UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
absorption of its scientific and philosophical mate- 
rial, by the literary and artistic spirit. 
How vividly present Huxley is in everything he 
writes or speaks, the man shining through his sen- 
tences as if the sword were to shine through its scab- 
bard! — a different type from Tyndall, more con- 
troversial. A lover of combat, he sniffs the battle 
afar; he is less poetical than Tyndall, less given to 
rhetoric, but more a part of what he says, and hav- 
ing a more absolutely transparent style. How he 
charged the foes of Darwin, and cleared the field of 
them in a hurry! His sentences went through their 
arguments as steel through lead. 
As a sample of fine and eloquent literary state- 
ment I have always greatly admired that closing 
passage in his essay on “Science and Morals” in 
which he defends physical science against the at- 
tacks of Mr. Lilly, who, armed with the weapons of 
both theology and philosophy, denounced it as the 
evil genius of modern days: — 
If the diseases of society [says Huxley] consist in the 
weakness of its faith in the existence of the God of the 
theologians, in a future state, and in uncaused volitions, 
the indication, as the doctors say, is to suppress Theology 
and Philosophy, whose bickerings about things of which 
they know nothing have been the prime cause and con- 
tinual sustenance of that evil skepticism which is the 
Nemesis of meddling with the unknowable. 
Cinderella is modestly conscious of her ignorance of 
these high matters. She lights the fire, sweeps the house, 
186 
