ry, Huxley wrote his first book,
already mentioned, Man's Place in Nature.

To read a list of the various kinds of work which Huxley was doing
from 1870 to 1875 is to be convinced of his abundant energy and many
interests. At about this time Huxley executed the plan which he had had
in mind for a long time, the establishment of laboratories for the
use of students. His object was to furnish a more exact preliminary
training. He complains that the student who enters the medical school
is "so habituated to learn only from books, or oral teaching, that the
attempt to learn from things and to get his knowledge at first hand is
something new and strange." To make this method of teaching successful
in the schools, Huxley gave practical instruction in laboratory work to
school-masters.

"If I am to be remembered at all," Huxley once wrote, "I would rather it
should be as a man who did his best to help the people than by any
other title." Certainly as much of his time as could be spared from his
regular work was given to help others. His lectures to workingmen and
school-masters have already been mentioned. In addition, he lectured to
women on physiology and to children on elementary science. In order
to be of greater service to the children, Huxley, in spite of delicate
health, became a member of the London School Board. His immediate object
was "to temper book-learning with something of the direct knowledge of
Nature." His other purposes were to secure a better physical training
for children and to give them a clearer understanding of social and
moral law. He did not believe, on the one hand, in overcrowding the
curriculum, but, on the other hand, he "felt that all education should
be thrown open to all that each man might know to what state in life he
was called." Another statement of his purpose and beliefs is given by
Professor Gladstone, who says of his work on the board: "He resented
the idea that schools were to train either congregations for churches or
hands for factories. He was on the Board as a friend of children. What
he sought to do for the child was for the child's sake, that it might
live a fuller, truer, worthier life."

The immense amount of work which Huxley did in these years told very
seriously on his naturally weak constitution. It became necessary for
him finally for two successive years to stop work altogether. In 1872
he went to the Mediterranean and to Egypt. This was a holiday full of
interest for