V

LEHRJAHRE


The award of the Royal Medal was felt by Huxley to be a turning-point.
It was something which convinced the "practical" people who used to
scoff at his "dreamy" notions, and brought them to urge him on a more
"dreamy" course than ever he dreamed of. "However," he remarks, "I
take very much my own course now, even as I have done before--Huxley
all over." Without being blinded by any vanity, he saw in the award
and the general estimate in which it was held a finger-post showing
as clearly as anything can what was the true career lying open before
him. Ambitious in the current sense of worldly success he was not. The
praise of men stirred a haunting mistrust of their judgment and his
own worthiness. Honours he valued as evidences of power; but no more.
What possessed him was, as he confessed in a letter meant only for
the eye of his future wife, "an enormous longing after the highest and
best in all shapes--a longing which haunts me and is the demon which
ever impels me to work, and will let me have no rest unless I am doing
his behests." With the sense of power stirring within him, he
refused to be beholden to any man. Patronage he abhorred in an ago
of patronage. He was ready to accept a helping hand from any one who
thought him capable of forwarding the great cause in ever so small a
way; but on no other terms. If the time had come to speak out on any
matter, he was resolved to let no merely personal influence restrain