To T. H. Huxley   31 October [1861]1

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

Oct. 31st

My dear Huxley

In a little Book, just published, called the Three Barriers (a theological hash of old abuse of me) Owen gives to the Author a new resume of his Brain doctrine;2 & I thought you would like to hear of this. He ends with a delightful sentence. “No science affords more scope or easier ground for the caviller & controversialist; & these do good by preventing scholars from giving more force to generalisations than the master propounding them does, or meant his readers or hearers to give”.—3

You will blush with pleasure to hear that you are of some use to the Master.

Ever yours | C. Darwin

I have had more Catasetums, all right you audacious “caviller”.—4

Mr. Campbell vows he will work; if he will, he shall have lots—5

1
The year is given by CD’s reference to the publication of The three barriers (see n. 2, below).
2
The anonymous work The three barriers: notes on Mr. Darwin’s “Origin of Species” was published in August 1861 (Publishers’ Circular 1861). The author was the Scottish Episcopalian clergyman Gilbert Rorison (NUC). A review of this work by Samuel Pickworth Woodward, which appeared in the Critic, 30 November 1861, is in CD’s ‘Scrapbook of Reviews’ (DAR 226.1); Woodward incorrectly identified the author as ‘George’ Rorison. Huxley and Richard Owen were engaged in a public dispute over the question of the zoological classification of man. In particular, they disagreed about whether or not there was an anatomical difference between the brain of humans and that of the higher apes. Owen argued that the human brain was uniquely distinguished by virtue of the presence of the hippocampus minor; Huxley maintained that this structure was also present in other members of the Quadrumana. See also letters to T. H. Huxley, 1 April [1861], and to J. D. Hooker, 23 [April 1861].
3
[Rorison] 1861, p. 163. The discussion to which CD refers is in an appendix entitled ‘On the human and brute brains’, which presents, ‘with Professor Owen’s kind permission’, Owen’s criticism of Huxley’s article ‘On the zoological relations of man with the lower animals’ (T. H. Huxley 1861a).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3303,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3303