Thomas Henry Huzley. 179 
“From the lowest animals, he has gradually extended his 
investigations up to the highest, and even to man. His earlier 
labours were, for the most part, occupied with the lower 
marine animals, especially with the pelagic organisms swim- 
ming at the surface of the open sea.” 
Alors important than any of the individual discoveries 
which are contained in Huxley’s numerous less and greater 
researches on the most widely different animals are the pro- 
found and truly philosophical conceptions which have guided 
him in his inquiries, having always enabled him to distinguish 
the essential from the unessential, and to value special empiri- 
eal facts chiefly as a means of arriving at general ideas.” 
* After Charles Darwin had, in 1859, reconstructed this 
most important biological theory, and by his epoch-making 
theory of Natural Selection placed it on an entirely new foun- 
dation, Huxley was the first who extended it to man, and in 
1863, in his celebrated three Lectures on ‘“ Man’s Place in 
Nature,’ admirably worked out its most important develop- 
ments. With luminous clearness, and convincing certainty, he 
has here established the fundamental law, that, in ever 
respect, the anatomical differences between man and the high- 
est apes are of less value than those between the highest and 
lowest apes. * * * * * Not only has the Evolution 
Theory received from Prof. Huxley a complete demonstration 
of its immense importance, not only has it been largely 
advanced by his valuable comparative researches, but its spread 
among the general public has been largely due to his well- 
known popular writings. In these he has accomplished the 
difficult task of rendering most fully and clearly intelligible, to 
an educated public of various ranks, the highest problems of 
philosophical Biology. From the lowest to the highest organ- 
ism, * * * he has elucidated the connecting law of development. 
“In these several ways he has, in the struggle for truth, 
rendered Science a service which must ever rank as one of the 
highest of his many and great scientific merits.” 
The above refers only to Huxley’s biological work up to 
1874. During the next twenty years, his scientific labors were 
equally fruitful, but embraced a much wider field. The results 
will be estimated in so many special reviews by those familiar 
with each department of science he treated, that they need not 
be especially mentioned here. 
Huxley has himself placed on record, in the following words, 
the main objects he kept in view during his whole scientific 
career : 
“To promote the increase of natural knowledge and to 
forward the application of scientific methods of investigation 
to all the problems of life to the best of my ability, in the 
