possibly suggest personal fraud and so inflict gratuitous
pain upon believers in it. The question of the fundamentals of
Christian evidences had long been in his mind; it was no new subject
to him when in the eighties, debarred by his health from physiological
researches, he extended his work on Biblical studies.

If the Metaphysical Society effected nothing else, it brought about
a personal _rapprochement_ between the representatives of opposing
schools of thought. It became clear to the older school that the new
thinkers had by no means failed, as they suspected, to examine the
older doctrines. Theirs was not dishonest doubt, but a strong demand
for better evidence. If the Society itself "died of too much love," it
may well have contributed to the greater amenity of public discussion
as the years passed, and the diminution of the former rabid
denunciations which waned as the new doctrines spread, and were even
absorbed and digested by their former antagonists.

VII

CONTROVERSY AND THE BATTLE OF THE "ORIGIN"

The piercing clearness of mind described by Prof. Sidgwick, which
could not express itself otherwise than trenchantly and drove straight
at the heart of the subject, gave Huxley the popular reputation of
being above all things a controversialist. Naturally enough, the
public knew little and cared less for the unspectacular researches
among the Invertebrates, which had won such high scientific fame.
They were only stirred when the results of study in geology, in
fossil forms and simian anatomy, clashed with long-established
popular conceptions. There was also a gladiatorial delight in watching
controversy not simply abstract, but fanned by personal conviction,
which marked the champions above all as good fighters.

It must be noted, however, that, vigorous as he was in carrying war
into the enemy's country, on two occasions only did Huxley set forth
without being first personally attacked. One was his review of
the _Vestiges of Creation,_ when he was irritated by the writer's
"prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific habit of mind."

If it had any influence on me at all [he writes], it set me
against Evolution; and the only review I ever have qualms of
conscience about, on the ground of needless savagery, is one I
wrote on the _Vestiges_ while under that influence (1854).

The other was his controversy in 1885-6 with Mr. Gladstone, over the
account of the creation in Genesi