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NOTICES OF RECENT BOOKS. 



Thomas Henry Huxley. A sketch of bis life and work. By 

 P. Chalmers Mitchell, M.A. 8 x 5j in., xvii -f 297 pages, 

 6 plates. New York and London, 1900: G. P. Putnam's 

 Sons. Price 5s. 



Comparisons are odious, it is said. Nevertheless, we do not 

 imagine that we shall hurt anybody's feelings when we say that 

 Huxley was by far the most eminent of the many distinguished 

 men who have held the office of President of the Quekett Micro- 

 scopical Club. For this reason alone members of the Club should 

 not fail to read this account of the life and work of the great 

 tighter, who certainly did more than any other man to secure to 

 scientific workers the perfect liberty they now enjoy of following 

 the conclusions derived from their investigations, whithersoever 

 they may lead. But, apart from this consideration, the book 

 before us is well w^orthy of perusal, and it gives just about the 

 amount of information which most people will require. For the 

 general reader it is probably to be preferred to the " Life and 

 Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley," by his son. It certainly gives 

 one a much better idea of his relation to his contemporaries, and to 

 the great problems which were being fought over during a large part 

 of the second half of the nineteenth century, than can be obtained 

 from his own correspondence, however interesting this may be. 



The mainsprings of Huxley's remarkable power are well 

 summed up by Mr. Mitchell as follows : — (1) "a faculty for the 

 patient and assiduous observation of facts"; (2) "a swift power 

 of discriminating between the essential and the accessory among 

 facts"; (3) " the constructive ability to arrange these essentials 

 in wide generalisations." Impelling and directing these faculties 

 were two personal characteristics of immense importance, namely, 

 ■" a driving force, which distinguishes the successful man from the 

 muddler," and " a lofty and disinterested enthusiasm." These 

 qualities were not only applied by Huxley to his biological work, 

 but also to the problems of education, sociology, philosophy, and 

 metaphysics. 



As an example of one of the points mentioned above — namely, 

 the extraordinary capacity of going straight to the essential 

 features of every subject to which he turned his attention, we 

 may venture perhaps to refer to Huxley's Presidential Address to 



