Howard Florey. The making of a great scientist

have been unable to depict satisfactorily his multi-sided and often contradictory personality. Professor Paradis' study attempts a reconstruction of Huxley's intellectual biography within the context of "Victorian culture". Therefore his book does not deal with the "internal" minutiae of Huxley's scientific work, but endeavours to outline his views of the relations involving science, philosophy, and society; quite clearly, this study is along the lines of W. Irvine's well-known Apes, angels and Victorians. Professor Paradis successfully places Huxley in the intellectual and political life of nineteenth-century Britain. His thesis is that Huxley moved from the early influence of Carlyle's Romantic thought to rationalism and scientific humanism. Professor Paradis bases his conclusions upon evidence largely obtained from Huxley's Collected essays and his private correspondence. For once we have a clear outline of Huxley's youth and of his difficult relationship with his family about which both T. H. Huxley and his son Leonard in the Life and letters of Thomas Henry Huxley were reticent. The best part of the book is probably the chapter which considers Huxley's debt to Carlyle's views-the connexions between the ideas of the two thinkers are outlined with extreme clarity, and Professor Paradis does not fail to point out the very different views of "heroism" held by Carlyle and Huxley in their maturity, as their disagreement apropos the Eyre affair proves. Moreover we are convincingly told about the clash between the internal disorder of Huxley's personality and his desire to find external order in the world of science. The book vividly describes Huxley's philosophical position, which moved closer and closer to that propounded by J. S. Mill, and the connexions between Huxley's ideas and the non-scientific intellectual world. The most original view proposed by Professor Paradis is that Huxley's concept of organic dualism somehow foreshadowed some of Freud's ideas: Huxley's application of the concept of organic dualism to the problems of civilization was a step, however limited, in the direction of what was to become the cultural theory of Freud. While Huxley had no clear concept of the subconscious mind, and while he lacked a specific theory of sexuality and the relationship of instinct to consciousness, he grasped the idea that instinct was an agent somehow competing with consciousness in the determination of human behaviour. (pp. 153-54) Professor Paradis is weaker on the scientific aspects of Huxley's work. He tends to overstate the importance of Man's place in nature, …