io6 Selections from Huxley 



I am not about to trouble you with my autobiography; 

 the omens are hardly favorable, at present, for work of 

 that kind. But I should like if I may do so without ap- 

 pearing, what I earnestly desire not to be, egotistical I 

 5 should like to make it clear to you, that such notions as 

 these, which are sometimes attributed to me, are, as I have 

 said, inconsistent with my mental constitution, and still 

 more inconsistent with the upshot of the teaching of my 

 experience. For I can certainly claim for myself that sort 



10 of mental temperament which can say that nothing human 

 comes amiss to it. I have never yet met with any branch 

 of human knowledge which I have found unattractive 

 which it would not have been pleasant to me to follow, so 

 far as I could go; and I have yet to meet with any form 



15 of art in which it has not been possible for me to take as 

 acute a pleasure as, I believe, it is possible for men to 

 take. 



And with respect to the circumstances of life, it so hap- 

 pens that it has been my fate to know many lands and 



20 many climates, and to be familiar, by personal experience, 

 with almost every form of society, from the uncivilized 

 savage of Papua and Australia and the civilized savages 

 of the slums and dens of the poverty-stricken parts of great 

 cities, to those who, perhaps, are occasionally the some- 



25 what over-civilized members of our upper ten thousand. 

 And I have never found, in any of these conditions of life, 

 a deficiency of something which was attractive. Savagery 

 has its pleasures, I assure you, as well as civilization, 

 and I may even venture to confess if you will not let 



30 a whisper of the matter get back to London, where I am 

 known I am even fain to confess, that sometimes in the 

 din and throng of what is called " a brilliant reception " 

 the vision crosses my mind of waking up from the soft 

 plank which has afforded me satisfactory sleep during the 



