lectual. I
mean, that the source of pleasure is exactly the same as in most
of my problems in morphology--that you have the theme in one of
the old masters' works followed out in all its endless
variations, always appearing and always reminding you of unity in
variety."

He had a hot temper, and did not readily brook opposition, especially
when that seemed to him to be the result of stupidity or of prejudice
rather than of reason, and his own reason was of a very clear,
decided, and exact order. He had little sympathy with vacillation of
any kind, whether it arose from mere infirmity of purpose or from the
temperament which delights in balancing opposing considerations. He
said on one occasion:

"A great lawyer-statesman and philosopher of a former age--I mean
Francis Bacon--said that truth came out of error much more
rapidly than out of confusion. There is a wonderful truth in that
saying. Next to being right in this world, the best of all things
is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out
somewhere. If you go buzzing about between right and wrong,
vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you are
absolutely and thoroughly and persistently wrong, you must, some
of these days, have the extreme good fortune of knocking your
head against a fact, and that sets you all straight again. So I
will not trouble myself as to whether I may be right or wrong in
what I am about to say, but at any rate I hope to be clear and
definite; and then you will be able to judge for yourselves
whether, in following out the train of thought I have to
introduce, you knock your heads against facts or not."

The particular suggestions to which these remarks were the
characteristic introduction related to definite problems of education,
that is to say, to questions upon which some action was urgent. It was
in all cases of life, in science or affairs, that Huxley was resolute
for clear ideas and definite courses of conduct. As a matter of fact,
no one ever took greater care to satisfy himself as best he could as
to what was right and what was wrong; but where action rather than
reflection was needed, then his principle was to act, and to know
definitely and clearly why you acted and for what you acted. In
matters of opinion, on the other hand, he was all for not coming to a
definite opinion when the facts obtaina