greater. Huxley was a great believer in the _distillatio per
ascensum_ of scientific knowledge and culture, and spared
no pains in approaching the artisan and so-called "working
classes." He gave the workmen of his best. The substance of
his _Man's Place in Nature_, one of the most successful and
popular of his writings, and of his _Crayfish_, perhaps the
most perfect zoological treatise ever published, was first
communicated to them. In one of the last conversations I
had with him, I asked his views on the desirability of
discontinuing the workmen's lectures at Jermyn Street, since
the development of working men's colleges and institutes
is regarded by some to have rendered their continuance
unnecessary. He replied, almost with indignation: "With our
central position and resources, we ought to be in a position
to give the workmen that which they cannot get elsewhere";
adding that he would deeply deplore any such discontinuance.

He had begun these in 1855, the second year of his appointment at the
Royal School of Mines. On February 27 of that year he wrote to his
friend Dr. Dyster:--

I enclose a prospectus of some People's Lectures (_Popular_
Lectures I hold to be an abomination unto the Lord) I am about
to give here. I want the working classes to understand that
Science and her ways are great facts for them--that physical
virtue is the base of all other, and that they are to be clean
and temperate and all the rest, not because fellows in black
with white ties tell them so, but because these are plain and
patent laws of nature which they must obey "under penalties."