60 HUXLEY 



the letter, apart from that already stated, is to 

 explain that Huxley had not time to write a defence 

 of some of the contents of the book, which had been 

 criticised, and, secondly, to point out that in certain 

 particulars he had modified his views a-s therein 

 stated. 



The book opens with a lay sermon on the " Ad- 

 visableness of Improving Natm-al Knowledge," de- 

 livered in St. Martin's Hall on the 7th of January 

 1866 ; and subsequently pubHshed in the FortnigUly 

 Review. Huxley's thesis in this address is that the 

 marvellous intellectual growth which has taken place 

 since the time of our forefathers is mainly due to 

 our increasing knowledge of natmal science. Our 

 forefathers, he says, accounted for calamity in their 

 own way, submitting to the plague in humility and 

 penitence, believing it to be the judgment of" God, 

 but interpreting the fire of London, with furious 

 indignation, as the efforts of malicious republicans 

 or papists, according to their political ideas. Huxley 

 pictures the first noble President of the Royal Society 

 revisiting modem London, anxious to know how 

 often the city had been burnt down since his time, 

 and the surprise with which this worthy man would 

 discover that although London contains tenfold the 

 inflammable material that it did in 1666, and that 

 although our rooms are filled with woodwork and 

 draperies, and in spite of the fmther fact that we 

 bring inflammable gases into every comer of our 

 streets and houses, yet we never allow a street to be 

 burnt down. If he had asked how this had come 

 about, he would have been told that the improvement 

 of natural knowledge had fm-nished us -^-ith machines 

 for dealing with such catastrophes as large fires; 



