320 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxii 



divorced, were closely united; and literature owes him a 

 debt for importing into it so much of the highest scientific 

 habit of mind; for showing that truthfulness need not be 

 bald, and that real power lies more in exact accuracy than 

 in luxuriance of diction. Years after, no less an authority 

 than Spedding, in a letter upon the influence of Bacon on 

 his own style in the matter of exactitude, the pruning of fine 

 epithets and sweeping statements, the reduction of number- 

 less superlatives to positives, asserted that, if as a young 

 man he had fallen in with Huxley's writings before Bacon's, 

 they would have produced the same effect upon him.* 



Of the other two discourses referred to, one is the open- 

 ing address which he delivered as Principal at the South 

 London Working Men's College on January 4, " A Liberal 

 Education, and Where to Find It." This is not a brief for 

 science to the exclusion of other teaching; no essay has 

 insisted more strenuously on the evils of a one-sided educa- 

 tion, whether it be classical or scientific; but it urged the 

 necessity for a strong tincture of science and her method, 

 if the modern conception of the world, created by the spread 

 of natural knowledge, is to be fairly understood. If culture 

 is the " criticism of life," it is fallacious if deprived of knowl- 

 edge of the most important factor which has transformed 

 the medieval into the modem spirit. 



Two of his most striking passages are to be found in 

 this address; one the simile of the force behind nature as 

 the hidden chess player; the other the noble description of 

 the end of a true education. 



Well known as it is, I venture to quote the latter as an 

 instance of his style : — 



That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been 

 so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, 

 and does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechan- 

 ism it is capable of ; whose intellect is a clear cold log^c engine, 

 with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working 

 order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of 

 work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of 

 the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great 



* See p. 520. 



