HUXLEY 19 



only, should be presented to the student. In that 

 way he looked to get a breadth which could not 

 otherwise be gained. Exactitude he trusted to 

 secure at the same time that he was striving for 

 breadth by the method of teaching. Selecting a 

 few themes, and a few only, from the several 

 branches of biology, and these so far as possible 

 of an elementary, fundamental character, he 

 strove to make the student grasp each of these as 

 fully and as exactly as was within his power. And 

 he taught through the eyes as well as through the 

 ears. The younger generation to-day can per- 

 haps hardly realise to what an extent, thirty or 

 forty years ago, in science teaching, especially in 

 biological teaching, oral exposition and the read- 

 ing of books still supplied the dominant means of 

 learning. Biological laboratories were then only 

 beginning to be. Huxley was from the first in- 

 sistent that a firm grasp, an exact grip, of the 

 phenomena and laws of nature could only be 

 gained by him who had been led to see the phe- 

 nomena for himself, and to work out through 

 observations and experiments conducted by him- 

 self the problems presented. Arguments, discus- 

 sions, apt illustrations, lucid exposition, all these 

 were needed to make good the lesson; but they 

 were as so much beating the air, unless they dealt 

 with things which had been really seen and actu- 

 ally handled. 



It was not in the teaching of biological science 

 alone that he urged this marriage of breadth with 



