Creator; but you assert that God made you: and yet you know that you
yourself were originally a little piece of matter, no bigger than the
end of this gold pencil-case." [Lastly as to the descent from a monkey,
he said:] "I should feel it no shame to have risen from such an origin;
but I should feel it a shame to have sprung from one who prostituted the
gifts of culture and eloquence to the service of prejudice and of
falsehood."

[Many others spoke. Mr. Gresley, an old Oxford don, pointed out that in
human nature at least orderly development was not the necessary rule:
Homer was the greatest of poets, but he lived 3000 years ago, and has
not produced his like.

Admiral FitzRoy was present, and said he had often expostulated with his
old comrade of the "Beagle" for entertaining views which were
contradictory to the First Chapter of Genesis.

Sir John Lubbock declared that many of the arguments by which the
permanence of species was supported came to nothing, and instanced some
wheat which was said to have come off an Egyptian mummy, and was sent to
him to prove that wheat had not changed since the time of the Pharaohs;
but which proved to be made of French chocolate. Sir Joseph (then Dr.)
Hooker spoke shortly, saying that he had found the hypothesis of Natural
Selection so helpful in explaining the phenomena of his own subject of
Botany, that he had been constrained to accept it. After a few words
from Darwin's old friend, Professor Henslow, who occupied the chair, the
meeting broke up, leaving the impression that those most capable of
estimating the arguments of Darwin in detail saw their way to accept his
conclusions.