tive review by Huxley of Owen's
contributions to knowledge.

The middle of 1860, however, was not a time for Huxley, in his
capacity as Darwin's chief defender, to make truce with the enemy. In
England a certain number of well-known scientific men had given a
general support to Darwinism. From France, Germany, and America there
had come some support and a good deal of cold criticism, but most
people were simmering with disturbed emotions. The newspapers and the
reviews were full of the new subject; political speeches and sermons
were filled with allusions to it. Wherever educated people talked the
conversation came round to the question of evolution. Were animals and
plants the results of special creations, or were they, including man,
the result of the gradual transformations of a few simple primitive
types evolving under the stress of some such force as Darwin's natural
selection? To many people it seemed to be a choice between a world
with God and a world without God; and the accredited defenders of
religion gathered every force of argument, of misrepresentation,
conscious and unconscious, of respectability, and of prejudice to
crush once for all the obnoxious doctrine and its obnoxious
supporters. In the autumn of that year it fell that the meeting of the
British Association, then coming into prominence as the annual
parliament of the sciences, was to be held at Oxford. It was
inevitable that evolution should be debated formally and informally in
the sessions of the Association, and it must have seemed to the
orthodox that there, in that beautiful city, its air vibrant with
tinkling calls to faith, its halls and libraries crowded with the
devout and the learned, its history and traditions alike calling on
all to defend the old fair piety, in such an uncongenial air, the
supporters of evolution must be overwhelmed. Almost the whole weight
of the attack had to be resisted by Huxley. In the various sectional
meetings he had combat after combat with professors and clerics. Of
these dialectic fights the most notable were one with Owen on the
anatomical structure of the brain, and another with Wilberforce upon
the general question of evolution. Owen contended that there were
anatomical differences not merely of degree but of kind between the
brain of man and the brain of the highest ape, and his remarks were
accepted by the audience as a complete and authoritative blow to the
theory of descent. Huxley at once met Owen wi