52 [July 
SOME NEW BOOKS 
HUXLEY AS STUDENT 
Tue SctenTiFIc Memorrs oF THoMAS HENRY Huxtey. 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. 
Ir 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- 
Chirurgical 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 ina 
strict chronological order, without addition or alteration, so that we 
may trace through them the modifications of view and the gradual 
