t98 HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION 



radish as symbols of the unfortunate victims of the 

 ' Examiner of all Examiners '. With the very best 

 intentions, but with the very worst effects, the idea has 

 taken root in this country that the imagination must hot 

 be allowed free play until some arbitrary amount of 

 knowledge has been absorbed, with the result that too 

 often all original faculty is water-logged and drowned in 

 a sea of facts. We lose sight of the educational value 

 of research, and the fact that the imagination needs exer- 

 cise and grows by performance. We frequently hear of 

 the danger of encouraging crude work. The real danger 

 is the other way : it is only too easy to discourage and 

 dishearten, forgetting the great truth that a first research, 

 poor and immature though it be, means a rich intellectual 

 growth — forgetting that to chill the divine spark is often 

 to quench it for ever. 



The home of information is in this country too often 

 the grave of the imagination. The mind of man appeals 

 to the known for instruction, to the unknown for inspira- 

 tion ; and the teacher who understands education, which 

 means development, will continually bring his pupils, 

 however young, with a stimulating shock right up against 

 the boundaries of knowledge. 



Huxley, in his essay on A Liberal Education, spoke of 

 one ' whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great 

 and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her 

 operations ' ; 1 but the emphasis is here laid on quality 

 rather than quantity. He knew full well that no training 

 of any man worth calling a man is complete without 

 research. Thus we find that on December 31, 1856, at 

 the age of thirty-one, he made this entry in his journal, 2 

 ' 1856-7-8 must still be " Lehrjahre " to complete train- 

 ing in principles of Histology, Morphology, Physiology, 

 Zoology, and Geology by Monographic Work in each 

 Department' It must not be concluded that Huxley 

 waited until he was thirty-one before beginning original 

 work. In 1845, when he was twenty, he published an 

 account of what has since been known as ' Huxley's layer ' 



1 Lay Sermons, &c, London, 1877, pp. 34-5. 



2 Life and Letters of T. H, Huxley, vol. i, p. 151. 



