43<D LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. 



As he wrote in reply to an appeal for help in this case 

 (March 12, 1883): 



I have not read the writings for which Mr. Foote was 

 prosecuted. But, unless their nature has been grossly misrepre- 

 sented, I cannot say that I feel disposed to intervene on his 

 behalf. 



I am ready to go great lengths in defence of freedom of dis- 

 cussion, but I decline to admit that rightful freedom is attacked, 

 when a man is prevented from coarsely and brutally insulting 

 his neighbours' honest beliefs. 



I would rather make an effort to get legal penalties inflicted 

 with equal rigour on some of the anti-scientific blasphemers 

 who are quite as coarse and unmannerly in their attacks on 

 opinions worthy of all respect as Mr. Foote can possibly have 

 been. 



The grand result of his determination not to compromise 

 where truth was concerned, was the securing freedom of 

 thought and speech. One man after another, looking back 

 on his work, declares that if we can say what we think now, 

 it is because he fought the battle of freedom. Not indeed 

 the battle of toleration, if toleration means toleration of error 

 for its own sake. Error, he thought, ought to be extirpated 

 by all legitimate means, and not assisted because it is con- 

 scientiously held. 



As Lord Hobhouse wrote, soon after his death : 



I see now many laudatory notices of him in papers. But I 

 have not seen, and I think the younger men do not know, that 

 which (apart from science) I should put forward as his strong- 

 est claim to reverence and gratitude ; and that is the steadfast 

 courage and consummate ability with which he fought the battle 

 of intellectual freedom, and insisted that people should be 

 allowed to speak their honest convictions without being op- 

 pressed or slandered by the orthodox. He was one of those, 

 perhaps the very foremost, who won that priceless freedom for 

 us ; and, as is too common, people enter into the labours of the 

 brave, and do not even know what their elders endured, or what 

 has been done for themselves. 



With this went a proud independence of spirit, intolerant 

 of patronage, careless of titular honours, indifferent to the 

 accumulation of worldly w r ealth. He cared little even for 



