ble did not justify such an
opinion. In thought, agnosticism, the refusal to accept any ideas or
principles except on sufficient evidence; in action, positivism, to
act promptly in definite and known directions for definite and known
objects: these were his principles.

Another aspect of the same trait of character, he shewed in an address
to medical students at a distribution of prizes. After congratulating
the victors he confessed to "an undercurrent of sympathy for those who
have not been successful, for those valiant knights who have been
overthrown in their tourney, and have not made their appearance in
public." After recounting an early failure of his own, he proceeded:

"I said to myself, 'Never mind; what's the next thing to be
done?' And I found that policy of 'never minding' and going on to
the next thing to be done, to be the most important of all
policies in the conduct of practical life. It does not matter how
many tumbles you have in this life, so long as you do not get
dirty when you tumble; it is only the people who have to stop to
be washed and made clean, who must necessarily lose the race. You
learn that which is of inestimable importance--that there are a
great many people in the world who are just as clever as you are.
You learn to put your trust, by and by, in an economy and
frugality of the exercise of your powers both moral and
intellectual; and you very soon find out, if you have not found
it out before, that patience and tenacity of purpose are worth
more than twice their weight of cleverness."

All Huxley's work was marked by a quality which may be called
conscientiousness or thoroughness. Looking through his memoirs,
written many years ago, the subjects of which have since been handled
and rehandled by other writers with new knowledge and with new methods
at their disposal, one is struck that all the observations he made
have stood their ground. With new facts new generalisations have often
been reached, and some of the positions occupied by Huxley have been
turned. But what he saw and described had not to be redescribed; the
citations he made from the older authorities were always so chosen as
to contain the exact gist of the writers. These qualities, admirable
in scientific work, became at once admirable and terrible in his
controversial writings. His own exactness made him ruthless in
exposing any inexactness in his a