INTRODUCTION THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY "He had intellect to comprehend his highest duty distinctly, and force of character to do it; which of us dare ask for a higher summary of his life than that?" These words were written by Huxley to his friend Hooker on the death of Professor Henslow; and they are even more appropriate when they are applied to the life and work of Huxley himself. When we read his life in the Autobiography, or the more lengthy memoirs by Sir Michael Foster and P. Chalmers Mitchell, we are impressed by the manifoldness of his activity. Scientist, citizen, educator, lecturer, writer, he was all these; and upon all the work he did he impressed the peculiar stamp of his individuality. It is perhaps after all Huxley, the man, who is most interesting. The enormous growth of scientific research and scientific education since 1860, -for now almost half the time of our students in secondary schools and colleges is taken up with science in one form or other, and they are busy with its method even in literary courses of study, is in a large measure due to two causes. The first is the doctrine of evolution, which was put upon a scientific basis in 1859 by the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. The second is the unwearied, as he said, "fanatical," insistence by Huxley upon the importance of physical science as an educational agent. This would in itself be cause sufficient for a study of his life and writings. But it is not Huxley the scientist, so much as Huxley the man, that I propose to bring to your acquaintance in this Introduction. His scientific researches and their value must be left to instructors in biology, physiology, or zoology. They have been amply recognized. Let us get a knowledge of the man that will illuminate the other spheres of his activity. The reader who takes up a biography of Huxley, hoping to read accounts of "moving accidents by field or flood," and other such episodes of "a strenuous life," will soon find himself disappointed. With the one exception of his Rattlesnake voyage, and a few comparatively mild trips for his health to Egypt and the Alps, he lived a quiet and uneventful life in or near London, industriously devoting himself to what he felt his duty. The earlier events in Huxley's life are given so well in the Autobiography that it would be quite inappropriate to call attention to them here. One thing is highly suggestive of the dogged persistency with which he followed up any plan he set himself. When a student in London, he selected as his motto Goethe's Wie das Gestirn, Ohne Hast, Ohne Rast,like the star, without haste, without rest. And this diligent pegging away at an ideal, that at first might seem impossible, was what made him the man he grew to be. Late in life when he was speaking to some medical students at a distribution of prizes, after congratulating the victors, he confessed to "an undercurrent of sympathy for those who have not been successful, for those valiant knights who have been overthrown in their tourney, and have not made their appearance in public," and recounting an earlier failure of his own, he proceeded: |