372 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxiv 



the Incarnation as warmly as that of the Trinity), it may be 

 well to leave things as they are. 



All this is for your own eye. There is nothing in substance 

 that I have not said publicly, but I do not feel called upon to 

 say it over again, or get mixed up in an utterly wearisome con- 

 troversy. — I am, yours faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



However, he was unsuccessful in his proposal that a 

 selection be made of passages for reading from the Bible ; 

 the Board refused to become censors. On May lo he 

 raised the question of the diversion from the education of 

 poor children of charitable bequests, which ought to be 

 applied to the augmentation of the school fund. In speak- 

 ing to this motion he said that the long account of errors 

 and crimes of the Catholic Church was greatly redeemed 

 by the fact that that Church had always borne in mind the 

 education of the poor, and had carried out the great demo- 

 cratic idea that the soul of every man was of the same value 

 in the eyes of his Maker. 



The next matter of importance in which he took part 

 was on June 14, when the Committee on the Sctieme 

 of Education presented its first report. Dr. Gladstone 

 writes : — 



It was a very voluminous document. The Committee had 

 met every week, and, in the words of Huxley, " what it had 

 endeavoured to do, was to obtain some order and system and 

 uniformity in important matters, whilst in comparatively unim- 

 portant matters they thought some play should be given for the 

 activity of the bodies of men int■(5"vvEose^ands^He~^^anageme^t 

 of the various schools should be placed." The recommendations 

 were considered on June 21 and July 12, and passed without 

 any material alterations or additions. They were very much 

 the same as existed in the best elementary schools of the period. 

 Huxley's chief interest, it may be surmised, was in the sub- 

 jects of instruction. It was passed that, in infants' schools 

 there should be the Bible, reading, writing, arithmetic, object 

 lessons of a simple character, with some such exercise of the 

 hands and eyes as is given in the Kindergarten system, music, 

 and drill. In junior and senior schools the subjects of instruc- 

 tion were divided into two classes, essential and discretionary, 

 the essentials being the Bible, and the principles of religion and 



