xx INTRODUCTION 



the student who is building up a knowledge of structure 

 for his own use. 



According to Huxley's biographer in the Life and 

 Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, the essays which rep- 

 resent him at his best are those published in 1868. They 

 are A Piece of Chalk, A Liberal Education, and On the 

 Physical Basis of Life. In connection with the comment 

 on these essays is the following quotation which gives 

 one interesting information as to Huxley's method of ob- 

 taining a clear style : 



This lecture on A Piece of Chalk together with two others de- 

 livered this year, seems to me to mark the maturing of his style 

 into that mastery of clear expression for which he deliberately 

 labored, the saying exactly what he meant, neither too much 

 nor too little, without confusion and without obscurity. Have 

 something to say, and say it, was the Duke of Wellington's 

 theory of style ; Huxley's was to say that which has to be said 

 in such language that you can stand cross-examination on each 

 word. Be clear, though you may be convicted of error. If you 

 are clearly wrong, you will run up against a fact sometime and 

 get set right. If you shuffle with your subject, and study chiefly 

 to use language which will give a loophole of escape either 

 way, there is no hope for you. 



This was the secret of his lucidity. In no one could Buffon's 

 aphorism on style find a better illustration, Le style c'est I'homme 

 meme. In him science and literature, too often divorced, were 

 closely united ; and literature owes him a debt for importing into 

 it so much of the highest scientific habit of mind ; for showing 

 that truthfulness need not be bald, and that real power lies more 

 in exact accuracy than in luxuriance of diction. 



Huxley's own theory as to how clearness is to be ob- 

 tained gets at the root of the matter. " For my part, I 

 venture to doubt the wisdom of attempting to mould one's 

 style by any other process than that of striving after the 

 clear and forcible expression of definite conceptions ; in 

 which process the Glassian precept, first catch your de- 

 finite conception, is probably the most difficult to obey." 



Perfect clearness, above every other quality of style, 

 certainly is characteristic of Huxley ; but clearness alone 

 does not make subject-matter literature. In ad- 

 quaiities dition to this quality, Huxley's writing wins the 

 reader by the racy diction, the homely illustra- 

 tion, the plain, honest phrasing. All these and other qual- 



