Ivi 



his own scientific development, bat also, and much more so, on his 

 outward scientific activity. 



He first met Mr. Darwin soon after his return from Australia, in 

 1851 or 1852, and the acquaintance rapidly ripened into a close friend- 

 ship. Next to Lyell and Hooker, it was Huxley on whom Darwin leant 

 for advice and help ; he came to speak of him playfully as " my general, 

 agent," and Huxley was one of the few who were privileged to learn 

 Darwin's argument before it was put forth to the world. 



From the very first Huxley had felt it as a duty laid upon him to 

 expound by mouth and by pen the teachings of science in general, 

 and of biological science in particular, to that large part of the world 

 which lay outside science, knowing little of it and caring less for it ; 

 for there came to him very early the conviction that science was not 

 merely the study of the few, for the sake of the intellectual gratifica- 

 tion of the pursuit or the material benefits of the applications, but a 

 thing to be known and, so far as may be, understood of all men as a 

 sure guide for human life. It was this conviction which led him to 

 devote much time and care to more or less popular lectures and 

 addresses, inculcating the broad uses and value of science, such as the 

 the Friday Evening Discourse (at the Royal Institution, w r hich he gave 

 in 1856) on " Natural History as Knowledge, Discipline, and Power." 

 And he at once saw the far-reaching value of the lesson in evolu- 

 tion so forcibly expounded in the ' Origin of Species by Natural 

 Selection.' Beginning* with the striking review in the ' Times.' 

 which appeared the day after the publication of the book, continuing 

 with the Friday Evening Discourse, in 1860, on " Species, Races, and 

 their Origin," following up in the same year with lectures to work- 

 ing men at Jermyn Street, on " The Relation of Man to the Lower 

 Animals," and later on with the book on 4 Man's Place in Nature,' 

 and by many other utterances, he became known far outside the 

 narrow circle of scientific workers as the powerful champion of what 

 soon came to be called the Darwinian doctrine. One event especially 

 brought his name before the public, and that was the memorable 

 meeting of the British Association at Oxford in June, 1860, at'which 

 Samuel Wilberforce, the then Bishop of Oxford, in a discussion on 

 the burning topic, wholly unaware of the new forces which had 

 arisen in biologic science, and thinking to crush the new doctrine 

 with one episcopal blow, was, by his ignorance, delivered into Huxley's 

 hands and smitten by him hip and thigh. Before that the name of 

 Huxley was but little known outside scientific circles and that section 

 of London society which delights to entertain " eminent science ;" 

 after that it became, and rapidly, to be quoted among the people as 

 the name of a leader of men in science. 



All this labour of exposition, and the various calls made upon him 

 by his increasing fame as a man of science of unwonted brilliancy and 



