216 LLFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY cHAP. IX 



been republished. It was to have been included in 

 a tenth volume of collected Essays, along with a 

 number of others which he projected, but never 

 wrote. 



Thus, begging the Positivists not to regard him as 

 a rival or competitor in the business of instructing 

 the human race, he says : — 



I aspire to no such elevated and difficult situation. I 

 declare myself not only undesirous of it, but deeply 

 conscious of a constitutional unfitness for it. Age and 

 hygienic necessities bind me to a somewhat anchoritic 

 life in pure air, with abundant leisure to meditate upon 

 the wisdom of Candide's sage aphorism, " Cultivons notre 

 jardin" — especially if the term garden may be taken 

 broadly and applied to the stony and weed-grown ground 

 within my skull, as well as to a few perches of more 

 promising chalk down outside it. In addition to these 

 effectual bars to any of the ambitious pretensions ascribed 

 to me, there is another : of all possible positions that of 

 master of a school, or leader of a sect, or chief of a party, 

 appears to me to be the most undesirable ; in fact, the 

 average British matron cannot look upon followers with 

 a more evil eye than I do. Such acquaintance with the 

 history of thought as I possess, has taught me to regard 

 schools, parties, and sects, as arrangements, the usual effect 

 of which is to perpetuate all that is worst and feeblest in 

 the master's, leader's, or founder's work ; or else, as in 

 some cases, to upset it altogether ; as a sort of hydrants 

 for extinguishing the fire of genius, and for stifling the 

 flame of high aspirations, the kindling of which has been 

 the chief, perhaps the only, merit of the protagonist of 

 the movement. I have always been, am, and propose to 

 remain a mere scholar. All that I have ever proposed to 

 myself is to say, this and this have I learned ; thus and 

 thus have I learned it : go thou and learn better ; but 



