Produced by Sue Asscher LECTURES AND ESSAYS By T.H. Huxley The People's Library Cassell And Company, Ltd. London, Paris, New York, Toronto & Melbourne. MCMVIII. EDITOR'S NOTE. Of the great thinkers of the nineteenth century, Thomas Henry Huxley, son of an Ealing schoolmaster, was undoubtedly the most noteworthy. His researches in biology, his contributions to scientific controversy, his pungent criticisms of conventional beliefs and thoughts have probably had greater influence than the work of any other English scientist. And yet he was a "self-made" intellectualist. In spite of the fact that his father was a schoolmaster he passed through no regular course of education. "I had," he said, "two years of a pandemonium of a school (between eight and ten) and after that neither help nor sympathy in any intellectual direction till I reached manhood." When he was twelve a craving for reading found satisfaction in Hutton's "Geology," and when fifteen in Hamilton's "Logic." At seventeen Huxley entered as a student at Charing Cross Hospital, and three years later he was M.B. and the possessor of the gold medal for anatomy and physiology. An appointment as surgeon in the navy proved to be the entry to Huxley's great scientific career, for he was gazetted to the "Rattlesnake", commissioned for surveying work in Torres Straits. He was attracted by the teeming surface life of tropical seas and his study of it was the commencement of that revolution in scientific knowledge ultimately brought about by his researches. Thomas Henry Huxley was born at Ealing on May 4, 1825, and died at Eastbourne June 29, 1895. CONTENTS. ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE CAUSES OF THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE: THE PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE. THE PAST CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE. THE METHOD BY WHICH THE CAUSES OF THE PRESENT AND PAST CONDITIONS OF ORGANIC NATURE ARE TO BE DISCOVERED.--THE ORIGINATION OF LIVING BEINGS. THE PERPETUATION OF LIVING BEINGS, HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION AND VARIATION. THE CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE AS AFFECTING THE PERPETUATION OF LIVING BEINGS. A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE POSITION OF MR. DARWIN'S WORK, "ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES," IN RELATION TO THE COMPLETE THEORY OF THE CAUSES OF THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE. ESSAYS ON DARWIN'S "ORIGIN OF SPECIES": THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS. TIME AND LIFE. THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. CRITICISMS ON "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES". EVIDENCE AS TO MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE: ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MAN-LIKE APES. ON THE RELATIONS OF MAN TO THE LOWER ANIMALS. ON SOME FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN. ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE. ON THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY. GEOLOGICAL CONTEMPORANEITY AND PERSISTENT TYPES OF LIFE. CORAL AND CORAL REEFS. YEAST. THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. ***** NOTICE TO THE FIRST EDITION.