344 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxin 



to be the appropriate title of " agnostic." It came into my 

 head as suggestively antithetic to the " gnostic " of Church his- 

 tory, who professed to know so much about the very things of 

 which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of 

 parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like 

 the other foxes. To my great satisfaction, the term took; and 

 when the Spectator had stood godfather to it, any suspicion in 

 the minds of respectable people that a knowledge of its parent- 

 age might have awakened was, of course, completely lulled. 



As for the dialectical powers he displayed in the de- 

 bates, it was generally acknowledged that in this, as well 

 as in the power of conducting a debate, he shared the pre- 

 eminence with W. G. Ward. Indeed, a proposal was made 

 that the perpetual presidency in alternate years should be 

 vested in these two; but time and health forbade. 



His part in the debates is thus described in a letter to 

 me from Professor Henry Sidgwick : — 



Dear Mr. Huxley — I became a member of the Metaphysical 

 Society, I think, at its first meeting in 1869; and, though my 

 engagements in Cambridge did not allow me to attend regularly, 

 I retain a very distinct recollection of the part taken by your 

 father in the debates at which we were present together. There 

 were several members of the Society with whose philosophical 

 views I had, on the whole, more sympathy; but there was cer- 

 tainly no one to whom I found it more pleasant and more in- 

 structive to listen. Indeed I soon came to the conclusion that 

 there was only one other member of our Society who could 

 be placed on a par with him as a debater, on the subjects dis- 

 cussed at our meetings; and that was, curiously enough, a man 

 of the most diametrically opposite opinions — W. G. Ward, the 

 well-known advocate of Ultramontanism. Ward was by train- 

 ing, and perhaps by nature, more of a dialectician; but your 

 father was unrivalled in the clearness, precision, succinctness, 

 and point of his statements, in his complete and ready grasp 

 of his own system of philosophical thought, and the quickness 

 and versatility with which his thought at once assumed the right 

 attitude of defence against any argument coming from any 

 quarter. I used to think that while others of us could perhaps 

 find, on the spur of the moment, an answer more or less effective 

 to some unexpected attack, your father seemed always able to" 

 find the answer — I mean the answer that it was reasonable to 



