THE CONTROVERSIALIST 1 59 



long or short, he should devote it to the work out- 

 lined in the papers on the " Evolution of Theology." 1 

 There was to be no truce with " that ecclesiastical 

 spirit, that clericalism, which is the deadly enemy of 

 science." The battle had gone on, intermittently, 

 for a quarter of a century. A fortnight after the 

 famous duel with Wilberforce, when writing to 

 Hooker about a proposed scientific quarterly, Huxley 

 jocosely said that its tone would be " mildly episco- 

 pophagous," 2 and in 1889 he asks Professor Ray 

 Lankester if he sees " any chance of educating the 

 white corpuscles of the human race to destroy the 

 theological bacteria which are bred in parsons." 3 

 The author of Lay Sermons, let it be said, had the 

 making of a preacher in him. In the fragment of 

 autobiography reprinted in the first volume of the 

 Collected Essays, he tells how in early childhood he 

 turned his pinafore wrong side forwards to represent a 

 surplice, and held forth to his mother's kitchenmaids. 

 And the impression of his homiletic gifts has sly ref- 

 erence in Bishop Thirlwall's Letters to a Friend^ 

 when, speaking of the Metaphysical Society (founded 

 in 1869), he says that " among the contributors to its 

 proceedings have been Archbishop Huxley and Pro- 

 fessor Manning." 



' Coll. Essays, iv. chap. viii. 2 I. 210. 



3II.234. «P. 317. 



