2i8 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xv 



opinion of Mansel's Bampton Lectures on the Limits of 

 Religious Thought: — 



A friend of mine, Huxley, who will soon take rank as one 

 of the first naturalists we have ever produced, begged me to 

 read these sermons as first rate, " although, regarding the au- 

 thor as a churchman, you will probably compare him, as I did, 

 to the drunken fellow in Hogarth's contested election, who is 

 sawing through the signpost at the other party's public-house, 

 forgetting he is sitting at the other end of it. But read them 

 as a piece of clear and unanswerable reasoning." 



In the 1894 preface to the re-issue of Man's Place in 

 the Collected Essays, Huxley speaks as follows of the warn- 

 ings he received against publishing on so dangerous a topic, 

 of the storm which broke upon his head, and the small re- 

 sult which, in the long run, it produced * : 



Magna est Veritas et prcevalehit ! Truth is great, certainly, 

 but considering her greatness, it is curious what a long time she 

 is apt to take about prevailing. When, towards the end of 1862, 

 I had finished writing Man's Place in Nature, I could say with 

 a good conscience that my conclusions " had not been formed 

 hastily or enunciated crudely." I thought I had earned the right 

 to publish them, and even fancied I might be thanked rather 

 than reproved for doing so. However, in my anxiety to publish 

 nothing erroneous, I asked a highly competent anatomist and 

 very good friend of mine to look through my proofs, and, if he 

 could, point out any errors of fact. I was well pleased when he 

 returned them without criticism on that score; but my satis- 

 faction was speedily dashed by the very earnest warning as to 

 the consequences of publication, which my friend's interest in 

 my welfare led him to give. But, as I have confessed elsewhere, 

 when I was a young man, there was just a little — a mere soupgon 

 — in my composition of that tenacity of purpose which has 

 another name ; and I felt sure that all the evil things prophesied 

 would not be so painful to me as the giving up that which I 

 had resolved to do, upon grounds which I conceived to be right.* 



* In September 1887 he wrote to Mr. Edward Clodd — "All the 

 propositions laid down in the wicked book, which was so well anath- 

 ematised a quarter of a century ago, are now taught in the text-books. 

 What a droll world it is ! " 



f As to this advice not to publish Man's Place for fear of misrepre- 

 sentation on the score of morals, he said, in criticising an attack of 



