I20 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, vii 



So also at other times ; he writes in September to Sir 

 M. Foster, the Secretary, with reference to evening gather- 

 ings at which smoking should be permitted. 



Bournemouth, Sept. 17, 1885. 



I am not at all sure that I can give my blessing to the 

 "Tabagie." When I heard of it I had great doubts as to its 

 being a wise move. It is not the question of " smoke " so much, 

 as the principle of having meetings in the Society's rooms, 

 which are not practically (whatever they may be theoretically), 

 open to all the fellows, and which will certainly be regarded as 

 the quasi-private parties of one of the officers. You will have 

 all sorts of jealousies roused, and talk of a clique, etc. 



When I was Secretary the one thing I was most careful to 

 avoid was the appearance of desiring to exert any special influ- 

 ence. But there was a jealousy of the x Club, and only the 

 other day, to my great amusement, I was talking to an influ- 

 ential member of the Royal Society Club about the possibility 

 of fusing it with the Phil. Club, and he said, forgetting I was 

 a member of the latter : " Oh ! we don't want any of those wire- 

 pullers ! " Poor dear innocent dull-as-ditchwater Phil. Club ! 



Mention has already been made of the unveiling of the 

 Darwin statue at South Kensington on June 9, when, as 

 President of the Royal Society, Huxley delivered an address 

 in the name of the Memorial Committee, on handing over 

 the statue of Darwin to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, as rep- 

 resentative of the Trustees of the British Museum. The 

 concluding words of the speech deserve quotation : — 



We do not make this request [i.e. to accept the statue] for 

 the mere sake of perpetuating a memory; for so long as men 

 occupy themselves with the pursuit of truth, the name of Darwin 

 runs no more risk of oblivion than does that of Copernicus, or 

 that of Harvey. 



Nor, most assuredly, do we ask you to preserve the statue in 

 its cynosural position in this entrance hall of our National 

 Museum of Natural History as evidence that Mr. Darwin's 

 views have received your official sanction; for science does not 

 recognise such sanctions, and commits suicide when it adopts a 

 creed. 



No, we beg you to cherish this memorial as a symbol by 

 which, as generation after generation of students enter yonder 



