as in writing a book he was careful first to plan out the scheme of it and the balance of the parts, so, however much his public addresses gave the impression of being largely impromptu, he had always thought out carefully every word he meant to say.  “There is,” he said, “no greater danger than the so-called inspiration of the moment, which leads you to say something which is not exactly true, or which you would regret afterwards.”

Yet his was not a strong verbal memory.  It was essentially a memory for facts; he could tear the heart out of a book as swiftly as a Macaulay, packing the facts into the framework of his knowledge, and always knowing thereafter where to find his facts or verify his references.  In his speeches it was the compelling thought seeking expression, and fitting the form of expression exactly to the form of the thought, that brought the meditated words so infallibly and so spontaneously to his lips:  they were already welded together in mind.  But he had not that kind of memory which, after once reading a page of a book, can recite the whole word for word, whether prose or verse.  Single phrases embodying a notable image would remain with him, and remain ready for use as allusive colour or pointed epigram.  Many of these were Biblical phrases, for he knew his Bible well, and admired not only the grandeur of thought to be found enshrined in it, but its magnificence as a treasure-house of our English tongue.  And, apart from many scientific terms of his invention, he coined divers words and phrases which have enriched our language, such as “Agnostic,” “the ladder from the gutter to the university,” the descriptions of Positivism as “Catholicism without Christianity,” and the Salvation Army methods as “Corybantic Christianity.”

His working day began soon after nine, for he was never one of those people who can do hours of work before breakfast.  The working day, however, regularly went on until midnight, and, as has been mentioned, was often prolonged by late reading.

The speed with which his mind worked to see through complex questions and spring swiftly to a conclusion was such that he contrived to do four ordinary men’s work in a single lifetime.  But this swiftness of reaching a conclusion, so useful at most times, was liable sometimes to betray him.  If, however, he found that he had made a mistake, he was ready to confess the fact.  The most celebrated instance of this was the story of Bathybius.  In 1868, while soundings were being made in connection with the laying of the Atlantic cable, certain specimens of mud were dredged up.  The mud was sticky, owing to the presence of innumerable lumps of a transparent gelatinous substance.  This was in fine granules, which possessed neither a nucleus nor a covering membrane.  Scattered through it were calcareous coccoliths.  Such were the facts; what inference was to be drawn?  The only thing this substance resembled was one of the many simple forms of oceanic life recently found and described by the great zoologist Haeckel.