452 Canadian Record of Science. 



who most thoroughly differed from many of his opinions 

 could not but be charmed with his manner of expressing 

 them. He himself has said that he was not one of those 

 fortunate persons who are able to regard " a popular lec- 

 ture as a mere hors d'amvre, unworthy of being ranked 

 among the serious efforts of a philosopher ; and who keep 

 their fame as scientific hierophants unsullied by attempts, 

 — at least of the successful sort — to be understood by the 

 people." On the contrary, he had found that "the task 

 of making truths learned in the field, the laboratory, and 

 the museum, at. once intelligible and accurate, taxed such 

 scientific and literary faculty as he possessed to the ut- 

 most." This was no doubt true, for he was nervously 

 anxious as to public appearances, and careful that every- 

 thing he did was well done ; but he was evidently a man 

 of genius, to whom the precise light in which a complex 

 truth could be best seen came like a flash of inspiration. 

 With this he combined that realistic and pictorial turn of 

 mind to which a fact presented itself not merely as a bare 

 fact, but surrounded with all its accessories and results, 

 and glorified with a halo of fancy. 



Huxley's real scientific work, owing partly to his own 

 versatility and partly to the varied demands made on him, 

 was spread over so many fields — cultivated in patches by 

 specialists — that few are able to grasp its whole am.ount. 

 Yet his clearness of insight was so great that he com- 

 mended himself to all classes of specialists as an eminent 

 worker in every department which he undertook, while 

 he brought forth and made plain to the understanding of 

 the outer world multitudes of researches which would 

 scarcely have been heard of beyond the range of a few 

 special experts. 



One thing only he wanted to raise his surpassing gifts 

 to the highest possible level, and that was, faith in nature 

 as a realization of infinite thought within the domain of 



