state endowments, or private endowments,
are ready to help every capable boy, as far as Huxley was helped, and
in his progress from boyhood to supreme distinction, there is nothing
that cannot be emulated by every boy at school to-day. The minds of
human beings when they are born into the world are as naked as their
bodies; it matters not if parents, grandparents, and remoter ancestors
were unlettered or had the wisdom of all the ages, the new mind has to
build up its own wisdom from the beginning. We cannot even say with
certainty that children inherit mental aptitudes and capacities from
their parents; for as tall sons may come from short parents or
beautiful daughters from ugly parents, so we may find in the
capacities of the parents no traces of the future greatness of their
children. None the less it is interesting to learn what we can about
the parents of great men; and Huxley tells us that he thinks himself
to have inherited many characters of his body and mind from his
mother.

Thomas Henry Huxley was born on the 4th of May, 1825, at Ealing, then
a little country village, now united to London as a great suburb. He
was the seventh child of George Huxley, who was second master at the
school of Dr. Nicholson at Ealing. In these days private schools of
varying character were very numerous in England, and this
establishment seems to have been of high-class character, for Cardinal
Newman and many other distinguished men received part of their
education there. His mother, whose maiden name was Rachel Withers,
was, he tells us himself:[A]

"A slender brunette of an emotional and energetic temperament,
and possessed of the most piercing black eyes I ever saw in a
woman's head. With no more education than other women of the
middle classes in her day, she had an excellent mental capacity.
Her most distinguishing characteristic, however, was rapidity of
thought. If one ventured to suggest she had not taken much time
to arrive at any conclusion, she would say, 'I cannot help it.
Things flash across me.' That peculiarity has been passed on to
me in full strength: it has often stood me in good stead: it has
sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has always been a danger.
But, after all, if my time were to come over again there is
nothing I would less willingly part with than my inheritance of
'mother wit.'"

From his father he thinks that he inherited little