Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/571

Rh any inquiry into the why absolutely idle.

The highest motive for scientific research we hold—in opposition to our critic—to be the improvement of the conditions of human life. That there are, in our day, adequate motives for research is evident from the advances which science is making in every department; and that such advances are possible is due to the fact that men have, for some generations, been mainly seeking answers to the question "How?" Were they now to betake themselves to the question which Mr. Clark commends to the attention of the scientific world, the result would be a disastrous arrest of progress. In the ages when pestilences were of frequent occurrence, all the conjecturing that men could do as to why they were sent did not avail one jot to check their virulence. The knowledge that was needed, we see clearly now, was the knowledge of how they were caused. If that could have been got through the wool of our ancestors, their sufferings would have been wonderfully abated. And to-day, as then, the knowledge that is most needful is the knowledge of causes. Take away from us our knowledge of causes, and all that we could conjecture of Divine purposes would not save us from plunging into barbarism.

the death of Professor Huxley the world has lost a man whom it could ill spare. He was one of the very few men who unite to a real capacity for original work the impulse and the ability to bring home the results of scientific research to the popular mind. He believed that a knowledge of science, and above all of scientific method, was good for mankind; and he turned aside from studies in which he had won renown, and might have won more, in order that he might preach what he considered the gospel of science to the multitude. Some of his friends regretted this; in the interest of his fame they would have preferred that he should never have quitted the higher walks of scientific investigation; but for our own part it seems to us impossible that Huxley should have chosen his course otherwise than as he did. He had, what few of the devotees of pure science possess, strong popular sympathies and an extremely active temperament. He could not so immerse himself in the minutiae of anatomy, or the obscurities of physiological processes, as to be indifferent to what was going on in the world around him. He was interested in fishes and reptiles, but he was more interested in his fellow-men; and it would be difficult to overestimate the value of the service he rendered in promoting sound habits of thought in this generation. Having won complete intellectual emancipation for himself, he desired that others should share the same benefit; and wherever the cause of intellectual liberty seemed to be in danger, there he was ready to come forward in its defense.

No one could read a page of Professor Huxley's writings without being struck by the breadth of culture they displayed. He was not a university-bred man, and yet in his knowledge of literature and philosophy—to say nothing of his strictly scientific attainments—he put the vast majority of university men to shame. His culture, however, was never merely on exhibition as culture; it was employed in the most legitimate manner to strengthen the causes he had at heart. There was in him too broad a humanity and too much of earnest purpose to permit him to lapse into the arts of the