PREFACE. 15 



wee bit into which the word idea entered, for a moment, with a 

 somewhat Hegelian shade. Might I venture to hint, too, that 

 Mr Huxley, if he still honours me with his interest, may find 

 every difficulty in all these references dispelled in the popular 

 statement (only fifteen pages long) of my first lecture on the 

 Philosophy of Law? 



I have given my reader the opportunity of seeing for himself 

 every direct word that concerns me in Mr Huxley's essay, and 

 I know but a single indirect one. That, too, I shall not with- 

 hold ; it is this. The words immediately preceding the direct 

 ones I have extracted, refer to " quite superfluous explosions on 

 the part of some who should have been better informed " (then 

 follow, as already quoted, " Dr Stirling, for example" etc.) ; and 

 perhaps I shall not be wrong in taking this as an intimation on 

 Mr Huxley's part, that / (the " for example ") should have been 

 " better informed." Well, it is a consummation always devoutly 

 to be wished ; but where, may I be allowed to ask, ought I, in 

 this matter, to be "better informed?" That protoplasm, for 

 example, was no longer an infinite variety of different cells, but 

 an indifferent one material, as it were, in web ? Well per- 

 haps so but how then about the Germans 1 Really, where 

 ought I in this matter to be better informed ? but no ! I will 

 not press farther this rhetorical hack I I will not as much as 

 speak of Mr Huxley's poetry of giant Californian pines and 

 Indian figs no ! not even of the " great Finner whale, hugest of 

 beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety 

 feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in 

 which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard," etc. Did my 



reader ever hear of " the great ring-tailed bab-boon from " 



But no ! I will refrain. Mr Huxley writes always an excellent 

 clear English, and he does not generally yield to the charlatan- 

 ism of the platform. 



It would probably be now in place for me, as against such 

 serious charges as " travesty " and " utter misrepresentation," 

 to bring forward the counter-testimony of other experts of equal, 

 or perhaps higher, rank than even Mr Huxley. This, too, I will 

 now forego. I will refer only to Beale, Bastian, Gamgee, to Dr 

 John Brown, to Dr Hodge of Princeton ; and I will quote, in 

 allusion to my essay, this single sentence from Sir John 

 Herschel : 



