CHAPTER V 

 1884 



FROM this time forward the burden of ill-health grew 

 slowly and steadily. Dyspepsia and the hypochondriacal 

 depression which follows in its train, again attacked Huxley 

 as they had attacked him twelve years before, though this 

 time the physical misery was perhaps less. His energy was 

 sapped ; when his official work was over, he could hardly 

 bring himself to renew the investigations in which he had 

 always delighted. To stoop over the microscope was a 

 physical discomfort ; he began to devote himself more ex- 

 clusively to the reading of philosophy and critical theology. 

 This was the time of which Sir M. Foster writes that " there 

 was something working in him which made his hand, when 

 turned to anatomical science, so heavy that he could not 

 lift it. Not even that which was so strong within him, 

 the duty of fulfilling a promise, could bring him to the 

 work." 



Up to the beginning of October, he went on with his 

 official work, the lectures at South Kensington, the business 

 as President of the Royal Society, and ex officio Trustee of 

 the British Museum ; the duties connected with the In- 

 spectorship of Fisheries, the City and Guilds Technical 

 Education Committee, and the University of London, and 

 delivered the opening address at the London Hospital Medi- 

 cal School, on : The State and the Medical Profession ' 

 (Coll. Ess. iii. 323), his health meanwhile growing less and 

 less satisfactory. He dropped minor offices, such as the 

 Presidency of the National Association of Science Teach- 

 70 



