post would have been acceptable, because he had advocated the view
that there were several species of man. The court political leaders,
and society generally, resented strongly anything that seemed at all
likely to disturb the somewhat narrow orthodoxy prevalent in those
times; and, as there were comparatively few posts open to scientific
men, and comparatively greater chances of posts being made for men of
talent and ability who adhered to the respectable traditions, those
who tampered with so serious a question as the place of man were
likely to burn their fingers severely. However, the difficulties of
discussing these problems were much greater immediately after 1859.
One of the most surprising things in the history of this century is
the sudden intensity of the opposition of the public, particularly the
respectable and religious public, to zooelogical writing upon man,
immediately after the publication of the _Origin_. Before that time
anatomists did not necessarily hesitate to point out the close
resemblance between the anatomy of man and that of the higher apes,
and the difficulties anatomists had in making anatomical distinction
of value between them. Thus Professor Owen, who, as a writer, was
rather unusually nervous about expressing facts to which any objection
might be raised by those outside the strictly scientific world, had
written the following paragraph in the course of an essay on the
characters of the class Mammalia, published, in 1857, in the _Journal
of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society_:

"Not being able to appreciate or conceive of the distinction
between the psychical phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a
Boschisman or of an Aztec, with arrested brain-growth, as being
of a nature so essential as to preclude a comparison between
them, or as being other than a difference of degree, I cannot
shut my eyes to the significance of that all-pervading similitude
of structure--every tooth, every bone, strictly homologous--which
makes the determination of the difference between _Homo_ and
_Pithecus_ the anatomist's difficulty."

It is true, he went on to explain his belief in the existence of
certain characters in the brain which seemed to him to justify the
separation of man in a different group from that in which the apes
were placed; but it is certain that he regretted having said anything
which seemed to support the Darwinian view; and, two years later, wh