292 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HTJXLEY cHAP. XII 



views as Mr. Spencer — for were they not both 

 Evolutionists ? On general attention being called to 

 the existing difference between their views, some 

 jumped to the conclusion that Huxley was offering a 

 general recantation of evolution, others that he had 

 discarded his former theories of ethics. On the one 

 hand he was branded as a deserter from free thousrht : 

 on the other, hailed almost as a convert to orthodoxy. 

 It was irritating, but little more than he had expected. 

 The conditions of the lecture forbade any reference to 

 politics or religion ; hence much had to be left unsaid, 

 which was supplied next year in the Prolegomena 

 prefacing the re-issue of the lecture. 



After all possible trimming and compression, he 

 still feared the lecture would be too long, and would 

 take more than an hour to deliver, especially if the 

 audience was likely to be large, for the numbers must 

 be considered in reference to the speed of speaking. 

 But he had taken even more pains than usual with it. 

 " The Lecture," he writes to Professor Romanes on 

 April 19, " has been in type for weeks, if not months, 

 as I have been taking an immensity of trouble over 

 it. And I can judge of nothing till it is in type." 

 But this very precaution led to unexpected com- 

 plications. When the proposition to lecture was first 

 made to him, he was not sent a copy of the statute 

 ordering that publication in the first instance should 

 lie with the University Press ; and in view of the 

 proviso that " the Lecturer is free to publish on his 

 own behalf in any other form he may like," he had 



