52 [July 



SOME NEW BOOKS 



Huxley as Student 



The Scientific Memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley. Edited by Prof. Michael Foster 

 and by Prof. E. Ray Lankester. Vol. i.. 8vo, pp. xvi + 606, with frontispiece and 

 32 plates. London: Macmillan & Co. New York : Appleton & Co., 1898. Price, 

 25s. net. 



It is always an interesting, though perhaps not a very important 

 question, what is the true position of any one scientific worker. 

 Some there are who attain a wide popularity, but whose names are 

 almost unknown to, or passed over with a sneer by, the professional 

 student of science. There are others whose names, though held in 

 honour by their fellow-workers, are absolutely unknown, not merely 

 to the general public, but to those circles of it that claim the 

 epithet ' cultured.' It is rarely that a man of science receives 

 adequate honour from both his fellow-workers and the great pub- 

 lic ; and in the one case or the other the honour, even if it comes, is 

 pretty sure to be based on something else than true appreciation. 

 Darwin, to mention the only name that will not be considered 

 invidious, — Darwin was estimated by his fellow-workers at something 

 approaching his true value, but to the outer public he was the man 

 who said we were descended from monkeys, and little more. As 

 such, his fame was enormous, but hardly desirable. 



Of what nature is the reputation of Huxley ? That he had a 

 popular reputation is undeniable. Whether as the militant critic of 

 orthodoxy, the writer of widely used text-books and professor in an 

 important school, or as the lucid and polished exponent of a new 

 scientific philosophy, he had his following both in this country and on 

 the continents of Europe and America. But a reputation based on 

 these forms of intellectual activity would hardly last were it not sup- 

 ported by a bulk of more solid scientific work, capable of winning 

 the admiration of competent critics. A wide popularity is often looked 

 at askance by scientific men, who regard it as imcompatible with 

 serious work. Often they are right, especially when meaner intellects 

 are concerned ; and even in the case of Huxley there might be some 

 danger lest his brilliant essays should eclipse, even in the eyes of 

 scientific workers, the sober background of original research, from 

 this point of view, therefore, the point of view of memorial, to keep 

 the example of Huxley before future generations, it was a wise 

 thought to republish in collected form his more technical papers. 

 Many of these were, in fact, issued in publications not easy of access by 

 the general zoologist of to-day, such as The British and Foreign Medico- 

 Chirurgiccd Review, Todd's Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology, and 

 The London Medical Gazette, so that their republication in convenient 

 form were in any case something to be grateful for. 



We are not among those, if any there be, who need to be con- 

 vinced of Huxley's greatness as a biologist. But just because we 

 admit this so fully we are glad to have his articles thus collected in a 

 strict chronological order, without addition or alteration, so that we 

 may trace through them the modifications of view and the gradual 



