Critiques and addresses / by Thomas Huxley.

  • Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Critiques and addresses / by Thomas Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/344
    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 Eadicals 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 in reality) from the opinions of a man of genius to whom I am bound by the twofold tie of the respect due to a profound philosopher and the affection given to a very old friend. But had I no other means of knowing the fact, the kindly geniality of Mr. Herbert Spencer's reply1 assures me that the tie to which 1 refer will bear a much heavier strain than I have put, or ever intend to put, upon it, and I rather rejoice that I have been the means of calling forth so vigorous a piece of argumentative writing. Nor is this disinterested joy at an attack upon myself diminished by the circumstance, that, in all humility, but in all sincerity, I think it may be repulsed. Mr. Spencer compkins that I have first misinterpreted, and then miscalled, the doctrine of which he is so able 1 Specialized Administration ; Fortnightly Review, December 1871.