hich he wished to convey. He was
concerned only to set forth these ideas in their clear and logical
order, convinced in his own mind that, were the facts as he knew them
placed before the minds of his hearers, only one possible result could
follow. The facts had convinced him: they must equally convince any
honest and intelligent person placed in possession of them. He had not
the smallest intention of overbearing by authority or of swaying by
skilfully aroused emotion. Such weapons of the orator seemed to him
dishonest in the speaker and most perilous to the audience. For him,
speaking on any subject was merely a branch of scientific exposition;
when emotion was to be roused or enthusiasm to be kindled the
inspiration was to come from the facts and not from the orator. The
arts he allowed himself were those common to all forms of exposition;
he would explain a novel set of ideas by comparison with simpler ideas
obvious to all his listeners; and he sought to arrest attention or to
drive home a conclusion by some brilliant phrase that bit into the
memory. These two arts, the art of the phrase-maker and the art of
explaining by vivacious and simple comparison, he brought to a high
perfection. The fundamental method of his exposition was simply the
method of comparative anatomy, the result of a habit of thinking which
makes it impossible to have any set of ideas brought into the mind
without an immediate, almost unconscious, overhauling of the memory
for any other ideas at all congruous. In a strict scientific
exposition Huxley would choose from the multitude of possible
comparisons that most simple and most intelligible to his audience;
when in a lighter vein, he gave play to a natural humour in his
choice. Instances of his method of exposition by comparison abound in
his published addresses. Let us take one or two. In the course of an
address to a large mixed audience so early in his public career as
1854, in making plain to them the proposition, somewhat novel for
those days, that the natural history sciences had an educational
value, he explained that the faculties employed in that subject were
simply those of the common sense of every-day life.

"The vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical
faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are
practised by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs
of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks