HOW OTHERS SAW HIM 79 



beyond what could be verified ; for truth in act, 

 perfect straightforwardness and sincerity, with 

 complete disregard of personal consequences for 

 uttering unpalatable fact." Any form of lie was 

 to Huxley most hateful, and no form of it more so 

 than that due to self-delusion or foggy thinking. 

 And wath this he classed what he termed the sin of 

 faith — that is, to say, the form of belief which does 

 not make the proper use of reason, but which abuses 

 reason by giving assent to propositions wliich are 

 neither obvious nor sufficiently proved. It was 

 here, of course, that he came into conflict with the 

 church and orthodoxy. There was no such thing 

 as compromise between truth and falsehood in his 

 mind. He was independent in spirit, quite indiffer- 

 ent to rewards and honours, and even to financial 

 successes. The only recognition he considered of 

 any value was that of his contemporaries in science. 

 The only thing for which he did claim recognition 

 was the honesty of his motives. The opinion of those 

 who judged him only from his public work was that 

 he seemed hard, and at times unsympathetic, but 

 to those who knew him well, and above all to his 

 own family, it was quite obvious that the very re- 

 verse was the truth ; so much so that one of his 

 friends WTOte after Huxley's death : " His many 

 private friends are almost tempted to forget the pubhc 

 loss in thinking of the quahties which so endeared 

 him to them all." 



His mind was wonderfully balanced in its develop- 

 ment on both the speculative and the practical 

 sides, so that, in addition to his intense love of know- 

 ledge as such, he was always found urging the apph- 



