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Title: Critiques and Addresses

Author: Thomas Henry Huxley

Release Date: June 3, 2004 [EBook #12506]

Language: English

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=CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES.=

BY

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, LL.D., F.R.S.

1873.

PREFACE.

The "Critiques and Addresses" gathered together in this volume, like
the "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews," published three years ago,
deal chiefly with educational, scientific, and philosophical subjects;
and, in fact, indicate the high-water mark of the various tides of
occupation by which I have been carried along since the beginning of
the year 1870.

In the end of that year, a confidence in my powers of work, which,
unfortunately, has not been justified by events, led me to allow
myself to be brought forward as a candidate for a seat on the London
School Board. Thanks to the energy of my supporters I was elected, and
took my share in the work of that body during the critical first year
of its existence. Then my health gave way, and I was obliged to resign
my place among colleagues whose large practical knowledge of the
business of primary education, and whose self-sacrificing zeal in the
discharge of the onerous and thankless duties thrown upon them by
the Legislature, made it a pleasure to work with them, even though my
position was usually that of a member of the minority.

I mention these circumstances in order to account for (I had almost
said to apologize for) the existence of the two papers which head
the present series, and which are more or less political, both in the
lower and in the higher senses of that word.

The question of the expediency of any form of State Education is, in
fact, a question of those higher politics which lie above the region
in which Tories, Whigs, and Radicals "delight to bark and bite." In
discussing it in my address on "Administrative Nihilism," I found
myself, to my profound regret, led to diverge very widely (though even
more perhaps in seeming than