l6 HUXLEY 



one and the same throughout ; and if the condition 

 of my success in unravelling some little difficulty of 

 anatomy or physiology is, that I shall rigorously re- 

 fuse to put faith in that which does not rest on 

 sufficient evidence, I cannot believe that the great 

 mysteries of existence will be laid open to me on 

 other terms. 1 



Huxley summed up the whole matter in his Rec- 

 torial Address to the students of Aberdeen University : 

 " Veracity is the heart of morality." His references 

 to the formative influences on his life in the letter to 

 Kingsley are prefaced by the statement that his 

 neglected boyhood had been followed by a profligate 

 manhood. His words are, " I confess to my shame 

 that few men have drank deeper of all kinds of sin 

 than I." Commenting on this in his review of the 

 Life and Letters, Sir W. Thiselton-Dyer says, 

 " Frankly, I do not believe a word of it." And those 

 who knew Huxley in any degree of intimacy will 

 agree with him. Sir W. Thiselton-Dyer adds : — 



In a rather serious conversation I once had with 

 him, he spoke of a period in his life when he might 

 have taken to evil courses ; but he did not give me 

 the smallest reason to suppose that in the retrospect 

 he saw more than the existence of a possible crevasse 

 in his path into which he might have fallen. 2 



The truth is that we have here the language of ex- 

 aggeration born of the desolation of the moment ; the 

 1 I. 217. 2 Nature, 13th June, 1901, p. 146. 



