THE MAN 25 



ness of the primitive horde to the comity of na- 

 tions. Hence, as he says in the second division of 

 the book — 



The question of questions for mankind — the problem 

 which underlies all others, and is more deeply inter- 

 esting than any other — is the ascertainment of the 

 place which Man occupies in nature and of his relation 

 to the universe of things. Whence our race has 

 come ; what are the limits of our power over nature 

 and of nature's power over us ; to what goal we are 

 tending ; are the problems which present themselves 

 anew and with undiminished interest to every man 

 born into the world. 1 



While, however, this interest in ultimate problems, 

 evidenced in the journal of his boyhood, grew with his 

 years, it absorbed no undue proportion of his time. 

 Man in his relation to his fellows had more interest 

 for him, and explains Huxley's activities in all things 

 affecting the body politic, and the social progress of 

 his kind. Needless to say that he who was all for 

 truth was likewise all for freedom. In 1862, when 

 the Civil War in America was raging, and when 

 Gladstone was telling us that Jefferson Davis had 

 " made a nation," Huxley never doubted that slavery 

 was doomed. Not that he believed in the negro ; he 

 knew how permanent are the natural inequalities of 

 races, and how hopeless, except in the rarest cases, it 



1 P. 56. 



