The concluding verses run as follows:
Next HUXLEY replies
That OWEN he lies
And garbles his Latin quotation;
That his facts are not new,
His mistakes not a few,
Detrimental to his reputation.
"To twice slay the slain"
By dint of the Brain
(Thus Huxley concludes his review),
Is but labour in vain,
Unproductive of gain,
And so I shall bid you "Adieu!">[
Some think my winding-up too strong, but I trust the day will never come when I shall abstain from expressing my contempt for those who prostitute Science to the Service of Error. At any rate I am not old enough for that yet. Darwin came in just now. I get no scoldings for pitching into the common enemy now!!
I would give you fifty guesses [he writes to Hooker on April 30], and you should not find out the author of the "Punch" poem. I saw it in MS. three weeks ago, and was told the author was a friend of mine. But I remained hopelessly in the dark till yesterday. What do you say to Sir Philip Egerton coming out in that line? I am told he is the author, and the fact speaks volumes for Owen's perfect success in damning himself.
[In the midst of the fight came a surprising invitation. On April 10 he writes to his wife:—]
They have written to me from the Philosophical Institute of Edinburgh to ask me to give two lectures on the "Relation of Man to the Lower Animals" next session. I have replied that if they can give me January 3 and 7 for lecture days I will do it—if not, not. Fancy unco guid Edinburgh requiring illumination on the subject! They know my views, so if they did not like what I have to tell them, it is their own fault.
[These lectures were eventually delivered on January 4 and 7, 1862, and were well reported in the Edinburgh papers. The substance of them appears as Part 2 in "Man's Place in Nature," the first lecture describing the general nature of the process of development among vertebrate animals, and the modifications of the skeleton in the mammalia; the second dealing with the crucial points of comparison between the higher apes and man, namely the hand, foot, and brain. He showed that the differences between man and the higher apes were no greater than those between the higher and lower apes. If the Darwinian hypothesis explained the common ancestry of the latter, the anatomist would have no difficulty with the origin of man, so far as regards the gap between him and the higher apes.
Yet, though convinced that] "that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions," [he steadfastly refused to be an advocate of the theory,] "if by an advocate is meant one whose business it is to smooth over real difficulties, and to persuade when he cannot convince."
[In common fairness he warned his audience of the one missing link in the chain of evidence—the fact that selective breeding has not yet produced species sterile to one another. But it is to be adopted as a working hypothesis like other scientific generalisations,] "subject to the production of proof that physiological species may be produced by selective breeding; just as a physical philosopher may accept the undulatory theory of light, subject to the proof of the existence of the hypothetical ether; or as the chemist adopts the atomic theory, subject to the proof of the existence of atoms; and for exactly the same reasons, namely, that it has an immense amount of prima facie probability; that it is the only means at present within reach of reducing the chaos of observed facts to order; and lastly, that it is the most powerful instrument of investigation which has been presented to naturalists since the invention of the natural system of classification, and the commencement of the systematic study of embryology."