THE LATE PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

Evening Star, Issue 9807, 21 September 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE LATE PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

[FuOM OeH SI’ECIAE CoKKESFONUENT.]

Lomjo.n, July 5.

Il has oftcu been said of Mr Gladstone that if, instead of choosing the thorny path of politics, he had gone into the Church or been called to the Bar, he would without the faintest doubt have achieved the highest honors possible to either vocation. In the same way it was unquestionably true of the late Professor Huxley, who succumbed to a complication of maladies on Sunday last, that as a barrii-ter or a politician he would have become as great (possibly even a greater) man than he was a scientist. “People complain,” Darwin wrote to his friend, “ of the unequal distribution of wealth, but it is a much greater shame and injustice that anyone should have the power to write so many brilliant things as you have lately done.” Darwin had, of course, good reason to admire his friend’s powerful peu and mighty intellect. “It is better sometimes,” wrote the latter, “to irrigate than to excel.” Huxley’s positive contributions to scientific discovery were numerous and considerable. But it was to the defence of other men’s discoveries he devoted the main energies of his life. What Darwin’s life-work would have been without him it is hard to say. The names of Darwin and Huxley were almost from the first associated in men’s minds, and there can be no doubt that the fertilising and irrigating effect which the Darwinian hypothesis has exercised in all departments of contemporary thought has been due, to a great extent, to Huxley’s brilliant advocaay. His lucidity of thought, vigor of style, and determination of character equipped him in a special degree for the task. Like Bradlaugh, the Professor, too, was “ever a fighter.” He loved to throw himself fiercely into the mel e, and his weapons were polished to the utmost point of keenness. He was one of the few men of any age who combine scientific and literary attainments ■of the highest character. “ There is no one,” said Darwin, writes like Huxley,” and even hostile critics of his labors admit this too. _ _ His polemical .and expository writings are (says‘The Times’) conspicuous throughout not only for vigor, lucidity, and felicity, but for the impress which they bear of a richly* stored mind and a finely-cultivated taste.