REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY. 719 



would be a very inadequate and unjust estimate of Gladstone which 

 sliould-set him down as a shuffler and there leave the matter. From 

 the statesman's point of view it might be contended that Ghidstonc 

 was exceptionally direct and frank. But a statesman is seldom, if 

 ever, called upon to ascertain and exhibit the fundamentid facts of a 

 case without bias and in the disinterested mood which science demands 

 of her votaries. The statesman's business is to accomplish sundry 

 concrete political purposes, and he measures statements primarily, not 

 by their truth, but by their availableness as means toward a practical 

 end. Pure science cultivates a widely diti'erent habit of mind. One 

 could no more expect a prime minister, as such, to understand Huxley's 

 attitude in presence of a scientific problem than a deaf-nuite to com- 

 prehend a symphony of Beethoven. Gladstone's aim was to score a 

 point against his adversary, at whatever cost, whereas Huxley was as 

 quick to detect his own mistakes as anybody else's; and such differ- 

 ences in temperament were scarcely compatible with nuitual under- 

 standing. 



If absolute lo^^alty to truth, involving complete self-abnegation in 

 face of the evidence, be the ideal aim of the scientific inquirer, there 

 have been few men in whom that ideal has been so perfectly I'ealized 

 as in Huxley. If ever he were tempted by some fancied charm of 

 speculation to swerve a hair's breadth from the strict line of fact, the 

 temptation was promptly slaughtered and made no sign. For intel- 

 lectual integrity he was a spotless Sir Galahad. I believe there was 

 nothing in life which he dreaded so much as the sin of allowing his 

 reason to be hoodwinked by personal predilections, or whatever Francis 

 Bacon would have called "idols of the cave." Closely connected with 

 this ever present feeling was a holy horror of a priori convictions of 

 logical necessity and of long festoons of deductive argument suspended 

 from such airy supports. The prime necessity for him was to appeal 

 at every step" to observation and experiment, and in the al)senc.> ()f 

 such verification to rest content with saying, " 1 do not know." It is 

 to Huxlev, I believe, that we owe the epithet ^Agnostic," for which 

 all men of scientific proclivities owe him a debt of gratitude, since it 

 happened to please the popular fancy, and at once supplanted the 

 label "Positivist," which used to be ruthlessly pasted upon al such 

 men, in spite of their protests and struggles. No better word than 

 -Ag.K)stic" could be found to express Huxley's mental temperament 

 but with anything like a formulated system of agnosticism he had 

 little more to do than with other "isms." He used to --'^-^t 

 formidable parade which Lewes was making with h^s Objective M th d 

 and Verification, in which capital letters did duty tor pa <> the 

 arcrument- and as for Dean Hansel's elaborate agnostwis.n in us 

 L^n>f Religious Thought, Huxley, taking a '-^t^-- .^^j^^^;; 

 used to liken him to a (theological) umkeeper who has climbed 



