Thomas Henry Huxley: 52 books

The purpose of the following selections is to present to students of English a few of Huxley's representative essays. Some of these selections are complete; others are extracts. In the latter case, however, they are not extracts in the sense of being incomplete wholes, for each selection given will be...

Some of the passages were picked out for their philosophy, some for their moral guidances, some for their scientific exposition of natural facts, or for their insight into social questions; others for their charms of imagination or genial humour, and many—not the least—for their pure beauty of...

Huxley was one of the first adherents to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and advanced its acceptance by scientists and the public. Man's Place in Nature was explicitly directed against Richard Owen, who had claimed that there were distinct differences between human brains and those...

L’ouvrage tout récent dont nous présentons la traduction au public français a un double intérêt, et d’abord celui d’être une excellente monographie de Hume. Par des citations bien choisies, par de nombreux emprunts à la correspondance ou aux écrits de son héros, M. Huxley a su donner...

Forty years ago the position of scientific studies was not so firmly established as it is to-day, and a conflict was necessary to secure their general recognition. The forces of obscurantism and of free and easy dogmatism were arrayed against them; and, just as in former centuries astronomy, and in more...

There are three ways of regarding any account of past occurrences, whether delivered to us orally or recorded in writing.

THE subject upon which I wish to address you to-night is the structure and origin of Coral and Coral Reefs. Under the head of “coral” there are included two very different things; one of them is that substance which I imagine a great number of us have champed when we were very much younger than we...

MR. DARWIN'S long-standing and well-earned scientific eminence probably renders him indifferent to that social notoriety which passes by the name of success; but if the calm spirit of the philosopher have not yet wholly superseded the ambition and the vanity of the carnal man within him, he must be well...

MERCHANTS occasionally go through a wholesome, though troublesome and not always satisfactory, process which they term “taking stock. ” After all the excitement of speculation, the pleasure of gain, and the pain of loss, the trader makes up his mind to face facts and to learn the exact quantity and quality of his solid and reliable possessions.

IN the preceding five lectures I have endeavoured to give you an account of those facts, and of those reasonings from facts, which form the data upon which all theories regarding the causes of the phenomena of organic nature must be based. And, although I have had frequent occasion to quote Mr. Darwin—...