The importance of the Oxford meeting lay in the open resistance that was made to authority, at a moment when even a drawn battle was hardly less effectual than acknowledged victory.  Instead of being crushed under ridicule, the new theories secured a hearing, all the wider, indeed, for the startling nature of their defence.]

CHAPTER 1.15.

1860-1863.

[In the autumn he set to work to make good his promise of demonstrating the existence in the simian brain of the structures alleged to be exclusively human.  The result was seen in his papers “On the Zoological Relations of Man with the Lower Animals” ("Natural History Review” 1861 pages 67-68); “On the Brain of Ateles Paniscus,” which appeared in the “Proceedings of the Zoological Society” for 1861, and on “Nyctipithecus” in 1862, while similar work was undertaken by his friends Rolleston and Flower.  But the brain was only one point among many, as, for example, the hand and the foot in man and the apes; and he already had in mind the discussion of the whole question comprehensively.  On January 6 he writes to Sir J. Hooker:—­]

Some of these days I shall look up the ape question again and go over the rest of the organisation in the same way.  But in order to get a thorough grip of the question I must examine into a good many points for myself.  The results, when they do come out, will, I foresee, astonish the natives.

[Full of interest in this theme, he made it the subject of his popular lectures in the spring of 1861.

Thus from February to May he lectured weekly to working men on “The Relation of Man to the rest of the Animal Kingdom,” and on March 22 writes to his wife:—­]

My working men stick by me wonderfully, the house being fuller than ever last night.  By next Friday evening they will all be convinced that they are monkeys...Said lecture, let me inform you, was very good.  Lyell came and was rather astonished at the magnitude and attentiveness of the audience.

[These lectures to working men were published in the “Natural History Review,” as was a Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution (February 8) on “The Nature of the Earliest Stages of Development of Animals.”

Meanwhile the publication of these researches led to another pitched battle, in which public interest was profoundly engaged.  The controversy which raged had some resemblance to a duel over a point of honour and credit.  Scientific technicalities became the catchwords of society, and the echoes of the great Hippocampus question linger in the delightful pages of the “Water-Babies.”  Of this fight Huxley writes to Sir J. Hooker on April 18, 1861:—­]

A controversy between Owen and myself, which I can only call absurd (as there is no doubt whatever about the facts), has been going on in the “Athenaeum,” and I wound it up in disgust last week.

[And again on April 27:—­]