NOTICE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The Publisher of these interesting Lectures, having made an arrangement
for their publication with Mr. J.A. Mays, the Reporter, begs to append
the following note from Professor Huxley:--

"Mr. J. Aldous Mays, who is taking shorthand notes of my 'Lectures to
Working Men,' has asked me to allow him, on his own account, to print
those Notes for the use of my audience. I willingly accede to this
request, on the understanding that a notice is prefixed to the effect
that I have no leisure to revise the Lectures, or to make alterations in
them, beyond the correction of any important error in a matter of fact."

***


ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE CAUSES OF THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE:


THE PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE.

When it was my duty to consider what subject I would select for the six
lectures* ([Footnote] *To Working Men, at the Museum of Practical
Geology, 1863.) which I shall now have the pleasure of delivering to
you, it occurred to me that I could not do better than endeavour to put
before you in a true light, or in what I might perhaps with more modesty
call, that which I conceive myself to be the true light, the position of
a book which has been more praised and more abused, perhaps, than any
book which has appeared for some years;--I mean Mr. Darwin's work on the