Produced by Sue Asscher asschers@bigpond.com
[With the year 1870 comes another turning-point in Huxley's career.From his return to England in 1850 till 1854 he had endured four yearsof hard struggle, of hope deferred; his reputation as a zoologist hadbeen established before his arrival, and was more than confirmed byhis personal energy and power. When at length settled in theprofessorship at Jermyn Street, he was so far from thinking himselfmore than a beginner who had learned to work in one corner of thefield of knowledge, still needing deep research into all kindredsubjects in order to know the true bearings of his own little portion,that he treated the next six years simply as years of furtherapprenticeship. Under the suggestive power of the "Origin of Species"all these scattered studies fell suddenly into due rank and order; thephilosophic unity he had so long been seeking inspired his thoughtwith tenfold vigour, and the battle at Oxford in defence of the newhypothesis first brought him before the public eye as one who not onlyhad the courage of his convictions when attacked, but could, and more,would, carry the war effectively into the enemy's country. And for thenext ten years he was commonly identified with the championship of themost unpopular view of the time; a fighter, an assailant oflong-established fallacies, he was too often considered a mereiconoclast, a subverter of every other well-rooted institution,theological, educational, or moral.
It is difficult now to realise with what feelings he was regarded inthe average respectable household in the sixties and early seventies.His name was anathema; he was a terrible example of intellectualgravity beyond redemption, a man with opinions such as cannot be held"without grave personal sin on his part" (as was once said of Mill byW.G. Ward), the representative in his single person of rationalism,materialism, atheism, or if there be any more abhorrent "ism"—intoken of which as late as 1892 an absurd zealot at the headquarters ofthe Salvation Army crowned an abusive letter to him at Eastbourne bythe statement, "I hear you have a local reputation as a Bradlaughite."
But now official life began to lay closer hold upon him. He cameforward also as a leader in the struggle for educational reform,seeking not only to perfect his own biological teaching, but to show,in theory and practice, how scientific training mi