xiv INTRODUCTION 



men. "The most important object of all educational 

 schemes," he said, "is to catch these exceptional people, 

 and turn them to account for the good of society . . . 

 to keep these glorious sports of Nature from being either 

 corrupted by luxury or starved by poverty, and to put 

 them into the position in which they can do the work 

 for which they are especially fitted." 



Ill 



Huxley's efforts to put into effect his educational 

 schemes kindled an interest in political theory, and his 

 theories are the logical result of his habit of subjecting 

 a priori reasoning to the process of verification by facts. 

 In 1871 when, as a member of the School Board he wished 

 to demonstrate the wisdom and legality of state support 

 of education, he wrote an address, Administrative 

 Nihilism, in which he pointed out the danger to the 

 state of the doctrine of laissez-faire in education, and 

 demonstrated the right and duty of the state to provide 

 means of education. His main argument is that it is 

 the duty of the state not simply to punish wrongdoing, 

 but actively to promote the welfare of its citizens. 



His other political essays were written nearly twenty 

 years later. They are directed mainly against the "su- 

 perficially plausible doctrines" of Rousseau and 

 similar political speculators. Their doctrines were being 

 revived by Henry George and other millenarian social- 

 ists and seemed to Huxley to threaten the peace if not 

 the safety of society, and he felt bound to expose them. 

 "I thought," he said, "it was my duty to see whether 

 some thirty years' training in the art of making diffi- 

 cult questions intelligible to audiences without much 

 learning, but with that abundance of keen practical sense 



