10 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I 



This early interest in metaphysics was another 

 form of the intense curiosity to discover the motive 

 principle of things, the why and how they act, that 

 appeared in the boy's love of engineering and of 

 anatomy. The unity of this motive and the accident 

 which bade fair to ruin his life at the outset, and 

 actually levied a lifelong tax upon his bodily vigour, 

 are best told in his own words : 



As I grew older, my great desire was to be a 

 mechanical engineer, but the fates were against this, and 

 while very young I commenced the study of medicine 

 under a medical brother-in-law. But, though the 

 Institute of Mechanical Engineers would certainly not 

 own me, I am not sure that I have not all along been a 

 sort of mechanical engineer in partibus infidelium. I am 

 now occasionally horrified to think bow little I ever knew 

 or cared about medicine as the art of bealing. The only 

 part of my professional course which really and deeply 

 interested me was physiology, which is the mechanical 

 engineering of living machines ; and, notwithstanding 

 that natural science has been my proper business, I am 

 afraid there is very little of the genuine naturalist in me. 

 I never collected anything, and species work was always 

 a burden to me ; what I cared for was the architectural 

 and engineering part of tbe business, the working out the 

 wonderful unity of plan in tbe thousands and thousands 

 of diverse living constructions, and the modifications of 

 similar apparatuses to serve diverse ends. The extra- 

 ordinary attraction I felt towards the study of the in- 

 tricacies of living structure nearly proved fatal to me at 

 the outset. I was a mere boy I tbink between thirteen 

 and fourteen years of age when I was taken by some 

 older student friends of mine to tbe first post-mortem 

 examination I ever attended. All my life I have been 

 most unfortunately sensitive to the disagreeables which 



