358 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



only his own interests he would not have done so, but we owe much to 

 him for the inestimable freedom which we now enjoy. 



When he was moved to wrath it was when he thought wrong was 

 being done, the people were being misled, or truth was being unfairly 

 attacked, as, for instance, in the celebrated discussion at Oxford. The 

 statue in the Natural History Museum is very powerful and a very exact 

 likeness, but it is like him when he was moved to righteous indignation. 

 It is not Huxley as he was generally, as he was when he was teaching, 

 or when in the company of friends. He was one of the most warm- 

 hearted and genial of men. Mr. Hutton, who sat with him on the Vivi- 

 section Commission, has recorded that "considering he represented the 

 physiologists on this Commission, I was much struck with his evident 

 horror of anything like torture even for scientific ends." I do not, how- 

 ever, see why this should have surprised him, because the position of 

 physiologists is that it is the anti-vivisectionists who would enormously 

 increase the suffering in the world. To speak of inflicting pain 'for 

 scientific ends' is misleading. It is not for the mere acquisition of 

 useless knowledge, but for the diminution of suffering and because one 

 experiment may prevent thousands of mistakes and save hundreds of 

 lives. The medical profession may be mistaken in this, but it is obvious 

 that their conviction, whether it be right or whether it be wrong, is not 

 only compatible with, but is inspired by, a horror of unnecessary suffer- 

 ing. 



The great object of his labors was, in his own words, "to promote 

 the increase of natural knowledge and to forward the application of 

 scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life." His 

 family life was thoroughly happy. He was devoted to his children, and 

 they to him. "The love our children show us," he said in one of his 

 letters, "warms our old age better than the sun." 



Nor can I conclude without saying a word about Mrs. Huxley, of 

 whom her son justly says that she was "his help and stay for forty years, 

 in his struggles ready to counsel, in adversity to comfort; the critic 

 whose judgment he valued above almost any, and whose praise he cared 

 most to win; his first care and latest thought, the other self, whose union 

 with him was a supreme example of mutual sincerity and devotion." 



At a time of deep depression and when his prospects looked most 

 gloomy he mentions a letter from Miss Heathorn as having given him 

 "more comfort than anything for 1 a long while. I wish to Heaven," he 

 says, "it had reached me six months ago. It would have saved me a 

 world of pain and error." 



Huxley had two great objects in life as he has himself told us. 

 "There are," he said, "two things I really care about — one is the prog- 

 ress of scientific thought, and the other is the bettering of the condition 

 of the masses of the people by bettering them in the way of lifting them- 



