24 HUXLEY 



The outcome of all this was his first, and, in many 

 respects, his most important book, Evidence as to 

 Man's Place in Nature, which, based upon lectures 

 delivered to working men in London, and at the 

 Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, was published 

 in 1863. He was no superficial student of his kind ; 

 he was anthropologist as well as anatomist -, he had 

 studied in the book of the world more than in the 

 world of books. As he told an audience in 1882, 

 it had been his fate 



to be familiar with almost every form of society, from 

 the uncivilised savage of Papua and Australia and the 

 civilised savages of the slums and dens of the pov- 

 erty-stricken parts of great cities, to those who, per- 

 haps, are occasionally the somewhat over-civilised 

 members of our upper ten thousand. 1 



He saw with Herbert Spencer and Darwin (who 

 had been content to throw out a bare hint at the end 

 of his book) that if the processes of what is called 

 the law of Evolution are applicable anywhere, they 

 are applicable everywhere ; that when once the funda- 

 mental relation of man to the lower animals, so far as 

 his bodily structure and functions are concerned, is 

 proven, inquiry into the relation of his mental ap- 

 paratus and faculties to theirs must follow, and, 

 with this, the study of his intellectual and spiritual 

 development, and of his progress from the selfish- 



1 Coll. Essays, iii. p. 164. 



