c books; every university and many schools have their
lectures and laboratories for science, and there is scientific
teaching involved in every educational curriculum. To attempt a
complete account of how this radical change in the attitude of the
world to science has come about would be to attempt to write the
history of European civilisation in the last half-century. A thousand
causes have been contributory; but among these causes two have been of
extraordinary importance--an idea and a man. The idea is the
conception of organic evolution, and the man was Huxley. The idea of
evolution clothed the dead bones of anatomy with a fair and living
flesh, and the new body left the dusty corners of museums to pervade
the world, arousing the attention and interest of all. A large part of
the prodigious mental activities of Huxley was devoted to compelling
the world to take an interest in biological science. Had his life-work
been no more than this side of it, it would have been of commanding
importance. A mere enumeration of the modes in which he assisted in
arousing attention to science among all classes would fill many pages.
Almost before he was settled in London, in the lecture from which we
quoted at the beginning of this chapter he urged the "educational
value of the natural history sciences." In 1869 in a speech in
Liverpool; in 1870 at University College, London; in 1874 as his
Rectorial address in the University of Aberdeen; in 1876 at the
opening ceremonial of the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore; in
the same year at South Kensington; in 1877 in a separate essay; in
1881 in an address to the International Medical Congress: at these
different times and addressing different and important audiences he
continued to urge the absolute necessity of a knowledge of nature. A
well-known and eloquent passage from an address on "a liberal
education" delivered to working men in 1868 contains the gist of his
reiterated argument:

"Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of
every one of us would, one day or other, depend on his winning or
losing a game of chess, don't you think that we should all
consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and
the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen
eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do you
not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to
scorn upon the