iv MODERN E VOL UTION 



243 



ledge, there may be regret that throughout his life 

 circumstances were against his doing any piece of 

 long-sustained work, such as that which, for example, 

 the affluence and patience of Darwin permitted him 

 to do. But until Huxley's later years, and, indeed, 

 through broken health to the end, his work outside 

 official demands had to be done fitfully and piece- 

 meal, or not at all. Notwithstanding this, it has 

 the unity which is inspired by a central idea. The 

 application of the theory of evolution all round im- 

 parts a quality of relation to subjects seemingly 

 diverse. And this comes out clearly and strongly 

 in the more orderly arrangement of the material in 

 the new issue of Collected Essays. 



These show what an omnivorous reader he was ; 

 how well equipped in classics, theology, and general 

 literature, in addition to subjects distinctly his own. 

 He sympathised with every branch of culture. As 

 contrasted with physical science, he said, * Nothing 

 would grieve me more than to see literary training 

 other than a very prominent branch of education/ 

 One corner of his library was filled with a strange 

 company of antiquated books of orthodox type ; this 

 he called 'the condemned cell.' When looking at 

 the ' strange bedfellows ' that slept on the shelves, the 

 present writer asked Huxley what author had most 

 influenced a style whose clearness and vigour, never- 

 theless, seems unborrowed ; and he at once named the 

 masculine and pellucid Leviathan of Hobbes. He had 

 the happy faculty of rapidly assimilating what he read ; 

 of clearly grasping an opponent's standpoint ; and, 

 what is a man's salvation nowadays, freedom from that 

 curse of specialism which kills all sense of proportion 



