16 HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



ley's lead a new school of biological inquiry came 

 into being. Thus from the very beginning of his 

 career, by mere force of his efforts to get for him- 

 self a clear view of the things with which he had 

 to deal, to gain a firm ground from which he could 

 push forward into the unknown, Huxley, without 

 thought of others, became a teacher of inquirers. 

 But he could not do without thinking of others. 

 To his strong desire to know fully, and to think 

 clearly for himself, there was added a no less 

 strong desire that others also should know fully 

 and should think clearly. Not content, as he well 

 might have been, with being a teacher by 

 example, he, very soon after his return to Eng- 

 land, became a teacher by precept. While some 

 of us of the biological craft are painfully aware 

 of how much science would have gained had the 

 stream of energy which later on spread over such 

 wide fields been kept in its earlier and narrower 

 channel, we must admit that the world at large 

 would thereby have been greatly a loser. Hux- 

 ley became a teacher by precept, set himself to 

 the task of bettering the way in which men should 

 be taught. He began, naturally began, with the 

 teaching of what I may call the professional few, 

 with the training of those who enter upon the 

 study of science, knowing that a knowledge of 

 science must be, in one way or another, an 

 important factor in their future life; but he very 

 soon passed on to the wider task of teaching the 

 general many. In both these kinds of teaching 



