x INTRODUCTION 



tion, so. far as science is concerned, for his belief that 

 "the only source of real knowledge lies in the applica- 

 tion of scientific methods of inquiry to the ascertainment 

 of the facts of existence; that the ascertainable is in- 

 finitely greater than the ascertained." So when Darwin 

 startled the world with his theory of evolution, Huxley 

 was ready first to examine it, to point out its weak 

 points, and then to become its ardent champion and 

 "Darwin's bull-dog." "The only rational course for 

 those who had no other object than the attainment of 

 truth," he wrote in a chapter contributed to the Life of 

 Darwin, "was to accept 'Darwinism' as a working hy- 

 pothesis and see what could be made of it. Either it 

 would prove its capacity to elucidate the facts of or- 

 ganic life, or it would break down under the strain." 



Once convinced of the essential truth of the theory 

 of evolution, Huxley did valuable service in extending 

 the application of that truth to human life. For him 

 the theory destroyed the mechanistic conception of the 

 universe and showed that a world which had grown from 

 a nebulous mass and produced forms of life and of in- 

 telligence is a world in which further progress is pos- 

 sible and in which man may have a share in shaping 

 his own destiny and that of his fellows. Instead of re- 

 garding man's place in the scheme of evolution as de- 

 grading, as many of his contemporaries did, he saw in 

 his rise from "lowly stock," "the best evidence of the 

 splendour of his capacities," and "in his long progress 

 through the Past, a reasonable ground of faith in his 

 attainment of a noble Future." 



One of the great moments in Huxley's career was his 

 reply to Wilberforce who, as the champion of orthodoxy, 

 attacked the theory of evolution at a meeting of the 

 British Association at Oxford in 1860. The Bishop is 

 said to have spoken "for full half an hour with inimitable 



