The Selections xxiii 



lucidity is vitalized by conviction and enthusiasm. These 

 are personal or rather, emotional traits, while lucidity 

 is purely intellectual. Euclid and Blackstone are lucid; 

 Macaulay and Huxley are vivid. 



Huxley began his lectures to working men in 1855. " I 

 am sick of the dilettante class," he wrote, " and mean to 

 try what I can do with these hard-handed fellows who 

 live among facts." Only working men were admitted, 

 though a clerk once secured admission by calling himself 

 a " driver." He was in fact a " quill-driver." The at- 

 tendance and attention were equally gratifying, and Hux- 

 ley exerted himself to the utmost to make these lectures 

 a power for right thinking and right living. They 

 represent him at his best in the spoken presentation of 

 scientific truth. 



5. ON A PIECE OF CHALK. This lecture was de- 

 livered to the working men of Norwich during the meet- 

 ing of the British Association in 1 868. It was published 

 in Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews (1870), and 

 republished in the eighth volume of Collected Essays. An 

 interesting reference to Mrs. Huxley's good judgment is 

 made by Huxley in connection with the proof-sheets of 

 this lecture. He wrote to her from Norwich, August 23, 

 1866: "I met Grove who edits Macmillan, at the soiree. 

 He pulled the proof of my lecture out of his pocket and 

 said : ' Look here, there is one paragraph in your lecture 

 I can make neither top nor tail of. I can't understand 

 what it means.' I looked to where his finger pointed, 

 and behold it was the paragraph you objected to when I 

 read you the lecture on the seashore ! I told him, and said 

 I should confess, however set up it might make you." 



" The address is noteworthy," says Mr. J. R. Ains- 

 worth Davis, " in a variety of ways. For one thing it 

 marks the increasing interest which men of science were 



