130 Notes and Comment 



how far it reached, it never shrank from trying to make equally 

 clear the limit beyond which it could not go." Life and Letters, 

 I, 224. 



15, 10. Ecclesiastical spirit. "The antagonism of science," 

 says Huxley, " is not to religion but to the heathen survivals 

 and the bad philosophy under which religion herself is often 

 well-nigh crushed." 



15, 28. New Reformation. Mrs. Humphry Ward gave this 

 name to the new scientific movement. Huxley, writing to his 

 wife in 1873, says: "The part I have to play is not to found a 

 new school of thought or to reconcile the antagonisms of the 

 old schools. We are in the midst of a gigantic movement 

 greater than that which preceded and produced the Reforma- 

 tion, and really only the continuation of that movement. . . . 

 I have no more doubt that free thought will win in the long 

 run than I have that I sit here writing to you." 



LETTERS 

 (See Introduction, pp. xx-xxi) 



16, i. Miss Heathorn: Miss Henrietta Anne Heathorn, whom 

 Huxley married July i, 1855. See Introduction xi. 



16, 5. Naughten: a fusion of naught and nothing. 



17, 3. Sardonic grin. Homer was the first to speak of 

 sardonic laughter, meaning laughter that concealed some evil 

 design. Sardonic still has this sense, but Huxley means by it 

 not malignant but strained, forced, unnatural, not proceeding 

 from real gaiety. 



18, 14. Duke of Wellington. Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852) 

 became successively baron, viscount, earl, marquis, and finally 

 Duke of Wellington. After his victory over Napoleon at 

 Waterloo, he was considered the greatest soldier, as Nelson 

 was the greatest sailor, that England had produced. In the ode 

 to which Huxley alludes in this letter, Tennyson calls Well- 

 ington, 



" Our greatest yet with least pretense, 

 Great in council and great in war, 

 Foremost captain of his time, 

 Rich in saving common-sense, 

 And, as the greatest only are, 

 In his simplicity sublime." 



