22 
NATURE 

cated who does not possess the power of bringing his 
perceptive faculties to play on the phenomena that sur- 
round him, and also of exercising his reasoning powers 
to systematise his observations, and to compare them with 
those of others who have preceded him. The surest 
way of cultivating the Perception is by the severe study 
of some branch of Natural Science; the Reason is to be 
trained in the lecture-room and the study. Nature does 
not proceed on the principle of setting one of her gifts 
at variance with another; and so far. from one of these 
sets of faculties being opposed to the other, neither can be 
cultivated to the full extent of the mental powers without 
the assistance of the other. No nation has distinguished 
itself by producing a greater number of keen and accurate 
observers of Nature than the Scotch, and none has set 
a higher value on the education that is derived from 
books. In the scientific education of the agricultural 
population of England, it will be found that the long disuse 
for generations of the reasoning powers is the greatest 
difficulty to be overcome. Although we do meet here and 
there with those who are more or less accurate observers 
of Nature, it is extremely rare to find one who has any 
power of forming a connected train of reasoning as the 
result of his observations. 
We need but look around us on the events passing 
before our eyes on the Continent of Europe, to recognise 
the manner in which Education is proclaiming herself vic- 
torious along the whole line. As a nation, we are slow to 
learn. But that nation must indeed be both deaf and 
blind, which does not at the present time see the necessity 
of straining every nerve to redeem itself from the disgrace 
of ignorance. With our working classes taught to exercise 
those faculties which they all possess, but which so few 
know how to use, and thus trained to form the strength 
of the nation in all fresh advancements in Science and 
the Arts, England would quickly distance all competitors, 
and assume that position which it would now seem younger 
riyals are likely to snatch from her grasp. 

HUXLEY’S LAY SERMONS 
Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews. 
Henry Huxley, LL.D., F.R.S. 
1870.) 
By Thomas 
(Macmillan and Co., 
N this volume Professor Huxley has presented to the 
public a miscellaneous collection of essays, some 
didactic, some controversial, some addressed to a general 
audience, some to a special one, and composed at various 
times during a number of years extending from 1854 to 
within the last few months. 
The subjects of which the Professor treats are as various 
as the occasions for which his papers were written and the 
audiences which he addresses, and, as may be easily be- 
lieved, his essays are of very unequal value. But one 
great element of value they all possess in common, and 
that is, the thorough-going boldness, and honesty, and 
out-spokenness with which they deal with all subjects 
alike. This is no small merit in any writer, and it is an 
especially great one in a man occupying the position 
which is held by Professor Huxley. It is a remarkable 
condition of English society at the present time that a 
man who combines real scientific eminence with great 

general ability and special oratorical power, as Professor 
Huxley does, is made, with or without any consent 
of his own, into a kind of popular oracle. Like an 
oracle he is expected to have a response ready for any 
imaginable query, and like an oracle toa he must find 
himself not unfrequently under special and strong tempta- 
tion to “ prophesy smooth things.” Yet Mr. Huxley does 
not prophesy smooth things; on the contrary, he does 
not hesitate to put the most unpopular propositions in the 
plainest possible language when he sees that it is right to 
do so; and to say that a man—and that man a public 
teacher—lies under special temptation, and that he resists 
that temptation, is to say at once that his teaching must 
be worth listening to, and that even where we cannat 
accept his doctrines, we may still listen to them with 
advantage and gain instruction from them. 
With one exception, the papers in this volume may be 
classed under three heads, viz. : Educational Essays, 
either theoretical or practical, which include Nos. 1, 3, 
4, 5, 6, and 9: Scientific Controversy, consisting of Nos. 
12 and 13, on the Origin of Species; and also 7, 8, and 
14, of which the first is the famous “ Essay on the Phy- 
sical Basis of Life,” and the other two are replies to 
the attacks made upon the former: Finally, Presidential 
Addresses to the Geological Society, Nos. 10 and 11, of. 
which the latter might fairly come under our second 
heading, consisting as it does of a very able reply to Sir 
W. Thomson’s strictures upon modern geology. The 
essay which will not come into any of these divisions is 
the shortest in the book; viz. that on “ Emancipation, 
Black and White.” We must however devote some 
space to it, since it appears to us to be almost the best 
reasoned and most temperate view of what its author calls 
the “irrepressible woman question” which we have yet 
seen, although we are not prepared to accept the 
author’s conclusions without reserve. In this essay 
Mr. Huxley’s allegiance to the facts of science comes 
into uncomfortable collision with his allegiance to the 
traditions of party. He comes before us in the character 
of an adyanced Liberal, but he cannot forget that he is, 
before all things, a biologist ; and the consequence very 
naturally is, that although he is prepared to support a 
policy of emancipation—apparently upon the general 
principle that 2/7 government is a mistake—yet he is com- 
pelled to admit that the arguments of e2¢reme emancipa- 
tionists are “ to a great extent nonsensical.” We are 
confident that this question is one which must be ulti- 
mately settled mainly upon physiological grounds, and it 
is just because the conventions of society very rightly do 
not admit of the full and fair discussion of those grounds 
before mixed audiences, that the extreme emancipationists 
have been enabled to obtain for their theory the amount 
of currency which has lately fallen to its lot. In the pre- 
sent instance, Mr. Huxley appears to have followed out 
his physiological argument with characteristic fairness Zo 
a certain point, and consequently sees that after all due 
emancipation, “ Nature’s old salique law will not be re- 
pealed, no change of dynasty will be effected ;” and again, 
that “so long as potential motherhood is her lot, woman 
will be found to be fearfully weighted in the race of life.” 
But why should Mr. Huxley halt at this admission ? Why 
does not his Darwinian logic carry him on to its legiti- 
mate and necessary consequence? According to the law 
[Nov. 10, 1870 — 
