SOURCE: "The Rhetoric of T. H. Huxley," in The University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. XVIII, No. 2, January, 1949, pp. 159-75.

In this essay, Houghton contends that, contrary to traditional appraisals, Huxley used a variety of rhetorical tools to advocate his agnosticism.

For anyone so obviously devoted to controversy and propaganda, Huxley enjoyed a reputation for candour and sincerity that seems almost incredible. We can scarcely believe that the self-appointed champion of science, writing in an age of bitter religious controversy, and endowed with both pugnacity and a flair for style, could have resisted the temptation to use rhetorical sophistries of one kind or another. And use them he did, and with all the more success because, by great good luck, he had managed to acquire a reputation for simple honesty and plain speech which disarmed the usual caution of critics, as well as of general readers, on approaching polemical...