REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 203 
of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent 
digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.” 
This can hardly be accurate; no electric effect could 
have been wrought by so long-winded a sentiment. I 
agree with a writer in Macmzllan’s Magazine that this 
version is “much too Green,” but it doubtless gives 
the purport of what Huxley probably said in half as 
many but far more picturesque and fitting words. I 
have a feeling that the electric effect is best preserved 
in the Youmans version, in spite of its manifest verbal 
inaccuracy. It is curious to read that in the ensuing 
buzz of excitement a lady fainted, and had to be car- 
ried from the room; but the audience were in general 
quite alive to the bishop’s blunder in manners and tac- 
tics, and, with the genuine English love of fair play, 
they loudly applauded Huxley. From that time forth 
it was recognized that he was not the sort of man to be 
browbeaten. As for Bishop Wilberforce, he carried 
with him from the affray no bitterness, but was always 
afterward most courteous to his castigator. 
When Huxley had his scrimmage with Congreve, in 
1869, over the scientific aspects of Positivism, I was 
giving lectures to postgraduate classes at Harvard on 
the Positive Philosophy. I never had any liking for 
Comte or his ideas, but entertained an absurd notion 
that the epithet “ Positive” was a proper and conven- 
ient one to apply to scientific methods and scientific 
philosophy in general. In the course of the discussion 
I attacked sundry statements of Huxley with quite un- 
necessary warmth, for such is the superfluous belliger- 
ency of youth. The Word reported my lectures in 
full, insomuch that each one filled six or seven columns, 
and the editor, Manton Marble, sent copies regularly 
