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The Huxley-Wilberforce Debate: A Reconsideration1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Sheridan Gilley
Sheridan Gilley*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

Viewers of the recent television series ‘The Voyage of Charles Darwin’ must have been amused at the portrayal of Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford, at the famous meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1860, at which Wilberforce condemned the evolutionary doctrine of Darwin’s Origin of Species. This Wilberforce is the vaudeville villain of the Victorian stage, saturnine and leering in his initial triumph, and with more than the suggestion of horns and tail, as he stalks off scowling darkly after his discomfiture by T. H. Huxley. In the vulgar mythology of the television screen, Huxley and Wilberforce are not so much personalities as the warring embodiments of rival moralities, Huxley, the archangel Michael of enlightenment, knowledge, and the disinterested pursuit of truth; Wilberforce, the dark defender of the failing forces of authority, bigotry and superstition. The picture has the stark contrast and attractive simplicity of traditional legend. As a debate, it dramatizes a great conflict of principle. With its Victorian setting, only the stock conventions of melodrama can do it justice, and so it lives on in the popular mind as the best known symbol of the nineteenth century conflict of science and religion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 17: Religion and Humanism , 1981 , pp. 325 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1981

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Footnotes

1

For assistance with this article I am especially grateful to Dr Ann Loades and Dr David Knight of the university of Durham, Peter Sedgwick of the university of Birmingham and Dr Christopher Wright of the British Library. I had completed this paper when I read J. R. Lucas, ‘Wilberforce and Huxley: a Legendary Encounter’, The Historical Journal 22 (June 1979) pp 313–30. Mr Lucas has not seen Miss Browne’s significant essay (see footnote 32) or James Moore’s recent book (see footnote 12). Mr Lucas is less interested in the religious context, is more exclusively concerned with the details of the debate, and we differ on a number of points of interpretation; but both our points of agreement and difference establish the uncertainty of the episode.

References

2 The subsequent Horizon programme, ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ takes a similar line. See also The Voyage of Charles Darwin: his Autobiographical Writings (BBC London 1979). For earlier discussion in the orthodox tradition see Alan Moorehead’s Darwin and the Beagle, and the overture to the brilliantly composed Irvine’s, William Apes, Angels and Victorians: A joint biography of Darwin and Huxley (London 1955) pp 3–8 Google Scholar.

3 Gillispie, C.C., Genesis and Geology (Cambridge, Mass. 1951)Google Scholar.

4 Wilson, Leonard G. (ed) Sir Charles Lyell’s Scientific Journals on the Species Question (New Haven 1970)Google Scholar.

5 (London 1844). Darwin’s opponent, Richard Owen (on whom see footnote 14) did not condemn the Vestiges.

6 The best short summary of the relations between nineteenth century religion and science, containing much original research, is Chadwick’s, Owen The Victorian Church 2 vols (1966-70) 1, pp 558-72Google Scholar, 2, pp 1-35. On Darwin’s role in destroying one clergyman’s faith, see Annan, Noel, Leslie Stephen (London 1951) pp 162-71Google Scholar.

7 Huxley, T. H., ‘On the reception of the “Origin of Species”,’ in [Francis] Darwin, [The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin), 3 vols (London 1887) 2, p 186 Google Scholar.

8 There is now a massive if controversial body of literature on these and related points: see Ellegård, Alvar, Darwin and the General Reader (Gothenburg 1958)Google Scholar; Vorzimmer, Peter J., Charles Darwin: The Years of Controversy (London 1972)Google Scholar; Hull, David, Darwin and his Critics (Cambridge, Mass. 1973)Google Scholar.

9 See Cannon, [Walter F.], [‘Scientists and Broad Churchmen; an Early Victorian Intellectual Network’], The Journal of British Studies 4 (1963-4) p 85 Google ScholarPubMed.

10 Darwin, 1, p 47.

11 Ibid, 2, p 202.

12 Moore, [James], [The Post-Darwinian Controversies] (Cambridge 1979) pp 217-51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see Peckham, Morse, ‘Darwin and Darwinisticism’ Victorian Studies 3 (September 1959) pp 19–40 Google Scholar.

13 Moore, p 100: ‘Towards a non-violent history’, pp 101-22.

14 Oken’s influence on Owen is difficult to determine, and is discussed in Owen’s pietistic and colourless biography, by Huxley, in a concluding contribution to the work on Owen’s scientific achievement. Here I am following Huxley. Owen, [Rev Richard], [The Life of Richard Owen], 2 vols (London 1894) 2, pp 312–6 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Rudwick, M.J.S., The Meaning of Fossils (London 1972) p 207 Google Scholar.

16 Ibid, p 214.

17 Darwin, Charles, ‘An historical sketch of the progress of opinion on the origin of species’, in the sixth edition of the Origin of Species of 1872: (20 ed London 1920) p xviii Google Scholar.

18 Sir Beer, Gavin de, Charles Darwin: Evolution by Natural Selection (London 1963) p 165 Google Scholar.

19 Owen, Richard, ‘Darwin, On the Origin of Species’, The Edinburgh Review 111 (April 1860) pp 487–532 Google Scholar.

20 Wilberforce, [Samuel], [‘Darwin’s] Origin [of Species’,] Quarterly Review 108 (July 1860) pp 225-64Google Scholar. There is also the suspicious circumstances that John Murray published both the Origin and the Quarterly. Did he commission a hostile review to swell the sales of the Origin?

21 There is no reference to the British Association’s meeting in Owen’s life; his visit to Oxford is dismissed with an account of a chess game with the dean of Christ Church and a private view of Holman Hunt’s ‘Christ in the Temple’. The biography then continues with his silver wedding anniversary! Owen. 2, p 102. Nor is the debate mentioned in Adam Sedgwick’s life, though Sedgwick was a fierce opponent of Darwin’s and was present at the British Association meeting in Oxford in 1860 if not at Section D; Clark, John Willis and Hughes, Thomas McKenny, The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick 2 vols (Cambridge 1890) 2, p 364 Google Scholar.

22 Wilberforce, Origin, pp 263-4.

23 Huxley, [Leonard], [Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley] 3 vols (2 ed London 1903) 1, pp 204–5 Google Scholar.

24 On Thursday June 28; Huxley, 1, p 261; The Athenaeum 7 July 1860, p 26.

25 Darwin, 2, p 202. Huxley did believe that Darwin had destroyed Paley’s teleology; on this larger issue, see Passmore, John, ‘Darwin’s impact on British metaphysics’, Victorian Studies 3 (September 1959) pp 41–54 Google Scholar.

26 The best short sketch of Huxley is Leslie Stephen’s brilliant essay in Studies of a biographer 4 vols (London 1898-1902) 2, pp 188–219 Google Scholar. The standard modern life is Bibby, Cyril, Scientist Extraordinary: The Life and Scientific Work of Thomas Henry Huxley, 1820-1895 (Oxford 1972)Google Scholar. On the debate, see pp 41-2.

27 Huxley, 1, p 199.

28 Ibid, 1, p 6, 3, p 403.

29 Ibid, 2, pp 1-2.

30 Ibid, I, p 259.

31 Huxley to Dyster, 9 September 1860, in Bibby, [Cyril], [T.H. Huxley Scientist, Humanist and Educator] (London 1959) pp 69–70 Google Scholar: I disagree with Bibby’s claim that ‘nothing conflicts’ with Huxley’s letter.

32 Browne, [Janet], [‘The Charles Darwin—Joseph Hooker correspondence : an analysis of manuscript resources and their use in biography’], Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 8 (1978) pp 351-66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Huxley, [Leonard], [Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton] Hooker, 2 vols (London 1918) 2, pp 301–4 Google Scholar.

33 Darwin, [Francis], [Charles] Darwin (3 ed London 1908) p 240 Google Scholar.

34 Browne, p 362.

35 Huxley, I, pp 259-74; Huxley, Hooker 1, pp 520-7.

36 Punch, 18 May 1861, p 206.

37 The Athenaeum, 14 July 1860, p 68. There is a short jocular survey of the debate—rather in the spirit of Wilberforce’s own humour—at the end of the opening remarks on the Association’s meetings in The Athenacum, 7 July 1860 p 19. The actual transcript of the debate appeared the following week. Cf Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 7 July 1860, p 2.

38 Ashwell, [A.R. and Wilberforce, R.G.], [Life of the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce, D. D.], 3 vols (London 1880-2) 2, p 451 Google Scholar.

39 Ibid, 3, p xiv.

40 Chadwick, 2, p 10.

41 Ibid.

42 Browne, p 361; see Huxley, Hooker, 2, p 303.

43 Darwin, 2, pp 321-2, MrsLyell, , Life Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. 2 vols (London 1881) 2, p 335 Google Scholar.

44 Fawcett, Henry, ‘A popular exposition of Mr. Darwin on the Origin of Species’, Macmillan’s Magazine 3 (December 1860) p 88 Google Scholar.

45 Huxley, Hooker, 1, p 527.

46 Ward, W.R., ‘Oxford and the Origins of Liberal Catholicism in the Church of England’, SCH, 1, pp 244–6 Google Scholar, on high church liberalism; see Cannon, pp 65-68, on the Cambridge alliance between science and broad churchmanship.

47 Wilberforce, 2, pp 450-1.

48 Meacham, Standish, Lord Bishop : The Life of Samuel Wilbertorce 1805-1873 (Cambridge, Mass. 1970) pp 215–7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 J. R. Green to W. Boyd Dawkins, 3 July 1860, in Stephen, Leslie (ed) Letters of John Richard Green (London 1901) pp 44-5Google Scholar.

50 Darwin, 2, p 322.

51 T. H. Huxley to Francis Darwin, 27 June 1891, Darwin, Darwin, p 240. On first publication, Huxley’s letter was misdated 1861.

52 Newton, [Alfred], [‘Early days of Darwinism’,] Macmillan’s Magazine 57 (February 1888) pp 248-9Google Scholar.

53 Darwin, Darwin, pp 238-9; also Huxley 1, pp 269-271.

54 Sidgwick, Isabel, ‘A grandmother’s tales’, Macmillan’s Magazine 78 (October 1898) pp 433-4Google Scholar. Mrs Sidgwick appropriately reproduced the grandmaternal motif in her title. She was the wife of the William Sidgwick mentioned by Poulton below, and her authorship is identified by The Wellesley Index 0f Victorian Periodicals (ed) Houghton, Walter E., 1 (Toronto 1966) p 656 Google Scholar.

55 Huxley, 1, p 273.

56 Bibby, p 69.

57 Huxley, 1, p 266. Canon A. S. Farrar of Durham was also an able scientist: see DNB.

58 Ibid, pp 268-9.

59 Tuckwell, William, Reminiscences of Oxford (2 ed London 1907) p 55 Google Scholar.

60 George Rolleston to Huxley, undated 1860, Huxley collection, Imperial College.

61 Browne, p 361.

62 Newton, p 249.

63 Poulton, Edward, Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection (London 1896) p 155 Google Scholar. I owe this reference and much else to Dr. David Knight.

64 Himmelfarb, [Gertrude], [Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution] (London 1959) p 240 Google Scholar.

65 Huxley, Hooker 1, p 326.

66 14 July 1860, p 65.

67 Chadwick, 2, p 11.

68 Darwin, 1, pp 182-4. On the other hand, in a letter to Huxley (see footnote 60) George Rolleston attributed the ‘very moderate tone of the Article in the Quarterly to the famous passage of arms when you

“Rose on stronger wings
Unconquered when you met with Sam”.’

But Wilberforce’s article appeared a few days after the Oxford meeting, and according to his diary, he finished it on May 20. Wilberforce, 2, p 449.

69 Dr. David Knight considers that at least two of the three mistakes of Wilberforce which Huxley lists were possibly because the bishop’s information was outdated : his reference to venemous snakes is perhaps a reminiscence of Paley’s, William Natural Theology, 2 vols (Oxford 1826) 1, p 231 Google Scholar.

70 Darwin’s suggestion: ‘There has been a cancelled page; I should like to know what gigantic blunder it contained’. Darwin, 2, p 331.

71 And the last to lack references and bibliography.

72 ‘and that insecurity’, Huxley wrote as late as 1887, ‘remains up to the present time’. Darwin, 2, 198.

73 Wilberforce, Origin, p 258.

74 Wilberforce, 2, p 450.

75 Here Darwin’s leading American supporter Asa Gray and his co-discoverer of natural selection A. R. Wallace were at one with Wilberforce.

76 Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man 2 vols (London 1871) 1, p 68 Google Scholar; see Himmelfarb, pp 306-8, on this and ‘Darwin’s tendency to resolve all issues at the lowest level’.

77 Darwin, 2, pp 324-5.

78 Huxley, 3, 274.

79 Ibid, pp 175-6.

80 ‘Of the two Establishments’ (scientific and religious) Butler ‘actually preferred the Church’, Willey, Basil, Darwin and Butler (London 1960) p 80 Google Scholar.

81 Back to Methuselah. A Metabiological Pentateuch (London 1929) p lxxviii.