Abstract
IN the history of scientific thought there have been a few supreme occasions only on which scientific men have been compelled to enter the public lists on behalf of a new idea. Each time the issue at stake has been fundamental the acceptance or rejection of new knowledge, revolutionising our understanding of man's place in Nature. Each time the repercussions, arousing partisanship and controversy, have reverberated along the whole cultural front. Such a situation developed in the middle of the nineteenth century when the battle for evolution reached its climax, and Press, platform and pulpit resounded to the noise of strife. The centre of that struggle was, of course, T. H. Huxley, and his activities brought him into contact with the whole intellectual life of the period scientific, literary, philosophic and religious. Probably more than any other man of that century, the threads of cultural life crossed him from all directions.
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The Huxley Letters. Nature 137, 307–308 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137307c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137307c0