170 



LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, x 



suits, in which Huxley found the only difference between 

 scientific men and any other class of the community. 



But it was not merely this misrepresentation of science 

 on its speculative side which Huxley deplored ; he was 

 roused to indignation by an attack on its morality. The 

 preacher reiterated the charge brought forward in the 

 " Great Lesson," that Dr. Murray's theory of coral reefs 

 had been actually suppressed for two years, and that by the 

 advice of those who accepted it, for fear of upsetting the 

 infallibility of the great master. 



Hereupon he turned in downright earnest upon the 

 originator of the assertion, who, he considered, had no more 

 than the amateur's knowledge of the subject. A plain 

 statement of the facts was refutation enough. The new 

 theories, he pointed out, had been widely discussed ; they 

 had been adopted by some geologists, although Darwin him- 

 self had not been converted, and after careful and prolonged 

 re-examination of the question, Professor Dana, the greatest 

 living authority on coral reefs, had rejected them. As Pro- 

 fessor Judd said, " If this be a ' conspiracy of silence,' where, 

 alas ! can the geological speculator seek for fame ? " Any 

 warning not to publish in haste was but advice to a still 

 unknown man not to attack a seemingly well-established 

 theory without making sure of his ground.* 



As for the Bathybius myth, Huxley pointed out that 

 his announcement of the discovery had been simply a state- 

 ment of the actual facts, and that so far from seeing in it 

 a confirmation of Darwinian hypotheses, he was careful to 

 warn his readers " to keep the questions of fact and the 

 questions of interpretation well apart." " That which in- 

 terested me in the matter," he says, " was the apparent anal- 

 ogy of Bathybius with other well-known forms of lower 

 life," ..." if Bathybius were brought up alive from the 

 bottom of the Atlantic to-morrow, the fact would not have 

 the slightest bearing, that I can discern, upon Mr. Darwin's 

 speculations, or upon any of the disputed problems of biol- 

 ogy." And as for his " eating the leek " afterwards, his 



* Letter in Nature, 



