Huxley's Life and Work xv 



fossil of an American horse with five toes. The honor of 

 the find belongs, therefore, by discovery to Professor 

 Marsh, and only by prophecy to Huxley. 



One other contribution to anatomy may be said to close 

 Huxley's achievements as a discoverer. It was a generally 

 accepted belief that the skull was merely the expanded 

 backbone. A German naturalist, named Oken, while 

 walking in the Harz Mountains, had picked up the dried 

 skull of a sheep, and it suddenly occurred to him that this 

 skull was nothing but a series of expanded vertebrae 

 molded together. Oken's view was accepted in England 

 till Huxley overthrew it. He examined the skulls of 

 fishes, beasts, and men, and found that Oken's theory 

 was not borne out by the facts. " It may be true," he 

 said, " that there is a primitive identity of structure be- 

 tween the spinal or vertebral column and the skull, but it 

 is no more true that the adult skull is a modified vertebral 

 column than it would be to affirm that the vertebral 

 column is a modified skull." 



Let us turn now to Huxley's services in the cause of 

 education. If Darwin outranks him as a scientist, he 

 outranks Darwin just as incontestably as an educator. 

 His interests were more varied than Darwin's, his per- 

 ceptions quicker, his personality more vigorous, his human 

 sympathies broader, and his command of the resources 

 of the English language far superior. If Huxley had done 

 nothing more than contribute to modern thought the 

 definition of a liberal education found on pages 54 and 55 

 of this book, he would be remembered at least to the ex- 

 tent of that stimulating paragraph. But he did far more. 

 He talked and wrote and worked unceasingly to make his 

 educational ideals prevail. These ideals are scattered 

 through his essays and lectures and letters, but the funda- 

 mentals may be easily summarized. 



