1C AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



to do would be to speak of the work of my life, or 

 to say at the end of the day whether I think I 

 have earned my wages or not. Men are said to 

 be partial judges of themselves. Young men may 

 be, I doubt if old men are. Life seems terribly 

 foreshortened as they look back, and the mountain 

 they set themselves to climb in youth turns out to 

 be a mere spur of immeasurably higher ranges 

 when, with failing breath, they reach the top. 

 But if I may speak of the objects I have had more 

 or less definitely in view since I began the ascent 

 of my hillock, they are briefly these : To promote 

 the increase of natural knowledge and to forward 



V the application of scientific methods of investiga- 

 tion to all the problems of life to the best of my 

 ability, in the conviction which has grown with my 

 growth and strengthened with my strength, that 



/ there is no alleviation for the sufferings of man- 

 kind except veracity of thought and of action, and 

 the resolute facing of the world as it is when th*.' 

 garment of make-believe by which pious hauxls 

 have hidden its uglier features is stripped off. 



It is with this intent that I have subordinated 

 any reasonable, or unreasonable, ambition for 

 scientific fame which I may have permitted myself 

 to entertain to other ends ; to the popularisation 

 of science ; to the development and organisation 

 of scientific education ; to the endless series of 

 battlrs and skirmishes over evolution ; and to un- 

 tiring opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit, that 



