xxiv Introduction 



beginning to take in deep-sea life, and which culminated 

 in the equipment and despatch of the Challenger expedi- 

 tion towards the end of 1872." Interest in deep-sea 

 problems, it may be said, had been greatly stimulated by 

 the publication in 1855 of Matthew Fontaine Maury's 

 Physical Geography of the Sea. This book was re- 

 printed in England, where it passed through more than 

 twenty editions. Huxley's address is noteworthy also 

 as a perfect example of how a thinker can take a seemingly 

 trivial subject and make it " a window into the infinite." 

 Huxley's Piece of Chalk belongs with Tennyson's Flower 

 in the Crannied Wall. 



6. ON SCIENCE AND ART IN RELATION TO EDUCA- 

 TION. This lecture was delivered at a meeting of the 

 Liverpool Institution in 1882 and published in the third 

 volume of Collected Essays. It forms a fitting conclusion 

 to our selections because Huxley here summarizes his 

 views about education, defends his position against the 

 charge of one-sidedness, re-affirms what he has said about 

 science, and then talks interestingly and helpfully about 

 literature in general, about grammar, drawing, English 

 literature in particular, English composition, the value of 

 translations in fact, " all the essentials of education for 

 an English child." 



In simplicity of style, in maturity of thought, in range 

 and variety of topics discussed, in autobiographic signifi- 

 cance, in all the elements of clear and forceful exposition, 

 this lecture outranks (in the editor's opinion) all that 

 have preceded it. It is, therefore, more than a conclusion 

 to our selections: it is, in its way, a summary and a 

 culmination. 



