INTRODUCTION vii 



Hindu idols, sharks' teeth, mangy monkeys, scorpions, and 

 conch shells who shall describe the weary inutility of 

 it? It is really worse than nothing, because it leads the 

 unwary to look for objects of science elsewhere than under 

 their noses. What they want to know is that their ' Amer- 

 ica is here,' as Wilhelm Meister has it." During this 

 period, also, he began his lectures to workingmen, calling 

 them Peoples' Lectures. "Popular lectures," he said, "I 

 hold to be an abomination unto the Lord." Working- 

 men attended these lectures in great numbers, and to them 

 Huxley seemed to be always able to speak at his best. His 

 purpose in giving these lectures should be expressed in his 

 own words : " I want the working class to understand that 

 Science and her ways are great facts for them that phys- 

 ical virtue is the base of all other, and that they are to be 

 clean and temperate and all the rest not because fellows 

 in black and white ties tell them so, but because there are 

 plain and patent laws which they must obey ' under pen- 

 alties.' " 



Toward the close of 1859, Darwin's Origin of Species " 

 was published. It raised a great outcry in England ; and 

 Huxley immediately came forward as chief de- Attitnfle 

 fender of the faith therein set forth. He took toward 

 part in debates on this subject, the most famous evolutiolL 

 of which was the one between himself and Bishop Wilber- 

 force at Oxford. The Bishop concluded his speech by 

 turning to Huxley and asking, " Was it through his grand- 

 father or grandmother that he claimed descent from a 

 monkey?" Huxley, as is reported by an eye-witness, 

 " slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure, stern 

 and pale, very quiet and grave, he stood before us and 

 spoke those tremendous words. . . . He was not ashamed 

 to have a monkey for an ancestor ; but he would be ashamed 

 to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure 

 the truth." Another story indicates the temper of that 

 time. Carlyle, whose writing had strongly influenced Hux- 

 ley, and whom Huxley had come to know, could not for- 

 give him for his attitude toward evolution. One day, years 

 after the publication of Man's Place in Nature, Huxley, 



