find out the why and wherefore, and it has often occurred to me that the pleasure derived from musical compositions of this kind is essentially of the same nature as that which is derived from pursuits which are commonly regarded as purely intellectual.  I mean, that the source of pleasure is exactly the same as in most of my problems in morphology—­that you have the theme in one of the old masters’ works followed out in all its endless variations, always appearing and always reminding you of unity in variety.”

He had a hot temper, and did not readily brook opposition, especially when that seemed to him to be the result of stupidity or of prejudice rather than of reason, and his own reason was of a very clear, decided, and exact order.  He had little sympathy with vacillation of any kind, whether it arose from mere infirmity of purpose or from the temperament which delights in balancing opposing considerations.  He said on one occasion: 

“A great lawyer-statesman and philosopher of a former age—­I mean Francis Bacon—­said that truth came out of error much more rapidly than out of confusion.  There is a wonderful truth in that saying.  Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out somewhere.  If you go buzzing about between right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have the extreme good fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and that sets you all straight again.  So I will not trouble myself as to whether I may be right or wrong in what I am about to say, but at any rate I hope to be clear and definite; and then you will be able to judge for yourselves whether, in following out the train of thought I have to introduce, you knock your heads against facts or not.”

The particular suggestions to which these remarks were the characteristic introduction related to definite problems of education, that is to say, to questions upon which some action was urgent.  It was in all cases of life, in science or affairs, that Huxley was resolute for clear ideas and definite courses of conduct.  As a matter of fact, no one ever took greater care to satisfy himself as best he could as to what was right and what was wrong; but where action rather than reflection was needed, then his principle was to act, and to know definitely and clearly why you acted and for what you acted.  In matters of opinion, on the other hand, he was all for not coming to a definite opinion when the facts obtainable did not justify such an opinion.  In thought, agnosticism, the refusal to accept any ideas or principles except on sufficient evidence; in action, positivism, to act promptly in definite and known directions for definite and known objects:  these were his principles.

Another aspect of the same trait of character, he shewed in an address to medical students at a distribution of prizes.  After congratulating the victors he confessed to “an undercurrent of sympathy for those who have not been successful, for those valiant knights who have been overthrown in their tourney, and have not made their appearance in public.”  After recounting an early failure of his own, he proceeded: