232 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



During 1892, too, the first volume of Huxley's Collected 

 Essays appeared in the " Eversley Series," under the name 

 of Method and Results, and this included, like all its 

 successors, a special Preface. 



The necessity for establishing a teaching University 

 for London was now becoming a pressing question, and 

 there can be no doubt that the University of London, as 

 now modified, owes very much to his energy and sound 

 judgment. For one thing, as Professor Karl Pearson 

 says : — 



" . . . . Professor Huxley's leadership did, at any rate, a 

 great deal to unite the London teachers, and raise their ideal of 

 a true university, while at the same time helping to repress the 

 self-interests of many persons and institutions which had been 

 before very much to the front " (Life, ii, p. 314). 



Huxley's ideal is expressed in a letter to Professor Ray 

 Lankester (dated April 11, 1892): — 



" The mediaeval university looked backwards ; it professed to 

 be a storehouse of old knowledge, and except in the way of 

 dialectic cobweb-spinning, its professors had nothing to do with 

 novelties. Of the historical and physical (natural) sciences, of 

 criticism and laboratory practice, it knew nothing. Oral teach- 

 ing was of supreme importance on account of the cost and rarity 

 of manuscripts. 



<* The modern university looks forward : its professors have 

 to be at the top of the wave of progress. Research and criticism 

 must be the breath of their nostrils ; laboratory work the main 

 business of the scientific student ; books his main helpers. 



" The lecture, however, in the hands of an able man will still 

 have the utmost importance in stimulating and giving facts and 

 principles their proper relative prominence" (Life, ii, p. 309). 



The advantages of Oxford and Cambridge, and one 

 advance made by them in the " modern " direction, are 

 indicated in a letter to Mr. Briton Riviere : — 



" . . . .in the way of practical advantage in any career, there 



