Huxley 
must add his good fortune in possessing so able 
a lieutenant as Huxley. 
Huxley was an ardent evolutionist, an able 
writer, and a brilliant debater. A man of his 
mental calibre was able, like a clever barrister, 
to make out a plausible case for any theory which 
he chose to take up. While nominally a strong 
supporter of the Darwinian theory, he was in 
reality fighting for the doctrine of descent. Had 
any plausible theory of evolution been enunciated, 
Huxley would undoubtedly have fought for it 
equally earnestly. 
A firm believer in evolution, Huxley was, 
as Professor Poulton says, confronted by two 
difficulties, — first, the insufficiency of the evi- 
dence of evolution, and, secondly, the absence of 
any explanation of how the phenomenon had 
occurred. The Ovigin of Species solved both 
these difficulties. It adduced much weighty evi- 
dence in favour of evolution, and suggested a 
modus operandt. Small wonder, then, that 
Huxley became a champion of Darwinism. But, 
as Poulton writes, on page 202 of Lssays on 
Evolution, ‘while natural selection thus enabled | 
Huxley freely to accept evolution, he was by no 
means fully satisfied with it.” ‘He never com- 
mitted himself to a full belief in natural selection, 
and even contemplated the possibility of its 
ultimate disappearance.” To use Huxley’s own 
words: ‘‘ Whether the particular shape which the 
II 
