SOURCE: "T. H. Huxley's Treatment of 'Nature'," in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 18, January, 1957, pp. 120-27.

In the following essay, Stanley claims that Huxley's early, romantic view of nature differs from his later, scientific philosophy. Stanley suggests that the shift may have occurred as a result of John Stuart Mill's essay "Nature."

The reader of Thomas Henry Huxley may be puzzled in observing the contradictory points of view toward Nature embodied in the various essays. In any one essay the view is consistent. But in one piece Nature appears as a loving mother heaping rich gifts upon her children if they obey her rules. And in another Nature is the non-moral sum of all phenomena. That is, in one essay Huxley is romantic; in another, scientific. An effort to explain this opposition required first an examination of Huxley's writings in chronological order. This inspection revealed that...