x INTRODUCTION 



another vacation was impossible. At this moment, a criti- 

 cal one in his life, some of his close scientific friends placed 

 to his credit twenty-one hundred pounds to enable him to 

 take the much needed rest. Darwin wrote to Huxley con- 

 cerning the gift : " In doing this we are convinced that 

 we act for the public interest." He assured Huxley that 

 the friends who gave this felt toward him as a brother. 

 " I am sure that you will return this feeling and will 

 therefore be glad to give us the opportunity of aiding you 

 in some degree, as this will be a happiness to us to the 

 last day of our lives." The gift made it possible for Hux- 

 ley to take another long vacation, part of which was spent 

 with Sir Joseph Hooker, a noted English botanist, visiting 

 the volcanoes of Auvergne. After this trip he steadily 

 improved in health, with no other serious illness for ten 

 years. 



In 1876 Huxley was invited to visit America and to 

 deliver the inaugural address at Johns Hopkins Univer- 

 Vislt to s ity- 1 J u ty f this year accordingly, in company 

 America. with his wife, he crossed to New York. Every- 

 where Huxley was received \nth enthusiasm, for his name 

 was a very familiar one. Two quotations from his address 

 at Johns Hopkins are especially worthy of attention as a 

 part of his message to Americans. "It has been my fate 

 to see great educational funds fossilise into mere bricks 

 and mortar in the petrifying springs of architecture, with 

 nothing left to work them. A great warrior is said to have 

 made a desert and called it peace. Trustees have sometimes 

 made a palace and called it a university." 



The second quotation is as follows : 



I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by 

 your bigness or your material resources, as such. Size is not 

 grandeur, territory does not make a nation. The great issue, 

 about which hangs true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging 

 fate, is, what are you going to do with all these things ? . . . 



The one condition of success, your sole safeguard, is the moral 

 worth and intellectual clearness of the individual citizen. Edu- 

 cation cannot give these, but it can cherish them and bring them 

 to the front in whatever station of society they are to be found, 

 and the universities ought to be, and may be, the fortresses of 

 the higher life of the nation. 



