NA rURE 



[May 14, 1896 



name has become great, we shall be in the position of those 

 who have nobody to honour anil no names to co;nmemorate. 

 I feel, therefore, though all may differ in some points from 

 Prof Huxley, there is not one of you who cannot with the 

 mo^t simple honesty of purpose take part in this meeting. 

 I am here to do honour, as an English citizen, to the name 

 of a great Englishman. We who belong to the English 

 race are, I suppose, sometimes slightly jealous for its greatness 

 in certain departments. We feel we are outstripped by our 

 Teutonic neighbours in the pathways of investigation. We feel 

 wc are outstripped sometimes by our American neighbours in 

 the process of invention. So that whenever we have a great 

 man we might as well cherish him, and make the most of him. 

 Nations are great from a variety of causes. Their geographical 

 position contributes to their greatness ; their fertility and wealtli 

 of .soil, and their racial qualities play a large part in the 

 conspicuous or obscure place they are able to fill on the platform 

 of the worlil. But the element which constitutes the happiest 

 source of national greatness is the possession of great men. Great 

 men are in the nation what the highest peaks are in the geo- 

 graphy of the land — they mark the high level to which the 

 people are capable of attaining ; they are fertilising water-sheds 

 pouring out their rich .stores on the great plains below them. A 

 nation ought, therefore, to reverence its great men, for they are 

 not merely the expression of national greatness, but high ideals 

 producing a reaction, an enthusiasm, an ambition in the hearts 

 of those who come after them. I think you will agree with me 

 that Huxley was entitled to the epithet "great." He was a 

 .strong man among strong men. But it was not .simply that he 

 attained immense eminence in the walk of life to which he 

 dedicated his powers, he possessed also an unique power of being 

 able to look with a sympathetic and appreciative eye on other 

 walks and realms of science than those which were peculiarly 

 his own. And, therefore, he was able to take a larger 

 outlook than many a man who, shut up in his laboratory, 

 or working in the fields, or observing through his telescope, 

 remained limited to one particidar sphere of .scientific work. 

 And because Huxley possessed that power, he became what 

 he himself humorously described, "a maid of all work, a 

 gladiator-general for science." That position was a worthy and 

 a useful one. He also possessed a marvellous gift of lucid 

 exposition. He was able to make clear to the minds of those 

 who were not scientific, thoughts and ideas which were emin- 

 ently scientific. For these reasons we have a right to claim 

 him as great — great in English life, great by virtue of his 

 devotion to science, great by virtue of that wide appreciative- 

 ness he brought to bear upon it, and great in the power of being 

 able to expound to others. I am here as a friend of knowledge, 

 to du honour to one who enlarged its borders. I know there are 

 many — though they are a diminishing quantity — who are disposed 

 to look somewhat askance at the jjrogre.ss of science. In the 

 history of the world it has been only too obvious that men 

 through timidity have been afraid of the advance of knowledge, 

 and it is not surprising to find that in the nineteenth century, 

 with all its vaunted enlightenment, that spirit of timidity should 

 have found expression. What men own and feel to be dear to 

 them they cherish, and God forbid they should be hindered 

 from cherishing it. Many a man looks on science very much in 

 the same way as a woman who hugs her infant to her breast 

 looks on the doctor wlio draws near, and in regard to whom 

 she entertains some very unreal but still natural suspicion. 

 When men hug to their bosom the faith which is dear to them, 

 and which they feel to be bound up with their dearest hopes, 

 one can quite understand their clinging more closely and look- 

 ing apprehensively at the progress and advance of science. But 

 men are beginning to understand that it caimot be in the nature 

 of things that liicts and truths will contradict those things which 

 are nearest and dearest and most essential to men. And because 

 we are men we claim it to be our privilege and our responsi- 

 bility — I may almost say we claim it to be part and parcel of 

 our probation in this world — to follow truth wherever it leads 

 us. It is not, therefore, our duty to encourage a timidity which, 

 if it were encouraged, ran only lead to a fatal obscurantism. 

 The progress of knowledge can only deepen and intensify our 

 attachment to the things which are true, and things which are 

 true cannot be out of harmony with the things round about us. 

 The child, cherished and reluctantly parted with, is restored to 

 us by his doctor healed and saved. Religious truth, in one sense, 

 must always wait on scientific truth, and religious truth must 

 often change its form at the bidding and on the information 



NO. 1385, VOL. 54] 



given it by scientific truth. I am not aware that in the history 

 of scientific progress religion has ever lost ; the precious jewels 

 have always been restored to her in richer and nobler settings. 

 Because I believe that the advancement of knowledge must be 

 for the benefit of mankind, and could not in the long run be 

 hostile to any of the things most precious to us, I stand here 

 to-day to do honciur to one who laboured in the cause of the 

 advancement of knowledge, and did so much to make it the 

 heritage of all people. And, lastly, I am here to do honour 

 to one, for whose truthfulness of character I have the 

 profoundest admiration. Prof. Huxley had what might 

 almost be called an exaggerated tenacity for the thing 

 which he believed to be true, and a reluctance to surrender 

 the truthfulness of his spirit at the bidding of any man or any 

 authority. "But," some may say, "he was antagonistic." 

 This is not the place nor the occasion to speak of Prof. Hux- 

 ley's attitude towards Christianity, or even towards faith ; but 

 it should be remembered that the antagonism of his spirit was 

 far more called out by the unfortunate attitude adopted by some 

 who professed and cdled themselves Christians than by anything 

 in its (Christianity) own nature. The moral and lesson of it is 

 perfectly clear. A man may show himself the antagonist of 

 other men's errors and of other men's methods without in the 

 least degree being ho.stile to those precious things on which the 

 hearts of men were wont to repose. Prof Huxley was not one 

 to knock from under any cripple's arm the crutch that enabled 

 him to walk. While he spoke the language which seemed to 

 him to be justified against those whose methods he could not 

 approve, his language at other times was of that childlike .sim- 

 plicity, that entile modesty, and that natural humility which 

 belonged to all thinking, educated, and reasonable men. 

 Because he seemed to be setting before the world, even when 

 we did not agree with him, an example of simplicity and 

 truthfulness of disposition, I am here to say I honour him. 

 We all desire to honour one who, great in his powers, sought to 

 extend the borders of knowledge, and thus to add to the com- 

 forts, the joys, and the assurances of life, and who showed a 

 character so simple, steadfast and truthful. 



NOTES. 

 Prof. Victor Meyer has been elected a correspontling 

 member of the class of mathematics and physics of the Berlin 

 Academy of Sciences. 



M.\jOR P. A. MacMahon has been appointed to represent 

 the London Mathematical Society at Lord Kelvin's juljilee com- 

 memoration in Glasgow. 



The Bavarian .\cademy of .Sciences at Munich has awarded 

 the LiebigGold Medal to Prof F. Stohmann, Professor of Agricul- 

 tural Chemistry in Leipzig University, and silver medals to Prof 

 B. ToUens, Professorof Agricultural Chemistry in Giittingen Uni- 

 versity, and Prof. P. Sorauer, of Berlin. 



Mr. Frederii- Ducane Goiiman, K. U.S., has been elected 

 a Trustee of the British Museum. 



The annual visitation of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 

 will take place 011 Saturday, June 6. 



Mr. G. Grh 1 ith left Liverpool for Toronto on Saturday, 

 to make arrangements for the meeting of the British As.sociation 

 in 1897. 



The exhibition g.alleries of the British Museum, Bloomsbury 

 and of the Britisli Museum (Natural History), Cromwell Road 

 will be opened to Ihe public on Sunday next from 2.30 to 7 p.m. ; 

 and will be opened on subsequent .Sunday afternoons until further 

 notice. 



A si'Eci.-\l. general meeting of the Geological Society will be 

 held on Wednesday, May 20, in order to submit to the decision 

 of the Fellows certain resolutions of the Council regarding a 

 proposed transference of a portion of the Society's collections to 

 the Trustees of the Briti.sh Mu.seum. 



