Moreover, it is not likely that a strictly esoteric intellectualism can survive at all, much less attain that leadership which is the proper function of intelligence in human affairs in a world organized as ours is. As I have said before, our intellectual hold upon reality, even for the best trained minds, is more precarious than we think. A slight general shifting of emotional interest or of perspective--the spread, let us suppose, of Fundamentalism through lower middle class minds generally,--a sudden spasm of popular disillusionment regarding the “wonders” of science or of hostility toward scientific methods which are ever upsetting the consolations of faith,--might conceivably occur at any time, and bring the beginning of the end of all that scholars have struggled for since the Renaissance. If as Huxley said, the epoch which began with the Reformation is about played out, it is not by any means a foregone conclusion what the sequel is to be. If science and letters are to join forces in the achievement of a truly Humanist culture, this culture must be rooted in the life and thought of the community. It will not likely be again a fifteenth century Italian mimicry of the age of Cicero; neither can it support itself like a bridge over an illiterate and enslaved populace, after the fashion of ancient Athenian Humanism. This modern public can read, it is very vociferous, it has votes and purchasing power and it pays to flatter it. But there is in the modern public a small and growing minority, scattered throughout all classes in the community, who honestly desire knowledge of science and the humanities. Professional scholarship has in the example of Huxley a splendid precedent for any attempts it may care to make to ally itself with this teachable minority. I once invited a neighboring biologist to participate with other research scholars, in a course of lectures at Cooper Union on scientific methods. He declined, because he believed that a scientist who lectured to popular audiences cheapened his reputation. I wondered if he had forgotten the great service to science rendered by Huxley, who did not think it beneath the dignity of one who was perhaps the leading biologist of England to wage the struggle for scientific advance in the presence of a public which was much less trained in the principles of natural science than the people who regularly attend the lectures at Cooper Union. Huxley seemed to believe that the outcome of the struggle of evolution against popular ignorance and superstition was inseparable from the fate of science itself. He set himself to make knowledge of the principles of science universal. He did a work of adult education that has not been surpassed in modern times. If today there is greater freedom for scientific research and teaching, and in general a more liberal and tolerant attitude on the part of official and popular religion toward scientific discovery, our generation is in no small measure indebted to Huxley.