into doubt.  It was only too evident that the Marquis himself found no comfort in evolution, and even entertained a suspicion as to its probability.  It was well worth the whole journey to Oxford to watch Huxley during this portion of the address.  In his red doctor-of-laws gown, placed upon his shoulders by the very body of men who had once referred to him as “a Mr. Huxley” (This phrase was actually used by the “Times".), he sank deeper into his chair upon the very front of the platform and restlessly tapped his foot.  His situation was an unenviable one.  He had to thank an ex-Prime Minister of England and present Chancellor of Oxford University for an address, the sentiments of which were directly against those he himself had been maintaining for twenty-five years.  He said afterwards that when the proofs of the Marquis’s address were put into his hands the day before, he realised that he had before him a most delicate and difficult task.  Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson) one of the most distinguished living physicists, first moved the vote of thanks, but his reception was nothing to the tremendous applause which greeted Huxley in the heart of that University whose cardinal principles he had so long been opposing.  Considerable anxiety had been felt by his friends lest his voice should fail to fill the theatre, for it had signally failed during his Romanes Lecture delivered in Oxford the year before, but when Huxley arose he reminded you of a venerable gladiator returning to the arena after years of absence.  He raised his figure and his voice to its full height, and, with one foot turned over the edge of the step, veiled an unmistakable and vigorous protest in the most gracious and dignified speech of thanks.

Throughout the subsequent special sessions of this meeting Huxley could not appear.  He gave the impression of being aged but not infirm, and no one realised that he had spoken his last word as champion of the law of evolution. (See, however, below.)

Such criticism of the address as he actually expressed reappears in the leading article, “Past and Present,” which he wrote for “Nature” to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of its foundation (November 1, 1894).

The essence of the criticism is that with whatever demonstrations of hostility to parts of the Darwinian theory Lord Salisbury covered the retreat of his party from their ancient positions, he admitted the validity of the main points for which Darwin contended.]

The essence of this great work (the “Origin of Species”) may be stated summarily thus:  it affirms the mutability of species and the descent of living forms, separated by differences of more than varietal value, from one stock.  That is to say, it propounds the doctrine of evolution as far as biology is concerned.  So far, we have merely a restatement of a doctrine which, in its most general form, is as old as scientific speculation.  So far, we have the two theses which were declared to be scientifically absurd and theologically damnable by the Bishop of Oxford in 1860.