viii INTRODUCTION 



of a reason for forsaking them. For myself I say deliberately, 

 it is better to have a millstone tied around the neck and be 

 thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises of those to 

 whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they minister 

 to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it 

 shudders to look at." 



So effectively did Huxley serve truth in the realm of 

 science that it is hard now to realise that fifty years ago 

 it was necessary to contend vigorously for the introduc- 

 tion of the experimental method in the study of the 

 natural sciences as well as in physics and chemistry, that 

 there was a fury of opposition to the theory of evolu- 

 tion, or that the very foundations of religion were felt 

 to rock when science asserted that the Biblical account of 

 the creation and of the flood is chiefly legend, that 

 there is insufficient real evidence of the "existence and 

 activity of a demonic world," and that the strict his- 

 torical accuracy of the Pentateuch and the Gospels may 

 be questioned. 



Huxley's contributions to purely scientific knowledge 

 I am incompetent to discuss; I accept the judgment of 

 others that they are of the highest value. But I believe 

 that, valuable as his scientific studies are, they do not 

 claim the attention of students of literature as his 

 less technical essays do. One gains, however, a 

 heightened opinion of the powers of man when he looks 

 over the eleven pages of titles of scientific memoirs in 

 Leonard Huxley's Life and Letters of his father. The 

 first is "On a Hitherto Undescribed Structure in the Hu- 

 man Hair Sheath," 1845, the last, "The Gentians: Notes 

 and Queries," 1888; the subjects between range over 



