MODERN EVOLUTION. 



263 



application of the theory of evolution all round im- 

 parts a quality of relation to subjects seemingly di- 

 verse. And this comes out clearly and strongly in 

 the more orderly arrangement of the material in the 

 new issue of Collected Essays. 



These show what an omnivorous reader he was; 

 how well equipped in classics, theology, and general 

 literature, in addition to subjects distinctly his own. 

 He sympathized with every branch of culture. As 

 contrasted with physical science, he said, " Nothing 

 would grieve me more than to see literary training 

 other than a very prominent branch of education." 

 One corner of his library was filled with a strange 

 company of antiquated books of orthodox type; this 

 he called " the condemned cell." When looking at 

 the " strange bedfellows " that slept on the shelves, 

 the writer asked Huxley what author had most in- 

 fluenced a style whose clearness and vigour, never- 

 theless, seems unborrowed; and he at once named 

 the masculine and pelluccid Leviathan of Hobbes. He 

 had the happy faculty of rapidly assimilating what he 

 read; of clearly grasping an opponent's standpoint; 

 and what is a man's salvation nowadays, freedom 

 from that curse of specialism which kills all sense of 

 proportion, and reduces its slave to the level of the 

 machine-hand that spends his life in making the 

 heads of screws. He believed in " scepticism as the 

 highest duty, and in blind faith as the one unpardon- 

 able sin." " And," he adds, " it cannot be otherwise, 

 for every great advance in natural knowledge has 



