370 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY cHAP. 



put forward as his strongest claim to reverence and 

 gratitude ; and that is the steadfast courage and consum 

 mate ability with which he fought the battle of intel- 

 lectual freedom, and insisted that people should be allowed 

 to sjiealv their honest convictions without being oppressed 

 or slandered by the orthodox. He was one of those, 

 perhaps the very foremost, who won that priceless freedom 

 for us ; and, as is too common, people enter into the 

 labours of the brave, and do not even know what their 

 elders endured, or what has been done for themselves. 



With this went a proud independence of spirit, 

 intolerant of patronage, careless of titular honours, 

 indifferent to the accumulation of worldly wealth. 

 He cared little even for recognition of his work. " If 

 I had £400 a year," '^ he exclaimed at the outset of 

 his career, "I should be content to work anonymously 

 for the advancement of science." The only recogni- 

 tion he considered worth ha\dng, was that of the 

 scientific world ; yet so little did he seek it, so little 

 insist on questions of priority, that, as Professor 

 Howes tells me, there are at South Kensington among 

 the mass of unpublished drawings from dissections 

 made by him, many which show that he had arrived 

 at discoveries which afterwards brought credit to 

 other investigators. 



He was as ready to disclaim for himself any merits 

 which really belonged to his predecessors, whether 

 philosophical or scientific. He was too well read in 

 their works not to be aware of the debt owed them 



^ A sum w hich might have supported a bachelor, but was entirely 

 inadequate to the ueeds of a large family. 



