INTRODUCTION ix 



lessly away from the broad forehead, and grew rather long 

 behind, yet the length did not suggest, as it often does, effemi- 

 nacy. He was masculine in everything look, gesture, 

 speech. Sparing of gesture, sparing of emphasis, careless 

 of mere rhetorical or oratorical art, he had nevertheless the 

 secret of the highest art of all, whether in oratory or whatever 

 else he had simplicity." 



HUXLEY THE SCIENTIST 



"The question of questions for mankind the problem 

 which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting 

 than any other is the ascertainment of the place which Man 

 occupies in nature and of his relation to the universe of things. 

 Whence our race has come ; what are the limits of our power 

 over nature and of nature's power over us ; to what goal are 

 we tending : are the problems^ which present themselves anew 

 and with undiminished interest to every man born into the 

 world. " This was the great problem Huxley kept before him ; 

 h,is immediate aims he stated thus : "To smite all humbugs, 

 however big; to give a nobler tone to science; to set an 

 example of abstinence from personal controversies, and of 

 toleration for everything but lying ; to be indifferent as to 

 whether the work is recognized as mine or not, so long as 

 it is done." This was the life text of a man who went to 

 the bottom of things, a man absolutely simple and natural, 

 a man of genial nature, an eager searcher after truth. 



How well Huxley kept to his text, how deeply he carved 

 "T. H. H. his mark" upon the world, is clearly stated by 

 John Fiske in his " Essays Historical and Literary " (Vol. II, 

 ch. vi) : "If absolute loyalty to truth, involving complete 

 self-abnegation in face of the evidence, be the ideal aim of 

 the scientific inquirer, there have been few men in whom that 

 ideal has been so perfectly realized as in Huxley. If he were 



