2 52 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



in his excellent book on evolutional ethics {^Fon Darivin bis 

 Nietzsche, Leipzig, 1895), showed that Huxley's merits in 

 treating evolutional ethics are principally of a negative kind. Of 

 all the champions in this field Huxley has the most unflinchingly 

 exposed and the most pungently criticised the current a priori 

 assumptions of ethical speculation. In two excellent essays on 

 the ' Natural Inequality of Men,' and on ' Natural and Political 

 Rights,' he broke to pieces the favourite doctrine of Rousseauism 

 and socialism — the equality of all men and the belief in inborn 

 ' natural rights,' and dethroned and crushed the state ideal of that 

 political school. With pitiless logic he proved that the alleged 

 facts on which that school bases its doctrines are no facts at all, 

 but wild speculations. Huxley arrives thus at the conclusion, 

 that the aims of current morality cannot, as Spencer thought they 

 could, be reached by the natural medium of competition." 



Of Huxley's contributions to critical theology, highly 

 controversial for the most part, as he himself regretfully 

 admitted, enough has elsewhere been said. Here and 

 there they are perhaps a little too strongly illuminated by 

 flashes of withering wit and biting sarcasm, and he would 

 seem to have underrated the capacity of some of his 

 opponents, Mr. Gladstone more particularly. The 

 " scratches " he inflicted were sometimes more serious 

 than " flesh wounds." But his unsurpassable powers of 

 debate, and his thorough knowledge of authorities, gave 

 him in all cases an undeniable advantage. And we 

 largely owe to him in this country that freedom of speech 

 in matters theological without which progress would be 

 indefinitely postponed. 



The work of Huxley's life, carried on with unflagging 

 zeal and undiminished powers almost to the day of his 

 death, is a symmetrical and finished whole. Beginning 

 with primeval protoplasm, the " physical basis of life," it 

 ranges through the long perspectives of the animal kingdom 

 to man as the noblest outcome of organic evolution. To 

 man as an individual, to thinking man as a member of 



