THE CONTROVERSIALIST 1 63 



bishops was the more necessary because the degree 

 of importance with which the lay mind invests any 

 statement by a cleric is regulated by his position in 

 the Church. Huxley's " episcopophagy " took hu- 

 morous form in the story of a country school lad who 

 came near the boundary-line in an examination, one 

 of his blunders consisting in putting the mitral valve, 

 so-called from its resemblance to a mitre, on the right 

 side of the heart instead of on the left side. " On 

 appeal, Huxley let him through, observing, ' Poor 

 little beggar, I never got them (the valves) correctly 

 myself until I reflected that a bishop was never in the 

 right.' "i 



In opening the campaign, Huxley did not waste 

 powder and shot on that irreconcilable enemy of 

 knowledge and the liberty which is its fruit, the 

 Roman Catholic Church, " the one great spiritual 

 organisation which is able to resist, and must, as a 

 matter of life and death, resist the progress of science 

 and modern civilisation." 2 He divided the clergy of 

 the Established Church into three sections : " an im- 

 mense body who are ignorant, and speak out ; a small 

 proportion who know and are silent ; and a minute 

 minority who know and speak according to their 

 knowledge." Only with the last-named had he any- 

 thing in common ; but his intellectual honesty caused 



1 II. 415. 2 Coll. Essays, iii. p. 1 20. 



