378 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxiv 



His contempt for the idea of the world into which we were 

 born being either a sort of clergyhouse or a market-place, was 

 too complete to be jnarked by any eagerness. But in view of the 

 market-place idea he was the less calm. 



Like many others who had not yet come to know in what 

 high esteem he held the moral and spiritual nature of children, 

 I had thought he was the advocate of mere secular studies, alike 

 in the nation's schools, and in its families. But by contact with 

 him, this soon became an impossible idea. In very early days on 

 the Board a remark I had made to a mutual friend which im- 

 plied this unjust idea was repeated to him. " Tell Waugh that 

 he talks too fast," was his message to me. I was not long in 

 finding out that this was a very just reproof. . . . 



The two things in his character of which I became most 

 conscious by contact with him, were his childlikeness and his 

 consideration for intellectual inferiors. His arguments were as 

 transparently honest as the arguments of a child. They might 

 or might not seem wrong to others, but they were never untrue 

 to himself. Whether you agreed with them or not, they always 

 added greatly to the charm of his personality. Whether his face 

 was lighted by his careless and playful humour or his great 

 brows were shadowed by anger, he was alike expressing himself 

 with the honesty of a child. What he counted iniquity he hated, 

 and what he counted righteous he loved with the candour of a 

 child. . . . 



Of his consideration for intellectual inferiors I, of course, 

 needed a large share, and it was never wanting. Towering as 

 was his intellectual strength and keenness above me, indeed 

 above the whole of the rest of the members of the Board, he 

 did not condescend to me. The result was never humiliating. 

 It had no pain of any sort in it. He was too spontaneous and 

 liberal with his consideration to seem conscious that he was 

 showing any. There were many men of religious note upon the 

 Board, of some of whom I could not say the same. 



In his most trenchant attacks on what he deemed wrong in 

 principles, he never descended to attack either the sects which 

 held them or the individuals who supported them, even though 

 occasionally much provocation was given him. He might not 

 care for peace with some of the theories represented on the 

 Board, but he had certainly and at all times great good-will to 

 men. 



As a speaker he was delightful. Few, clear, definite, and 

 calm as stars were the words he spoke. Nobody talked whilst 



