138 Notes and Comment 



religion appears to me," said Huxley, " to be purely factitious, 

 fabricated on the one hand by short-sighted religious people; 

 and on the other by equally short-sighted scientific people." See 

 also the note on line 10, page 15. In another passage he says: 

 " When I say that Descartes consecrated doubt, you must re- 

 member that it was that sort of doubt which Goethe has called 

 ' the active skepticism, whose whole aim is to conquer itself ' ; 

 and not that other sort which is born of flippancy and ignorance, 

 and whose aim is only to perpetuate itself, as an excuse for 

 idleness and indifference." 



A LIBERAL EDUCATION: AND WHERE TO FIND IT 

 (See Introduction xxii-xxiii) 



48, 5. Ichabod. See / Samuel iv, 21. 



48, 10. The people perish for lack of knowledge. Hosea 

 i<u, 6: " My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." 



49, 22. Our public schools. These are not to be confounded 

 with our American public schools. Huxley had in mind such 

 schools as Rugby and Eton. 



49, 29. Senior wranglership, or a double-first. These are 

 English academic terms, the first meaning the highest honors 

 in mathematics at Cambridge University, the second the high- 

 est honors in mathematics and the classical languages at Ox- 

 ford University. 



51, i. Raveled skein. To ravel is one of the few verbs in 

 English that may mean two contradictory things: to tangle or 

 to untangle. Huxley uses it in the first sense. 



51, 18. Gambit: an opening play by which a pawn is sacri- 

 ficed to gain a better position. 



52, 10. Retzsch: Friedrich August Moritz Retzsch (1779- 

 1857), a German etcher and painter. 



53, 29. Test-Acts. The English Test-Act of 1673, repealed 

 in 1828, forbade any one to hold public office who did not 

 swear loyalty to the Church of England. 



53> 33- The " Poll ": students who pass (get through) but 

 take no honors. The term is in vogue at Cambridge University 

 and is derived from the Greek ol Tro\\ol, " the many," " the 

 mass." 



54, i. Plucked: pitched, "flunked," dropped from the roll. 

 56, 2. Law of the inverse squares. According to this law 



