34 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



confidence in my general powers, but one thing I prided my- 

 self upon was clearness. I was once talking of the brain 

 before a large, mixed audience, and soon began to feel that no 

 one in the room understood me. Finally I saw the thoroughly 

 interested face of a woman auditor, and took consolation in 

 delivering the remainder of the lecture directly to her. At 

 the close, my feeling as to her interest was confirmed when 

 she came up and asked if she might put one question upon a 

 single point which she had not quite understood. ' Certainly/ 

 I replied. ' Now Professor/ she said, ' is the cerebellum inside 

 or outside of the skull ? ' ' Once, speaking of his deafness, he 

 said : " It is a great misfortune to be deaf in only one ear. 

 Every time I dine out, the lady sitting by my good ear thinks 

 I am charming, but I make a mortal enemy of the lady on my 

 deaf side." A story of his about babies is also characteristic : 

 "When a fond mother calls upon me to admire her baby I 

 never fail to respond ; and, while cooing appropriately, I take 

 advantage of an opportunity to gently ascertain whether the 

 soles of its feet turn in and tend to support my theory of 

 arboreal descent." 



Huxley's life is as full of suggestion to the student as were 

 his lectures and his conversation. It illustrates the force of 

 obtaining a very broad view of the animal kingdom before we 

 attempt to enter the plane of higher generalization. Huxley's 

 training in embryology, vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, 

 palaeontology, and geology was not mapped out for him as 

 for the modern university student. His prolonged sea-voyage 

 gave him time and material for reflection, and after this he 

 was led from one subject to another until he obtained a grasp 

 of nature as a whole, second only to that of Darwin. 



Huxley was born in 1825. Like Goethe, he inherited from 

 his mother his brilliantly alert powers of thought, and from his 

 father, his courage and tenacity of purpose, a combination of 

 qualities which especially fitted him for the period in which he 

 was to live. There is nothing striking recorded about his boy- 

 hood as a naturalist. He preferred engineering, but was led 

 into medicine. 



At the close of his medical course he secured a navy medical 



