188 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



lack of means, he would have started life in the same 

 profession which Herbert Spencer followed till he 

 forsook Messrs. Fox's office for journalism. So, 

 with a certain shrinking from anatomical work, 

 Huxley studied medicine for a time under a relative, 

 and in his seventeenth year entered the Charing 

 Cross Hospital School as a student. In those days 

 there was no instruction in physics, and only in such 

 branch of chemistry as dealt with the nature of 

 drugs. Non multa, sed multum, and what was lack- 

 ing in breadth was, perhaps, gained in thoroughness. 

 Huxley had as excellent a teacher in Wharton Jones 

 as the latter had a promising pupil in Huxley, and 

 in working with the microscope, the evidence of that 

 came in his discovery of a certain root-sheath in the 

 hair, which has since then been known as * Huxley's 

 layer/ 



Up to the time of his studentship, he had been 

 left, intellectually, altogether to his own devices. 

 He tells us that he was a voracious and omnivorous 

 reader, ' a dreamer and speculator of the first water, 

 well endowed with that splendid courage in attacking 

 any and every subject which is the blessed compensa- 

 tion of youth and inexperience.' Among the books 

 and essays that impressed him were Guizot's History 

 of Civilisation, and Sir William Hamilton's essay 

 1 On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned/ which he 

 accidentally came upon in an od volume of the 

 Edinburgh Review. This, he adds, was 'devoured 

 with avidity/ and it stamped upon his mind the 

 strong conviction ' that on even the most solemn and 

 important of questions, men are apt to take cunning 

 phrases for answers ; and that the limitation of our 



