1 68 Thomas Henry Huxley 



" utter ignorance as to the simplest laws of their own animal 

 life, which prevails among even the most highly educated 

 persons in this country." "I am addressing," he said, "I 

 imagine, an audience of cultivated persons ; and yet I dare 

 venture to assert that, with the exception of those of my 

 hearers who may chance to have received a medical educa- 

 tion, there is not one who could tell me what is the meaning 

 and use of an act which he performs a score of times ever}' 

 minute, and whose suspension would involve his immediate 

 death: — I mean the act of breathing — or who could state 

 in precise terms why it is that a confined atmosphere is 

 injurious to health." 



The power to express the precise meaning of even 

 a common physiological act is probably not j'et pos- 

 sessed by all educated people ; but no one can doubt 

 that there is now a very generalh- diffused knowledge 

 of and interest in the ordinary processes of living 

 bodies. It is almost impossible for any of us to escape 

 some amount of scientific education at school, at col- 

 lege, from lectures, or from books. Certainly those 

 of us who have a natural inclination towards know- 

 ledge of that kind can hardly fail to have the oppor- 

 tunity of acquiring it. Ever}^ library abounds in 

 elementary and advanced scientific books ; every 

 iniiversity and many schools have their lectures and 

 laboratories for science, and there is scientific teaching 

 involved in every educational curriculum. To attempt 

 a complete account of how this radical change in the 

 attitude of the world to science has come about would 

 be to attempt to write the history of European civilis- 

 ation in the last half-century. A thousand causes have 

 been contributor}' ; but among these causes two have 

 been of extraordinary importance — an idea and a man. 

 The idea is the conception of organic evolution, and 

 the man was Huxley. The idea of evolution clothed 



