None the
less it is important to recognise that a genuine aversion from affairs
is characteristic of many fine original investigators, and it is on
such persons that the idea of the simple and childlike nature of
philosophers, a simplicity often reaching real incapacity for the
affairs of life, is based. There was no trace of this natural
isolation in the character of Huxley. He was not only a serious
student of science but a keen and zealous citizen, eagerly conscious
of the great social and political movements around him, with the full
sense that he was a man living in society with other men and that
there was a business of life as well as a business of the laboratory.
We have seen with what zeal he brought his trained intelligence to
bear not only on his own province of scientific education, but on the
wider problems of general education, and yet the time he gave to these
was only a small part of that which he spared from abstract science
for affairs. In scientific institutions as in others, there is always
a considerable amount of business, involving the management of men and
the management of money, and Huxley's readiness and aptitude led to
his being largely occupied with these. For many years he was Dean of
the Royal College of Science at South Kensington, and for a
considerable time he served the Geological Society and the Royal
Society as secretary.
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