ecially my ever-friendly
hearers at the Royal Institution, who were the subjects of my oratorical
experiments.

The last thing that it would be proper for me to do would be to speak of
the work of my life, or to say at the end of the day whether I think I
have earned my wages or not. Men are said to be partial judges of
themselves. Young men may be; I doubt if old men are. Life seems
terribly foreshortened as they look back, and the mountain they set
themselves to climb in youth turns out to be a mere spur of immeasurably
higher ranges when, with failing breath, they reach the top. But if I
may speak of the objects I have had more or less definitely in view
since I began the ascent of my hillock, they are briefly these: To
promote the increase of natural knowledge and to forward the application
of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life to
the best of my ability, in the conviction which has grown with my growth
and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the
sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the
resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe
by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.

It is with this intent that I have subordinated any reasonable, or
unreasonable, ambition for scientific fame which I may have permitted
myself to entertain to other ends; to the popularisation of science; to
the development and organisation of scientific education; to the
endless series of battles and skirmishes over evolution; and to untiring
opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit, that clericalism, which in
England, as everywhere else, and to whatever denomination it may belong,
is the deadly enemy of science.

In striving for the attainment of these objects, I have been but one
among many, and I shall be well content to be remembered, or even not
remembered, as such. Circumstances, among which I am proud to reckon the
devoted kindness of many friends, have led to my occupation of various
prominent positions, among which the Presidency of the Royal Society is
the highest. It would be mock modesty on my part, with these and other
scientific honours which have been bestowed upon me, to pretend that I
have not succeeded in the career which I have followed, rather because I
was driven into it than of my own free will; but I am afraid I should
not count even these things as marks of success if I could not h