V. HUXLEY ON SCIENCE AND CULTURE
BY PROFESSOR A. O. NORTON
HUXLEY’S address on “Science and Culture”〖Harvard Classics, xxviii, 209ff.〗 was delivered in 1880, at the opening of Mason Science College in Birmingham, England. Like many academic addresses, it not only celebrates a local event, but also deals with questions of the day, chosen to suit the occasion. Unlike most such addresses, however, it is of permanent value as a document in the history of a great epoch in English educational progress. The event which it celebrates marks “a crisis in the long battle, or rather of the long series of battles” which were fought over education during the nineteenth century; the discussion concerns two of the most significant educational reforms of that century; the speaker was a great leader in the struggle which brought those reforms to pass; the style of the address illustrates the “strenuous and attractive method of exposition” which characterizes all of Huxley’s writings, and which was a powerful means of winning public support for his views.