6 Thomas Henry Huxley 



his father and slowl}' recovered health. From that 

 time, however, all through his life, heL-Suffered period- 

 jically from prostrating d3'spepsia. After some months 

 devoted to promiscuous reading he resumed his work 

 under his brother-in-law in London. He confesses 

 that he was far from a model student. 



"I worked extremely bard when it pleased me, and wlien it 

 did not, — which was a frequent case, — I was extremely idle 

 (unless making caricatures of one's pastors and masters is to be 

 called a branch of industry), or else wasted my energies in 

 wrong directions. I read everything I could lay hands upon, 

 including novels, and took up all sorts of pursuits to drop them 

 again quite speedily." 



It is almost certain, however, that Huxley underesti- 

 mated the value of this time. He stored his mind with 

 both literature and science, and laid the foundation of 

 the extremely varied intellectual interests which after- 

 wards proved to him of so much value. It is certain, 

 also, that during this time he acquired a fair know- 

 ledge of French and German. It would be difficult to 

 exaggerate the value to him of this addition to his 

 weapons for attacking knowledge. To do the best 

 work in any scientific pursuit it is necessarj- to freshen 

 one's own mind by contact with the ideas and results 

 of other workers. As these workers are scattered over 

 different countries it is necessary to transcend the con- 

 fusion of Babel and read what they write in their own 

 tongues. When Huxley was young, the great reputa- 

 tion of Cuvier overshadowed English anatomy, and 

 English anatomists did little more than seek in nature 

 what Cuvier had taught them to find. In German}^ 

 other men and other ideas were to be found. Johannes 

 Mueller and Von Baer were attacking the problems of 



