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, when the opposition to Darwin was in its acutest stage, Owen withdrew his words.  His “Reade Lecture,” delivered in the University of Cambridge, was in all respects a reprint of the essay from which we have just quoted, but the apparently dangerous words were omitted.  More than that, the points insisted on in the essay as being sufficient for the purpose of separating man in zooelogical classification were elevated into a reason against descent.  Although Huxley, in several addresses and publications, disproved the existence of the alleged differences, and although Sir William Flower gave an actual demonstration shewing the essential identity of the brain of man and of the apes in the matter in question, Owen never admitted his error.