6o THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



(Coll. Essays, viii, p. 196). The particular volume of 

 Collected Essays in which this is reprinted largely con- 

 sists of popular lectures, and the following extract from 

 the Preface (dated April, 1894) shows that Huxley 

 attached great importance to discourses of the kind, if 

 undertaken in a proper spirit : — 



" .... I have not been one of those fortunate persons who 

 are able to regard a popular lecture as a mere hors-a"auvre, un- 

 worthy of being ranked among the seriousefForts of a philosopher ; 

 and who keep their fame as scientific hierophants unsullied by 

 attempts — at least of the successful sort — to be understanded of 

 the people. On the contrary, I found that the task of putting 

 the truths learned in the field, the laboratory and the museum, 

 into language which, without bating a jot of scientific accuracy 

 shall be generally intelligible, taxed such scientific and literary 

 faculty as I possess to the uttermost ; indeed my experience 

 has furnished me with no better corrective of the tendency to 

 scholastic pedantry which besets all those who are absorbed in 

 pursuits remote from the common ways of men, and become 

 habituated to think and speak in the technical dialect of their 

 own little world, as if there were no other." 



In this lecture the anatomy and physiology of a 

 lobster are reviewed, and used to' illustrate some of the 

 general principles of biology, after which the proper 

 methods of teaching physical science in general and 

 zoology in particular are laid down, and the claims of 

 science to an important place in education vindicated. 

 Those who are interested in the complex educational 

 problems, the solution of which exercises us to-day, 

 would do well to study this essay, now over forty years 

 old. 



The essence of the much debated "type-system," 

 with the establishment of which Huxley had so much 

 to do, is embodied in the following sentence : — 



" The great matter is, to make teaching real and practical, by 



