LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I 



Oxford in defence of the new hypothesis first brought 

 him before the public eye as one who not only had 

 the courage of his convictions when attacked, but 

 could, and more, would, carry the war effectively 

 into the enemy's country. And for the next ten 

 years he was commonly identified with the champion- 

 ship of the most unpopular view of the time; a 

 fighter, an assailant of long-established fallacies, he 

 was too often considered a mere iconoclast, a sub- 

 verter of every other well-rooted institution, theo- 

 logical, educational, or moral. 



It is difficult now to realise with what feelings he 

 was regarded in the average respectable household 

 in the sixties and early seventies. His name was 

 anathema ; he was a terrible example of intellectual 

 pravity beyond redemption, a man with opinions 

 such as cannot be held "without grave personal sin 

 on his part" (as was once said of Mill by W. G. 

 Ward, see p. 142), the representative in his single 

 person of rationalism, materialism, atheism, or if 

 there be any more abhorrent "ism" in token of 

 which as late as 1892 an absurd zealot at the head- 

 quarters of the Salvation Army crowned an abusive 

 letter to him at Eastbourne by the statement, "I 

 hear you have a local reputation as a Bradlaughite." 



But now official life began to lay closer hold upon 

 him. He came forward also as a leader in the 

 struggle for educational reform, seeking not only to 

 perfect his own biological teaching, but to show, in 

 theory and practice, how scientific training might be 



