4 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



classes in her day, she had an excellent mental capacity. 

 Her most distinguishing characteristic, however, was 

 rapidity of thought. If one ventured to suggest she had 

 not taken much time to arrive at any conclusion, she 

 would say: "I cannot help it, things flash across me." 

 That peculiarity has been passed on to me in full 

 strength; it has often stood me in good stead; it has 

 sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has always been 

 a danger. But, after all, if my time were to come over 

 again, there is nothing I would less willingly part with 

 than my inheritance of mother wit. 



I have next to nothing to say about my childhood. 

 In later years my mother, looking at me almost reproach- 

 fully, would sometimes say, "Ah! you were such a 

 pretty boy!" whence I had no difficulty in concluding 

 that I had not fulfilled my early promise in the matter 

 of looks. In fact, I have a distinct recollection of 

 certain curls of which I was vain, and of a conviction 

 that I closely resembled that handsome, courtly gentle- 

 man, Sir Herbert Oakley, who was vicar of our parish, 

 and who was as a god to us country folk, because he 

 was occasionally visited by the then Prince George of 

 Cambridge. I remember turning my pinafore wrong 

 side forwards in order to represent a surplice, and 

 preaching to my mother's maids in the kitchen as nearly 

 as possible in Sir Herbert's manner one Sunday morning 

 when the rest of the family were at church. That is 

 the earliest indication I can call to mind of the strong 

 clerical affinities which my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer 4 



4 Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was a very original and im- 

 portant philosopher and friend of Huxley. Like Huxley he 

 helped to extend the application of the theory of evolution, par- 

 ticularly in pure and social science. He devoted himself to the 

 development of a "Synthetic Philosophy" and the unification of 

 knowledge by the formulation of laws which hold good for all 

 orders of phenomena. Huxley once pointed out his weakness 



