io HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



by the able men who will succeed me in the com- 

 ing years. Following in his steps, I shall, even 

 at the risk of giving offence, try to speak plainly 

 and straightforwardly when I come to touch on 

 themes with which he dealt, about which we all 

 feel so deeply. 



Every one in this world, at least every one of 

 whom others need take count, has a dominant 

 note. If I ask myself, what was Huxley's 

 dominant note ? I find myself answering without 

 hesitation a love of knowledge, an ever-present 

 never-satisfied desire to know. There are many 

 ways of knowing; of these two stand out as dis- 

 tinctive ways, offering a contrast the one to the 

 other. One way of knowing lies in gathering up, 

 in sweeping into the mind, all the grains of 

 information which happen to be lying around. 

 This is, as it were, the greediness of multifarious 

 knowledge, conspicuous in the child, but also 

 common in the adult; it is that yearning to know 

 everything that is going on which is the main- 

 spring of daily talk and makes the fortunes of the 

 Press. Such a greed of knowledge Huxley 

 possessed ; such a way of knowing he followed to 

 a remarkable degree ; nothing touched him, noth- 

 ing even came near to him but what he strove to 

 lay hold of it. And he found such profit to him- 

 self in this kind of knowledge that he laid it 

 down as an axiom of education that every one, so 

 far as possible, should be led towards knowing 

 something of everything. 



