Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
now sweeping across Britain's intellectual landscape. Darwin's achievement
in this regard was the first great sign of the historical swell that was soon to
wash aristocratic and clerical privilege into the sea.
The Origin of Species is not the first, and it will not be the [last] of the
great questions born of science, which will demand settlement from this
generation. The general mind is seething strangely, and to those who
watch the signs of the times, it seems plain that this nineteenth century
will see revolutions of thought and practice as great as those which the
sixteenth witnessed. Through what trials and sore contests the civilized
world will have to pass in the course of this new reformation, who can
tell? But I verily believe that come what will, the part which England may
play in the battle is a grand and a noble one. She may prove to the world
that for one people, at any rate, despotism and demagoguy [sic] are not
the necessary alternatives of government; that freedom and order are not
incompatible; that reverence is the handmaid of knowledge; that free dis-
cussion is the life of truth, and of true unity in a nation.
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Given that the “battle” Huxley describes here was overtly one raging between
science and religion, it would be easy to overlook the extent to which this
passage carries on a narrative rooted in England's Reformation tradition.
But to entirely abandon the Christian view of history was not an option.
Huxley's determination to make the scientific revolution a “new reforma-
tion” enabled him to tap into historical meanings that genuine naturalism
could never provide. To let go of the significance that made science a sign
of history's preordained plan would be to let go of its role as the instrument
of progress.
Sitting in the audience, Darwin was understandably perplexed to see
the scientific defense of natural selection that he had expected to hear
evaporate into this ideological vapor. He had set great hope on Huxley's
lecture and had even paid a fancier to supply him with a variety of bred
pigeons, pouters, tumblers, and fantails, as a living illustration of the analo-
gous power of artificial selection.
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But, as his subsequent correspondence
indicates, the talk was a disappointment.
I succeeded in persuading myself for 24 hours that Huxley's lecture was a
success. Parts were eloquent & good & all
very
bold, & I heard strangers
say “what a good lecture.” I told Huxley so . . . [But] after conversation
with others & more reflection I must confess that as an Exposition of the
doctrine the Lecture seems to me an entire failure . . . He gave no just idea
of
natural
selection.
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