2 
Walter Frank Raphael Weldou. 1860—1906. 
there is the devotion to truth, the deep sympathy with nature, and the determina- 
tion to sacrifice all minor matters to one great end. What after all helps us is not 
that "he settled Hoti's business"... 
" Properly based Oxm — 
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic Be" 
but that the Granmiarian had the strength of will which enabled him "not to Live 
but Know." 
If there is to be a constant stream of men, who serve science from love as men 
in great religious epochs have served the Church, then we must have scientific 
ideals of character, and these do involve some knowledge of personal life and 
development. It is the abuse of the personal so prevalent in modern life, the mere 
satisfaction of a passing curiosity, which we have to condemn. But the personal 
which enables us to see the force of character behind the merely intellectual, is of 
value, because it moulds our working ideals. We see the environment — imposed 
and self-created — which favours scientific development, and we can with accumu- 
lating experience balance environment against heritage in the production of the 
highest type of scientific mind. From the standpoint that no man works 
effectively without a creed of life, that for width of character and healthy 
development there must ever be a proper balance of the emotional and the 
intellectual, it would be a distinct loss if the personal were removed from what we 
know of the lives of Charles Darwin and James Clerk-Maxwell. Science, like most 
forms of human activity, is occasionally liable to lose sight of its ultimate ends 
under a flood of controversy, the stragglings of personal ambition, or the fight for 
pecuniary rewards or less physical honours. The safety of science lies in the 
inculcation of high ideals among its younger votaries. A certain amount of purely 
human hero-worship is not to be condemned, and yet this is impossible without 
some knowledge of the personal. Weldon himself was no more free from hero- 
worship than the best of his contemporaries. Of the men whose influence tended 
most to mould his life and career — F. M. Balfour, T. H. Huxley, Francis Galton — the 
personal side was not the smaller element. There was enthusiasm, hero-worship 
in its best sense, unregarding self-saci"ifice in the defence of the man who had 
become for Weldon not only an ideal thinker, but an ideal character. In the 
defence of hero or friend, Weldon belonged to a past age, he was out with his 
rapier, before considering the cause ; it was enough for him to know that one he 
loved or admired was attacked. A criticism of Huxley was to the end inadmissible ; 
if at any point apparently correct, this appearance of correctness was due solely 
to the inadequate manner in which the facts of his life had been reported by 
biographers, — the class who pandered to the public love of the petty. It was in 
this spirit that Weldon received with delight the request to write for the Dictionary 
of National Biography , a scientific appreciation of Huxley's work. From Weldon's 
standpoint that appreciation should have formed the " Life." It is a fine piece of 
work and it was a labour of love, but those who have ever watched the younger 
man with the old, will know that the Huxley of the appreciation was not all that 
