284 Thomas Henry Huxley 



ist ; and yet he made oul}' a few observations and a 

 limited collection of curiosities, and even his exiguous 

 place in the annals of zoolog}- is the accidental result 

 of his companionship with Huxley. The special nat- 

 tural endowments whicli Huxley brought to the study 

 of zoology were, in the first place, a facult}' for the pa- 

 tient and assiduous observation of facts ; in the second, 

 a swift power of discriminating between the essential 

 and the accessory among facts ; in the third, the con- 

 structive ability to arrange these essentials in wide gen- 

 eralisations which we call laws or principles and which, 

 within the limits necessarily set by inductive princi- 

 ples, are the starting-point for new deductions. These 

 were the faculties which he brought to his science, but 

 there were added to them two personal characteristics 

 without which they would not have taken him far. 

 They were impelled by a driving force which dis- 

 tinguishes the successful man from the muddler and 

 without which the finest mental powers are as useless 

 as a complicated machine disconnected from its driving- 

 wheel. They were directed by a lofty and disinter- 

 ested enthusiasm, without which the most talented 

 man is a mere self-seeker, useless or dangerous to 

 societ}'. The faculties and qualities which made Hux- 

 ley great as a zoologist were practically those which 

 he applied to the general questions of biological theory, 

 to the problems of education and of society, and to 

 philosophy and metaphysics. A comparison between 

 his sane and forcible handling of questions that lay 

 outside the special province to which the greater part 

 of his life was devoted, with the dubious and involved 

 treatment given such questions by the professional 

 politicians to whom the English races tend to entrust 

 their de.stinies, is a useful comment on that value of 



