Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevelyan Huxley ( 1891 – 1914 ), who committed suicide after a period of clinical depression.

Following his education at Balliol, Huxley was financially indebted to his father and had to earn a living.

Aldous Huxley had transformative lessons with Alexander, and continued doing so with other teachers after moving to the USA.

As a result of his letters and, no doubt, personal conversations, Huxley and Haeckel were convinced that, at the time he wrote Principles, he believed new species had arisen by natural methods.

Many of the proponents of Darwinism at that time, including Huxley, had reservations about the significance of natural selection, and Darwin himself gave credence to what was later called Lamarckism.

Huxley had been interested in spiritual matters and had used alternative therapies for some time.

More specifically, Huxley had first heard of peyote use in ceremonies of the Native American Church in New Mexico soon after coming to the USA in 1937.

In the epilogue to his novel The Devils of Loudon published earlier that year, Huxley had written that drugs were “ toxic short cuts to self-transcendence ” For the Canadian writer George Woodcock, Huxley had changed his opinion because mescaline was not addictive and appeared to be without unpleasant physical or mental side-effects, further he had found that hypnosis, autohypnosis and meditation had apparently failed to produce the results he wanted.

Reflecting on his stated motivations, Woodcock wrote that Huxley had realised the ways to enlightenment were many, and prayer and meditation were techniques among others.

Osmond arrived at Huxley ’ s house in West Hollywood on May 3, and recorded his impressions of the famous author as a tolerant and kind man, although he had expected otherwise.

The psychiatrist had misgivings about giving the drug to Huxley, and wrote that " I did not relish the possibility, however remote, of being the man who drove Aldous Huxley mad ," but instead found him an ideal subject.

Osmond later said he had a photo of the day that showed Huxley wearing flannels.

Huxley had used Blake's metaphor in The Doors of Perception while discussing the paintings of Vermeer and the Nain brothers, and previously in The Perennial Philosophy, once in relation to the use of mortification as a means to remove persistent spiritual myopia and secondly to refer to the absence of separation in spiritual vision.

In the early 1950s, Huxley had suffered a debilitating attack of the eye condition Iritis.

" For Steven J. Novak, The Doors Of Perception ( and Heaven and Hell ) redefined taking mescaline ( and LSD, although Huxley had not taken it until after he had written both books ) as a mystical experience with possible psychotherapeutic benefits, where physicians had previously thought of the drug in terms of mimicking a psychotic episode, known as psychotomimetic.

In a second letter on 19 April, Huxley invited Osmond to stay while he was visiting Los Angeles to attend the American Psychiatric Association convention.

Shortly after beginning her studies there, she visited London with Vladimir, who spent time with his colleagues Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin, while she was invited to attend George Eliot's Sunday salons.

In 1941 Huxley was invited to the United States on a lecturing tour, and generated some controversy by saying that he thought the United States should join World War II: a few weeks later came the attack on Pearl Harbor.

According to Huxley, Sister Jeanne, enraged by his rejection, instead invited Canon Mignon, an enemy of Grandier, to become the director.

In 1904 he was invited by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain to give the Huxley Memorial Lecture.

He invited Thomas Henry Huxley to India for an event but his invitation was declined.

In 1949, Julian Huxley, UNESCO's first Director-General, invited Fraser Darling to be one of UNESCO's representatives at the United Nations conference on conservation at Lake Success on Long Island.

Lyell was also a friend of Darwin's closest colleagues, Hooker and Huxley, but unlike them he struggled to square his religious beliefs with evolution.

He often entertained literary figures like Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Aldous Huxley, Ferenc Molnár, and close friend Somerset Maugham, as well.

Lorenz was also a friend and student of renowned biologist Sir Julian Huxley ( grandson of " Darwin's bulldog ", Thomas Henry Huxley ).

Thomas Mann, the author and friend of Huxley, believed the book demonstrated Huxley's escapism.

For Huxley ’ s biographer and friend, the author Sybille Bedford, the book combined sincerity with simplicity, passion with detachment.

In the field of religion, Huxley ’ s friend and spiritual mentor, the Vedantic monk Swami Prabhavananda, thought that mescaline was an illegitimate path to enlightenment, a " deadly heresy " as Christopher Isherwood put it.

His brother was the writer Aldous Huxley, and his half-brother a fellow biologist and Nobel laureate, Andrew Huxley ; his father was writer and editor Leonard Huxley ; and his paternal grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley, a friend and supporter of Charles Darwin and proponent of evolution.

Huxley was a friend and mentor of the biologists and Nobel laureates Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, and taught and encouraged many others.

Spencer himself introduced the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who would later win fame as ' Darwin's Bulldog ' and who remained his lifelong friend.

* The writer Aldous Huxley and his first wife Maria, with Mary Hutchinson a friend of Clive Bell.

At the 1862 Cambridge meeting Huxley arranged for his friend William Flower to give a public dissection to show that the same structures were indeed present, not only in apes, but in monkeys also.

He was a friend of Thomas Henry Huxley, who gave the second Romanes lecture.

After the war he moved in social circles in London ; Aldous Huxley became a long-term friend and correspondent, and he wooed Nancy Cunard with sonnets.

Huxley was a friend of Joy Adamson, the author of Born Free, and is mentioned in the biography of Joy and George Adamson entitled The Great Safari.

Huxley was a close friend of the family, and whilst still a child Ray met Hooker, Henfry, Clifford, Gosse, Owen, Forbes, Carpenter, Lyell, Murchison, Henslow and Darwin.

Huxley was introduced to psychedelic drugs in 1953 by a friend, psychiatrist Dr. Humphry Osmond.

Like the outlook of his friend Aldous Huxley ( another in this circle ), the essence of Heard ’ s mature outlook was that a human being can effectively pursue intentional evolution of consciousness.

The staff reviewer, " as innocent of any knowledge of science as a babe ", gave the task to Huxley, leading Darwin to ask his friend how " did you influence Jupiter Olympus and make him give three and a half columns to pure science?

Thomas Henry Huxley became a close friend of the family, and visited often.