THE MAN 3 



treasures of India." From boyhood to old age his 

 tastes were omnivorous, ranging from science and 

 philosophy to the last new fiction. Dr. Johnson said 

 that Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy took him out of 

 bed two hours before his usual time; Hutton's 

 Geology kept Huxley in it, with blanket pinned round 

 his shoulders. At twelve he had read Hamilton's 

 essay On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned, with the 

 result, he tells us, of stamping on his mind " the 

 strong conviction that on even the most solemn and 

 important of questions, men are apt to take cunning 

 phrases for answers." Carlyle's translations from the 

 German moved him to teach himself a language 

 knowledge of which was to be of the utmost service 

 in his life-work. Of the influence which Sartor 

 Resartus had upon him, he says, cc It led me to know 

 that a deep sense of religion was compatible with the 

 entire absence of theology." 1 



During this formative period his interest ranged 

 from speculations on the absolute basis of matter and 

 the crystallisation of carbon to the injustice of com- 

 pelling Dissenters to pay church rates. In the boy's 

 quotation from Lessing, " I hate all people who want 

 to found sects," there is the spirit of the man who 

 said that " science commits suicide when it adopts a 

 creed." In a scheme for a " classification of all 



1 1. 220. 



