148 Thomas Henry Huxley 



blasts of niisrepreseutation and ridicule for soiiie years ; and I 

 was even as one of the wicked. Indeed, it surprises me, ;it 

 times, to think how anyone who had sunk so low could have 

 emerged into, at any rate, relative respectability." 



Further, in the same preface, Huxley strongly ad- 

 vises others to imitate his action in this matter. There 

 are now, and no doubt there always will be, truths 

 " plainly obvious and generall)' denied." Whoever 

 attacks the current ideas is certain, unless human 

 nature changes greatl3% to encounter a bitter opposition, 

 and there will always be those among his friends who 

 recommend him to temper truth by prtidence. Hux- 

 ley's advice is different : 



"If there is a young man of the present generation who has 

 taken as much trouble as I did to assure himself that they are 

 truths, let him come out with them, without troubling his head 

 about the barking of the dogs of St. Ernulphus. Veritas pnr- 

 valebit — some day ; and, even if she does not prevail in his 

 time, he himself will be all the better and wiser for having 

 tried to help her. And let him recollect that such great reward 

 is full payment for all his labour and pains." 



Although they were written so long ago, the lectures 

 on " Man's Place in Nature " are still the best existing 

 treatise on the subject, and we shall give an outline of 

 them, mentioning the chief points in which further work 

 has been done. Information concerning the man-like 

 apes was scattered in very different places, in the 

 grave records of scientific societies, in the letters of 

 travellers and missionaries, in the reports of the zoo- 

 logical societies which had been in possession of living 

 specimens. The facts had to be sifted out from a great 

 mass of verbiage and unfounded statement. With a 

 characteristic desire for historical accuracy, more usual 

 in a man of letters than in an anatomist, Huxlej' began 



