24O HUXLEY 



remembered at all, I would rather it should be as " a 

 man who did his best to help the people " than by any- 

 other title. 



Even the best of modern civilisations appears to me 

 to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither em- 

 bodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit 

 of stability. I do not hesitate to express my opinion 

 that, if there is no hope of a large improvement of 

 the condition of the greater part of the human family ; 

 if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the win- 

 ning of a greater dominion over Nature which is its 

 consequence, and the wealth which follows on that 

 dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and 

 the intensity of Want, with its concomitant physical 

 and moral degradation, among the masses of the peo- 

 ple, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet, 

 which would sweep the whole affair away, as a desir- 

 able consummation. 



What profits it to the human Prometheus that he 

 has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and 

 that the spirits of the earth and the air obey him, if 

 the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very 

 vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction ? L 



Moved by these gloomy facts to " work while it is 

 yet day," Huxley, found little, save for adverse criti- 

 cism, in the social reform schemes which " have in- 

 fested political thought for centuries." He had no 

 belief in " leaders " and " saviours " of society, or in 

 the " fanatical individualism of our time which at- 

 tempts to apply the analogy of cosmic nature to so- 

 ciety, and seriously debates whether the members of a 



1 Coll. Essays, i. p. 423; and cf. v. p. 256. 



