54 



HUXLEY 



mained to him he was more in evidence than ever. 

 He had never permitted his official position to curb 

 his freedom of speech, and now that his time was all 

 his own, that freedom could have larger play. In a 

 retrospect of life, summing-up the part he had played 

 in what he called the " New Reformation," he said 

 that the objects which he had pursued were " briefly 

 these " : 



To promote the increase of natural knowledge and 

 to forward the application of scientific methods of 

 investigation to all the problems of life to the best of 

 my ability, in the conviction which has grown with 

 my growth and strengthened with my strength, that 

 there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind 

 except veracity of thought and of action, and the 

 resolute facing of the world as it is, when the gar- 

 ment of make-belief by which pious hands have 

 hidden its uglier features is stripped off. It is with 

 this intent that I have subordinated any reasonable or 

 unreasonable ambition for scientific fame which I may 

 have permitted myself to entertain to other ends : to 

 the popularisation of science ; to the development and 

 organisation of scientific education ; to the endless 



o 



series of battles and skirmishes over evolution ; and 

 to untiring opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit, that 

 clericalism which in England, and everywhere else, 

 and to whatever denomination it may belong, is the 

 deadly enemy of science. 1 



The " battles and skirmishes over evolution " were 

 now resolved by Huxley into a well-conceived plan of 

 campaign in which all the forces that come of the 



1 Coll. Essays, i. p. 17. 



