150 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII 



For the difference between this and the labours of 

 the greatest English comparative anatomist of the 

 time, whose detailed work was of the highest value, 

 but whose generalisations and speculations, based on 

 the philosophy of Oken, proved barren and fruitless, 

 lay in the fact that Huxley, led to it doubtless by 

 his solitary readings in his Charing Cross days, had 

 taken up the method of von Baer and Johannes 

 Miiller, then almost unknown, or at least unused in 

 England "the method which led the anatomist to 

 face his problems in the spirit in which the physicist 

 faced his." 



He had been warned by Forbes not to speak too 

 strongly about the dilatoriness of the Government 

 in the matter of the grant, so he writes : "I will 

 ' roar you like any sucking dove ' at the dinner, 

 though I felt tempted otherwise." On December 1 

 he tells how he carried out this advice. 



MY DEAR FORBES You will, I know, like to learn 

 how I got on yesterday. The President's address to me 

 had been drawn up by Bell. It was, of course, too 

 flattering, but he had taken hold of the right points in 

 my work at least I thought so. 



Bunsen spoke very well for Humboldt. 



There was a capital congregation at the dinner sixty 

 or seventy Fellows there. . . . 



When it came to my turn to return thanks, I believe 



have given rise to a process of reasoning, the results of which can 

 scarcely yet be anticipated, but must bear in a very important 

 degree upon some of the most abstruse points of what may be 

 called transcendental physiology." See Royal Society, Obituary 

 Notices, vol. lix. p. 1. 



