It must be noted, however, that, vigorous as he was in carrying war into the enemy’s country, on two occasions only did Huxley set forth without being first personally attacked.  One was his review of the Vestiges of Creation, when he was irritated by the writer’s “prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific habit of mind.”

If it had any influence on me at all [he writes], it set me against Evolution; and the only review I ever have qualms of conscience about, on the ground of needless savagery, is one I wrote on the Vestiges while under that influence (1854).

The other was his controversy in 1885-6 with Mr. Gladstone, over the account of the creation in Genesis.  But, at least, this was a reply to Mr. Gladstone’s attack upon M. Reville and his applications of scientific methods to the problem.

Nevertheless, in this and the similar controversies on Biblical subjects, his chief aim was not simply to confute his adversary.  To demolish once more the legend of the Flood, or the literal truth of the Creation myth, in which a multitude of scholars and critics and educated people generally had ceased to believe, was not an otiose slaying of the slain.  It made people think of the wider questions involved.  To riddle the story of the Gadarene swine was to make a breach in the whole demonology of the New Testament and its claims to superior knowledge of the spiritual world.

It may be noted in passing that, however hard he hit in these controversies, he never descended to anything which would merely wound and offend cherished convictions.  His own feelings forbade ribaldry, and abuse disgusted him, on whichever side employed.  He declined to admit that rightful freedom of discussion is attacked when a man is prevented from coarsely and brutally insulting his neighbours’ honest beliefs.  And this apart from the question of bad policy, inasmuch as abuse stultifies argument.  But if prosecutions for blasphemy are permitted, it would be but just to penalize some of the anti-scientific blasphemers for their coarse and unmannerly attacks on opinions worthy of all respect.

For the rest, as he humorously remarks, when he began in early days to push his researches into the history and origin of the world and its life, he invariably ran up against a sign-board with the notice, “No Thoroughfare—­By Order—­Moses.”  Geology and Biology were shut in by a ring-fence; the universe beyond was a Forbidden Land, guarded by the Lamas of ecclesiastical authority.

The first great clash with this authority, which focussed attention upon the scientific struggle for freedom of thought, was that which followed the publication of the Origin of Species at the end of 1859, and culminated in the debate with the Bishop of Oxford at the Oxford meeting of the British Association in 1860.  A fierce but more limited struggle for freedom of criticism within the pale of the Church was to follow the publication of Essays and Reviews (1860) and Bishop Colenso’s examination of the Pentateuch in 1862 and onwards.