Of all the burning questions connected with the Origin of Species, this
was the most heated--the most surrounded by prejudice and passion. To
touch it was to court attack; to be exposed to endless scorn, ridicule,
misrepresentation, abuse--almost to social ostracism. But the facts were
there; the structural likenesses between the apes and man had already
been shown; and as Huxley warned Darwin,] "I will stop at no point so
long as clear reasoning will carry me further."

[Now two years before the "Origin" appeared, the denial of these facts
by a leading anatomist led Huxley, as was his wont, to re-investigate
the question for himself and satisfy himself one way or the other. He
found that the previous investigators were not mistaken. Without going
out of his way to refute the mis-statement as publicly as it was made,
he simply embodied his results in his regular teaching. But the
opportunity came unsought. Fortified by his own researches, he openly
challenged these assertions when repeated at the Oxford meeting of the
British Association in 1860, and promised to made good his challenge in
the proper place.

We also find him combating some of the difficulties in the way of
accepting the theory laid before him by Sir Charles Lyell. The veteran
geologist had been Darwin's confidant from almost the beginning of his
speculations; he had really paved the way for the evolutionary doctrine
by his own proof of geological uniformity, but he shrank from accepting
it, for its inevitable extension to the descent of man was repugnant to
his feelings. Nevertheless, he would not allow sentiment to stand in the
way of truth, and after the publication of the "Origin" it could be said
of him:--]

Lyell, up to that time a pillar of the anti-transmutationists (who