SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY xxix 



Essays. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Does Huxley's Autobiography seem 

 to you to bring out the chief events in his life? Upon 

 what part of his life does it dwell chiefly? What seem to 

 you to be its defects as biography? Read a life of 

 Huxley in the Dictionary of National Biography or Ency- 

 clopedia Britannica and compare the details there 

 selected with those in the Autobiography. How do you 

 explain Huxley's choice of details? Why is the Autobi- 

 ography interesting? Do you think from your reading 

 of Huxley and from his biography that he succeeded in 

 the objects to which he refers in the last paragraphs of 

 his Autobiography? 



ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE. Why do you 

 think the introduction to this essay is so impressive? 

 What does Huxley gain by commencing with the plague 

 and the fire? What were the great achievements of the 

 sixteen centuries which he describes as lacking in material 

 progress? Does he adequately develop his claim that the 

 improvement of natural knowledge has changed the 

 ethical ideals of men? What are the "foundations of a 

 new morality" which he says are laid in this way? Is it 

 really a new morality? Is his conception of the "old" 

 morality altogether accurate? 



METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION. Does the 

 objective existence of the material world depend upon 

 Huxley's theory of matter as its "substratum?" Is there 

 any other theory of causation besides Huxley's? How 

 else are the "laws of Nature" defined? 



PROLEGOMENA. How does observation of a country 

 side lead into the subject of evolution? W T hat aspect of 

 the evolutionary process does the introduction most 

 emphasise? Why is the familiar metaphor of a "chain" 

 and "links" inappropriate to represent the evolutionary 

 process? 



