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LIFE AND: LETTERS: OF
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
 

 
Portrait from a Daguerrotype made in 1846.

Frontispiece.
LIFE AND LETTERS
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

BY HIS SON

LEONARD HUXLEY

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. |

 

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
CopyYRIGHT, 1900,
By D, APPLETON AND COMPANY.
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION

THE American edition of the Life and Letters of Thomas
Henry Huxley calls for a few words by way of preface, for
there existed a particular relationship between the English
writer and his transatlantic readers.

From the time that his Lay Sermons was published his
essays found in the United States an eager audience, who
appreciated above all things his directness and honesty of
purpose and the unflinching spirit in which he pursued
the truth. Whether or not, as some affirm, the American
public “ discovered’ Mr. Herbert Spencer, they responded
at once to the influence of the younger evolutionary writer,
whose wide and exact knowledge of nature was but a
stepping-stone to his interest in human life and its prob-
lems. And when, a few years later, after more than one
invitation, he came to lecture in the United States and made
himself personally known to his many readers, it was this
widespread response to his influence which made his wel-
come comparable, as was said at the time, to a royal
progress.

His own interest in the present problems of the country
and the possibilities of its future was always keen, not
merely as touching the development of a vast political
force—one of the dominant factors of the near future—but
far more as touching the character of its approaching great-
ness. Huge territories and vast resources were of small
interest to him in comparison with the use to which they
should be put. None felt more vividly than he that the
true greatness of a nation would depend upon the spirit
of the principles it adopted, upon the character of the indi-
viduals who make up the nation and shape the channels
in which the currents of its being will hereafter flow.

v
vi LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY

This was the note he struck in the appeal for intellectual
sincerity and clearness which he made at the end of his
New York Lectures on Evolution. The same note domi-
nates that letter to his sister—a Southerner by adoption
—which gives his reading of the real issue at stake in
the great civil war. Slavery is bad for the slave, but far
worse for the master, as sapping his character and making
impossible that moral vigour of the individual on which is
based the collective vigour of the nation.

The interest with which he followed the later develop-
ment of social problems need not be dwelt on here, except
to say that he watched their earlier maturity in America
as an indication of the problems which would afterwards
call for a solution in his own country. His share in treat-
ing them was limited to examining the principles of social
philosophy on which some of the proposed remedies for
social troubles were based, and this examination may be
found in his Collected Essays. But the educational cam-
paign which he carried on in England had its counterpart
in America. It was not only that he was chosen to open
the Johns Hopkins University as the type of a new form
of education; there and elsewhere pupils of his carried out
in America his methods of teaching biology, while others
engaged in general education would write testifying to the
influence of his ideas upon their own methods of teaching.
But it must be remembered that nothing was further from
his mind than the desire to found a school of thought. He
only endeavoured as a scholar and a student to clear up
his own thoughts and help others to clear theirs, whether
in the intellectual or the moral world. This was the
help he steadfastly hoped to give the people, that interact-
ing union of intellectual freedom and moral discernment
which may be furthered by good education and training,
by precept and example, that basis of all social health and
prosperity. And if, as he said, he would like to be remem-
bered as one who had done his best to help the people,
he meant assuredly not the people only of his native land,
but the wider world to whom his words could be carried.
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

My father’s life was one of so many interests, and his
work was at all times so diversified, that to follow each
thread separately, as if he had been engaged on that alone
for a time, would be to give a false impression of his activity
and the peculiar character of his labours. All through his
active career he was equally busy with research into nature,
with studies in philosophy, with teaching and administra-
tive work. The real measure of his energy can only be
found when all these are considered together. Without
this there can be no conception of the limitations imposed
upon him in his chosen life’s work. The mere amount of
his research is greatly magnified by the smallness of the
time allowed for it.

But great as was the impression left by these researches
in purely scientific circles, it is not by them alone that he
made his impression upon the mass of his contemporaries.
They were chiefly moved by something over and above
his wide knowledge in so many fields—by his passionate
sincerity, his interest not only in pure knowledge, but in
human life, by his belief that the interpretation of the book
of nature was not to be kept apart from the ultimate prob-
lems of existence; by the love of truth, in short, both
theoretical and practical, which gave the key to the char-
acter of the man himself.

Accordingly, I have not discussed with any fulness the
value of his technical contributions to natural science; I
have not drawn up a compendium of his philosophical
views. One is a work for specialists; the other can be
gathered from his published works. I have endeavoured
rather to give the public a picture, so far as I can, of the
man himself, of his aims in the many struggles in which

we
viil LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY

he was engaged, of his character and temperament, and
the circumstances under which his various works were be-
gun and completed.

So far as possible, I have made his letters, or extracts
from them, tell the story of his life. If those of any given
period are diverse in tone and character, it is simply because
they reflect an equal diversity of occupations and interests.
Few of the letters, however, are of any great length; many
are little more than hurried notes; others, mainly of private
interest, supply a sentence here and there to fill in the
general outline.

Moreover, whenever circumstances permit, I have en-
deavoured to make my own part in the book entirely im-
personal. My experience is that the constant iteration by
the biographer of his relationship to the subject of his
memoir, can become exasperating to the reader; so that
at the risk of offending in the opposite direction, I have
chosen the other course.

Lastly, I have to express my grateful thanks to all who
have sent me letters or supplied information, and espe-
cially to Dr. J. H. Gladstone, Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff,
Professor Howes, Professor Henry Sidgwick, and Sir
Spencer Walpole, for their contributions to the book; but
above all to Sir Joseph Hooker and Sir Michael Foster,
whose invaluable help in reading proofs and making sug-
gestions has been, as it were, a final labour of love for the
memory of their old friend.
CHAPTER

I.
II.
III.
DN
Ae

ASL

VIL
VIII.

IX.
. (1855-1858)

MI.
XIT.
NII.

XIV.

XV.
SEL
XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.
BEX
XXI.
XXII.
XXII.
XXIV.

(1825-1842)
(1841-1846)
(1846-1849)
(1848-1850)
(1850-1851)
(1851-1854)
(1851-1853)
(1854)

(1855)

(1857-1858)
(1859-1860)
(1859)
(1859-1860)
(1860-1863)
(1860-1861)
(1861-1863)
(1864)
(1865)
(1866)
(1867)
(1868)
(1869)
(1870)

CONTENTS
x

CHAPTER

XXV.
XXVI.
XXVIII.
XXVIII.
XXIX.
XXX.
XXXI.
XXXII.
XXXII.

LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY

(1871)
(1872)
(1873)
(1874).
(1875-1876)
(1875-1876)
(1876)
(1877)
(1878)

PAGE
383
394
418
436
459
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

Portrait from a Daguerrotype made in 1846 ; Frontispiece
Facsimile of Sketch, ‘‘ The Loves and Graces” 85
Portrait from a Photograph by Maull and Polyblank, 1857 160

No. 4 Marlborough Place—from the Garden. After a Water-
colour Sketch by R. Huxley

Portrait from a Photograph by Elliott and Fry; Steel Engrav-
ing in Vature, February 5, 1874

xt

412

436
CHAPTER I
1825-1842

In the year 1825 Ealing was as quiet a country village as
could be found within a dozen miles of Hyde Park Corner.
Here stood a large semi-public school, which had risen to
the front rank in numbers and reputation under Dr. Nich-
olas, of Wadham College, Oxford, who in 1791 became the
son-in-law and successor of the previous master.

The senior assistant-master in this school was George
Huxley, a tall, dark, rather full-faced man, quick tempered,
and distinguished, in his son’s words, by “that glorious
firmness which one’s enemies called obstinacy.” In the year
1810 he had married Rachel Withers; she bore five sons
and three daughters, of whom one son and one daughter
died in infancy; the seventh and youngest surviving child
was Thomas Henry.

George Huxley, the master at Ealing, was the second
son of Thomas Huxley and Margaret James, who were mar-
ried at St. Michael’s, Coventry, on September 8, 1773.
This Thomas Huxley continued to live at Coventry until
his death in January 1796, when he left behind him a large
family and no very great wealth. The most notable item
in the latter is the “capital Messuage, by me lately pur-
chased of Mrs. Ann Thomas,” which he directs to be sold
to pay his debts—an inn, apparently, for the testator is
described as a victualler. Family tradition tells that he came
to Coventry from Lichfield, and if so, he and his sons after
him exemplify the tendency to move south, which is to be
observed in those of the same name who migrated from

I
2 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I

their original home in Cheshire. This home is represented
to-day by a farm in the Wirral, about eight, miles from
Chester, called Huxley Hall. From this centre Huxleys
spread to the neighbouring villages, such as Overton and
Eccleston, Clotton and Duddon, Tattenhall and Wettenhall ;
others to Chester and Brindley near Nantwich. The south-
ward movement carries some to the Welsh border, others
into Shropshire. The Wettenhall family established them-
selves in the fourth generation at Rushall, and held property
in Handsworth and Walsall; the Brindley family sent a.
branch to Macclesfield, whose representative, Samuel, must
have been on the town council when the Young Pretender
rode through on his way to Derby, for he was mayor in
1746; while at the end of the sixteenth century, George,
the disinherited heir of Brindley, became a merchant in
London, and purchased Wyre Hall at Edmonton, where his
descendants lived for four generations, his grandson being
knighted by Charles II in 1663.

But my father had no particular interest in tracing his
early ancestry. “ My own genealogical inquiries,” he said,
“have taken me so far back that I confess the later stages
do not interest me.” Towards the end of his life, however,
my mother persuaded him to see what could be found out
about Huxley Hall and the origin of the name. This proved
to be from the manor of Huxley or Hodesleia, whereof one
Swanus de Hockenhull was enfeoffed by the abbot and
convent of St. Werburgh in the time of Richard I. Of the
grandsons of this Swanus, the eldest kept the manor and
name of Hockenhull (which is still extant in the Midlands) ;
the younger ones took their name from the other fief.

But the historian of Cheshire records the fact that owing
to the respectability of the name, it was unlawfully assumed
by divers “losels and lewd fellows of the baser sort,” and
my father, with a fine show of earnestness, used to declare
that he was certain the legitimate owners of the name were
far too sober and respectable to have produced such a
reprobate as himself, and one of these “ losels” must be his
progenitor.

Thomas Henry Huxley was born at Ealing on May 4,
1825 EARLY LIFE 3

1825, “about eight o’clock in the morning.” * “TI am not
aware,” he tells us playfully in his Autobiography, “ that
any portents preceded my arrival in this world, but, in my
childhood, I remember hearing a traditional account of the
manner in which I lost the chance of an endowment of
great practical value. The windows of my mother’s room
were open, in consequence of the unusual warmth of the
weather. For the same reason, probably, a neighbouring
beehive had swarmed, and the new colony, pitching on the
window-sill, was making its way into the room when the
horrified nurse shut down the sash. If that well-meaning
woman had only abstained from her ill-timed interference,
the swarm might have settled on my lips, and I should have
been endowed with that mellifluous eloquence which, in this
country, leads far more surely than worth, capacity, or
honest work, to the highest places in Church and State.
But the opportunity was lost, and I have been obliged to
content myself through life with saying what I mean in the
plainest of plain language, than which, I suppose, there is no
habit more ruinous to a man’s prospects of advancement.”

As to his debt, physical and mental, to either parent, he
writes as follows :-—

~ Physically I am the son of my mother so completely—even
down to peculiar movements of the hands, which made their
appearance in me as I reached the age she had when I noticed
them—that I can hardly find any trace of my father in myself,
except an inborn faculty for drawing, which, unfortunately, in
my case, has never been cultivated, a hot temper, and that
amount of tenacity of purpose which unfriendly observers some-
times call obstinacy.

My mother was a slender brunette, of an emotional and ener-
getic temperament, and possessed of the most piercing black
eyes I ever saw in a woman’s head. With no more education
than other women of the middle classes in her day, she had an
excellent mental capacity. Her most distinguishing character-
istic, however, was rapidity of thought. If one ventured to sug-
gest that she had not taken much time to arrive at any conclu-
sion, she would say, “I cannot help it; things flash across me.”

 

* So in the Autobiography, but 9.30 according to the Family Bible.
4 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I

That peculiarity has been passed on to me in full strength; 1
has often stood me in good stead; it has sometimes played me
sad tricks, and it has always been a danger. But, after all, if
my time were to come over again, there is nothing I would less
willingly part with than my inheritance of mother-wit.

Restless, talkative, untiring to the day of her death, she
was at sixty-six “as active and energetic as a young wom-
an.” His early devotion to her was remarkable. Describ-
ing her to his future wife he writes :-—

Asa child my love for her was a passion. I have lain awake
for hours crying because I had a morbid fear of her death; her
approbation was my greatest reward, her displeasure my great-
est punishment.

I have next to nothing to say about my childhood (he con-
tinues in the Autobiography). In later years my mother, look-
ing at me almost reproachfully, would sometimes say, “ Ah! you
were such a pretty boy!” whence I had no difficulty in conclud- -
ing that I had not fulfilled my early promise in the matter of
looks. In fact, I have a distinct recollection of certain curls of
which I was vain, and of a conviction that I closely resembled
that handsome, courtly gentleman, Sir Herbert Oakley, who was
vicar of our parish, and who was as a god to us country folk,
because he was occasionally visited by the then Prince George
of Cambridge. I remember turning my pinafore wrong side
forwards in order to represent a surplice, and preaching to my
mother’s maids in the kitchen as nearly as possible in Sir Her-
bert’s manner one Sunday morning when the rest of the family
were at church. That is the earliest indication of the strong
clerical affinities which my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer has
always ascribed to me, though I fancy they have for the most
part remained in a latent state.

There remains no record of his having been a very pre-
cocious child. Indeed, it is usually the eldest child whose
necessary companionship with his elders wins him this
reputation. The youngest remains a child among children
longer than any other of his brothers and sisters.

One talent, however, displayed itself early. The faculty
of drawing he inherited from his father. But on the queer
principle that training is either unnecessary to natural ca-
pacity or even ruins it, he never received regular instruction
1833 SCHOOLING 5

in drawing; and his draughtsmanship, vigorous as it was,
and a genuine medium of artistic expression as well as an
admirable instrument in his own especial work, never
reached the technical perfection of which it was naturally
capable.

The amount of instruction, indeed of any kind, which
he received was scanty in the extreme. For a couple of
years, from the age of eight to ten, he was given a taste of
the unreformed public school life, where, apart from the
rough and ready mode of instruction in vogue and the
necessary obedience enforced to certain rules, no means
were taken to reach the boys themselves, to guide them and
help them in their school life. The new-comer was left to
struggle for himself in a community composed of human
beings at their most heartlessly cruel age, untempered by
any external influence.

Here he had little enough of mental discipline, or that
deliberate training of character which is a leading object of
modern education. On the contrary, what he learnt was a
knowledge of undisciplined human nature..

My regular school training (he tells us), was of the briefest,
perhaps fortunately; for though my way of life has made me
acquainted with all sorts and conditions of men, from the high-
est to the lowest, I deliberately affirm that the society I fell into
at school was the worst I have ever known. We boys were
average lads, with much the same inherent capacity for good and
evil as any others; but the people.who were set over us cared
about as much for our intellectual and moral welfare as if they
were baby-farmers. We were left to the operation of the strug-
gle for existence among ourselves; bullying was the least of the
ill practices current among us. Almost the only cheerful remi-
niscence in connection with the place which arises in my mind
is that of a battle I had with one of my classmates, who had
bullied me until I could stand it no longer. I was a very slight
lad, but there was a wild-cat element in me which, when roused,
made up for lack of weight, and I licked my adversary effectu-
ally. However, one of my first experiences of the extremely
rough-and-ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the course of
things in general, arose out of the fact that I—the victor—had
a black eye, while he—the vanquished—had none, so that I got
6 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I

into disgrace and he did not. We made it up, and thereafter I
was unmolested. One of the greatest shocks I ever received in
my life was to be told a dozen years afterwards by the groom
who brought me my horse in a stable-yard in Sydney that he
was my quondam antagonist. He had a long story of family
misfortune to account for his position; but at that time it was
necessary to deal very cautiously with mysterious strangers in
New South Wales, and on inquiry I found that the unfortunate
young man had not only been “sent out,” but had undergone
more than one colonial conviction.

His brief school career was happily cut short by the
break up of the Ealing establishment. On the death of
Dr. Nicholas, his sons attempted to carry on the school; but
the numbers declined rapidly, and George Huxley, about
1835, returned to his native town of Coventry, where he
obtained the modest post of manager of the Coventry sav-
ings bank, while his daughters eked out the slender family
resources by keeping school.

In the meantime the boy Tom, as he was usually called,
got little or no regular instruction. But he had an inquiring
mind, and a singularly early turn for metaphysical specula-
tion. He read everything he could lay hands on in his
father’s library. Not satisfied with the ordinary length of
the day, he used, when a boy of twelve, to light his candle
before dawn, pin a blanket round his shoulders, and sit up
in bed to read Hutton’s Geology. He discussed all manner
of questions with his parents and friends, for his quick and
eager mind made it possible for him to have friendships
with people considerably older than himself. Among these
may especially be noted his medical brother-in-law, Dr.
Cooke of Coventry, who had married his sister Ellen in
1839, and through whom he early became interested in hu-
man anatomy; and George Anderson May, at that time in
business at Hinckley (a small weaving centre some dozen,
miles distant from Coventry), whom his friends who knew
him afterwards in the home which he made for himself on
the farm at Elford, near Tamworth, will remember for his
genial spirit and native love of letters. There was a real
friendship between the two. The boy of fifteen notes down
1838 EARLY PURSUITS 7

with pleasure his visits to the man of six-and-twenty, with
whom he could talk freely of the books he read, and the
ideas he gathered about philosophy.

Afterwards, however, their ways lay far apart, and I
believe they did not meet again until the seventies, when
Mr. May sent his children to be educated in London, and
his youngest son was at school with me; his younger
daughter studied art at the Slade School with my sisters,
and both found a warm welcome in the home circle at
Marlborough Place.

One of his boyish speculations was as to what would
become of things if their qualities were taken away; and
lighting upon Sir William Hamilton’s Logic, he devoured it
to such good effect that when, years afterwards, he came to
tackle the greater philosophers, especially the English and
the German, he found he had already a clear notion of where
the key of metaphysic lay.

This early interest in metaphysics was another form of
the intense curiosity to discover the motive principle of
things, the why and how they act, that appeared in the
boy’s love of engineering and of anatomy. The unity of
this motive and the accident which bade fair to ruin his life
at the outset, and actually levied a lifelong tax upon his
bodily vigour, are best told in his own words :—

As I grew older, my great desire was to be a mechanical
engineer, but the fates were against this, and while very young I
commenced the study of medicine under a medical brother-in-
law. But, though the Institute of Mechanical Engineers would
certainly not own me, I am not sure that I have not all along
been a sort of mechanical engineer in partibus infidelium. JI am
now occasionally horrified to think how little I ever knew or
cared about medicine as the art of healing. The only part of
my professional course which really and deeply interested me
was physiology, which is the mechanical engineering of living
machines; and, notwithstanding that natural science has been
my proper business, I am afraid there is very little of the genu-
ine naturalist in me, I never collected anything, and species
work was always a burden to me; what I cared for was the
architectural and engineering part of the business, the working
out the wonderful unity of plan in the thousands and thousands

2
8 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I

of diverse living constructions, and the modifications of similar
apparatuses to serve diverse ends. The extraordinary attrac-
tion I felt towards the study of the intricacies of living struc-
ture nearly proved fatal to me at the outset. I was a mere boy
—I think between thirteen and fourteen years of age—when I
was taken by some older student friends of mine to the first
post-mortem examination I ever attended. All my life I have
been most unfortunately sensitive to the disagreeables which
attend anatomical pursuits, but on this occasion my curiosity
overpowered all other feelings, and I spent two or three hours
in gratifying it. I did not cut myself, and none of the ordinary
symptoms of dissection-poison supervened, but poisoned I was
somehow, and I remember sinking into a strange state of apathy.
By way of a last chance, I was sent to the care of some good,
kind people, friends of my father’s, who lived in a farmhouse
in the heart of Warwickshire. I remember staggering from my
bed to the window on the bright spring morning after my
arrival, and throwing open the casement. Life seemed to come
back on the wings of the breeze, and to this day the faint odour
of wood-smoke, like that which floated across the farmyard in
the early morning, is as good to me as the “ sweet south upon a
bed of violets.” I soon recovered, but for years I suffered from
occasional paroxysms of internal pain, and from that time my
constant friend, hypochondriacal dyspepsia, commenced his half-
century of co-tenancy of my fleshly tabernacle.,

Some little time after his return from the voyage of the
Rattlesnake, Huxley succeeded in tracing his good Warwick-
shire friends again. A letter of May 11, 1852, from one—
of them, Miss K. Jaggard, tells how they had lost sight of
the Huxleys after their departure from Coventry ; how they
were themselves dispersed by death, marriage, or retire-
ment; and then proceeds to draw a lively sketch of the long
delicate-looking lad, which clearly refers to this period or
a little later.

My brother and sister who were living at Grove Fields when
you visited there, have now retired from the cares of business,
and are living very comfortably at Leamington. . . . I suppose
you remember Mr. Joseph Russell, who used to live at Avon
Dassett. He is now married and gone to live at Grove Fields,
so that it is still occupied by a person of the same name as when
you knew it. But it is very much altered in appearance since
1840 INFLUENCE OF CARLYLE 9

the time when such merry and joyous parties of aunts and
cousins used to assemble there. I assure you we have often
talked of “Tom Huxley” (who was sometimes one of the
party) looking so thin and ill, and pretending to make hay with
one hand, while in the other he held a German book! Do you
remember it? And the picnic at Scar Bank? And how often too
your patience was put to the test in looking for your German
books which had been hidden by some of those playful compan-
ions who were rather less inclined for learning than yourself?

It is interesting to see from this letter and from a journal,
to be quoted hereafter, that he had thus early begun to
teach himself German, an undertaking more momentous in
its consequences than the boy dreamed of. The knowledge
of German thus early acquired was soon of the utmost serv-
ice in making him acquainted with the advance of biological
investigation on the continent at a time when few indeed
among English men of science were able to follow it at first
hand, and turn the light of the newest theories upon their
own researches.

It is therefore peculiarly interesting to note the cause
which determined the young Huxley to take up the study of
so little read a language. I have more than once heard him
say that this was one half of the debt he owed to Carlyle,
the other half being an intense hatred of shams of every sort
and kind. The translations from the German, the constant
references to German literature and philosophy, fired him to
try the vast original from which these specimens were quar-
ried, for the sake partly of the literature, but still more of
the philosophy. The translation of Wilhelm Meister, and
some of the Miscellaneous Essays together, with The French
Revolution, were certainly among works of Carlyle with
which he first made acquaintance, to be followed later by
Sartor Resartus, which for many years afterwards was his
Enchiridion, as he puts it in an unpublished autobiographi-
cal fragment.

By great good fortune, a singularly interesting glimpse
of my father’s life from the age of fifteen onwards has been
preserved in the shape of a fragmentary journal which he
entitled, German fashion, Thoughts and Doings. Begun
Io LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY . cHar. I

on September 29, 1840, it is continued for a couple of years,
and concludes with some vigorous annotations in 1845,
when the little booklet emerged from a three years’ oblivion
at the bottom of an old desk. Early as this journal is, in it
the boy displays three habits afterwards characteristic of
the man: the habit of noting down any striking thought
or saying he came across in the course of his reading; of
speculating on the causes of things and discussing the right
and wrong of existing institutions ; and of making scientific
experiments, using them to correct his theories.

The first entry, the heading, as it were, and keynote of
all the rest, is a quotation from Novalis :—‘ Philosophy can
bake no bread; but it can prove for us God, freedom, and
immortality. Which, now, is more practical, Philosophy or
Economy?” The reference here given is to a German
edition of Novalis, so that it seems highly probable that the
boy had learnt enough of the language to translate a bit for
himself, though, as appears from entries in 1841, he had
still to master the grammar completely.

In science, he was much interested in electricity; he
makes a galvanic battery “in view of experiment to get
crystallized carbon. Got it deposited, but not crystallized.”
Other experiments and theorizing upon them are recorded
in the following year. Another entry showing the courage
of youth, deserves mention :—

“Oct. 5 (1840).—Began speculating on the cause of
colours at sunset. Has any explanation of them ever been
attempted?” which is supplemented by an extract “from
old book.”

We may also remark the early note of Radicalism and
resistance to anything savouring of injustice or oppression,
together with the naive honesty of the admission that his
opinions may change with years. 2

Oct. 25 (at Hinckley).—Read Dr. S. Smith on the Divine
Government.—Agree with him partly—I should say that a gen-
eral belief in his doctrines would have a very injurious effect on
morals.

Nov. 22.—. . . Had a long talk with my mother and father
about the right to make Dissenters pay church rates —and
1841 EARLY JOURNAL Il

whether there ought to be any Establishment. I maintain that
there ought not in both cases—I wonder what will be my opin-
ion ten years hence? I think now that it is against all laws of
justice to force men to support a church with whose opinions
they cannot conscientiously agree. The argument that the rate
is so small is very fallacious. It is as much a sacrifice of prin-
ciple to do a little wrong as to do a great one.

Nov. 22 (Hinckley ).—Had a long argument with Mr. May
on the nature of the soul and the difference between it and
matter. I maintained that it could not be proved that matter is
essentially—as to its base—different from soul. Mr. M. wittily
said, soul was the perspiration of matter.

We cannot find the absolute basis of matter: we only know
it by its properties; neither know we the soul in any other way.
‘Cogito ergo sum is the only thing that we certainly know.

Why may not soul and matter be of the same substance (i.e.
basis whereon to fix qualities, for we cannot suppose a quality
to exist per sc—it must have a something to qualify), but with
different qualities.

Let us suppose then an Eon—a something with no quality
but that of existence—this Eon endued with all the intelligence,
mental qualities, and that in the highest degree—is God. This
combination of intelligence with existence we may suppose to
have existed from eternity. At the creation we may suppose
that a portion of the Eon was separated from the intelligence, and
it was ordained—it became a natural law—that it should have the
properties of gravitation, etc—that is, that it should give to
man the ideas of those properties. The Eon in this state is
matter in the abstract. Matter, then, is Eon in the simplest
form in which it possesses qualities appreciable by the senses.
Out of this matter, by the superimposition of fresh qualities, was
made all things that are.

1841

Jan. 7—Came to Rotherhithe.*
June 20.—What have I done in the way of acquiring knowl-
edge since January?
Projects begun—
1. German
2. Italian
3. To read Miiller’s Physiology.

t to be learnt.

 

* See Chap. II.
12 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I

4. To prepare for the Matriculation Examination at
London University which requires knowledge of :—
(a) Algebra—Geometry ) did not begin to read for
(b) Natural Philosophy ; this till April.
(c) Chemistry.
(d) Greek—Latin.
(e) English History down to end of seventeenth
century.
(f) Ancient History.
English Grammar.
5. To make copious notes of all things I read.

Projects completed—
1. Partly. 2. Not at all. 3 and 5, stuck to these pretty
closely.
4. (e) Read as far as Henry III. in Hume.
(a) Evolution and involution.
(b) Refraction of light—Polarisation partly.
(c) Laws of combination—must read them over
again.
(d) Nothing.
(f) Nothing.

I must get on faster than this. I must adopt a fixed plan of
studies, for unless this is done I find time slips away without
knowing it—and let me remember this—that it is better to read
a little and thoroughly, than cram a crude undigested mass into
my head, though it be great in quantity.

(This is about the only resolution I have ever stuck to—
1845).

[Well do I remember how in that little narrow surgery I
used to work morning after-morning and evening after evening
at that insufferably dry and profitless book, Hume’s History,
how I worked against hope through the series of thefts, rob-
beries, and throat-cutting in those three first volumes, and how
at length I gave up the task in utter disgust and despair.

Macintosh’s History, on the other hand, I remember reading
with great pleasure, and also Guizot’s Civilisation in Europe, the
scientific theoretical form of the latter especially pleased me, but
the want of sufficient knowledge to test his conclusions was a
great drawback. 1845].

There follow notes of work done in successive weeks—
June 20 to August 9, and September 27 to October 4.
1842 EARLY JOURNAL 13

History, German, Mathematics, Physics, Physiology ; makes
an electro-magnet; reads Guizot’s History of Civilisation in
Europe, on which he remarks “‘an excellent work—very
tough reading, though.”

At the beginning of October, under “ Miscellaneous,”
“ Became acquainted with constitution of French Chambre
des députés and their parties.”

It was his practice to note any sayings that struck
him :—

Truths: “I hate all people who want to found sects. It is
not error but sects—it is not error but sectarian error, nay, and
even sectarian truth, which causes the unhappiness of man-
kind.”—Lessing.

“Tt is only necessary to grow old to become more indul-
gent. I see no fault committed that I have not committed

myself. . . .”—Goethe.

“One solitary philosopher may be great, virtuous, and happy
in the midst of poverty, but not a whole nation. . . .’—Isaac
Iselin.

1842

Jan. 30, Sunday evening.—I have for some time been pon-
dering over a classification of knowledge. My scheme is to divide
all knowledge in the first place into two grand divisions. 1. Ob-
jective—that for which a man is indebted to the external world;
and 2. Subjective—that which he has acquired or may acquire
by inward contemplation.

Subjective Objective

ene

 

I | |
Metaphys. proper Maths. Logic Theology Malailey Hist. Physiology Physics

Metaphysics comes immediately, of course, under the first
(2) head—that is to say, the relations of the mind to itself;
of this Mathematics and Logic, together with Theology, are
branches.

I am in doubt under which head to put morality, for I can-
not determine exactly in my own mind whether morality can
exist independent of others, whether the idea of morality could
ever have arisen in the mind of an isolated being or not. I am
rather inclined to the opinion that it is objective.
14 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I

Under the head of objective knowledge comes first Physics,
including the whole body of the relations of inanimate unorgan-
ised bodies; secondly, Physiology. Including the structure and
functions of animal bodies, including language and Psychology;
thirdly comes History.

One object for which I have attempted to form an arrange-
ment of knowledge is that I may test the amount of my own
acquirements. I shall form an extensive list of subjects on this
plan, and as I acquire any one of them I shall strike it out of the
list. May the list soon get black! though at present I shall
hardly be able, I am afraid, to spot the paper.

(A prophecy ! a prophecy, 1845 !).

April 1842 introduces a number of quotations from
Carlyle’s Miscellaneous Writings, “ Characteristics,’ some
clear and crisp, others sinking into Carlyle’s own vein of
speculative mysticism, e.g.

“In the mind as in the body the sign of health is uncon-
sciousness.”

“Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape
into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and
conscious discourse lies the region of meditation.”

“Genius is ever a secret to itself.”

“The healthy understanding, we should say, is neither the
argumentative nor the Logical, but the Intuitive, for the end of
understanding is not to prove and find reasons but to know and
believe” (!)

“The ages of heroism are not ages of Moral Philosophy.
Virtue, when it is philosophised of, has become aware of itself,
is sickly and beginning to decline.”

At the same time more electrical experiments are re-
corded; and theories are advanced with pros and cons to
account for the facts observed.

The last entry was made three years later—

Oct. 1845.—I have found singular pleasure—having acci-
dentally raked this Bichlein from a corner of my desk—in look-
ing over these scraps of notices of my past existence; an illus-
tration of J. Paul’s saying that a man has but to write down his
yesterday’s doings, and forthwith they appear surrounded with
a poetic halo.

But after all, these are but the top skimmings of these five
1845 EARLY JOURNAL 15

years’ living. I hardly care to look back into the seething
depths of the working and boiling mass that lay beneath all this
froth, and indeed I hardly know whether I could give myself
any clear account of it. Remembrances of physical and mental
pain ... absence of sympathy, and thence a choking up of
such few ideas as I did form clearly within my own mind.

Grief too, yet at the misfortune of others, for I have had few
properly my own; so much the worse, for in that case I might
have said or done somewhat, but here was powerless.

Oh, Tom, trouble not thyself about sympathy; thou hast two
stout legs and young, wherefore need a staff?

Furthermore, it is twenty minutes past two, and time to go
to bed.

Bichlein, it will be long before my secretiveness remains so
quiet again; make the most of what thou hast got.
CHAPTER II
1841-1846

THE migration to Rotherhithe, noted under date of Janu-
ary 9, 1841, was a fresh step in his career. In 1839 both his
sisters married, and both married doctors. Dr. Cooke, the
husband of the elder sister, who was settled in Coventry,
had begun to give him some instruction in the principles
of medicine as early as the preceding June. It was now
arranged that he should go as assistant to Mr. Chandler, of
Rotherhithe, a practical preliminary to walking the hospitals
and obtaining a medical degree in London. His experi-
ences among the poor in the dock region of the East of
London—for Dr. Chandler had charge of the parish—sup-
plied him with a grim commentary on his diligent reading
in Carlyle. Looking back on this period, he writes :—

The last recorded speech of Professor Teufelsdréckh pro-
poses the toast ‘Die Sache der Armen in Gottes und Teufels-
namen’ (The cause of the Poor in Heaven’s name and ’s.)
The cause of the Poor is the burden of Past and Present, Chart-
asm, and Latter-Day Pamphlets. To me... this advocacy of
the cause of the poor appealed very strongly ... because...
I had had the opportunity of seeing for myself something of
the way the poor live. Not much, indeed, but still enough to
give a terrible foundation of real knowledge to my speculations.

 

After telling how he came to know something of the
East End, he proceeds :—

I saw strange things there—among the rest, people who
came to me for medical aid, and who were really suffering from
nothing but slow starvation. I have not forgotten—am not

16
1842 AMONG THE POOR IN EAST END 17

likely to forget so long as memory holds—a visit to a sick girl
in a wrétched garret where two or three other women, one a
deformed woman, sister of my patient, were busy shirt-making.
After due examination, even my small medical knowledge sui-
ficed to show that my patient was merely in want of some better
food than the bread and bad tea on which these people were
living. I said so as gently as I could, and the sister turned
upon me with a kind of choking passion. Pulling out of her
pocket a few pence and halfpence, and holding them out, “ That
is all I get for six and thirty hours’ work, and you talk about
giving her proper food.”

Well, I left that to pursue my medical studies, and it so hap-
pened the shortest way between the school which I attended
and the library of the College of Surgeons, where my spare
hours were largely spent, lay through certain courts and alleys,
Vinegar Yard and others, which are now nothing like what they
were then. Nobody would have found robbing me a profitable
employment in those days, and I used to walk through these
wretched dens without let or hindrance. Alleys nine or ten feet
wide, I suppose, with tall houses full of squalid drunken men
and women, and the pavement strewed with still more squalid
children. The place of air was taken by a steam of filthy ex-
halations; and the only relief to the general dull apathy was a
roar of words—filthy and brutal beyond imagination—between
the closed-packed neighbours, occasionally ending in a general
row. All this almost within hearing of the traffic of the Strand,
within easy reach of the wealth and plenty of the city.

I used to wonder sometimes why these people did not sally
forth in mass and get a few hours’ eating and drinking and
plunder to their hearts’ content, before the police could stop
and hang a few of them. But the poor wretches had not the
heart even for that. As a slight, wiry Liverpool detective once
said to me when I asked him how it was he managed to deal
with such hulking ruffians as we were among, “ Lord bless you,
sir, drink and disease leave nothing in them.”

This early contact with the sternest facts of the social
problem impressed him profoundly. And though not ac-
tively employed in what is generally called “ philanthropy,”
still he did his part, hopefully but soberly,:not only to
throw light on the true issues and to strip away make-
believe from them, but also to bring knowledge to the
working classes, and to institute machinery by which ca-
18 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. Ii

pacity should be caught and led to a position where it might
be useful instead of dangerous to social order.

After some time, however, he left Mr. Chandler to join
his second brother-in-law,* who had set up in the north of
London, and to whom he was duly apprenticed, as his
brother James had been before him. This change gave him
more time and opportunity to pursue his medical education.
He attended lectures at the Sydenham College, and, as has
been seen, began to prepare for the matriculation examina-
tion of the University of London. At the Sydenham Col-
lege he met with no little success, winning, besides certifi-
cates of merit in other departments, a prize—his first prize
—ior botany. His vivid recollections, given below, of this
entry into the scientific arena are taken from a journal he
kept for his fiancée during his absence from Sydney on the
cruises of the Rattlesnake.

On Boarp H.M.S. RATTLESNAKE, CHRISTMAS 1847.

Next summer it will be six years since I made my first trial.
in the world. My first public competition, small as it was, was
an epoch in my life. I had been attending (it was my first sum-
mer session) the botanical lectures at Chelsea. One morning I
observed a notice stuck up—a notice of a public competition for
medals, etc., to take place on the 1st August (if I recollect right).
It was then the end of May or thereabouts. J remember looking
longingly at the notice, and some one said to me, “ Why don’t
you go in and try for it?” I laughed at the idea, for I was very
young, and my knowledge somewhat of the vaguest. Neverthe-
less I mentioned the matter to S.t when I returned home. He
likewise advised me to try, and so I determined I would. I set
to work in earnest, and perseveringly applied myself to such
works as I could lay my hands on, Lindley’s and Decandolle’s
Systems and the Annales des Sciences Naturelles in the British
Museum. I tried to read Schleiden, but my German was insuf-
ficient.

For a young hand I worked really hard from eight or nine
in the morning until twelve at night, besides a long hot sum-
mer’s walk over to Chelsea two or three times a week to hear
Lindley. A great part of the time I worked till sunrise. The

 

* John Godwin Scott. + His brother-in-law,
1842 HIS FIRST SUCCESS 19

result was a sort of ophthalmia which kept me from reading at
night for months afterwards.

The day of examination came, and as I went along the pas-
sage to go out I well remember dear Lizzie,* half in jest, half
in earnest, throwing her shoe after me, as she said, for luck.
She was alone, beside S., in the secret, and almost as anxious
as I was. How I reached the examination room I hardly know,
but I recollect finding myself at last with pen and ink and paper
before me and five other beings, all older than myself, at a long
table. We stared at one another like strange cats in a garret,
but at length the examiner (Ward) entered, and before each
was placed the paper of questions and sundry plants. I looked
at my questions, but for some moments could hardly hold my
pen, so extreme was my nervousness; but when I once fairly
began, my ideas crowded upon me almost faster than I could
write them. And so we all sat, nothing heard but the scratching
of the pens and the occasional crackle of the examiner’s Times
as he quietly looked over the news of the day.

The examination began at eleven. At two they brought in
lunch. It was a good meal enough, but the circumstances were
not particularly favourable to enjoyment, so after a short delay
we resumed our work. It began to be evident between whom the
contest lay, and the others determined that I was one man’s
competitor and Stocks + (he is now in the East India service)
the other. Scratch, scratch, scratch! Four o’clock came, the
usual hour of closing the examination, but Stocks and I had not
half done, so with the consent of the others we petitioned for an
extension. The examiner was willing to let us go on as long as
we liked. Never did I see man write like Stocks; one might
have taken him for an attorney’s clerk writing for his dinner.
We went on. I had finished a little after eight, he went on till
near nine, and then we had tea and dispersed.

Great were the greetings I received when I got home, where
my long absence had caused some anxiety. The decision would
not take place for some weeks, and many were the speculations
made as to the probabilities of success. I for my part managed
to forget all about it, and went on my ordinary avocations with-
out troubling myself more than I could possibly help about it.

 

* His eldest sister, Mrs. Scott.

+ John Ellerton Stocks, M.D., London, distinguished himself as a
botanist in India. He travelled and collected in Beloochistan and
Scinde; died 1854.
20 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. II

I knew too well my own deficiencies to have been either sur-
prised or disappointed at failure, and I made a point of shatter-
ing all involuntary “ castles in the air” as soon as possible. My
worst anticipations were realised. One day S. came to me with
a sorrowful expression of countenance. He had inquired of the
Beadle as to the decision, and ascertained on the latter’s au-
thority that all the successful candidates were University Col-
lege men, whereby, of course, I was excluded. I said, “ Very
well, the thing was not to be helped,” put my best face upon the
matter, and gave up all thoughts of it. Lizzie, too, came to com-
fort me, and, I believe, felt it more than I did. What was my
surprise on returning home one afternoon to find myself sud-
denly seized, and the whole female household vehemently insist-
ing on kissing me. It appeared an official-looking letter had
arrived for me, and Lizzie, as I did not appear, could not re-
strain herself from opening it. I was second, and was to re-
ceive a medal * accordingly, and dine with the guild on the 9th
November to have it bestowed.

I dined with the company, and bore my share in both pud-
ding and praise, but the charm of success lay in Lizzie’s warm
congratulation and sympathy. Since then she always took upon
herself to prophesy touching the future fortunes of “ the boy.”

The haphazard, unsystematic nature of preliminary
medical study here presented can not fail to strike one with
wonder. Thomas Huxley was now seventeen; he had al-
ready had two years’ “ practice in pharmacy” as a testi-
monial put it. After a similar apprenticeship, his brother
had made the acquaintance of the director of the Gloucester
Lunatic Asylum, and was given by him the post of dispenser
or “apothecary,” which he filled so satisfactorily as to re-
ceive a promise that if he went to London for a couple of
years to complete his medical training, a substitute should

 

* Silver Medal of the Pharmaceutical Society, oth November 1842.
Another botanical prize is a book—Za Botanigue, by A. Richard—with
the following inscription :—

THOMAE HuXLEy
In Exercitatione Botanicés
Apud Scholam Collegii Sydenhamiensis
Optime Merenti
Hunc librum dono dedit
Ricarpus D. Hostyn, Botanicés Professor.
1842 AT CHARING CROSS HOSPITAL 21

be appointed meanwhile to keep the place until he re-
turned. .

The opportunity to which both the brothers looked
came in the shape of the Free Scholarships offered by the
Charing Cross Hospital to students whose parents were
unable to pay for their education. Testimonials as to the
position and general education of the candidates were re-
quired, and it is curious that one of the persons applied
to by the elder Huxley was J. H. Newman, at that time
Vicar of Littlemore, who had been educated at Dr. Nicholas’
School at Ealing.

The application for admission to the lectures and other
teaching at the Hospital states of the young T. H. Huxley
that “ He has a fair knowledge of Latin, reads French with
facility, and knows something of German. He has also
made considerable progress in the Mathematics, having,
as far as he has advanced, a thorough not a superficial
knowledge of the subject.” The document ends in the
following confident words :—

I appeal to the certificates and testimonials that will be here-
with submitted for evidence of their past conduct, offering pro-
spectively that these young men, if elected to the Free Scholar-
ships of the Charing Cross Hospital and Medical College, will
be diligent students, and in all things submit themselves to the
controul and guidance of the Director and Medical Officers of
the establishment. A father may be pardoned, perhaps, for add-
ing his belief that these young men will hereafter reflect credit
on any institution from which they may receive their education.

The authorities replied that ‘“ although it is not usual to
receive two members of the same family at the same time,
the officers taking into consideration the age of Mr. Huxley,
sen., the numerous and satisfactory testimonials of his re-
spectability, and of the good conduct and merits of the
candidates, have decided upon admitting Mr. J. E. and Mr.
T. Huxley on this occasion.”

The brothers began their hospital course on October 1,
1842. Here, after a time, my father seems to have begun
working more steadily and systematically than he had done
before, under the influence of a really good teacher.
22 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IT

Looking back (he says) on my “ Lehrjahre,” I am sorry to
say that I do not think that any account of my doings as 4
student would tend to edification. In fact, I should distinctly
warn ingenuous youth to avoid imitating my example. I worked
extremely hard when it pleased me, and when it did not, which
was a very frequent case, I was extremely idle (unless making
caricatures of one’s pastors and masters is to be called a branch
of industry), or else wasted my energies in wrong directions. I
read everything I could lay hands upon, including novels, and
took up all sorts of pursuits to drop them again quite as speedily.
No doubt it was very largely my own fault, but the only in-
struction from which I obtained the proper effect of education
was that which I received from Mr. Wharton Jones, who was
the lecturer on physiology at the Charing Cross School of Medi-
cine. The extent and precision of his knowledge impressed
me greatly, and the severe exactness of his method of lecturing
was quite to my taste. I do not know that I have ever felt so
much respect for anybody as a teacher before or since. I
worked hard to obtain his approbation, and he was extremely
kind and helpful to the youngster who, I am afraid, took up
more of his time than he had any right to do. It was he who
suggested the publication of my first scientific paper—a very
little one—in the Medical Gazette of 1845, and most kindly cor-
rected the literary faults which abounded in it, short as it was;
for at that time, and for many years afterwards, I detested the
trouble of writing, and would take no pains with it.

He never forgot his debt to Wharton Jones, and years
afterwards was delighted at being able to do him a good
turn, by helping to obtain a pension for him. But although
in retrospect he condemns the fitfulness of his energies and
his want of system, which left much to be learned afterwards,
which might with advantage have been learned then, still it
was his energy that struck his contemporaries. I have a
story from one of them that when the other students used
to go out into the court of the hospital after lectures were
over, they would invariably catch sight of young Huxley’s
dark head at a certain window bent over a microscope while
they amused themselves outside. The constant silhouette
framed in the outlines of the window tickled the fancy of
the young fellows, and a wag amongst them dubbed it with
a name that stuck, ‘ The Sign of the Head and Microscope.”
1845-46 PERPETUAL MOTION 23

The scientific paper, too, which he mentions, was some-
what remarkable under the circumstances. It is not given
to every medical student to make an anatomical discovery,
even a small one. In this case the boy of nineteen, in-
vestigating things for himself, found a hitherto undiscovered
membrane in the root of the human hair, which received the
name of Huxley’s layer.

Speculations, too, such as had filled his mind in early
boyhood, still haunted his thoughts. In one of his letters
from the Rattlesnake, he gives an account of how he was
possessed in his student days by that problem which has
beset so many a strong imagination, the problem of per-
petual motion, and even sought an interview with Faraday,
whom he left with the resolution to meet the great man
some day on a more equal footing.

March 1848.

To-day, ruminating over the manifold ins and outs of life in
general, and my own in particular, it came into my head sud-
denly that I would write down my interview with Faraday—
how many years ago? Aye, there’s the rub, for I have com-
pletely forgotten. However, it must have been in either my
first or second winter session at Charing Cross, and it was be-
fore Christmas I feel sure.

I remember how my long brooding perpetual motion scheme
(which I had made more than one attempt to realise, but failed
owing to insufficient mechanical dexterity) had been working
upon me, depriving me of rest even, and heating my brain with
chateaux d’Espagne of endless variety. I remember, too, it
was Sunday morning when I determined to put the questions,
which neither my wits nor my hands would set at rest, into some
hands for decision, and I determined to go before some tribunal
from whence appeal should be absurd.

But to whom to go? I knew no one among the high priests
of science, and going about with a scheme for perpetual motion
was, I knew, for most people the same thing as courting ridicule
among high and low. After all I fixed upon Faraday, possibly
perhaps because I knew where he was to be found, but in part
also because the cool logic of his works made me hope that my
poor scheme would be treated on some other principle than that
of mere previous opinion one way or other. Besides, the known
courtesy and affability of the man encouraged me. So I wrote

3
24 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. Il

a letter, drew a plan, enclosed the two in an envelope, and
tremblingly betook myself on the ‘following afternoon to-the
Royal Institution.

“Ts Dr. Faraday here?” said I to the porter. “No sir, he
has just gone out.” I felt relieved. “ Be good enough to give
him this letter,” and I was hurrying out when a little man in a
brown coat came in at the glass door. “ Here is Dr. Faraday,”
said the man, and gave him my letter. He turned to me and
courteously inquired what I wished. “To submit to you that
letter, sir, if you are not occupied.” “ My time is always occu-
pied, sir, but step this way,” and he led me into the museum or
library, for I forget which it was, only I know there was a glass
case against which we leant. He read my letter, did not think
my plan would answer. Was I acquainted with mechanism,
what we calf the laws of motion? I saw all was up with my
poor scheme, so after trying a little to explain, in the course of
which I certainly failed in giving him a clear idea of what I
would be at, I thanked him for his attention, and went off as
dissatisfied as ever. The sense of one part of the conversation
I well recollect. He said “that were the perpetual motion pos-
sible, it would have occurred spontaneously in nature, and would
have overpowered all other forces,’ or words to that effect. I
did not see the force of this, but did not feel competent enough
to discuss the question.

However, all this exorcised my devil, and he has rarely come
to trouble me since. Some future day, perhaps, I may be able to
call Faraday’s attention more decidedly. Perge modo! “ wie das
Gestirn, ohne Hast, ohne Rast” (Das Gestirn in a midshipman’s
berth !).

In other respects also his student’s career was a brilliant
one. In 1843 he won the first chemical prize, the certificate
stating that his “extraordinary diligence and success in the
pursuit of this branch of science do him infinite honour.”
At the same time, he also won the first prize in the class of
anatomy and physiology. On the back of Wharton Jones’
certificate is scribbled in pencil: “Well, ’tis no matter.
Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me
off when I come on? How then?”

Finally, in 1845 he went up for his M.B. at London
University, and won a gold medal for anatomy and physi-
ology, being second in honours in that section.
1846 ENTERS THE NAVY 25

Whatever then he might think of his own work, judged
by his own standards, he had done well enough as medical
students go. But a brilliant career as a student did not suf-
fice to start him in life or provide him with a livelihood. How
he came to enter the Navy is best told in his own words.

It was in the early spring of 1846, that, having finished my
obligatory medical studies and passed the first M.B. examina-
tion at the London University, though I was still too young to
qualify at the College of Surgeons, I was talking to a fellow-
student (the present eminent physician, Sir Joseph Fayrer),
and wondering what I should do to meet the imperative neces-
sity for earning my own bread, when my friend suggested that
I should write to Sir William Burnett, at that time Director-
General for the Medical Service of the Navy, for an appoint-
ment. I thought this rather a strong thing to do, as Sir William
was personally unknown to me, but my cheery friend would not
listen to my scruples, so I went to my lodgings and wrote the
best letter I could devise. A few days afterwards I received
the usual official circular of acknowledgment, but at the bottom
there was written an instruction to call at Somerset House on
such a day. I thought that looked like business, so at the
appointed time I called and sent in my card while I waited in
Sir William’s anteroom. He was a tall, shrewd-looking old
gentleman, with a broad Scotch accent, and I think I see him
now as he entered with my card in his hand. The first thing he
did was to return it, with the frugal reminder that I should
probably find it useful on some other occasion. The second was
to ask whether I was an Irishman. I suppose the air of modesty
about my appeal must have struck him. I satisfied the Director-
General that I was English to the backbone, and he made some
inquiries as to my student career, finally desiring me to hold
myself ready for examination. Having passed this, I was in
Her Majesty’s Service, and entered on the books of Nelson’s old
ship the Victory, for duty at Haslar Hospital, about a couple
of months after my application.

My official chief at Haslar was a very remarkable person,
the late Sir John Richardson, an excellent naturalist and far-
famed as an indomitable Arctic traveller. He was a silent, re-
served man, outside the circle of his family and intimates; and
having a full share of youthiul vanity, I was extremely dis-
gusted to find that “Old John,” as we irreverent youngsters
called him, took not the slightest notice of my worshipful self,
26 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. II

either the first time I attended him, as it was my duty to do, or
for some weeks afterwards. I am afraid to think of the lengths
to which my tongue may have run on the subject of the churl-
ishness of the chief, who was, in truth, one of the kindest-
hearted and most considerate of men. But one day, as I was
crossing the hospital square, Sir John stopped me and heaped
coals of fire.on my head by telling me that he had tried to get
me one of the resident appointments, much coveted by the assist-
ant-surgeons, but that the Admiralty had put in another man.
“ However,” said he, “I mean to keep you here till I can get
you something you will like,” and turned upon his heel without
waiting for the thanks I stammered.out. That explained how it
was I had not been packed off to the West Coast of Africa like
some of my juniors, and why, eventually, I remained altogether
seven months at Haslar.

After a long interval, during which “ Old John” ignored my
existence almost as completely as before, he stopped me again as
we met in a casual way, and describing the service on which the
Rattlesnake was likely to be employed, said that Captain Owen
Stanley, who was to command the ship, had asked him to recom-
mend an assistant surgeon who knew something of science;
would I like that? Of course I jumped at the offer. ‘“ Very
well; I give you leave; go to London at once and see Captain
Stanley.” I went, saw my future commander, who was very
civil to me, and promised to ask that I should be appointed to
his ship, as in due time I was. It is a singular thing that during
the few months of my stay at Haslar I had among my mess-
mates two future Directors-General of the Medical Service of
the Navy (Sir Alexander Armstrong and Sir John Watt-Reid),

_ With the present President of the College of Physicians, and
my kindest of doctors, Sir Andrew Clark.

A letter to his eldest sister, Lizzie, dated from Haslar
May 24, 1846, shows how he regarded the prospect now ©
opening before him.

. . . As-I see no special queries in your letter, I think I shall
go on to tell you what that same way of life is likely to be—my
fortune having already been told for me (for the next five years
at least). I told you in my last that I was likely to have a perma-
nency here. Well, I was recommended by Sir John Richardson,
and should have certainly had it, had not (luckily) the Ad-
miralty put in a man of their own. Having a good impudent

 
1846 APPOINTMENT TO THE RATTLESNAKE 27

faith in my own star (Wie das Gestirn, ohne Hast, ohne Rast),
I knew this was only because I was to have something better,
and so it turned out; for a day or two after I was ousted from
the museum, Sir J. Richardson (who has shown himself for
some reason or another a special good friend to me) told me
that he had received a letter from Captain Owen Stanley, who
is to command an exploring expedition to New Guinea (not
coast of Africa, mind), requesting him to recommend an assist-
ant surgeon for this expedition—would I like the appointment ?
As you may imagine I was delighted at the offer, and immedi-
ately accepted it. I was recommended accordingly to Captain
Stanley and Sir W. Burnett, and I shall be appointed as soon
as the ship is in commission. We are to have the Rattlesnake,
a 28-gun frigate, and as she will fit out here I shall have no
trouble. We sail probably in September.

New Guinea, as you may be aware, is a place almost un-
known, and our object is to bring back a full account of its
Geography, Geology, and Natural History. In the latter de-
partment with which I shall have (in addition to my medical
functions) somewhat to do, we shall form one grand collection
of specimens and deposit it in the British Museum or some
other public place, and this main object being always kept in
view, we are at liberty to collect and work for ourselves as we
please. Depend upon it unless some sudden attack of laziness
supervenes, such an opportunity shall not slip unused out of
my hands. The great difficulty in such a wide field is to choose
an object. In this point, however, I hope to be greatly assisted
by the scientific folks, to many of whom I have already had
introductions (Owen, Gray, Grant, Forbes), and this, I assure
you, I look upon as by no means the least of the advantages
I shall derive from being connected with the expedition. I have
been twice to town to see Captain Stanley. He is a son of the
Bishop of Norwich, is an exceedingly gentlemanly man, a thor-
ough scientific enthusiast, and shows himself altogether very
much disposed to forward my views in every possible way.
Being a scientific man himself he will take care to have the
ship’s arrangements as far as possible in harmony with scientific
pursuits—a circumstance you would appreciate as highly as I
do if you were as well acquainted as I now am with the ordinary
opportunities of an assistant surgeon. Furthermore, I am given
to understand that if one does anything at all, promotion is
almost certain. So that altogether I am in a very fair way,
and would snap my fingers at the Grand Turk. Wharton Jones
28 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. II

was delighted when I told him about my appointment. Dim
visions of strangely formed corpuscles seemed to cross his imagi-
nation like the ghosts of the kings in Macbeth.

What seems his head
The likeness of a nucleated cell has on.

The law’s delays are proverbial, but on this occasion, as
on the return of the Rattlesnake, the Admiralty seem to
have been almost as provoking to the eager young surgeon
as any lawyer could have been. The appointment was
promised in May; it was not made till October. On the
6th of that month there is another letter to his sister, giving
fuller particulars of his prospects on the voyage :—

My pearest Lizzie—At last I have really got my appoint-
ment and joined my ship. I was so completely disgusted with
the many delays that had occurred that I made up my mind not
to write to anybody again until I had my commission in my
hand. Henceforward, like another Jonah, my dwelling-place
will be the “inwards” of the Rattlesnake, and upon the whole
I really doubt whether Jonah was much worse accommodated, so
far as room goes, than myself. My total length, as you are aware,
is considerable, 5 feet 11 inches, possibly, but the height of the
lower deck of the Rattlesnake, which will be my especial loca-
tion, is at the outside 4 feet 10 inches. What I am to do with
the superfluous foot I cannot divine. Happily, however, there
is a sort of skylight into the berth, so that I shall be able to sit
with the body in it and my head out.

Apart from joking, however, this is not such a great matter,
and it is the only thing I would see altered in the whole. affair.
The officers, as far as I have seen them, are a very gentlemanly,
excellent set of men, and considering we are to be together for
four or five years, that is a matter of no small importance. I
am not given to be sanguine, but I confess I expect a good deal
to arise out of this appointment. In the first place, surveying
ships are totally different from the ordinary run of men-of-war.
The requisite discipline is kept up, but not in the martinet style.
Less form is observed. From the men who are appointed hav-
ing more or less scientific turns, they have more respect for
one another than that given by mere position in the service,
and hence that position is less taken advantage of. They are
brought more into contact, and hence those engaged in the sur-
veying service almost proverbially stick by one another. To
1846 PROSPECTS OF THE VOYAGE 29

me, whose interest in the service is almost all to be made, this
is a matter of no small importance.

Then again, in a surveying ship you can work. In an ordi-
nary frigate if a fellow has the talents of all the scientific men
from Archimedes downwards compressed into his own peculiar
skull they are all lost. Even if it were possible to study in a
midshipmen’s berth, you have not room in your “chat” for
more than a dozen books. But in the Rattlesnake the whole
poop is to be converted into a large chart-room with bookshelves
and tables and plenty of light. There I may read, draw, or
microscopise at pleasure, and as to books, I have a carte blanche
from the Captain to take as many as I please, of which permis-
sion we shall avail ourself—rather—and besides all this, from
the peculiar way in which I obtained this appointment, I shall
have a much wider swing than assistant surgeons in general
get. I can see clearly that certain branches of the natural his-
tory work will fall into my hands if I manage properly through
Sir John Richardson, who has shown himself a very kind friend
all throughout, and also through Captain Stanley I have been
introduced to several eminent zoologists—to Owen and Gray
and Forbes of King’s College. From all these men much is to be
learnt which becomes peculiarly my own, and can of course only
be used and applied by me. From Forbes especially I have
learned and shall learn much with respect to dredging opera-
tions (which bear on many of the most interesting points of
zoology). In consequence of this I may very likely be entrusted
with the carrying of them out, and all that is so much the more
towards my opportunities. Again, I have learnt the calotype pro-
cess for the express purpose of managing the calotype apparatus,
for which Captain Stanley has applied to the Government.

And having once for all enumerated all these meaner pros-
pects of mere personal advancement, I must confess I do glory in
the prospect of being able to give myself up to my own favourite
pursuits without thereby neglecting the proper duties of life.
And then perhaps by the following of my favourite motto—

Wie das Gestirn,
Ohne Hast,
Ohne Rast—

something may be done, and some of Sister Lizzie’s fond imagi-
nations turn out not altogether untrue.

I perceive that I have nearly finished a dreadfully egotistical
letter, but I know you like to hear of my doings, so shall not
30 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. II

apologise. Kind regards to the Doctor and kisses to the babbies.
Write me a long letter all about yourselves—Your affect.
brother, T. H. Huxtey.

One more description to complete the sketch of his
quarters on board the Rattlesnake. It is from a letter to
his mother, written at Plymouth, where the Rattlesnake put
in after leaving Portsmouth. The comparison with the ordi-
nary quarters of an assistant-surgeon, and the shifts to which
a studious man might be put in his endeavour to find a quiet
spot to work in, have a flavour of Mr. Midshipman Easy
about them to relieve the deplorable reality of his situation :-—

You will be very glad to know that I am exceedingly com-
fortable here. My cabin has now got into tolerable order, and
what with my books—which are, I am happy to say, not a few
—my gay curtain and the spicy oilcloth which will be down on
the floor, looks most respectable. Furthermore, although it is
an unquestionably dull day I have sufficient light to write here,
without the least trouble, to read, or even if necessary, to use
my microscope. I went to see a friend of mine on board the
Recruit the other day, and truly I hugged myself when I com-
pared my position with his. The berth where he and seven
others eat their daily bread is hardly bigger than my cabin, ex-
cept in height—and, of course, he has to sleep in a hammock.
My friend is rather an eccentric character, and, being missed
in the ship, was discovered the other day reading in the main-
top—the only place, as he said, sufficiently retired for study.
And this is really no exaggeration. If I had no cabin I should
take to drinking in a month.

It was during this period of waiting that he attended his
first meeting of the British Association, which was held in
1846 at Southampton. Here he obtained from Professor
Edward Forbes one of his living specimens of Amphioxus
lanceolatus, and made an examination of its blood. The
result was a short paper read at the following meeting of
the Association,* which showed that in the composition of

its blood this lowly vertebrate approached very near the
invertebrates.

 

* «Examination of the Corpuscles of the Blood of Amphioxus lan-
ceolatus,” British Association Report, 1847, ii. p..95, and Sez. Memoirs, i,
CHAPTER III
1846-1849

Tr is a curious coincidence that, like two other leaders of
science, Charles Darwin and Joseph Dalton Hooker, their
close friend Huxley began his scientific career on board one
of Her Majesty’s ships. He was, however, to learn how
little the British Government of that day, for all its pro-
fessions, really cared for the advancement of knowledge.*
But of the immense value to himself of these years of hard
training, the discipline, the knowledge of men and of the
capabilities of life, even without more than the barest ne-
cessities of existence—of this he often spoke. As he puts
it in his Autobiography :—

Life on board Her Majesty’s ships in those days was a very
different affair from what it is now, and ours was exceptionally
rough, as we were often many months without receiving letters
or seeing any civilised people but ourselves. In exchange, we
had the interest of being about the last voyagers, I suppose, to
whom it could be possible to meet with people who knew noth-

 

* The key to this attitude on the part of the Admiralty is to be
found in the scathing description in Briggs’ Maval Administration from
1827 to 1892, p. 92, of the ruinous parsimony of either political party at
this time with regard to the navy—a policy the results of which were
only too apparent at the outbreak of the Crimean War. I quote a
couple of sentences, ‘‘ The navy estimates were framed upon the lowest
scale, and reduction pushed to the very verge of danger.” ‘‘Even
from a financial point of view the course pursued was the reverse of
economical, and ultimately led to wasteful and increased expenditure.”
Thus the liberal professions of the Admiralty were not fulfilled; its
goodwill gave the young surgeon three and a half years of leave from
active service; with an obdurate treasury, it could do no more.

31
32 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. III

ing of firearms—as we did on the south coast of New Guinea
—and of making acquaintance with a variety of interesting
savage and semi-civilised people. But, apart from experience of
this kind and the opportunities offered for scientific work, to me,
personally, the cruise was extremely valuable. It was good for
me to live under sharp discipline; to be down on the realities
of existence by living on bare necessaries: to find how extremely
well worth living life seemed to be when one woke up from a
night’s rest on a soft plank, with the sky for canopy, and cocoa
and weevilly biscuit the sole prospect for breakfast; and, more
especially, to learn to work for the sake of what I got for myself
out of it, even if it all went to the bottom and I along with it.
My brother officers were as good fellows as sailors ought to be
and generally are, but, naturally, they neither knew nor cared
anything about my pursuits, nor understood why I should be so
zealous in pursuit of the objects which my friends, the middies,
christened “ Buffons,” after the title conspicuous on a volume
of the Suites a Buffon, which stood on my shelf in the chart-
room.

On the whole, life among the company of officers was
satisfactory enough.* Huxley’s immediate superior, John
Thompson, was a man of sterling worth; and Captain Stan-
ley was an excellent commander, and sympathetic withal.
Among Huxley’s messmates there was only one, the ship’s
clerk, who ever made himself actively disagreeable, and a
quarrel with him only served to bring into relief the young
surgeon’s integrity and directness of action. After some
dispute, in which he had been worsted, this gentleman
sought to avenge himself by dropping mysterious hints as
to Huxley’s conduct before joining the ship. He had been
treasurer of his mess; there had been trouble about the
accounts, and a scandal had barely been averted. This was
not long in coming to Huxley’s ears. Furiously indignant
as he was, he did not lose his self-control; but promptly

 

* The Assistant-Surgeon messed in the gun-room with the middies.
A man in the midst of a lot of boys, with hardly any grown-up com-
panions, often has a rather unenviable position; but, says Captain
Heath, who was one of these middies, Huxley's constant good spirits
and fun, when he was not absorbed in his work, his freedom from any
assumption of superiority over them, made the boys his good comrades
and allies,
1846-47 LEAVES ENGLAND 33

inviting the members of the wardroom to meet as a court
of honour, laid his case before them, and challenged his
accuser to bring forward any tittle of evidence in support
of his insinuations. The latter had nothing to say for him-
self, and made a formal retraction and apology. A signed
account of the proceedings was kept by the first officer, and
a duplicate by Huxley, as a defence against any possible
revival of the slander.

On December 3, 1846, the Rattlesnake frigate left Spit-
head, but touched again at Plymouth to ship £65,000 of
specie for the Cape. This delay was no pleasure to the
young Huxley; it only served to renew the pain of parting
from home, so that, after writing a last letter to reassure
his mother as to the comfort of his present quarters, he was
glad to lose sight of the English coast on the 11th.

Madeira was reached on the 18th. On the 26th they
sailed for Rio de Janeiro, where they stayed from January 23
to February 2, 1847. Here Huxley had his first experience
of tropical dredging in Botafago Bay, with Macgillivray,
naturalist to the expedition. It was a memorable occasion,
the more so, because in the absence of a sieve they were
compelled to use their hands as strainers the first day.
Happily the want was afterwards supplied by a meat cover.
From the following letter it seems that several prizes of
value were taken in the dredge :—

Rio JANEIRO, Jan. 24, 1847.

My pear MotHer—Four weeks of lovely weather and un-
interrupted fair winds brought us to this southern fairyland.
In my last letter I told you a considerable yarn about Madeira,
I guess, and so for fear lest you should imagine me scenery
mad I will spare you any description of Rio Harbour. Suffice
it to say that it contends with the Bay of Naples for the title
of the most beautiful place in the world. It must beat Naples
in luxuriance and variety of vegetation, but from all accounts,
to say nothing of George’s * picture, falls behind it in the col-
ours of sky and sea, that of the latter being in the harbour and
for some distance outside of a dirty olive green like the wash-
ings of a painter’s palette.

 

* His eldest brother,
34 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, III

We have come in for the purpose of effecting some trifling
repairs, which, though not essential to the safety of the ship,
will nevertheless naturally enhance the comfort of its inmates.
This you will understand when I tell you that in consequence
of these same defects I have had water an inch or two deep in
my cabin, wish-washing about ever since we left Madeira.

We crossed the line on the 13th of this month, and as one
of the uninitiated I went through the usual tomfoolery prac-
tised on that occasion. The affair has been too often described
for me to say anything about it. I had the good luck to be
ducked and shaved early, and of course took particular care
to do my best in serving out the unhappy beggars who had to
follow. I enjoyed the fun well enough at the time, but unques-
tionably it is on all grounds a most pernicious custom. It
swelled our sick list to double the usual amount, and one poor
fellow, I am sorry to say, died of the effects of pleurisy then
contracted.

We have been quite long enough at sea now to enable me to
judge how I shall get on in the ship, and to form a very clear
idea of how it fits me and how I fit it. In the first place I am
exceedingly well and exceedingly contented with my lot. My
opinion of the advantages lying open to me increases rather than
otherwise as I see my way about me. I am on capital terms
with all the superior officers, and I find them ready to give me
all facilities. I have a place for my books and microscope in
the chart room, and there I sit and read in the morning much
as though I were in my rooms in Agar Street. My immediate
superior, Johnny Thompson, is a long-headed good fellow with-
out a morsel of humbug about him—a man whom I thoroughly
respect, both morally and intellectually. I think it will be my
fault if we are not fast friends through the commission. One
friend on board a ship is as much as anybody has a right to
expect.

It is just the interval between the sea and the land breezes,
the sea like glass, and not a breath stirring. I shall become
soup if I do not go on deck. Temp. in sun at noon 86 in shade,
139 in sun. N.B.—It has been up to 89 in shade, 139 in sun
since this.

March 28.—I see I concluded with a statement of temp.
Since then it has been considerably better—14o in sun; however,
in the shade it rarely rises above 86 or so, and when the sea or
land breezes are blowing this is rather pleasant than otherwise.

I have been ashore two or three times. The town is like
1847 FIRST WORK IN THE RATTLESNAKE 35

most Portuguese towns, hot and stinking, the odours here being
improved by a strong flavour of nigger from the slaves, of
whom there is an immense number. They seem to do all the
work, and their black skins shine in the sun as though they had
been touched up with Warren, 30 Strand. They are mostly
in capital condition, and on the whole look happier than the
corresponding class in England, the manufacturing and agri-
cultural poor, I mean. I have a much greater respect for them
than for their beastly Portuguese masters, than whom there is
not a more vile, ignorant, and besotted nation under the sun.
I only regret that such a glorious country as this should be in
such hands. Had Brazil been colonised by Englishmen, it would
by this time have rivalled our Indian Empire.

The naturalist Macgillivray and I have had several excur-
sions under pretence of catching butterflies, etc. On the whole,
however, I think we have been most successful in imbibing sherry
cobbler, which you get here in great perfection. By the way, tell
Cooke,* with my kindest regards, that is a lying old thief,
many of the things he told me about Macgillivray, e.g., being an
ignoramus in natural history, etc. etc., having proved to be lies.
He is at any rate a very good ornithologist, and, I can testify,
is exceedingly zealous in his vocation as a collector. As in
these (points) Mr. ’s statements are unquestiorrably false,
I must confess I feel greatly inclined to disbelieve his other
assertions.

March 29.—We sail hence on Sunday for the Cape, so I will
finish up. If you have not already written to me at that place,
direct your letters to H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Sydney (to wait
arrival). We shall probably be at the Cape some weeks sur-
veying, thence shall betake ourselves to the Mauritius, and
leave a card on Paul and Virginia, thence on to Sydney; but it
is of no use to direct to any place but the last.

P.S.—The Rattlesnakes are not idle. We shall most likely
have something to say to the English savans before long. If I
have any friz in the fire I will let you know.

 

 

He gives a fuller account of this piece of work in a
. letter to his sister, dated Sydney, August 1, 1847. The
two papers in question, as appears from the briefest notice
in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, ascribing them to
William (!) Huxley, were read in 1849 :—

 

* His brother-in-law.
36 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. II

In my last letter I think I mentioned to you that I had
worked out and ‘sent home to the President of the Linnean Soc.,
through Capt. Stanley, an account of Physalia, or Portuguese
-man-of-war as it is called, an animal whose structure and affini-
ties had never been properly worked out. The careful investi-
gation I made gave rise to several new ideas covering the whole
class of animals to which this creature belongs, and these ideas
I have had the good fortune to have had many opportunities of
working out in the course of our subsequent wanderings, so that
I am provided with materials for a second paper far more con-
siderable in extent, and embracing an altogether wider field.
This second paper is now partly in esse—that is, written out—
and partly in posse—that is, in my head; but I shall send it
before leaving. Its title will be “ Observations upon the Anato-
my of the Diphydz, and upon the Unity of Organisation of the
Diphydze and Physophoridz,”’ and it will have lots of figures
to illustrate it. Now when we return from the north I hope to
have collected materials for a much bigger paper than either of
these, and to which they will serve as steps. If my present
anticipations turn out correct, this paper will achieve one of the
great ends of Zoology and Anatomy, viz. the reduction of two
or three apparently widely separated and incongruous groups
into modifications of the single type, every step of the reasoning
being based upon anatomical facts. There! Think yourself
lucky you have only got that to read instead of the slight ab-
stract of all three papers with which I had some ‘intention of
favouring you.*

But five years ago you threw a slipper after me for luck on
my first examination, and I must have you to do it for every-
thing else.

At the Cape a stay of a month was made, from March 6
to April 10, and certain surveying work was done, after
which the Rattlesnake sailed for Mauritius. In spite of the
fact that the novelty of tropical scenery had worn off, the
place made a deep impression. He writes to his mother,
May 15, 1847 :—

After.a long and somewhat rough passage from the Cape, we
made the highland of the Isle of France on the afternoon of the

 

* These papers are to be found in vol. i. of the Scent? fic Memoirs of
T. H. Huxley, p. 9.
1847 MAURITIUS 37

3rd of this month, and passing round the northern extremity of
the island, were towed into Port Louis by the handsomest of tugs
about noon on the 4th. In my former letter I have spoken to you
of the beauty of the places we have visited, of the picturesque
ruggedness of Madeira, the fine luxuriance of Rio, and the rude
and simple grandeur of South Africa. Much of my admiration
has doubtless arisen from the novelty of these tropical or semi-
tropical scenes, and would be less vividly revived by a second
visit. I have become in a manner blasé with fine sights and
something of a critic. All this is to lead you to believe that I
have really some grounds for the raptures I am going into pres-
ently about Mauritius. In truth it is a complete paradise, and
if I had nothing better to do, I should pick up some pretty
French Eve (and there are plenty) and turn Adam. N.B. There
are no serpents in the island.

This island is, you know, the scene of St. Pierre’s beautiful
story of Paul and Virginia, over which I suppose most people
have sentimentalised at one time or another of their lives. Until
we reached here I did not know that the tale was like the lady’s
improver—a fiction founded on fact, and that Paul and Virginia
were at one time flesh and blood, and that their veritable dust
was buried at Pamplemousses in a spot considered as one of the
lions of the place, and visited as classic ground. Now, though
I never was greatly given to the tender and sentimental, and
have not had any tendencies that way greatly increased by the
elegancies ard courtesies of a midshipman’s berth,—not to say
that, as far as I recollect, Mdlle. Virginia was a bit of a prude,
and M. Paul a pump,—yet were it but for old acquaintance sake,
I determined on making a pilgrimage. Pamplemousses is a small
village about seven miles from Port Louis, and the road to it
is lined by rows of tamarind trees, of cocoanut trees, and sugar-
canes. I started early in the morning in order to avoid the great
heat of the middle of the day, and having breakfasted at Port
Louis, made an early couple of hours’ walk of it, meeting on
my way numbers of the coloured population hastening to market
in all the varieties of their curious Hindoo costume. After some
trouble I found my way to the “ Tombeaux ” as they call them.
They are situated in a garden at the back of a house now in
the possession of one Mr. Geary, an English mechanist, who
puts up half the steam engines for the sugar mills in the island.
The garden is now an utter. wilderness, but still very beautiful ;
round it runs a grassy path, and in the middle of the path on
each side towards the further extremity of the garden is a
38 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, UI

funeral urn supported on a pedestal, and as dilapidated as the
rest of the affair. These dilapidations, as usual, are the work
of English visitors, relic-hunters, who are as shameless here
as elsewhere. I was exceedingly pleased on the whole with my
excursion, and when I returned I made a drawing of the place,
which I will send some day or other.

Since this I have made, in company with our purser and a
passenger, Mr. King, a regular pedestrian trip to see some very
beautiful falls up the country.

Leaving Mauritius on May 17, they prolonged their
voyage to Sydney by being requisitioned to; take more
specie to Hobart Town, so that Sydney was not reached
until July 16, eight months since they had had news of
home.

The three months spent in this first visit to Sydney
proved to be one of the most vital periods in the young
surgeon’s career. From boyhood up, vaguely conscious of
unrest, of great powers within him working to find expres-
sion, he had yet been to a certain extent driven in upon him-
self. He had been somewhat isolated from those of his own
age by his eagerness for problems about which they cared
nothing ; and the tendency to solitude, the habit of outward
reserve imposed upon an unusually warm nature, were
intensified by the fact that he grew up in surroundings not
wholly congenial. One member alone of his family felt
with him that complete and vivid sympathy which is so
necessary to the full development of such a nature. When
he was fourteen this sister married and left home, but the
bond between them was not broken. In some ways it was
strengthened by the lad’s love for her children; by his grief,
scarcely less than her own, at the death of her eldest little
girl. Moreover they were brought into close companionship
for a considerable time when, after his dismal period of
apprenticeship at Rotherhithe—to which he could never
look back without a shudder—he came to work under her
husband. She had encouraged him in his studies; had
urged him to work for the Botanical prize at Sydenham
College; had brightened his life with her sympathy, and
believed firmly in the brilliant future which awaited him—a
1848 ENGAGEMENT 39

belief which for her sake, if for nothing else, he was eager to
justify by his best exertions.

He had not had, so far, much opportunity of entering
the social world; but his visit to Sydney gave him an oppor-
tunity of entering a good society to which his commission
in the navy was a sufficient introduction. He was eager
to find friendships if he could, for his reserve was anything
but misanthropic. It was not long before he made the
acquaintance of William Macleay, a naturalist of wide re-
search and great speculative ability; and struck up a close
friendship with William Fanning, one of the leading
merchants of the town, a friendship which was to have
momentous consequences. For it was at Fanning’s house
that he met his future wife, Miss Henrietta Anne Heathorn,
for whom he was to serve longer and harder than Jacob
thought to serve for Rachel, but who was to be his help
and stay for forty years, in his struggles ready to counsel,
in adversity to comfort; the critic whose judgment he val-
ued above almost any, and whose praise he cared most
to win; his first care and his latest thought, the other self,
whose union with him was a supreme example of mutual
sincerity and devotion.

It was a case of love, if not actually at first sight, yet of
very rapid growth when he came to learn the quiet strength
and tenderness of her nature as displayed in the manage-
ment of her sister’s household. A certain simplicity and
directness united with an unusual degree of cultivation, had
attracted him from the first. She had been two years at
school in Germany, and her knowledge of German and of
German literature brought them together on common
ground. Things ran very smoothly at the beginning, and
the young couple, whose united ages amounted to forty-
four years, became engaged.

The marriage was to take place on his promotion to the
rank of full surgeon—a promotion he hoped to attain speed-
ily at the conclusion of the voyage on the strength of his
scientific work, for this was the inducement held out by the
Admiralty to energetic subalterns. The following letter to
his sister describes the situation :—

4
40 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. ill

SypnEey Harsour, March 21, 1848.

... Lhave deferred writing to you in the hope of knowing
something from yourself of your doings and whereabouts, and
now that we are on the eve of departing for a long cruise in
Torres Straits, I will no longer postpone the giving you some
account of “ was ist geschehen” on this side of the world. We
spent three months in Sydney, and a gay three months of it we
had,—nothing but balls and parties the whole time. In this
corner of the universe, where men of war are rather scarce,
even the old Rattlesnake is rather a lion, and her officers are
esteemed accordingly. Besides, to tell you the truth, we are
rather agreeable people than otherwise, and can manage to get up
a very decent turn-out on board on occasion. What think you of
your grave, scientific brother turning out a ball-goer and doing
the “light fantastic” to a great extent? It is a great fact, I
assure you. But there is a method in my madness. I found it
exceedingly disagreeable to come to a great place like Sydney
and think there was not a soul who cared whether I was alive
or dead, so I determined to go into what society was to be had
and see if I could not pick up a friend or two among the multi-
tude of the empty and frivolous. I am happy to say that I have
had more success than I hoped for or deserved, and then as
now, two or three houses where I can go and feel myself at
home at all times. But my “home” in Sydney is the house of
my good friend Mr. Fanning, one of the first merchants in the
splace. But thereby hangs a tale which, of all people in the
world, I must tell you. Mrs. Fanning has a sister, and the dear
little sister and I managed to fall in love with one another in
the most absurd manner after seeing one another—I will not
tell you how few times, lest you should laugh. Do you remem-
ber how you used to talk to me about choosing a wife? Well,
I think that my choice would justify even your fastidiousness.
... I think you will understand how happy her love ought to
and does make me. I fear that in this respect indeed the ad-
vantage is on my side, for my present wandering life and uncer-
tain position must necessarily give her many an anxious thought.
Our future is indeed none of the clearest. Three years at the
very least must elapse before the Rattlesnake returns to Eng-
land, and then unless I can write myself into my promotion or
something else, we shall be just where we were. Nevertheless
I have the strongest persuasion that four years hence I shall
be married and settled in England. We shall see.
1848 NEW TIES 4l

I am getting on capitally at present. Habit, inclination, and
now a sense of duty keep me at work, and the nature of our
cruise affords me opportunities such as none but a blind man
would fail to make use of. I have sent two or three papers
home already to be published, which I have great hopes will
throw light upon some hitherto obscure branches of natural his-
tory, and I have just finished a more important one, which | —
intend to get read at the Royal Society. The other day I sub-
mitted it to William Macleay (the celebrated propounder of the
Quinary system), who has a beautiful place near Sydney, and,
I hear, “werry much approves what I have done.” All this
goes to the comforting side of the question, and gives me hope
of being able to follow out my favourite pursuits in course of
time, without hindrance to what is now the main object of my
life. I tell Netty to look to being a ‘“ Frau Professorin” one
of these odd days, and she has faith, as I believe would have
if I told her I was going to be Prime Minister.

We go to. the northward again about the 23rd of this month
(April), and shall be away for ten or twelve months surveying
in Torres Straits. I believe we are to refit in Port Essington, and
that will be the only place approaching to civilisation that we
shall see for the whole of that time; and after July or August
next, when a provision ship is to come up to us, we shall not
even get letters. I hope and trust I shall hear from you before
then. Do not suppose that my new ties have made me forgetful
of old ones. On the other hand, these are if anything strength-
ened. Does not my dearest Nettie love you as I do! and do I
not often wish that you could see and love and esteem her as
I know you would. We often talk about you, and I tell her
stories of old times.

Another letter, a year later, gives his mother the answers
to a string of questions which, mother-like, she had asked
him, thirsting for exact and minute information about her
future daughter-in-law :—

Sypney, Fed. 1, 1849.

(After describing how he had just come back from a nine
months’ cruise)—First and foremost, my deay mother, I must
thank you for your very kind letter of September 1848. I read
the greater part of it to Nettie, who was as much pleased as [
with your kindly wishes towards both of us. Now I suppose I
must do my best to answer your questions. First, as to age,
Nettie is about three months younger than myself—that is the
42 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. UI

difference in our years, but she is in fact as much younger than
her years as I am older than mine. Next, as to complexion she
is exceedingly fair, with the Saxon yellow hair and blue eyes.
Then as to face, I really don’t know whether she is pretty or not.
I have never been able to decide the matter in my own mind.
Sometimes I think she is, and sometimes I wonder how the idea
ever came into my head. Whether or not, her personal appear-
ance has nothing whatever to do with the hold she has upon my
mind, for I have seen hundreds of prettier women. But I never
met with so sweet a temper, so self-sacrificing and affectionate a
disposition, or so pure and womanly a mind, and from the per-
fectly intimate footing on which I stand with her family I have
plenty of opportunities of judging. As I tell her, the only great
folly I am aware of her being guilty of was the leaving her
happiness in the hands of a man like myself, struggling upwards
and certain of nothing.

As to my future intentions I can say very little about them.
With my present income, of course, marriage is rather a bad look
out, but I do not think it would be at all fair towards N. herself
to leave this country without giving her a wife’s claim upon
me. ... It is very unlikely I shall ever remain in the colony.
Nothing but a very favourable chance could induce me to
do so.

Much must depend upon how things go in England. If my
various papers meet with any success, I may perhaps be able to
leave the service. At present, however, I have not heard a word
of anything I have sent. Professor Forbes has, I believe, pub-
lished some of MacGillivray’s letters to him, but he has appar-
ently forgotten to write to MacGillivray himself, or to me. So
I shall certainly send him nothing more, especially as Mr. Mac-
Leay (of this place, and a great man in the naturalist world)
has offered to get anything of mine sent to the Zoological
Society.

In the paper mentioned in the letter of March 21, above
(“On the Anatomy and Affinities of the Family of the
Medusae”’), Huxley aimed at “ giving broad and general
views of the whole class, considered as organised upon a
given type, and inquiring into its relations with other fam-
ilies,” unlike previous observers whose patience and ability
had been devoted rather to “stating matters of detail con-
cerning particular genera and species.” At the Outset, sec-
tion 8 (Sci. Mem., i. 11), he states—
1848 AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY 43

I would wish to lay particular stress upon the composition of
this (the stomach) and other organs of the Meduse out of two
distinct membranes, as I believe that it is one of the essential
peculiarities of their structure, and that a knowledge of the fact
is of great importance in investigating their homologies. I will
call these two membranes as such, and independently of any
modifications into particular organs, “ foundation membranes.”

And in section 56 (p. 23) one of the general conclusions
which he deduces from his observations, is

That a Medusa consists essentially of two membranes in-
closing a variously-shaped cavity, inasmuch as its various organs
are so composed,

a peculiarity shared by certain other families of zoophytes.
This is the point which that eminent authority, Professor
G. J. Allman, had in his mind when he wrote to call my
attention

to a fact which has been overlooked in all the notices I have
seen, and which I regard as one of the greatest claims of his
splendid work on the recognition of zoologists. I refer to his
discovery that the body of the Medusae is essentially composed
of two membranes, an outer and an inner, and his recognition of
these as the homologues of the two primary germinal leaflets
in the vertebrate embryo. Now this discovery stands at the very
basis of a philosophic zoology, and of a true conception of the
affinities of animals. It is the ground on which Heckel has
founded his famous Gastrzea Theory, and without it Kowalesky
could never have announced his great discovery of the affinity
of the Ascidians and Vertebrates, by which zoologists had been
startled.
CHAPTER IV
1848-1850

Tue whole cruise of the Rattlesnake lasted almost pre-
cisely four years, her stay in Australian waters nearly three.
Of this time altogether eleven months were spent at Sydney,
namely, July 16 to October 11, 1847; January 14 to Feb-
ruary 2, and March g to April 29, 1848; January 24 to
May 8, 1849; and February 14 to May 2, 1850. The three
months of the first northern cruise were spent in the survey
of the Inshore Passage—the passage, that is, within the
Great Barrier Reef for ships proceeding from India to Syd-
ney. In 1848, while waiting for the right season to visit
Torres Straits, a short cruise was made in February and
March, to inspect the lighthouses in Bass’ Straits. It was
on this occasion that Huxley visited Melbourne, then an
insignificant town, before the discovery of gold had brought
a rush of immigrants.

The second northern cruise of 1848, which lasted nine
months, had for its object the completion of the survey of
the Inner Passage as far as New Guinea and the adjoining
archipelago. The third cruise in 1849-50 again lasted nine
months, and continued the survey in Torres Straits, the
Louisiade archipelago, and the south-eastern part of New
Guinea. After this the original plan was to make a fourth
cruise, filling up the charts of the Inner Passage on the
east coast, and surveying the straits of Alass between
Lombok and Sumbawa in the Malay Archipelago; then,
instead of returning to Sydney, to proceed to Singa-
pore and so home by the Cape. But these plans were

44
1849 VOYAGE OF THE RATTLESNAKE 45

altered by the untimely death of Captain Stanley on
March 13, and the Rattlesnake sailed for England direct
in May 1850.

There was a great monotony about these cruises, par-
ticularly to those who were not constantly engaged in the
active work of surveying. The ship sailed slowly from place
to place, hunting out reefs and islets; a stay of a few days
would be made at some lonely island, while charting ex-
peditions went out in the boats or supplies of water and
fresh fruits were laid in. On the second expedition there
were two cases of scurvy on board by the time the mail
from Sydney reached the ship at Cape York with letters
and lime-juice, the first reminder of civilisation for four
months and a half. On this cruise there was an unusual
piece of interest in Kennedy's ill-fated expedition, which
the Rattlesnake landed in Rockingham Bay, and trusted
to meet again at Cape York. Happy it was for Huxley that
his duties forbade him to accept Kennedy’s proposal to
join the expedition. After months of weary struggles in
the dense scrub, Kennedy himself, who had pushed on
for help with his faithful black man Jacky, was speared
by the natives when almost in sight of Cape York; Jack
barely managed to make his way there through his
enemies, and guided a party to the rescue of the two
starved and exhausted survivors of the disease-stricken
camp by the Sugarloaf Hill. It was barely time. An-
other hour, and they too would have been killed by the
crowd of blackfellows who hovered about in hopes of
booty, and were only dispersed for a moment by the res-
cue party.

On the third cruise there were a few adventures more
directly touching the Rattlesnake. Twice the landing par-
ties, including Huxley, were within an ace of coming to
blows with the islanders of the Louisiades, and on one
occasion a portly member of the gun-room, being cut off
by these black gentry, only saved his life by parting with
all his clothes as presents to them, and keeping them amused
by an impromptu dance in a state of nature under the
broiling sun, until a party came to his relief. At Cape
46 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV

York also, a white woman was rescued who had been made
prisoner by the blacks from a wreck, and had lived among
them for several years. Here, too, Huxley and MacGilli-
vray made a trip inland, and were welcomed by a native
chief, who saw in the former the returning spirit of his
dead brother.

Throughout the voyage Huxley was busy with his
pencil, and many lithographs from his drawings illustrate
the account of the voyage afterwards published. As to
his scientific work, he was accumulating a large stock of
observations, but felt rather sore about the papers which he
had already sent home, for no word had reached him as to
their fate, not even that they had been received or looked
over by Forbes, to whom they had been consigned. As a
matter of fact, they had not been neglected, as he was to
find out on his return; but meanwhile the state of affairs
was not reassuring to a man whose dearest hopes were
bound up in the reception he could win for these and similar
researches. Altogether, it was with no little joy that he
turned his back on the sweltering heat of Torres Straits,
on the great mountains of New Guinea, the Owen Stanley
range, which had remained hidden from D’Urville in the
Astrolabe to be discovered by the explorers on the Rattle-
snake, and the far stretching archipelago of the Louisiades,
one tiny island in which still bears the name of Huxley,
after the assistant-surgeon of the Rattlesnake.

A few extracts from letters of the time will give a more
vivid idea of what the voyage was like. The first is from
a letter to his mother, dated February 1, 1849 :—

. . . I suppose you have wondered at the long intervals of
my letters, but my silence has been forced. I wrote from Rock-
ingham Bay in May, and from Cape York in October. After
leaving the latter place we have had no communication with any
one but the folks at Port Essington, which is a mere military
post, without any certain means of communication with Eng-
land. We were ten weeks on our passage from Port Essington
to Sydney and touched nowhere, so that you may imagine we
were pretty well tired of the sea by the time we reached Port
Jackson.
1849 VOYAGE OF THE RATTLESNAKE 47

Thank God we are now safely anchored in our old quarters,
and for the next three months shall enjoy a few of those com-
forts that make life worth the living. .. .

The only place we have visited since my last budget to you
was Port Essington, a military post which has been an object
of much attention for some time past in connection with the
steam navigation between Sydney and India. It is about the
most useless, miserable, ill-managed hole in Her Majesty’s do-
minions. Placed fifteen miles inland on the swampy banks of
an estuary out of reach of the sea breezes, it is the most insuffer-
ably hot and enervating place imaginable. The temperature of
the water alongside the ship was from 88 to go, 1.e. about that
of a moderately warm bath, so that you may fancy what it is
on land. Added to this, the commandant is a litigious old fool,
always at war with his officers, and endeavouring to make the
place as much of a hell morally as it is physically. Little more
than two years ago a detachment of sixty men came out to the
settlement. At the parade on the Sunday I was there; there
were just ten men present. The rest were invalided, dead, or
sick. I have no hesitation in saying that half of this was the
result of ill-management. The climate in itself is not par-
ticularly unhealthy. We were all glad to get away from the
place.

Another is to his sister, under date Sydney, March 14,
1849 :—

By the way, I may as well give you a short account of our
cruise. We started from here last May to survey what is called
the inner passage to India. You must know that the east coast
of Australia has running parallel to it at distances of from five
miles to seventy or eighty an almost continuous line of coral
reefs, the Great Barrier as it is called. Outside this line is the
great Pacific, inside is a space varying in width as above, and
cut up by little islands and detached reefs. Now to get to India
from Sydney, ships must go either inside or outside the Great
Barrier. The inside passage has been called the Inner Route in
consequence of its desirability for steamers, and our business
has been to mark out this Inner Route safely and clearly among
the labyrinth-like islands and reefs within the Barrier. Anda
parlous dull business it was for those who, like myself, had no
necessary and constant occupation. Fancy for five mortal
months shifting from patch to patch of white sand in latitude
48. LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV

from 17 to 10 south, living on salt pork and beef, and seeing
no mortal face but our own sweet countenances considerably
obscured by the long beard and moustaches with which, partly
from laziness and partly from comfort, we had become adorned.
I cultivated a peak in Charles I. style, which imparted a re-
markably peculiar and ¢riste expression to my sunburnt phiz,
heightened by the fact that the aforesaid beard was, I regret
to say it, of a very questionable auburn—my messmates called
it red.

We convoyed a land expedition as far as the Rockingham
Bay in 17 south under a Mr. Kennedy, which was to work its
way up to Cape York in 11 south and there meet us. A fine
noble fellow poor Kennedy was too. I was a good deal with
him at Rockingham Bay, and indeed accompanied him in the
exploring trips which he made for some four or five days in
order to see how the land lay about him. In fact we got on so
well together that he wanted me much to accompany him and
join the ship again at Cape York, and if the Service would have
permitted of my absence I should certainly have done so. But
it was well I did not. Out of thirteen men composing the party
but three remain alive. The rest have perished by starvation
or the spears of the natives. Poor Kennedy himself had, in
company with the black fellow attached to the party, by dint of
incredible exertions, pushed on until he came within sight of
the provision vessel waiting his arrival at Cape York. But
here, within grasp of his object, a large party of natives attacked
and killed him. The black fellow alone reached Cape York
with the news. The other two men who were saved were the
sole survivors of the party Kennedy leit behind him at a spot
near the coast, and were picked up by the provision vessel when
she returned.

You may be sure I am not sorry to return home. I say home
advisedly, for my friend Fanning’s house is as completely my
home as it well can be. And then Nettie had not heard anything
of me for six months, so that I have been petted and spoiled
ever since we came in... . As I tell her I fear she has rested
her happiness on a very insecure foundation; but she is full of,
hope and confidence, and to me her love is the faith that moveth
mountains. We have, as you may be sure, a thousand difficul-
ties in our way, but like Danton I take for my motto, “ De
laudace et encore de l’audace et toujours de l’audace,” and look
forward to a happy termination, nothing doubting.
1850 SECOND CRUISE OF THE RATTLESNAKE 49

To nis MotTHER

(Announcing the probable time of his return).

Sypney, “ed. 11, 1850.

I cannot at all realise the idea of our return. We have been
leading such a semi-savage life for years past, such a wandering
nomadic existence, that any other seems in a manner unnatural
to me. Time was when I should have looked upon our return
with unmixed joy; but so many new and strong ties have arisen
to unite me with Sydney, that now when the anchor is getting
up for England, I scarcely know whether to rejoice or to grieve.
You must not be angry, my dear Mother; I have none the less
affection for you or any other of those whom I love in England
—only a very great deal for a certain little lassie whom I must
leave behind me without clearly seeing when we are to meet
again. You must remember the Scripture as my excuse, “A
man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his” (I
wish I could add) wife. Our long cruises are fine times for
reflection, and during the last I determined that we would be
terribly prudent and get married about 1870, or the Greek
Kalends, or, what is about the same thing, whenever I am
afflicted with the malhcur de richesses.

People talk about the satisfaction of an approving con-
science. Mine approves me intensely; but I’ll be hanged if I see
the satisfaction of it. I feel much more inclined to swear
“worse than our armies in Flanders.” . . . So far as my private
doings are concerned, I hear very satisfactory news of them.
I heard from an old messmate of mine at Haslar the other day
that Dr. MacWilliam, F.R.S., one of our deputy-inspectors, had
been talking about one of my papers, and gave him to under-
stand that it was to be printed. Furthermore, he is a great
advocate for the claims of assistant surgeons to ward-room
rank, and all that sort of stuff, and, I am told, quoted me as an
example! Henceforward I look upon the learned doctor as a
man of sound sense and discrimination! Without joking, how-
ever, I am glad to have come under his notice, as he may be of
essential use to me. I find myself getting horribly selfish, look-
ing at everything with regard to the influence it may have on
my grand objects.

Further descriptions of the voyage are to be drawn from
an article in the Westminster Review for January 1854
50 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV

(vol. v.), in which, under the title of “ Science at Sea,” Hux-
ley reviewed the Voyage of the Rattlesnake by MacGillivray,
the naturalist to the expedition, which had recently ap-
peared. This book gave very few descriptions of the inci-
dents and life on board, and so drew in many ways a col-
ourless picture of the expedition. This defect the reviewer
sought to remedy by giving extracts from the so-called
“unpublished correspondence” of one of the officers—
sketches apparently written for the occasion—as well as
from an equally unpublished but more real journal kept by
the same hand.

The description of the ship herself, of her inadequate
equipment for the special purposes she was to carry out, of
the officers’ quiet contempt of scientific pursuits, which not
even the captain’s influence was able to subdue, of the
illusory promises of help and advancement held out by the
Admiralty to young investigators, makes a striking foil to
the spirit in which the Government of thirty years later
undertook a greater scientific expedition. Perhaps some
vivid recollections of this voyage did something to better the
conditions under which the later investigators worked.

Thus, p. 100:

In the year 1846, Captain Owen Stanley, a young and zeal-
ous officer, of good report for his capabilities as a scientific
surveyor, was entrusted with the command of the Rattlesnake,
a vessel of six-and-twenty guns, strong and seaworthy, but one
of that class unenviably distinguished in the war-time as a
“ donkey-frigate.” To the laity it would seem that a ship jour-
neying to unknown regions, when the lives of a couple of hun-
dred men may, at any moment, depend upon her handiness in
going about, so as to avoid any suddenly discovered danger,
should possess the best possible sailing powers. The Admiralty,
however, makes its selection upon other principles, and explor-
ing vessels will be invariably found to be the slowest, clumsiest,
and in every respect the most inconvenient ships which wear
the pennant. In accordance with the rule, such was the Rattle-
snake; and to carry out the spirit of the authorities more com-
pletely, she was turned out of Portsmouth dockyard in such a
disgraceful state of unfitness, that her lower deck was con-
tinually under water during the voyage.
1846 EQUIPMENT OF A SURVEYING SHIP 51

Again, p. 100:

It is necessary to be provided with books of reference, which
are ruinously expensive to a private individual, though a mere
dewdrop in the general cost of the fitting out of a ship, espe-
cially as they might be kept in store, and returned at the end of
a commission, like other stores. A hundred pounds would have
well supplied the Rattlesnake; but she sailed without a volume,
an application made by her captain not having been attended to.

P. 103:

Of all those who were actively engaged upon the survey, the
young commander alone was destined by inevitable fate to be
robbed of his just reward. Care and anxiety, from the mobility
of his temperament, sat not so lightly upon him as they might
have done, and this, joined to the physical debility produced by
the enervating climate of New Guinea, fairly wore him out,
making him prematurely old before much more than half of
the allotted span was completed. But he died in harness, the end
attained, the work that lay before him honourably done. Which
of us may dare to ask for more? He has raised an enduring
monument in his works, and his epitaph shall be the grateful
thanks of many a mariner threading his way among the mazes
of the Coral Sea.

P. 104:
The world enclosed within the timbers of a man-of-war is a
most remarkable community, hardly to be rendered vividly

intelligible to the mere landsman in these days of constitutional
government and freedom of the press.

Then follows a vigorous sketch of sea life from Cha-
misso, suggesting that the type of one’s relation to the cap-
tain is to be found in Jean Paul’s Biography of the Twins,
who were united back to back. This sketch Huxley en-
forces by a passage from the imaginary journal aforesaid,
“indited apparently when the chains were yet new and
somewhat galled the writer,” to judge from which “ little
alteration would seem to have taken place in nautical life”
since Chamisso’s voyage, thirty years before.

You tell me (he writes), that you sigh for my life of freedom
and adventure; and that, compared with mine, the conventional
monotony of your own stinks in your nostrils. My dear fellow,
52 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV

be patient, and listen to what I have to say; you will then, per-
haps, be a little more content with your lot in life, and a little
less desirous of mine. Of all extant lives, that on board a ship-
of-war is the most artificial—whether necessarily so or not is a
question I will not undertake to decide; but the fact is indubi-
table. : ;

How utterly disgusted you get with one another ! Little
peculiarities which would give a certain charm and variety to
social intercourse under any other circumstances, become
sources of absolute pain, and almost uncontrollable irritation,
when you are shut up with them day and night. One good
friend and messmate of mine has a peculiar laugh, whose itera-
tion on our last cruise nearly drove me insane. .

There is no being alone in a ship. Sailors are essentially
gregarious animals, and don’t at all understand the necessity
under which many people labour—I among the rest—of having
a little solitary converse with oneself occasionally.

Then, to a landsman fresh from ordinary society and its
peculiarly undemonstrative ways, there is something very won-
derful about naval discipline. I do not mean to say that the
subordination kept up is more than is necessary, nor perhaps is
it in reality greater than is to be found in a college, or a regi-
ment, or a large mercantile house; but it is made so very ob-
vious. You not only feel the bit, but you see it; and your
bridle is hung with bells to tell you of its presence.

Your captain is a very different person, in relation to his
officers, from the colonel of a regiment; he ts a demi-god, a
Dalai lama, living in solitary state; sublime, unapproachable;
and the radiation of his dignity stretches through all the other
members of the nautical hierarchy; hence all sorts of petty
intrigues, disputes, grumblings, and jealousies, which, to the
irreverent eye of an “idler,” give to the whole little society
the aspect of nothing so much as the court of Prinz Irenezus in
Kater Murr’s inestimable autobiography.

P. 107 sq.:

After describing the illusory promises of the Admiralty
and their grudging spirit towards the scientific members of
the expedition, he continues :—

These are the facilities and encouragement to science
afforded by the Admiralty; and it cannot be wondered at if
the same spirit runs through its subordinate officers.
1848 SCIENCE AT SEA 53

Not that there is any active opposition—quite the reverse.
But it is a curious fact, that if you want a boat for dredging, ten
chances to one they are always actually or potentially otherwise
disposed of; if you leave your towing-net trailing astern in
search of new creatures, in some promising patch of discoloured
water, it is, in all probability, found to have a wonderful effect
in stopping the ship’s way, and is hauled in as soon as your back
is turned; or a careful dissection waiting to be drawn may find
its way overboard as a “ mess.”

The singular disrespect with which the majority of naval
officers regard everything that lies beyond the sphere of routine,
tends to produce a tone of feeling very unfavourable to scientific
exertions. How can it be otherwise, in fact, with men who,
from the age of thirteen, meet with no influence but that which
teaches them that the ‘“ Queen’s regulations and instructions ”
are the law and the prophets, and something more?

It may be said, without fear of contradiction, that in time of
peace the only vessels which are engaged in services involving
any real hardship or danger are those employed upon the various
surveys; and yet the men of easy routine—harbour heroes—the
officers of regular men-of-war, as they delight to be called, pre-
tend to think surveying a kind of shirking—in sea-phrase,
“sloping.” It is to be regretted that the officers of the survey-
ing vessels themselves are too often imbued with the same
spirit; and though, for shame’s sake, they can but stand up for
hydrography, they are too apt to think an alliance with other
branches of science as beneath the dignity of their divinity—the
“ Service.”

P. 112:

Any adventures ashore were mere oases, separated by whole
deserts of the most wearisome ennui. For weeks, perhaps, those
who were not fortunate enough to be living hard and getting
fatigued every day in the boats were yawning away their exist-
ence in an atmosphere only comparable to that of an orchid-
house, a life in view of which that of Mariana in the moated
grange has its attractions.

For instance, consider this extract from the journal of one
of the officers, date August 1849 :-—

“Rain! rain! encore et toujours—I wonder if it is possible
for the mind of man to conceive anything more degradingly
offensive than the condition of us 150 men, shut up in this
wooden box, and being watered with hot water, as we are now.
54 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV

It is no exaggeration to say hot, for the temperature is that at
which people at home commonly take a hot bath. It rains so
hard that we have caught seven tons of water in one day, and
it is therefore impossible to go on deck, though, if one did, one’s
condition would not be much improved. A hot Scotch mist
covers the sea and hides the land, so that no surveying can be
done; moving about in the slightest degree causes a flood of
perspiration to pour out; all energy is completely gone, and if
I could help it I would not think even; it’s too hot. The rain
awnings are spread, and we can have no wind sails up; if we
could, there is not a breath of wind to fill them; and conse-
quently the lower and main decks are utterly unventilated: a
sort of solution of man in steam fills them from end to end, and
surrounds the lights with a lurid halo. It’s too hot to sleep,
and my sole amusement consists in watching the cockroaches,
which are in a state of intense excitement and happiness. They
manifest these feelings in a very remarkable manner—a sudden
unanimous impulse seems to seize the obscene thousands which
usually lurk hidden in the corners of my cabin. Out they rush,
helter-skelter, and run over me, my table, and my desk; others,
more vigorous, fly, quite regardless of consequences, until they
hit against something, upon which, half spreading their wings,
they make their heads a pivot and spin round in a circle, in a
manner which indicates a temporary aberration of the cock-
roach mind. It is these outbreaks alone which rouse us from
our lassitude. Knocks are heard resounding on all sides, and
each inhabitant of a cabin, armed with a slipper, is seen taking
ample revenge upon the disturbers of his rest and the destroyers
of his body and clothes.”

Here, on the other hand, is an oasis, a bartering scene at
Bruny Island, in the Louisiade :—

“We landed at the same place as before, and this time the
natives ran down prancing and gesticulating. Many of them
had garlands of green leaves round their heads, knees, and
ankles; some wore long streamers depending from their arms
and ears and floating in the wind as they galloped along, shak-
ing their spears and prancing just as boys do when playing at
horses. They soon surrounded us, shouting ‘Kelumai! Ke-
lumai!’ (their word for iron), and offering us all sorts of
things in exchange. One very fine athletic man, ‘ Kai-oo-why-
who-at’ by name, was perfectly mad to get an axe, and very
soon comprehended the arrangements that were made. Mr.
Brady drew ten lines on the sand and laid an axe down by them,
1849 INCIDENT AT BRUNY ISLAND 55

 

giving K (I really can’t write that long name all over
again) to understand by signs that when there was a ‘bahar’
(yam) on every mark he should have the axe. He compre-
hended directly, and bolted off as fast as he could run, soon
returning with his hands full of yams, which he deposited one
by one on the appropriate lines; then fearful lest some of the
others should do him out of the axe, he caught hold of Brady
by the arm, and would not let him go until yams enough had
been brought by the others to make up the number, and the axe
was handed over to him.

“Then was there a yell of delight! He jumped up with the
axe, flourished it, passed it to his companions, tumbled down
and rolled over, kicking up his heels in the air, and finally, catch-
ing hold of me, we had a grand waltz, with various poses
plastiques, for about a quarter of a mile. I daresay he was un-
sophisticated enough to imagine that I was filled with sym-
pathetic joy, but I grieve to say that I was taking care all the
while to direct his steps towards the village, which, as we had
as yet examined none of their houses, I was most desirous of
entering under my friend’s sanction. J think he suspected some-
thing, for he looked at me rather dubiously when I directed
our steps towards the entrance in the bush which led to the
houses, and wanted me to go back; but I was urgent, so he
gave way, and we both entered the open space, where we were
joined by two or three others, and sat down under a cocoa-
nut tree.

“T persuaded him to sit for his portrait (taking care first
that my back was against the tree and my pistols handy), and
we ate green cocoanuts together, at last attaining to so great a
pitch of intimacy that he made me change names with him,
calling himself ‘Tamoo’ (my Cape York name), and giving me
to understand that I was to take his own lengthy appellation.
When I did so, and talked to him as ‘Tamoo,’ nothing could
exceed the delight of all around; they patted me as you would
a child, and evidently said to one another, ‘ This really seems
to be a very intelligent white fellow.’

“Like the Cape York natives, they were immensely curious
to look at one’s legs, asking permission, very gently but very
pressingly, to pull up the trouser, spanning the calf with their
hands, drawing in their breath and making big eyes all the
while. Once, when the front of my shirt blew open, and they
saw the white skin of my chest, they set up an universal shout.
I imagine that as they paint their faces black, they fancied that

5
56 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV

we ingeniously coloured ours white, and were astonished to
see that we were really of that (to them) disgusting tint all
over.”

On May 2, 1850, the Rattlesnake sailed for the last time
out of Sydney harbour, bound for England by way of the
Horn. In spite of his cheerful anticipations, Huxley was
not to see his future wife again for five years more, when he
was at length in a position to bid her come and join him.
During the three years of their engagement in Australia,
they had at least been able to see each other at intervals,
and to be together for months at a time. In the long
periods of absence, also, they had invented a device to cheat
the sense of separation. Each kept a particular journal, to
be exchanged when they met again, and only to be read,
day by day, during the next voyage. But now it was
very different, their only means of communication being the
slow agency of the post, beset with endless possibilities of
misunderstanding when it brought belated answers to ques-
tions already months old and out of date in the changed
aspect of circumstances. These perils, however, they
weathered, and it proves how deep in the moral nature of
each the bond between them was rooted, that in the end
they passed safely through the still greater danger of im-
perceptibly growing estranged from one another under the
influences of such utterly different surroundings.

A kindly storm which forced the old ship to put into
the Bay of Islands to repair a number of small leaks that
rendered the lower deck uninhabitable, made it possible for
Huxley to send back a letter that should reach Australia
in one month instead of ten after his departure.

He utilized a week’s stay here characteristically enough
in an expedition to Waimate, the chief missionary station
and the school of the native institutions (a sort of Normal
School for native teachers), in order to judge of his own
inspection what missionary life was like.

I have been greatly surprised in these good people (he
writes). I had expected a good deal of straight-hairedness (if
you understand the phrase) and methodistical puritanism, but
I find it quite otherwise. Both Mr. and Mrs. Burrows seem
1850 THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 57

very quiet and unpretending—straightforward folks desirous of
doing their best for the people among whom they are placed.

One touch must not be allowed to pass unnoticed in
his appreciation of the missionaries’ unstudied welcome to
the belated travellers, whose proper host was unable to take
them in :—* tea unlimited and a blazing fire, together with
a very iice cat.”

By July 12, midwinter of course in the southern hemi-
sphere, they had rounded the Horn, and Huxley writes from
that most desolate of British possessions, the Falkland
Islands :—

I have great hopes of being able to send a letter to you, via
California, even from this remote corner of the world. It is the
Ultima Thule and no mistake. Fancy two good-sized islands
with undulated surface and sometimes elevated hills, but with-
out tree or bush as tall as a man. When we arrived the 8th
inst. the barren uniformity was rendered still more obvious by
the deep coating of snow which enveloped everything. How
can I describe to you “ Stanley,” the sole town, metropolis, and
seat of government? It consists of a lot of black, low, weather-
board houses scattered along the hillsides which rise round the
harbour. One barnlike place is Government House, another the
pensioners’ barracks, rendered imposing by four field-pieces in
front; others smaller are the residences of the colonel, surgeon,
etc. In one particularly black and unpromising-looking house
lives a Mrs. Sullivan (sic) the wife of Captain Sullivan,* who
surveyed these islands, and has settled out here. I asked myself
if I could have had the heart to bring you to such a desolate
place, and myself said “ No.” However, I believe she is very
happy with her children. Sullivan is a fine energetic man, so
I suppose if she loves him, well and good, and fancies (is she
not a silly woman?) that she has her reward. Mrs. Stanley
has gone to stay with them while the ship remains here, and I

 

* Captain Sullivan, who sailed with Darwin in the Beagle, and
served with great distinction in command of the southern division of
the fleet in the battle of Obligado (Plate River), had surveyed the Falk-
land Islands many years before his temporary settlement there. Dur-
ing the Crimean War he was surveying officer to the Baltic fleet, and
afterwards naval adviser to the Board of Trade. He was afterwards
Admiral and K.C.B.
58 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV

think I shall go and look them up under pretence of making a
call. They say that the present winter is far more savage than
the generality of Falkland Island winters, and it had need be,
for I never felt anything so bitterly cold in my life. The ther-
mometer has been down below 22, and shallow parts of the har-
bour even have frozen. Nothing to be done ashore. My rifle
lies idle in its case; no chance of a shot at a bull, and one has to
go away 20 miles to get hold even of the upland geese and
rabbits. The only thing to be done is to eat, eat, eat, and the
cold assists one wonderfully in that operation. You consume
a pound or so of beefsteaks at breakfast and then walk the
deck for an appetite at dinner, when you take another pound or
two of beef or a goose, or some such trifle. By four o’clock it
is dark night, and as it is too cold to read the only thing to be
done is to vanish under blankets as soon as possible and take
twelve or fourteen hours’ sleep.

Mrs. Stanley’s Bougirigards,* which I have taken under my
care during the cold weather, admire this sort of thing exceed-
ingly and thrive under it, so I suppose I ought to.

The journey from New Zealand here has been upon the
whole favourable; no gales—quite the reverse—but light vari-
able winds and calms. The latter part of our voyage has, how-
ever, been very cold, snow falling in abundance, and the ice
forming great stalactites about our bows. We have seen no
icebergs nor anything remarkable. From all I can learn it is
most probable that we shall leave in about a week and shall go
direct to England without stopping at any other port. I wish
it may be so. I want to get home and look about me.

We have had news up to the end of March. There is noth-
ing of any importance going on. By the Navy list for April I
see that I shall be as nearly as possible in the middle of those
of my own rank, z.e. I shall have about 150 above and as many
below me. This is about what I ought to expect in the ordinary
run of promotion in eight years, and I have served four and a
half of that time. I don’t expect much in the way of promotion,
especially in these economic times; but I do not fear that I
shall be able to keep me in England for at least a year after
our arrival, in order to publish my papers. The Admiralty
have quite recently published a distinct declaration that they
will consider scientific attainments as a claim to their notice,
and I expect to be the first to remind them of their promise, and

 

* The Australian love-bird; a small parrakeet.
1850 THE LAST OF THE FALKLANDS 59

I will take care to have the reminder so backed that they must
and shall take note of it. Even if they will not promote me at
once, it would answer our purpose to have an appointment to
some ship on the home station for a short time.

The last of the Falklands was seen on July 25; the
line was crossed in thirty-six days; another month, and
water running short, it was found necessary to put in at
the Azores for a week. Leaving Fayal on October 5, the
Rattlesnake reached Plymouth on the 23rd, but next day
proceeded to Chatham, which, thanks to baffling winds,
was not reached till November 9, when the ship was paid
off.
CHAPTER V
1850-1851

In the Huxley Lecture for 1898 (Times, October 4) Pro-
fessor Virchow takes occasion to speak of the effect of
Huxley’s service in the Rattlesnake upon his intellectual de-
velopment :—

When Huxley himself left Charing Cross Hospital in 1846,
he had enjoyed a rich measure of instruction in anatomy and
physiology. Thus trained, he took the post of naval surgeon,
and by the time that he returned, four years later, he had
become a perfect zoologist and a keen-sighted ethnologist. How
this was possible any one will readily understand who knows
from his own experience how great the value of personal ob-
servation is for the development of independent and unpreju-
diced thought. For a young man who, besides collecting a rich
treasure of positive knowledge, has practised dissection and
the exercise of a critical judgment, a long sea-voyage and a
peaceful sojourn among entirely new surroundings afford an in-
valuable opportunity for original work and deep reflection.
Freed from the formalism of the schools, thrown upon the use
of his own intellect, compelled to test each single object as
regards properties and history, he soon forgets the dogmas of
the prevailing system and becomes, first a sceptic, and then an
investigator. This change, which did not fail to affect Huxley,
and through which arose that Huxley whom we commemorate
to-day, is no unknown occurrence to one who is acquainted with
the history, not only of knowledge, but also of scholars.

But he was not destined to find his subsequent path’
easy. Once in England, indeed, he did not lose any time.
No sooner had the Rattlesnake touched at Plymouth than

60.
1850 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS OF THE VOYAGE 61

Commander Yule, who had succeeded Captain Stanley in
the command of the ship, wrote to the head of the Naval
Medical Department stating the circumstances under which
Huxley’s zoological investigations had been undertaken, and
asking the sanction of the Admiralty for their publication.
The hydrographer, in sending the formal permission, says :—

But I have to add that their Lordships will not allow any
charge to be made upon the public funds towards the expense.
You will, however, further assure Mr. Huxley that any assist-
ance that can be supplied from this office shall be most cheer-
fully given to him, and that I heartily hope, from the capacity
and taste for scientific investigation for which you give him
credit, that he will produce a work alike creditable to himself,
to his late Captain, by whom he was selected for it, and to Her
Majesty’s service.

Personally, the hydrographer took a great interest in
science; but as for the department, Huxley somewhat bit-
terly interpreted the official meaning of this well-sounding
flourish to be made: “‘ Publish if you can, and give us credit
for granting every facility except the one means of pub-
lishing.”

Happily there was another way of publishing, if the
Admiralty would grant him time to arrange his papers and
superintend their publication. The Royal Society had at
their disposal an annual grant of money for the publication
of scientific works. If the Government would not con-
tribute directly to publish the researches made under their
auspices, the favourable reception which his preliminary
papers had met with led Huxley to hope that his greater
work would be undertaken by the Royal Society. If the
leading men of science attested the value of his work, the
Admiralty might be induced to let him stay in England with
the nominal appointment as assistant surgeon to H.M.S.
Fisguard at Woolwich, for “ particular service,” but with
leave of absence from the ship so that he could live and
pursue his avocations in London. There was a precedent
for this course in the case of Dr. Hooker, when he had to
work out the scientific results of the voyage of the Erebus
and Terror.
62 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. V

In this design he was fortified by his old Haslar friend,
Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Watt Reid, who wrote: “ They
cannot, and, I am sure, will not wish to stand in your way
at Whitehall.” Meanwhile, the first person, naturally, he
had thought of consulting was his old chief, Sir John
Richardson, who had great weight at the Admiralty, and to
him he wrote the following letter before leaving Plymouth.

To Sir Joun RicHaRDSON
Oct. 31, 1850.

I regret very much that in consequence of our being ordered
to be paid off at Chatham, instead of Portsmouth, as we always
hoped and expected, I shall be unable to submit to your inspec-
tion the zoological notes and drawings which I have made dur-
ing our cruise. They are somewhat numerous (over 180 sheets
of drawings), and I hope not altogether valueless, since they
have been made with as great care and attention as I am master
of—and with a microscope, such as has rarely, if ever, made a
voyage round the world before. A further reason for indulging
in this hope consists in the fact that they relate for the most
part to animals hitherto very little known, whether from their
rarity or from their perishable nature, and that they bear upon
many curious physiological points.

I may thus classify and enumerate the observations I have
made—

1. Upon the organs of hearing and circulation in some of the
transparent Crustacea, and upon the structure of certain of the
lower forms of Crustacea.

2. Upon some very remarkable new forms of Annelids, and
especially upon the much contested genus Sagitta, which I have
evidence to show is neither a Mollusc nor an Epizoon, but an
Annelid.

3. Upon the nervous system of certain Mollusca hitherto im-
perfectly described—upon what appears to me to be an urinary
organ in many of them—and upon the structure of Firola and
Atlanta, of which latter I have a pretty complete account.

4. Upon two perfectly new (ordinally new) species of
Ascidians.

5. Upon Pyrosoma and Salpa. The former has never been
described (I think) since Savigny’s time, and he had only speci-
mens preserved in spirits. I have a great deal to add and alter.

 
1850 HIS SCIENTIFIC WORK 63

Then as to Salpa, whose mode of generation has always been
so great a bone of contention, I have a long series of observa-
tions and drawings which I have verified over and over again,
and which, if correct, must give rise to quite a new view of the
matter. I may mention as an interesting fact that in these
animals so low in the scale I have found a placental circulation,
rudimentary indeed, but nevertheless a perfect model on a small
scale of that which takes place in the mammalia.

6. I have the materials for a monograph upon the Acalephe
and Hydrostatic Acalephe. I have examined very carefully more
than forty genera of these animals—many of them very rare, and
some quite new. But I paid comparatively little attention to the
collection of new species, caring rather to come to some clear
and definite idea as to the structure of those which had indeed
been long known, but very little understood. Unfortunately for
science, but fortunately for me, this method appears to have been
somewhat novel with observers of these animals, and conse-
quently everywhere new and remarkable facts were to be had
for the picking up.

It is not to be supposed that one could occupy one’s self with
the animals for so long without coming to some conclusion as to
their systematic place, however subsidiary to observation such
considerations must always be regarded, and it seems to me
(although on such matters I can of course only speak with
the greatest hesitation) that just as the more minute and careful
observations made upon the old “ Vermes” of Linnzus neces-
sitated the breaking up of that class into several very distinct
classes, so more careful investigation requires the breaking up
of Cuvier’s “ Radiata” (which succeeded the “ Vermes” as a
sort of zoological lumber-room) into several very distinct and
well-defined new classes, of which the Acalephe, Hydrostatic
Acalephe, actinoid and hydroid polypes, will form one. But I
fear that I am trespassing beyond the limits of a letter. I have
only wished to state what I have done in order that you may
judge concerning the propriety or impropriety of what I propose
todo. And I trust that you will not think that I am presuming
too much upon your kindness if I take the liberty of thus asking
your advice about my own affairs. In truth, I feel in a manner
responsible to you for the use of the appointment you procured
for me; and furthermore, Capt. Stanley’s unfortunate decease
has left the interests of the ship in general and my own in par-
ticular without a representative.

Can you inform me, then, what chance I should have either
64 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. V

(1) of procuring a grant for the publication of my papers, OF
(2) should that not be feasible, to obtain a nominal appointment
(say to the Fisguard at Woolwich, as in Dr. Hooker’s case) for
such time as might be requisite for the publication of my papers
and drawings in some other way?

I shall see Professors Owen and Forbes when I reach Lon-
don, and I have a letter of introduction to Sir John Herschel
(who has, I hear, a great penchant for the towing-net). Sup-
posing I could do so, would it be of any use to procure recom-
mendations from them that my papers should be published?

[(Half-erased) To Sir F. Beaufort also I have a letter.]
Would it not be proper also to write to Sir W. Burnett acquaint-
ing him with my views, and requesting his acquiescence and
assistance ?

Begging an answer at your earliest convenience, addressed
either to the Rattlesnake or to my brother, I remain, your
obedient servant, T. H. Hux.ey.

41 North Bank.

He received a most friendly reply from ‘“ Old John.”
He was willing to do all in his power to help, but could
recommend Government aid better if he had seen the draw-
ings. Meantime a certificate should be got from Forbes,
the best man in this particular branch of science, backed, if
possible, by Owen. He would speak to some officials him-
self, and give Huxley introductions to others, and if he
could get up to town, would try to see the collections and
add his name to the certificate.

Both Forbes and Owen were ready-to help. The former
wrote a most encouraging letter, singling out the character-
istics which gave a peculiar value to these papers :—

I have had very great pleasure in examining your drawings
of animals observed during the voyage of the Rattlesnake, and
have also fully availed myself of the opportunity of going over
the collections made during the course of the survey upon which
you have been engaged. I can say without exaggeration that
more important or more complete zoological researches have
never been conducted during any voyage of discovery in the
southern hemisphere. The course you have taken of directing
your attention mainly to impreservable creatures, and to those
orders of the animal kingdom respecting which we have least
1850 CHARACTER OF HIS SCIENTIFIC WORK 65

information, and the care and skill with which you have con-
ducted elaborate dissections and microscopic examinations of
the curious creatures you were so fortunate as to meet with,
necessarily gives a peculiar and unique character to your re-
searches, since thereby they fill up gaps in our knowledge of
the animal kingdom. This is the more important, since such
researches have been almost always neglected during voyages of
discovery. The value of some of your notes was publicly ac-
knowledged during your absence, when your memoir on the
structure of the Medusae, communicated to the Royal Society,
was singled out for publication in the Philosophical Transac-
tions. It would be a very great loss to science if the mass of
new matter and fresh observation which you have accumulated
were not to be worked out and fully published, as well as an
injustice to the merits of the expedition in which you have
served.

The latter offered to write to the Admiralty on his behalf,
giving the weight of his name to the suggestion that the
work to be done would take at least twelve months, and that
therefore his appointment to the Fisguard should not be
limited to any less period. “ They might be disposed,”
wrote Huxley to him, “ to cut anything I request down—on
principle.” Moreover, Owen, Forbes, Bell, and Sharpey, all
members of the Committee of Recommendation of the
Royal Society, had expressed themselves so favourably to
his views that in his application he was able to relieve the
economic scruples of the Admiralty by telling them that he
had a means of publishing his papers through the Royal
Society.

The result of his application, thus backed, was that he
obtained his appointment on November 29. It was for six
months, subject to extension if he were able to report satis-
factory progress with his work.

A long letter to his sister, now settled in Tennessee,
gives a good idea of his aims and hopes at this time.

41 NortTH BANK, REGENT’S PARK,
Nov, 21, 1850.
My pvearest Lizz1e—We have been at home now nearly
three weeks, and I have been a free man again twelve days.
Her Majesty’s ships have been paid off on the 9th of this month.
66 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. V

Properly speaking, indeed, we have been at home longer, for
we touched at Plymouth and trod English ground and saw Eng-
lish green fields on the 23rd of October, but we were allowed
to remain only twenty-four hours, and to my great disgust were
ordered round to Chatham to be paid off. The ill-luck which
had made our voyage homeward so long (we sailed from Syd-
ney on the 2nd of May) pursued us in the Channel, and we did
not reach Chatham until the 2nd of November; and what do you
think was one of the first things I did when we reached Plym-
outh? Wrote to Eliza K. asking news of a certain naughty
sister of mine, from whom IJ had never heard a word since we
had been away—and if perchance there should be any letter,
begging her to forward it ‘immediately to Chatham. And so,
when at length we got there, I found your kind long letter had
been in England some six’ or seven months; but hearing of the
likelihood of our return, they had very judiciously not sent it
to me.

Your letter, my poor Lizzie, justifies many a heartache I
have had when thinking over your lot, knowing, as I well do,
what emigrant life is in climates less trying than that in which
you live. I have seen a good deal of bush life in Australia, and
it enables me fully to sympathise with and enter into every
particular you tell me—from the baking and boiling and pigs
squealing, down to that ferocious landshark Mrs. Gunther, of
whose class Australia will furnish fine specimens. Had I been
at home, too, I could have enlightened the good folks as to the
means of carriage in the colonies, and could have told them
that the two or twenty thousand miles over sea is the smallest
part of the difficulty and expense of getting anything to people
living inland; as it is, I think I have done some good in the
matter; their meaning was good but their discretion small. But
the obtuseness of English in general about anything out of the
immediate circle of their own experience is something won-
derful.

I had heard here and there fractional accounts of your
doings from Eliza K. and my mother—not of the most cheery
description—and therefore I was right glad to get your letter,
which, though it tells of sorrow and misfortune enough and to
spare, yet shows me that the brave woman’s heart you always
had, my dearest Lizzie, is still yours, and that you have always
had the warm love of those immediately around you, and now,
as the doctor’s letter tells us, you have one more source of joy
and happiness, and this new joy must efface the bitterness—
1850 LETTER TO HIS SISTER 67

I do not say the memory, knowing how impossible that would
be—of your great loss.* God knows, my dear sister, I could
feel for you. It was as if I could see again a shadow of the
great sorrow that fell upon us all years ago.

Nothing can bind me more closely to your children than I
am already, but if the christening be not all over you must let
me be godfather; and though I fear I am too much of a heretic
to promise to bring him up a good son of the church—yet. should
ever the position which you prophesy, and of which I have an
“Ahnung” (though I don’t tell that to anybody but Nettie),
be mine, he shall (if you will trust him to me) be cared for
as few sons are., As things stand, I am talking half nonsense,
but I mean it—and you know of otd, for good and for evil, my
tenacity of purpose.

Now, as to my own sea. am not married. Prudently,
at any rate, but whether wisely or foolishly I am not quite sure
yet, Nettie and I resolved to have nothing to do with matrimony
for the present. In truth, though our marriage was my great
wish on many accounts, yet I feared to bring upon her the con-
sequences that might have occurred had anything happened to
me within the next few years. We had a sad parting enough,
and as is usually the case with me, time, instead of alleviating,
renders more disagreeable our separation. I have a woman’s
element in me. I hate the incessant struggle and toil to cut one
another’s throat among us men, and I long to be able to meet
with some one in whom I can place implicit confidence, whose
judgment I can respect, and yet who will not laugh at my most
foolish weaknesses, and in whose love I can forget all care. All
these conditions I have fulfilled in Nettie. With a strong natu-
ral intelligence, and knowledge enough to understand and sym-
pathise with my aims, with firmness of a man, when necessary,
she combines the gentleness of a very woman and the honest
simplicity of a child, and then she loves me well, as well as I
love her, and you know I love but few—in the real meaning of
the word, perhaps, but two—she and you. And now she is
away, and you are away. The worst of it is I have no ambition,
except as means to an end, and that end is the possession of a
sufficient income to marry upon. I assure you I would not give
two straws for all the honours and titles in the world. A worker
I must always be—it is my nature—but if I had £400 a year I
would never let my name appear to anything I did or shall ever

 

* The death of her little daughter Jessie.
68 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. V

do. It would be glorious to be a voice working in secret and
free from all those personal motives that have actuated the best.
But, unfortunately, one is not a “vox et preterea nihil,” but
with a considerable corporality attached which requires feeding,
and so while my inner’ man is continually indulging in these
anchorite reflections, the outer is sedulously elbowing and push-
ing as if he dreamed of nothing but gold medals and pro-
fessors’ caps.

I am getting on very well—better I fear than I deserve.
One of my papers was published in 1849 in the Philosophical
Transactions, another in the Zoological Transactions, and some
more may be published in the Linnean if I like—but I think I
shall not like. Then I have worked pretty hard, and brought
home a considerable amount of drawings and notes about new
or rare animals, all particularly nasty slimy things, and they
will most likely be published as a separate work by the Royal
Society.

Owens, Forbes, Bell, and Sharpey (the doctor will tell you
of what weight these names are) are all members of the com-
mittee which disposes of the money, and are all strongly in
favour of my “valuable researches” (cock-a-doodle-doo!!)
being published by the Society. From various circumstances I
have taken a better position than I could have expected among
these grandees, and I find them all immensely civil and ready to
help me on, tooth and nail, particularly Prof. Forbes, who is a
right good fellow, and has taken a great deal of trouble on my
behalf. Owen volunteered to write to the “First Lord” on
my behalf, and did so. Sharpey, when I saw him, reminded
me, as he always does, of my great contest with Stocks * (do
you remember throwing the shoe?), and promised me all the
assistance in his power. Prof. Bell, who is secretary to the
Royal, and has great influence, promised to help me in every
way, and asked me to dine with him and meet a lot of nobs.
I take all these things quite as a matter of course, but am
all the while considerably astonished. The other day I dined
at the Geological Club and met Lyell, Murchison, de la B[eche]
Horner, and a lot more, and last evening I dined with a whole
lot of literary and scientific people.

Owen was, in my estimation, great, from the fact of
smoking his cigar and singing his song like a brick.

I tell you all these things to show you clearly how I sting.

 

* See p. I9.
1850 HIS AIMS AND PROSPECTS 69

I am under no one’s patronage, nor do I ever mean to be. I
have never asked, and I never will ask, any man for his help
from mere motives of friendship. If any man thinks that I am
capable of forwarding the great cause in ever so small a way,
let him just give me a helping hand and I will thank him, but
if not, he is doing both himself and me harm in offering it, and
if it should be necessary for me to find public expression to my
thoughts on any matter, I have clearly made up my mind to
do so, without allowing myself to be influenced by hope of gain
or weight of authority.

~ There are many nice people in this world for whose praise or
blame I care not a whistle. I don’t know and I don’t care whether
I shall ever be what is called a great man. I will leave my mark

somewhere, and it shall be clear and distinct |T. H. H., his mark.

and ‘free from the abominable blur of cant, humbug, and self-
seeking which surrounds everything in this present world—that
is to say, supposing that I am not already unconsciously tainted
myself, a result of which I have a morbid dread. I am perhaps
overrating myself. You must put me in mind of my better
self, as you did in your last letter, when you write.

But I must come to the close of my epistle, as I have one to
enclose from my mother. My next shall be longer, and I hope I
shall then be able to tell you what I am doing. At any rate I
hope to be in England for twelve months.

I am very much ashamed of myself for not having written to
you for so long—open confession is good for the soul, they say,
and I will honestly confess that I was half puzzled, half piqued,
and altogether sulky at your not having answered my last letter
containing my love story, of which I wrote you an account be-
fore anybody. You must not suppose my affection was a bit the
less because I was half angry. Nettie, who knows you well,
could tell you otherwise. Indeed, now that I know all, I con-
sider myself a great brute, and I will give you leave, if you will
but write soon, to scold me as much as you like. All the family
are well. My father is the only one who is much altered, and
that in mind and strength, not in bodily health, which is very
good. My mother has lost her front teeth, but is otherwise just
the same amusing, nervous, distressingly active old lady she
always was.

Our cruisers visit New Orleans sometimes, and if ever I am
on the West India station, who knows, I may take a run up to
see you all. Kindest love to the children. Tell Florry that I
70 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. V

could not get her the bird with the long tail, but that some day
I will send her some pictures of copper-coloured gentlemen with
great big wigs and no trousers, and tell her her old uncle loves
her very much and never forgets her nor anybody else.

God bless you, dearest Lizzie. Write soon.— Ever your
brother, Tom.

Thus within a month of landing in England, Huxley
had secured his footing in the scientific world. He was
freed for the time from the more irksome part of his pro-
fession; his service in the navy had become a stepping-
stone to the pursuits in which his heart really was. He had
long been half in despair over the work which he had sent
out like the dove from the ark, if haply it might find him
some standing ground in the world; no news of it had
reached him till he was about to start on his homeward
voyage, but he returned to discover that at a single stroke
it had placed him in the front rank of naturalists.

41 NorTH BANK, REGENT’s PARK,
Jan. 3, 1851.

My progress (he writes),* must necessarily be slow and un-
certain. I cannot see two steps forwards. Much depends upon
myself, much upon circumstances. Hitherto all has gone as well
as I could wish. I have gained each object that I had set before
myself—that is, I have my shore appointment, I have found a
means of publishing what I have done creditably, and I have

_continued to come into communication with some of the first
men in England in my department of science. But, as I have
found to be the case in all things that are gained, from money;
to friendship, it is not so much getting as keeping. It is by no
means difficult if you are decently introduced, have tolerably
agreeable manners, and some smattering of science, to take a
position among these folks, but it is a mighty different affair to
keep it and turn it to account. Not like the man who, at the
Enchanted Castle, had the courage to blow the horn but not to
draw the sword, and was consequently shot forth from the
mouth of the cave by which he entered with most ignominious
haste,—one must be ready to fight immediately after one’s
arrival has been announced, or be blown into oblivion.

 

* When not otherwise specified, the extracts in this chapter are from
letters to his future wife.
1851 EARLY FRIENDS 71

I have drawn the sword, but whether I am in truth to beat
the giants and deliver my princess from the enchanted castle is
yet to be'seen.

For several months he lived with his brother George and
his wife at North Bank, St. John’s Wood (the house was
pulled down in 1896 for the Great Central Railway), but the
surroundings were too easy, and not conducive to hard
work.

I must, I fear, emigrate to some “two pair back,” which
shall have the feel and manner of a workshop, where I can leave
my books about and dissect a marine nastiness if I think fit,
sallying forth to meet the world when necessary, and giving it
no more time than necessary. If it were not for a fear that P.
would take it unkindly I should go at once. I must summon up
moral courage somehow (how difficult when it is to pain those|
we love!) and trust to her good sense for the rest.

And later :—

... [have been very busy looking about for the last two
days, and have been in fifty houses if I have been in one. I
want some place with a decent address, cheap, and beyond all
things, clean. The dirty holes that some of these lodgings are!
such tawdry finery and such servants, with their faces and hands
not merely dirty, but absolutely macadamised. And they all
make this confounded great Exhibition a plea for about doubling
the rent.

So in April 1851 he removed to lodgings hard by, at 1
Hanover Place, Clarence Gate, Regent’s Park (“ which
sounds grand, but means nothing more than a sitting-room
and bedroom in a small house’’), then to St. Anne’s Gar-
dens, and after that to Upper York Place, while making
a second home with his brother. His other great friends
already in London were the Fannings, who had left Aus-
tralia a few months before his own return. In the scientific
world he spon made acquaintance with most of the leading
men, and began a close friendship with Edward Forbes, with
George Busk (then surgeon to H.M.S. Dreadnought at
Greenwich, afterwards President of the College of Sur-
geons) and his accomplished wife, and later in the year
with both Hooker and Tyndall. The Busks, indeed, showed

A
72 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. V

him the greatest kindness throughout this period of strug-
gle, and the sympathy and intellectual stimulus he received
from their society were of the utmost help. They were al-
ways ready to welcome him at Greenwich, and he not only
often ran down there for a week-end, but would spend part
of his vacations with them at Lowestoft or Tenby, where
naturalists could find plenty of occupation.

But from a worldly point of view, it was too soon clear
that science was sadly unprofitable. There seemed no
speedy prospect of making enough to marry on. As early
as March 1851 he writes :-—

The difficulties of obtaining a decent position in England in
anything like a reasonable time seem to me greater than ever
they were. To attempt to live by any scientific pursuit is a
farce. Nothing but what is absolutely practical will go down
in England. A man of science may earn great distinction, but
not bread. He will get invitations to all sorts of dinners and
conversaziones, but not enough income to pay his cab fare. A
man of science in these times is like an Esau who sells his birth-
right for a mess of pottage. Again, if one turns to practice,
it is still the old story—wait; and only after years of working
like a galley-slave and intriguing like a courtier is there any
chance of getting a decent livelihood. I am not at all sure
if... it would not be the most prudent thing to stick by the
Service: there at any rate is certainty in health and in sickness.

Nevertheless he was mightily encouraged in the work of
bringing out his Rattlesnake papers by a notable success in
a quarter where he scarcely dared to hope for it. The
Royal Society had for some time set itself to become a body
of working men of science; to exclude for the future all
mere dilettanti, and to admit a limited number of men whose
work was such as to deserve recognition. Thanks to the
initiative of Forbes, he now found this recognition accorded
to him on the strength of his “ Medusa” paper. He writes
in February :—

The F.R.S. that you tell me you dream of being appended to
my name is nearer than one might think, to my no small sur-
prise. . . . I had no idea that it was at all within my reach, until
I found out the other day, talking with Mr. Bell, that my having
a paper in the Transactions was one of the best of qualifications.
1851 ELECTED F.R.S. 73

My friend Forbes, to whom I am so much indebted, has
taken the matter in hand for me, and I am told I am sure of
getting it this year or the next. I do not at all expect it this
year, as there are a great many candidates, far better men than
I. ... I shall think myself lucky if I get it next year. Don’t
say anything about the matter till I tell you... . As the old
proverb says, there is many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.

There were thirty-eight candidates; of these the Council
would select fifteen, and submit their names for election at a
general meeting of the Society. He was not yet twenty-six
years of age, and certainly the youngest and least known
of the competitors. Others probably had been up before—
possibly many times before; nevertheless, on this, his first
candidature, he was placed among the selected. The formal
election did not take place till June 5, but on a chance
visit to Forbes he heard the great news. The F.R.S. was a
formal attestation of the value of the work he had already
done; it was a token of success in the present, an augury
of greater success in the future. No wonder the news was
exciting.

To-day (he writes on April 14) I saw Forbes at the Museum
of Practical Geology, where I often drop in on him. “ Well,” he
said, “I am glad to be able to tell you you are all right for the
Royal Society; the selection was made on Friday night, and I
hear that you are one of the selected. I have not seen the list,
but my authority is so good that you may make yourself easy
about it.” I confess to having felt a little proud, though I
believe I spoke and looked as cool as a cucumber. There were
thirty-eight candidates, out of whom only fifteen could be
selected, and I fear that they have left behind much better men
than I. I shall not feel certain about the matter until I receive
some official announcement. I almost wish that until then I
had heard nothing about it. Notwithstanding all my cucumbery
appearance, I will confess to you that I could not sit down and
read to-day after the news. I wandered hither and thither rest-
lessly half over London. . . . Whether I have it or not, I can
say one thing, that I have left my case to stand on its own
strength; I have not asked for a single vote, and there are not
on my certificate half the names that there might be. If it be
mine, it is by no intrigue.
74 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. V

Again, on May 4:—

I am twenty-six to-day ... and it reminds me that I have
left you now a whole year. It is perfectly frightful to think how
the time is slipping by, and yet seems to bring us no nearer.

What have I done with my twenty-sixth year? Six months
were spent at sea, and therefore may be considered as so much
lost; and six months I have had in England. That, I may say,
has not been thrown away altogether without fruit. I have read
a good deal and I have written a good deal. I have made some
valuable friends, and have found my work more highly esti-
mated than I had ventured to hope. I must tell you something,
because it will please you, even if you think me vain for
doing so.

I was talking to Professor Owen yesterday, and said that I
imagined I had to thank him in great measure for the honour of
the F.R.S. “No,” he said, “ you have nothing to thank but the
goodness of your own work.” For about ten minutes I felt
rather proud of that speech, and shall keep it by me whenever
I feel inclined to think myself a fool, and that I have a most
mistaken notion of my own capacities. The only use of honours
is as an antidote to such fits of the “ blue devils.” Of one thing,
however, which is by no means so agreeable, my opportunities
for seeing the scientific world in England force upon me every
day a stronger and stronger conviction. It is that there is no
chance of living by science. I have been loth to believe it, but
it is so. There are not more than four or five offices in London
which a Zoologist or Comparative Anatomist can hold and live
by. Owen, ‘who has a European reputation, second only to that
of Cuvier, gets as Hunterian Professor £300 a year! which is
less than the salary of many a bank clerk. My friend Forbes,
who is a highly distinguished and a very able man, gets the
same from his office of Paleontologist to the Geological Survey
of Great Britain. Now, these are first-rate men—men who have
been at work for years laboriously toiling upward—men whose
abilities, had they turned them into the many channels of money-
making, must have made large fortunes. But the beauty of
Nature and the pursuit of Truth allured them into a nobler life
—and this is the result. . . . In literature a man may write for
magazines and reviews, and so support himself; but not so in
science. I could get anything I write into any of the journals
or any of the Transactions, but I know no means of thereby
earning five shillings. A man who chooses a life of science
1851 POSITION IN THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 75

chooses not a life of poverty, but, so far as I can see, a life of
nothing, and the art of living upon nothing at all has yet to be
discovered. You will naturally think, then, ‘“‘ Why persevere
in so hopeless a course?” At present I cannot help myself. For
my own credit, for the sake of gratifying those who have hith-
erto helped me on—nay, for the sake of truth and science itself,
I must work out fairly and fully complete what I have begun.
And when that is done, I will courageously and cheerfully turn
my back upon all my old aspirations. The world is wide, and
there is everywhere room for honesty of purpose and earnest
endeavour. Had I failed in attaining my wishes from an ovér-
weening self-confidence,—had I found that the obstacles after
all lay within myself—I should have bitterly despised myselt,
and, worst of all, I should have felt that you had just ground
of complaint.

So far as the acknowledgment of the value of what I have
done is concerned, I have succeeded beyond my expectations,
and if I have failed on the other side of the question, I cannot
blame myself. It is the world's fault and not mine.

A few months more, and he was able to report another
and still more unexpected testimony to the value of his
work—another encouragement to persevere in the difficult
pursuit of a scientific life. He found himself treated as an
equal by men of established reputation; and the first-fruits
of his work ranked on a level with the maturer efforts of
veterans in science. He was within an ace of receiving the
Royal Medal, which was awarded him the following year.
Of this, he writes :—

November 7, 1851.—I have at last tasted what it is to mingle
with my fellows—to take my place in that society for which
nature has fitted me, and whether the draught has been a poison
which has heated my veins or true nectar from the gods, life-
giving, I know not, but I can no longer rest where I once could
have rested. If I could find within myself that mere personal
ambition, the desire of fame, present or posthumous, had any-
thing to do with this restlessness, I would root it out. But in
those moments of self-questioning, when one does not lie even
to oneself, I feel that I can say it is not so—that the real pleas-
ure, the true sphere, lies in the feeling of self-development—in
the sense of power and of growing oneness with the great spirit
of abstract truth.
76 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. V

Do you understand this? I know you do; our old oneness of
feeling will not desert us here... .

To-day a most unexpected occurrence came to my know-
ledge. I must tell you that the Queen places at the disposal of
the Royal Society once a year a valuable gold medal to be given
to the author of the best paper upon either a physical, chemical,
or anatomical or physiological subject. One of these branches
of science is chosen by the Royal Society for each year, and
therefore for any given subject—say anatomy and physiology;
it becomes a triennial prize, and is given to the best memoir in
the Transactions for three years.

It happens that the Royal Medal, as it is called, is this year
given in Anatomy and Physiology. I had no idea that I had the
least chance of getting it, and made no effort to do so. But I
heard this morning from a member of the Council that the
award was made yesterday, and that I was within an ace of
getting it. Newport, a man of high standing in the scientific
world, and myself were the two between whom the choice rested,
and eventually it was given to him, on account of his having a
greater bulk of matter in his papers, so evenly did the balance
swing. Had I only had the least idea that I should be selected
they should have had enough and to spare from me. However,
I do not grudge Newport his medal; he is a good and a worthy
competitor, old enough to be my father, and has long had a
high reputation. Except for its practical value as a means of
getting a position I care little enough for the medal. What I
do care for is the justification which the being marked in this
position gives to the course I have taken. Obstinate and self-
willed as J am... there are times when grave doubts over-
shadow my mind, and then such testimony as this restores my
self-confidence.

To let you know the full force of what I have been saying,
I must tell you that this “ Royal Medal” is what such men as
Owen and Faraday are glad to get, and is indeed one of the
highest honours in England.

To-day I had the great pleasure of meeting my old friend Sir
John Richardson (to whom I was mainly indebted for my ap-
pointment in the Rattlesnake). Since I left England he has
married a third wife, and has taken a hand in joining in search
of Franklin (which was more dreadful?), like an old hero as
he is; but not a feather of him is altered, and he is as grey, as
really kind, and as seemingly abrupt and grim, as ever he was.
Such a fine old polar bear!
CHAPTER VI
1851-1854

THE course pursued by the Government in the matter of
Huxley’s papers is curious and instructive. The Admiralty
minute of 1849 had promised either money assistance for
publishing or speedy promotion as an encouragement to
scientific research in the Navy, especially by the medical
officers. On leave to publish the scientific results of the
expedition being asked for, the Department forestalled any
request for monetary aid by an intimation that none would
be given. Strong representations, however, from the lead-
ing scientific authorities induced them to grant the appoint-
ment to the Fisguard for six months.

The sequel shows how the departmental representatives
of science did their best for science in Huxley’s case, so far
as in their power lay :—

dango —The other day I received an intimation that
my pres was required at Somerset House. I rather expected
the mandate, as six months’ leave was up. Sir William was
very civil, and told me that the Commander of the Fisguard had
applied to the Admiralty to know what was to be done with me,
as my leave had expired. “ Now,” said he, “go to Forrest ” (his
secretary), “ write a letter to me, stating what you want, and I
will get it done for you.” So away I went and applied for an
indefinite amount of leave, on condition of reporting the
progress of my work every six months, and as I suppose I shall
get it, I feel quite easy on that head.

In May 1851 he applied to the Royal Society for help
from the Government Grant towards publishing the bulk
of his work as a whole, for much of its value would be lost

77
78 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VI
if scattered fragmentarily among the Transactions of vari-
ous learned societies. Personally, the members of the com-
mittee were very willing to make the grant, but on further
consideration it appeared that the money was.to be applied
for promoting research, not for assisting publication; and
moreover, it was desirable not to establish a precedent for
saddling the funds at the disposal of the Society with all
the publications which it was the clear duty of the Govern-
ment to undertake. On this ground the application was
refused, but at the same time it was resolved that the Gov-
ernment be formally asked to give the necessary subvention
towards bringing out these valuable papers.

A similar resolution was passed at the Ipswich meeting
of the British Association in July 1851, and at a meeting of
its Council in March 1852 the President declared himself
ready to carry it into effect by asking the Treasury for the
needful £300. But at the July meeting he could only re-
port a non possumus answer for the current year (1852) from
the Government, and a resolution was passed recommend-
ing that application on the subject be renewed by the British
Association in the following year.

Meanwhile, weary of official delay, Huxley had con-
ceived the idea of writing direct to the Duke of Northum-
berland, then First Lord of the Admiralty, whom he knew
to take an interest in scientific research. At the same time
he stirred Lord Rosse, the President of the Royal Society,
to repeat his application to the Treasury. Although the
Admiralty in April 1852 again refused money help, and bade
him apply to the Royal Society for a portion of the Govern-
ment Grant (which the latter had already refused him), the
Hydrographer was directed to make inquiries as to the pro-
priety of granting him an extension of leave. To his ques-
tion asking the exact amount of time still required for finish-
ing the work of publication, Huxley returned what he
described as a “savage reply,” that his experience of en-
gravers led him to think that the plates could be published
in eight or nine months from the receipt of a grant; that
he had reason to believe this grant might soon be promised,
but that the long delay was solely due to the remissness
1852-3 TREASURY AND ADMIRALTY 79

of those whose duty it was to represent his claims to the
Government; and finally, that he must ask for a year’s ex-
tension of leave.

For these expressions his conscience smote him when,
on June 12, at a soirée of the Royal Society, Lord Rosse
took him aside and informed him that he had seen Sir C.
Trevelyan, the Under Secretary to the Treasury, who said
there would be no difficulty in the matter if it were properly
laid before the Prime Minister, Lord Derby. To Lord
Derby therefore he went, and was told that Mr. Huxley
should go to the Treasury and arrange matters in person
with Trevelyan. At the same time the indignant tone of
his letter to the Hydrographer seemed to have done good;
he was invited to explain matters in person, and was granted
the leave he asked for.

Everything now seemed to point to a speedy solution of
his difficulties. The promise of a grant, of course, did
nothing immediate, but assured him a good position, and
settled all the scruples of the Admiralty with regard to time.
“You have no notion,” he writes, “ of the trouble the grant
has cost me. It died a natural death till I wrote to the
Duke in March, and brought it to life again. The more
opposition there is, the more determined I am to carry it
through.” But he was doomed to a worse disappointment
than before. Trevelyan received him very civilly, but had
heard nothing on the matter from Lord Derby, and accord-
ingly sent him in charge of his private secretary to see Lord
Derby’s secretary. The latter had seen no papers relating
to any such matter, and supposed Lord Derby had not
brought them from St. James’ Square, “ but promised to
write to me as soon as anything was learnt. I look upon it
as adjourned sine die.” Parliament breaking up immedi-
ately after gave the officials a good excuse for doing nothing
more.

When his year’s leave expired in June 1853, he wrote
the following letter to Sir William Burnett :—

As the period of my leave of absence from H.M.S. Fisguard

is about to expire, I have the honour to report that the duty on
which I have been engaged has been carried out, as far as my
80 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VI

means permit, by the publication of a “ Memoir upon the Homol-
ogies of the Cephalous Mollusca,” with four plates, which ap-
peared in the Philosophical Transactions for 1852 (published
1853), being the fourth memoir resulting from the observations
made during the voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake which has ap-
peared in these Transactions.

I have the pleasure of being able to add that the President
and Council of the Royal Society have considered these memoirs
worthy of being rewarded by the Royal Medal in Physiology
for 1852, which they did me the honour to confer in the Novem-
ber of that year.

I regret that no definite answer of any kind having as yet
been given to the strong representations which were made by the
Presidents both of the Royal Society and of the British Associa-
tion in 1852 to H.M. Government—representations which have
recently been earnestly repeated—in order to obtain a grant for
the purpose of publishing the remainder of these researches in
a separate form, I have been unable to proceed any further,
and I beg to request a renewal of my leave of absence from
H.M.S. Fisguard, so that if H.M. Government think fit to give
the grant applied for, it may be in my power to make use of it;
or that, should it be denied, I may be enabled to find some other
means of preventing the total loss of the labour of some years.

Hereupon he was allowed six months longer, but with
the intimation that no further leave would be granted. A
final application from the scientific authorities resulted in
fresh inquiries as to the length of time still required, and the
deadlock between the two departments of State being un-
changed, he replied to the same effect as before, but to no
purpose. His formal application for leave in January 1854
was met by orders to join the Jilustrious at Portsmouth.
He appealed to the Admiralty that this appointment might
be cancelled, giving a brief summary of the facts, and
pointing out that it was the inaction of the Treasury which
had absolutely prevented him from completing his work.

I would therefore respectfully submit that, under these cir-
cumstances, my request to be permitted to remain on half-pay
until the completion of the publication of the results of some
years’ toil is not wholly unreasonable. It is the only reward for
which I would ask their Lordships, and indeed, considering the
distinct pledge given in the minute to which I have referred,
1854 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS OF THE VOYAGE 81

to grant it would seem as nearly to concern their Lordships’
honour as my advantage.

The counter to this bold stroke was crushing, if not
convincing. He was ordered to join his ship immediately
under pain of being struck off the Navy list. He was of
course prepared for this ultimatum, and whether he could
manage to pursue science in England or might be compelled
to set up as a doctor in Sydney, he considered that he would
be better off than as an assistant surgeon in the Navy.
Accordingly he stood firm, and the threat was carried into
effect in March 1854. An unexpected consequence fol-
lowed. As long as he was in the navy, with direct claims
upon a Government department for assistance in publishing
his work, the Royal Society had not felt justified in allotting
him any part of the Government Grant. But now that he
had left the service, this objection was removed, and in June
1854 the sum of £300 was assigned for this purpose, while
the remainder of the expense was borne by the Ray Society,
which undertook the publication under the title of Oceanic
Hydrozoa. Thus he was able to record with some satisfac-
tion how he at last has got the grant, though indirectly,
from the Government, and considers it something of a tri-
umph for the principle of the family motto, fenar propositi.

While these fruitless negotiations with the Admiralty
were in progress, he had done a good deal, both in pub-
lishing what he could of his Rattlesnake work, and in trying
to secure some scientific appointment which would enable
him to carry out his two chief objects: the one his marriage,
the other the unhampered pursuit of science. In addition
to the papers sent home from the cruise—one on the Medu-
sae, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society for 1849, and one on the Animal of Trigonia, pub-
lished in the Proceedings of the Zoological Socicty for the
same year—he had reported to the Admiralty in June 1851
the publication of seven memoirs :—

1. On the Auditory Organs of the Crustacea. Published in
the Annals of Natural History.

2. On the Anatomy of the genus Tethea. Published in the
Annals of Natural History.
82 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VI

3. Report upon the Development of the Echinoderms. To
appear in the Annals for July.

4. On the Anatomy and Physiology of the Salpe, with four
plates. Read at the Royal Society, and to be published in the
next part of the Philosophical Transactions. :

5. On two Genera of Ascidians, Doliolum and Appen-
dicularia, with one plate. Read at the Royal Society, and
to be published in the next part of the Philosophical Trans-
actions.

6. On some peculiarities in the Circulation of the Mollusca.
Sent to M. Milne-Edwards, at his request, to be published in the
Annales des Sciences.

7. On the Generative Organs of the Physophoride and
Diphydz. Sent to Prof. Miiller of Berlin for publication in his
Archiv.

By the end of the year he had four more to report :—
1. On the Hydrostatic Acalephae; 2. On the genus Sagitta,
both published in the Report of the British Association for
1851; 3. On Lacinularia Socialis, a contribution to the
anatomy and physiology of the Rotifera, in the Transactions
of the Microscopical Society; 4. On Thalassicolla, a new
zoophyte, in the Annals of Natural History. Next year he
read before the British Association a paper entitled “ Re-
searches into the Structure of the Ascidians,” and a very
important one on the Morphology of the Cephalous Mol-
lusca, afterwards published in the Philosophical Transactions.
In addition he had prepared a great part of his longer work
for publication; out of twenty-four or twenty-five plates,
nineteen were ready for the engraver when he wrote his
appeal to the Duke of Northumberland. In this same year,
1852, he was also awarded the Royal Medal in Physiology
for the value of his contributions to the Philosophical Trans-
actions.

In 1853, besides seeing some of these papers through
the press, he published one on the existence of Cellulose in
the Tunic of Ascidians, read before the Microscopical So-
ciety, and two papers on the Structure of the Teeth; the
latter, of course, like a paper of the previous year on Echi-
nococcus, being distinct from the Rattlesnake work. The
greater work on Oceanic Hydrozoa, over which the battle
1851 SYDNEY AND TORONTO 83

of the grant in aid had been waged so long, did not see
the light until 1858, when his interest had been diverted
from these subjects, and to return to them was more a
burden than a pleasure.

In the second place, the years 1851-53, so full of profit-
less successes in pure science, and delusive hopes held out
by the Government, were marked by an equally unsuccess-
ful series of attempts to obtain a professorship. If a chair
of Natural History had been established, as he hoped, in
the projected university at Sydney, he would gladly have
stood for it. Sydney was a second home to him; he would
have been backed by the great influence of Macleay; and
in his eyes a naturalist could not desire a finer field for
his labours than the waters of Port Jackson. But this was
not to be, and the first chair he tried for was the newly-
instituted chair of Zoology at the University of Toronto.
The vacancy was advertised in the summer of 1851; the
pay of full £300 a year was enough to marry on; his friends
reassured him as to his capacity to fill the post, which,
moreover, did not debar him from the hope of returning
some day to fill a similar post in England.

1 EpWARD STREET, ST. Jonn’s Woop TERRACE,
July 29 [1851].

My pear HenFrey—I have been detained in town, or I hope
we should long since have had our projected excursion.

What do you think of my looking out for a Professorship of
Natural History at Toronto? Pay £350, with chances of extra
fees. I think that out there one might live comfortably upon
that sum—possibly even do the domestic and cultivate the Loves
and Graces as well as the Muses.

Seriously, however, I should like to know what you think of
it. The choice of getting anything over here without devoting
one’s self wholly to Mammon, seems to me very small. At least
it involves years of waiting.

Toronto is not very much out of the way, and the pay is
decent and would enable me to devote myself wholly to my
favourite pursuits. Were it in England, I could wish nothing
better; and, as it is, I think it would answer my purpose very
well for some years at any rate.

If they go fairly to work I think I shall have a very good
84 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VI

chance of being elected; but I am told that these matters are
often determined by petty intrigues.

 

 

 

Francis * and I looked for you everywhere at the Botanic
Gardens, and finding you were too wise to come, came here,
grieving your absence, and had an aesthetic “ Bier.”

 

He obtained a remarkably strong set of testimonials
from all the leading anatomists and physiologists in the
kingdom, as well as one from Milne-Edwards in Paris.

I have put together (he writes) twelve or fourteen testi-
monials from the first men. I will have no other.

His newly-obtained F.R.S. was a recommendation in
itself. So that he writes :—

 

* Dr. William Francis, one of the editors of the Philosophical Maga-
zine, and a member of the publishing firm of Taylor and Francis.
1851 DISAPPOINTMENTS ABROAD AND AT HOME 85

There are, I learn, several other candidates, but no one I fear
at all, if they only have fair play. There is no one of the others
who can command anything like the scientific influence which is
being exercised for me, whatever private influence they may have.

What makes all the big-wigs so marvellously zealous on my
behalf I know not. I have sought none of them and flattered
none of them, that I can say with a good conscience, and I think
you know me well enough to believe it. I feel very grateful
to them; and if it ever happens that I am able to help a young
man on (when I am a big-wig myself!) I shall remember it.

And again, September 23, 1851 :—

When I have once sent away my testimonials and done all
that is to be done, I shall banish the subject from my mind and
make myself quite easy as to results. For the present I confess
to being somewhat anxious.

Nevertheless, after many postponements, a near relative
of an influential Canadian politician was at length appointed
late in 1853. By an amusing coincidence, Huxley’s newly-
made friend, Tyndall, was likewise a candidate for a chair
at Toronto, and likewise rejected. Two letters, concerning
Tyndall’s election to the Royal Society, contain references
both to Toronto and to Sydney.

4 Upper York PLaceg, St. Joun’s Woop,
Dec. 4 [1851].

My bear S1r—I was greatly rejoiced to find I could be of
service to you in any way, and I only regret, for your sake, that
my name is not a more weighty one. Your election, I should
think, can be a matter of no doubt.

As to Toronto, I confess I am not very anxious about it.
Sydney would have been far more to my taste, and I confess I
envy you what, as I hear, is the very good chance you have of
going there.

It used to be our headquarters in the Rattlesnake and my
home for three months in the year. Should you go, I should be
very happy, if you like, to give you letters to some of my
friends.

Greatly as I wish we had been destined to do our work
together, I cannot but offer the most hearty wishes for your
success in Sydney.—Ever yours very faithfully,

John Tyndall, Esq. Tuomas H. Hux ey.
86 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VI

41 Nortu Bank, REGENT’S PARK,
May 7, 1852.

My pear TynpALL—Allow me to be one of the first to have
the pleasure of congratulating you on your new honours. I had
the satisfaction last night to hear your name read out as one of
the selected of the Council of the Royal Society for election to the
Fellowship this year, and you are therefore as good as elected.

I always made sure of your success, but I am not the less
pleased that it is now a fait accompli—tI am, my dear Tyndall,
faithfully yours, T. H. Hux.ey.

P.S.—I have heard nothing of Toronto, and I begin to think
that the whole affair, University and all, is a myth.

His hopes of the Colonies failing, he tried each of the
divisions of the United Kingdom in turn, with uniform ill-
success; in 1852-53 at Aberdeen and at Cork; in 1853 at
King’s College, London. He had great hopes of Aberdeen
at first; the appointment lay with the Home Secretary, a
personal friend of Sir J. Clark, who was interested in Hux-
ley though not personally acquainted with him. But no
sooner had he written to urge the latter’s claims than a
change of ministry took place, and other influences com-
manded the field. It was cold comfort that Clark told him
only to wait—something must turn up. There was still a
great probability of the Toronto chair falling to a Cork
professor; so with this in view, he gave up a trip to Cha-
mounix with his brother, and attended the meeting of the
British Association at Belfast in August 1852, in order
to make himself known to the Irish-men of science, for, as
his friends told him, personal influerice went for so much,
and while most men’s reputations were better than them-
selves, he might flatter himself that he was better than his
reputation. But this, too, came to nothing, and the King’s
College appointment also went to the candidate who was
backed by the most powerful influence.

A fatality seemed to dog his efforts; nevertheless he
writes at the end of 1851 :-—

Among my scientific friends the monition I get on all sides is
that of Dante’s great ancestor to him—

A te sequi la tua stella.
1852 CONTEMPLATED ABANDONMENT OF SCIENCE 87

If this were from personal friends only, I should disregard it;
but it comes from men to whose approbation it would be foolish
affectation to deny the highest value. I find myself treated on
a footing of equality (“my proud self,” as you may suppose,
would not put up with any other) by men whose names and
works have been long before the world. My opinions are
treated with a respect altogether unaccountable to me, and
what I have done is quoted as having full authority. Without
canvassing a soul or making use of any influence, I have been
elected into the Royal Society at a time when that election is
more dit icult than it has ever been in the history of the Society.
Without my knowledge I was within an ace of getting the Royal
Society medal this year, and if I go on I shall very probably
get it next time.

In 1852 he was not only to receive this coveted honour,*
but also to be elected upon'the Royal Society Council. In
January 1852, when standing for Toronto, he describes how
Col. Sabine, then Secretary of the Royal Society, dissuaded
him from the project, saying that a brilliant prospect lay
before him if he would only wait.

“Make up your mind to get something fairly within your
reach, and you will have us all with you.” Prof. Owen again
offers to do anything in his power for me; Prof. Forbes will
move heaven and earth for me if he can; Gray, Bell, and all
the leading men are, I know, similarly inclined. Fate says wait,
and you shall reach the goal which from a child you have set
before yourself. On the other hand, a small voice like con-
science speaks of one who is wasting youth and life away for
your sake.

Other friends, who, while recognising his general capaci-
ties, were not scientific, and had no direct appreciation of
his superlative powers in science, thought he was following
a course which would never allow him to marry, and urged
him to give up his unequal battle with fate, and emigrate to
Australia. Of this he writes on August 5, 1852, to Miss
Heathorn :—

I must make up my mind to it if nothing turns up. How-
ever, I look upon such a life as would await me in Australia
with great misgiving. A life spent in a routine employment, |

 

* See pp. III sqq.
88 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VI

with no excitement and no occupation for the higher powers of
the intellect, with its great aspirations stifled and all the great
problems of existence set hopelessly in the background, offers to
me a prospect that would be utterly intolerable but for your
love. . . . Sometimes I am half mad with the notion of bring-
ing all my powers in a surer struggle for a livelihood. Some-
times I am equally wild at thinking of the long weary while that
has passed since we met. There are times when I cannot bear
to think of leaving my present pursuits, when I feel I should be
guilty of a piece of cowardly desertion from my duty in doing
it, and there come intervals when I would give truth and sci-
ence and all hopes to be folded in your arms. . . . I know which
course is right, but I never know which I may follow; help
me... for there is only one course in which there is either
hope or peace for me.

These repeated disappointments deepened the fits of de-
pression which constantly assailed him. He was torn by
two opposing thoughts. Was it just, was it right, to demand
so great a sacrifice from the woman who had entrusted her
future to the uncertain chances of his fortunes? Could he
ask her to go on offering up the best years of her life to
aspirations of his which were possibly chimerical, or per-
haps merely selfishness in disguise, which ought to yield to
more imperative duties? Why not clip the wings of Peg-
asus, and descend to the sober, everyday jog-trot after
plain bread and cheese like other plain people? Time after
time he almost made up his mind to throw science to the
winds ; to emigrate and establish a practice in Sydney; to
try even squatting or storekeeping. And yet he knew only
too well that with his temperament no life would bring him
the remotest approach to lasting happiness and satisfaction
except one that gave scope to his intellectual passion. To
yield to the immediate pressure of circumstances was per-
haps ignoble, was even more probably a surer road to the
loss of happiness for himself and for his wife than the
repeated and painful sacrifices of the present. With all
this, however, and the more when assured of her entire
confidence in his judgment, he could not but feel a sense
of remorse that she willingly accepted the sacrifice, and
feared that she might have done so rather to gratify his
1852 DESPAIR 89

wishes than because reason approved it as the right course
to follow.

Here is another typical extract from his correspondence.
Hearing that Toronto is likely to go to a relative of a Cana-
dian minister, he writes, January 2, 1852 :—

I think of all my dreams and aspirations, and of the path
which I know lies before me if I can only bide my time, and it
seems a sin and a shameful thing to allow my resolve to be
turned; and then comes the mocking suspicion, is this fine ab-
stract duty of yours anything but a subtlety of your own selfish-
ness? Have you not other more imperative duties?

You may fancy whether my life is a very happy one thus
spent without even the satisfaction of the sense of right-doing.
I must come to some resolution about it, and that shortly. I
was talking seriously with Fanning the other night about the
possibility of finding some employment of a profitable kind in
Australia, storekeeping, squatting, or the like. As I told him,
any change in my mode of life must be total. If Iam to change
at all, the change must be total and complete. I will not attempt
my own profession. I should only be led astray to think and to
work as of old, and sigh continually for my old dear and intoxi-
cating pursuits. I wish I understood Brewing, and I would
make a proposition to come and help your father. You may
smile, but I am as serious as ever I was in my life.

The distance between them made it doubly difficult to
keep in touch with one another, when the post took from
four and a half to five or even six months to reach England
from Australia. The answer to a letter would come when
the matter in question was long done with. The assur-
ance that he was doing right at one moment seemed in-
adequate when circumstances had altered and hope sunk
lower. It was all too easy to suspect that she did not under-
stand his aims, his thirst for action, nor the fact that he was
no longer free to do as he liked, whether to stay in the
navy, to go into practice, or follow his own pursuits and
pleasure. Yet it made him despair to be so hedged in by
circumstances. With all his efforts, he seemed as though
he had done nothing but earn the reputation of being a
very promising young man. How much easier to continue
the struggle if he could but have seen her face to face, and
90 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VI

read her thoughts as to whether he were right or wrong in
the course he was pursuing. He appeals to her faith that
he is choosing the nobler path in pursuing knowledge, than
in turning aside to the temptation of throwing it up for the
sake of their speedier union. Still she was right in claim-
ing a share in his work; but for her his life would have
been wasted. ,

The clouds gathered very thickly about him when in
April 1852 his mother died, while his father was hopelessly
ill. “ Belief and happiness,” he writes, ‘‘ seem to be beyond
the reach of thinking men in these days, but courage and
silence are left.” Again the clouds lifted, for in October he
received Miss Heathorn’s “ noble and self-sacrificing letter,
which has given me more comfort than anything for a long
while,” the keynote of which was that a man should pursue
those things for which he is most fitted, let them be what
they will. He now felt free to tell the vicissitudes of
thought and will he had passed through this twelvemonth,
and how the idea of giving up all had affected him.
“The spectre of a wasted life has passed before me—a
vision of that servant who hid his talent in a napkin and
buried it.”

Early in 1853 he writes how much he was cheered by his
sister’s advice and encouragement to persist in the struggle;
but the darkest moment was still to come. His hopes from
his candidature crumbled away one after the other ; his leave
from the Admiralty was coming to an end, and there was
small hope of renewing it; the grant from Government re-
mained as unattainable as ever; the long struggle had taught
him the full extent of his powers only, it seemed, to end by
denying him all opportunity for their use.

And so the card house I have been so laboriously building up
these two years with all manner of hard struggling will be
tumbled down again, and my small light will be ignominiously
snuffed out like that of better men. . . . I can submit if the fates
are too strong. The world is no better than an arena of gladi-
ators, and I, a stray savage, have been turned into it to fight my
way with my rude club among the steel-clad fighters. Well, I
have won my way into the front rank, and ought to be thankful.
1853 HIS DECISION ol

and deem it only the natural order of things if I can get no
further.

And again in a letter of July 6, 1853 -—

I know that these three years have inconceivably altered
me—that from being an idle man, only too happy to flow into
the humours of the moment, I have become almost unable to
exist without active intellectual excitement. I know that in
this I find peace and rest such as I can attain in no other way.
From being a mere untried fledgling, doubtful whether the wish
to fly proceeded from mere presumption or from budding wings,
I have now some confidence in well-tried pinions, which have
given me rank among the strongest and foremost. I have
always felt how difficult it was for you to realise all this—how
strange it must be to you that though your image remained as
bright as ever, new interests and purposes had ranged themselves
around it, and though they could claim no pre-eminence, yet
demanded their share of my thoughts. I make no apology for
this—it is man’s nature and the necessary influence of circum-
stances which will so have it; and depend, however painful our
present separation may be, the spectacle of a man who had
given up the cherished purpose of his life, the Esau who had
sold his birthright for a mess of pottage and with it his self-
respect, would before long years were over our heads be infi-
nitely more painful. Depend upon it, the trust which you
placed in my hands when I left you—to choose for both of us—
has not been abused. Hemmed in by all sorts of difficulties, my
choice was a narrow one, and I was guided more by circum-
stances than my own free will. Nevertheless the path has shown
itself to be a fair one, neither more difficult nor less so than
most paths in life in which a man of energy may hope to do
much if he believes in himself, and is at peace within.

My course in life is taken. I will not leave London—I will
make myself a name and a position as well as an income by some
kind of pursuit connected with science, which is the thing for
which nature has fitted me if she has ever fitted any one for any-
thing. Bethink yourself whether you can cast aside all repining
and all doubt, and devote yourself in patience and trust to help-
ing me along my path as no one else could. I know what I ask,
and the sacrifice I demand, and if this were the time to use false
modesty, I should say how little I have to offer in return. ...

I am full of faults, but I am real and true, and the whole
devotion of an earnest soul cannot be overprized. :
92 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VI

... It is as if all that old life at Holmwood had merely been
a preparation for the real] life of our love—as if we were then
children ignorant of life’s real purpose—as if these last months
had merely been my old doubts over again, whether I had rightly
or wrongly interpreted the manner and the words that had given
me hope... .

We will begin the new love of woman and man, no longer
that of boy and girl, conscious that we have aims and pur- |
poses as well as affections, and that if love is sweet life is dread-
fully stern and earnest.

As time went on and no permanency offered—although
a good deal of writing fell in his way—the strain told
heavily upon him. In the autumn he was quite out of sorts,
body and mind, more at war with himself than he ever
was in his life before. All this, he writes, had darkened his
thoughts, had made him once more imagine a hopeless dis-
crepancy between the two of them in their ways of thinking
and objects in life. It was not till November 1853 that this
depression was banished by the trust and confidence of her
last letter. ‘I wish to Heaven,” he writes, “ it had reached
me six months ago. It would have saved me a world of
pain and error.” But with this, the worst period of mental
suffering was over, and every haunting doubt was finally
exorcised. His career was made possible by the steady
faith which neither separation nor any misgiving nor its own
troubles could shake. And from this point all things began
to brighten. His health had been restored by a trip to the
Pyrenees with his brother George in September. He had
got work that enabled him to regard the Admiralty and its
menaces with complete equanimity; a Manual of Compara-
tive Anatomy, for Churchill the publisher, regular work on
the Westminster,* and another book in prospect, “so that
if I quit the Service to-morrow, these will give me more than

 

* This regular work was the article on Contemporary Science, which
in October 1854 he got Tyndall to share with him. For, he writes,
“To give some account of the books in one’s own department is no
particular trouble, and comes with me under the head of being paid
for what I mst, in any case, do—but I neither will, nor can, go on
writing about books in other departments, of which I am not com-
petent to form a judgment even if I had the time to give to them.”
1853 HAPPIER PROSPECTS 93
my pay has been.” And on December 7 he writes how he
has been restored and revived by reading over her last two
letters, and confesses, ‘‘I have been unjust to the depth
and strength of your devotion, but will never do so again.”
Then he tells all he had gone through before leaving Eng-
land in September for his holiday—how he had resolved
to abandon all his special pursuits and take up Chemistry,
for practical purposes, when first one publisher and then
another asked him to write for them, and hopes were held
out to him of being appointed to deliver the Fullerian lec-
tures at the Royal Institution for the next three years ; while,
most important of all, Edward Forbes was likely before long,
to leave his post at the Museum of Practical Geology, and
he had already been spoken to by the authorities about fill-
ing it. This was worth some £200 a year, while he calcu-
lated to make about £250 by his pen alone. ‘“ Therefore it
would be absurd to go hunting for chemical birds in the
bush when I have such in the hand.”
CHAPTER VII
1851-1853

SEVERAL letters dating from 1851 to 1853 help to fill up
the outlines of Huxley’s life during those three years of
struggle. There is a description of the British Association
meeting at Ipswich in 1851,* with the traditional touch of
gaiety to enliven the gravity of its proceedings, and the un-
conventional jollity of the Red Lion Club (a dining-club of
members of the Association), whose palmy days were those
under the inspiration of the genial and gifted Forbes. This
was the meeting at which Huxley first began his alliance
with Tyndall, with whom he travelled down from town,
although he does not mention his name in this letter. With
Hooker he had already made acquaintance; and from this
time forwards the three were closely bound together by
personal regard as well as by similarity of aims and interests.

Then follow his sketch of the English scientific world as
he found it in 1851, given in his letter to W. Macleay;
several letters to his sister; the description of his first lec-
ture at the Royal Institution, which, though successful on
the whole, was very different in manner and delivery from
the clear and even flow of his later style, with the voice not
loud but distinct, the utterance never hurried beyond the
point of immediate comprehension, but carrying the atten-
tion of the audience with it, eager to the end. Two letters
of warning and remonstrance against the habits of lecturing

 

* “Forbes advises me to go down to the meeting of the British As-
sociation this year and make myself notorious somehow or other.
Thank Heaven I have impudence enough to lecture the savans of Eu-
rope if necessary. Can you imagine me holding forth?” (June 6, 1851.)

94
1851 BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT IPSWICH 95

in a colloquial tone, suitable to a knot of students gathered
round his table, but not to a large audience—of running
his words, especially technical terms, together—of pouring
out new and unfamiliar matter at breakneck speed, were
addressed to him—one by a“ working man” of his Monday
evening audience at Jermyn Street in 1855, the other, un-
dated, by Mr. Jodrell, a frequenter of the Royal Institution,
and afterwards founder of the Jodrell Lectureships at Uni-
versity College, London, and other benefactions to science,
and these he kept by him as a perpetual reminder, labelled
“Good Advice.” How much can be done by the frank
acceptance of criticism and by careful practice is shown
by the difference between the feelings of the later audiences
who flocked to his lectures, and those of the members of
an Institute in St. John’s Wood, who, as he often used
to tell, after hearing him in his early days, petitioned “ not
to have that young man again.”

July 12, 1851.—The interval between my letters has been a
little longer than usual, as I have been very busy attending the
meeting of the British Association at Ipswich. The last time I
attended one was at Southampton five years ago, when I went
merely as a spectator, and looked at the people who read papers
as if they were somebodies.* This time I have been behind the
scenes myself and have played out my little part on the boards.
I know all about the scenery and decorations, and no longer
think the manager a wizard.

Any one who conceives that I went down from any especial
interest in the progress of science makes a great mistake. My
journey was altogether a matter of policy, partly for the purpose
of doing a little necessary trumpeting, and partly to get the
assistance of the Association in influencing the Government.

On the journey down, my opposite in the railway carriage
turned out to be Sir James Ross, the Antarctic discoverer. We
had some very pleasant talk together. I knew all about him, as
Dayman + had sailed under his command; oddly enough we
afterwards went to lodge at the same house, but as we were
attending our respective sections all day we did not see much
of one another.

 

* See Chap. II., ad fin.
+ One of the lieutenants of the Rattlesnake,
96 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII

When we arrived at Ipswich there was a good deal of trouble
about getting lodgings. My companions located themselves
about a mile out of the town, but that was too far for my “ in-
dolent habits” ; I sought and at last found a room in the town
a little bigger than my cabin on board ship for which I had the
satisfaction of paying 30s. a week.

You know what the British Association is. It is a meeting
of the savans of England and the Continent, under the presi-
dency of some big-wig or other,—this year of the Astronomer-
Royal,—for the purpose of exchanging information. . To this
end they arrange themselves into different sections, each with
its own president and committee, and indicated by letters. For
instance, Section A is for Mathematics and Physics; Section
B for Chemistry, etc.; my own section, that of Natural History,
was D, under the presidency of Professor Henslow of Cam-
bridge. I was on the committee, and therefore saw the working
of the whole affair.

On the first day there was a dearth of matter in our section.
People had not arrived with their papers. So by way of finding
out whether I could speak in public or not, I got up and talked to
them for about twenty minutes. I was considerably surprised
to find that when once I had made the plunge, my tongue went
glibly enough.

On the following day I read a long paper, which I had pre-
pared and illustrated with a lot of big diagrams, to an audience
of about twenty people! The rest were all away after Prince Al-
bert, who had been unfortunately induced to visit the meeting,
and fairly turned the heads of the good people of Ipswich. On
Saturday a very pleasant excursion on scientific pretences, but in
fact a most jolly and unscientific picnic, took place. Several hun-
dred people went down the Orwell in a steamer. The majority
returned, but I and two others, considering Sunday in Ipswich
an impossibility, stopped at a little seaside village, Felixstowe,
and idled away our time there very pleasantly. Babington the
botanist and myself walked in to Ipswich on Sunday night. It
is about eleven miles, and we did it comfortably in two hours
and three quarters, which was not bad walking.

On Monday at Section D again. Forbes brought forward
the subject of my application to Government in committee, and
it was unanimously agreed to forward a resolution on the sub-
ject to the Committee of Recommendations. I made a speechi-
fication of some length in the Section about a new animal.

On Thursday morning I attended a meeting of the Ray
1351 BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT IPSWICH 97

Society, and to my infinite astonishment, the secretary, Dr.
Lankester, gave me the second motion to make. The Prince
of Casino moved the first, so I was in good company. The great
absurdity of it was that not being a member of the Society I
had properly no right to speak at all. However, it was only a
vote of thanks, and I got up and did the “ neat and appropriate ”
in style.

After this a party of us went out dredging in the Orwell in
a small boat. We were away all day, and it rained hard coming
back, so that I got wet through, and had to pull five miles to
keep off my enemy, the rheumatics.

Then came the President’s dinner, to which I did not go, as
I preferred making myself comfortable with a few friends else-
where. And after that, the final evening meeting, when all the
final determinations are announced.

Among them I had the satisfaction to hear that it was
resolved — that the President and Council of the British Asso-
ciation should co-operate with the Royal Society in repre-
senting the value and importance, etc., of Mr. T. H. Huxley’s
zoological researches to Her Majesty’s Government for the pur-
pose of. obtaining a grant towards their publication. Subse-
quently I was introduced to Colonel Sabine, the President of
the Association in 1852, and a man of very high standing and
considerable influence. He had previously been civil enough
to sign my certificate at the Royal Society, unsolicited, and
therefore knew me by reputation—I only mean that as a very
small word. He was very civil and promised me every assist-
ance in his power. .

It is a curious thing that out of the four applications to
Government to be made by the Association, two were for Naval
Assistant-Surgeons, viz. one for Dr. Hooker, who had just re-
turned from the Himalaya Mountains, and one for me. How I
envied Hooker ; he has long been engaged to a daughter of Pro-
fessor Henslow’s, and at this very meeting he sat by her side.
He is going to be married in a day or two. His father is director
of the Kew Gardens, and there is little doubt of his succeed-
ing him.

Whether the Government accede to the demand that will
be made upon them or not, I can now rest satisfied that no
means of influencing them has been left unused by me. If
they will not listen to the conjoint recommendations of the
Royal Society and the British Association, they will listen to
nothing. ...
98 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII

July 16, 1851.—I went yesterday to dine with Colonel Sa-
bine. We had a long discourse about the prospects and probable
means of existence of young men trying to make their way to
an existence in the scientific world. I took, as indeed what I
have seen has forced me to take, rather the despairing side of
the question, and said that as it seemed to me England did not
afford even the means of existence to young men who were
willing to devote themselves to science. However, he spoke
cheeringly, and advised me by no means to be hasty, but to wait,
and he doubted not that I should succeed. He cited his own
case aS an instance of waiting, eventually successful. Alto-
gether I felt the better for what he said... .

There has been a notice of me in the Literary Gazette for
last week, much more laudatory than I deserve, from the pen of
my friend Forbes.* ...

In the same number is a rich song from the same fertile and
versatile pen, which was sung at one of our Red Lion meetings.
That is why I want you to look at it, not that you will under-
stand it, because it is full of allusions to occurrences known only
in the scientific circles. At Ipswich we had a grand Red Lion
meeting; about forty members were present, and among them
some of the most distinguished members of the Association.
Some foreigners were invited (the Prince of Casino, Buona-
parte’s nephew, among others), and were not a little astonished
to see the grave professors, whose English solemnity and gravity
they had doubtless commented on elsewhere, giving themselves
up to all sorts of fun. Among the Red Lions we have a custom
(instead of cheering) of waving and wagging one coat-tail
(one Lion’s tail) when we applaud. This seemed to strike the
Prince’s fancy amazingly, and when he got up to return thanks
for his health being drunk, he told us that as he was rather
out of practice in speaking English, he would return thanks
in our fashion, and therewith he gave three mighty roars and
wags, to the no small amusement of every one. He is singularly
like the portraits of his uncle, and seems a very jolly, good-
humoured old fellow. I believe, however, he is a bit of a rip.
It was remarkable how proud the Quakers were of being noticed
by him.

 

* An appreciation of his papers on the Physophoridae and Sagitta,
speaking highly both of his observations and philosophic power, in
the report of the proceedings in Section D.
1351 SCIENCE HIS VOCATION 99

To W. Mac Leay, or SYDNEY

41 NortH Bank, REGENT’s Park, Mov. 9, 1851.

My bear S1r—It is a year to-day since the old Rattlesnake
was paid off, and that reminds me among other things that I
have hardly kept my promise of giving you information now
and then upon the state of matters scientific in England. My
last letter is, I am afraid, nine or ten months old, but here in
England the fighting and scratching to keep your place in the
crowd exclude almost all other thoughts. When I last wrote I
was but at the edge of the crush at the pit-door of this great
fools’ theatre—now I have worked my way into it and through
it, and am, I hop2, not far from the check-takers. I have learnt
a good deal in my passage.

[Follows an account of his efforts to get his papers
published—substantially a repetition of what has already
been given. |

Rumours there are scattered abroad of a favourable cast,
and I am told on all hands that something will certainly be done.
I only asked for £300, something less than the cost of a parlia-
mentary blue-book which nobody ever hears of. They take care
to obliterate any spark of gratitude that might perchance arise
for what they do, by keeping one so long in suspense that the
result becomes almost a matter of indifference. Had I known
they would keep me so long, I would have published my work
as a series of papers in the Philosophical Transactions.

In the meanwhile I have not been idle, as I hope to show you
by the various papers enclosed with this. You will recollect that
on the Salpae. No one here knew anything about them, and I
thought that all my results were absolutely new — until, me
miserum! I found them in a little paper of Krohn’s in the
Annales des Sciences for 1846, without any figures to draw
anybody’s attention.

The memoir on the Meduse (which I sent to you) has, I
hear, just escaped a high honour—to wit, the Royal Medal. The
award has been made to Newport for his paper on “ Impregna-
tion.” J had no idea that anything I had done was likely to
have the slightest claim to such distinction, but I was informed
yesterday by one of the Council that the balance hung pretty
evenly, and was only decided by their thinking my memoir was
too small and short.
IoO LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII

I have been working in all things with a reference to wide
views of zoological philosophy, and the report upon the Echino-
derms is intended in common with the mem. on the Salpae to
explain my views of Individuality among the lower animals—
views which I mean to illustrate still further and enunciate still
more clearly in my book that is to be.* They have met with
approval from Carpenter, as you will see by the last edition of
his Principles of Physiology, and I think that Forbes and some
others will be very likely eventually to come round to them, but
everything that relates to abstract thought is at a low ebb among
the mass of naturalists in this country.

In the paper upon “ Thalassicolla,” and in that which I read
before the British Association, as also in one upon the organisa-

‘tion of the Rotifera, which I am going to have published in the
Microscopical Society’s Transactions, I have been driving in
a series of wedges into Cuvier’s Radiata, and showing how selon
mot they ought to be distributed.

I am every day becoming more and more certain that you
were on the right track thirty years ago in your views of the
order and symmetry to be traced in the true natural system.

During the next session I mean to send in a paper to the
R.S. upon the “ Homologies of the Mollusca,’ which shall
astonish them. I want to get done for the Mollusca what
Savigny did for the Articulata, viz. to show how they all—
Cephalopoda, Gasteropoda, Pteropoda, Heteropoda, etc. — are
organised on one type, and how the homologous organs are
modified in each. What with this and the book, I shall have
enough to do for the next six months.

You- will doubtless ask what is the practical outlook of all
this? whether it leads anywhere in the direction of bread and
cheese? To this also I can give a tolerably satisfactory answer.

As you won’t have a Professor of Natural History at Syd-
ney—to my great sorrow—I have gone in as a candidate for a
Professorial chair at the other end of the world, Toronto in
Canada. In England there is nothing to be done—it is the most
hopeless prospect I know of; of course the Service offers noth-
ing for me except irretrievable waste of time, and the scientific
appointments are so few and so poor that they are not tempt-
INS eos

Had the Sydney University been carried out as originally
proposed, I should certainly have become a candidate for the

 

* He lectured on this subject at the Royal Institution in 1852.
1851 SCIENCE HIS VOCATION 101

Natural History Chair. I know no finer field for exertion for
any naturalist than Sydney Harbour itself. Should such a Pro-
fessorship be hereafter established, I trust you will jog the
memory of my Australian friends in my behalf. I have finally
decided that my vocation is science, and I have made up my
mind to the comparative poverty which is its necessary adjunct,
and to the no less certain seclusion from the ordinary pleasures
and rewards of men. I say this without the slightest idea that
there is anything to be enthusiastic about in either science or
its professors. A year behind the scenes is quite enough to
disabuse one of all rose-pink illusions.

But it is equally clear to me that for a man of my tempera-
ment, at any rate, the sole secret of getting through this life
with anything like contentment is to have full scope for the
development of one’s faculties. Science alone seems to me to
afford this scope—Law, Divinity, Physic, and Politics being in
a state of chaotic vibration between utter humbug and utter
scepticism.

There is a great stir in the scientific world at present about
who is to occupy Konig’s place at the British Museum, and
whether the whole establishment had better not, guoad Zoology,
be remodelled and placed under Owen’s superintendence. The
heart-burnings and jealousies about this matter are beyond all
conception. Owen is both feared and hated, and it is predicted
that if Gray and he come to be officers of the same institution,
in a year or two the total result will be a caudal vertebra of
each remaining after the manner of the Kilkenny cats.

However, I heard yesterday, upon what professed to be very
good authority, that Owen would not leave the College under
any circumstances.

It is astonishing with what an intense feeling of hatred
Owen is regarded by the majority of his contemporaries, with
Mantell as arch-hater. The truth is, he is the superior of most,
and does not conceal that he knows it, and it must be confessed
that he does some very ill-natured tricks now and then. A
striking specimen of one is to be found in his article on Lyell
in the last Quarterly, where he pillories poor Quekett—a most
inoffensive man and his own immediate subordinate—in a man-
ner not more remarkable for its severity than for its bad taste.
That review has done him much harm in the estimation of
thinking men—and curiously. enough, since it was written, rep-
tiles have been found in the old red sandstone, and insectivo-
rous mammals in the Trias! Owen is an able man, but to my
102 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII

mind not so great as he thinks himself. He can only work in
the concrete from bone to bone, in abstract reasoning he be-
comes lost—witness “ Parthenogenesis ” which he told me he
considered one of the best things he had done!

He has, however, been very civil to me, and I am as grate-
ful as it is possible to be towards a man with whom I feel it
necessary to be always on my guard.

Quite another being is the other leader of Zoological Science
in this country—I mean Edward Forbes, Paleontologist to the
Geological Survey. More especially a Zoologist and a Geologist
than a Comparative Anatomist, he has more claims to the title
of a Philosophic Naturalist than any man I know of in England.
A man of letters and an artist, he has not merged the man in the
man of science—he has sympathies for all, and an earnest, truth-
seeking, thoroughly genial disposition which win for him your
affection as well as your respect. Forbes has more influence by
his personal weight and example upon the rising generation of
scientific naturalists than Owen will have if he write from now
till Doomsday.

Personally I am greatly indebted to him (though the opinion
I have just expressed is that of the world in general). During
my absence he superintended the publication of my paper, and
from the moment of my arrival until now he has given me all
the help one man can give another. Why he should have done
so I do not know, as when I left England I had only spoken
to him once.

The rest of the naturalists stand far below these two in
learning, originality, and grasp of mind. Goodsir of Edinburgh
should I suppose come next, but he can’t write intelligibly. Dar-
win might be anything if he had good health. Bell is a good man
in all the senses of the word, but wants qualities 2 and 3. New-
port is a laborious man, but wants 1 and 3. Grant and Rymer
Jones—arcades ambo—have mistaken their vocation.

My old chief Richardson is a man of men, but troubles him-
self little with anything but detail zoology. What think you of
his getting married for the third time just before his last ex-
pedition? I hardly know by which step he approved himself
the bolder man.

I think I have now fulfilled my promise of supplying you
with a little scientific scandal—and if this long epistle has repaid
your trouble in getting through it, I am content.

Believe me, I have not forgotten, nor ever shall forget, your
kindness to me at a time when a little appreciation and encour-
1851 THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD OF 1851 103

agement were more grateful to me and of more service than
they will perhaps ever be again. I have done my best to jus-
tify you.

I send copies of all the papers I have published with one
exception, of which I have none separate. Of the Royal Society
papers I send a double set. Will you be kind enough to give
one with my kind regards and remembrances to Dr. Nicholson?
I feel I ought to have written to him before leaving Sydney,
but I trust he will excuse my not having done so.

I shall be very glad if you can find time to write——Ever
yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

W. Macleay, Esq.

P.S.—Miller has just made a most extraordinary discovery,
no less than the generation of Molluscs from Holothuriae! ! !
You will find a translation of his paper by me in the Annals for
January 1852

Dee, 13, 1851.

To HIS SISTER
May 20, 1851.

. Owen has been amazingly civil to me, and it was
through his writing to the First Lord that I got my present
appointment. He is a queer fish, more odd in appearance than
ever ... and more bland in manner. He is so frightfully polite
that I never feel thoroughly at home with him. He got me to
furnish him with some notes for the second edition of the
Admiralty Manual of Scientific Inquiry, and I find that in it
Darwin and I (comparisons are odorous) figure as joint au-
thorities on some microscopic matters! !

Professor Forbes, however, is my great ally, a first-rate man,
thoroughly in earnest and disinterested, and ready to give his
time and influence—which is great—to help any man who is
working for the cause. To him I am indebted for the super-
vision of papers that were published in my absence, for many
introductions, and most valuable information and assistance,
and all done in such a way as not to oppress one or give one
any feeling of patronage, which you know (so much do I retain
of my old self) would not suit me. My notions are diametrically
opposed to his in some matters, and he helps me to oppose him.
The other night, or rather nights, for it took three, I had a long
paper read at the Royal Society which opposed some of his
views, and he got up and spoke in the highest terms of it after-

8
104 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII

wards. This is all as it should be. I can reverence such a
man and yet respect myself.

I have been aspiring to great honours since I wrote to you
last, to wit the F.R.S., and found no little to my astonishment
that I had a chance of it, and so went in. I must tell you that
they have made the admission more difficult than it used to be.
Candidates are not elected by the Society alone, but fifteen
only a year are selected by a committee, and then elected as a
matter of course by the Society. This year there were thirty-
eight candidates. I did not expect to come in till next year, but
I find I am one of the selected. I fancy I shall be the junior
Fellow by some years. Singularly enough, among the non-
selected candidates were Ward, the man who conducted the
Botanical Honours Examination of Apothecaries’ Hall nine
years ago, and Bryson, the surgeon of the Fisguard, i.e. nomi-
nally my immediate superior, and who, as he frequently acts
as Sir Wm. Burnett’s deputy, will very likely examine me when
I pass for Surgeon R.N.!! That is awkward and must be an-
noying to him, but it is not my fault. I did not ask for a single
name that appeared upon my certificate. Owen’s name and
Carpenter’s, which were to have been appended, were not added.
Forbes, my recommender, told me beforehand not to expect to
get in this year, and did not use his influence, and so I have
no intriguing to reproach myself with or to be reproached with.
The only drawback is that it will cost me £14, which is more
than I can very well afford.

By the way, I have not told you that after staying for about
five months with George, I found that if I meant to work in
earnest his home was not the place, so, much to my regret,—
for they made me very happy there,—I summoned resolution
and The Boy’s Own Book and took a den of my own, whence
I write at present. You had better, however, direct to George,
as I am going to move and don’t know how long I may remain
at my next habitation. At present I am living in the Park Road,
but I find it too noisy and am going to St. Anne’s Gardens, St.
John’s Wood, close to my mother’s, against whose forays I
shall have to fortify myself.

It was a minor addition to his many troubles that after a
time Huxley found a grudging and jealous spirit exhibited
in some quarters towards his success, and influence used to
prevent any further advance that might endanger the exist-
ing balance of power in the scientific world. But this could
1852 JEALOUSY OF HIS RISE 105

be battled with directly; indeed it was rather a relief to
have an opportunity for action instead of sitting still to wait
the results of uncertain elections. The qualities requisite for
such a contest he possessed, in a high ideal of the dignity of
science as an instrument of truth; a standard of veracity in
scientific workers to which all should subordinate their per-
sonal ambitions; a disregard of authority as such unless its
claims were verified by indisputable fact; and as a begin-
ning, the will to subject himself to his own most rigid canons
of accuracy, thoroughness, and honesty; then to maintain
his principle and defend his position against all attempts at
browbeating.

March 5, 1852.

I told you I was very busy, and I must tell you what I am
about and you will believe me. I have just finished a Memoir
for the Royal Society,* which has taken me a world of time,
thought, and reading, and is, perhaps, the best thing I have done
yet. It will not be read till May, and I do not know whether
they will print it or not afterwards; that will require care and
a little manceuvring on my part. You have no notion of the
intrigues that go on in this blessed world of science. Science is,
I fear, no purer than any other region of human activity ; though
it should be. Merit alone is very little good; it must be backed
by tact and knowledge of the world to do very much.

For instance, I know that the paper I have just sent in is
very original and of some importance, and I am equally sure that
if itis referred to the judgment of my “ particular friend ’”» ——
that it will not be published. He won't be able to say a word
against it, but he will pooh-pooh it to a dead certainty.

You will ask with some wonderment, Why? Because for
the last twenty years has been regarded as the great au-
thority on these matters, and has had no one to tread on his
heels, until at last, I think, he has come to look upon the Natural
World as his special preserve, and “no poachers allowed.” So
I must manceuvre a little to get my poor memoir kept out oi
his hands.

The necessity for these little stratagems utterly disgusts me.
I would so willingly reverence and trust any man of high stand-
ing and ability. I am so utterly unable to comprehend this petty

 

 

*“ On the Morphology of the Cephalous Mollusca,’ Scéentife
Memoirs, vol. i. p. 152.
106 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII

greediness. And yet withal you will smile at my perversity. I
have a certain pleasure in overcoming these obstacles, and fight-
ing these folks with their own weapons. I do so long to be able
to trust men implicitly. I have such a horror of all this literary
pettifogging. I could be so content myself, if the necessity of
making a position would allow it, to work on anonymously, but
I see is determined not to let either me or any one else
rise if he can help it. Let him beware. On my own subjects
I am his master, and am quite ready to fight half a dozen
dragons. And although he has a bitter pen, I flatter myself that
on occasions I can match him in that department also.

But I was telling you how busy I am. I am getting a
memoir ready for the Zoological Society, and working at my
lecture for the Royal Institution, which I want to make striking
and original, as it is a good opportunity, besides doing a trans-
lation now and then for one of the Journals. Besides this, I
am working at the British Museum to make a catalogue of some
creatures there. All these things take a world of time and
labour, and yield next to no direct profit; but they bring me into
contact with all sorts of men, in a very independent position,
and I am told, and indeed hope, that something must arise from
it. So fair a prospect opens out before me if I can only wait.
I am beginning to know what work means, and see how
much more may be done by steady, unceasing, and well-directed
efforts. I thrive upon it too. I am as well as ever I was in
my life, and the more I work the better my temper seems to be.

 

April 30, 1852, 114 P.M.

I have just returned from giving my lecture * at the Royal
Institution, of which I told you in my last letter.

I had got very nervous about it, and my poor mother’s death
had greatly upset my plans for working it out.

It was the first lecture I had ever given in my life, and to
what is considered the best audience in London. As nothing
ever works up my energies but a high flight, I had chosen a
very difficult abstract point, in my view of which I stand almost
alone. When I took a glimpse into the theatre and saw it full
of faces, I did feel most amazingly uncomfortable. I can now
quite understand what it is to be going to be hanged, and noth-
ing but the necessity of the case prevented me from running
away.

 

* “On Animal Individuality,” Scientific Memoirs, vol. i. p. 146, cp.
p. 88, supra.
1852 DEATH OF HIS MOTHER 107

However, when the hour struck, in I marched, and began to
deliver my discourse. For ten minutes I did not quite know
where I was, but by degrees I got used to it, and gradually
gained perfect command of myself and of my subject. I believe
I contrived to interest my audience, and upon the whole I think
I may say that this essay was successful.

Thank Heaven I can say so, for though it is no great matter
succeeding, failing would have been a bitter annoyance to me.
It has put me comfortably at my ease with regard to all future
lecturings. After the Royal Institution there is no audience I
shall ever fear.

May 9.

The foolish state of excitement into which I allowed myself
to get the other day completely did for me, and I have hardly
done anything since except sleep a great deal. It is a strange
thing that with all my will I cannot control my physical organi-
sation.

To His SISTER
April 17, 1852.

... I fear nothing will have prepared you to hear that one
so active in body and mind as our poor mother was has been
taken from us. But soitis....

It was very strange that before leaving London my mother,
possessed by a strange whim, as I thought, distributed to many
of us little things belonging to her. I laughed at her for what
I called her ‘“‘ testamentary disposition,” little dreaming that the
words were prophetic.

[The summons to those of the family in London reached
them late, and their arrival was made still later by inconvenient
trains and a midnight drive, so that all had long been over when
they came to Barning in Kent, where the elder Huxleys had
just settled near their son James. ]

Our mother had died at half-past four, falling gradually
into a more and more profound insensibility. She was thus
happily spared the pain of fruitlessly wishing us round her, in
her last moments; and as the hand of Death was upon her, I
know not that it could have fallen more lightly.

I offer you no consolation, my dearest sister, for I know of
none. There are things which each must bear as he best may
with the strength that has been allotted to him. Would that I
were near you to soften the blow by the sympathy which we
should have in common... .
108 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII

May 3, 1852.

So much occupation has crowded upon me between the be-
ginning of this letter and the present time that I have been
unable to finish it. I had undertaken to give a lecture at the
Royal Institution on the 30th April. It was on a difficult sub-
ject, requiring a good deal of thought; and as it was my first
appearance and before the best audience in London, you may
imagine how anxious and nervous I was, and how completely I
was obliged to abstract my thoughts from everything else.

However, I am happy to say it is well over. There was a
very good audience—Faraday, Prof. Forbes, Dr. Forbes,
Wharton Jones, and [a] whole lot of “nobs,’ among my audi-
tors. I had made up my mind all day to break down, and then
go and hang myself privately. And so you may imagine that
I entered the theatre with a very pale face, and a heart beating
like a sledge-hammer nineteen to the dozen. For the first five
minutes I did not know very clearly what I was about, but by
degrees I got possession of myself and of my subject, and did
not care for anybody. I have had “golden opinions from all
sorts of men” about it, so I suppose I may tell you I have suc-
ceeded. I don’t think, however, that I ever felt so thoroughly
used up in my life as I did for two days afterwards. There is
one comfort, I shall never be nervous again about any audience;
but at one’s first attempt, to stand in the place of Faraday and
such big-wigs might excuse a little weakness.

The way is clear before me, if my external circumstances
will only allow me to persevere; but I fully expect that I shall
have to give up my dreams.

Science in England does everything—but pay. You may
earn praise but not pudding.

I have helping hands held out to me on all sides, but there
is nothing to help me to. Last year I became a candidate for a
Professorship at Toronto. I took an infinity of trouble over
the thing, and got together a mass of testimonials and recom-
mendations, much better than I had any right to expect. From
that time to this I have heard nothing of the business—a result
for which I care the less, as I believe the chair will be given
to a brother of one of the members of the Canadian ministry,
who is, I hear, a candidate. Such a qualification as that is, of
course, better than all the testimonials in the world.

I think I told you when I last wrote that I was expecting a
grant from Government to publish the chief part of my work,
done while away. I am expecting it still. I got tired of waiting
1852 THE IRONY OF SUCCESS 109

the other day and wrote to the Duke of Northumberland, who
is at present First Lord of the Admiralty, upon the subject.
His Grace has taken the matter up, and I hope now to get it
done.

With all this, however, Time runs on. People look upon
me, I suppose, as a “very promising young man,” and perhaps
envy my “success,” and I all the while am cursing my stars
that my Pegasus will fly aloft instead of pulling slowly along
in some respectable gig, and getting his oats like any other
praiseworthy cart-horse.

It’s a charming piece of irony altogether. It is two years
yesterday since I left Sydney harbour—and of course as long
since I saw Nettie. I am getting thoroughly tired of our sepa-
ration, and I think she is, though the dear little soul is ready to
do anything for my sake, and yet I dare not face the stagnation
—the sense of having failed in the whole purpose of my exist-
ence—which would, I know, sooner or later beset me, even with
her, if I forsake my present object. Can you wonder with all
this, my dearest Lizzie, that often as I long for your brave heart
and clear head to support and advise me, I yet rarely feel in-
clined to write? Pray write to me more often than you have
done; tell me all about yourself and the Doctor and your chil-
dren. They must be growing up fast, and Florry must be get-
ting beyond the “ Bird of Paradise” I promised her. Love
and kisses to all of them, and kindest remembrances to the Doc-
tor—Ever your affectionate brother, T. H. Huxtey.

To Miss HEATHORN
Nov. 13, 1852.

Going last week to the Royal Society’s library for a book,
and like the boy in church “ thinkin’ o’ naughten,” when I went
in, Weld, the Assistant Secretary, said, “ Well, I congratulate
you.” I confess I did not see at that moment what any mortal
man had to congratulate me about. I had a deuced bad cold,
with rheumatism in my head; it was a beastly November day
and I was very grumpy, so I inquired in a state of mild sur-
prise what might be the matter. Whereupon I learnt that the
Medal had been conferred at the meeting of the Council on the
day before. I was very pleased ... and I thought you would
be so too, and I thought moreover that it was a fine lever to
help us on, and if I could have sent a letter to you immediately
I should have sat down and have written one to you on the spot.
110 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII

As it is I have waited for official confirmation and a convenient
season.

And now... shall I be very naughty and make a con-
fession? The thing that a fortnight ago (before I got it) I
thought so much of, I give you my word I do not care a pin
for. I am sick of it and ashamed of having thought so much
of it, and the congratulations I get give me a sort of internal
sardonic grin. I think this has come about partly because I
did not get the official confirmation of what I had heard for
some days, and with my habit of facing the ill side of things
I came to the conclusion that Weld had made a mistake, and I
went in thought through the whole enormous mortification of
having to explain to those whom I had mentioned it that it was
quite a mistake. I found that all this, when I came to look at
it, was by no means so dreadful as it seemed—quite bearable in
short—and then I laughed at myself and have cared nothing
about the whole concern ever since. In truth ...I do not
think that I am in the proper sense of the word ambitious. I have
an enormous longing after the highest and best in all shapes—
a longing which haunts me and is the demon which ever impels
me to work, and will let me have no rest unless I am doing his
behests. The honours of men I value so far as they are evi-
dences of power, but with the cynical mistrust of their judg-
ment and my own worthiness, which always haunts me, I put
very little faith in them. Their praise makes me sneer inwardly.
God forgive me if I do them any great wrong.

. .. I feel and know that all the rewards and honours in the
world will ever be worthless for me as soon as they are obtained.
I know that always, as now, they will make me more sad than
joyful. I know that nothing that could be done would give me
the pure and heartfelt joy and peace of mind that your love has
given me, and, please God, shall give for many a long year to
come, and yet my demon says work! work! you shall not even
love unless you work.

Not blinded by any vanity, then, I hope... but viewing
this stroke of fortune as respects its public estimation only, I
think I must look upon the award of this medal as the turning-
point of my life, as the finger-post teaching me as clearly as
anything can what is the true career that lies open before me.
For whatever may be my own private estimation of it, there can
be no doubt as to the general feeling about this thing, and in
case of my candidature for any office it would have the very
greatest weight. And as you will have seen by my last letter,
1852 RECEIVES THE ROYAL MEDAL III

it only strengthens and confirms the conclusion I had come to.
Bid me God-speed then . . . it is all I want to labour cheerfully.

Wes, 28.

... You will hear all the details of the Great Duke's state
funeral from the papers much better than I can tell you them.
I went to the Cathedral (St. Paul's) and had the good fortune
to get a capital seat—in front, close to the great door by which
every one entered. It was bitter cold, a keen November wind
blowing right in, and as I was there from eight till three, [
expected nothing less than rheumatic fever the next day; how-
ever I didn't get it. It was pitiful to see the poor old Marquis
of Anglesey—a year older than the Duke—standing with bare
head in the keen wind close to me for more than three quarters
of an hour. It was impressive enough —the great interior
lighted up by a single line of light running along the whole cir-
cuit of the cornice, and another encircling the dome, and casting
a curious illumination over the masses of uniforms which filled
the great space. The best of our people were there and passed
close to me, but the only face that made any great impression
upon my memory was that of Sir Chas. Napier, the conqueror
of Scinde. Fancy a very large, broad-winged, and fierce-look-
ing hawk in uniform. Such an eye!

When the coffin and the mourners had passed I closed up
with the soldiers and went up under the dome, where I heard
the magnificent service in full perfection.

All of it, however, was bug stage trickery compared with the
noble simplicity of the old man’s life. How the old stoic, used
to his iron bed and hard hair pillow, would have smiled at all
the pomp—submitting to that, however, and all other things
necessary to the “ carrying on of the Queen’s Government.”

I send Tennyson’s ode by way of packing—it is not worth
much more, the only decent passages to my mind being those °
I have marked.

The day after to-morrow I go to have my medal presented
and to dine and make a speech.

The Royal Medal was conferred on November 30, and
the medallists were entertained at the anniversary dinner of
the Society on that day. In the words with which the
President, the Earl of Rosse, accompanied the presentation
of the medal, “it is not difficult,” writes Sir M. Foster,
“reading between the lines, to recognise the appreciation of
II2 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII

a new spirit of anatomical inquiry, not wholly free from a
timorous apprehension as to its complete validity.” * For
the difference between this and the labours of the greatest
English comparative anatomist of the time, whose detailed
work was of the highest value, but whose generalisations
and speculations, based on the philosophy of Oken, proved
barren and fruitless, lay in the fact that Huxley, led to it
doubtless by his solitary readings in his Charing Cross days,
had taken up the method of von Baer and Johannes Miiller,
then almost unknown, or at least unused in England—“ the
method which led the anatomist to face his problems in the
spirit in which the physicist faced his.”

He had been warned by Forbes not to speak too strongly
about the dilatoriness of the Government in the matter of
the grant, so he writes: “I will ‘roar you like any sucking
dove’ at the dinner, though I felt tempted otherwise.” On
December 1 he tells how he carried out this advice.

My pear Forses—You will, I know, like to learn how I got
on yesterday. The President’s address to me had been drawn
up by Bell. It was, of course, too flattering, but he had taken
hold of the right points in my work—at least I thought so.

Bunsen spoke very well for Humboldt.

There was a capital congregation at the dinner—sixty or
seventy Fellows there. ...

When it came to my turn to return thanks, I believe I made
a very tolerable speechification, at least everybody says so. Lord
Rosse had alluded to “science having to take care of itself in
this country,” and in winding up I gave them a small screed
upon that text. That you may see I kept your caution in mind,
I will tell you as nearly as may be what I said. I told them
that I could not conceive that anything I had hitherto done
merited the honour of that day (I looked so preciously meek over

 

* “In these papers (on the Meduse) you have for the first time
fully developed their structure, and laid the foundation of a rational
theory for their classification.” ‘In your second paper ‘On the Anat-
omy of Salpa and Pyrosoma,’ the phenomena, etc., have received the
most ingenious and elaborate elucidation, and have given rise to a
process of reasoning, the results of which can scarcely yet be antici-
pated, but must bear in a very important degree upon some of the
most abstruse points of what may be called transcendental physiology.”
See Royal Society, Obituary Notices, vol. lix. p. 1.
1353 HIS HABITS 113

this), but that I was glad to be able to say that I had so much
unpublished material as to make me hopeful of one day dimin-
ishing the debt. I then said, “‘ The Government of this country,
of this great country, has been two years debating whether it
should grant the three hundred pounds necessary for the pub-
lication of these researches. I have been too long used to strict
discipline to venture to criticise any act of my superiors, but
I venture to hope that before long, in consequence of the exer-
tions of Lord Rosse, of the President of the British Association,
and the goodwill, which I gratefully acknowledge, of the present
Lord of the Admiralty, I shall be able to lay before you some-
thing more worthy of to-day’s award.”

I -had my doubts how the nobs would take it, but both Lord
Rosse and Sabine warmly commended my speech and regretted
I had not said even more upon the subject.

Some light is thrown upon his habits at this time by
the following, part of his letter to Forbes of November
19 :—

I have frequent visits from He is a good man, but
direfully argumentative, and in that sense to me a bore. Be-
sides that, the creature will come and call upon me at nine or
ten o’clock in the morning before I am out of bed, or if out of
bed, before I am in possession of my faculties, which never
arrive before twelve or one.

 

This morning incapacity was of a piece with his hatred
of the breakfast-party of the period. To go abroad from
home or to do any work before breakfasting ensured him a
headache for the rest of the day, so that he never was one
of those risers with the dawn who do half a day’s work be-
fore the rest of the world is astir. And though necessity
often compelled him to do with less, he always found eight
hours his proper allowance of sleep.

But in the end of 1853 we hear of a reform in his ways,
after a bad bout of ill-health, when he rises at eight, goes to
bed at twelve, and eschews parties of every kind as far as
possible, with excellent results as far as health went.

After his marriage, however, and indeed to the begin-
ning of his last illness, he always rose early enough for an
eight o’clock breakfast, after which the working day began,
lasting regularly from a little after nine till midnight.
114 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII

4 Upper York Ptace, ST. Joun’s Woop, Fed. 6, 1853.

Many thanks, my dearest sister, for your kind and thought-
ful letter—it went to my heart no little that you, amidst all your
trials and troubles, should find time to think so wisely and so
affectionately of mine. Though greatly tempted otherwise, I
have acted in the spirit of your advice, and my reward, in the
shape of honours at any rate, has not failed me, as the Royal
Society gave me one of the Royal medals last year. It’s a
bigger one than I got under your auspices so many years ago,
being worth £50, but I don’t know that I cared so much about it.

It was assigned to me quite unexpectedly, and in the eyes of
the world I, of course, am greatly the bigger—but I will confess
to you privately that I am by no means dilated, and am the
identical Boy Tom I was before I achieved the attainment of
my golden porter’s badge. Curiously it was given for the first
Memoir I have in the Royal Society’s Transactions, sent home
four years ago with no small fear and trembling, and, “ after
many days,” returning with this queer crust of bread. In the
speech I had to make at the Anniversary Dinner I grew quite
eloquent on that point, and talked of the dove I had sent from
my ark, returning, not with the olive branch, but with a sprig
of the bay and a fruit from the garden of the Hesperides—a
simile which I thought decidedly clever, but which the audi-
ence—distinguished audience I ought to have said—probably
didn’t, as they did not applaud that, while they did some things
I said which were incomparably more stupid. This was in No-
vember, and I ought to have written to you about it before, my
dear Lizzie, but for one thing I am very much occupied, and
for the other (shall I confess it?) I was rather puzzled that
I had not heard from you since I wrote. Now my useless con-
science, which never makes me do anything right in time, is
pitching in to me when it is too late.

The medal, however, must not be jested at, as it is most
decidedly of practical use in giving me a status in the eyes of
those charming people, “practical men,” such as I had not
before, and I am amused to find some of my friends, whose con-
tempt for my “dreamy” notions was not small in time past,
absolutely advising me to take a far more dreamy course than
I dare venture upon. However, I take very much my own
course now, even as I have done before—Huxley all over.

However, that is enough about myself just now. In the next
letter I will tell you more at length about my plans and pros-
pects, which are mostly, I am sorry to say, only provocative of
1853 “CORN IN EGYPT” 11s

setting my teeth hard and saying, “ Never mind, I will.” But
what I write in a hurry about and want you to do at once, is
to write to me and tell me exactly how money may be sent safely
to you. It is inexpedient to send without definite directions,
according to the character you give your neighbours. Don’t
expect anything vast, but there is corn in Egypt... .

Two classes of people can I deal with and no third. They
are the good people—people after my own heart, and the thor-
ough men of the world. Either of these I can act and sym-
pathise with, but the others, who are neither for God nor for
the Devil, but for themselves, as grim old Dante has it, and
whom he therefore very justly puts in a most uncomfortable
place, I cannot do with... .

So Florry is growing up into a great girl; the child will not
remember me, but kiss her and my godson for me, and give my
love to them all. The Lymph shall come in my next letter for
the young Yankee. I hope the juices of the English cow will
prevent him from ever acquiring the snuffle.

Tell the Doctor all about the medal, with my kindest re-
gards, and believe me, my dearest Lizzie, your affectionate
brother, ‘ Tom.

4 Uprer York PLace, St. Jonn’s Woon, April 22, 1853.
~ My pearest Lizz1e—First let me congratulate you on being
safe over your troubles and in possession of another possible
President. I think it may be worth coming over twenty years
hence on the possibility of picking up something or other from
one of my nephews at Washington.

[He sends some money.] Would it were more worth your
having, but I have not as yet got on to Tom Tiddler’s ground on
this side of the water. You need not be alarmed about my
having involved myself in any way—such portion of it as is
of my sending has been conquered by mine own sword and
' spear, and the rest came from Mary.*

[After giving a summary of his struggle with the Admiralty,
he proceeds]—If I were to tell you all the intriguing and hum-
bug there has been about my unfortunate grant — which yet
granted—it would occupy this letter, and though a very good
illustration of the encouragement afforded to Science in this
country, would not be very amusing. Once or twice it has fairly
died out, only to be stirred up again by my own pertinacity.
However, I have hopes of it at last, as I‘hear Lord Rosse is

 

* Mrs. George Huxley.
116 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII

just about'to make another application to the present Govern-
ment on the subject. While this business has been dragging
on of course I have not been idle. I have four memoirs (on
various matters in Comparative Anatomy) in the Philosophical
Transactions, and they have given me their Fellowship and one
of the Royal medals. I have written a whole lot of things for
the journals—reviews for the British and Foreign Quarterly
Medical, etc. I am one of the éditors of Taylor’s Scientific
Memoirs (German scientific translations). In conjunction with
my friend Busk I am translating a great German book on the
Microscopical Anatomy of Man, and I have engaged to write
a long article for Todd’s Cyclopedia. Besides this, have read
two long memoirs at the British Association, and have given
two lectures at the Royal Institution—one of them only two days
ago, when I was so ill with influenza I could hardly stand or
speak.

Furthermore, I have been a candidate for a Professorship of
Natural History at Toronto (which is not even yet decided) ;
for one at Aberdeen, which has been given against me; and at
present I am a candidate for the Professorship of Physiology
at King’s College, or, rather, for half of it—Todd having given
up, and Bowman, who remains, being willing to take only half,
and that he will soon give up. My friend Edward Forbes—a
regular brick, who has backed me through thick and thin—
is backing me for King’s College, where he is one of the Pro-
fessors. My chance is, I believe, very good, but nothing can be
more uncertain than the result of the contest. If they don’t
take one of their own men I think they will have me. It would
suit me very well, and the whole chair is worth £400 a year, and
would enable me to live.

Something I must make up my mind to do, and that speedily.
I can get honour in Science, but it doesn’t pay, and “ honour
heals no wounds.” In truth I am often very weary. The
longer one lives the more the ideal and the purpose vanishes
out of one’s life, and I begin to doubt whether I have done
wisely in giving vent to the cherished tendency towards Science
which has haunted me ever since my childhood. Had I given
myself to Mammon I might have been a respectable member of
society with large watch-seals by this time. I think it is very
likely that if this King’s College business goes against me, I
may give up the farce altogether—burn my books, burn my
rod, and take to practice in Australia. It is no use to go on
kicking against the pricks... .
CHAPTER VIII
1854

THE year 1854 marks the turning-point in Huxley’s
career. The desperate time of waiting came to an end. By
the help of his lectures and his pen, he could at all events
stand and wait independently of the Navy. He could not,
of course, think of immediate marriage, nor of asking Miss
Heathorn to join him in England; but it so happened that
her father was already thinking of returning home, and
finally this was determined upon just before Professor
Forbes’ translation to a chair at Edinburgh gave Huxley
what turned out to be the long-hoped-for permanency in
London.

June 3, 1854.

I have often spoken to you of my friend Edward Forbes.
He has quite recently been suddenly appointed to a Professorial
Chair in Edinburgh, vacated by the death of old Jamieson. He
was obliged to go down there at once and lecture, and as he
had just commenced his course at the Government School of
Mines in Jermyn Street, it was necessary to obtain a substitute.
He had spoken to me of the possibility of his being called away
long ago, and had asked if I would take his place, to which,
of course, I assented, but the whole affair was so uncertain
that I never in any way reckoned upon it. Even at last I did
not know on the Monday whether I was to go on for him on
the Friday or not. However, he did go after giving two lec-
tures, and on Friday the 25th May I took his lecture, and I
have been going on ever since, twice a week on Mondays and
Fridays. Called upon so very suddenly to give a course of some
six and twenty lectures, I find it very hard work, but I like it
and I never was in better health.

117
118 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VIII

On July 20, this temporary work, which he had under-
taken as the friend of Forbes, was exchanged for one of the
permanent lectureships formerly held by the latter. A hun-
dred a year for twenty-six lectures was not affluence; it
would have suited him better to have had twice the work
and twice the pay. But it was his crossing of the Rubicon,
and, strangely enough, no sooner had he gained this success
than it was doubled.

July 30, 1854.

I was appointed yesterday to a post of £200 a year. It has
all come about in the strangest way. I told you how my friend
Forbes had been suddenly called away to Edinburgh, and that
I had suddenly taken his duties—sharp work it has been I can
tell you these summer months, but it is over and done satisfac-
torily. Forbes got £500 a year, £200 for a double lectureship,
£300 for another office. I took one of the lectureships, which
would have given me £100 a year only, and another man was to
have the second lectureship and the other office in question. It
was so completely settled a week ago that I had written to the
President of the Board of Trade who makes the appointment, ac-
cepting mine, and the other man had done the same. Happily for
me, however, my new colleague was suddenly afflicted with a
sort of moral colic, an absurd idea that he could not perform
the duties of his office, and resigned it. The result is that a
new man has been appointed to the office he left vacant, while
the lectureship was offered to me. Of course I took it, and so
in the course of the week I have seen my paid income doubled:
... So after a short interval I have become a Government
officer again, but in rather a different position I flatter my-
self. I am chief of my own department, and my position is con-
sidered a very good one—as good as anything of its kind in
London.

Furthermore, on August 11 he was “entrusted with
the Coast Survey investigations under the Geological Sur-
vey, and remunerated by fee until March 31, 1855, when he
was ranked as Naturalist on the Survey with an additional
salary of £200, afterwards increased to £400, rising to £600
per annum,” as the official statement has it.

Then in quick succession he was offered in August a
lectureship on Comparative Anatomy at St. Thomas’ Hos-
pital for the following May and June, and in September he
1854 HIS FRANKNESS 119

was asked to lecture in November and March for the Sci-
ence and Art Department at Marlborough House.

Now therefore, with the Heathorns coming to England,
his plans and theirs exactly fitted, and he proposed to get
married as soon as they came over, early in the following
summer.

A letter of this year deserves quoting as illustrating the
directness of Huxley’s dealings with his friends, and his
hatred of doing anything unknown to them which might
be misreported to them or misconstrued without explana-
tion. As a member of the Royal Society Council, it was his
duty to vote upon the persons to whom the yearly medals
of the Society should be awarded. For the Royal Medal
first Hooker was named, and received his hearty support;
then Forbes, in opposition to Hooker, in his eyes equally
deserving of recognition, and almost more closely bound
to him by ties of friendship, so that whatever action he took,
might be ascribed to motives which should have no part
in such a selection. The course actually taken by him he
explained at length in letters to both Forbes and Hooker.

Nov. 6, 1854.

My pear Hooker—I have been so busy with lecturing here
and there that I have not had time to write and congratulate you
on the award of the medal. The queer position in which I was
placed prevents me from being able to congratulate myself on
having any finger in the pie, but I am quite sure there was no
member of the Council who felt more strongly than myself that
what honour the bauble could confer was most fully won, and no
more than your just deserts; or who rejoiced more when the
thing was settled in your favour.

However, I do trust that I shall never be placed in such an-
awkward position again. I would have given a great deal to be
able to back Forbes tooth and nail—not only on account of my
personal friendship and affection for him, but because I think he
well deserves such recognition. And had I thought right to do
so, I felt sure that you would have fully appreciated my motives,
and that it would have done no injury to our friendship.

But as I told the Council I did not think this a case where
either of you had any right to be excluded by the other. I told
them that had Forbes been first named, I should have thought it

9
120 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, VIII

injudicious to bring you forward, and that, as you were named,
I for my own part should not have brought forward Forbes as
a candidate; that therefore while willing to speak up to any
extent for Forbes’ positive merits and deserts, I would carefully
be understood to give no opinion as to your and his relative
standing.

They did not take much by my speech therefore either way,
more especially as I voted for both of you.

I hate doing anything of the kind “ unbeknownst ” to people,
so there is the exact history of my proceedings. If I had been
able to come to the clear conclusion that the claims of either
of you were strongly superior to those of the other, I think I
should have had the honesty and moral courage to “act ac-
cordin’,” but I really had not, and so there was no part to play
but that of a sort of Vicar of Bray.—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxzey.

Forbes’ reply was a letter which Huxley, after his friend’s
death, held ‘“‘among his most precious possessions.” It
appeared without names in the obituary notice of Forbes in
the Literary Gazette for November 25, 1854, as an example
of his unselfish generosity :—

I heartily concur in the course you have taken, and had I
been placed as you have been, would have done exactly the
same. .. . Your way of proceeding was as true an act of friend-
ship as any that could be performed. As to myself, I dream so
little about medals, that the notion of being on the list never
entered my brain, even when asleep. If it ever comes I shall
be pleased and thankful; if it does not, it is not the sort of thing
to break my equanimity. Indeed, I would always like to see it
given not as a mere honour, but as a help to a good man, and
this it is assuredly in Hooker’s case. Government people are
so ignorant that they require to have merits drummed into their
heads by all possible means, and Hooker’s getting the medal
may be of real service to him before long. I am in a snug,
though not an idle, nest,—he has not got his resting-place yet.
And so, my dear Huxley, I trust that you know me too well to
think that I am either grieved or envious, and you, Hooker,
and I are much of the same way of thinking.

It is interesting to record the same scrupulosity over
the election to the Registrarship of the University of Lon-
don in 1856, when, having begun to canvass for Dr. Latham
1853 HIS FRANKNESS 121

before his friend Dr. W. B. Carpenter entered the field, he
writes to Hooker :—

I at once, of course, told Carpenter precisely what I had
done. Had I known of his candidature earlier, I should cer-
tainly have taken no active part on either side—not for Latham,
because I would not oppose Carpenter, and not for Carpenter,
because his getting the Registrarship would probably be an ad-
vantage for me, as I should have a good chance of obtaining the
Examinership in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy which
he would vacate. Indeed, I refused to act for Carpenter in a
case in which he asked me to do so, partly for this reason and
partly because I felt thoroughly committed to Latham. Under
these circumstances I think you are quite absolved from any
pledge to me. It’s deuced hard to keep straight in this wicked
world, but as you say the only chance is to out with it, and I
thank you much for writing so frankly about the matter. I hope
it will be as fine as to-day at Down.*

Unfortunately the method was not so successful with
smaller minds. Once in 1852, when he had to report un-
favourably on a paper for the Annals of Natural History on
the structure of the Starfishes, sent in by an acquaintance,
he felt it right not to conceal his action, as he might have
done, behind the referee’s usual screen of anonymity, but to
write a frank account of the reasons which had led him so
to report, that he might both clear himself of the suspicion
of having dealt an unfair blow in the dark, and give his ac-
quaintance the opportunity of correcting and enlarging his
paper with a view of submitting it again for publication.

In this case the only result was an impassioned corre-
spondence, the author even going so far as to suggest that
Huxley had condemned the paper without having so much
as dissected an Echinoderm in his life! and then all inter-
course ceased, till years afterwards the gentleman in ques-
tion realised the weaknesses of his paper and repented him
of his wrath.

Before leaving London to begin his work at Tenby as
Naturalist to the Survey, he delivered at St. Martin’s Hall,
on July 22, an address on the “ Educational Value of the

 

* Charles Darwin’s home in Kent.
122 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VIII

Natural History Sciences.* This, when it came out later as
a pamphlet, he sent to his Tenby friend Dr. Dyster (of
whom hereafter), to whose criticism on one passage he re-
plied on October 10 :—

...—I am rejoiced you liked my speechment. It was
written hastily and is, like its speaker, I fear, more forcible
than eloquent, but it can lay claim to the merit of being sin-
cere.

My intention on p. 28 was by no means to express any satis-
faction at the worms being as badly off as ourselves, but to show
that pain being everywhere is inevitable, and therefore like all
other inevitable things to be borne. The rest of it is the product
of my scientific Calvinism, which fell like a shell at your feet
when we were talking over the fire.

I doubt, or at least I have no confidence in, the doctrine of
ultimate happiness, and I am more inclined to look the opposite
possibility fully in the face, and if that also be inevitable, make
up my mind to bear it also.

You will tell me there are better consolations than Stoicism;
that may be, but I do not possess them, and I have found my
“erin and bear it” philosophy stand me in such good stead in
my course through oceans of disgust and chagrin, that I should
be loth to give it up.

The summer of 1854 was spent in company with the
Busks at Tenby, amid plenty of open-air work and in great
peace of mind, varied with a short visit to Liverpool in order
to talk business with his friend Forbes, who was eager that
Huxley should join him in Edinburgh.

 

* The subsequent reference is to the words, ‘‘I cannot but think
that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably
woven up in the life of the very worms will bear his own share with
more courage and submission ; and will, at any rate, view with sus-
picion those weakly amiable theories of the divine government, which
would have us believe pain to be an oversight and a mistake, to be
corrected by and by.” (Collected Essays, iii. p. 62.) This essay contains
the definition of science as ‘‘trained and organised common sense,”
and the reference to a new “‘ Peter Bell” which suggested Miss May
Kendall’s spirited parody of Wordsworth :—

Primroses by the river’s brim

Dicotyledons were to him,
And they were nothing more.
1854 SURVEY WORK AT TENBY 123

TENBY, SouTH WALEs, Sef/. 3, 1854.

I have been here since the middle of August, getting rid of
my yellow face and putting om a brown one, banishing dys-
pepsias and hypochondrias and all such other town afflictions to
the four winds, and rejoicing exceedingly that I am out of the
way of that pest, the cholera, which is raging just at present
in London.

After I had arranged to come here to do a lot of work of my
own which can only be done by the seaside, our Director, Sir
Henry de la Beche, gave me a special mission of his own
whereby I have the comfort of having my expenses paid, but
at the same time get it taken out of me in additional labour, so
my recreation is anything but leisure.

Oct. T4.

I left this place for a week’s trip to Liverpool in the end
of September. The meeting of the British Association was held
there, but I went not so much to be present as to meet Forbes,
with whom I wanted to talk over many matters concerning us
both. Forbes had a proposition that I should go to Edinburgh
to take part of the duties of the Professor of Physiology there,
who is in bad health, with the ultimate aim of succeeding to the
chair. It was a tempting offer made in a flattering manner,
and presenting a prospect of considerably better emolument
than my special post, but it had the disadvantage of being but
an uncertain position. Had I accepted, I should have been at
the mercy of the actual Professor—and that is a position I don’t
like standing in, even with the best of men, and had he died
or resigned at any time the Scotch chairs are so disposed of
that there would have been nothing like a certainty of my get-
ting the post, so I definitely declined—I hope wisely.

After some talk, Forbes agreed with my view of the case, so
he is off to Edinburgh, and I shall go off to London. I hope
to remain there for my life long.

He had long felt that London gave the best oppor-
tunities for a scientific career, and it was on his advice that
Tyndall had left Queenwood College for the Royal Institu-
tion, where he was elected Professor of Natural Philosophy
in 1853 :—

6 Upper York PLace, ST. Jonn’s Woon,
Feb, 25, 1853.

My pear Tynpatt—Having rushed into more responsibility

than I wotted of, I have been ruminating and taking counsel
124 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VIII

what advice to give you. When I wrote I hardly knew what
kind of work you had in your present office, but Francis has
since enlightened me. I thought you had more leisure. One
thing is very clear—you must come out of that. Your Pegasus
is quite out of place ploughing. You are using yourself up in
work that comes to nothing, and so far as I can see cannot be
worse off.

Now what are your prospects? Why, as I told you before,
you have made a succés here and must profit by it. The other
night your name was mentioned at the Philosophical Club (the
most influential scientific body in London) with great praise.
Gassiot, who has great influence, said in so many words, “ you
had made your fortune,” and I frankly tell you I believe so too,
if you can only get over the next three years. So you see that
quoad position, like Quintus Curtius, there is a “fine opening”
ready for you, only mind you don’t spoil it by any of your horrid
modesty. -

So much for glory—now for economics. I have been try-
ing to ferret out more nearly your chances of a post, and here
are my results (which, I need not tell you, must be kept to
yourself).

At the Museum in Jermyn Street, Playfair, Forbes, Percy
and I think Sir Henry would do anything to get you, and elimi-
nate ; but, so far as I can judge, the probability of his
going is so small that it is not worth your while to reckon upon
it. Nevertheless it may be comforting to you to know that in
case of anything happening these men will help you tooth and
nail. Cultivate Playfair when you have a chance—he is a good
fellow, wishes you well, has great influence, and will have more.
Entre. nous, he has just got a new and important post under
Government.

Next, the Royal Institution. This is where, as I told you,
you ought to be—loking to Faraday’s place. Have no scruple
about your chemical knowledge; you won’t be required to train a
college of students in abstruse analyses; and if you were, a
year’s work would be quite enough to put you at ease. What
they want, and what you have, are clear powers of exposition
—so clear that people may think they understand even if they
don’t. That is the secret of Faraday’s success, for not a tithe
of the people who go to hear him really understand him.

However, I am afraid that a delay must occur before you
can get placed at the Royal Institution, as you cannot hold the
Professorship until you have given a course of lectures there,

 
1853 ADVICE TO TYNDALL 123

and it would seem that there is no room for you this year. How-
ever, I must try and learn more about this.

Under these circumstances the London Institution looks
tempting. I have been talking over the matter with Forbes,
whose advice I look upon as first-rate in all these things, and
he is decidedly of the opinion that you should take the London
Institution if it is offered you. He says that lecturing there
and lecturing at other Institutions, and writing, you could with
certainty make more than you at present receive, and that you
would have the command of a capital laboratory and plenty of
ume.

Then as to position—of which I was doubtful—it appears
that Grove has made it a good one.

It is of great importance to look to this point in London—to
be unshackled by anything that may prevent you taking the
highest places, and it was only my fear on this head that made
me advise you to hesitate about the London Institution. More
consideration leads me to say, take that, if it will bring you up
to London at once, so that you may hammer your reputation
while it is hot.

However, consider all these things well, and don’t be hasty.
I will keep eyes and ears open and inform you accordingly.
Write to me if there is anything you want done, supposing
always there is nobody who will do it better—which is im-
probable——Ever yours, T. H. Huxtey.

But this year of victory was not to pass away without
one last blow from fate. On November 18, Edward Forbes,
the man in whom Huxley had found a true friend and
helper, inspired by the same ideals of truth and sincerity
as himself, died suddenly at Edinburgh. The strong but
delicate ties that united them were based not merely upon
intellectual affinity, but upon the deeper moral kinship of
two strong characters, where each subordinated interest to
ideal, and treated others by the measure of his own self-
respect. As early as March 1851 he had written :—

I wish you knew my friend Prof. Forbes. He is the best
creature you can imagine, and helps me in all manner of ways.
A man of very great knowledge, he is wholly free from pedantry
and jealousy, the two besetting sins of literary and scientific
men. Up to his eyes in work, he never grudges his time if it
is to help a friend. He is one of the few men I have ever met
126 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VIII

to whom I can feel obliged, without losing a particle of inde-
pendence or self-respect.

The following from a letter to Hooker, announcing
Forbes’ death, is a striking testimony to his worth :—

I think I have never felt so crushed by anything before.
It is one of those losses which cannot be replaced either to the
private friend or to science. To me especially it is a bitter loss.
Without the aid and sympathy he has always given me from
first to last, I should never have had the courage to persevere
in the course I have followed. And it was one of my greatest
hopes that we should work in harmony for long years at the
aims so dear to us both.

But it is otherwise, and we who remain have nothing left
but to bear the inevitable as we best may.

And again a few days later :—

I have had no time to write to you again till now, but I write
to say how perfectly you express my own feeling about our poor
friend. One of the first things I thought of was that medal
business,* and I never rejoiced in anything more than that I
had not been deterred by any moral cowardice from acting as
I did.

As it is I reckon that letter (which I will show you some
day) among my most precious possessions.

Huxley’s last tribute to his dead friend was the organ-
ising a memorial fund, part of which went to getting a bust
of him made, part to establishing an Edward Forbes medal,
to be competed for by the students of his old school in
Jermyn Street. .

As Huxley had been Forbes’ successor at Jermyn Street,
so now he seemed to many marked out to succeed him at
Edinburgh. In November he writes to Hooker :-—

People have been at me about the Edinburgh chair. If I
could contrive to stop here, between you and I, I would prefer it
to half a dozen Edinburgh chairs, but there is a mortal difference
between £200 and £1000 a year. I have written to say that if
the Professors can make up their minds they wish me to stand, I
will—if not, I will not. For my own part, I believe my chances

 

* P. 119.
1854 AN EVENTFUL YEAR 127

would be very small, and I think there is every probability of
their dividing the chair, in which case I certainly would not go.
However, I hate thinking about the thing.

And also to his sister :—

Nov, 26, 1854.

My pearest Lizzre—I feel I have been silent very long—a
great deal too long—but you would understand if you knew how
much I have to do; why, with every disposition to do otherwise,
I now write hardly any but business letters. Even Nettie comes
off badly I am afraid. When a man embarks as I have done,
with nothing but his brains to back him, on the great sea of life
in London, with the determination to make the influence and the
position and the money which he hasn’t got, you may depend
upon it that the fierce wants and interests of his present and
immediate circle leave him little time to think of anything else,
whatever old loves and old memories may be smouldering as
warmly as ever below the surface. So, sister mine, you must
not imagine because I do not write that therefore I do not think
of you or care to know about you, but only that I am eaten up
with the zeal of my own house, and doing with all my heart the
thing that the moment calls for.

The last year has been eventful for me. There is always
a Cape Horn in one’s life that one either weathers or wrecks
one’s self on. Thank God I think I may say I have weathered
mine—not without a good deal of damage to spars and rigging
though, for it blew deuced hard on the other side.

At the commencement of this year my affairs came to a
crisis. The Government, notwithstanding all the representa-
tions which were made to them, would neither give nor refuse
the grant for the publication of my work, and by way of cutting
short all further discussion the Admiralty called upon me to
serve. A correspondence ensued, in which, as commonly hap-
pens in these cases, they got the worst of it in logic and words,
and I in reality and “tin.” They answered my syllogism by
the irrelevant and absurd threat of stopping my pay if I did not
serve at once. Here was a pretty business! However, it was
no use turning back when so much had been sacrificed for one’s
end, so I put their Lordships’ letter up on my mantelpiece and
betook myself to scribbling for my bread. They, on the other
hand, removed my name from the List. So there was an inter-
regnum when I was no longer in Her Majesty's service. I had
already joined the Westminster Review, and had inured myself
128 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VIII

to the labour of translation—and I could get any amount of
scientific work I wanted—so there was a living, though a
scanty one, and amazingly hard work for it. My pen is not
a very facile one, and what I write costs me a good deal of
trouble.

In the spring of this year, however, a door opened. My
poor lost friend Professor Forbes—whose steady attachment and
aid had always been of the utmost service to me—was called
to fill the chair of Natural History in Edinburgh at a moment’s
notice. It is a very valuable appointment, and he was obliged
to fill it at once. Of course he left a number of vacancies be-
hind, among them one at the Government School of Mines in
Jermyn Street, where he lectured on Natural History. I was
called upon to take up his lectures where he left off, in the same
sudden way, and the upshot of it all was that I became perma-
nently attached—with £200 a year pay. In other ways I can
make a couple of hundred a year more even now, and I hope
by-and-by to do better. In fact, a married man, as I hope soon
to be, cannot live at all in the position which I ought to occupy
under less than six hundred a year. If I keep my health, how-
ever, I have every hope of being able to do this—but, as the
jockeys say, the pace is severe. Nettie is coming over in the
spring, and if I have any luck at all, I mean to have paid off
my debts and to be married by this time next year.*

In the meanwhile, strangely enough—and very painfully for
me—new possibilities have sprung up. My poor friend Forbes
died only a week ago, just as he was beginning his course and
entering upon as brilliant a career as ever was opened to any
scientific man in this country.

I cannot tell you how deeply this has shocked me. I owe him
so much, I loved him so well, and I have so very very few
friends in the true sense of the word, that it has been perhaps

 

* He writes on July 21, 1851:—‘‘ I commenced life upon nothing at
all, and I had to borrow in the ordinary way from an agent for the
necessary expenses of my outfit. I sent home a great deal of money,
but notwithstanding, from the beautiful way they have of accumu-
lating interest and charges of one description and another, I found
myself £100 in debt when I returned—besides something to my broth-
er, about which, however, I do not suppose I need trouble myself just
at present. As you may imagine, living in London, my pay now
hardly keeps me, to say nothing of paying off my old scores. I could
get no account of how things were going on with my agent while I
was away, and therefore I never could tell exactly how I stood.”
1854 TENAX PROPOSITI 129

a greater loss to me than to any one—although there never was
a man so widely lamented. One could trust him so thoroughly!
However, he has gone, poor fellow, and there is nothing for it
but to shut one’s self up again—and I was only going to say
that his death leaves his post vacant, and I have been strongly
urged to become a candidate for it by several of the most influ-
ential Edinburgh Professors. I am greatly puzzled what to do.
I do not want to leave London, nor do I think much of my own
chances of success if I become a candidate—though others do.
On the other hand, a stipend which varies between £800 and
£1200 a year is not to be pooh-poohed.

We shall see. If I can carry out some arrangements which
are pending with the Government to increase my pay to £400 a
year, I shall be strongly tempted to stop in London. It is the
place, the centre of the world.

In the meanwhile, as things always do come in heaps, I
obtained my long-fought-for Grant—though indirectly—from
the Government, which is, I think, a great triumph and vindi-
cation of the family motto—tenax propositi. Like many long-
sought-for blessings, however, it is rather a bore now I have it,
as I don’t see how I am to find time to write the book. But
things “do themselves” in a wonderful way. I'll tell you how
many irons I have in the fire at this present moment :—(1) a
manual of Comparative Anatomy for Churchill; (2) my
“Grant” book; (3) a book for the British Museum people
(half done) ; (4) an article for Todd’s Cyclopedia (half done) ;
(5) sundry memoirs on Science; (6) a regular Quarterly arti-
cle in the Westminster; (7) lectures at Jermyn Street in the
School of Mines; (8) lectures at the School of Art, Marlbor-
ough House; (9) lectures at the London Institution, and odds
and ends. Now, my dearest Lizzie, whenever you feel inclined
to think it unkind I don’t write, just look at that list, and re-
member that all these things require strenuous attention and
concentration of the faculties, and leave one not very fit for
anything else. You will say that it is bad to be so entirely ab-
sorbed in these things, and to that I heartily say Amen !—but
you might as well argue with a man who has just mounted the
favourite for the “ Oaks” that it is a bad thing to ride fast.
He admits that, and is off like a shot when the bell rings never-
theless. My bell has rung some time, and thank God the win-
ning-post is in sight.

Give my kindest regards to the doctor and special love to all
the children. I send a trifle for my godson and some odds and
130 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VIII

ends in the book line, among other things a Shakespeare for

yourself, dear Liz—Believe me, ever your affec. brother,
T. H. Huxtey.

In December the Edinburgh chair was practically offered
to him undivided; but by that time the London authorities
thought they had better make it worth his while to stay at
Jermyn Street, and with negotiations begun for this end he
refused to stand for Edinburgh. In the following spring,
however, he was again approached from Edinburgh—not so
much to withdraw his refusal and again become a candidate,
as to let it be made known that he would accept the chair
if it were offered him. But his position in London was
now established; and he preferred to live in London on a
bare sufficiency rather than to enjoy a larger income away
from the centre of things.

Two letters to Tyndall, which refer to the division of
labour in the science reviews for the Westminster (see p.
92), indicate very clearly the high pressure at which Huxley
had already begun to work :—

TenBy, SOUTH WALES, Oct. 22, 1854.

My pear Tynpatit—lI was rejoiced to find you entertaining
my proposition at all. No one believes how hard you work more
than I, but I was not going to be such a bad diplomatist as to
put that at the head of my letter, and if I had thought that
what I want you to do involved any great accession thereto, I
think I could not have mustered up the face to ask you. But
really and truly, so long as it is confined to our own depart-
ment it is no great affair. You make me laugh at the long face
you pull about the duties, based on my phrase. The fact is, you
notice what you like, and what you do not you leave undone,
unless you get an editorial request to say something about a
particular book. The whole affair is entirely in your own hands
—at least it is in mine—as I went upon my principle of having
a row at starting. ...

Now here is an equitable proposition. Look at my work. I
have a couple of monographs, odds and ends of papers for jour-
nals, a manual and some three courses of lectures to provide
for this winter. “ My necessities are as great as thine,” as Sir
Philip Sidney didn’t say, so be a brick, split the difference, and
1854 INVITED TO SUCCEED FORBES 131

say you will be ready for the April number. I will write and
announce the fact to Chapman.

What idiots we all are to toil and slave at this pace. I
almost repent me of tempting you—after all—so I promise to
hold on if you really think you will be overdoing it.

With you I envy Francis his gastric energies. I feel I have
done for myself in that line, and am in for a life-long dyspeps.
I have not, now, nervous energy enough for stomach and brain
both, and if I work the latter, not even the fresh breezes of this
place will keep the former in order. That is a discovery I have
made here, and though highly instructive, it is not so pleasant
as some other physiological results that have turned up.

Chapman, who died of cholera, was a distant relative of my
man. The poor fellow vanished in the middle of an unfinished
article, which has appeared in the last Westminster, as his for-
lorn vale! to the world. After all, that is the way to die, better
a thousand times than drivelling off into eternity betwixt awake
and asleep in a fatuous old age.—Believe me, ever yours faith-
fully, T. H. Huxtey.

On Tyndall consenting, he wrote again on the 29th :—

I rejoice in having got you to put your head under my yoke,
and feel ready to break into a hand gallop on the strength of it.

I have written to Chapman to tell him you only make an
experiment on your cerebral substance, whose continuance de-
pends on tenacity thereof.

I didn’t suspect you of being seduced by the magnificence of
the emolument, you Cincinnatus of the laboratory. I only sug-
gested that as pay sweetens labour, a fortiori it will sweeten
what to you will be no labour.

I’m not a miserable mortal now—quite the contrary. I never
am when I have too much to do, and my sage reflection was not
provoked by envy of the more idle. Only I do wish I could
sometimes ascertain the exact juste miliew of work which will
suit, not my head or will, these can’t have too much; but my
absurd stomach.

The Edinburgh candidature, the adoption of his wider
scheme for the carrying out of the coast survey, and his
approaching marriage, are touched upon in the following
letters to Dr. Frederick Dyster * of Tenby, whose keen

 

*It was to Dyster that Huxley owed his introduction in 1854 to
F, D. Maurice (whose work in educating the people he did his best to
132 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VIII

interest in marine zoology was the starting-point of a warm
friendship with the. rising naturalist, some fifteen years his
junior. He was strongly urged by the younger man to
complete and systematise his observations by taking in turn
all the species of each genus of annelids found at Tenby,
and working them up into a series of little monographs
“which would be the best of all possible foundations for a
History of the British Annelidz ” :—

To Dr. DysTER
Jan. 5, 1855.

[He begins by confessing “a considerable liberty” he had
been taking with Dyster’s name, in calling a joint discovery of
this, which he described in the Edinburgh New Philosophical
Journal, Protula Dysteri.]

Are you very savage? If so, you must go and take a walk
along the sands and see the slant rays of the sunset tipping the
rollers as they break on the beach; that always made even me at
peace with all the world, and a fortiori it will you.

Truly, I wish I had any such source of consolation. Chim-
ney pots are highly injurious to my morals, and my temper is
usually in proportion to the extent of my horizon.

I have been swallowing oceans of disgust lately. All sorts
of squabbles, some made by my own folly and others by the
malice of other people, and no great sea and sky to go out under,
and be alone and forget it all.

You may have seen my name advertised by Reeve as about
to write a memoir of poor Forbes, to be prefixed to a collection
of his essays. I found that to be a mere bookseller’s dodge on
Reeve’s part, and when I made the discovery, of course we had
a battle-royal, and I have now wholly withdrawn from it.

I find, however, that one’s kind and generous friends imagine
it was an electioneering manceuvre on my part for Edinburgh.
Imagine how satisfactory. I forget whether I told you that I
had been asked to stand for Edinburgh and have done so.
‘Whether I shall be appointed or not I do not know. So far as

 

help), and later to Charles Kingsley, whom he first met at the end of
June 1855. ‘What Kingsley do you refer to?” he writes on May 6,
‘Alton Locke Kingsley or Photographic Kingsley? I shall be right
glad to find good men and true anywhere, and I will take your bail for
any man. But the work must be critically done.”
1855 EFFLORESCENT PIETISM 133

my own wishes go, I am in a curiously balanced state of mind
about it. Many things make it a desirable post, but I dread
leaving London and its freedom—its Bedouin sort of life—for
Edinburgh and no whistling on Sundays. Besides, if I go there,
I shall have to give up all my coast-survey plans, and all their
pleasant concomitants.

Apropos of Edinburgh I feel much like the Irish hod-man
who betted his fellow he could not carry him up to the top of a
house in his hod. The man did it, but Pat turning round as he
was set down on the roof, said, “ Ye’ve done it, sure enough,
but, bedad, I'd great hopes ye’d let me fall about three rounds
from the top.” Bedad, I’m nearly at the top of the Scotch ladder,
but I’ve hopes.

It is finally settled that the chair will not be divided. I told
them frankly I would not go if it were.

Has Highly sent your books yet?—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

JERMYN STREET, Fe. 13, 1855.

My pear Dyster— .. . I will do my best to help to
some alumni if the chance comes in my way, though, as you say,
I don’t like him. I can’t help it. I respect piety, and hope I
have some after my own fashion, but I have a profound preju-
dice against the efflorescent form of it. ‘I never yet found
in people thoroughly imbued with that pietism, the same no-
tions of honour and straightforwardness that obtain among
men of the world. It may be otherwise with ——, but I can’t
help my pagan prejudice. So don’t judge harshly of me there-
anent.

About Edinburgh, I have been going to write to you for
days past. I have decided on withdrawing from the can-
didature, and have done so. In fact the more I thought of
it the less I liked it. They require nine months’ lectures some
four or five times a week, which would have thoroughly
used me up, and completely put a stop to anything like original
work; and then there was a horrid museum to be arranged,
work I don’t care about, and which would have involved an
amount of intriguing and heart-burning, and would have re-
quired an amount of diplomacy to carry to a successful issue,
for which my temper and disposition are wholly unfitted.

And then I felt above all things that it was for me an im-
posture. Here have I been fighting and struggling for years,
sacrificing everything to be a man of science, a genuine worker,

 
134 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VIII

and if I had obtained the Edinburgh chair, I should have been
in reality a mere pedagogue and a man of science only in name.
Such were my notions, and if I hesitated at all and allowed
myself to become a candidate, it was only because I have other
interests to consult than my own. Intending to “ range myself”
one of these days and become a respectable member of society,
I was bound to consider my material interests. And so I should
have been still a candidate for Edinburgh had not the Govern-
ment here professed themselves unwilling to lose my services,
adding the ‘“ material guarantee” of an addition to my income,
which, though by no means bringing it up to the point of Edin-
burgh, will still enable me (das heisst us”) to live comfort-
ably here.

I must renounce the “pomps and vanities,” but all those
other “lusts of the flesh” which may beseem a gentleman may
be reasonably gratified.

Don’t you think I have been wise in my Hercules choice?
After all I don’t lay claim to any great merit, seeing it was any-
thing but certain I should get Edinburgh.

The best of all is that I have every reason to believe that
Government will carry out my scheme for a coast survey, so
happily and pleasantly begun at Tenby last year.

The final arrangements are almost complete, and I believe
you may make up your mind to have four months of me next
year. Tenby shall be immortalised and Jenkyn * converted into
a philosopher. By the way, I think the best way would be to
retain the shells till I come. My main purpose is to have in
them a catalogue of what Tenby affords.

Pray give my kind remembrances to Mrs. Dyster, and be-
lieve me, ever yours, T. H. Huxtey.

‘

April 1, 1855.

My pear Dyster—By all that’s good, your last note, which
lies before me, has date a month ago. I looked at it just now,
and became an April fool on the instant.

All the winds of March, however, took their course through
my thorax and eventuated in lectures. At least that is all the
account I can give to myself of the time, and an unprofitable
account it is, for everything but one’s exchequer.

So far as knowledge goes it is mere prodigality spending

 

* Jenkyn was employed to collect shells, etc., at Tenby. He is
often alluded to as ‘‘ the Professor.”
1855 THE COAST SURVEY 135
one’s capital and adding nothing, for I find the physical exertion
of lecturing quite unfits me for much else. Fancy how last
Friday was spent. I went to Jermyn Street in the morning with
the intention of preparing for my afternoon’s lecture. People
came talking to me up to within a quarter of an hour of the
time, so I had to make a dash without preparation. Then I had
to go home to prepare for a second lecture in the evening, and
after that I went to a soirée, and got home about one o'clock in
the morning.

I go on telling myself this won’t do, but to no purpose.

You will be glad to hear that my affairs here are finally
settled, and I am regularly appointed an officer of the survey
with the commission to work out the natural history of the
coast.

Edinburgh has been tempting me again, and in fact I be-
lieve I was within an ace of going there, but the Government
definitely offering me this position, I was too glad to stop
where I am.

Ican make six hundred a year here, and that being the case,
I conceive I have a right to consult my own inclinations and
the interests of my scientific reputation. The coast survey puts
in my hands the finest opportunities that ever a man had, and
it is a pity if I do not make myself something better than a
Caledonian pedagogue.

The great first scheme I have in connection with my new
post is to work out the Marine Natural History of Britain, and
to have every species of sea beast properly figured and described
in the reports which I mean from time to time to issue. I can
get all the engravings and all the printing I want done, but of
course I am not so absurd as to suppose I can work out all these
things myself. Therefore my notion is to seek in all highways
and byways for fellow labourers. Busk will, I hope, supply me
with figures and descriptions of the British Polyzoa and Hy-
drozoa, and I have confidence in my friend, Mr. Dyster of Tenby
(are you presumptuous enough to say you know him?) for
the Annelids, if he won’t object to that mode of publishing his
work. The Mollusks, the Crustaceans, and the Fishes, the
Echinoderms and the Worms, will give plenty of occupation to
the other people, myself included, to say nothing of distribution
and of the recent geological changes, all of which come within
my programme.

Did I not tell you it was a fine field, and could the land 0’
cakes give me any scope like this?

10
136 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, VIII

April g, 1855.

My pear DystER—I didn’t by any means mean to be so
sphinx-like in my letter, though you have turned out an CE&dipus
of the first water. True it is that I mean to “range myself,”
“live cleanly and leave off sack,” within the next few months
—that is to say, if nothing happen to the good ship which is at
present bearing my fiancée homewards.

So far as a restless mortal—more or less aweary of most
things—like myself can be made happy by any other human
being, I believe your good wishes are safe of realisation; at any
rate, it will be my fault if they are not, and I beg you never to
imagine that I could confound the piety of friendship with the
“ efflorescent” variety.

I hope to marry in July, and make my way down to Tenby
shortly afterwards, and I am ready to lay you a wager that your
vaticinations touching the amount of work that won’t be done
don’t come true.

So much for wives—now for worms—(I could not for the
life of me help the alliteration). I, as right reverend father in
worms and Bishop of Annelidz, do not think I ought to inter-
fere with my most promising son, when a channel opens itself
for the publication of his labours. So do what you will apropos
of J If he does not do the worms any better than he did
the zoophytes, he won’t interfere with my plans. .

I shall be glad to see Mrs. Buckland’s Echinoderm. I think
it must be a novelty by what you say. She is a very jolly
person, but I have an unutterable fear of scientific women.—
Ever yours, T. H. Hux.ey.

 

May 6, 1855.

My ship is not come home but is coming, and I have been
in a state of desperation at the continuous east winds. How-
ever, to-day there is a westerly gale, and if it lasts I shall
have news soon. You may imagine that I-am in an unsat-
isfactory state of mind between this and lecturing five times
a week,

I beg to say that the “ goods” I expect are home produce
transplanted (or sent a voyage as you do Madeira), and not
foreign growth by any means. But it is five years since we met,
I am another man altogether, and if my wife be as much altered,
we shall need a new introduction. Correspondence, however
active, is a poor substitute for personal communication and tells
one but little of the inner life.
1855 FULLERIAN LECTURES 13

Finally, on the eve of his marriage in July, Tyndall con
gratulates him on being appointed to deliver the next cours:
of Fullerian Lectures at the Royal Institution :—

The fates once seemed to point to our connection in a distan
land: we are now colleagues at home, and I can claim you a
my scientific brother. May the gods continue to drop fatnes

spon you, and may your next great step be productive of all th
felicity which your warmest friends or your own rebellious hear
can desire.
CHAPTER IX

1855

Miss HEATHORN and her parents reached England at
the beginning of May 1855, and took up their abode at 8
Titchfield Terrace, not far from Huxley’s own lodgings and
his brother’s house. One thing, however, filled Huxley with
dismay. Miss Heathorn’s health had broken down utterly,
and she looked at death’s door. All through the preceding
year she had been very ill; she had gone with friends, Mr.
and Mrs. Wise, to the newly opened mining-camp at Bath-
urst, and she and Mrs. Wise were indeed the first women
to visit it; returning to Sydney after rather a rough time,
she caught a chill, and being wrongly treated by a doctor
of the blood-letting, calomel-dosing school, she was re-
duced to a shadow, and only saved by another practitioner,
who reversed the treatment just in time.

In his letters to her, Huxley had not at first realised
the danger she had been in; and afterwards tried to keep
her spirits up by a cheerful optimism that would only look
forward to ‘their joyful union and many years of unbroken
happiness to atone for their long parting.

But the reality alarmed him. He took her to one of
the most famous doctors of the day, as if merely a patient
he was interested in. Then as one member of the profession
to another, he asked him privately his opinion of the case.
“T give her six months of life,” said A‘sculapius. “ Well,
six months or not,” replied Huxley, “ she is going to be my
wife.” The doctor was mightily put out. ‘‘ You ought to
have told me that before.” Of course, the evasive answer
in such a contingency was precisely what Huxley wished to

138 ;
1855 HIS MARRIAGE 139

avoid. Happily another leading doctor held a much more
favourable opinion, and said that with care her strength
would come back, slowly but surely.

; 14 WAVERLEY PLACE, ednesday.

My pear Hooxer—My wife and I met again on Sunday last,
and I have established herself, her father and mother, close by
me here at 8 Titchfield Terrace, Regent’s Park, and whenever
you and Mrs. Hooker are in this part of the world, and can find
time to call there, you will find her anything but surprised to
see you.

God help me! I discover that I am as bad as any young fool
who knows no better, and if the necessity for giving six lectures
a week did not sternly interfere, I should be hanging about her
ladyship’s apron-strings all day. She is in very bad health,
poor child, and I have some reason to be anxious, but I have
every hope she will mend with care.

Oh this life! “ atra cura,” as old Thackeray has it, sits on all
our backs and mingles with all our happiness. But if I go on
talking in this way you will wonder what has come over my
philosophership.—Ever yours, T. H. Hux ey.

Black Care was still in the background, but had relaxed
her hold upon him. His spirits rose to the old point of
gaiety. He writes how he gives a lively lecture to his
students, and in the midst of it Satan prompts him to crow
or howl—a temptation happily resisted. He makes atro-
cious puns in bidding Hooker to the wedding, which took
place on July 21.

JERMYN STREET, /ly 6, 1855.

My pear Hooker—I ought long since to have thanked you
in Thomson’s name as well as my own for your Flora Indica.
Some day I promise myself much pleasure and profit from the
digestion of the Introductory Essay, which is probably as much
as my gizzard is competent to convert into nutrition.

I terminate my Baccalaureate and take my degree of M.A.-
trimony (isn’t that atrocious?) on Saturday, July 21. After the
unhappy criminals have been turned off, there will be refresh-
ment provided for the sheriffs, chaplain, and spectators. Will
you come? Don’t if it is a bore, but I should much like to have
you there.
140 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. 1X

It was not a large party that assembled at the George
Huxleys for the wedding, but all were life-long friends, in-
cluding, besides the Fanning clan and Mrs. Griffiths, an
old Australian ally, Hooker, Tyndall, and Dr. and Mrs.
Carpenter. There was none present but felt that abundant
happiness was at least well earned after eight years of trial,
and still more that its best guarantee was the firm loyalty
and devotion that had passed through so many dangers of
absence and isolation, so many temptations to renounce the
ideal course under stress of circumstance, only to emerge
strengthened and ennobled by the stern discipline of much
sacrifice.

Great as was his new happiness, he hardly stood in need
of Darwin’s word of warning: “I hope your marriage will
not make you idle; happiness, I fear, is not good for work.”
Huxley could not sit idle for long. If he had no occupation
on hand, something worth investigation—and thorough in-
vestigation—was sure to catch his eye. So he writes to
Hooker from Tenby :—

15 ST. JULIAN’s TERRACE, TENBY,
Aug. 16, 1855.

My bear Hooxker—I am so near the end of the honeymoon
that I think it can hardly be immodest if I emerge from private
life and write you a letter, more particularly as I want to know
something. I went yesterday on an expedition to see the re-
mains of a forest which exists between tidemarks at a place
called Amroth, near here.

So far as I can judge there can be no doubt that this really
is a case of downward movement. The stools of the trees are
in their normal position, and their roots are embedded and in-
terwoven in a layer of stiff blue clay, which lies immediately
beneath the superficial mud of the shore. Layers of leaves,
too, are mixed up with the clay in other parts, and the bark of
some of the trees is in perfect preservation. The condition of
the wood is very curious. It is like very hard cheese, so that
you can readily cut slices with a spade, and yet where more of
the trunk has been preserved some parts are very hard. The
trees are, I fancy, Beech and Oak. Could you identify slices if
I were to send you some?

Now it seems to me that here is an opportunity one does
not often have of getting some information about the action of
1855 SEEKS INFORMATION 141

sea water on wood, and on the mode in which these vegetable
remains may become embedded, etc. etc., and I want to get you
to tell me where I can find information on submerged forests in
general, so as to see to what points one can best direct one’s
attention, and to suggest any inquiries that may strike yourself.

I do not see how the stumps can occur in this position with-
out direct sinking of the land, and that such a sinking should |
have occurred tallies very well with some other facts which
I have observed as to the nature of the bottom at considerable
depths here.

We had the jolliest cruise in the world by Oxford, War-
wick, Kenilworth, Stratford, Malvern, Ross, and the Wye,
though it was a little rainy, and though my wife’s strength sadly
failed at times.

Still she was on the whole much better and stronger than
I had any right to expect, and although I get frightened every
now and then, yet there can be no doubt that she is steadily
though slowly improving. I have no fears for the ultimate
result, but her amendment will be a work of time. We have
really quite settled down into Darby and Joan, and I begin to
regard matrimony as the normal state of man. It’s wonderful
how light the house looks when I come back weary with a day’s
boating to what it used to do.

I hope Mrs. Hooker is well and about again. Pray give her
our very kind regards, and believe me, my dear Hooker, ever
yours, T. H. Huxtey.

At Tenby he stayed on through August and September,
continuing his occupations of the previous summer, dredg-
ing up specimens for his microscope, and working partly
for his own investigations, partly for the Geological Survey.
CHAPTER X
1855-1858

UP to his appointment at the School of Mines, Huxley’s
work had been almost entirely morphological, dealing with
the Invertebrates. His first investigations, moreover, had
been directed not to species-hunting, but to working out the
real affinities of little known orders, and thereby evolving
a philosophical classification from the limbo of “ Vermes ”
and “ Radiata.”

He had continued the same work by tracing homologies
of development in other classes of animals, such as the
Cephalous Mollusca, the Articulata, and the Brachiopods.
On these subjects, also, he had a good deal of correspond-
ence with other investigators of the same cast of mind, and
even when he did not carry conviction, the impression made
by his arguments may be judged from the words of Dr. All-
man, no mean authority, in a letter of May 2, 1852 :—

I have thought over your arguments again and again, and
while I am the more convinced of their ingenuity, originality,
and strength, I yet feel ashamed to confess that I too must ex-
claim “tenax propositi.” When was it otherwise in contro-
versy?

Other speculations arising out of these researches had
been given to the public in the form of lectures, notably
that on Animal Individuality at the Royal Institution in
1852.

But after 1854, Paleontology and administrative work
began to claim much of the time he would willingly have
bestowed upon distinctly zoological research. His lectures

142
1856 LECTURER ON NATURAL HISTORY 143

on Natural History of course demanded a good deal of
first-hand investigation, and not only occasional notes in his
fragmentary journals, but a vast mass of drawings now pre-
served at South Kensington attest the amount of work he
still managed to give to these subjects. But with the ex-
ception of the Hunterian Lectures of 1868, he only pub-
lished one paper on Invertebrates as late as 1860; and only
half a dozen, not counting the belated ‘* Oceanic Hydro-
zoa,” between 1856 and 1859. The essay on the Crayfish
did not appear until after he had left Jermyn Street and
Paleontology for South Kensington.

The “ Method of Paleontology,” published in 1856, was
the first of a long series of papers dealing with fossil crea-
tures, the description of which fell to him as Naturalist to
the Geological Survey. By 1860 he had published twelve
such papers, and by 1871 twenty-six more, or thirty-eight
in sixteen years.

It was a curious irony of fate that led him into this
position. He writes in his Autobiography that, when Sir
Henry de la Beche, the Director-General of the Geological
Survey, offered him the post Forbes vacated of Paleontolo-
gist and Lecturer on Natural History,

I refused the former point blank, and accepted the latter
only provisionally, telling Sir Henry that I did not care for
fossils, and that I should give up Natural History as soon as
I could get a physiological post. But I held the office for thirty-
one years, and a large part of my work has been paleontological.

Yet the diversion was not without great use. A wide
knowledge of paleontology offered a key to many problems
that were hotly debated in the years of battle following the
publication of the Origin of Specics in 1859, as well as pro-
viding fresh subject-matter for the lectures in which he con-
tinued to give the lay world the results of his thought.

On the administrative and official side he laid before
himself the organisation of the resources of the Museum of
Practical Geology as an educational instrument. This in-
volved several years’ work in the arrangement of the speci-
mens, so as to illustrate the paleontological lectures, and the
144 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. X

writing of “ introductions ” to each section of the catalogue,
which should be a guide to the students. The ‘ Method of
Paleontology” mentioned above served as the prefatory
essay to the whole catalogue, and was reprinted in 1869
by the Smithsonian Institute of Washington under the title
of Principles and Methods of Paleontology.

This work led to his taking a lively interest in the
organisation of museums in general, whether private, such
as Sir Philip Egerton’s, which he visited in 1856; local, such
as Warwick or Chester; or central, such as the British Mu-
seum or that at Manchester.

With regard to the British Museum, the question had
arisen of removing the Natural History collections from the
confined space and dusty surroundings of Great Russell
Street. A first memorial on the subject had been signed,
not only by many non-scientific persons, but also by a
number of botanists, who wished to see the British Museum
Herbarium, etc., combined with the more accessible and
more complete collections at Kew. Owing apparently to offi-
cial opposition, the Natural History sub-committee of the
British Museum Trustees advised a treatment of the Botan-
ical Department which commended itself to none of the
leading botanists. Consequently a number of botanists and
zoologists took counsel together and drew up a fresh memo-
rial from the strictly scientific point of view. Huxley and
Hooker took an active part in the agitation. “ It is no use,”
writes the former to his friend, “ putting any faith in the old
buffers, hardened as they are in trespasses and sin.” And
again :—

I see nothing for it but for you and I to constitute ourselves
into a permanent “ Committee of Public Safety,” to watch over
what is being done and take measures with the advice of others
when necessary. ... As for and id genus omne, I have
never expected anything but opposition from them. But I
don’t think it is necessary to trouble one’s head about such
opposition. It may be annoying and troublesome, but if we are
beaten by it we deserve to be. We shall have to wade through
oceans of trouble and abuse, but so long as we gain our end,

I care not a whistle whether the sweet voices of the scientific
mob are with me or against me.

 
1856 MUSEUMS AND THEIR ARRANGEMENT 145

According to Huxley’s views a complete system de-
manded a triple museum for each subject, Zoology and
Botany, since Geology was sufficiently provided for in
Jermyn Street—one typical or popular, * in which all promi-
nent forms or types of animals or plants, recent or fossil,
should be so displayed as to give the public an idea of the
vast extent and variety of natural objects, to diffuse a
general knowledge of the results obtained by science in their
investigation and classification, and to serve as a general
introduction to the student in Natural Science”; the second
scientific, ‘in which collections of all available animals and
plants and their parts, whether recent or fossil, and in a
sufficient number of specimens, should be disposed con-
veniently for study, and to which should be exclusively
attached an appropriate library, or collection of books and
illustrations relating to science, quite independent of any
general library”; the third economic, “in which economic
products, whether zoological or botanical, with illustrations
of the processes by which they are obtained and applied to
use, Should be so disposed as best to assist the progress of
Commerce and the Arts.” It demanded further a Zoological
and a Botanical Garden, where the living specimens could be
studied.

Some of these institutions existed, but were not under
state control. Others were already begun—e.g. that of
Economic Zoology at South Kensington; but the value of
the botanical collections was minimised by want of concen-
tration, while as to zoology “the British Museum contains
a magnificent collection of recent and fossil animals, the
property of the state, but there is no room for its proper
display and no accommodation for its proper study. Its
official head reports directly neither to the Government nor
to the governing body of the institution. ... It is true
that the people stroll through the enormous collections of the
British Museum, but the sole result is that they are dazzled
and confused by the multiplicity of unexplained objects,
and the man of science is deprived thrice a week of the
means of advancing knowledge.”

The agitation of 1859-60 bore fruit in due season, and
146 ; LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, X

within twenty years the ideal here sketched was to a great
extent realised, as any visitor to the Natural History Mu-
seum at South Kensington can see for himself.

The same principles are reiterated in his letter of Janu-
ary 25, 1868, to the Commissioners of the Manchester
Natural History Society, who had asked his advice as to
the erection of a museum. But to the principles he adds a
number of most practical suggestions as to the actual struc-
ture of the building, which are briefly appended in abstract.
The complement to this is a letter of 1872, giving advice
as to a local museum at Chester, and one of 1859 describ-
ing the ideal catalogue for a geological museum.

Jan. 25, 1868.
The Commissioners of the Manchester

Natural History Society.
Scheme for a Museum.

Objects——1. The public exhibition of a collection of speci-
mens large enough to illustrate all the most important truths
of Natural History, but not so extensive as to weary and con-
fuse ordinary visitors.

2. The accessibility of this collection to the public.

3. The conservation of all specimens not necessary, for the
purpose defined in (1) in a place apart.

4. The accessibility of all objects contained in the museum
to the curator and to scientific students, without. interference
with the public or by the public.

5. Thorough exclusion of dust and dirt from the specimens.

6. A provision of space for workrooms, and, if need be,
lecture-rooms.

Principle.—A big hall (350 X 40 X 30) with narrower halls
on either side, lighted from the top. The central hall. for the
public, the others for the curators, etc. The walls, of arches
upon piers about 15 ft. high, bearing on girders a gallery 5 ft.
wide in the public room, and 3 ft. 6 in. in the curators’.

The cases should be larger below, 5 ft. deep, and smaller
above, 2 ft. deep, with glass fronts to the public, and doors on
the curators’ side.

For very large specimens—e.g. a whale—the case could
expand into the curators’ part without encroaching on the public
part, so as to keep the line of windows regular.
1856 SCHEME FOR A MUSEUM 147

Specimens of the Vertebrata, illustrations of Physical Geog-
raphy and Stratigraphical Geology, should be placed below.

The Invertebrata, Botanical and Mineralogical specimens in
the galleries.

The partition to be continued above the galleries to the roof,
thus excluding all the dust raised by the public.

Space for students should be provided in the curators’
rooms.

Storage should be ample.

A museum of this size gives twice as much area for ex-
hibition purposes as that offered by all the cases in the present
museum,

ATHENEUM CLus, Dec. 8, 1872.

Dear S1r—I regret that your letter has but just come into
my hands, so that my reply cannot be in time for your meeting,
which, I understand you to say, was to be held yesterday.

I have no hesitation whatever in expressing the opinion
that, except in the case of large and wealthy towns (and even
in their case primarily), a Local Museum should be exactly
what its name implies, viz. “ Local ”’—illustrating local Geology,
local Botany, local Zoology, and local Archeology.

Such a museum, if residents who are interested in these
sciences take proper pains, may be brought to a great degree
of perfection and be unique of its kind. It will tell both natives
and strangers exactly what they want to know, and possess great
scientific interest and importance. Whereas the ordinary lum-
ber-room of clubs from New Zealand, Hindoo idols, sharks’
teeth, mangy monkeys, scorpions, and conch shells—who shall
describe the weary inutility of it? It is really worse than noth-
ing, because it leads the unwary to look for the objects of sci-
ence elsewhere than under their noses. What they want to
know is that their ‘“ America is here,” as Wilhelm Meister has
it—Yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

Alfred Walker, Esq., Nant-y-Glyn, Colwyn Bay.

To THE Rev. P. BropIE oF WARWICK
JERMYN STREET, Oct. 14, 1859.
My pear Mr. Bropre—I am sorry to say that I can as yet
send you no catalogue of ours. The remodelling of our museum

is only just completed, and only the introductory part of my
catalogue is written. When it is printed you shall have an early

copy.
148 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. X

If I may make a suggestion I should say that a catalogue of
your museum for popular use should commence with a sketch
of the topography and stratigraphy of the county, put into the
most intelligible language, and illustrated by reference to min-
eral specimens in the cases, and to the localities where sections
showing the superposition of such and such beds is to be seen.
After that I think should come a list of the most remarkable
and interesting fossils, with reference to the cases where they
are to be seen; and under the head of each a brief popular ac-
count of the kind of animal or plant which the thing was when
alive, its probable habits, and its meaning and importance as a
member of the great series of successive forms of life—Yours
very faithfully, T. H. Huxiey.

The reorganisation of the course of studies at Jermyn
Street, fully sketched out in the 1857 notebook, involved
two very serious additions to his work over and above what
was required of him by his appointment as Professor. He
found his students to a great extent lacking in the know-
ledge of general principles necessary to the comprehension
of the special work before them. To enable them to make
the best use of his regular lectures, he offered them in
addition a preliminary evening course of nine lectures each
January, which he entitled “ An Introduction to the Study
of the Collection of Fossils in the Museum of Practical
Geology.” These lectures summed up what he afterwards
named Physiography, together with a general sketch of
fossils and their nature, the classification of animals and
plants, their distribution at various epochs, and the princi-
ples on which they are constructed, illustrated by the ex-
amination of some animal, such as a lobster.

The regular lectures, fifty-seven in number, ran from
February to April and from April to June, with fortnightly
examinations during the latter period, six in number. I
take the scheme from his notebook :—“ After prolegomena,
the physiology and morphology of lobster and dove; then
through Invertebrates, Anodon, Actinia, and Vorticella
Protozoa, to Molluscan types. Insects, then Vertebrates.
Supplemented Paleontologically by the demonstrations of
the selected types in the cases; twelve Paleozoic, twelve
1857 PRELIMINARY LECTURES 149

Mesozoic and Cainozoic,” by his assistants. “To make the
course complete there should be added (1) A series of lec-
tures on Species, practical discrimination and description,
modification by conditions and distribution; (2) Lectures
on the elements of Botany and Fossil Plants.”

This reorganisation of his course went hand in hand
with his utilisation of the Jermyn Street Museum for paleon-
tological teaching, and all through 1857 he was busily
working at the Explanatory Catalogue.

Moreover, in 1855 he had begun at Jermyn Street his
regular courses of lectures to working men—lectures which
impressed those qualified to judge as surpassing even his
class lectures. Year after year he gave the artisans of his
best, on the principle enunciated thus early in a letter of
February 27, 1855, to Dyster—

I enclose a prospectus of some People’s Lectures (Popular
Lectures I hold to be an abomination unto the Lord) I am
about to give here. I want the working classes to understand
that Science and her ways are great facts for them—that physi-
cal virtue is the base of all other, and that they are to be clean
and temperate and all the rest—not because fellows in black
with white ties tell them so, but because these are plain and
patent laws of nature which they must obey “ under penalties.”

I am sick of the dilettante middle class, and mean to try
what I can do with these hard-handed fellows who live among
facts. You will be with me, I know.

And again on May 6, 1855 :—

I am glad your lectures went off so well. They were better
attended than mine [the Preliminary Course], although in point
of earnestness and attention my audience was all I could wish.
I am now giving a course of the same kind to working men
exclusively—one of what we call our series of “ working men’s
lectures,” consisting of six given in turn by each Professor.
The theatre holds 600, and is crammed full.

I believe in the fustian, and can talk better to it than to
any amount of gauze and Saxony; and to a fustian audience
(but to that only) I would willingly give some when I come to
Tenby.

The corresponding movement set going by F. Dz
Maurice also claimed his interest, and in 1857 he gave his
150 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. X

first address at the Working Men’s College to an audience,
as he notes, of some fifty persons, including Maurice him-
self.

Other work of importance was connected with the Royal
Institution. He had been elected to deliver the triennial
course as Fullerian Professor, and for his subject in 1856-57
chose Physiology and Comparative Anatomy ; in 1858, the
Principles. of Biology.

He was extremely glad of the additional “ grist to the
mill.” brought in by these lectures. As he wrote in 1890 :—

I have good reason to know what difference a hundred a
year makes when your income is not more than four or five
times that. I remember when I was candidate fog the Fullerian
professorship some twenty-three years ago, a friend of mine
asked a wealthy manager to support me. He promised, but
asked the value of the appointment, and when told, said, “ Well,
but what’s the use of a hundred a year to him?” I suppose he
paid his butler that.

A further attempt to organise scientific work throughout
the country and make its results generally known, dates
from this time. Huxley, Hooker, and Tyndall had dis-
cussed, early in 1858, the possibility of starting a Scientific
Review, which should do for science what the Quarterly
or the Westminster did for literature. The scheme was found
not to be feasible at the time, though it was revived in
another form in 1860; so in the meanwhile it was arranged
that science should be laid before the public every fortnight,
through the medium of a scientific column in the Saturday
Review. The following letter bears on this proposal :—

April 20, 1858.

My pear Hooxer—Before the dawn of the proposal for the
ever-memorable though not-to-be Scientific Review, there had
been some talk of one or two of us working the public up for
science through the Saturday Review. Maskelyne (you know
him, I suppose) was the suggester of the scheme, and undertook
to talk to the Saturday people about it.

I thought the whole affair had dropped through, but yester-
day Maskelyne came to me and to Ramsay with definite propo-
sitions from the Saturday editor.
1858 SCIENCE IN THE SATURDAY REVIEW 151

He undertakes to put in a scientific article in the inter-
mediate part between Leaders and Reviews once a fortnight if
we will supply him. He is not to mutilate or to alter, but to
take what he gets and be thankful.

The writers to select their own subjects. Now the question
is, Will seven or eight of us, representing different sciences,
join together and undertake to supply at least one article in
three months? Once a fortnight would want a minimum of six
articles in three months, so that if there were six, each man
must supply one.

Sylvester is talked of for Mathematics. I am going to write
to Tyndall about doing Physics. Maskelyne and perhaps Frank-
land will take Chemistry and Mineralogy. You and I might do
Biology; Ramsay, Geology; Smyth, Technology.

This looks to me like a very feasible plan, not asking too
much of anyone, and yet giving all an opportunity of saying
what he has to say.

Besides this the Saturday would be glad to get Reviews
from us.

If all those mentioned agree to join, we will meet some-
where and discuss plans.

Let me have a line to say what you think, and believe me,
ever yours faithfally, T. H. Huxtey.

In 1858 he read three papers at the Geological and two
at the Linnean; he lectured (February 15) on Fish and
Fisheries at South Kensington, and on May 21 gave a
Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution on “‘ The
Phenomena of Gemmation.” He wrote an article for Todd’s
Cyclopaedia, on the Tegumentary Organs, an elaborate paper,
as Sir M. Foster says, on a histological theme, to which,
as to others of the same class on the Teeth and the Cor-
puscula Tactus (Q. J. Micr. Sci. 1853-4), he had been “ led
probably by the desire, which only gradually and through
lack of fulfilment left him, to become a physiologist rather
than a naturalist.”

No less important was his more general work for sci-
ence. Physiological study in England at this time was
dominated by transcendental notions. To put first princi-
ples on a sound experimental basis was the aim of the new
leaders of scientific thought. To this end Huxley made

Il
152 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. X

two contributions in 1858—one on the general subject of
the cell theory, the other on the particular question of the
development of the skull. “In a striking ‘ Review of the
Cell Theory,’” says Sir M. Foster, “ which appeared in the
British and Foreign Medical Review in 1858, a paper which
more than one young physiologist at the time read with
delight, and which even to-day may be studied with no
little profit, he, in this subject as in others, drove the sword
of rational inquiry through the heart of conceptions, meta-
physical and transcendental, but dominant.”

Of this article Professor E. Ray Lankester also writes :—

. . . Indeed it is a fundamental study in morphology. The
extreme interest and importance of the views put forward in
that article may be judged of by the fact that although it is
forty years since it was published, and although our knowledge
of cell structure has made immense progress during those forty
years, yet the main contention of that article, viz. that cells are
not the cause but the result of organisation—in fact, are, as he
says, to the tide of life what the line of shells and weeds on the
sea-shore is to the tide of the living sea—is even now being re-
asserted, and in a slightly modified form is by very many cytolo-
gists admitted as having more truth in it than the opposed view
and its later outcomes, to the effect that the cell is the unit of
life in which and through which alone living matter manifests
its activities.

The second was his Croonian Lecture of 1858, “ On the
Theory of the Vertebrate Skull,” in which he demonstrated
from the embryological researches of Rathke and others,
that after the first step the whole course of development
in the segments of the skull proceeded on different lines
from that of the vertebral column; and that Oken’s imagi-
native theory of the skull as modified vertebrae, logically
complete down to a strict parallel between the subsidiary
head-bones and the limbs attached to the spine, outran
the facts of a definite structure common to all vertebrates
which he had observed.*

 

* “ Following up Rathke, he strove to substitute for the then domi-
nant fantastic doctrines of the homologies of the cranial elements ad-
vocated by Owen, sounder views based on embryological evidence.
1858 THEORY OF THE VERTEBRATE SKULL 153

With the demolition of Oken’s theory fell the super-
structure raised by its chief supporter, Owen, “ archetype ”
and all.

It was undoubtedly a bold step to challenge thus openly
the man who was acknowledged as the autocrat of science
in Britain. Moreover, though he had long felt that on his
own subjects he was Owen's master, to begin a controversy
was contrary to his deliberate practice. But now he had
the choice of submitting to arbitrary dictation or securing
himself from further aggressions by dealing a blow which
would weaken the authority of the aggressor. For the
growing antagonism between him and Owen had come to
a head early in the preceding year, when the latter, taking
advantage of the permission to use the lecture-theatre at
Jermyn Street for the delivery of a paleontological course,
_ unwarrantably assumed the title of Professor of Paleontol-
ogy at the School of Mines, to the obvious detriment of
Huxley’s position there. His explanations not satisfying
the council of the School of Mines, Huxley broke off all
personal intercourse with him.

 

He exposed the futility of attempting to regard the skull as a series of
segments, in each of which might be recognised all the several parts
of a vertebra, and pointed out the errors of trusting to superficial re-
semblances of shape and position. He showed, by the history of the
development of each, that, though both skull and vertebral column are '
segmented, the one and the other, after an early stage, are fashioned
on lines so different as to exclude all possibility of regarding the de-
tailed features of each as mere modifications of a type repeated along
the axis of the body. ‘The spinal column and the skull start from the
same primitive condition, whence they immediately begin to diverge.’
‘It may be true to say that there is a primitive identity of structure
between the spinal or vertebral column and the skull; but it is no;
more true that the adult skull is a modified vertebral column than it
would be to affirm that the vertebral column is modified skull.’ This’
lecture marked an epoch in England in vertebrate morphology, and
the views enunciated in it carried forward, if somewhat modified, as
they have been, not only by Huxley’s subsequent researches and by
those of his disciples, but especially by the splendid work of Gegen-
baur, are still, in the main, the views of the anatomists of to-day.”—
Sir M. Foster, Royal Society Obituary Notice of T. H. Huxley.

/
CHAPTER XI
1857-1858

TurouGcnout this period his health was greatly tried
by the strain of his work and life in town. Headache!
headache! is his repeated note in the early part of 1857,
and in 1858 we find such entries as:—‘‘ Feb. 11.—Used
up. Hypochondrical and bedevilled.” ‘Ditto 12.” “13.
—Not good for much.” “21.—Toothache, incapable all
day.” And again:—‘“ March 30.—Voiceless.”  “ 31.—
Missed lecture.” And, “ April 1—Unable to go out.” He
would come in thoroughly used up after lecturing twice on
the same day, as frequently happened, and lie wearily on
one sofa; while his wife, whose health was wretched, matched
him on the other. Yet he would go down to a lecture feel-
ing utterly unable to deliver it, and, once started, would
carry it through successfully—at what cost of nervous en-
ergy was known only to those two at home.

But there was another branch of work, that for the
Geological Survey, which occasionally took him out of
London, and the open-air occupation and tramping from
place to place did him no little good. Thus, through the
greater part of September and October 1856 he ranged the
coasts of the Bristol Channel from Weston to Clovelly, and
from Tenby to Swansea, preparing a “ Report on the Recent
Changes of Level in the Bristol Channel.” ‘“ You can’t
think,” he writes from Braunton on October 3, “ how well
{ am, so long as I walk eight or ten miles a day and don’t
work too much, but I find fifteen or sixteen miles my limit
for comfort.”

For many years after this his favourite mode of recruit-

154 :
1856 IN SWITZERLAND 155

ing from the results of a spell of overwork was to take a
short walking tour with a friend. In April 1857 he is off
for a week to Cromer; in 1860 he goes with Busk and
Hooker for Christmas week to Snowdon; another time he
is manoeuvred off by his wife and friends to Switzerland
with Tyndall.

In Switzerland he spent his summer holidays both in
1856 and 1857, in the latter year examining the glaciers
with Tyndall scientifically, as well as seeking pleasure by
the ascent of Mont Blanc. As fruits of this excursion were
published late in the same year, his ‘‘ Letter to Mr. Tyndall
on the Structure of Glacier Ice” (Phil. Mag. xiv. 1857), and
the paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society, which appeared—much against his will—in the joint
names of himself and Tyndall. Of these he wrote in 1893
in answer to an inquiry on the subject :—

By the Observations on Glaciers I imagine you refer to a
short paper published in Phil. Mag. that embodied results of a
little bit of work of my own. The Glacier paper in the Phil.
Trans. is essentially and in all respects Professor Tyndall’s.
He took up glacier work in consequence of a conversation at
my table, and we went out to Switzerland together, and of
course talked over the matter a good deal. However, except for
my friend’s insistence, I should not have allowed my name to
appear as joint author, and I doubt whether IJ ought to have
yielded. But he is a masterful man and over-generous.

And in a letter to Hooker he writes :—

By the way, you really must not associate me with Tyndall
and talk about our theory. My sole merit in the matter (and for
that I do take some credit) is to have set him at work at it, for
the only suggestion I made, viz. that the veined structure was
analogous to his artificial cleavage phenomena, has turned out
to be quite wrong.

Tyndall fairly made me put my name to that paper, and
would have had it first if I would have let him, but if people
go on ascribing to me any share in his admirable work I shall
have to make a public protest. All I am content to share is the
row, if there is to be one.

The following letters to Hooker and Tyndall touch upon
his Swiss trips of 1856 and 1857 :—
156 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XI

BERNE, Sept. 3, 1856.

I send you a line hence, having forgotten to write from
Interlaken, whence we departed this morning.

The Weissthor expedition was the most successful thing
you can imagine. We reached the Riffelberg in 114 hours, the
first six being the hardest work I ever had in my life in the
climbing way, and the last five carrying us through the most
glorious sight I ever witnessed. During the latter part of the
day there was not a cloud on the whole Monte Rosa range, so
you may imagine what the Matterhorn and the rest of them
looked like from the wide plain of névé just below the Weissthor.
It was quite a new sensation, and I would not have missed it
for any amount; and besides this I had an opportunity of ex-
amining the névé at a very great height. A regularly stratified
section, several hundred feet high, was exposed on the Cima di
Jazi, and I was convinced that the Weissthor would be a capital
spot for making observations on the névé and on other correl-
ative matters. There are no difficulties in the way of getting
up to it from the Zermatt side, tough job as it is from Macug-
naga, and we might readily rig a tent under shelter of the ridge.
That would lick old Saussure into fits. All the Zermatt guides
put the S. Theodul pass far beneath the Weissthor in point of
difficulty; and you may tell Mrs. Hooker that they think the
S. Theodul easier than the Monte Moro. The best of the joke
was that I lost my way in coming down the Riffelberg to Zer-
matt the same evening, so that altogether I had a long day of
it. The next day I walked from Zermatt to Visp (recovering
Baedeker by the way), but my shoes were so knocked to pieces
that I got a blister on my heel. Next day Voiture to Susten,
and then over Gemmi to Kandersteg, and on Thursday my foot
was so queer I was glad to get a retour to Interlaken. I found
most interesting and complete evidences of old moraine deposits
all the way down the Leuk valley into the Rhine valley, and
I believe those little hills beyond Susten are old terminal mo-
raines too. On the other side I followed moraines down to
Frutigen, and great masses of glacial gravel with boulders,
nearly to the Lake of Thun.

My wife is better, but anything but strong.

CHAMOUNIX, Aug. 16, 1857.
My wife sends me intelligence of the good news you were
so kind as to communicate to her. I need not tell you how
rejoiced I am that everything has gone on well, and that your
1857 MONT BLANC 157

wife is safe and well. Offer her my warmest congratulations
and good wishes. I have made one matrimonial engagement
for Noel already, otherwise I would bespeak the hand of the
young lady for him.

It has been raining cats and dogs these two days, so that
we have been unable to return to our headquarters at the
Montanvert which we left on Wednesday for the purpose of
going up Mont Blanc. Tyndall (who has become one of the
most active and daring mountaineers you ever saw—so that we
have christened him “cat”; and our guide said the other day,
“Tl va plus fort qu’un mouton. II faut lui mettre une sonnette ”’)
had set his heart on the performance of this feat (of course
with purely scientific objects), and had equally made up his
mind not to pay five and twenty pounds for the gratification.
So we had one guide and took two porters in addition as far as
the Grands Mulets. He is writing to you, and will tell you him-
self what happened to those who reached the top—to wit, him-
self, Hirst, and the guide. I found that three days in Switzer-
land had not given me my Swiss legs, and consequently I re-
mained at the Grands Mulets, all alone in my glory, and for
some eight hours in a great state of anxiety, for the three did
not return for about that period after they were due.

I was there on a pinnacle like St. Simon Stylites, and nearly
as dirty as that worthy saint must have been, but without any
of his other claims to angelic assistance, so that I really did not
see, if they had fallen into a crevasse, how I was to help either
them or myself. They came back at last, just as it was growing
dusk, to my inexpressible relief, and the next day we came down
here—such a set of dirty, sun-burnt, snow-blind wretches as
you never saw.

We heartily wished you were with us. What we shall do
next I neither know nor care, as I have placed myself entirely
under Commodore Tyndall's orders; but I suppose we shall be
three or four days more at the Montanvert, and then make the
tour of Mont Blanc. I have tied up six pounds in one end of
my purse, and when I have no more than that I shall come back.
Altogether I don’t feel in the least like the father of a family;
no more would you if you were here. The habit of carrying a
pack, I suppose, makes the “ quiver full of arrows” feel light.

115 EspLlaANADE, DEAL, Sef/. 3, 1857.
My pear TyNnpALL—I don’t consider myself returned until
next Wednesday, when the establishment of No. 14 will reopen
158 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XI

on its accustomed scale of magnificence, but I don’t mind letting
you know I am in the flesh and safe back.

The tour round Mont Blanc was a decided success; in fact,
I had only to regret you were not with me. The grand glacier
of the Allée Blanche and the view of Mont Blanc from the
valley of Aosta were alone worth all the trouble. I had only
one wet day, and that I spent on the Brenon Glacier; for, in
spite of all good resolutions to the contrary, I cannot resist
poking into the glaciers whenever I have a chance. You will
be interested in my results, which we shall soon, I hope, talk on
together at length.

As I suspected, Forbes has made a most egregious blunder.
What he speaks of and figures as the “ structure” of the Brenon
is nothing but a peculiar arrangement of entirely superficial dirt
bands, dependent on the structure, but not it. The true structure
is singularly beautiful and well marked in the Brenon, the blue
veins being very close set, and of course wholly invisible from
a distance of a hundred yards, which is less than that of the
spot whence Forbes’ view of the (supposed) structure is taken.

I saw another wonderful thing in La Brenon. About the
middle of its length there is a step like this of about 20 or 30
feet in height. In the lower part (B) the structural planes are
vertical; in the upper (A) they dip at a considerable angle. I
thought I had found a case of unconformability, indicating a
slip of one portion of the glacier over another, but when I came
to examine the intermediate region (X) carefully, I found the
structural planes at every intermediate angle, and consequently
a perfect transition from the one to the other.

I returned by Aosta, the great St. Bernard, and the Col de
Balme. Old Simond was quite affectionate in his discourse
about you, and seemed quite unhappy because you would not
borrow his money. He had received your remittance, and asked
me to tell you so. He was distressed at having forgotten to get
a certificate from you, so I said in mine I was quite sure you
were well satisfied with him.

On our journey he displayed his characteristic qualities,
Je ne sais pas being the usual answer to any topographical in-
quiries with a total absence of nerve, and a general conviction
that distances were very great and that the weather would be
bad. However, we got on very well, and I was sorry to part
with him.

I came home by way of Neuchatel, paying a visit to the
Pierre 4 Bot, which I have long wished to see. My financial
1857 LITERARY BALANCE-SHEET 159

calculations were perfect in theory, but nearly broke down in
practice, inasmuch as I was twice obliged to travel first-class
when I calculated on second. The result was that my personal
expenses between Paris and London amounted to 1.50!! and I
arrived at my own house hungry and with a remainder of a
few centimes. I should think that your fate must have been
similar.

Many thanks for writing to my wife. She sends her kind-
est remembrances to youu—Ever yours, T. H. H.

The year 1857 was the last in which Huxley apparently
had time to go so far in journal-writing as to draw up a
balance-sheet at the year’s end of work done and work
undone. Though he finds “as usual a lamentable differ-
ence between agenda and acta; many things proposed to
be done not done, and many things not thought of finished,”
still there is enough noted to satisfy most energetic people.
Mention has already been made of his lectures—sixty-six
at Jermyn Street, twelve Fullerian, and as many more to
prepare for the next year’s course; seven to working men,
and one at the Royal Institution, together with the rear-
rangement of specimens at the Jermyn Street Museum,
and the preparation of the Explanatory Catalogue, which
this year was published to the extent of the Introduction
and the Tertiary collections. To these may be added ex-
aminations at the London University, where he had suc-
ceeded Dr. Carpenter as examiner in Physiology and Com-
parative Anatomy in 1856, reviews, translations, a report
on Deep Sea Soundings, and ten scientific memoirs.

The most important of the unfinished work consists of
the long-delayed Oceanic Hydrozoa, the Manual of Compara-
tive Anatomy, and a report on Fisheries. The rest of the
unfinished programme shows the usual commixture of tech-
nical studies in anatomy and paleontology, with essays on
the philosophical and educational bearings of his work. On
the one hand are memoirs of Daphnia, Nautilus, and the
Herring, the affinities of the Paleozoic Crustacea, the As-
cidian Catalogue and Positive Histology; on the other, the
Literature of the Drift, a review of the present state of
philosophical anatomy, and a scheme for arranging the
160 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XI

Explanatory Catalogue to serve as an introductory text-
book to the Jermyn Street lectures and the paleontological
demonstrations. Here, too, would fall a proposed “ Letter
on the Study of Comparative Anatomy,” to do for those
subjects what Henslow had done in his “Letter” for
Botany.

In addition to the fact of his being forced to take up
Paleontology, it was perhaps the philosophic breadth of
view with which he regarded his subject at any time, and
the desire of getting to the bottom of each subsidiary prob-
lem arising from it, that made him for many years seem
constantly to spring aside from his own subject, to fly off
at a tangent from the line in which he was assured of un-
rivalled success did he but devote to it his undivided powers.
But he was prepared to endure the charge of desultori-
ness with equanimity. In part, he was still studying the
whole field of biological science before he would claim
to be a master in one department; in part, he could not
yet tell to what post he might succeed when he left—as
he fully expected to leave—the professorship at Jermyn
Street.

One characteristic of his early papers should not pass
unnoticed. This was his familiarity with the best that had
been written on his subjects abroad as well as in England.
Thoroughness in this respect was rendered easier by the fact
that he read French and German with almost as much
facility as his mother tongue. “It is true, of course, that
scientific men read French and German before the time of
Huxley; but the deliberate consultation of all the authori-
ties available has been maintained in historical succession
since Huxley’s earliest papers, and was absent i in the papers
of his early contemporaries.” *

About this time his activity in several branches of sci-
ence began to find recognition from scientific societies at
home and abroad. In 1857 he was elected honorary mem-
ber of the Microscopical Society of Giessen; and in the
same year, of a more important body, the Academy of

 

* P. Chalmers Mitchell in Matural Science, Augusi 1895.
Portrait from a Photograph by Maull and Polvblank, 1857.
 
1857 ELECTED TO THE ATHENUM CLUB 161

Breslau (Imperialis Academia Czsariana Naturz Curioso-
rum). He writes to Hooker :—

14 WAVERLEY PLAcE, April 3, 1857.

Having subsided from standing upon my head—which was
the immediate causation of your correspondence about the co-
extension Imp. Acad. Ces.. Nat. Cur. (don’t I know their
thundering long title well!)—I have to say that I was born on
the 4th of May of the year 1825, whereby I have now more or
less mis-spent thirty-one years and a bittock, nigh on thirty-
two.

Furthermore, my locus natalis is Ealing, in the county of
Middlesex. Upon my word, it is very obliging of the “ curious
naturals,’ and I must say wholly surprising and unexpected.

I shall hold up my head immensely to-morrow when (blessed
be the Lord) I give my last Fullerian.

Among other things, I am going to take Cuvier’s crack case
of the ’Possum of Montmartre as an illustration of my views.

I wondered what had become of you, but the people have
come talking about me this last lecture or two, so I supposed
you had erupted to Kew.

My glacier article is out; tell me what you think of it
some day.

I wrote a civil note to Forbes * yesterday, charging myself
with my crime, and I hope that is the end of the business.

My wife is mending slowly, and if she were here would
desire to be remembered to you.

In December 1858 he became a Fellow of the Linnean,
and the following month not only Fellow but Secretary
of the Geological Society.

In 1858 also he was elected to the Atheneum Club
under Rule 2, which provides that the committee shall
yearly elect a limited number of persons distinguished in
art, science, or letters. His proposer was Sir R. Murchison,

who wrote :—
ATHEN.EUM, Jan. 26.
My pear Huxtry—I had a success as to you that I never
had or heard of before. Nineteen persons voted, and of these
eighteen voted for you and no one against you. You, of course,

 

* Principal James Forbes, with whose theory of glaciers Huxley
and Tyndall disagreed.
162 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XI

came in at the head of the poll; no other having, i.e. Cobden,
more than eleven.—Yours well satisfied,
Rop. I. MurcuHIson.

From this time forth he corresponded with many foreign
men of science; in these years particularly with Victor
Carus, Lacaze Duthiers, Kolliker, and de Quatrefages, in
reference to their common interest in the study of the in-
vertebrates.

At home, the year 1857 opened very brightly for Hux-
ley with the birth of his first child, a son, on the eve of
the New Year. A Christmas child, the boy was named
Noel, and lived four happy years to be the very sunshine
of home, the object of passionate devotion, whose sudden
loss struck deeper and more ineffaceably than any other
blow that befell Huxley during all his life.

As he sat alone that December night, in the little room
that was his study in the house in Waverley Place, waiting
for the event that was to bring him so much happiness and
so much sorrow, he made a last entry in his journal, full of
hope and resolution. In the blank space below follows a
note of four years later, when “ the ground seemed cut from
under his feet,” yet written with restraint and without bit-
terness.

December 31, 1856. . . . 1856-7-8 must still be “ Lehrjahre ”
to complete training in principles of Histology, Morphology,
Physiology, Zoology, and Geology by Monographic Work in
each Department. 1860 will then see me well grounded and
ready for any special pursuits in either of these branches.

It is impossible to map out beforehand how this must be
done. I must seize opportunities as they come, at the risk of
the reputation of desultoriness.

In 1860 I may fairly look forward to fifteen or twenty years
“ Meisterjahre,” and with the comprehensive views my training
will have given me, I think it will be possible in that time to
give a new and healthier direction to all Biological Science.

To smite all humbugs, however big; to give a nobler tone to
science; to set an example of abstinence from petty personal
controversies, and of toleration for everything but lying; to be
indifferent as to whether the work is recognised as mine or not,
so long as it is done:—are these my aims? 1860 will show.
1856 BIRTH AND DEATH OF A SON 163

Willst du dir ein htibsch Leben zimmern,
Musst dich ans Vergangene nicht bekiimmern ;
Und wire dir auch was Verloren,

Musst immer thun wie neugeboren.

Was jeder Tag will, sollst du fragen;

Was jeder Tag will, wird er sagen.

Musst dich an eigenem Thun ergétzen ;

Was andere thun, das wirst du schitzen.
Besonders keinen Menschen hassen

Und das Ubrige Gott tberlassen.*

Half-past ten at night.

Waiting for my child. I seem to fancy it the pledge that
all these things shall be.

Born five minutes before twelve. Thank God. New
Year’s Day, 1857.

Sept. 20, 1860.

And the same child, our Noel, our first-born, after being for
nearly four years our delight and our joy, was carried off by
scarlet fever in forty-eight hours. This day week he and I had
a great romp together. On Friday his restless head, with its
bright blue eyes and tangled golden hair, tossed all day upon
his pillow. On Saturday night the fifteenth, I carried him
here into my study, and laid his cold still body here where I
write. Here too on Sunday night came his mother and I to that
holy leave-taking.

My boy is gone, but in a higher and a better sense than was
in my mind when I wrote four years ago what stands above—
I feel that my fancy has been fulfilled. I say heartily and with-
out bitterness—Amen, so let it be.

 

* Wilt shape a noble life? Then cast
No backward glances to the past.
And what if something still be lost?
Act as new-born in all thou dost.
What each day wills, that shalt thou ask ;
Each day will tell its proper task ;
What others do, that shalt thou prize,
In thine own work thy guerdon lies.
This above all: hate none. The rest—
Leave it to God. He knoweth best.
CHAPTER XII
1859-1860

THE programme laid down in 1857 was steadily carried
out through a great part of 1859. Huxley published nine
monographs, chiefly on fossil Reptilia, in the proceedings
of the Geological Society and of the Geological Survey,
one on the armour of crocodiles at the Linnean, and ‘‘ Ob-
servations on the Development of some Parts of the Skele-
ton of Fishes,” in the Journal of Microscopical Science.

Among the former was a paper on Stagonolepis, a
creature from the Elgin beds, which had previously been
ranked among the fishes. From some new remains, which
he worked out of the stone with his own hands, Huxley
made out that this was a reptile closely allied to the Croco-
diles; and from this and the affinities of another fossil,
Hyperodapedon, from neighbouring beds, determined the
geological age to which the Elgin beds belonged A good
deal turned upon the nature of the scales from the back and
belly of this animal, and a careful comparison with the
scales of modern crocodiles—a subject till then little inves-
tigated—led to the paper at the Linnean already men-
tioned.

The paper on fish-development was mainly based upon
dissections of the young of the stickleback. Fishes had
been divided into two classes according as their tails are
developed evenly on either side of the line of the spine,
which was supposed to continue straight through the centre
of the tail, or lopsided, with one tail fin larger than the
other. This investigation showed that the apparently even
development was only an extreme case of lopsidedness, the

164
1859 HUXLEY AT OXFORD 165

continuation of the “ chorda,” which gives rise to the spine,
being at the top of the upper fin, and both fins being devel-
oped on the same side of it. Lopsidedness as such, there-
fore, was not to be regarded as an embryological character
in ancient fishes; what might be regarded as such was the
absence of a bony sheath to the end of the “ chorda”’ found
in the more developed fishes. Further traces of this bony
structure were shown to exist, among other piscine resem-
blances, in the Amphibia. Finally the embryological facts
now observed in the development of the bones of the skull
were of great importance, ‘as they enable us to understand,
on the one hand, the different modifications of the palato-
suspensorial apparatus in fishes, and on the other hand the
relations of the components of this apparatus to the corre-
sponding parts in other Vertebrata,” fishes, reptiles, and
mammals presenting a well-marked series of gradations in
respect to this point.

This part of the paper had grown out of the investiga-
tions begun for the essay on the Vertebrate Skull,* just as
that on Jacare and Caiman from inquiry into the scales of
Stagonolepis.

Thus he was still able to devote most of his time to
original research. But though in his letter of March 27,
1855, below, he says, “I never write for the Reviews now,
as original work is much more to my taste,” it appears from
jottings in his 1859 notebook, such as “ Whewell’s History
of Scientific Idcas, as a Peg on which to hang Cuvier arti-
cle,” that he again found it necessary to supplement his
income by writing. He was still examiner at London Uni-
versity, and delivered six lectures on Animal Motion at the
London Institution and another at Warwick. This lecture
he had offered to give at the Warwick Museum as some
recognition of the willing help he had received from the
assistants when he came down to examine certain fossils
there. On the way he visited Rolleston at Oxford. The
knowledge of Oxford life gained from this and a later visit
led him to write :—

 

* See p. 152.
166 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XII

The more I see of the place the more glad I am that I elected
to stay in London. I see much to admire and like; but I am
more and more convinced that it would not suit me as a resi-
dence.

Two more important points remain to be mentioned
among the occupations of the year. In January Huxley
was elected Secretary of the Geological Society, and with
this office began a form of administrative work in the scien-
tific world which ceased only with his resignation of the |
Presidency of the Royal Society in 1885.

Part of the summer Huxley spent in the North. On
August 3 he went to Lamlash Bay in Arran. Here Dr.
Carpenter had, in 1855, discovered a convenient cottage on
Holy Island—the only one, indeed, on the island—well
suited for naturalists; the bay was calm and suitable both
for the dredge and for keeping up a vivarium. He proposed
that either the Survey should rent the whole island at a cost
of some £50, or, failing this, that he would take the cottage
himself, if Huxley would join him for two or three seasons
and share the expense. Huxley laid the plan before Sir
R. Murchison, the head of the Survey, who consented to try
the plan for a course of years, during three months in each
year. “But,” he added, “keep it experimental; for there
are no useful fisheries such as delight Lord Stanley.” Here,
then, with an ascent of Goatfell for variety on the 21st, a
month was passed in trawling, and experiments on the
spawning of the herring appear to have been continued for
him during the winter in Bute. ,

On the 29th Huxley left .Lamlash for a trip through
central and southern Scotland, continuing his geological
work for the Survey ; and wound up by attending the meet-
ing of the British Association at Aberdeen, leaving his wife
and the three children at Aberdour, on the Fifeshire coast.

From Aberdeen, where Prince Albert was President of
the Association, Huxley writes on September 15 :—

Owen's brief address on giving up the presidential chair was
exceedingly good. ...I shall be worked like a horse here.
There are all sorts of new materials from Elgin, besides other
things, and I daresay I shall have to speak frequently. In point
1558 TYNDALL AND THE PHYSICAL CHAIR 167

of attendance and money this is the best meeting the Associa-
tion ever had. In point of science, we shall see... . Tyndall
has accepted the Physical chair with us, at which I am greatly
delighted.

In this connection the following letter to Tyndall is in-
teresting :-—

ABERDOUR, FIFE, N.B., Sept. 5, 1859.

My pear TynpaLtt—I met Faraday on Loch Lomond yester-
day, and learned from him that you had returned, whereby you
are a great sinner for not having written to me. Faraday told
me you were all sound, wind and limb, and had carried out
your object, which was good to hear.

Have you had any letter from Sir Roderick? If not, pray
call in Jermyn Street and see Reeks * as soon as possible.

The thing I have been hoping for for years past has come
about,—Stokes having resigned the Physical Chair in our place,
in consequence of his appointment to the Cambridge University
Commission. This unfortunately occurred only after our last
meeting for the session, and after I had left town, but Reeks
wrote to me about it at once. I replied as soon as I received
his letter, and told him that I would take upon myself the re-
sponsibility of saying that you would accept the chair if it were
offered you. I thought I was justified in this by various con-
versations we have had; and, at any rate, I felt sure that it was
better that I should get into a mess than that you should lose the
chance.

I know that Sir Roderick has written to you, but I imagine
the letter has gone to Chamounix, so pray put yourself into
communication with Reeks at once.

You know very well that the having you with us at Jermyn
Street is a project that has long been dear to my heart, partly
on your own account, but largely for the interest of the school.
I earnestly hope that there is no impediment in the way of your
coming to us. How I am minded towards you, you ought to
know by this time; but I can assure you that all the rest of us
will receive you with open arms. Of that I am quite sure.

Let me have a line to know your determination. I am on
tenterhooks till the thing is settled.

 

*Mr. Trenham Reeks, who died in 1879, was Registrar of the
School of Mines, and Curator and Librarian of the Museum of Practi-
cal Geology.

12
168 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY . CHAP. XII

Can’t you come up this way as you go to Aberdeen ?—-Ever
yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

P.S.—I thought I might mention the Jermyn Street matter
to Faraday privately, and did so. He seemed pleased that the
offer had been made.

The acceptance of the lectureship at the School of Mines
brought Tyndall into the closest contact with Huxley for
the next nine years, until he resigned his lectureship in 1868
on succeeding Faraday as superintendent of the Royal In-
stitution.

On September 17 he writes :—

Yesterday Owen and I foregathered in Section D. He read
a very good and important paper, and I got up afterwards and
spoke exactly as I thought about it, and praising many parts
of it strongly. In his reply he was unco civil and compli-
mentary, so that the people who had come in hopes of a row
were (as I intended they should be) disappointed.

A number of miscellaneous letters of this period are here
grouped together.

14 WAVERLEY PLAcE, Jan. 30, 1858.

My pear Hooker—. . . I wish you wouldn’t be apologetic
about criticism from people who have a right to criticise. I
always look upon any criticism as a compliment, not but what
the old Adam in T. H. H. will arise and fight vigorously against
all impugnment, and irrespective of all odds in the way of au-
thority, but that is the way of the beast.

Why I value your and Tyndall’s and Darwin’s friendship so
much is, among other things, that you all pitch into me when
necessary. You may depend upon it, however blue I may look
when in the wrong, it’s wrath with myself and nobody else.

To HIS SISTER

THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL OF MINES, JERMYN ST.,

March 27, 1858. :
My vearest Lizz1e—It is a month since your very welcome
letter reached me. I had every inclination and every intention
to answer it at once, but the wear and tear of incessant occupa-
tion (for your letter arrived in the midst of my busiest time)
has, I will not say deprived me of the leisure, but of that tone
of mind which one wants for writing a long letter. I fully
1858 LETTER TO HIS SISTER 169

understand—no one should be better able to comprehend—how
the same causes may operate on you, but do not be silent so
long again; it is bad for both of us. I have loved but few people
in my life, and am not likely to care for any more unless it be
my children. I desire therefore rather to knit more firmly than
to loosen the old ties, and of these which is older or stronger
than ours? Don't let us drift asunder again.

Your letter came just after the birth of my second child, a
little girl. I registered her to-day in the style and title of Jessie
Oriana Huxley. The second name is a family name of my
wife’s and not, as you might suppose, taken from Tennyson.
You will know why my wife and I chose the first. We could
not make you a godmother, as my wife’s mother is one, and a
friend of ours had long since applied for the other vacancy, but
perhaps this is a better tie than that meaningless formality. My
little son is fifteen months old; a fair-haired, blue-eyed, stout
little Trojan, very like his mother. He looks out on the world
with bold confident eyes and open brow, as if he were its master.
We shall try to make him a better man than his father. As for
the little one, I am told she is pretty, and slavishly admit the fact
in the presence of mother and nurse, but between ourselves I
don’t see it. To my carnal eyes her nose is the image of mine,
and you know what that means. For though wandering up
and down the world and work have begun to sow a little silver
in my hair, they have by no means softened the outlines of that
remarkable feature.

You want to know what I am and where I am—well, here’s
a list of titles. T. H.H., Professor of Natural History, Govern-
ment School of Mines, Jermyn Street; Naturalist to the Geo-
logical Survey; Curator of the Paleontological collections (non-
official maid-of-all-work in Natural Science to the Govern-
ment); Examiner in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy to
the University of London; Fullerian Professor of Physiology to
the Royal Institution (but that’s just over); F.R.S., F.G.S., ete.
Member of a lot of Societies and Clubs, all of which cost him a
mint of money. Considered a rising man and not a bad fellow
by his friends—per contra greatly over-estimated and a bitter
savage critic by his enemies. Perhaps they are both right. I
have a high standard of excellence and am no respecter of per-
sons, and I am afraid I show the latter peculiarity rather too
much. An internecine feud rages between Owen and myself
(more’s the pity) partly on this account, partly from other
causes.
170 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XII

This is the account any third person would give you of what
I am and of what I am doing. He would probably add that I
was very ambitious and desirous of occupying a high place in
the world’s estimation. Therein, however, he would be mis-
taken. An income sufficient to place me above care and anxiety,
and free scope to work, are the only things I have ever wished
for or striven for. But one is obliged to toil long and hard for
these, and it is only now that they are coming within my grasp.
I gave up the idea of going to Edinburgh because I doubted
whether leaving London was wise. Recently I have been
tempted to put up for a good physiological chair which is to
be established at Oxford; but the Government propose to im-
prove my position at the School of Mines, and there is every
probability that I shall now permanently remain in London.
Indeed, it is high time that I should settle down to one line of
work. Hitherto, as you see by the somewhat varied list of my
duties, etc., above, I have been ranging over different parts of a
very wide field. But this apparent desultoriness has been neces-
sary, for I knew not for what branch of science I should eventu-
ally have to declare myself. There are very few appointments
open to men of science in this country, and one must take what
one can get and be thankful.

My health was very bad some years ago, and I had great
fear of becoming a confirmed dyspeptic, but thanks to the pedes-
trian tours in the Alps I have taken for the past two years, I am
wonderfully better this session, and feel capable of any amount
of work. It was in the course of one of these trips that I went,
as you have rightly heard, half way up Mont Blanc. But I was
not in training and stuck at the Grands Mulets, while my three
companions went on. I spent seventeen hours alone on that
grand pinnacle, the latter part of the time in great anxiety, for
I feared my friends were lost; and as I had no guide my own
neck would have been in considerable jeopardy in endeavour-
ing to return amidst the maze of crevasses of the Glacier des
Bois. But it was glorious weather and the grandest scenery
in the world. In the previous year I saw much of the Bernese
and Monte Rosa country, journeying with a great friend of mine
well known as a natural philosopher, Tyndall, and partly seeking
health and partly exploring the glaciers. You will find an arti-
cle of mine on that subject in the Westminster Review for 1857.

I used at one time to write a good deal for that Review, prin-
cipally the Quarterly notice of scientific books. But I never
write for the Reviews now, as original work is much more to
1858 ENOUGH ABOUT MY “ICH” 171

my taste. The articles you refer to are not mine, as, indeed,
you rightly divined. The only considerable book I have trans-
lated is Kolliker's Histology—in conjunction with Mr. Busk,
an old friend of mine. All translation and article writing is
weary work, and I never do it except for filthy lucre. Lecturing
I do not like much better; though one way or another I have to
give about sixty or seventy a year.

Now then, I think that is enough about my “Ich.” You
shall have a photographic image of him and my wife and child
as soon as I can find time to have them done... .

1 ELpon PLace, BRoapsTairs, Sept. 5, 1858.

My pear Hooker—I am glad Mrs. Hooker has found rest
for the sole of her foot. I returned her Tyndall’s letter
yesterday. :

Wallace’s impetus seems to have set Darwin going in
earnest, and I am rejoiced to hear we shall learn his views in
full, at last. I look forward to a great revolution being effected.
Depend upon it, in natural history, as in everything else, when
the English mind fully determines to work a thing out, it will
do it better than any other.

I firmly believe in the advent of an English epoch in science
and art, which will lick the Augustan (which, by the bye, had
neither science nor art in our sense, but you know what I mean)
into fits. So hooray, in the first place, for the Genera plantarum.
I can quite understand the need of a new one, and I am right
glad you have undertaken it. It seems to me to be in all respects
the sort of work for you, and exactly adapted to your environ-
ment at Kew. I remember you mentioned to me some time
ago that you were thinking of it.

I wish I could even hope that such a thing would be even
attempted in the course of this generation for animals.

But with animal morphology in the state in which it is now,
we have no terminology that will stand, and consequently con-
cise and comparable definitions are in many cases impossible.

If old Dom. Gray * were but an intelligent activity instead of
being a sort of zoological whirlwind, what a deal he might do.
And I am hopeless of Owen’s comprehending what classification
means since the publication of the wonderful scheme which
adorns the last edition of his lectures.

 

* John Edward Gray (1800-1875), appointed Keeper of the Zoologi-
cal Collections in the British Museum in 1840.
172 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XII

As you say, I have found this a great place for “ work of
price.” I have finished the “ Oceanic Hydrozoa” all but the
bookwork, for which I must have access to the B.M. Library—
but another week will do him. My notes are from eight to
twelve years old, and really I often have felt like the editor of
somebody else’s posthumous work.

Just now I am busy over the “ Croonian,” which must be
done before I return. I have been pulling at all the arguments
as a spider does at his threads, and I think they are all strong.
If so the thing will do some good.

I am perplexed about the N.H. Collections. The best thing,
I firmly believe, would be for the Economic Zoology and a set
of well selected types to go to Kensington, but I should be sorry
to see the scientific collection placed under any such auspices as
those which govern the “ Bilers.” I don’t believe the clay soil
of the Regent’s Park would matter a fraction—and to have a
grand scientific zoological and paleontological collection for
working purposes close to the Gardens where the living beasts
are, would be a grand thing. I should not wonder if the affair
is greatly discussed at the B.A. at Leeds, and then, perhaps,
light will arise.

Have you seen that madcap Tyndall’s letter in the Times?
He'll break his blessed neck some day, and that will be a great
hole in the efficiency of my scientific young England. We mean
to return next Saturday, and somewhere about the 16th or 17th
I shall go down to York, where I want to study Plesiosaurs. I
shall return after the British Association. The interesting ques-
tion arises, Shall I have a row with the Great O. there? What
a capital title that is they give him of the British Cuvier. He
stands in exactly the same relation to the French as British
brandy to cognac.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

Am I to send the Gardener’s Chronicle on, and where?
please. JI have mislaid the address.

JERMYN STREET, Oct. 25, 1858.

My pear SPENCER—I read your article on the “ Archetype”
the other day with great delight, particularly the phrase which
puts the Owenian and Cummingian interpolations on the same
footing. It is rayther strong, but quite just.

I do not remember a word to object to, but I think I could
have strengthened your argument in one or two places. Having
eaten the food, will you let me have back the dish? I am wind-
1858 LETTER TO MRS. SCOTT 173

ing up the “ Croonian,” and want L’Archetype to refer to. So
if you can let me have it I shall be obliged. When do you
return?—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

14 WAVERLEY PLaceE, Jan. 1, 1859.

My pearest L1zz1E—If intentions were only acts, the quan-
‘tity of letter paper covered with my scrawl which you would
have had by this time would have been something wonderful.
But I live at high pressure, with always a number of things
crying out to be done, and those that are nearest and call loudest
get done, while the others, too often, don’t. However, this day
shall not go by without my wishing you all happiness in the
new year, and that wish you know necessarily includes all be-
longing to you, and my love to them.

I have been long wanting to send you the photographs of
myself, wife, and boy, but one reason or other (Nettie’s inces-
sant ill-health being, I am sorry to say, the chief) has inces-
santly delayed the procuring of the last. However, at length,
we have obtained a tolerably successful one, though you must
not suppose that Noel has the rather washed out look of his
portrait. That comes of his fair hair and blue gray eyes—for
the monkey is like his mother and has not an atom of resem-
blance to me.

He was two years old yesterday, and is the apple of his
father’s eye and chief deity of his mother’s pantheon, which at
present contains only a god and goddess. Another is expected
shortly, however, so that there is no fear of Olympus looking
empty.

... Here is the 26th of January and no letter gone yet... .
Since I began this letter I have been very busy with lectures and
other sorts of work, and besides, my whole household almost has
been ill—chicks with whooping cough, mother with influenza, a
servant ditto. I don't know whether you have such things in
Tennessee.

Let me see what has happened to me that will interest you
since I last wrote. Did I tell you that I have finally made up
my mind to stop in London—the Government having made it
worth my while to continue in Jermyn Street? They give me
£600 a year now, with a gradual rise up to £800, which I reckon
as just enough to live on if one keeps very quiet. However,
it is the greatest possible blessing to be paid at last, and to be
free from all the abominable anxieties which attend a fluctuating
income. I can tell you I have had a sufficiently hard fight of it.
174 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XII

When Nettie and I were young fools we agreed we would
marry whenever we had £200 a year. Well, we have had more
than twice that to begin upon, and how it is we have kept out of
the Bench is a mystery to me. But we have, and I am inclined
to think that the Missus has got a private hoard (out of the
puddings) for Noel.

I shall leave Nettie to finish this rambling letter. In the
meanwhile, my best love to you and yours, and mind you are a
better correspondent than your affectionate brother, Tom.

To Proressor LEUCKART

THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL OF MINES,
JERMYN STREET, LonDon, January 30, 1859.

My bEAR Sir—Our mutual friend, Dr. Harley, informs me
that you have expressed a wish to become possessed of a sepa-
rate copy of my lectures, published in the Medical Times. I
greatly regret that I have not one to send you. The publisher
only gave me half a dozen separate copies of the numbers of
the journal in which the Lectures appeared. Of these I sent
one to Johannes Miiller and one to Professor Victor Carus,
and the rest went to other friends.

I am sorry to say that a mere fragment of what I originally
intended to have published has appeared, the series having been
concluded when I reached the end of the Crustacea. To say
truth, the Lectures were not fitted for the journal in which they
appeared.

I did not know that anyone in Germany had noticed them
until I received the copy of your Bericht for 1856, which you
were kind enough to send me. I owe you many thanks for the
manner in which you speak of them, and I assure you it was a
source of great pleasure and encouragement to me to find so
competent a judge as yourself appreciating and sympathising
with my objects.

Particular branches of zoology have been cultivated in this
country with great success, as you are well aware, but ten years
ago I do not believe that there were half a dozen of my country-
men who had the slightest comprehension of morphology, and of
what you and I should call “ Wissenschaftliche Zoologie.”

Those who thought about the matter at all took Owen’s
osteological extravaganzas for the ne plus ultra of morphological
speculation.

I learned the meaning of Morphology and the value of de-
(859 LETTER TO LEUCKART 175

velopment as the criterion of morphological views—first, from
the study of the Hydrozoa during a long voyage, and secondly,
from the writings of Von Bar. I have done my best, both by
precept and practice, to inaugurate better methods and a better
spirit than had long prevailed. Others have taken the same
views, and I confidently hope that a new epoch for zoology is
dawning among us. I do not claim for myself any great share
in the good work, but I have not flinched when there was any-
thing to be done.

Under these circumstances you will imagine that it was very
pleasant to find on your side a recognition of what I was about.

I sent you, through the booksellers, some time ago a copy of
my memoir on Aphis. I find from Moleschott'’s Untersuchungen
that you must have been working at this subject contemporane-
ously with myself, and it was very satisfactory to find so close
a concordance in essentials between our results. Your memoirs
are extremely interesting, and to some extent anticipated results
at which my friend, Mr. Lubbock * (a very competent worker,
with whose paper on Daphnia you are doubtless acquainted), had
arrived.

I should be very glad to know what you think of my views
of the composition of the articulate head.

I have been greatly interested also in your Memoir on
Pentastomum. There can be no difficulty about getting a notice
of it in our journals, and, indeed, I will see to it myself. Pray
do me the favour to let me know whenever I can serve you in
this or other ways.

I shall do myself the pleasure of forwarding to you immedi-
ately, through the booksellers, a lecture of mine on the Theory
of the Vertebrate Skull, which is just published, and also a little
paper on the development of the tail in fishes.

I am sorry to say that I have but little time for working at
these matters now, as my position at the School of Mines obliges
me to confine myself more and more to Palzontology.

However, I keep to the anatomical side of that sort of work,
and so, now and then, I hope to emerge from amidst the fossils
with a bit of recent anatomy.

Just at present, by the way, I am giving my disposable hours
to the completion of a monograph on the Calycophoride and
Physophoride observed during my voyage. The book ought to
have been published eight years ago. But for three years I could

 

* The present Sir John Lubbock, M.P.
176 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XII

get no money from the Government, and in the meanwhile you
and Kdlliker, Gegenbaur and Vogt, went to the shores of the
Mediterranean and made sad havoc with my novelties. Then
came occupations consequent on my appointment to the chair
I now hold; and it was only last autumn that I had leisure to
take up the subject again.

However, the plates, which I hope you will see in a few
months have, with two exceptions, been engraved five years.

Pray make my remembrances to Dr. Eckhard. I was sorry
not to have seen him again in London.—Ever, my dear Sir, very
faithfully yours, T. H. Hux ey.

Prof. Leuckart.

At this time Sir J. Hooker was writing, as an introduc-
tion to his Flora of Tasmania, his essay on the Flora of
Australia, published in 1859—a book which owed its form
to the influence of Darwin, and in return lent weighty sup-
port to evolutionary theory from the botanical side. He
sent his proofs for Huxley to read,

14 WAVERLEY PLace, N.W., Afri/ 22, 1859.

My pear Hooxer—I have read your proofs with a great deal
of attention and interest. I was greatly struck with the sug-
gestions in the first page, and the exposure of the fallacy “that
cultivated forms recur to wild types if left alone” is new to me
and seems of vast importance.

The argument brought forward in the note is very striking
and as simple as the egg of Columbus, when one sees it. I have
marked one or two passages which are not quite clear to
MES 4. oi
I have been accused of writing papers composed of nothing
but heads of chapters, and I think you tend the same way.
Please take the trouble to make the two lines I have scored into
a paragraph, so that poor devils who are not quite so well up
in the subject as yourself may not have to rack their brains for
an hour to supply all the links of your chain of argument... .

You see that I am in a carping humour, but the matter of
the essays seems to me to be so very valuable that I am jealous
of the manner of it.

I had a long visit from Greene of Cork yesterday. He is
very Irish, but very intelligent and well-informed, and I am in
hopes he will do good service. He is writing a little book on
the Protozoa, which (so far as I have glanced over the proof
1859 LETTERS 177
sheets as yet) seems to show a very philosophical turn of mind.
It is very satisfactory to find the ideas one has been fighting
for beginning to take root.

I do not suppose my own personal contributions to science
will ever be anything very grand, but I shall be well content if
I have reason to believe that I have done something to stir up
others.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Hux.ey.

To the same :—
April, 1859.
My bear Hooker . . . I pity you—as for the MSS. it is one
of those cases for which penances were originally devised.
What do you say to standing on your head in the garden for
one hour per diem for the next week? It would be a relief... .
I suppose you will be at the Phil. Club next Monday. In
the meanwhile don’t let all the flesh be worried off your bones
(there isn’t much as it is)—Ever yours faithfully,
T. H. Hux ey.

14 WAVERLEY Pace, /zly 29, 1859.
My pear Hooxker—I meant to have written to you yester-
day, but things put it out of my head. If there is to be any
fund raised at all, I am quite of your mind that it should be a
scientific fund and not a mere naturalists’ fund. Sectarianism
in such matters is ridiculous, and besides that, in this particular
case it is bad policy. For the word “ Naturalist ” unfortunately
includes a far lower order of men than chemist, physicist, or
mathematician. You don’t call a man a mathematician because
he has spent his life in getting as far as quadratics; but every
fool who can make bad species and worse genera is a “ Natural-
ist” !~save the mark! Imagine the chemists petitioning the
Crown for a Pension for P. if he wanted one! and yet he
really is a philosopher compared to poor dear A ,
“Naturalists” therefore are far more likely to want help
than any other class of scientific men, and they would be greatly
damaging their own interests if they formed an exclusive fund
for themselves.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Hux ey.

 

 
CHAPTER XIII

1859

In November 1859 the Origin of Species was published,
and a new direction was given to Huxley’s activities. Ever
since Darwin and Wallace had made their joint communica-
tion to the Linnean Society in the preceding July, expecta-
tion had been rife as to the forthcoming book. Huxley
was one of the few privileged to learn Darwin’s argument
before it was given to the world; but the greatness of the
book, mere instalment as it was of the long accumulated
mass of notes, almost took him by surprise. Before this
time, he had taken up a thoroughly agnostic attitude with
regard to the species question, for he could not accept the
creational theory, yet sought in vain among the transmu-
tationists for any cause adequate to produce transmuta-
tion. He had had many talks with Darwin, and though
ready enough to accept the main point, maintained such a
critical attitude on many others, that Darwin was not by
any means certain of the effect the published book would
produce upon him. Indeed, in his 1857 notebook, I find
jotted down under the head of his paper on Pygocephalus
(read at the Geological Society), “ anti-progressive confes-
sion of faith.” Darwin was the more anxious, as, when he
first put pen to paper, he had fixed in his mind three judges,
by whose decision he determined mentally to abide. These
three were Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley. If these three came
round, partly through the book, partly through their own
reflections, he could feel that the subject was safe. ‘“ No
one,” writes Darwin on November 13, “ has read it, except
Lyell, with whom I have had much correspondence.

178
1S85y THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 179

Hooker thinks him a complete convert, but he does not
seem so in his letters to me; but is evidently deeply inter-
ested in the subject.” And again: “I think I told you
before that Hooker is a complete convert. If I can con-
vert Huxley I shall be content.” (Life, vol. ii. p. 221.)

On all three, the effect of the book itself, with its de-
tailed arguments and overwhelming array of evidence, was
far greater than that of previous discussions. With one or
two reservations as to the logical completeness of the theory,
Huxley accepted it as a well-founded working hypothesis,
calculated to explain problems otherwise inexplicable.

Two extracts from the chapter he contributed to the
Life of Darwin show very clearly his attitude of mind when
the Origin of Specics was first published :-—

Extract from “ The Reception of the ‘Origin of Species’” in
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. ii. pp. 187-90 and
195-97.

I think I must have read the l’estiges before I left England
in 1846; but, if I did, the book made very little impression upon
me, and I was not brought into serious contact with the
“Species” question until after 1850. At that time, I’had long
done with the Pentateuchal cosmogony, which had been im-
pressed upon my childish understanding as Divine truth, with
all the authority of parents and instructors, and from which it
had cost me many a struggle to get free. But my mind was
unbiassed in respect of any doctrine which presented itself, if it
professed to be based on purely philosophical and scientific rea-
soning. It seemed to me then (as it does now) that “ creation,”
in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I
find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this
universe was not in existence; and that it made its appearance
in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in conse-
quence of the volition of some pre-existing Being. Then, as
now, the so-called a priori arguments against Theism, and, given
a Deity, against the possibility of creative acts, appeared to me
to be devoid of reasonable foundation. I had not then, and I
have not now, the smallest a priori objection to raise to the
account of the creation of animals and plants given in Paradise
Lost, in which Milton so vividly embodies the natural sense of
Genesis. Far be it from me to say that it is untrue because it
180 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XIII

is impossible. I confine myself to what must be regarded as
a modest and reasonable request for some particle of evidence
that the existing species of animals and plants did originate in
that way, as a condition of my belief in a statement which
appears to me to be highly improbable.

And, by way of being perfectly fair, I had exactly the same
answer to give to the evolutionists of 1851-58. Within the
ranks of the biologists, at ‘that time, I met with nobody, except
Dr. Grant of University College, who had a word to say for
Evolution—and his advocacy was not calculated to advance the
cause. Outside these ranks, the only person known to me whose
knowledge and capacity compelled respect, and who was, at the
same time, a thorough-going evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert
Spencer, whose acquaintance I made, I think, in 1852, and then

“entered into the bonds of a friendship which, I am happy to
think, has known no interruption. Many and prolonged were
the battles we fought on this topic. But even my friend’s rare
dialectic skill and copiousness of apt illustration could not drive
me from my agnostic position. JI took my stand upon two
grounds :—Firstly, that up to that time, the evidence in favour
of transmutation was wholly insufficient; and secondly, that no
suggestion respecting the causes of transmutation assumed,
which had been made, was in any way adequate to explain the
phenomena. Looking back at the state of knowledge at that
time, I really do not see that any other conclusion was justi-
fiable.

In those days I had never even heard of Treviranus’ Biolo-
gie. However, I had studied Lamarck attentively, and I had
read the Vestiges with due care; but neither of them afforded
me any good ground for changing my negative and critical atti-
tude. As for the Vestiges, I confess that the book simply irri-
tated me by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific
habit of mind manifested by the writer. If it had any influence
on me at all, it set me against Evolution; and the only review I
ever have qualms of conscience about, on the ground of need-
less savagery, is one I wrote on the Vestiges while under that
influence. ...

But, by a curious irony of fate, the same influence which led
me to put as little faith in modern speculations on this subject as
in the venerable traditions recorded in the first two chapters of
Genesis, was perhaps more potent than any other in keeping
alive a sort of pious conviction that Evolution, after all, would
turn out true. I have recently read afresh the first edition of
1859 PUBLICATION OF THE OR/GIN OF SPECIES I81

the Principles of Geology; and when I consider that this re-
markable book had been nearly thirty years in everybody’s hands,
and that it brings home to any reader of ordinary intelligence
a great principle and a great fact,—the principle that the past
must be explained by the present, unless good cause be shown
to the contrary; and the fact that so far as our knowledge of
the past history of life on our globe goes, no such cause can be
shown,—I cannot but believe that Lyell, for others, as for my-
self, was the chief agent in smoothing the road for Darwin. For
consistent uniformitarianism postulates Evolution as much in
the organic as in the inorganic world. The origin of a new
species by other than ordinary agencies would be a vastly
greater “catastrophe” than any of those which Lyell success-
fully eliminated from sober geological speculation.

Thus, looking back into the past, it seems to me that my own
position of critical expectancy was just and reasonable, and
must have been taken up, on the same grounds, by many other
persons. If Agassiz told me that the forms of life which have
successively tenanted the globe were the incarnations of succes-
sive thoughts of the Deity, and that He had wiped out one set
of these embodiments by an appalling geological catastrophe
as soon as His ideas took a more advanced shape, I found myself
not only unable to admit the accuracy of the deductions from
the facts of paleontology, upon which this astounding hypoth-
esis was founded, but I had to confess my want of any means
of testing the correctness of his explanation of them. And
besides that, I could by no means see what the explanation ex-
plained. Neither did it help me to be told by an eminent
anatomist that species had succeeded one another in time, in
virtue of “a continuously operative creational law.” That
seemed to me to be no more than saying that species had succeed-
ed one another in the form of a vote-catching resolution, with
“law” to catch the man of science, and “ creational” to draw
the orthodox. So I took refuge in that “ thatige Skepsis ” which
Goethe has so well defined; and, reversing the apostolic precept
to be all things to all men, I usually defended the tenability of
the received doctrines when I had to do with the transmuta-
tionist; and stood up for the possibility of transmutation among
the orthodox—thereby, no doubt, increasing an already current,
but quite undeserved, reputation for needless combativeness.

I remember, in the course of my first interview with Mr.
Darwin, expressing my belief in the sharpness of the lines of
demarcation between natural groups and in the absence of
182 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XIII

transitional forms, with all the confidence of youth and imper-
fect knowledge. I was not aware, at that time, that he had then
been many years brooding over the species-question; and the
humorous smile which accompanied his gentle answer, that such
was not altogether his view, long haunted and puzzled me. But
it would seem that four or five years’ hard work had enabled
me to understand what it meant; for Lyell, writing to Sir
Charles Bunbury (under date of April 30, 1856), says:—

“When Huxley, Hooker and Wollaston were at Darwin’s
last week, they (all four of them) ran a tilt against species—
further, I believe, than they are prepared to go.”

I recollect nothing of this beyond the fact of meeting Mr.
Wollaston; and except for Sir Charles’s distinct assurance as
to “all four,” I should have thought my outrecuidance was
probably a counterblast to Wollaston’s conservatism. With re-
gard to Hooker, he was already, like Voltaire’s Habbakuk, capa-
ble de tout in the way of advocating Evolution.

As I have already said, I imagine that most of those of
my contemporaries who thought seriously about the matter,
were very much in my own state of mind—inclined to say
to both Mosaists and Evolutionists, “a plague on both your
houses!” and disposed to turn aside from an interminable and
apparently fruitless discussion, to labour in the fertile fields of
ascertainable fact. And I may therefore suppose that the pub-
lication of the Darwin and Wallace paper in 1858, and still more
that of the “ Origin” in 1859, had the effect upon them of the
flash of light which, to a man who has lost himself on a dark
night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes him
straight home or not, certainly goes his way. That which we
were looking for, and could not find, was a hypothesis respect-
ing the origin of known organic forms which assumed the opera-
tion of no causes but such as could be proved to be actually at
work. We wanted, not to pin our faith to that or any other
speculation, but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions
which could be brought face to face with facts and have their
validity tested. The “Origin” provided us with the working
hypothesis we sought. Moreover, it did the immense service of
freeing us for ever from the dilemma—Refuse to accept the
creation hypothesis, and what have you to propose that can be
accepted by any cautious reasoner? In 1857 I had no answer
ready, and I do not think that anyone else had. A year later we
reproached ourselves with dulness for being perplexed with such
an inquiry. My reflection, when I first made myself master of
1859 BEACON-FIRE OF THE O&/GLV 183

the central idea of the “Origin was, “ How extremely stupid
not to have thought of that!"’ I suppose that Columbus’ com-
panions said much the same when he made the egg stand on
end. The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of
adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of
us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species prob-
lem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the
darkness, and the beacon-fire of the “ Origin” guided the be-
nighted.

Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of Evolu-
tion, as applied to the organic world, took in Darwin's hands,
would prove to be final or not, was to me a matter of indiffer-
ence. In my earliest criticisms of the ‘‘ Origin” I ventured to
point out that its logical foundation was insecure so long as
experiments in selective breeding had not produced varieties
which were more or less infertile; and that insecurity remains
up to the present time. But, with any and every critical doubt
which my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian
hypothesis remained incomparably more probable than the cre-
ation hypothesis. And if we had none of us been able to dis-
cern the paramount significance of some of the most patent
and notorious of natural facts, until they were, so to speak,
thrust under our noses, what force remained in the dilemma—
creation or nothing? It was obvious that hereafter the proba-
bility would be immensely greater, that the links of natural
causation were hidden from our purblind eyes, than that natural
causation should be incompetent to produce all the phenomena
of nature. The only rational course for those who had no other
object than the attainment of truth was to accept “ Darwinism”
as a working hypothesis and see what could be made of it.
Either it would prove its capacity to elucidate the facts of
organic life, or it would break down under the strain. This
was surely the dictate of common sense, and, for once, common
sense carried the day.

Even before the “ Origin” actually came out, Huxley
had begun to act as what Darwin afterwards called his ‘* gen-
eral agent.” He began to prepare the way for the accept-
ance of the theory of evolution by discussing, for instance,
one of the most obvious difficulties, namely, How is it that
if evolution is ever progressive, progress is not universal ?
It was a point with respect to which Darwin himself wrote
soon after the publication of the ‘“ Origin” :—‘ Judging

13
184 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIII

from letters . . . and from remarks, the most serious omis-
sion in my book was not explaining how it is, as I believe,
that all forms do not necessarily advance, how there can
now be sumple organisms existing.” (May 22, 1860.)

Huxley’s idea, then, was to call attention to the persist-
ence of many types without appreciable progression during
geological time; to show that this fact was not explicable
on any other hypothesis than that put forward by Darwin;
and by paleontological arguments, to pave the way for con-
sideration of the imperfection of the geological record.

Such were the lines on which he delivered his Friday
evening lecture on “ Persistent Types” at the Royal Insti-
tution on June 3, 1859.

However, the chief part which he took at this time in
extending the doctrines of evolution was in applying them
to his own subjects, Development and Vertebrate Anatomy,
and more particularly to the question of the origin of
mankind.

Of all the burning questions connected with the Origin
of Species, this was the most heated—the most surrounded
by prejudice and passion. To touch it was to court attack;
to be exposed to endless scorn, ridicule, misrepresentation,
abuse—almost to social ostracism. But the facts were there;
the structural likenesses between the apes and man had
already been shown; and as Huxley warned Darwin, “I
will stop at no point so long as clear reasoning will carry
me further.”

Now two years before the “ Origin” appeared, the denial
of these facts by a leading anatomist led Huxley, as was his
wont, to re-investigate the question for himself and satisfy
himself one way or the other. He found that the previous
investigators were not mistaken. Without going out of his
way to refute the mis-statement as publicly as it was made,
he simply embodied his results in his regular teaching. But
the opportunity came unsought. Fortified by his own re-
searches, he openly challenged these assertions when re-
peated at the Oxford meeting of the British Association in
1860, and promised to make good his challenge in the
proper place.
1859 LETTER TO LYELL 185

We also find him combating some of the difficulties in
the way of accepting the theory laid before him by Sir
Charles Lyell. The veteran geologist had been Darwin’s
confidant from almost the beginning of his speculations; he
had really paved the way for the evolutionary doctrine by
his own proof of geological uniformity, but he shrank from
accepting it, for its inevitable extension to the descent of
man was repugnant to his feelings. Nevertheless, he would
not allow sentiment to stand in the way of truth, and after
the publication of the ‘ Origin” it could be said of him—

Lyell, up to that time a pillar of the anti-transmutationists
(who regarded him, ever after, as Pallas Athene may have
looked at Dian, after the Endymion affair), declared himself a
Darwinian, though not without putting in a serious caveat.
Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength, and his courageous
stand for truth as against consistency did him infinite honour.
—(T. H. H. in Life of Darwin, vol ii. p. 231.)

To Str CHARLES LYELL
June 25, 1859.
My pear Sir CHarLtes—I have endeavoured to meet your
objections in the enclosed.—Ever yours, very truly,
T. H. H.

The fixity and definite limitation of species, genera, and
larger groups appear to me to be perfectly consistent with the
theory of transmutation. In other words, I think transmutation
may take place without transition.

Suppose that external conditions acting on species A give
rise to a new species, B; the difference between the two species
is a certain definable amount which may be called A-B. Now
I know of no evidence to show that the interval between the
two species must necessarily be bridged over by a series of
forms, each of which shall occupy, as it occurs, a fraction of
the distance between A and B. On the contrary, in the history
of the Ancon sheep, and of the six-fingered Maltese family,
given by Réaumur, it appears that the new form appeared at
once in full perfection.

I may illustrate what I mean by a chemical example. In an
organic compound, having a precise and definite composition,
you may effect all sorts of transmutations by substituting an
186 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XIII

atom of one element for an atom of another element. You may
in this way produce a vast series of modifications—but each
modification is definite in its composition, and there are no tran-
sitional or intermediate steps between one definite compound and
another. I have a sort of notion that similar laws of definite
combination rule over the modifications of organic bodies, and
that in passing from species to species “ Natura fecit saltum.”

All my studies lead me to believe more and more in the
absence of any real transitions between natural groups, great
and small—but with what we know of the physiology of con-
ditions [?] this opinion seems to me to be quite consistent with
transmutation.

When I say that no evidence, or hardly any, would justify
one in believing in the view of a new species of Elephant, e.g.
out of the earth, I mean that such an occurrence would be so
diametrically contrary to all experience, so opposed to those
beliefs which are the most constantly verified by experience,
that one would be justified in believing either that one’s senses
were deluded, or that one had not really got to the bottom of
the phenomenon. Of course, if one could vary the conditions,
if one could take a little silex, and by a little hocus-pocus a la
crosse, galvanise a baby out of it as often as one pleased, all
the philosopher could do would be to hold up his hands and cry,
“ God is great.” But short of evidence of, this kind, I don’t mean
to believe anything of the kind.

How much evidence would you require to believe that there
was a time when stones fell upwards, or granite made itself by a
spontaneous rearrangement of the elementary particles of clay
and sand? And yet the difficulties in the way of these beliefs
are as nothing compared to those which you would have to over-
come in believing that complex organic beings made themselves
(for that is what creation comes to in scientific language) out
of inorganic matter.

I know it will be said that even on the transmutation theory,
the first organic being must have made itself. But there is as
much difference between supposing the passage of inorganic
matter into an amoeba, e.g., and into an Elephant, as there is
between supposing that Portland stone might have built itself
up into St. Paul’s, and believing that the Giant’s Causeway may
have come about by natural causes.

True, one must believe in a beginning somewhere, but sci-
ence consists in not believing the having reached that beginning
before one is forced to do so.
1859 LETTER TO LYELL 187

It is wholly impossible to prove that any phenomenon what-
soever is not produced by the interposition of some unknown
cause. But philosophy has prospered exactly as it has disre-
garded such possibilities, and has endeavoured to resolve every
event by ordinary reasoning.

I do not exactly see the force of your argument that we
are bound to find fossil forms intermediate between men and
monkeys in the Rocks. Crocodiles are the highest reptiles as
men are the highest mammals, but we find nothing intermediate
between crocodilia and lacertilia in the whole range of the
Mesozoic rocks. How do we know that Man is not a persistent
type? And as for implements, at this day, and as, I suppose,
for the last two or three thousand years at least, the savages of
Australia have made their weapons of nothing but bone and
wood. Why should Homo Eocenus or Ooliticus, the fellows
who waddied the Amphithcrium and speared the Phascolo-
therium as the Australian niggers treat their congeners, have
been more advanced ?

I by no means suppose that the transmutation hypothesis is
proven or anything like it. But I view it as a powerful instru-
ment of research. Follow it out, and it will lead us somewhere;
while the other notion is like all the modifications of “ final
causation,” a barren virgin.

And I would very strongly urge upon you that it is the
logical development of Uniformitarianism, and that its adoption
would harmonise the spirit of Paleontology with that of Physical
Geology.
CHAPTER XIV

1859-60

THE “ Origin” appeared in November. As soon as he
had read it, Huxley wrote the following letter to Darwin
(already published in Life of Darwin, vol. ii. p. 231) :—

>

JERMYN STREET, W., Movember 23, 1859.

My pear Darwin—I finished your book yesterday, a lucky
examination having furnished me with a few hours of con-
tinuous leisure.

Since I read Von Bar’s essays, nine years ago, no work on
Natural History Science I have met with has made so great
an impression upon me, and I do most heartily thank you for
the great store of new views you have given me. Nothing, I
think, can be better than the tone of the book; it impresses those
who know about the subject. As for your doctrine, I am pre-
pared to go to the stake, if requisite, in support of Chapter IX *
and most parts of Chapters X, XI, XII, and Chapter XIII con-
tains much that is most admirable, but on one or two points I
enter a caveat until I can see further into all sides of the
question.

As to the first four chapters,t I agree thoroughly and fully
with all the principles laid down in them. I think you have
demonstrated a true cause for the production of species, and
have thrown the onus probandi, that species did not arise in
the way you suppose, on your adversaries.

 

* Chapter IX, The Imperfection of the Geological Record; X, The
Geological Succession of Organic Beings ; XI-XII, Geographical Dis-
tribution; XIII, Classification, Morphology, Embryology, and Rudi-
mentary Organs.

+ Chapter I, Variation under Domestication; II, Variation under
Nature; III, The Struggle for Existence; IV, Operation of Natural
Selection; V, Laws of Variation,

188
1859 THE 7/iVES REVIEW OF THE OA&/GlV 189

But I feel that I have not yet by any means fully realised
the bearings of those most remarkable and original Chapters
—III, IV, and V, and I will write no more about them just now.

The only objections that have occurred to me are—tst, That
you have loaded yourself with an unnecessary difficulty in adopt-
ing Natura non facit saltum so unreservedly; and 2nd, It is not
clear to me why, if continual physical conditions are of so little
moment as you suppose, variation should occur at all.

However, I must read the book two or three times more
before I presume to begin picking holes.

I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted
or annoyed by the considerable abuse and misrepresentation
which, unless I greatly mistake, is in store for you. Depend
upon it, you have earned the lasting gratitude of all thoughtful
men. And as to the curs which will bark and yelp, you must
recollect that some of your friends, at any rate, are endowed
with an amount of combativeness which (though you have often
and justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead.

I am sharpening up my claws and bedk in readiness.

Looking back over my letter, it really expresses so feebly all
I think about you and your noble book, that I am half-ashamed
of it; but you will understand that, like the parrot in the story,
“T think the more.""—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Hux.ey.

A month later, fortune put into his hands the oppor-
tunity of striking a vigorous and telling blow for the newly-
published book. Never was windfall more eagerly accepted.
A short account of this lucky chance was written by him
for the Darwin Life (vol. i. p. 255).

The “ Origin” was sent to Mr. Lucas, one of the staff of the
Times writers at that day, in what was I suppose the ordinary
course of business. Mr. Lucas, though an excellent journalist,
and at a later period, editor of Once a Week, was as innocent
of any knowledge of science as a babe, and bewailed himself
to an acquaintance on having to deal with such a book. Where-
upon, he was recommended to ask me to get him out of his
difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly, explaining,” how-
ever, that it would be necessary for him formally to adopt any-
thing I might be disposed to write, by prefacing it with two
‘or three paragraphs of his own.

I was too anxious to seize upon the opportunity thus offered
190 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIV

of giving the book a fair chance with the multitudinous readers
of the Times, to make any difficulty about conditions; and being
then very full of the subject, I wrote the article faster, I think,
than I ever wrote anything in my life, and sent it to Mr. Lucas,
who duly prefixed his opening sentences.

When the article appeared, there was much speculation as
to its authorship. The secret leaked out in time, as all secrets
will, but not by my aid; and then I used to derive a good deal of
innocent amusement from the vehement assertions of some of
my more acute friends, that they knew it was mine from the first
paragraph !

As the Times some years since, referred to my connection
with the review, I suppose there will be no breach of confidence
in the publication of this little history, if you think it worth the
space it will occupy.

The article appeared on December 26. Only Hooker
was admitted into the secret. In an undated note Huxley
writes to him :—

Thave written the other review you wot of, and have handed
it over to my friend to deal as he likes with it... . Darwin will
laugh over a letter that I sent him this morning with a vignette
of the Jermyn Street “pet” ready to fight his battle, and the
“judicious Hooker” holding the bottle.

And on December 31 he writes again :—

JERMYN STREET, December 31, 1859.

My pear Hooxer—I have not the least objection to my
share in the Times article being known, only I should not like to
have anything stated on my authority. The fact is, that the first
quarter of the first column (down to “ what is a species,” etc.) is
not mine, but belongs to the man who is the official reviewer for
the Times (my “ Temporal” godfather I might call him).

The rest is in my ipsissima verba, and I only wonder that it
turns out as well as it does—for I wrote it faster than ever I
wrote anything in my life. The last column nearly as fast as
my wife could read the sheets. But I was thoroughly in the
humour and full of the subject. Of course as a scientific review
the thing is worth nothing, but I earnestly hope it may have
made some of the educated mob, who derive their ideas from
the Times, reflect. And whatever they do, they shall respect
Darwin. :

Pray give my kindest regards and best wishes for the New
1860 MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE IgI

Year to Mrs. Hooker, and tell her that if she, of her own natural
sagacity and knowledge of the naughtiness of my heart, affirms
that I wrote the article, I shall not contradict her—but that for
reasons of state—I must not be supposed to say anything. I am
pretty certain the Saturday article was not written by Owen.
On internal grounds, because no word in it exceeds an inch in
length; on external, from what Cook said to me. The article
is weak enough and one-sided enough, but looking at the various
forces in action, I think Cook has fully redeemed his promise
to me.

I went down to Sir P. Egerton on Tuesday—was ill when I
started, got worse and had to come back on Thursday. I am all
adrift now, but I couldn’t stand being in the house any longer.
I wish I had been born an an-hepatous fetus.

All sorts of good wishes to you, and may you and I and
Tyndalides, and one or two more bricks, be in as good fighting
order in 1861 as in 1860.—Ever yours, T. H. Huxtey.

Speaking of this period and the half-dozen preceding
years, in his 1894 preface to Man’s Place in Nature he
says :—

Among the many problems which came under my considera-
tion, the position of the human species in zoological classifica-
tion was one of the most serious. Indeed, at that time it was a
burning question in the sense that those who touched it were
almost certain to burn their fingers severely. It was not so
very long since my kind friend, Sir William Lawrence, one of
the ablest men whom I have known, had been well-nigh ostra-
cised for his book On Man, which now might be read in a Sun-
day school without surprising anybody; it was only a few years
since the electors to the chair of Natural History in a famous
northern university had refused to invite a very distinguished
man to occupy it because he advocated the doctrine of the diver-
sity of species of mankind, or what was called “ polygeny.”
Even among those who considered man from the point of view,
not of vulgar prejudice, but of science, opinions lay poles
asunder. Linnzeus had taken one view, Cuvier another; and
among my senior contemporaries, men like Lyell, regarded by
many as revolutionaries of the deepest dye, were strongly op-
posed to anything which tended to break down the barrier be-
tween man and the rest of the animal world.

My own mind was by no means definitely made up about this

°
192 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIV

matter when, in the year 1857, a paper was read before the
Linnean Society “On the Characters, Principles of Division
and Primary Groups of the Class Mammalia,” in which certain
anatomical features of the brain were said to be “ peculiar to
the genus ‘ Homo,’” and were made the chief ground for sepa-
rating that genus from all other mammals and placing him in
a division, ‘“ Archencephala,” apart from, and superior to, all
the rest. As these statements did not agree with the opinions
I had formed, I set to work to reinvestigate the subject; and
soon satisfied myself that the structures in question were not
peculiar to Man, but were shared by him with all the higher
and many of the lower apes. I embarked in no public discus-
sion of these matters, but my attention being thus drawn to
them, I studied the whole question of the structural relations
of Man to the next lower existing forms, with much care. And,
of course, I embodied my conclusions in my teaching.

Matters were at this point when the Origin of Species ap-
peared. The weighty sentence, “ Light will be thrown on the
origin of man and his history” (1st edition, p. 488), was not
only in full harmony with the conclusions at which I had arrived
respecting the structural relations of apes and men, but was
strongly supported by them. And inasmuch as Development
and Vertebrate Anatomy were not among Mr. Darwin’s many
specialities, it appeared to me that I should not be intruding
on the ground he had made his own, if I discussed this part
of the general question. In fact, I thought that I might prob-
ably serve the cause of Evolution by doing so.

Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that
the necessity of making things clear to uninstructed people was
one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners
in one’s own mind. So, in 1860, I took the Relation of Man to
the Lower Animals for the subject of the six lectures to work-
ing men which it was my duty to deliver. It was also in 1860
that this topic was discussed before a jury of experts at the
meeting of the British Association at Oxford, and from that
time a sort of running fight on the same subject was carried on,
until it culminated at the Cambridge Meeting of the Association
in 1862, by my friend Sir W. Flower’s public demonstration of
the existence in the apes of those cerebral characters which had
been said to be peculiar to man.

The famous Oxford Meeting of 1860 was of no small
importance in Huxley’s career. It was not merely that he
1860 THE OXFORD MEETING OF 1860 193

helped to save a great cause from being stifled under mis-
representation and ridicule—that he helped to extort for it a
fair hearing ; it was now that he first made himself known in
popular estimation as a dangerous adversary in debate—a
personal force in the world of science which could not be
neglected. From this moment he entered the front fighting
line in the most exposed quarter of the field.

Most unluckily, no contemporary account of his own
exists of the encounter. Indeed, the same cause which
prevented his writing home the storv of the day’s work
nearly led to his absence from the scene. It was known
that Bishop Wilberforce, whose first class in mathematics
gave him, in popular estimation, a right to treat on scientific
matters, intended to “smash Darwin”; and Huxley, ex-
pecting that the promised debate would be merely an appeal
to prejudice in a mixed audience, before which the scientific
arguments of the Bishop’s opponents would be at the utmost
disadvantage, intended to leave Oxford that very morning
and join his wife at Hardwicke, near Reading, where she was
staying with her sister. But in a letter, quoted below, he
tells how, on the Friday afternoon, he chanced to meet
Robert Chambers, the reputed author of the Vestiges of
Creation, who begged him “not to desert them.” Accord-
ingly he postponed his departure; but seeing his wife next
morning, had no occasion to write a letter.

Several accounts of the scene are already in existence:
one in the Life of Darwin (vol. ii. p. 320), another in the
1892 Life, p. 236 sq.; a third that of Lyell (vol. ii. p. 335),
the slight differences between them representing the differ-
ence between individual recollections of eye-witnesses. In
addition to these I have been fortunate enough to secure
further reminiscences from several other eye-witnesses:

Two papers in Section D, of no great importance in
themselves, became historical as affording the opponents of
Darwin their opportunity of making an attack upon his
theory which should tell with the public. The first was on
Thursday, June 28. Dr. Daubeny of Oxford made a com-
munication to the Section, “‘ On the final causes of the sex-
uality of plants, with particular reference to Mr. Darwin's
194 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIV

work on the Origin of Species.” * Huxley was called upon
to speak by the President, but tried to avoid a discussion,
on the ground “that a general audience, in which senti-
ment would unduly interfere with intellect, was not the
public before which such a discussion should be carried on.”

This consideration, however, did not stop the discussion ;
it was continued by Owen. He said he “wished to ap-
proach the subject in the spirit of the philosopher,” and
declared his “ conviction that there were facts by which the
public could come to some conclusion with regard to the
probabilities of the truth of Mr. Darwin’s theory.” As
one of these facts, he stated that the brain of the gorilla
“presented more differences, as compared with the brain of
man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very
lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana.”

Now this was the very point, as said above, upon which
Huxley had made special investigations during the last two
years, with precisely opposite results, such as, indeed, had
been arrived at by previous investigators. Hereupon he
replied, giving these assertions a “direct and unqualified
contradiction,” and pledging himself to “ justify that un-
usual procedure elsewhere,’—a pledge which was amply
fulfilled in the pages of the Natural History Review for
1861.

Accordingly it was to him, thus marked out as the
champion of the most debatable thesis of evolution, that,
two days later, the Bishop addressed his sarcasms, only to
meet with a withering retort. For on the Friday there was
peace; but on the Saturday came a yet fiercer battle over
the “ Origin,” which loomed all the larger in the public eye,
because it was not merely the contradiction of one anatomist
by another, but the open clash between Science and the
Church. It was, moreover, not a contest of bare bact or
abstract assertion, but a combat of wit between two indi-
viduals, spiced with the personal element which appeals to
one of the strongest instincts of every large audience.

 

* My best thanks are due to Mr. F. Darwin for permission to quote
his accounts of the meeting; other citations are from the Atheneum
reports of July 14, 1860.
1860 THE OXFORD MEETING OF 1860 195

It was the merest chance, as I have already said, that
Huxley attended the meeting of the section that morning.
Dr. Draper of New York was to read a paper on the “ In-
tellectual Development of Europe considered with refer-
ence to the views of Mr. Darwin.” ‘“ I can still hear,” writes
one who was present, “ the American accents of Dr. Draper’s
opening address when he asked ‘ Air we a fortuitous con-
course of atoms?’”’ However, it was not to hear him, but
the eloquence of the Bishop, that the members of the Asso-
ciation crowded in such numbers into the Lecture Room
of the Museum, that this, the appointed meeting-place of
the section, had to be abandoned for the long west room,
since cut in two by a partition for the purposes of the
library. It was not term time, nor were the general public
admitted ; nevertheless the room was crowded to suffocation
long before the protagonists appeared on the scene, 700
persons or more managing to find places. The very win-
dows by which the room was lighted down the length of
its west side were packed with ladies, whose white handker-
chiefs, waving and fluttering in the air at the end of the
Bishop’s speech, were an unforgettable factor in the accla-
mation of the crowd.

On the east side between the two doors was the plat-
form. Professor Henslow, the President of the section, took
his seat in the centre; upon his right was the Bishop, and
beyond him again Dr. Draper; on his extreme left was Mr.
Dingle, a clergyman from Lanchester, near Durham, with
Sir J. Hooker and Sir J. Lubbock in front of him, and
nearer the centre, Professor Beale of King’s College, Lon-
don, and Huxley.

The clergy, who shouted lustily for the Bishop, were
massed in the middle of the room; behind them in the
north-west corner a knot of undergraduates (one of these
was T. H. Green, who listened but took no part in the
cheering) had gathered together beside Professor Brodie,
ready to lift their voices, poor minority though they were,
for the opposite party. Close to them stood one of the
few men among the audience already in Holy orders, who
joined in—and indeed led—the cheers for the Darwimians.
196 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XIV

So “Dr. Draper droned out his paper, turning first to
the right hand and then to the left, of course bringing in a
reference to the Origin of Species which set the ball roll-
ing.”

An hour or more that paper lasted, and then discus-
sion began. The President “wisely announced i linune
that none who had not valid arguments to bring forward on
one side or the other would be allowed to address the meet-
ing; a caution that proved necessary, for no fewer than four
combatants had their utterances burked by him, because of
their indulgence in vague declamation.” *

First spoke (writes Professor Farrar+) a layman from
Brompton, who gave his name as being one of the Committee
of the (newly formed) Economic section of the Association.
He, in a stentorian voice, let off his theological venom. Then
jumped up Richard Greswell ¢ with a thin voice, saying much
the same, but speaking as a scholar; but we did not merely want
any theological discussion, so we shouted them down. Then a
Mr. Dingle got up and tried to show that Darwin would have
done much better if he had taken him into consultation. He
used the blackboard and began a mathematical demonstration
on the question—“ Let this point A be man, and let that point
B be the mawnkey.” He got no further; he was shouted down
with cries of “ mawnkey.” None of these had spoken more than
three minutes. It was when these were shouted down that
Henslow said he must demand that the discussion should rest
on scientific grounds only.

Then there were calls for the Bishop, but he rose and said
he understood his friend Professor Beale had something to say
first. Beale, who was an excellent histologist, spoke to the effect
that the new theory ought to meet with fair discussion, but
added, with great modesty, that he himself had not sufficidént
knowledge to discuss the subject adequately. Then the Bishop
spoke the speech that you know, and the question about his
mother being an ape, or his grandmother.

From the scientific point of view, the speech was of
small value. It was evident from his mode of handling the
subject that he had been “ crammed up to the throat,” and

 

* Life of Darwin, Luc. + Canon of Durham,
¢ Rev. Richard Greswell, B.D,., Tutor of Worcester College.
1860 BISHOP WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH 197

knew nothing at first hand; he used no argument beyond
those to be found in his Quarterly article, which appeared
a few days later, and is now admitted to have been in-
spired by Owen. “ He ridiculed Darwin badly and Huxley
savagely; but,” confesses one of his strongest opponents,
‘all in such dulcet tones, so persuasive a manner, and in
such well turned periods, that I who had been inclined to
blame the President for allowing a discussion that could
serve no scientific purpose, now forgave him from the bot-
tom of my heart.” *

The Bishop spoke thus “for full half an hour with
inimitable spirit, emptiness and unfairness.” “In a light,
scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he assured us there was
nothing in the idea of evolution; rock-pigeons were what
rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to his antag-
onist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it
through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed
his descent from a monkey?” +

This was the fatal mistake of his speech. Huxley in-
stantly grasped the tactical advantage which the descent to
personalities gave him. He turned to Sir Benjamin Brodie,
who was sitting beside him, and emphatically striking his
hand upon his knee, exclaimed, “ The Lord hath delivered
him into mine hands.” The bearing of the exclamation

 

* Life of Darwin, le.

+ ‘‘Reminiscences of a Grandmother,” Macmillan’s Magazine, Octo-
ber 1898. Professor Farrar thinks this version of what the Bishop
said is slightly inaccurate. His impression is that the words actually
used seemed at the moment flippant and unscientific rather than inso-
lent, vulgar, or personal. The Bishop, he writes, ‘‘had been talking
of the perpetuity of species of Birds; and then, denying a fortiori the
derivation of the species Man from Ape, he rhetorically invoked the
aid of feeling, and said, ‘If any one were to be willing to trace his
descent through an ape as his grandfather, would he be willing to
trace his descent similarly on the side of his grandmother?’ His false
humour was an attempt to arouse the antipathy about degrading
woman to the quadrumana. Your father’s reply showed there was
vulgarity as well as folly in the Bishop's words; and the impression
distinctly was, that the Bishop’s party, as they left the room, felt
abashed, and recognised that the Bishop had forgotten to behave like
a perfect gentleman.”
198 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIV

did not dawn upon Sir Benjamin until after Huxley had
completed his “ forcible and eloquent ” answer to the sci-
entific part of the Bishop’s argument, and proceeded to
make his famous retort.*

On this (continues the writer in Macmillan’s Magazine) Mr.
Huxley slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure, stern
and pale, very quiet and very grave,t he stood before us and
spoke those tremendous words—words which no one seems sure
of now, nor, I think, could remember just after they were spoken,
for their meaning took away our breath, though it left us in no
doubt as to what it was. He was not ashamed to have a monkey
for his ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with
a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth. No one
doubted his meaning, and the effect was tremendous. One lady
fainted and had to be carried out; I, for one, jumped out of
my seat.

The fullest and probably most accurate account of these
concluding words is the following, from a letter of the late

 

* The Atheneum reports him as saying that Darwin’s theory was
an explanation of phenomena in Natural History, as the undulatory
theory was of the phenomena of light. No one objected to that theory
because an undulation of light had never been arrested and measured.
Darwin’s theory was an explanation of facts, and his book was full of
new facts, all bearing on his theory. Without asserting that every
part of that theory had been confirmed, he maintained that it was the
best explanation of the origin of species which had yet been offered.
With regard to the psychological distinction between men and ani-
mals, man himself was once a monad—a mere atom, and nobody
could say at what moment in the history of his development he
became consciously intelligent. The question was not so much one
of a transmutation or transition of species, as of the production of
forms which became permanent.

Thus the short-legged sheep of America was not produced grad-
ually, but originated in the birth of an original parent of the whole
stock, which had been kept up by a rigid system of artificial selec-
tion.

+“ Young, cool, quiet, scientific—scientific in fact and in treat-
ment.”—J. R. Green. A certain piquancy must have been added to
the situation by the superficial resemblance in feature between the
two men, so different in temperament and expression. Indeed next
day at Hardwicke, a friend came up to Mr. Fanning and asked who
his guest was, saying, ‘‘Surely it is the son of the Bishop of Ox-
ford.”
1860 SPEECH AT OXFORD 199

John Richard Green, then an undergraduate, to his friend,
afterwards Professor Boyd Dawkins * :—

I asserted—and I repeat—that a man has no reason to be
ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an
ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather
be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not
content with an equivocal + success in his own sphere of activity,
plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real
acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and
distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue
by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious preju-
dice. ¢

Further, Mr. A. G. Vernon-Harcourt, F.R.S., Reader in
Chemistry at the University of Oxford, writes to me :—

The Bishop had rallied your father as to the descent from a
monkey, asking as a sort of joke how recent this had been,
whether it was his grandfather or further back. Your father,
in replying on this point, first explained that the suggestion was
of descent through thousands of generations from a common
ancestor, and then went on to this effect—“ But if this question
is treated, not as a matter for the calm investigation of science,
but as a matter of sentiment, and if I am asked whether I would
choose to be descended from the poor animal of low intelligence
and stooping gait, who grins and chatters as we pass, or from
a man, endowed with great ability and a splendid position, who
should use these gifts” [here, as the point became clear, there
was a great outburst of applause, which mostly drowned the
end of the sentence] “to discredit and crush humble seekers
after truth, I hesitate what answer to make.”

 

* The writer in AZacmillan's tells me: ‘‘I cannot quite accept Mr.
J. R. Green’s sentences as your father’s, though I didn’t doubt that
they convey the sense; but then I think that only a shorthand writer
could reproduce Mr. Huxley’s singularly beautiful style—so simple
and so incisive. The sentence given is much too ‘Green.’”

+ My father once told me that he did not remember using the word
““equivocal” in this speech. (See his letter below.) The late Professor
Victor Carus had the same impression, which is corroborated by Pro-
fessor Farrar.

¢ As the late Henry Fawcett wrote in Macmillan's Magazine, 1860 :—
“The retort was so justly deserved, and so inimitable in its manner,
that no one who was present can ever forget the impression that it
made.”

14
200 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIV

No doubt your father’s words were better than these, and
they gained effect from his clear, deliberate utterance, but in
outline and in scale this represents truly what was said.

After the commotion was over, “ some voices called for
Hooker, and his name having been handed up, the President
invited him to give his view of the theory from the Botanical
side. This he did, demonstrating that the Bishop, by his
own showing, had never grasped the principles of the
‘Origin,’ and that he was absolutely ignorant of the ele-
ments of botanical science. The Bishop made no reply,
and the meeting broke up.” *

ACCOUNT OF THE OXFORD MEETING by the Rev. W. H.
FREEMANTLE (in Charles Darwin, his Life Told, &c.,
1892, p. 238).

The Bishop of Oxford attacked Darwin, at first playfully,
but at last in grim earnest. It was known that the Bishop had
written an article against Darwin in the last Quarterly Re-
view; + it was also rumoured that Professor Owen had been
staying at Cuddesdon and had primed the Bishop, who was to
act as mouthpiece to the great Palzontologist, who did not him-
self dare to enter the lists. The Bishop, however, did not show
himself master of the facts, and made one serious blunder. A
fact which had been much dwelt on as confirmatory of Darwin’s
idea of variation, was that a sheep had been born shortly before
in a flock in the North of England, having an addition of one
to the vertebre of the spine. The Bishop was declaring with
rhetorical exaggeration that there was hardly any evidence on
Darwin’s side. “What have they to bring forward?” he ex-
claimed. “Some rumoured statement about a _ long-legged
sheep.” But he passed on to banter: “I should like to ask
Professor Huxley, who is sitting by me, and is about to tear
me to pieces when IJ have sat down, as to his belief in being
descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather’s or his grand-
mother’s side that the ape ancestry comes in?” And then tak-
ing a graver tone, he asserted, in a solemn peroration, that Dar-
win’s views were contrary to the revelation of God in the
Scriptures. Professor Huxley was unwilling to respond: but

 

* Life of Darwin, Le.
+ It appeared in the ensuing number for July.
1860 CANON FREEMANTLE’S ACCOUNT 201

he was called for, and spoke with his usual incisiveness and
with some scorn: “I am here only in the interests of science,”
he said, “and I have not heard anything which can prejudice
the case of my august client.” Then after showing how little
competent the Bishop was to enter upon the discussion, he
touched on the question of Creation. “ You say that develop-
ment drives out the Creator; but you assert that God made
you: and yet you know that you yourself were originally a little
piece of matter, no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case.”
Lastly as to the descent from a monkey, he said: “I should
feel it no shame to have risen from such an origin; but I should
feel it a shame to have sprung from one who prostituted the
gifts of culture and eloquence to the service of prejudice and of
falsehood.”

Many others spoke. Mr. Gresley, an old Oxford don, pointed
out that in human nature at least orderly development was not
the necessary rule: Homer was the greatest of poets, but he
lived 3000 years ago, and has not produced his like.

Admiral FitzRoy was present, and said he had often ex-
postulated with his old comrade of the Beagle for entertaining
views which were contradictory to the First Chapter of Genesis.

Sir John Lubbock declared that many of the arguments by
which the permanence of species was supported came to nothing,
and instanced some wheat which was said to have come off an
Egyptian mummy, and was sent to him to prove that wheat had
not changed since the time of the Pharaohs; but which proved
to be made of French chocolate. Sir Joseph (then Dr.) Hooker
spoke shortly, saying that he had found the hypothesis of Natu-
ral Selection so helpful in explaining the phenomena of his own
subject of Botany, that he had been constrained to accept it.
After a few words from Darwin’s old friend, Professor Hens-
low, who occupied the chair, the meeting broke up, leaving the
impression that those most capable of estimating the arguments
of Darwin in detail saw their way to accept his conclusions.

Note.—Sir John Lubbock also insisted on the embryological
evidence for evolution. F. D.

T. H. Huxtey ro Francis Darwin (ibid.)

June 27, 1891.
I should say that Freemantle’s account is substantially correct,
but that Green has the substance of my speech more accurately.
However, I am certain I did not use the word, “ equivocal.”
202 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIV

The odd part of the business is, that I should not have been
present except for Robert Chambers. I had heard of the Bish-
op’s intention to utilise the occasion. I knew he had the
reputation of being a first-class controversialist, and I was quite
aware that if he played his cards properly, we should have little
chance, with such an audience, of making an efficient defence.
Moreover, I was very tired, and wanted to join my wife at her
brother-in-law’s country house near Reading, on the Saturday.
On the Friday I met Chambers in the street, and in reply to
some remark of his, about his going to the meeting, I said that
I did not mean to attend it—did not see the good of giving up
peace and quietness to be episcopally pounded. Chambers broke
out into vehement remonstrances, and talked about my deserting
them. So I said, “Oh! if you are going to take it that way,
I'll come and have my share of what is going on.”

So I came, and chanced to sit near old Sir Benjamin Brodie.
The Bishop began his speech, and to my astonishment very
soon showed that he was so ignorant that he did not know how
to manage his own case. My spirits rose proportionately, and
when he turned to me with his insolent question, I said to Sir
Benjamin, in an undertone, “ The Lord hath delivered him into
mine hands.”

That sagacious old gentleman stared at me as if I had lost
my senses. But, in fact, the Bishop had justified the severest
retort I could devise, and I made up my mind to let him have
it. I was careful, however, not to rise to reply, until the meet-
ing called for me—then I let myself go.

In justice to the Bishop, I am bound to say he bore no
malice, but was always courtesy itself when we occasionally met
in after years. Hooker and I walked away from the meeting
together, and I remember saying to him that this experience
had changed my opinion as to the practical value of the art of
public speaking, and that from that time forth I should carefully
cultivate it, and try to leave off hating it. I did the former,
but never quite succeeded in the latter effort.

I did not mean to trouble you with such a long scrawl when
I began about this piece of ancient history—Ever yours very
faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

In the evening there was a crowded conversazione in
Dr. Daubeny’s rooms, and here, continues the writer in
Macmullan’s, “ everyone was eager to congratulate the hero
of the day. I remember that some naive person wished ‘ it
1860 RESULT OF THE MEETING 203

could come over again’; Mr. Huxley, with the look on his
face of the victor who feels the cost of victory, put us aside
saying, ‘Once in a lifetime is enough, if not too much.’ ”

In a letter to me the same writer remarks—

I gathered from Mr. Huxley’s look when I spoke to him at
Dr. Daubeny’s that he was not quite satisfied to have been
forced to take so personal a tone—it a little jarred upon his
fine taste. But it was the Bishop who first struck the insolent
note of personal attack.

Again, with reference to the state of feeling at the
meeting :—

I never saw such a display of fierce party spirit, the looks
of bitter hatred which the audience bestowed—(I mean the
majority) on us who were on your father’s side—as we passed
through the crowd we felt that we were expected to say “how
abominably the Bishop was treated ”—or to be considered out-
casts and detestable.

It was very different, however, at Dr. Daubeny’s,
“where,” says the writer of the account in Darwin’s Life,
“the almost sole topic was the battle of the ‘ Origin,’ and
TI was much struck with the fair and unprejudiced way in
which the black coats and white cravats of Oxford discussed
the question, and the frankness with which they offered
their congratulations to the winners in the combat.”

The result of this encounter, though a check to the
other side, cannot, of course, be represented as an imme-
diate and complete triumph for evolutionary doctrine. This
was precluded by the character and temper of the audience,
most of whom were less capable of being convinced by the
arguments than shocked by the boldness of the retort, al-
though, being gentlefolk, as Professor Farrar remarks, they
were disposed to admit on reflection that the Bishop had
erred on the score of taste and good manners. Nevertheless,
it was a noticeable feature of the occasion, Sir M. Foster
tells me, that when Huxley rose he was received coldly,
just a cheer of encouragement from his friends, the audience
as a whole not joining in it. But as he made his points
204 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIV

the applause grew and widened, until, when he sat down,
the cheering was not very much less than that given to the
Bishop. To that extent he carried an unwilling audience
with him by the force of his speech. The debate on the
ape question, however, was continued elsewhere during the
next two years, and the evidence was completed by the
unanswerable demonstrations of Sir W. H. Flower at the
Cambridge meeting of the Association in 1862.

The importance of the Oxford meeting lay in the open
resistance that was made to authority, at a moment when
even a drawn battle was hardly less effectual than acknowl-
edged victory. Instead of being crushed under ridicule,
the new theories secured a hearing, all the wider, indeed,
for the startling nature of their defence.
CHAPTER XV
1860-1863

In the autumn he set to work to make good his promise
of demonstrating the existence in the simian brain of the
structures alleged to be exclusively human. The result was
seen in his papers ‘‘ On the Zoological Relations of Man
with the Lower Animals ” (Nat. Hist. Rev., 1861, pp. 67-68) ;
“On the Brain of Ateles Paniscus,” which appeared in the
Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1861, and on “ Nyc-
tipithecus ” in 1862, while similar work was undertaken by
his friends Rolleston and Flower. But the brain was only
one point among many, as, for example, the hand and the
foot in man and the apes; and he already had in mind the
discussion of the whole question comprehensively. On
January 6 he writes to Sir J. Hooker :—

Some of these days I shall look up the ape question again
and go over the rest of the organisation in the same way. But
in order to get a thorough grip of the question I must examine
into a good many points for myself. The results, when they
do come out, will, I foresee, astonish the natives.

Full of interest in this theme, he made it the subject of
his popular lectures in the spring of 1861.

Thus from February to May he lectured weekly to
working men on “ The Relation of Man to the rest of the
Animal Kingdom,” and on March 22 writes to his wife :—

My working men stick by me wonderfully, the house being
fuller than ever last night. By next Friday evening they will all
be convinced that they are monkeys... . Said lecture, let me
inform you, was very good. Lyell came and was rather aston-
ished at the magnitude and attentiveness of the audience.

These lectures to working men were published in the
Natural History Review, as was a Friday evening discourse
205
206 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV

at the Royal Institution (February 8) on “ The Nature of
the Earliest Stages of Development of Animals.”
Meanwhile the publication of these researches led to
another pitched battle, in which public interest was pro-
foundly engaged. The controversy which raged had some
resemblance to a duel over a point of honour and credit.
Scientific technicalities became the catchwords of society,
and the echoes of the great Hippocampus question linger in
the delightful pages of the Water-Babies. Of this fight
Huxley writes to Sir J. Hooker on April 18, 1861 :-—

A controversy between Owen and myself, which I can only
call absurd (as there is no doubt whatever about the facts), has
been going on in the Atheneum, and I wound it up in disgust
last week.

And again on April 27 :-—

Owen occupied an entirely untenable position—but I am
nevertheless surprised he did not try “abusing plaintiff’s at-
torney.” The fact is he made a prodigious blunder in com-
mencing the attack, and now his only chance is to be silent and
let people forget the exposure. I do not believe that in the
whole history of-science there is a case of any man of reputa-
tion getting hifmself into such a contemptible position. He will
be the laughifig-stock of all the continental anatomists.

Rolleston has a great deal of Oxford slough to shed, but on
that very ground his testimony has been of most especial service.
Fancy that man telling Maskelyne that Rolleston’s observa-
tions were entirely confirmatory of Owen.

 

About the same time he writes to his wife :—

April 16.—People are talking a good deal about the “ Manand
the Apes ” question, and I hear that somebody, I suspect Monck-
ton Milnes, has set afloat a poetical squib on the subject.* ...

 

* The squib in question, dated ‘‘the Zoological Gardens,” and
signed ‘‘ Gorilla,” appeared in Punch for May 15, 1861, under a picture
of that animal, bearing the sign, ‘‘4m Ia Man and a Brother 2?”

The concluding verses run as follows:

Next HUXLEY replies “ To twice slay the slain”
That OWEN he lies By dint of the Brain
And garbles his Latin quotation ; (Thus HUXLEY concludes his review),
That his facts are not new, Is but labour in vain,
His mistakes not a few, Unproductive of gain,

Detrimental to his reputation. And so I shall bid you * Adieu!”
1862 EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MAN 207

Some think my winding-up too strong, but I trust the day will |
never come when I shall abstain from expressing my contempt

for those who prostitute Science to the Service of Error. At

anyrate I am not old enough for that yet. Darwin came in

just now. I get no scoldings for pitching into the common

enemy now!!

I would give you fifty guesses (he writes to Hooker on
April 30), and you should not find out the author of the Punch
poem. I saw it in MS. three weeks ago, and was told the author
was a friend of mine. But I remained hopelessly in the dark
till yesterday. What do you say to Sir Philip Egerton coming
out in that line? I am told he is the author, and the fact
speaks volumes for Owen’s perfect success in damning himself.

In the midst of the fight came a surprising invitation.
On April 10 he writes to his wife :—

They have written to me from the Philosophical Institute
of Edinburgh to ask me to give two lectures on the “ Relation of
Man to the Lower Animals” next session. I have replied that
if they can give me January 3 and 7 for lecture days I will do it
—if not, not. Fancy unco guid Edinburgh requiring illumina-
tion on the subject! They know my views, so if they do not
like what I shall have to tell them, it is their own fault.

These lectures were eventually delivered on January 4
and 7, 1862, and were well reported in the Edinburgh pa-
pers. The substance of them appears as Part 2 in Man's
Place in Nature, the first lecture describing the general
nature of the process of development among vertebrate
animals, and the modifications of the skeleton in the mam-
malia; the second dealing with the crucial points of com-
parison between the higher apes and man, viz. the hand,
foot, and brain. He showed that the differences between
man and the higher apes were no greater than those be-
tween the higher and lower apes. If the Darwinian hy-
pothesis explained the common ancestry of the latter, the
anatomist would have no difficulty with the origin of man,
so far as regards the gap between him and the higher apes.

Yet, though convinced that “that hypothesis is as near
an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Coper-
nican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary
208 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XV

motions,” he steadfastly refused to be an advocate of the
theory, “if by an advocate is meant one whose business it
is to smooth over real difficulties, and to persuade when he
cannot convince.”

In common fairness he warned his audience of the one
missing link in the chain of evidence—the fact that selective
breeding has not yet produced species sterile to one another.
But it is to be adopted as a working hypothesis like other
scientific generalisations, “subject to the production of
proof that physiological species may be produced by se-
lective breeding ; just as a physical philosopher may accept
the undulatory theory of light, subject to the proof of the
existence of the hypothetical ether; or as the chemist adopts
the atomic theory, subject to the proof of the existence of
atoms; and for exactly the same reasons, namely, that it
has an immense amount of prima facie probability; that it
is the only means at present within reach of reducing the
chaos of observed facts to order; and lastly, that it is the
most powerful instrument of investigation which has been
presented to naturalists since the invention of the natural
system of classification, and the commencement of the sys-
tematic study of embryology.” ”

As for the repugnance of most men to admitting kin-
ship with the apes, “thoughtful men,” he says, “ once es-
caped from the blinding influences of traditional prejudices,
will find in the lowly stock whence man has sprung the
best evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will
discern, in his long progress through the past, a reasonable
ground of faith in his attainment of a nobler future.”

A simile, with which he enforced this elevating point of
view, which has since eased the passage of many minds to
the acceptance of evolution, seems to have been much ap-
preciated by his audience. It was a comparison of man to
the Alps, which turn out to be “ of one substance with the
dullest clay, but raised by inward forces to that place of
proud and seemingly inaccessible glory.”

The lectures were met at first with astonishing quiet,
but it was not long before the stones began to fly. The
Witness of January 11 lashed itself into a fury over the fact
1862 EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MAN 209
that the audience applauded this “ anti-scriptural and most
debasing theory ... standing in blasphemous contradic-
tion to biblical narrative and doctrine,” instead of express-
ing their resentment at this “ foul outrage committed upon
them individually, and upon the whole species as ‘ made in
the likeness of God,’”’ by deserting the hall in a body, or
using some more emphatic form of protest against the cor-
ruption of youth by “the vilest and beastliest paradox ever
vented in ancient or modern times amongst Pagans or
Christians.” In his finest vein of sarcasm, the writer ex-
presses his surprise that the meeting did not instantly resolve
itself into a ‘‘ Gorilla Emancipation Society,” or propose to
hear a lecture from an apostle of Mormonism; “ even this
would be a less offensive, mischievous, and inexcusable ex-
hibition than was made in the recent two lectures by Pro-
fessor Huxley,” etc.
JERMYN STREET, January 13, 1862.

My pear Darwin—In the first place a new year’s greeting
to you and yours. In the next, I enclose this slip (please return
it when you have read it) to show you what I have been doing
in the north.

Everybody prophesied I should be stoned and cast out of the
city gate, but, on the contrary, I met with unmitigated ap-
plause!! Three cheers for the progress of liberal opinion!!

The report is as good as any, but they have not put quite
rightly what I said about your views, respecting which I took
my old line about the infertility difficulty.

Furthermore, they have not reported my statement that
whether you were right or wrong, some form of the progressive
development theory is certainly true. Nor have they reported
here my distinct statement that I believe man and the apes to
have come from one stock.

Having got thus far, I find the lecture better reported in
the Courant, so I send you that instead.

I mean to publish the lecture in full by and by (about the
time the orchids come out).—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

I deserved the greatest credit for not having made an on-
slaught on Brewster for his foolish impertinence about your
views in Good Words, but declined to stir nationality, which
you know (in him) is rather more than his Bible.
210 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV

Jermyn STREET, January 16, 1862.

My pear Hooxer—I wonder if we are ever to meet again in
this world! At anyrate I send to the remote province of Kew,
Greeting, and my best wishes for the new year to you and yours.
I also inclose a slip from an Edinburgh paper containing a
report of my lecture on the “ Relation of Man,” etc. As you
will see, I went in for the entire animal more strongly, in fact,
than they have reported me. I told them in so many words
that I entertained no doubt of the origin of man from the same
stock as the apes.

And to my great delight, in saintly Edinburgh itself the an-
nouncement met with nothing but applause. For myself I can’t
say that the praise or blame of my audience was much matter,
but it is a grand indication of the general disintegration of old
prejudices which is going on.

I shall see if I cannot make something more of the lectures
by delivering them again in London, and then I shall publish
them.

The report does not put nearly strong enough what I said in
favour of Darwin’s views. I affirmed it to be the only scientific
hypothesis of the origin of species in existence, and expressed
my belief that the one gap in the evidence would be filled up, as
I always do.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

JERMYN STREET, January 20, 1862.

My pear Darwin—The inclosed article, which has been
followed up by another more violent, more scurrilously personal,
and more foolish, will prove to you that my labour has not been
in vain, and that your views and mine are likely to be better
ventilated in Scotland than they have been.

I was quite uneasy at getting no attack from the Witness,
thinking I must have overestimated the impression I had made,
and the favourableness of the reception of what I said. But the
raving of the Witness is clear testimony that my notion was
correct.

I shall send a short reply to the Scotsman for the purpose of
further advertising the question.

With regard to what are especially your doctrines, I spoke
much more favourably than J am reported to have done. I
expressed no doubt as to their ultimate establishment, but as I
particularly wished not to be misrepresented as an advocate
trying to soften or explain away real difficulties, I did not in
speaking enter into the details of what is to be said in diminish-
1862 EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MAN 211

ing the weight of the hybrid difficulty. All this will be put fully
when I print the Lecture.

The arguments put in your letter are those which I have
urged to other people —of the opposite side —over and over
again. I have told my students that I entertain no doubt that
twenty years’ experiments on pigeons conducted by a skilled
physiologist, instead of by a mere breeder, would give us
physiological species sterile infcr se, from a common stock (and
in this, if I mistake not, I go further than you do yourself),
and I have told them that when these experiments have been
performed I shall consider your views to have a complete
physical basis, and to stand on as firm ground as any physio-
logical theory whatever.

It was impossible for me, in the time I had, to lay all this
down to my Edinburgh audience, and in default of full ex-
planation it was far better to seem to do scanty justice to you. I
am constitutionally slow of adopting any theory that I must
needs stick by when I have once gone in for it; but for these
two years I have been gravitating towards your doctrines, and
since the publication of your primula paper with accelerated
velocity. By about this time next year I expect to have shot
past you, and to find you pitching into me for being more Dar-
winian than yourself. However, you have set me going, and
must just take the consequences, for I warn you I will stop at
no point so long as clear reasoning will carry me further.

My wife and I were very grieved to hear you had had such
a sick house, but I hope the change in the weather has done you
all good. Anything is better than the damp warmth we had.

I will take great care of the three “ Barriers.” * I wanted to
cut it up in the Saturday, but how I am to fulfil my benevolent
intentions—with five lectures a week—a lecture at the Royal
Institution and heaps of other things on my hands, I don’t know.
—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxzey.

I am very glad to hear about Brown Séquard; he is a thor-
oughly good man, and told me it was worth while to come all
the way to Oxford to hear the Bishop pummelled.

In the above-mentioned letter to the Scotsman of Janu-
ary 24 he expresses his unfeigned satisfaction at the fulfil-

 

* A pamphlet called ‘‘The Three Barriers, by G. R., being notes
on Mr. Darwin’s Origin of Species, 1861, 8vo.” Habitat, structure, and
procreative power are given, as these three barriers to Darwinism,
against which natural theology takes its stand on Final Causes.
212 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV

ment of the three objects of his address, namely, to state
fully and fairly his conclusions, to avoid giving unnecessary
offence, and thirdly, ‘‘ while feeling assured of the just and
reasonable dealing of the respectable part of the Scottish
press, I naturally hoped for noisy injustice and unreason
from the rest, seeing, as I did, the best security for the dis-
semination of my views through regions which they might
not otherwise reach, in the certainty of a violent attack by
(the Witness).”

The applause of the audience, he says, afforded him
genuine satisfaction, “ because it bids me continue in the
faith on which I acted, that a man who speaks out honestly
and fearlessly that which he knows, and that which he be-
lieves, will always enlist the good-will and the respect, how-
ever much he may fail in winning the assent, of his fel-
low-men.”

About this time a new field of interest was opened out
to him, closely connected with, indeed, and completing, the
ape question. Sir Charles Lyell was engaged in writing
his Antiquity of Man, and asked Huxley to supply him with
various anatomical data touching the ape question, and
later to draw him a diagram illustrating the peculiarities
of the newly discovered Neanderthal skull as compared with
other skulls. He points out in his letters to Lyell that the
range of cranial capacity between the highest and the low-
est German—“ one of the mediatised princes, I suppose ” *
—or the Malayan or Peruvian, is almost Io00 per cent; in
absolute amount twice as much as the difference between
that of the largest simian and the smallest human capacity,
so that in seeking an ordinal difference between man and
the apes, “it would certainly be well to let go the head,
though I am afraid it does not mend matters much to lay
hold of the foot.”

And on January 25, 1862 :—

I have been skull-measuring all day at the College of Sur-
geons. The Neanderthal skull may be described as a slightly

 

* The minor princes of Germany, whose territories were annexed
to larger states, and who thus exchanged a direct for a mediate share
in the imperial government.
1862 BEGINS ANTHROPOLOGICAL WORK 213

exaggerated modification of one of the two types (and the
lower) of Australian skulls.

After the fashion of accounting for the elephant of old, I
suppose it will be said that it was imported. But luckily the
differences, though only of degree, are rather too marked for
this hypothesis.

I only wish I had a clear six months to work at the subject.
Little did I dream what the undertaking to arrange your three
woodcuts would lead to. It will come in the long-run, I believe,
to a new ethnological method, new modes of measurement, a
new datum line, and new methods of registration.

If one had but two heads and neither required sleep!

One immediate result of his investigations, which ap-
peared in a lecture at the Royal Institution (February 7,
1862), ““On the Fossil Remains of Man,” was incorpo-
rated in Man’s Place in Nature. But a more important con-
sequence of this impulse was that he went scriously into
the study of Ethnology. Of his work in this branch of
natural science, Professor Virchow, speaking at the dinner
given him by the English medical profession on October
5, 1898, declared that in the eyes of German savants it
alone would suffice to secure immortal reverence for his
name.

The concluding stage in the long controversy raised first
at Oxford, was the British Association meeting at Cam-
bridge in 1862. It was here that Professor (afterwards Sir
W. H.) Flower made his public demonstration of the exist-
ence in apes of the cerebral characters said to be peculiar
to man.

From the rst to the 9th of October Huxley stayed at
Cambridge as the guest of Professor Fawcett at Trinity
Hall, running over to Felixstow on the 5th to see his wife,
whose health did not allow her to accompany him.

As President of Section D he had a good deal to do,
and he describes the course of events in a letter to Dar-
win :—

26 ABBEY PLACE, Oct. 9, 1862.

My pear Darwin—lIt is a source of sincere pleasure to me
to learn that anything I can say or do is a pleasure to you, and
I was therefore very glad to get your letter at that whirligig of
214 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV

an association meeting the other day. We all missed you, but
I think it was as well you did not come, for though I am pretty
tough, as you know, I found the pace rather killing. Nothing
could exceed the hospitality and kindness of the University
people—and that, together with a great deal of speaking on the
top of a very bad cold, which I contrived to catch just before
going down, has somewhat used me up.

Owen came down with the obvious intention of attacking me
on all points. Each of his papers was an attack, and he went so
far as to offer stupid and unnecessary opposition to proposals of
mine in my own committee. However, he got himself sold at all
points. ... The Polypterus paper and the Aye-Aye paper fell
flat. The latter was meant to raise a discussion on your views,
but it was all a stale hash, and I only made some half sarcastic
remarks which stopped any further attempts at discussion... .

I took my book to Scotland but did nothing. I shall ask
leave to send you a bit or two as I get on.—Ever yours,

T. H. Huxzey.

A “Society for the propagation of common honesty in all
parts of the world” was established at Cambridge. I want you
to belong to it, but I will say more about it by and by.

‘

This admirable society, which was also to “ search for
scientific truth, especially in biology,” seems to have been
but short lived. At all events, I can find only two refer-
ences to subsequent meetings, on October 7 and December
19 in this year.

A few days later a final blow was struck in the battle
over the ape question. He writes on October 15 how he
has written a letter to the Medical Times—his last word
on the subject, summing up in most emphatic terms :—

I have written the letter with the greatest care, and there is
nothing coarse or violent in it. But it shall put an end to all the
humbug that has been going on... . Rolleston will come out
with his letter in the same number, and the smash will be awful,
but most thoroughly merited.

These several pieces of work, struck out at different
times in response to various impulses, were now combined
and re-shaped into Man’s Place in Nature, the first book
which was published by him. Thus he writes to Sir Charles
Lyell on May 5, 1862 :—
1862 MAN’S PLACE IV NATURE 215

Of course I shall be delighted to discuss anything with
you,* and the more so as I mean to put the whole question
before the world in another shape in my little book, whose title
is announced as Evidences as to Man’s Place in Nature. I have
written the first two essays, the second containing the sub-
stance of my Edinburgh Lecture. I recollect you once asked me
for something to quote on the Man question, so if you want
anything in that way the MS. is at your service.

Lyell looked over the proofs, and the following letters
are in reply to his criticisms :—

ARDRISHAIG, LocH Fyne, Aug. 17, 1862.

My bear Sir CHarLes—I take advantage of my first quiet
day to reply to your letter of the oth; and in the first place let
me thank you very much for your critical remarks, as I shall
find them of great service.

With regard to such matters as verbal mistakes, you must
recollect that the greater part of the proof was wholly uncor-
rected. But the reader might certainly do his work better. I
do not think you will find room to complain of any want of dis-
tinctness in my definition of Owen’s position touching the Hip-
pocampus question. I mean to give the whole history of the
business in a note, so that the paraphrase of Sir Ph. Egerton’s
line ‘To which Huxley replies that Owen he lies,” shall be un-
mistakable.t+

I will take care about the Cheiroptera, and I will look at
Lamarck again. But I doubt if I shall improve my estimate of
the latter. The notion of common descent was not his—still
less that of modification by variation—and he was as far as De
Maillet from seeing his way to any vera causa by which varieties
might be intensified into species.

If Darwin is right about natural selection—the discovery of
this vera causa sets him to my mind in a different region alto-
gether from all his predecessors—and I should no more call his
doctrine a modification of Lamarck’s than I should call the
Newtonian theory of the celestial motions a modification of the
Ptolemaic system. Ptolemy imagined a mode of explaining
those motions. Newton proved their necessity from the laws
and a force demonstrably in operation. If he is only right Dar-

 

* Referring to the address on ‘Geological Contemporaneity”
delivered in 1862 at the Geological Society, see p. 220.
t See p. 206.
15
216 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV

win will, I think, take his place with such men as Harvey, and
even if he is wrong his sobriety and accuracy of thought will
put him on a far different level from Lamarck. I want to make
this clear to people.

I am disposed to agree with you about the “ emasculate”
and “uncircumcised ”—partly for your reasons, partly because
I believe it is an excellent rule always to erase anything that
strikes one as particularly smart when writing it. But it is a
great piece of self-denial to abstain from expressing my peculiar
antipathy to the people indicated, and I hope I shall be rewarded
for the virtue.

As to the secondary causes I only wished to guard myself
from being understood to imply that I had any comprehension
of the meaning of the term. If my phrase looks naughty I will
alter it. What I want is to be read, and therefore to give no
unnecessary handle to the enemy. There will be row enough
whatever I do.

Our Commission here * implicates us in an inquiry of some
difficulty, and which involves the interests of a great many poor
people. I am afraid it will not leave me very much leisure. But
we are in the midst of a charming country, and the work i is not
unpleasant or uninteresting. If the sun would only shine more
than once a week it would be perfect.— With kind remem-
brances to Lady Lyell, believe me, faithfully yours,

T. H. Huxtey.

We shall be here for the next ten days at least. But my
wife will always know my whereabouts.

JERMYN STREET, AZarch 23, 1863.

My pear Sir CHARLES—I suspect that the passage to which
you refer must have been taken from my unrevised proofs, for it
corresponds very nearly with what is written at p. 97 of my
book.

Flower has recently discovered that the Siamang’s brain
affords an even more curious exception to the general rule than
that of Mycetes, as the cerebral hemispheres leave part not only
of the sides but of the hinder end of the cerebellum uncovered.

As it is one of the Anthropoid apes and yet differs in this
respect far more widely from the gorilla than the gorilla differs
from man, it offers a charming example of the value of cerebral
characters.

 

* The Fishery Commission.
1863 MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE 217

Flower publishes a paper on the subject in the forthcoming
number of the N. H. Review.

Might it not be well to allude to the fact that the existence
of the posterior lobe, posterior cornu, and hippocampus in the
Orang has been publicly demonstrated to an audience of experts
at the College of Surgeons ?—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

The success of Afan’s Place was immediate, despite such
criticisms as that of the -lihencum, that ‘* Lyell’s object is to
make man old, Huxley’s to degrade him.” By the middle
of February it reached its second thousand; in July it is
heard of as republished in America; at the same time L.
Buchner writes that he wished to translate it into German,
but finds himself forestalled by Victor Carus. From another
aspect, Lord Enniskillen, thanking him for the book, says
(March 3), “I believe you are already excommunicated by
book, bell, and candle,” while in an undated note, Bollaert
writes, “ The Bishop of Oxford the other day spoke about
‘the church having been in danger of late, by such books
as Colenso’s, but that it (the church) was now restored.’
And this at a time, he might have added, when the works
of Darwin, Lyell, and Huxley are torn from the hands of
Mudie’s shopmen, as if they were novels—(see Daily Tele-
graph, April 10).”

At the same time, the impression left by his work upon
the minds of the leading men of science may be judged
from a few words of Sir Charles Lyell, who writes to a
friend on March 15, 1863 (Life and Letters, ii. 366) :—

Huxley’s second thousand is going off well. If he had
leisure like you and me, and the vigour and logic of the lectures,
and his address to the Geological Society, and half a dozen other
recent works (letters to the Times on Darwin, etc.), had been
all in one book, what a position he would occupy! I entreated
him not to undertake the Natural History Review before it
began. The responsibility all falls on the man of chief energy
and talent; it is a quarterly mischief, and will end in knocking
him up.

A similar estimate appears from an earlier letter of March
11, 1859 (Life and Letters, ii. 321), when he quotes Huxley’s
218 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV

opinion of Mansel’s Bampton Lectures on the Limits of
Religious Thought :—

A friend of mine, Huxley, who will soon take rank as one
of the first naturalists we have ever produced, begged me to
read these sermons as first rate, “ although, regarding the au-
thor as a churchman, you will probably compare him, as I did,
to the drunken fellow in Hogarth’s contested election, who is
sawing through the signpost at the other party’s public-house,
forgetting he is sitting at the other end of it. But read them
as a piece of clear and unanswerable reasoning.”

In the 1894 preface to the re-issue of Man’s Place in
the Collected Essays, Huxley speaks as follows of the warn-
ings he received against publishing on so dangerous a topic,
of the storm which broke upon his head, and the small re-
sult which, in the long run, it produced *:

Magna est veritas et prevalebit! Truth is great, certainly,
but considering her greatness, it is curious what a long time she
is apt to take about prevailing. When, towards the end of 1862,
I had finished writing Man’s Place in Nature, I could say with
a good conscience that my conclusions “had not been formed
hastily or enunciated crudely.” I thought I had earned the right
to publish them, and even fancied I might be thanked rather
than reproved for doing so. However, in my anxiety to publish
nothing erroneous, I asked a highly competent anatomist and
very good friend of mine to look through my proofs, and, if he
could, point out any errors of fact. I was well pleased when he
returned them without criticism on that score; but my satis-
faction was speedily dashed by the very earnest warning as to
the consequences of publication, which my friend’s interest in
my welfare led him to give. But, as I have confessed elsewhere,
when I was a young man, there was just a little—a mere soupcon
—in my composition of that tenacity of purpose which has
another name; and I felt sure that all the evil things prophesied
would not be so painful to me as the giving up that which I
had resolved to do, upon grounds which I conceived to be right.*

 

*In September 1887 he wrote to Mr. Edward Clodd—‘‘All the
propositions laid down in the wicked book, which was so well anath-
ematised a quarter of a century ago, are now taught in the text-books.
What a droll world it is!”

+ As to this advice not to publish A/an’s Place for fear of misrepre-
sentation on the score of morals, he said, in criticising an attack of
1863 MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE 219

So the book came out; and I must do my friend the justice to
say that his forecast was completely justified. The Boreas of
criticism blew his hardest blasts of misrepresentation and ridi-
cule for some years, and I was even as one of the wicked. In-
deed, it surprises me at times to think how anyone who had
sunk so low could since have emerged into, at any rate, relative
respectability. Personally, like the non-corvine personages in
the Ingoldsby legend, I did not feel “one penny the worse.”
Translated into several languages, the book reached a wider
public than I had ever hoped for; being largely helped, I imagine,
by the Ernulphine advertisements to which I referred. It has
had the honour of being freely utilised without acknowledgment
by writers of repute; and finally it achieved the fate, which is
_ the euthanasia of a scientific work, of being inclosed among the
rubble of the foundations of later knowledge, and forgotten.

To my observation, human nature has not sensibly changed
during the last thirty years. I doubt not that there are truths as
plainly obvious and as generally denied as those contained in
Man’s Place in Nature, now awaiting enunciation. If there is
a young man of the present generation who has taken as much
trouble as I did to assure himself that they are truths, let him
come out with them, without troubling his head about the bark-
ing of the dogs of St. Ernulphus. Veritas prevalebit—some
day; and even if she does not prevail in his time, he himself
will be all the better and wiser for having tried to help her. And
let him recollect that such great reward is full payment for all
his labour and pains.

The following letter refers to the newly published Man’s
Place in Nature. Miss H. Darwin had suggested a couple
of corrections :—

JERMYN STREET, Fed. 25, 1863.

My pear Darwin—Please to say to Miss Henrietta Minos
Rhadamanthus Darwin that I plead guilty to the justice of both
criticisms, and throw myself on the mercy of the court.

As extenuating circumstances with respect to indictment
No. I, see prefatory notice. Extenuating circumstance No. 2

 

this sort made upon Darwin in the Quarterly for July 1876 :—‘‘It
seemed to me, however, that a man of science has no ratson d’étre at
all, unless he is willing to face much greater risks than these for the
sake of that which he believes to be true; and further, that to a man
of science such risks do not count for much—that they are by no
means so serious as they are to a man of letters, for example.”
220 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV

—that I picked up “ Atavism” in Pritchard years ago, and as it
is a much more convenient word than “ Hereditary transmission
of variations,” it slipped into equivalence in my mind, and I
forgot all about the original limitation.

But if these excuses should in your judgment tend to aggra-
vate my offences, suppress ’em like a friend. One may always
hope more from a lady’s tender-heartedness than from her sense
of justice.

Publisher has just sent to say that I must give him any cor-
rections for second thousand of my booklet immediately.

Why did not Miss Etty send any critical remarks on that
subject by the same post? I should be most immensely obliged
for them.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Hux.ey.

During-this period of special work at the anthropological
side of the Evolution theory, Huxley made two important
contributions to the general question.

As secretary of the Geological Society, the duty of de-
livering the anniversary address in 1862 fell to him in the
absence of the president, Leonard Horner, who had been
driven by ill-health to winter in Italy.

The object at which he aimed appears from the post-
script of a brief note of Feb. 19, 1862, to Hooker :—

I am writing the body of the address, and I am going to
criticise Paleontological doctrines in general in a way that will
flutter their nerves considerable.

Darwin is met everywhere with — Oh this is opposed to
palzontology, or that is opposed to paleontology—and I mean to
turn round and ask, “ Now, Messieurs les Palzontologues, what
the devil do you really know?”

I have not changed sex, although the postscript is longer
than the letter.

The delivery of the address * itself on February 21 is
thus described by Sir Charles Lyell + (Life and Letters, ii. '
356) -—

Huxley delivered a brilliant critical discourse on what
paleontology has and has not done, and proved the value of

 

* On ‘‘ Geological Contemporaneity ” (Co//. Ess. viii. 292).

+ To a note of whose, proposing a talk over the subject, Huxley
replies on May 5, ‘‘I am very glad you find something to think about
in my address. That is the best of all praise.”
1862 WORKING MEN’S LECTURES 221

negative evidence, how much the progressive development sys-
tem has been pushed too far, how little can be said in favour of
Owen's more generalised types when we go back to the verte-
brata and invertebrata of remote ages, the persistency of many
forms high and low throughout time, how little we know of the
beginning of life upon the earth, how often events called con-
temporaneous in Geology are applied to things which, instead
of coinciding in time, may have happened ten millions of years
apart, etc.; and a masterly sketch comparing the past and present
in almost every class in zoology, and sometimes of botany cited
from Hooker, which he said he had done because it was useful
to look into the cellars and see how much gold there was there,
and whether the quantity of bullion justified such an enormous
circulation of paper. I never remember an address listened to
with such applause, though there were many private protests
against some of his bold opinions.

The dinner at Willis’s was well attended; I should think
eighty or more present ... and late in the evening Huxley
made them merry by a sort of mock-modest speech.

JERMYN STREET, Jay 6, 1862.

My pear Darwin—I was very glad to get your note about
my address. I profess to be a great stoic, you know, but there
are some people from whom I am glad to get a pat on the back.
Still Iam not quite content with that, and I want to know what
you think of the argument—whether you agree with what I say
about contemporaneity or not, and whether you are prepared to
admit—as I think your views compel you to do—that the whole
Geological Record is only the skimmings of the pot of life.

Furthermore, I want you to chuckle with me over the notion
I find a great many people entertain—that the address is dead
against your views. The fact being, as they will by and by
wake up [to] see that yours is the only hypothesis which is
not negatived by the facts,—one of its great merits being that
it allows not only of indefinite standing still, but of indefinite
retrogression.

I am going to try to work the whole argument into an in-
telligible form for the general public as a chapter of my forth-
coming “ Evidence” * (one half of which I am happy to say
is now written), so I shall be very glad of any criticisms or
hints.

 

* Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature.
222 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV

Since I saw you—indeed, from the following Tuesday on-
wards—I have amused myself by spending ten days or so in bed.
I had an unaccountable prostration of strength which they called
influenza, but which, I believe, was nothing but some obstruction
in the liver.

Of course I can’t persuade people of this, and they will have
it that it is overwork. I have come to the conviction, however,
that steady work hurts nobody, the real destroyer of hardwork-
ing men being not their work, but dinners, late hours, and the
universal humbug and excitement of society.

I mean to get out of all that and keep out of it—Ever yours
faithfully, T. H. Huxtey. ©

The other contribution to the general question was his
Working Men’s Lectures for 1862. As he writes to Dar-
win on October 10o—“I can’t find anything to talk to the
working men about this year but your book. I mean to
give them a commentary 4 la Coke upon Lyttleton.”

The lectures to working men here referred to, six in
number, were duly delivered once a week from November
10 onwards, and published in the form of as many little
pamphlets. Appearing under the general title, “On our
Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic
Nature,” they wound up with a critical examination of the
portion of Mr. Darwin’s work On the Origin of Species, in
relation to the complete theory of the causes of organic
nature.

JERMYN STREET, Dec. 2; 1862.

My pear Darwin—I send you by this post three of my
working men’s lectures now in course of delivery. As you will
see by the prefatory notice, I was asked to allow them to be
taken down in shorthand for the use of the audience, but I have
no interest in them, and do not desire or intend that they
should be widely circulated.

Some time hence, may be, I may revise and illustrate them,
and make them into a book as a-sort of popular exposition of
your views, or at any rate of my version of your views.

There really is nothing new in them nor anything worth
your attention, but if in glancing over them at any time you
should see anything to object to, I should like to know.

I am very hard worked just now—six lectures a week, and
no end of other things—but as vigorous as a three-year old.
1862 WORKING MEN'S LECTURES 223

Somebody told me you had been ill, but I hope it was fiction,
and that you and Mrs. Darwin and all your belongings are
flourishing.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

In reply, Darwin writes on December 10 :—

I agree entirely with all your reservations about accepting
the doctrine, and you might have gone further with perfect

safety and truth....

Touching the Natural History Review, “Do inaugurate a
great improvement, and have pages cut, like the Yankees do;-
I will heap blessings on your head.”

And again, December 18 :—

I have read No. IV. and V. They are simply perfect. They
ought to be largely advertised; but it is very good in me to say
so, for I threw down No. IV. with this reflection, ‘‘ What is the
good of my writing a thundering big book, when everything is
in this green little book so despicable for its size?” In the name
of all that is good and bad I may as well shut up shop altogether.

These lectures met with an annoying amount of suc-
cess. They were not cast into permanent form, for he
grudged the time necessary to prepare them for the press.
However, he gave a Mr. Hardwicke permission to take them
down in shorthand as delivered for the use of the audience.
But no sooner were they printed, than they had a large sale.
Writing to Sir J. D. Hooker early in the following month,
he says :—

I fully meant to have sent you all the successive lectures as
they came out, and I forward a set with all manner of apologies
for my delinquency. I am such a ’umble-minded party that I
never imagined the lectures as delivered would be worth bring-
ing out at all, and I knew I had no time to work them out. Now,
I lament I did not publish them myself and turn an honest penny
by them as I suspect Hardwicke is doing. He is advertising
them everywhere, confound him.

I wish when you have read them you would tell me whether
you think it would be worth while for me to re-edit, enlarge, and
illustrate them by and by.

And on January 28 Sir C. Lyell writes to him :—
224 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV

I do grudge Hardwicke very much having not only the pub-
lisher’s but the author’s profits. It so often happens that popular
lectures designed for a class and inspired by an attentive audi-
ence’s sympathy are better than any writing in the closet for the
purpose of educating the many as readers, and of remunerating
the publisher and author. I would lose no time in considering
well what steps to take to rescue the copyright of the third
thousand.

As for the value of the work thus done in support of
Darwin’s theory, it is worth while quoting the words of Lord
Kelvin, when, as President of the Royal Society in 1894, it
fell to him to award Huxley the Darwin Medal :—

To the world at large, perhaps, Mr. Huxley’s share in mould-
ing the thesis of Natural Selection is less well known than is
his bold unwearied exposition and defence of it after it had
been made public. And, indeed, a speculative trifler, revelling
in the problems of the “might have been,’ would find a con-
genial theme in the inquiry how soon what we now call “ Dar-
winism ” would have met with the acceptance with which it has
met, and gained the power which it has gained, had it not been
for the brilliant advocacy with which in its early days it was
expounded to all classes of men.

That advocacy had one striking mark: while it made or
strove to make clear how deep the new view went down, and
how far it reached, it never shrank from trying to make equally,
clear the limit beyond which it could not go.
CHAPTER XVI
1860-1861

Tue letters given in the following chapters illustrate the
occupations and interests of the years 1860 to 1863, apart
from the struggle over the species question.

One of the most important and most engrossing was the
launching of a scientific quarterly to do more systematically
and thoroughly what had been done since 1858 in the fort-
nightly scientific column of the Saturday Review. Its gene-
sis is explained in the following letter :-—

July 07, 1860.

My pear Hooxker—Some time ago Dr. Wright of Dublin
talked to me about the Natural History Review, which I believe
to a great extent belongs to him, and wanted me to join in the
editorship, provided certain alterations were made. I promised
to consider the matter, and yesterday he and Greene dined with
me, and I learned that Haughton and Galbraith were out of the
review—that Harvey was likely to go—that a new series was to
begin in January, with Williams and Norgate for publishers
over here—that it was to become an English and not a Hi-
bernian concern in fact—and finally, that if I chose to join as
one of the editors, the effectual control would be pretty much
in my own hands. Now, considering the state of the times, and
the low condition of natural history journalisation (always ex-
cepting quarterly Mic. Jour.) in this country this seems to me
to be a fine opening for a plastically minded young man, and I
am decidedly inclined to close with the offer, though I shall get
nothing but extra work by it.

To limit the amount of this extra work, however, I must get
co-editors, and I have written to Lubbock and to Rolleston (also
plastically minded young men) to see if they will join. Now up
to this point you have been in a horrid state of disgust, because

225
226 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVI

you thought I was going to ask you next. But I am not, for
rejoiced as I should be to have you, I know you have heaps of
better work to do, and hate journalism.

But can you tell me of any plastic young botanist who would
come in all for glory and no pay, though I think pay may be got
if the concern is properly worked. How about Oliver?

And though you can’t and won’t be an editor yourself, won't
you help us and pat us on the back?

The tone of the Review will be mildly episcopophagous, and
you and Darwin and Lyell will have a fine opportunity if you
wish it of slaying your adversaries.—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

Several of his elder friends tried to dissuade him from
an undertaking which would inevitably distract him from
his proper work. Sir C. Lyell prophesied (see p. 217) that
all the work would drift to the most energetic member
of the staff, and Huxley writes to Hooker, August 2,
1860 :— 7

Darwin wrote me a very kind expostulation about it, telling
me I ought not to waste myself on other than original work. In
reply, however, I assured him that I must waste myself willy-
nilly, and that the Review was only a save-all.

The more I think of it the more it seems to me it ought to
answer if properly conducted, and it ought to be of great use.

The first number appeared in January 1861. Writing
on the 6th, Huxley says :—

It is pleasant to get such expressions of opinion as I have
had from Lyell and Darwin about the Review. They make me
quite hopeful about its prosperity, as I am sure we shall be able
to do better than our first number.

It was not long, however, before Lyell’s prophecy began
to come true. In June Huxley writes :-—

It is no use letting other people look after the journal. I find
unless I revise every page of it, it goes wrong.

But in July 1863 he definitely ceased to contribute :—

I did not foresee all this crush of work, (he writes) when
the Review was first started, or I should not have pledged myself
to any share in supplying it. (Moreover, with the appointment
1860 LADIES AND THE LEARNED SOCIETIES 227

of paid editors that year, it seemed to him) that the working
editors with the credit and the pay must take the responsibility
of all the commissariat of the Review upon their shoulders.

Two years later, in 1865, the Review came to an end.
As Mr. Murray, the publisher, remarked, quarterlies did not
pay; and this quarterly became still more financially un-
sound after the over-worked volunteers, who both edited
and contributed, gave place to paid editors.

But Huxley was not satisfied with one defeat. The
quarterly scheme had failed; he now tried if he could not
serve science better by returning to a more frequent and
more popular form of periodical. From 1863 to 1866 he
was concerned with the Reader, a weekly issue; * but this
also was too heavy a burden to be borne in addition to his
other work. However, the labour expended in these ven-
tures was not wholly thrown away. The experience thus
gained at last enabled the present Sir Norman Lockyer, who
acted as science editor for the Reader, to realise what had
so long been aimed at by the establishment of Nature in
1869.

Apart from his contributions to the species question and
the foundation of a scientific review, Huxley published in
1860 only two special monographs (“On Jacare and Cai-
man,” and “ On the Mouth and Pharynx of the Scorpion,”
already mentioned as read in the previous year), but he read
“ Further Observations on Pyrosoma” at the Linnean So-
ciety, and was busy with paleontological work, the results
of which appeared in three papers the following year, the
most important of which was the Memoir called a “ Pre-
liminary Essay on the Arrangement of the Devonian
Fishes,” in the report of the Geological Survey, “ which,”
says Sir M. Foster, ‘‘ though entitled a Preliminary Essay,
threw an entirely new light on the affinities of these crea- '
tures, and, with the continuation published later, in 1866,
still remains a standard work.”

The question of the admission of ladies to the learned

 

* The committee also included Professor Cairns, F. Galton, W. F.
Pollock, and J. Tyndall.
228 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVI

societies was already being mooted, and a letter to Sir C.
Lyell gives his ideas thus early not only on this point, but
on the general question of women’s education.

March 17, 1860.

My bear Sir CHArLes—To use the only forcible expression,
I “twig” your meaning perfectly, but I venture to think the
parable does not apply. For the Geological Society is not, to my
mind, a place of education for students, but a place of discussion
for adepts; and the more it is applied to the former purpose the
less competent it must become to fulfil the latter—its primary
and most important object.

I am far from wishing to place any obstacle in the way of
the intellectual advancement and development of women. On
the contrary, I don’t see how we are to make any permanent
advancement while one-half of the race is sunk, as nine-tenths
of women are, in mere ignorant parsonese superstitions; and to
show you that my ideas are practical I have fully made up my
mind, if I can carry out my own plans, to give my daughters
the same training in physical science as their brother will get,
so long as he is a boy. They, at any rate, shall not be got up
as man-traps for the matrimonial market. If other people would
do the like the next generation would see women fit to be the
companions of men in all their pursuits—though I don’t think
that men have anything to fear from their competition. But
you know as well as I do that other people won't do the like,
and five-sixths of women will stop in the doll stage of evolution
to be the stronghold of parsondom, the drag on civilisation, the
degradation of every important pursuit with which they mix
themselves—“ intrigues ” in politics, and “ friponnes ” in science.

If my claws and beak are good for anything they shall be
kept from hindering the progress of any science I have to do
with.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

Three letters to Mr. Spencer show that he had been
reading and criticising the proofs of the First Principles.
With regard to the second letter, which gives reasons for
rejecting Mr. Spencer’s remarks about the power of infla-
tion in birds during flight, it is curious to note Mr. Spencer’s
reply:—

How oddly the antagonism comes out even when you are not
conscious of it! My authority was Owen! I heard him assign
1860 LETTERS TO SPENCER 229

this cause for the falling of wounded birds in one of his lectures
at the College of Surgeons.
14 WAVERLEY PLACE, Scft. 3, 1860.

My DEAR SPENCER—I return your proofs by this post. To
my mind nothing can be better than their contents, whether in
matter or in manner, and as my wife arrived, independently, at
the same opinion, I think my judgment is not one-sided.

There is something calm and dignified about the tone of the
whole — which eminently befits a philosophical work which
means to live—and nothing can be more clear and forcible than
the argument.

I rejoice that you have made a beginning, and such a begin-
ning—for the more I think about it the more important it seems
to me that somebody should think out into a connected system
the loose notions that are floating about more or less distinctly
in all the best minds.

It seems as if all the thoughts in what you have written were
my own, and yet I am conscious of the enormous difference your
presentation of them makes in my intellectual state. One is
thought in the state of hemp yarn, and the other in the state of
rope. Work away, then, excellent rope-maker, and make us
more ropes to hold on against the devil and the parsons.

For myself I am absorbed in dogs—gone to the dogs in fact
—having been occupied in dissecting them for the last fort-
night. You do not say how your health is.—Ever yours faith-
fully, T. H. Huxtey.

Sept. 19, 1860.

My pear SPENCER—You will forgive the delay which has
occurred in forwarding your proof when I tell you that we have
lost our poor little son, our pet and hope. You who knew him
well, and know how his mother’s heart and mine were wrapped
up in him, will understand how great is our affliction. He was
attacked with a bad form of scarlet fever on Thursday night,
and on Saturday night effusion on the brain set in suddenly and
carried him off in a couple of hours. Jessie was taken ill on
Friday, but has had the disease quite lightly, and is doing well.
The baby has escaped. So end many hopes and plans—sadly
enough, and yet not altogether bitterly. For as the little fellow
was our greatest joy so is the recollection of him an enduring
consolation. It is a heavy payment, but I would buy the four
years of him again at the same price. My wife bears’ up bravely.

I have read your proofs at intervals, and you must not sup-
230 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XVI

pose they have troubled me. On the contrary they were at times
the only things I could attend to. I agree in the spirit of the
whole perfectly. On some matters of detail I had doubts which
I am not at present clear-headed enough to think out.

The only thing I object to in toto is the illustration which I
have marked at p. 24. It is physically impossible that a bird’s
air-cells should be distended with air during flight, unless the
structure of the parts is in reality different from anything which
anatomists at present know. Blowing into the trachea is not to
the point. A bird cannot blow into its own trachea, and it has
no mechanism for performing a corresponding action.

A bird’s chest is essentially a pair of bellows in which the
sternum during rest and the back during flight act as movable
wall. The air cells may all be represented as soft-walled bags
opening freely into the bellows—there being, so far as anatomists
yet know, no valves or corresponding contrivances anywhere
except at the glottis, which corresponds with the nozzle and air
valve both, of our bellows. But the glottis is always opened
when the chest is dilated at each inspiration. How then can
the air in any air-cell be kept at a higher tension than the sur-
rounding atmosphere?

Hunter experimented on the uses of the air sacs, I know,
but I have not his works at hand. It may be that opening one
of the air-cells interferes with flight, but I hold it very difficult
to conceive that the interference can take place in the way you
suppose. How on earth is a lark to sing for ten minutes together
if the air-cells are to be kept distended all the while he is up in
the air?

At any rate twenty other illustrations will answer your pur-
pose as well, so I would not select one which may be assailed
by a carping fellow like—Yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

Oct. 10, 1860.
My pear SPENCER *—“ A wilful man must have his way,”
and if you won’t let me contribute towards the material guar-
antees for the success of your book, I must be content to add
twelve shillings’ worth of moral influence to that I already meant
to exert per annum in its favour.
I shall be most glad henceforth, as ever, to help your great

 

* This was written at the time when Mr. Spencer had issued a
notice of discontinuance, and when measures were being taken to pre-
vent it.
1860 FRIENDSHIP WITH HOOKER 231
undertaking in any way I can. The more I contemplate its
issues the more important does it seem to me to be, and I assure
you that I look upon its success as the business of all of us. So
that if it were not a pleasure I should feel it a duty to “ push
behind” as hard as I can.

Have you seen this quarter’s Westminster? The opening
article on “ Neo-Christianity ” is one of the most remarkable
essays in its way I have ever read. I suppose it must be New-
man’s. The Review is terribly unequal, some of the other arti-
cles being absolutely ungrammatically written. What a pity it
is it cannot be thoroughly organised.

My wife is a little better, but she is terribly shattered. By
the time you come back we shall, I hope, have reverted from our
present hospital condition to our normal arrangements, but in
any case we shall be glad to see youu—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxzey.

The following is, I think, the first reference to his
fastidiousness in the literary expression and artistic com-
pleteness of his work. As he said in an after-dinner speech
at a meeting in aid of the Literary Fund, “Science and
literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.”
Anything that was to be published he subjected to repeated
revision. And thus, apologising to Hooker for his absence,
he writes (August 2, 1860)—

I was sorry to have to send an excuse by Tyndall the other
day, but I found I must finish the Pyrosoma paper, and all last
Tuesday was devoted to it, and I fear the next after will have
the like fate.

It constantly becomes more and more difficult to me to finish
things satisfactorily.

To Hooker also he writes a few days later :—

I hope your ear is better; take care of yourself, there’s a
good fellow. I can’t do without you these twenty years. We
have a devil of a lot to do in the way of smiting the Amalekites.

Between two men who seldom spoke of their feelings,
but let constant intercourse attest them, these words show
more than the practical side of their friendship, their com-
munity of aims and interests. Quick, strong-willed, and
determined as they both were, the fact that they could work

16
232 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XVI

together for over forty years without the shadow of a mis-
understanding, presupposes an unusually strong friend-
ship firmly based upon mutual trust and respect as well
as liking, the beginning of which Sir J. Hooker thus de-
scribes :—

My first meeting your father was in 1851, shortly after his
return from the Rattlesnake voyage with Captain Stanley.
Hearing that I had paid some attention to marine zoology dur-
ing the voyage of the Antarctic Expedition, he was desirous
of showing me the results of his studies of the Oceanic Hy-
drozoa, and he sought me out in consequence. This and the
fact that we had both embarked in the Naval service in the
same capacity as medical officers and with the same object of
scientific research, naturally led to an intimacy which was un-
disturbed by a shadow of a misunderstanding for nearly forty-
five following years. Curiously enough, our intercourse might
have dated from an earlier period by nearly six years had I
accepted an appointment to the Rattlesnake offered me by Cap-
tain Stanley, which, but for my having arranged for a journey
to India, might have been accepted.

Returning to the purpose of our interview, the researches
Mr. Huxley laid before me were chiefly those on the Salpz, a
much misunderstood group of marine Hydrozoa. Of these I
had amused myself with making drawings during the long and
often weary months passed at sea on board the Erebus, but hav-
ing other subjects to attend to, I had made no further study of
them than as consumers of the vegetable life (Diatoms) of the
Antarctic Ocean. Hence his observations on their life-history,
habits, and affinities were on almost all points a revelation to
me, and I could not fail to recognise in their author all the
qualities possessed by a naturalist of commanding ability, in-
dustry, and power of exposition. Our interviews, thus com-
menced, soon ripened into a friendship, which led to an arrange-
ment for a monthly meeting, and in the informal establishment
of a club of nine, the other members of which were, Mr. Busk,
Dr. Frankland, Mr. Hirst, Sir J. Lubbock, Mr. Herbert Spencer,
Dr. Tyndall, and Mr. Spottiswoode.

Just a month after this letter to his friend, the same
year which had first brought Huxley public recognition
outside his special sphere brought him also the greatest
sorrow perhaps of his whole life. I have already spoken
1860 THE STANDARD OF BELIEF 233

of the sudden death of the little son in whom so much of
his own and his wife’s happiness was centred. The sudden-
ness of the blow made it all the more crushing, and the
mental strain, intensified by the sight of his wife's incon-
solable grief, brought him perilously near a complete break-
down. But the birth of another son, on December 11, gave
the mother some comfort; and as the result of a friendly
conspiracy between her and Dr. Tyndall, Huxley himself
was carried off for a week's climbing in Wales between
Christmas and the New Year.

His reply to a long letter of sympathy in which Charles
Kingsley set forth the grounds of his own philosophy as to
the ends of life and the hope of immortality, affords insight
into the very depths of his nature. It is a rare outburst at
a moment of intense feeling, in which, more completely than
in almost any other writing of his, intellectual clearness and
moral fire are to be seen uniting in a veritable passion for
truth :—

14 WAVERLEY PLACE, Seft. 23, 1860.

My pear Kincs_ey—I cannot sufficiently thank you, both on
my wife’s account and my own, for your long and frank letter,
and for all the hearty sympathy which it exhibits—and Mrs.
Kingsley will, I hope, believe that we are no less sensible of
her kind thought of us. To myself your letter was especially
valuable, as it touched upon what I thought even more than
upon what I said in my letter to you. My convictions, positive
and negative, on all the matters of which you speak, are of long
and slow growth and are firmly rooted. But the great blow
which fell upon me seemed to stir them to their foundation,
and had I lived a couple of centuries earlier I could have fancied
a devil scoffing at me and them—and asking me what profit it
was to have stripped myself of the hopes and consolations of
the mass of mankind? To which my only reply was and is
—Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. I have searched
over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name
and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the
penalty, still I will not lie.

And now I feel that it is due to' you to speak as frankly as
you have done to me. An old and worthy friend of mine tried
some three or four years ago to bring us together—because, as
he said, you were the only man who would do me any good.
234 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVI

Your letter leads me to think he was right, though not perhaps
in the sense he attached to his own words.

To begin with the great doctrine you discuss. I neither deny
nor affirm the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing
in it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it.

Pray understand that I have no a priori objections to the
doctrine. No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature
can trouble himself about a priori difficulties. Give me such
evidence as would justify me in believing anything else, and I
will believe that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonder-
ful as the conservation of force, or the indestructibility of
matter. Whoso clearly appreciates all that is implied in the
falling of a stone can have no difficulty about any doctrine simply
on account of its marvellousness. But the longer I live, the
more obvious it is to me that the most sacred act of a man’s
life is to say and to feel, “I believe such and such to be true.”
All the greatest rewards and all the heaviest penalties of exist-
ence cling about that act. The universe is one and the same
throughout; and if the condition of my success in unravelling
some little difficulty of anatomy or physiology is that I shall
rigorously refuse to put faith in that which does not rest on
sufficient evidence, I cannot believe that the great mysteries
of existence will be laid open to me on other terms. It is no use
to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I
mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares,
and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convic-
tions. I dare not if I would.

Measured by this standard, what becomes of the doctrine of
immortality ?

You rest in your strong conviction of your personal exist-
ence, and in the instinct of the persistence of that existence
which is so strong in you as in most men.

To me this is as nothing. That my personality is the surest
thing I know—may be true. But the attempt to conceive what
it is leads me into mere verbal subtleties. I have champed up
all that chaff about the ego and the non-ego, about noumena
and phenomena, and all the rest of it, too often not to know that
in attempting even to think of these questions, the human intel-
lect flounders at once out of its depth.

It must be twenty years since, a boy, I read Hamilton’s essay
on the unconditioned, and from that time to this, ontological
speculation has been a folly to me. When Mansel took up
Hamilton’s argument on the side of orthodoxy (!) I said he re-
1860 THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 235

minded me of nothing so much as the man who is sawing off the
sign on which he is sitting, in Hogarth’s picture. But this by
the way.

I cannot conceive of my personality as a thing apart from
the phenomena of my life. When I try to form such a concep-
tion I discover that, as Coleridge would have said, I only hypos-
tatise a word, and it alters nothing if, with Fichte, I suppose
the universe to be nothing but a manifestation of my personality.
I am neither more nor less eternal than I was before.

Nor does the infinite difference between myself and the
animals alter the case. I do not know whether the animals per-
sist after they disappear or not. I do not even know whether
the infinite difference between us and them may not be com-
pensated by their persistence and my cessation after apparent
death, just as the humble bulb of an annual lives, while the
glorious flowers it has put forth die away.

Surely it must be plain that an ingenious man could specu-
late without end on both sides, and find analogies for all his
dreams. Nor does it help me to tell me that the aspirations of
mankind—that my own highest aspirations even—lead me
towards the doctrine of immortality. I doubt the fact, to begin
with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking
me to believe a thing because I like it.

Science has taught to me the opposite lesson. She warns
me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my pre-
conceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief
than for one to which I was previously hostile.

My business is to teach my aspirations to conform them-
selves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my
aspirations.

Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest
manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian con-
ception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before
fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived
notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature
leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn
content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to
do this.

There are, however, other arguments commonly brought
forward in favour of the immortality of man, which are to my
mind not only delusive but mischievous. The one is the notion
that the moral government of the world is imperfect without a
system of future rewards and punishments. The other is: that
236 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVI

such a system is indispensable to practical morality. I believe
that both these dogmas are very mischievous lies.

With respect to the first, I am no optimist, but I have the
firmest belief that the Divine Government (if we may use such
a phrase to express the sum of the “customs of matter”) is
wholly just. The more I know intimately of the lives of other
men (to say nothing of my own), the more obvious it is to me
that the wicked does not flourish nor is the righteous punished.
But for this to be clear we must bear in mind what almost all
forget, that the rewards of life are contingent upon obedience
to the whole law—physical as well as moral—and that moral
obedience will not atone for physical sin, or vice versa.

The ledger of the Almighty is strictly kept, and every one
of us has the balance of his operations paid over to him at the
end of every minute of his existence.

Life cannot exist without a certain conformity to the sur-
rounding universe—that conformity involves a certain amount
of happiness in excess of pain. In short, as we live we are paid
for living.

And it is to be recollected in view of the apparent discrep-
ancy between men’s acts and their rewards that Nature is juster
than we. She takes into account what a man brings with him
into the world, which human justice cannot do. If I, born.a
bloodthirsty and savage brute, inheriting these qualities from
others, kill you, my fellow-men will very justly hang me, but
I shall not be visited with the horrible remorse which would
be my real punishment if, my nature being higher, I had done
the same thing.

The absolute justice of the system of things is as clear to me
as any scientific fact. The gravitation of sin to sorrow is as
certain as that of the earth to the sun, and more so—for experi-
mental proof of the fact is within reach of us all—nay, is before
us all in our own lives, if we had but the eyes to see it.

Not only, then, do I disbelieve in the need for compensation,
but I believe that the seeking for rewards and punishments out
of this life leads men to a ruinous ignorance of the fact that
their inevitable rewards and punishments are here.

If the expectation of hell hereafter can keep me from evil-
doing, surely a fortiori the certainty of hell now will do so? If
a man could be firmly impressed with the belief that stealing
damaged him as much as swallowing arsenic would do (and it
does), would not the dissuasive force of that belief be greater
than that of any based on mere future expectations?
1860 THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 237

And this leads me to my other point.

As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day,
with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating
minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, “If the dead
rise not again, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” I
cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had
neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alterna-
tive involved a blasphemy against all that was best and noblest
in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What!
because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have
given back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a
great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings
which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to
renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality? Why,
the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the
poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek
distraction in a gorge. :

Kicked into the world a boy without guide or training, or
with worse than none, I confess to my shame that few men have
drunk deeper of all kinds of sin than I. Happily, my course
was arrested in time—before I had earned absolute destruction
—and for long years I have been slowly and painfully climbing,
with many a fall, towards better things. And when I look back,
what do I find to have been the agents of my redemption? The
hope of immortality or of future reward? I can honestly say
that for these fourteen years such a consideration has not en-
tered my head. No, I can tell you exactly what has been at
work. Sartor Resartus led me to know that a deep sense of
religion was compatible with the entire absence of theology.
Secondly, science and her methods gave me a resting-place in-
dependent of authority and tradition. Thirdly, love opened up
to me a view of the sanctity of human nature, and impressed
me with a deep sense of responsibility.

If at this moment I am not a worn-out, debauched, useless
carcass of a man, if it has been or will be my fate to advance
the cause of science, if I feel that I have a shadow of a claim
on the love of those about me, if in the supreme moment when
I looked down into my boy’s grave my sorrow was full of sub-
mission and without bitterness, it is because these agencies have
worked upon me, and not because I have ever cared whether my
poor personality shall remain distinct for ever from the All from
whence it came and whither it goes.

And thus, my dear Kingsley, you will understand what my
238 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVI

position is. I may be quite wrong, and in that case I know I
shall have to pay the penalty for being wrong. But I can only
say with Luther, “Gott helfe mir, Ich kann nicht§ anders.”

I know right well that 99 out of 100 of my fellows would call
me atheist, infidel, and all the other usual hard names. As our
laws stand, if the lowest thief steals my coat, my evidence (my
opinions being known) would not be received against him.*

But I cannot help it. One thing people shall not call me
with justice and that is—a liar. As you say of yourself, I too
feel that I lack courage; but if ever the occasion arises when
I am bound to speak, I will not shame my boy.

I have spoken more openly and distinctly to you than I ever
have to any human being except my wife.

If you can show me that I err in premises or conclusion, I
am ready to give up these as I would any other theories. But at
any rate you will do me the justice to believe that I have not
reached my conclusions without the care befitting the momentous
nature of the problems involved.

And I write this the more readily to you, because it is clear
to me that if that great and powerful instrument for good or
evil, the Church of England, is to be saved from being shivered
into fragments by the advancing tide of science—an event I
should be very sorry to witness, but which will infallibly occur
if men like Samuel of Oxford are to have the guidance of her
destinies—it must be by the efforts of men who, like yourself,
see your way to the combination of the practice of the Church
with the spirit of science. Understand that all the younger men
of science whom I know intimately are essentially of my way
of thinking. (1 know not a scoffer or an irreligious or an im-
moral man among them, but they all regard orthodoxy as you
do Brahmanism.) Understand that this new school of the
prophets is the only one that can work miracles, the only one
that can constantly appeal to nature for evidence that it is right,
and you will comprehend that it is of no use to try to barricade
us with shovel hats and aprons, or to talk about our doctrines
being “ shocking.”

I don’t profess to understand the logic of yourself, Maurice,
and the rest of your school, but I have always said I would
swear by your truthfulness and sincerity, and that good must
come of your efforts. The more plain this was to me, however,
the more obvious the necessity to let you see where the men of

 

* The law with respect to oaths was reformed in 1869.
1860 LETTERS TO HOOKER 239

science are driving, and it has often been in my mind to write
to you before.
If I have spoken too plainly anywhere, or too abruptly,
pardon me, and do the like to me.
My wife thanks you very much for your volume of sermons.
Ever yours very faithfully, ai Ee cece

A letter written in reply to the suggestion that he
should carry out Hooker's own good resolutions of keep-
ing out of the turmoil of life, and devoting himself to
pure science, seems to indicate in its tone something of
the stress of the time when it was written—

JeRMyN STREET, Dec. 19, 1860.

My pear Hooxer—What with one thing and another, I have
almost forgotten to answer your note—and first, as to the busi-
ness matter. . . . Next as to my own private affairs, the young-
ster is “a swelling wisibly,” and my wife is getting on better
than I hoped, though not quite so well as I could have wished.
The boy’s advent is a great blessing to her in all ways. For
myself I hardly know yet whether it is pleasure or pain. The
ground has gone from under my feet once, and I hardly know
how to rest on anything again. Irrational, you will say, but
nevertheless natural. And finally as to your resolutions, my
holy pilgrim, they will be kept about as long as the resolutions
of other anchorites who are thrown into the busy world, or I
won't say that, for assuredly you will take the world “as coolly
as you can,” and so shall I. But that coolness amounts to the
red heat of properly constructed mortals.

It is no use having any false modesty about the matter. You
and I, if we last ten years longer, and you by a long while first,
will be the representatives of our respective lines in this country.
In that capacity we shall have certain duties to perform to our-
selves, to the outside world, and to science. We shall have to
swallow praise which is no great pleasure, and to stand multi-
tudinous basting and irritations, which will involve a good deal
of unquestionable pain. Don’t flatter yourself that there is any
moral chloroform by which either you or I can render ourselves
insensible or acquire the habit of doing things coolly. It is
assuredly of no great use to tear one’s self to pieces before one
is fifty. But the alternative, for men constructed on the high
pressure tubular boiler principle, like ourselves, is to lie still
240 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVI

and let the devil have his own way. And I will be torn to
pieces before I am forty sooner than see that.

I have been privately trading on my misfortunes in order to
get a little peace and quietness for a few months. If I can help
it I don’t mean to do any dining out this winter, and I have cut
down Societies to the minimum of the Geological, from which I
cannot get away.

But it won’t do to keep this up too long. By and by one must
drift into the stream again, and then there is nothing for it but
to pull like mad unless we want to be run down by every collier.

I am going to do one sensible thing, however, viz. to rush
down to Llanberis with Busk between Christmas Day and New
Year’s Day and get my lungs full of hill-air for the coming
session.

I was at Down on Saturday and saw Darwin. He seems
fairly well, and his daughter was up and looks better than I
expected to see her.—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

Meanwhile, he took the opportunity to make the child’s
birth a new link with his old friend, and wrote as follows :—

14 WAVERLEY PLAcE, Jan. 3, 1861.

My pear Hooxer—lIf I had nothing else to write about I
must wish you a Happy New Year and many on ’em; but, in
fact, my wife and I have a great favour to ask of you, which
is neither more nor less than to stand godfather for our little
son. You know my opinions on these matters, and I would not
ask you to do anything I would not do myself, so if you consent,
the clerk shall tell all the lies for you, and you shall be asked
to do nothing else than to help devour the christening feed, and
be as good a friend to the boy as you have been to his father.

My wife will have the youngster christened, although I am
always in a bad temper from the time it is talked about until the
ceremony is over. The only way of turning the farce into a
reality is by making it an extra bond with one’s friends. On the
other hand, if you have any objection to say, “all this I stead-
fastly believe,” even by deputy, I know you will have no hesita-
tion in saying so, and in giving me as frank a refusal as my
request.*

 

* As against his dislike of consenting to a rite, to him meaningless,
he was moved by a feeling which in part corresponded to Descartes’
morale par provision,—in part was an acknowledgment of the possi-
1861 LETTERS TO HOOKER 241

Let me know if you have any fault to find with the new
Review. I think you will see it would have been a dreadful busi-
ness to translate all the German titles in the bibliography. I
returned from a ramble about Snowdon with Busk and Tyndall
on the 31st, all the better. My wife is decidedly improved,
though she mends but slowly.

Our best wishes to you and all yours.—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

Any fragments from the rich man’s table for the next No.
of N.H.R.?

14 WAVERLEY PLace, Jam. 6, 1861.

My pear Hooker—My wife and I were very pleased to get
your hearty and kind acceptance of Godfathership. We shall
not call upon you for some time, I fancy, as the mistress doesn’t
get strong very fast. However, I am only glad she is well as she
is. She came down yesterday for the first time.

It is very pleasant to get such expressions of opinion as I
have had from you, Lyell, and Darwin about the Review. They
make me quite hopeful about its prosperity, as I am sure we
shall be able to do better than our first number.

I am glad you liked what I said in the opening of my article.*
I wish not to be in any way confounded with the cynics who
delight in degrading man, or with the common run of material-
ists, who think mind is any the lower for being a function of
matter. I dislike them even more than I do the pietists.

Some of these days I shall look up the ape question again,
and go over the rest of the organisation in the same way. But
in order to get a thorough grip of the question, I must examine

 

bilities of individual development, making it only fair to a child to
give it a connection with the official spiritual organisation of its coun-
try, which it could either ignore or continue on reaching intellectual
maturity.

*In the Natural History Review (1861, p. 67).—‘‘ The proof of his
claim to independent parentage will not change the brutishness of
man’s lower nature; nor, except in those valet souls who cannot see
greatness in their fellow because his father was a cobbler, will the
demonstration of a pithecoid pedigree one whit diminish man’s divine
right of kingship over nature; nor lower the great and princely dig-
nity of perfect manhood, which is an order of nobility not inherited,
but to be won by each of us, so far as he consciously seeks good and
avoids evil, and puts the faculties with which he is endowed to their

fittest use.”
242 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVI

into a good many points for myself. The results, when they do
come out, will, I foresee, astonish the natives.

I am cold-proof, and all the better for the Welsh trip. To
say truth, I was just on the edge of breaking down when I went.
Did I ever send you a letter of mine on the teaching of Natural
History? It was published while you were away, and I forget
whether I sent it or not. However, a copy accompanies this
note. ...

Of course there will be room for your review and welcome.
I have put it down and reckon on it—Ever yours faithfully,

, T. H. Huxtey.

Huxley returned from the trip to Wales in time to be
with his wife for the New Year. The plot she had made
with Dr. Tyndall had been entirely successful. The threat-
ened breakdown was averted. Wales in winter was as good
as Switzerland. Of the ascent of Snowdon he writes on
December 28: “ Both Tyndall and I voted it under present
circumstances as good as most things Alpine.”

His wife, however, continued in very weak health. She
was prostrated by the loss of her little boy. So in the
middle of March he gladly accepted Mr. Darwin’s invita-
tion for her and the three children to spend a fortnight
in the quiet of his house at Down, where he himself managed
to run down for a week end. “It appears to me,” he
writes to his wife, “ that you are subjecting poor Darwin to
a savage Tennysonian persecution. I shall see him look-
ing like a martyr and have to talk double science next
Sunday.”

In April another good friend, Dr. Bence Jones, lent the
invalid his house at Folkestone for three months. Unable
even to walk when she went there, her recovery was a slow
business. Huxley ran down every week ; his brother George
and his wife also were frequent visitors. Meanwhile he
resolved to move into a new house, in order that she might
not return to a place so full of sorrowful memories. On
May 30 he effected the move to a larger house not half a
mile away from Waverley Place—26 Abbey Place (now
23 Abercorn Place). Here also Mrs. Heathorn lived for the
next year, my grandfather, over seventy as he was, being
1861 DEATH OF HENSLOW 243

compelled to go out again to Australia to look after a busi-
ness venture of his which had come to grief.

Meantime the old house was still on his hands for an-
other year. Trying to find a tenant, he writes on May 21,
1861 :—

I met J. Tyndall at Ramsay's last night, and I think he is
greatly inclined to have the house. I gave him your message
and found that a sneaking kindness for the old house actuated
him a good deal in wishing to take it. It is not a bad fellow,
and we won't do him much on the fixtures.

Eventually Tyndall and his friend Hirst established
themselves there.

This spring Professor Henslow, Mrs. Hooker’s father, a
botanist of the first rank, and a man extraordinarily beloved
by all who came in contact with him, was seized with a
mortal illness, and lingered on without hope of recovery
through almost the whole of April. Huxley writes :—

JERMYN STREET, April 4, 1861.

My pear Hooxer—I am very much grieved and shocked by
your letter. The evening before last I heard from Busk that
your father-in-law had been ill, and that you had been to see
him, and I meant to have written to you yesterday to inquire,
but it was driven out of my head by people coming here. And
then I had a sort of unreasonable notion that I should see you
at the Linnzan Council to-day and hear that all was right again.
God knows, I feel for you and your poor wife. Knowing what
a great rift the loss of a mere undeveloped child will leave in
one’s life, I can faintly picture to myself the great and irrep-
arable vacuity in a family circle caused by the vanishing out
of it of such a man as Henslow, with great acquirements, and
that great calm catholic judgment and sense which always
seemed to me more prominent in him than in any man I ever
knew.

He had intellect to comprehend his highest duty distinctly,
and force of character to do it; which of us dare ask for a
higher summary of his life than that? For such a man there
can be no fear in facing the great unknown, his life has been
one long experience of the substantial justice of the laws by
which this world is governed, and he will calmly trust to them
still as he lays his head down for his long sleep.
244 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVI

You know all these things as well as I do, and I know as well
as you do that such thoughts do not cure heartache or assuage
grief. Such maladies, when men are as old as you and I are, are
apt to hang about one a long time, but I find that if they are
faced and accepted as part of our fair share of life, a great
deal of good is to be got out of them. You will find that too,
but in the meanwhile don’t go and break yourself down with
over wear and tear. The heaviest pull comes after the excite-
ment of a catastrophe of this kind is over.

Believe in my affectionate sympathy with you, and that I
am, my dear old fellow, yours ever, T. H. Hoxtey.

And again on the 18th :—

Many thanks for your two letters. It would be sad to hear
of life dragging itself out so painfully and slowly, if it were not
for what you tell me of the calmness and wisdom with which
the poor sufferer uses such strength as is left him.

One can express neither wish nor hope in such a case. With
such a man what is will be well. All I have to repeat is, don’t
knock yourself up. I wish to God I could help you in some way
or other. beyond repeating the parrot cry. If I can, of course
you will let me know.

In June 1861 a jotting in his notebook records that he
is at work on the chick’s skull, part of the embryological
work which he took up vigorously at this time, and at once
the continuation of his researches on the Vertebrate Skull,
embodied in his Croonian lecture of 1858, and the beginning
of a long series of investigations into the structure of birds.
There is a reference to this in a very interesting letter deal-
ing chiefly with what he conceived to be the cardinal point
of the Darwinian theory :—

26 ABBEY PLACE, Sept. 4, 1861.
My pear Hooxer—Yesterday being the first day I went to
the Atheneum after reading your note, I had a look at, and a
good laugh over, the Quarterly article. Who can be the writer?
I have been so busy studying chicken development, a difficult
subject to which I had long ago made up my mind to devote my
first spare time, that I have written you no word about your
article in the Gardener's Chronicle. I quite agree with the
general tendency of your argument, though it seems to me that
1861 LETTER TO HOOKER 245

you put your view rather too strongly when you seem to ques-
tion the position “ that, as a rule, resemblances prevail over dif-
ferences” between parent and offspring. Surely, as a rule, re-
semblances do prevail over differences, though I quite agree
with you that the latter have been far too much overlooked. The
great desideratum for the species question at present seems to
me to be the determination of the law of variation. Because
no law has yet been made out, Darwin is obliged to speak of
variation as if it were spontaneous or a matter of chance, so
that the bishops and superior clergy generally (the only real
atheists and believers in chance left in the world) gird at him
as if he were another Lucretius.

It is [in] the recognition of a tendency to variation apart
from the variation of what are ordinarily understood as ex-
ternal conditlons that Darwin’s view is such an advance
on Lamarck. Why does not somebody go to work experi-
mentally, and get at the law of variation for some one species
of plant?

What a capital article that was in the Atheneum the other
day apud the Schlagintweits.* Don Roderigo is very wroth at

 

* The brothers Schlagintweit (four of whom were ultimately
employed), who had gained some reputation for their work on the
Physical Geography of the Alps, were, on Humboldt’s recommenda-
tion, despatched by the East India Company in 1854-55-56 to the
Deccan, and especially to the Himalayan region (where they were the
first Europeans to cross the Kuenlun Mountains), in order to correlate
the instruments and observations of the several magnetic surveys of
India. But they enlarged the scope of their mission by professing to
correct the great trigonometrical survey, while the contract with them
was so loosely drawn up that they had practically a roving commis-
sion in science, to make researches and publish the results—up to
nine volumes—in all manner of subjects, which in fact ranged from
the surveying work to ethnology, and were crowned by an additional
volume on Buddhism! The original cost to the Indian Government
was estimated at £15,000; the allowances from the English Govern-
ment during the inordinately prolonged period of arranging and pub-
lishing materials, including payment for sixty copies of each volume,
atlas, and so forth, as well as personal payments, came to as much
more.

Unfortunately the results were of less value than was expected.
The attempt to correct the work done with the large instruments of
the trigonometrical survey by means of far smaller instruments was
absurd; away from the ground covered by the great survey the fig-
ures proved to be very inaccurate. The most annoying part of the
246 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVI

being made responsible with Sabine, and indeed I think he had
little enough to do with it.

You will see a letter from him in this week’s Atheneum.—
Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

 

affair was that it absorbed the State aid which might have been given
to more valuable researches.

The Council of the Royal Society had been consulted as to the
advisability of despatching this expedition and opposed it, for there
were in the service of the Company not a few men admirably qualified
for the duty, whose scientific services had received scant appreciation.
Nevertheless, the expedition started after all, with the approval of
Colonel Sabine, the president. In the last months of 1866, Huxley
drew up for the Royal Society a report upon the scientific value of the
results of the expedition.
CHAPTER XVII
1861-1863

It has been seen that the addition of journalistic work
in science to the mass of original research and teaching
work upon which Huxley was engaged, called forth a re-
monstrance from both Lyell and Darwin. To Hooker it
seemed still more serious that he was dividing his allegiance,
and going far afield in philosophy, instead of concentrating
himself upon natural science. He writes :—

I am sorry to hear that you are so poorly, and wish I could
help you to sit down and work quietly at pure science. You have
got into a whirlpool, and should strike out vigorously at the
proper angle, not attempt to breast the whole force of the cur-
rent, nor yet give in to it. Do take the counsel of a quiet looker
on and withdraw to your books and studies in pure Natural His-
tory; let modes of thought alone. You may make a very good
naturalist, or a very good metaphysician (of that I know noth-
ing, don’t despise me), but you have neither time nor place
for both.

However, it must be remarked that this love of philoso-
phy, not recently acquired either, was cnly part of the pas-
sion for general principles underlying the facts of science
which had always possessed him. And the time expended
upon it was not directly taken from the hours of scientific
work ; he*-would read in bed through the small hours of the
night, when sleep was slow in coming to him. In this way
he got through an immense amount of philosophy in the
course of several years. Not that he could “ state the views
of so and so” upon any given question, or desired such kind
of knowledge; he wished to find out and compare with his

17 247
248 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII

own the answers which other thinkers gave to the problems
which interested himself.

A gentler reproof of this time touches his handwriting,
which was never of the most legible, so that his foreign cor-
respondents in particular sometimes complained. Haeckel
used to get his difficulties deciphered by his colleague
Gegenbaur. I cannot forbear quoting the delicate remon-
strance of Professor Lacaze du Thiers, and the flattering
remedy he proposed :—

‘March 14.—Je lis Anglais imprimé, mais vos écritures
anglaises sont si rapides, qu'il m’est quelquefois difficile de m’en
sortir. On me dit que vous écrivez si bien le frangais que je
crois que je vous lirais bien mieux dans ma langue!

On his return from examining at Dublin, he again
looked over proofs for Mr. Spencer.

JERMYN STREET, Aug. 3, 1861.

My pEAR SPENCER—I have been absent on a journey to
Dublin and elsewhere * nearly all this week, and hence your
note and proof did not reach me till yesterday. I have but just
had time to glance through the latter, and I need hardly say how
heartily I concur in its general tenor. I have, however, marked
one or two passages which IJ think require some qualification.
Then, at p. 272, the fact that the vital manifestations of plants
depend as entirely as those of animals upon the fall towards
stable equilibrium of the elements of a complex protein com-
pound is not sufficiently prominent. It is not so much that plants
are deoxidisers and animals oxidisers, as that plants are manu-
facturers and animals consumers. It is true that plants manu-
facture a good deal of non-nitrogenous produce in proportion
to the nitrogenous, but it is the latter which is chiefly useful to
the animal consumer and not the former. This point is a very
important one, which I have never seen clearly and distinctly
put—the prettiness of Dumas’ circulation of the elements having
seduced everybody.

Of course this in no way affects the principle of what you
say. The statements which I have marked at p. 276 and 278
should have their authorities given, I think. I should hardly
like to commit myself to them absolutely.

“You will, if my memory does not mislead me, find authority
for my note at p. 283 in Stephenson’s life. I think old Geo.

 

* Visiting Sir Philip Egerton at Oulton Park.
1861 ANIMALS AND PLANTS 249

Stephenson brought out his views at breakfast at Sir R. Peel's
when Buckland was there.

These are all the points that strike me, and I do not keep
your proof any longer (I send it by the same post as this note),
because I fear you may be inconvenienced by the delay.

Tyndall is unfortunately gone to Switzerland, so that I can-
not get you his comments. Whether he might have picked holes
in any detail or not I do not know, but I know his opinions suf-
ficiently well to make sure in his agreement with the general
argument. In fact a favourite problem of his is—Given the
molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust
therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will
solve this easily.

I am grieved to hear such a poor account of your health; I
believe you will have to come at last to the heroic remedy of
matrimony, and if “ gynopathy ’ were a mode of treatment that
could be left off if it did not suit the constitution, I should de-
cidedly recommend it.

But it’s worse than opium-eating—once begin and you must
go on, and so, though I ascribe my own good condition mainly
to the care my wife takes of me, I dare not recommend it to
you, lest perchance you should get hold of the wrong medicine.

Beyond spending a night awake now and then I am in very
good order, and I am going to spend my vacation in a spasmodic
effort to lick the Manual into shape and work off some other
arrears.

My wife is very fairly well, and, I trust, finally freed from
all the symptoms which alarmed me so much. I dread the com-
ing round of September for her again, but it must be faced.

The babbies are flourishing; and beyond the facts that we
have a lunatic neighbour on one side and an empty house on the
other, that it has cost me about twice as much to get into my
house as I expected, that the cistern began to leak and spoil a
ceiling, and such other small drawbacks, the new house is a
decided success.

I forget whether I gave you the address, which is—

26 ABBEY PLACE,
St. Joun’s Woop.

You had better direct to me there, as after the roth of this

month I shall not be here for six weeks.—Ever yours faithfully,
T. H. Huxtey.

es
250 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII

October shows an unusual entry in his diary ; the sac-
rifice of a working evening to hear Jenny Lind sing. Fond
though he was of music, as those may remember who ever
watched his face at the Sunday evening gatherings in Marl-
borough Place in the later seventies, when there was sure
to be at least a little good music or singing either from
his daughters or some of the guests, he seldom could spare
the time for concert-going or theatre-going, and the occa-
sional notes of his bachelor days, “to the opera with Spen-
cer,” had ceased as his necessary occupations grew more
engrossing.

This year his friend Hooker moved to Kew to act as
second in command to his father, Sir William Hooker, the
director of the Botanical Gardens. This move made meet-
ings between the two friends, except at clubs and societies,
more difficult, and was one of the immediate causes of the
foundation of the + Club. It is this move which is referred
to in the following letters; the “poor client” being the
wife of an old messmate of his on the Rattlesnake :—

JERMYN STREET, Mov. 17.

My pear Hooxer—My wife wrote to yours yesterday, the
enclosed note explaining the kitchen-revolution which, it seems,
must delay our meeting. When she had done, however, she did
not know where to direct it, and I am no wiser, so I send it to
you. ,

It’s a horrid nuisance and I have sworn a few, but that will
not cook the dinner, however much it may prepare me for being
cooked elsewhere. To complete my disgust at things in general,
my wife is regularly knocked up with dining out twice this
week, though it was only in the quietest way. I shall have to
lock her up altogether.

Xx has made a horrid mess of it, and I am sorry to say,
from what I know of him, that I cannot doubt where the fault
lies. The worst of it is that he has a wife and three children
over here, left without a penny or any means of support. The
poor woman wrote to me the other day, and when I went to see
her I found her at the last shilling and contemplating the work-
house as her next step. She has brothers in Australia, and it
appeared to me that the only way to do her any good was to get
her out. She cannot starve there, and there will be more hope

 
1861 A POOR CLIENT 251

for her children than an English poor-house. I am going to
see if the Emigration Commissioners will do anything for her,
as of course it is desirable to cut down the cost of exportation
to the smallest amount.

It is most lamentable that a man of so much ability should
have so utterly damned himself as X has, but he is hope-
lessly Celtic.

I shall be at the Phil. Club next Thursday.—Ever yours
faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

 

14 WAVERLEY PLAcE, Monday morning [Wov. 1861].

My pear Hooker — The obstinate manner in which Mrs.
Hooker and you go on refusing to give any address leads us to
believe that you are dwelling peripatetically in a “ Wan” with
green door and brass knocker somewhere on Wormwood
Scrubbs, and that “ Kew” is only a blind. So you see I am
obliged to inclose Mrs. Hooker’s epistle to you.

You shall have your own way about the dinner, though we
shall have triumphed over all domestic difficulties by that time,
and the first lieutenant scorns the idea of being “ worrited”
about anything. I only grieve it is such a mortal long way for
you to come.

I could find it in my heart to scold you well for your gener-
ous aid to my poor client. I assure you I told you all about the
case because it was fresh in my mind, and without the least
notion of going to you for that kind of aid. May it come back
to you in some good shape or other.

I find it is no use to look for help from the emigration people,
but I have no fear of being able to get the £50 which will send
them out by the Walter Hood.

Would it be fair to apply to Bell in such a case? I will have
a talk to you about it at the Phil. Club—Ever, my dear Hooker,
yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

In 1862, in addition to all the work connected with the
species question already detailed, Huxley published three
paleontological papers,* while the paper on the “ Anatomy
and Development of Pyrosoma,” first read on December 1,

 

* “On the new Labyrinthodonts from the coal-field of Edinburgh” ;
“On a Stalk-eyed Crustacean from the coal-fields of Paisley”; and
‘““On the Teeth of Diprotodon.”
252 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII

1859, was now published in the Proceedings of the Linnean
Society.

In the list of work in hand are four paleontological pa-
pers,* besides the slowly progressing Manual of Comparative
Anatonvy.

When he went north to deliver his lectures at Edin-
burgh ‘“ On the relation of Man to the Lower Animals,”
he took the opportunity of examining fossils at Forfar,
and lectured also at Glasgow; while at Easter he went to
Ireland; on March 15 he was at Dublin, lecturing there
on the 25th.

Reference has already been made (in the letter to C.
Darwin of May 6, 1862) to the unsatisfactory state of Hux-
ley’s health. He was further crippled by neuralgic rheu-
matism in his arm and shoulder, and to get rid of this, went
on July 1 to Switzerland for a month’s holiday. Reaching
Grindelwald on the 4th, he was joined on the 6th by Dr.
Tyndall, and with him rambled on the glacier and made
an expedition to the Faulhorn. On the 13th they went
to the Rhone glacier, meeting Sir J. Lubbock on their way,
at the other side of the Grimsel. Both here and at the
Eggischhorn, where they went a few days later, Huxley
confined himself to easy expeditions, or, as his notebook
has it, stayed “quiet” or “idle,” while the hale pair as-
cended the Galenstock and the Jungfrau.

By July 28 he was home again in time for an exam-
iners’ meeting at the London University the next day, and
a viva voce in physiology on the 4th August, before going
to Scotland to serve on the Fishery Commission.

This was the first of the numerous commissions on
which he served. With his colleagues, Dr. Lyon Playfair
(afterwards Lord Playfair) and Colonel Maxwell, he was
busy from August 8 to September 16, chiefly on the west
coast, taking evidence from the trawlers and their oppo-

 

* “On Indian Fossils,” on ‘‘ Cephalaspis and Pteraspis,” on ‘‘ Sta-
gonolepis,” and a ‘‘Memoir descriptive of Labyrinthodont remains
from the Trias and Coal of Britain,” which he first treated of in 1858,
“clearly establishing for the first time the vertebrate nature of these
remains.”—Sir M. Foster, Obit. Notice, Proc. R. S. lix. 55.
1862 EXAMINER AT COLLEGE OF SURGEONS 253

nents, and making direct investigations into the habits of
the herring.

The following letter to Mr. (afterwards Sir W. H.)
Flower, then Curator of the Royal College of Surgeons’
Museum, refers to this trip and to his appointment to the
examinership in physiology at the College of Surgeons, for
which he had applied in May and which he held until 1870.
Mr. Flower, indeed, was deeply interested at this time in
the same problems as Huxley, and helped his investigations
for Man’s Place by making a number of dissections to test
the disputed relations between the brain of man and of

the apes.

HOTEL DE LA JUNGFRAU, AEGGISCHHORN, /z/y 18, 1862.

My pear FLower—Many thanks for your letter. I shall
make my acknowledgments to the council in due form when I
have read the official announcement on my return to England.
I trust they will not have occasion to repent declining Dr. ’S
offer. At any rate I shall do my best.

I am particularly obliged to you for telling me about the
Dijon bones. Dijon lies quite in my way in returning to Eng-
land, and I shall stop a day there for the purpose of making the
acquaintance of M. Nodet and his Schizopleuron. I have a sort
of dim recollection that there are some other remains of extinct
South American mammals in the Dijon Museum which I ought
to see.

Your news about the lower jaw made me burst out into such
an exclamation that all the salle-a-manger heard me! I saw the
fitness of the thing at once. The foramen and the shape of the
condyle ought to have suggested it at once.

I have had a very pleasant trip, passing through Grindel-
wald, the Aar valley, and the Rhone valley, as far as here; but,
up to the day before yesterday, my health remained very unsatis-
factory, and I was terribly teased by the neuralgia or rheu-
matism or whatever it is.

On that day, however, I had a very sharp climb involving a
great deal of exertion and a most prodigious sweating, and on
the next morning I really woke up a new man. Yesterday I re-
peated the dose and I am in hopes now that I shall come back
fit to grapple with all the work that lies before me.—Ever, my
dear Flower, yours very faithfully, T. H. Hoxuey,

 
254 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII

This autumn he gladly took on what appeared to be an
additional piece of work. On October 12 he writes from
26 Abbey Place :—

I saw Flower yesterday, and I find that my present colleague
in the Hunterian Professorship wishes to get rid of his share
in the lectures, having, I suppose, at the eleventh hour discov-
ered his incompetency. It looks paradoxical to say so, but it
will really be easier for me to give eighteen or twenty-four lec-
tures than twelve, so that I have professed my readiness to take
as much as he likes off his hands.

This professorship had been in existence for more than
sixty years, for when the Museum of the famous anatomist
John Hunter was entrusted to the College of Surgeons by
the Government, the condition was made that “ one course
of lectures, not less than twenty-four in number, on com-
parative anatomy and other subjects, illustrated by the
preparations, shall be given every year by some member of
the company.” Huxley arranged to publish from year to
year the substance of his lectures on the vertebrates, “ and
by that process to bring out eventually a comprehensive,
though condensed, systematic work on Comparative Anat-
omy.” * ,

Of the labour entailed in this course, the late Sir W. H.
Flower wrote :—

When, in 1862, he was appointed to the Hunterian Pro-
fessorship at the College of Surgeons, he took for the subject
of several yearly courses of lectures the anatomy of the verte-
brata, beginning with the primates, and as the subject was then
rather new to him, and as it was a rule with him never to make
a statement in a lecture which was not founded upon his own
actual observation, he set to work to make a series of original
dissections of all the forms he treated of. These were carried
on in the workroom at the top of the college, and mostly in the
evenings, after his daily occupation at Jermyn Street (the
School of Mines, as it was then called) was over, an arrange-
ment which my residence in the college buildings enabled me
to make for him. These rooms contained a large store of
material, entire or partially dissected animals preserved in spirit,

 

* Comparative Anatomy, vol. i. Preface.
1862 HUNTERIAN PROFESSOR 255

which, unlike those mounted in the museum, were available for
further investigation in any direction, and these, supplemented
occasionally by fresh subjects from the Zoological Gardens,
formed the foundation of the lectures. . . . On these evenings
it was always my privilege to be with him, and to assist in the
work in which he was engaged. In dissecting, as in everything
else, he was a very rapid worker, going straight to the point he
wished to ascertain with a firm and steady hand, never diverted
into side issues, nor wasting any time in unnecessary polishing
up for the sake of appearances; the very opposite, in fact, to
what is commonly known as “ finikin.” His great facility for
bold and dashing sketching came in most usefully in this work,
the notes he made being largely helped out with illustrations.

The following is the letter in which he makes himself
known to Professor Haeckel of Jena, who, in his thanks for
the specimens, bewails the lot of ** us poor inland Germans,
who have to get help from England.”

THE RoyaLt ScHooL OF MINES,
JERMYN STREET, LONDON, October 28, 1862.

Sir—A copy of your exceedingly valuable and beautiful
monograph, “ Die Radiolarien,” came into my hands two or
three days ago, and I have been devoting the little leisure I
possess just at present to a careful study of its contents, which
are to me profoundly interesting and instructive.

Permit me to say this much by way of introduction to a
request which I have to prefer, which is, that you will be good
enough to let me have a copy of your Habitationsschrift, De
Rhizopodum Finibus, if you have one to spare. If it is sent
through Frommans of Jena to the care of Messrs. Williams and
Norgate, London, it will reach me safely.

I observe that in your preface you state that you have no
specimen of the famous Barbadoes deposit. As I happen to
possess some from Schomburgk’s own collection, I should be
ashamed to allow you any longer to suffer from that want, and I
beg your acceptance of the inclosed little packet. If this is not
sufficient, pray let me know and I will send you as much more.

If you desire it, I can also send you some of the Oran earth,
and as much as you like of the Atlantic deep-sea soundings,
which are almost entirely made up of Globigcrina and Polycis-
ttna.—I am, Sir, yours very faithfully,

Tuomas H. Huxtey.
256 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII

The next letter refers to the scientific examinations at
the University of London.

Dec. 4, 1862.

My pear Hooxer—I look upon you as art and part of the
Natural History Review, though not ostensibly one of the gang,
so I bid you to a feast, partly of reason and partly of mutton, at
my house on December 11 (being this day week) at half-past
six. Do come if you can, for we have not seen your ugly old
phiz for ages, and should be comforted by an inspection thereof,
however brief.

I did my best yesterday to get separate exhibitions for Chem-
istry, Botany, and Zoological Biology, at the committee yester-
day,* and I suspect from your letter that if you had been there
you would have backed me. However, it is clear they only
mean to give separate exhibits for Chemistry and Biology as a
whole.

Because Botany and Zoology are, philosophically speaking,
cognate subjects, people are under the delusion that it is easier
to work both up at the same time, than it would be to work up,
say, Chemistry and Botany. Just fancy asking a young man
who has heaps of other things to work up for the B.Sc., to
qualify himself for honours both in botany, histological, sys-
tematic, and physiological. That is to say, to get a practical
knowledge of both these groups of subjects.

I really think the botanical and zoological examiners ought
to memorialise the senate jointly on the subject. The present
system leads to mere sham and cram.—Ever yours,

T. H. Huxtey.

The year 1863, notable for the publication of Huxley’s
first book, found him plunged deep in an immense quantity
of work of all sorts. He was still examiner in Physiology
and Comparative Anatomy at the London University, a
post he held from 1855 to 1863, and again from 1865 to
1870, “ making,” as Sir Michael Foster says, “even an
examination feel the influence of the new spirit in biology;
and among his examinees at that time there was one at
least who, knowing Huxley by his writings, but by his
writings only, looked forward to the viva voce test, not as
a trial, but as an occasion of delight.”

 

* At the London University.
1863 SPECIES AND STERILITY 257

In addition to the work mentioned in the following
letters, I note three lectures at Hull on April 6, 8, and 10;
a paper on “ Craniology ” (January 17), and his ‘‘ Letter on
the Human Remains in the Shell Mounds,” in the Ethno-
logical Society’s Transactions, while the Fishery Commission
claimed much of his time, either at the Board of Trade, or
travelling over the north, east, and south coasts from the
end of July to the beginning of October, and again in
November and December.

JERMYN STREET, Afri/ 30, 1863.

My pear Kincstey—I am exceedingly pleased to have your
good word about the lectures,*—and I think I shall thereby be
encouraged to do what a great many people have wished—that
is, to bring out an enlarged and revised edition of them.

The only difficulty is time—if one could but work five-and-
twenty hours a day!

With respect to the sterility question, I do not think there is
much doubt as to the effect of breeding in and in in destroying
fertility. But the sterility which must be obtained by the selec-
tive breeder in order to convert his morphological species into
physiological species—such as we have in nature—must be quite
irrespective of breeding in and in.

There is no question of breeding in and in between a horse
and an ass, and yet their produce is usually a sterile hybrid.

So if Carrier and Tumbler, e.g., were physiological species
equivalent to Horse and Ass, their progeny ought to be sterile
or semi-sterile. So far as experience has gone, on the contrary,
it is perfectly fertile—as fertile as the progeny of Carrier and
Carrier or Tumbler and Tumbler.

From the first time that I wrote about Darwin’s book in the
Times and in the Westminster until now, it has been obvious to
me that this is the weak point of Darwin’s doctrine. He has
shown that selective breeding is a vera causa for morphological
species; he has not yet shown it a vera causa for physiological
species.

But I entertain little doubt that a carefully devised system
of experimentation would produce physiological species by selec-
tion—only the feat has not been performed yet.

I hope you received a copy of Man’s Place in Nature, which
I desired should be sent to you long ago. Don’t suppose I ever

 

* See p. 223.
258 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII

expect an acknowledgment of a book—it is one of the greatest
nuisances in the world to have that to do, and I never do it—
but as you mentioned the Lectures and not the other, I thought
it might not have reached you. If it has not, pray let me know
and a copy shall be forwarded, as I want you very much to
read Essay No. 2.

I have a great respect for all the old bottles, and if the new
wine can be got to go into them and not burst them I shall be
very glad—I confess I do not see my way to it; on the con-
trary, the longer I live and the more I learn the more hopeless
to my mind becomes the contradiction between the theory of the
universe as understood and expounded by Jewish and Christian
theologians, and the theory of the universe which is every day
and every year growing out of the application of scientific
methods to its phenomena.

Whether astronomy and geology can or cannot be made to
agree with the statements as to the matters of fact laid down
in Genesis—whether the Gospels are historically true or not
—are matters of comparatively small moment in the face of the
impassable gulf between the anthropomorphism (however re-
fined) of theology and the passionless impersonality of the un-
known and unknowable which science shows everywhere under-
lying the thin veil of phenomena.

Here seems to me to be the great gulf fixed between science
and theology—beside which all Colenso controversies, reconcile-
ments of Scripture 4 la Pye Smith, etc., cut a very small figure.

You must have thought over all this long ago; but steeped
as I am in scientific thought from morning till night, the con-
trast has perhaps a greater vividness to me. I go into society,
and except among two or three of my scientific colleagues I
find myself alone on these subjects, and as hopelessly at variance
with the majority of my fellow-men as they would be with their
neighbours if they were set down among the Ashantees. I don’t
like this state of things for myself—least of all do I see how
it will work out for my children. But as my mind is constituted,
there is no way out of it, and I can only envy you if you can
see things differently—Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

JERMYN STREET, Jay 5, 1863.
My pear Kincstey — My wife and children are away at
Felixstow on the Suffolk coast, and as I run down on Saturday
and come back on Monday your MS. has been kept longer than
1863 THE ADVANCE OF MANKIND 259
it should have been. I am quite agreed with the general tenor
of your argument; and indeed I have often argued against those
who maintain the intellectual gulf between man and the lower
animals to be an impassable one, by pointing to the immense
intellectual chasm as compared to the structural differences
between two species of bees or between sheep and goat or dog
and wolf. So again your remarks upon the argument drawn
from the apparent absence of progression in animals seem to
me to be quite just. You might strengthen them much by refer-
ence to the absence of progression in many races of men. The
West African savage, as the old voyagers show, was in just the
same condition two hundred years ago as now—and I suspect
that the modern Patagonian is as nearly as possible the unim-
proved representative of the makers of the flint implements of
Abbeville.

Lyell’s phrase is very good, but it is a simple application of
Darwin's views to human history. The advance of mankind
has everywhere depended on the production of men of genius;
and that production is a case of “spontaneous variation” be-
coming hereditary, not by physical propagation, but by the help
of language, letters and the printing press. Newton was to all
intents and purposes a “sport” of a dull agricultural stock, and
his intellectual powers are to a certain extent propagated by the
grafting of the “ Principia,” his brain-shoot, on us.

Many thanks for your letter. It is a great pleasure to me to
be able to speak out to any one who, like yourself, is striving to
get at truth through a region of intellectual and moral influences
so entirely distinct from those to which I am exposed.

Iam not much given to open my heart to anybody, and on
looking back I am often astonished at the way in which I threw
myself and my troubles at your head, in those bitter days when
my poor boy died. But the way in which you received my
heathen letters set up a freemasonry between us, at any rate on
my side; and if they make you a bishop I advise you not to let
your private secretary open any letters with my name in the
corner, for they are as likely as not to contain matters which
will make the clerical hair stand on end.

Iam too much a believer in Butler and in the great principle
of the “ Analogy” that “there is no absurdity in theology so
great that you cannot parallel it by a greater absurdity of
Nature” (it is not commonly stated in this way), to have any
difficulties about miracles. I have never had the least sympathy
with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by
260 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII

nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the
atheistic and infidel school.

Nevertheless, I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly
what the Christian world call, and, so far as I can see, are justi-
fied in calling, atheist and infidel. I cannot see one shadow or
tittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phe-
nomena of the universe stands to us in the relation of a Father
—loves us and cares for us as Christianity asserts. On the con-
trary, the whole teaching of experience seems to me to show
that while the governance (if I may use the term) of the uni-
verse is rigorously just and substantially kind and beneficent,
there is no more relation of affection between governor and
governed than between me and the twelve judges. I know the
administrators of the law desire to do their best for every-
body, and that they would rather not hurt me than other-
wise, but I also know that under certain circumstances they
will most assuredly hang me; and that in any case it would
be absurd to suppose them guided by any particular affection
for me.

This seems to me to be the relation which exists between the
cause of the phenomena of this universe and myself. I submit
to it with implicit obedience and perfect cheerfulness, and the
more because my small intelligence does not see how any other
arrangement could possibly be got to work as the world is con-
stituted.

But this is what the Christian world calls atheism, and be-
cause all my toil and pains does not enable me to see my way
to any other conclusion than this, a Christian judge would (if
he knew it) refuse to take my evidence in a court of justice
against that of a Christian ticket-of-leave man.

So with regard to the other great Christian dogmas, the im-
mortality of the soul, and the future state of rewards and punish-
ments, what possible objection a priori can I—who am com-
pelled perforce to believe in the immortality of what we call
Matter and Force and in a very unmistakable present state of
rewards and punishments for all our deeds—have to these doc-
trines? Give mea scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump
at them.

But read Butler, and see to what drivel even his great mind
descends when he has to talk about the immortality of the soul !
I have never seen an argument on that subject which from a
scientific point of view is worth the paper it is written upon.
All resolve themselves into this formula:—The doctrine of the
1863 FACT AND SPECULATION 261

immortality of the soul is very pleasant and very useful, there-
fore it is true.

All the grand language about “human aspiration,” “ con-
sistency with the divine justice,” etc. etc., collapses into this at
last—Better the misery of the “ Vale! in «ternum vale!” ten
times over than the opium of such empty sophisms—I have
drunk of that cup to the bottom.

Iam called away and must close my letter. Don’t trouble
to answer it unless you are so minded.—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxzey.

JERMYN STREET, J/ay 22, 1863.

My pear KincsLEy—Pray excuse my delay in replying to
your letter. I have been very much pressed for time for these
two or three days.

First touching the action of the spermatozoon. The best
information you can find on the subject is, I think, in Newport’s
papers in the Philosophical Transactions for 1851, 1853, and
1854, especially the 1853 paper. Newport treats only of the
Frog, but the information he gives is very full and definite.
Allen Thomson’s very accurate and learned article “Ovum”
in Todd’s Cyclopedia is also well worth looking through, though
unfortunately it is least full just where you want most informa-
tion. In French there is Coste’s Développement des Corps
organisés and the volume on “ Development” by Bischoff in
the French translation of the last edition of Soemmering’s
Anatomy.

So much for your inquiries as to the matters of fact. Next,
as to questions of speculation. If any expression of ignorance
on my part will bring us nearer we are likely to come into
absolute contact, for the possibilities of “may be” are, to me,
infinite.

I know nothing of Necessity, abominate the word Law (ex-
cept as meaning that we know nothing to the contrary), and
am quite ready to admit that there may be some place, “ other
side of nowhere,” par exemple, where 2+ 2==5, and all bodies
naturally repel one another instead of gravitating together.

I don’t know whether Matter is anything distinct from
Force. I don’t know that atoms are anything but pure myths.
Cogito, ergo sum is to my mind a ridiculous piece of bad logic,
all I can say at any time being “Cogito.” The Latin form I
hold to be preferable to the English “I think,” because the latter
asserts the existence of an Ego—about which the bundle of
262 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII

phenomena at present addressing you knows nothing. In fact,
if I am pushed, metaphysical speculation lands me exactly where
your friend Raphael was when his bitch pupped. In other
words, I believe in Hamilton, Mansell and Herbert Spencer
so long as they are destructive, and I laugh at their beards as
soon as they try to spin their own cobwebs.

Is this basis of ignorance broad enough for you? If you,
theologian, can find as firm footing as I, man of science, do on
this foundation of minus nought—there will be nought to fear
for our ever diverging.

For you see I am quite as ready to admit your doctrine that
souls secrete bodies as I am the opposite one that bodies secrete
souls—simply because I deny the possibility of obtaining any
evidence as to the truth and falsehood of either hypothesis. My
fundamental axiom of speculative philosophy is that materialism
and spiritualism are opposite poles of the same absurdity—the
absurdity of imagining that we know anything about either
spirit or matter.

Cabanis and Berkeley (I speak of them simply as types of
schools) are both asses, the only difference being that one is a
black donkey and the other a white one.

This universe is, I conceive, like to a great game being
played out, and we poor mortals are allowed to take a hand.
By great good fortune the wiser among us have made out some
few of the rules of the game, as at present played. We call
them “Laws of Nature,” and honour them because we find
that if we obey them we win something for our pains. The
cards are our theories and hypotheses, the tricks our experi-
mental verifications. But what sane man would endeavour to
solve this problem: given the rules of a game and the winnings,
to find whether the cards are made of pasteboard or gold-
leaf? Yet the problem of the metaphysicians is to my mind
no saner.

If you tell me that an Ape differs from a Man because the
latter has a soul and the ape has not, I can only say it may be
so; but I should uncommonly like to know how either that the
ape has not one or that the man has.

And until you satisfy me as to the soundness of your method
of investigation, I must adhere to what seems to my mind a
simpler form of notation—i.c. to suppose that all phenomena
have the same substratum (if they have any), and that soul
and body, or mental and physical phenomena, are merely diverse
manifestations of that hypothetical substratum. In this way,
1863 FOUR POSSIBILITIES 263

it seems to me, I obey the rule which works so well in practice,
of always making the simplest possible suppositions.

On the other hand, if you are of a different opinion, and
find it more convenient to call the x which underlies (hypothetic-
ally) mental phenomena, Soul, and the x which underlies (hypo-
thetically) physical phenomena, Body, well and good. The two-
fluid theory and the one-fluid theory of electricity both ac-
counted for the phenomena up to a certain extent, and both
were probably wrong. So it may be with the theories that there
is only one x in nature or two +x’s or three +’s.

For, if you will think upon it, there are only four possible
ontological hypotheses now that Polytheism is dead.

I. There is no x = Atheism on Berkeleyan prin-
ciples.
II. There is only one « =Materialism or Pantheism,

according as you turn it

/ heads or tails.
III. There are two x’s
Spirit and Matter
IV. There are three +’s
God, Souls, Matter

t = Speculators incerte sedis.

t = Orthodox Theologians.

To say that I adopt any one of those hypotheses, as a repre-
sentation of fact, would to my mind be absurd; but No. 2 is the
one I can work with best. To return to my metaphor, it chimes
in better with the rules of the game of nature than any other
of the four possibilities, to my mind.

But who knows when the great Banker may sweep away
table and cards and all, and set us learning a new game? What
will become of all my poor counters then? It may turn out
that I am quite wrong, and that there are no 2’s or 20 4’s.

I am glad you appreciate the rich absurdities of the new doc-
trine of spontogenesis [?]. Against the doctrine of spontane-
ous generation in the abstract I have nothing to say. Indeed it
is a necessary corollary from Darwin’s views if legitimately car-
ried out, and I think Owen smites him (Darwin) fairly for
taking refuge in ‘“‘ Pentateuchal” phraseology when he ought
to have done one of two things—(a) give up the problem, (6)
admit the necessity of spontaneous generation. It is the very
passage in Darwin’s book to which, as he knows right well, I
have always strongly objected. The + of science and the x of
genesis are two different x’s, and for any sake don’t let us con-
fuse them together. Maurice has sent me his book. I have

18
264 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII

read it, but I find myself utterly at a loss to comprehend his
point of view.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

The following letter is interesting, as showing his con-
tinued interest in the question of skull structure, as well as
his relation to his friend and fellow-worker, Dr. W. K.
Parker.

JERMYN STREET, AZarch 18, 1863.

My DEAR PaRKER—Any conclusion that I have reached will
seem to me all the better based for knowing that you have been
near or at it, and I am therefore right glad to have your letter.
If I had only time, nothing would delight me more than to go
over your preparations, but these Hunterian Lectures are about
the hardest bit of work I ever took in hand, and I am obliged to
give every minute to them. ,

By and by I will gladly go with you over your vast material.

Did you not some time ago tell me that you considered the
Y-shaped bone (so-called presphenoid) in the Pike to be the
true basisphenoid? If so, let me know before lecture to-morrow,
that I may not commit theft unawares.

I have arrived at that conclusion myself from the anatomical
relations of the bone in question to the brain and nerves.

I look upon the proposition opisthotis = turtle’s “ occipital
externe ’ = Perch’s Rocher (Cuvier) as the one thing needful
to clear up the unity of structure of the bony cranium; and it
shall be counted unto me as a great sin if I have helped to keep
you back from it. The thing has been dawning upon me ever
since I read Kolliker’s book two summers ago, but I have never
had time to work it out—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

The following extracts from a letter to Hooker and a
letter to Darwin describe the pressure of his work at this
time.

1863.

My pear Hooxer—.. . I would willingly send a paper to
the Linnean this year if I could, but I do not see how it is
practicable. I lecture five times a week from now till the middle
-of February. I then have to give eighteen lectures at the Coll.
Surgeons—six on classification, and twelve on the vertebrate
skeleton. I must write a paper on this new Glyptodon, with
some eighteen to twenty plates. A preliminary notice has
already gone to the Royal Society. I have a decade of fossil
1863 PRESSURE OF WORK 265

fish in progress; a fellow in the country will keep on sending me
splendid new Labyrinthodonts from the coal, and that d—d
manual must come out.—A yes pitié de mot. T. H. H.

JERMYN STREET, /2/y 2, 1863.

My pear Darwin—I am horribly loth to say that I cannot
do anything you want done; and partly for that reason and
partly because we have been very busy here with some new
arrangements during the last day or two, I did not at once reply
to your note.

I am afraid, however, I cannot undertake any sort of new
work. In spite of working like a horse (or if you prefer it, like
an ass), I find myself scandalously in arrear, and I shall get into
terrible hot water if I do not clear off some things that have
been hanging about me for months and years.

If you will send me up the specimens, however, I will ask
Flower (whom I see constantly) to examine them for you. The
examination will be no great trouble, and I am ashamed to make
a fuss about it, but I have sworn a big oath to take no fresh
work, great or small, until certain things are done.

I wake up in the morning with somebody saying in my ear,
“ A is not done, and B is not done, and C is not done, and D is
not done,” etc., and a feeling like a fellow whose duns are all
in the street waiting for him. By the way, you ask me what I
am doing now, so I will just enumerate some of the A, B, and
C’s aforesaid.

A. Editing lectures on Vertebrate skull and bringing them
out in the Medical Times.

B. Editing and re-writing lectures on Elementary Physiolo-
gy,* just delivered here and reported as I went along.

C. Thinking of my course of twenty-four lectures on the
Mammalia at Coll. Surgeons in next spring, and making investi-
gations bearing on the same.

D. Thinking of and working at a Manual of Comparative
Anatomy (may it be d—d), which I have had in hand these
seven years.

 

* Delivered on Friday evenings from April to June at Jermyn
Street, and reported in the Medical Times. They formed the basis of
his well-known little book on Elementary Physiology, published 1866.
He writes on April 22:—‘‘ Macmillan has just been with me, and I
am let in for a school book on physiology based on these lectures of
mine. Money arrangements not quite fixed yet, but he is a good fel-
low, and will not do me unnecessarily.”
266 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XVII

E. Getting heaps of remains of new Labyrinthodonts from
the Glasgow coalfield, which have to be described.

F. Working at a memoir on Glyptodon based on a new and
almost entire specimen at the College of Surgeons.

G. Preparing a new decade upon Fossil fishes for this place.

H. Knowing that I ought to have written long ago a de-
scription of a most interesting lot of Indian fossils sent to me
by Oldham.

I. Being blown up by Hooker for doing nothing for the
Natural History Review.

K. Being bothered by sundry editors just to write articles
“which you know you can knock off in a moment.”

L. Consciousness of having left unwritten letters which
ought to have been written long ago, especially to C. Darwin.

M. General worry and botheration. Ten or twelve people
taking up my time all day about their own affairs.

N.O. P.Q. R.S. T. U. V. W. X. Y. Z.

Societies.

Clubs.

Dinners, evening parties, and all the apparatus for wasting
time called “Society.” Colensoism and botheration about
Moses. . . . Finally pestered to death in public and private be-
cause I am supposed to be what they call a “ Darwinian.”

If that is not enough, I could exhaust the Greek alphabet
for heads in addition.

I am glad to hear that Wyman thinks well of my book, as
he is very competent to judge. I hear it is republished in
America, but I suppose I shall get nothing out of it.*

An undated letter to Kingsley, who had suggested that
he should write an article on Prayer, belongs probably to
the autumn of 1863 :—

I should like very much to write such an article as you sug-
gest, but I am very doubtful about undertaking it for Fraser.
Anything I could say would go to the root of praying altogether,
for inasmuch as the whole universe is governed, so far as I
can see, in the same way, and the moral world is as much gov-
erned by laws as the physical—whatever militates against asking
for one sort of blessing seems to me to tell with the same force
against asking for any other.

 

*In this expectation, however, he was agreeably disappointed by
the action of D. Appleton and Company, as is told on page 305,
1863 PRESSURE OF WORK 267

Not that I mean for a moment to say that prayer is illogical,
for if the whole universe is ruled by fixed laws it is just as
logically absurd for me to ask you to answer this letter as to
ask the Almighty to alter the weather. The whole argument is
an “old foe with a new face,” the freedom and necessity ques-
tion over again.

If I were to write about the question I should have to
develop all this side of the problem, and then having shown
that logic, as always happens when it is carried to extremes,
leaves us bombinantes in vacuo, I should appeal to experience to
show that prayers of this sort are not answered, and to science
to prove that if they were they would do a great deal of harm.

But you know this would never do for the atmosphere of
Fraser. It would be much better suited for an article in my
favourite organ, the wicked Westminster.

However, to say truth, I do not see how I am to undertake
anything fresh just at present. I have promised an article for
Macmillan ages ago; and Masson scowls at me whenever we
meet. I am afraid to go through the Albany lest Cook should
demand certain reviews of books which have been long in my
hands. I am just completing a long memoir for the Linnean
Society; a monograph on certain fossil reptiles must be finished
before the new year. My lectures have begun, and there is a
certain “ Manual” looming in the background. And to crown
all, these late events * have given me such a wrench that I feel
I must be prudent.

The following reference to Robert Lowe, afterwards
Lord Sherbrooke, has a quasi-prophetic interest :—

May 7.—Dined at the Smiths’ + last night. Lowe was to
have been there, but had a dinner-party of his own. . . . I have
come to the conviction that our friend Bob is a most admirable,
well-judging statesman, for he says I am the only man fit to
be at the head of the British Museum, + and that if he had his
way he would put me there.

Years afterwards, on Sir R. Owen’s retirement, he was
offered the post, but declined it, as he greatly disliked the
kind of work. At the same time, he pointed out to the

 

* The death of his brother.
+ Dr. (afterwards Sir William) Smith, of dictionary fame.
¢ i.e. of the Natural History Collections.
268 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII

Minister who made the offer that the man of all others for
the post would be the late distinguished holder of it, Sir W.
H. Flower, a suggestion happily acted on.

Early in August a severe loss befell him in the sudden
death of his brother George, who had been his close friend
ever since he had returned from Australia, who had given
him all the help and sympathy in his struggles that could
be given by a man of the world without special interests in
science or literature. With brilliancy enough to have won
success if he had had patience to ensure it, he was not only
a pleasant companion, a “clubbable man” in Johnson’s
phrase, but a friend to trust. The two households had seen
much of one another; the childless couple regarded their
brother’s children almost as their own. Thus a real gap
was made in the family circle, and the trouble was not
lessened by the fact that George Huxley’s affairs were left
in great confusion, and his brother not only spent a great
deal of time in looking after the interests of the widow, but
took upon himself certain obligations in order to make
things straight, with the result that he was even compelled
to part with his Royal Medal, the gold of which was worth
£50.
CHAPTER XVIII
1864

THE year 1864 was much like 1863. The Hunterian
Lectures were still part of his regular work. The Fishery
Commission claimed a large portion of his time. From
March 28 to April 2 he was in Cornwall; on May 7 at
Shoreham; from July 24 to September 9 visiting the coasts
of Scotland and Ireland. The same pressure of work con-
tinued. He published four papers on paleontological or
anatomical subjects in the Natural History Revicw,* he
wrote “ Further Remarks upon the Human Remains from
the Neanderthal,” and later (see pp. 273 and 288), dealing
with “ Criticisms on the Origin of Species” (Collected Essays
IT, p. 80, “ Darwiniana”), he gently but firmly dispersed
several misconceptions of his old friend Kolliker as to the
plain meaning of the book; and ridiculed the pretentious
ignorance of M. Flourens’ dicta upon the same subject;
while in the winter he delivered a course of lectures to
workingmen on “ The Various Races of Mankind,” a choice
of subject which shows that his chief interest at that time
lay in Ethnology.

JERMYN STREET, /av. 16, 1864.

My pear Darwin—I have had no news of you for a long
time, but I earnestly hope you are better.

Have you any objection to putting your name to Flower's
certificate for the Royal Society herewith inclosed? It will

 

* On ‘Cetacean Fossils termed Ziphius by Cuvier,” in the 7rans-
actions of the Geological Society; in those of the Zoological, papers on
‘“Arctocebus Calabarensis” and ‘‘the Structure of the Stomach in
Desmodus Rufus”; and on the ‘‘ Osteology of the Genus Glyptodon,”
in the PAil. Trans.

269
270 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XVIII

please him much if you will; and I go bail for his being a thor-
oughly good man in all senses of the word—which, as you know,
is more than I would say for everybody.

Don’t write any reply; but Mrs. Darwin perhaps will do
me the kindness to send the thing on to Lyell as per enclosed
envelope. I will write him a note about it.

We are all well, barring customary colds and various forms
of infantile pip. As for myself, I am flourishing like a green
bay tree (appropriate comparison, Soapy Sam would observe),
in consequence of having utterly renounced societies and society
since October.

I have been working like a horse, however, and shall work
“horser” as my college lectures begin in February.—Tout a
vous, T. H. Huxtey.

RoyvaL SCHOOL OF MINEs,
JERMYN STREET, April 18, 1864.

My bear Darwin—I was rejoiced to see your handwriting
again, so much so that I shall not scold you for undertaking the
needless exertion (as it’s my duty to do) of writing to thank me
for my book.*

I thought the last lecture would be nuts for you, but it is
really shocking. There is not the smallest question that Owen
wrote both the article “ Oken” and the Archetype Book, which
appeared in its second edition in French—why, I know not. I
think that if you will look at what I say again, there will not
be much doubt left in your mind as to the identity of the writer
of the two.

The news you give of yourself is most encouraging ; but pray
don’t think of doing any work again yet. Careful as I have been
during this last winter not to burn the candle at both ends, I
have found myself, since the pressure of my lectures ceased, in
considerable need of quiet, and I have been lazy accordingly.

I don’t know that I fear, with you, caring too much for sci-
ence—for there are lots of other things I should like to go into
as well, but I do lament more and more as time goes on, the
necessity of becoming more and more absorbed in one kind of
work, a necessity which is created for any one in my position,
partly by one’s reputation, and partly by one’s children. For
directly a man gets the smallest repute in any branch of science,
the world immediately credits him with knowing about ten

 

* Hunterian Lectures on Anatomy.
1864 LETTER TO HIS SISTER 271

times as much as he really does, and he becomes bound in com-
mon honesty to do his best to climb up to his reputed place. And
then the babies are a devouring fire, eating up the present and
discounting the future; they are sure to want all the money one
can earn, and to be the better for all the credit one can win.

However, I should fare badly without the young monkeys.
Your pet Marian is almost as shy as ever, though she has left
off saying “can’t,” by the way.

My wife is wonderfully well. As I tell her, Providence has
appointed her to take care of me when I am broken down and
decrepit.

I hope you can say as much of Mrs. Darwin. Pray give her
my kind regards——And believe me, ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

A letter to his sister gives a sketch of his position at
this time, speaking of which he says to Dr. (afterwards Sir
J.) Fayrer, “ You and I have travelled a long way, in all
senses, since you settled my career for me on the steps of
the Charing Cross Hospital.” It must be remembered that
his sister was living in Tennessee, and that her son at fifteen
was serving in the Confederate army.

JERMYN STREET, 4/5/64.

You will want to know something about my progress in the
world. Well, at this moment I am Professor of Natural History
here, and Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy at the
College of Surgeons. The former is the appointment I have held
since 1855; the latter chair I was asked to take last year, and
now I have delivered two courses in that famous black gown
with the red facings which the doctor will recollect very well.
What with the duties of these two posts and other official and
non-official business, I am worked to the full stretch of my
powers, and sometimes a little beyond them; though hitherto
I have stood the wear and tear very well.

I believe I have won myself a pretty fair place in science,
but in addition to that I have the reputation (of which, I fear,
you will not approve) of being a great heretic and a savage
controversialist always in rows. To the accusation of heresy
I fear I must plead guilty; but the second charge proceeds only,
I do assure you, from a certain unconquerable hatred of lies
and humbug which I cannot get over.
272 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVIII

I have read all you tell me about the south with much in-
terest and with the warmest sympathy, so far as the fate of the
south affects you. But I am in the condition of most thoughtful
Englishmen. My heart goes with the south, and my head with
the north.

I have no love for the Yankees, and I delight in the energy
and self-sacrifice of your people; but for all that, I cannot doubt
that whether you beat the Yankees or not, you are struggling
to uphold a system which must, sooner or later, break down.

I have not the smallest sentimental sympathy with the negro;
don’t believe in him at all, in short. But it is clear to me that
slavery means, for the white man, bad political economy; bad
social morality; bad internal political organisation, and a bad
influence upon free labour and freedom all over the world. For
the sake of the white man, therefore, for your children and
grandchildren, directly, and for mine, indirectly, I wish to see
this system ended.* Would that the south had had the wisdom
to initiate that end without this miserable war!

All this must jar upon you sadly, and I grieve that it does
so; but I could not pretend to be other than I am, even to please
you. Let us agree to differ upon this point. If I were in your
place I doubt not I should feel as you do; and, when I think of
you, I put myself in your place and feel with you as your brother
Tom. The learned gentleman who has public opinions for which
he is responsible is another “ party” who walks about in T’s
clothes when he is not thinking of his sister.

If this were not my birthday I should not feel justified in
taking a morning’s holiday to write this long letter to you. The
ghosts of undone pieces of work are dancing about me, and I
must come to an end.

Give my love to your husband. I am glad to hear he wears
so well. And don’t forget to give your children kindly thoughts
of their uncle. Dr. Wright gives a great account of my name-
sake, and says he is the handsomest youngster in the Southern
States. That comes of his being named after me, you know
how renowned for personal beauty I always was.

I asked Dr. Wright if you had taken to spectacles, and he
seemed to think not. I had a pain about my eyes a few months

 

* Cf. Reader, February 27 onwards, where these general arguments
against slavery appear in a controversy arising from his ninth Hun-
terian Lecture, in which, while admitting negro inferiority, he refutes
those who justify slavery on the ground that physiologically the
negro is very low in the scale.
1864 CRITICISMS OF THE OR/GIN OF SPECIES 273

ago, but I found spectacles made this rather worse and left
them off again. However, I do catch myself holding a news-
paper further off than I used to do.
* Now don’t let six months go by without writing again. If
our little venture succeeds this time, we shall send again.*—
Ever, my dearest Lizzie, your affectionate brother,

T. H. Huxtey.

He writes to his wife, who had taken the children to
Margate :-—

Sept. 22.—I am now busy over a paper for the Zool. Soc.;
after that there is one for the Ethnological which was read last
session though not written. . . . Don’t blaspheme about going
into the bye-ways. They are both in the direct road of the
book, only over the hills instead of going over the beaten path.

Oct. 6.—I heard from Darwin last night jubilating over an
article of mine which is published in the last number of the
Nat. Hist. Review, and which he is immensely pleased with. . . .
My lectures tire me, from want of practice, I suppose. I shall
soon get into swing.

The article in question was the “ Criticisms of the Origin
of Species,” of which he writes to Darwin :—

JERMYN STREET, Oct. 5, 1864.

My pear Darwin—I am very glad to see your handwriting
(in ink) again, and none the less on account of the pretty words
into which it was shaped.

It is a great pleasure to me that you like the article, for it
was written very hurriedly, and I did not feel sure when I had
done that I had always rightly represented your views.

Hang the two scalps up in your wigwam!

Flourens I could have believed anything of, but how a man
of Kolliker’s real intelligence and ability could have so mis-
understood the question is more than I can comprehend.

It will be a thousand pities, however, if any review inter-
feres with your saying something on the subject yourself. Un-
less it should give you needless work I heartily wish you would.

Everybody tells me I am looking so exceedingly well that I
am ashamed to say a word to the contrary. But the fact is, I
get no exercise, and a great deal of bothering work on our Com-

 

* 7.e.a package of various presents to the family.
274 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XVIII

mission’s Cruise; and though much fatter (indeed a regular
bloater myself), I am not up to the mark. Next year I will
have a real holiday.*

I am a bachelor, my wife and belongings being all at that
beautiful place, Margate. When I came back I found them all
looking so seedy that I took them off bag and baggage to that,
as the handiest place, before a week was over. They are won-
derfully improved already, my wife especially being abundantly
provided with her favourite east wind. Your godson is growing
a very sturdy fellow, and I begin to puzzle my head with think-
ing what he is and what he is not to be taught.

Please to remember me very kindly to Mrs. Darwin, and
believe me, yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

The following illustrates the value he set upon public
examinations as to a practical means for spreading scientific
education, and upon first-rate examiners as a safeguard of
proper methods of teaching.

Oct. 6, 1864.

My pear Hooxer—Donnelly told me to-day that you had
been applied to by the Science and Tarts Department to examine
for them in botany, and that you had declined.

Will you reconsider the matter? I have always taken a very
great interest in the science examinations, looking upon them, as
I do, as the most important engine for forcing science into ordi-
nary education.

The English nation will not take science from above, so it
must get it from below.

Having known these examinations from the beginning, I
can assure you that they are very genuine things, and are work-
ing excellently. And what I have regretted from the first is
that the botanical business was not taken in hand by you, instead
of by ;

Now, like a good fellow, think better of it. The papers are
necessarily very simple, and one of Oliver’s pupils could look
them over for you. Let us have your co-operation and the
advantage of that reputation for honesty and earnestness which
you have contrived (Heaven knows how) to get.

I have come back fat and seedy for want of exercise. - All

 

 

* At the end of the year, as so often, he went off fora ploy with
Tyndall, this time into Derbyshire, walking vigorously over the moors.
1864 DARWIN’S COPLEY MEDAL : 275

my belongings are at Margate. Hope you don’t think my review
of Darwin's critics too heretical if you have seen it—Ever yours

faithfully, T. H. Huxiey

When is our plan for getting some kind of meetings during
the winter to be organised?

The next two letters refer to the award of the Copley
Medal to Mr. Darwin. Huxley was exceedingly indignant
at an attempt on the part of the president to discredit the
Origin by a side wind :—

JERMYN STREET, /Vov. 4, 1864.

My pear Darwin—I write two lines which are not to be
answered, just as to say how delighted I am at the result of the
doings of the Council of the Royal Society yesterday. Many of
us were somewhat doubtful of the result, and the more ferocious
sort had begun to whet their beaks and sharpen their claws in
preparation for taking a very decided course of action had there
been any failure of justice this time. But the affair was settled
by a splendid majority, and our ruffled feathers are smoothed
down.

Your well-won reputation would not have been lessened by
the lack of the Copley, but it would have been an indelible re-
proach to the Royal Society not to have given it you, and a
good many of us had no notion of being made to share that
ignominy.

But quite apart from all these grand public-spirited motives
and their results, you ought as a philanthropist to be rejoiced in
the great satisfaction the award has given to your troops of
friends, to none more than my wife (whom I woke up to tell
the news when I got home late last night).—Yours ever,

T. H. Huxtey.

Please remember us kindly to Mrs. Darwin, and make our
congratulations to her on owning a Copley medallist.

JERMYN STREET, Dec. 3, 1864.
My pear Hooxer—I wish you had been at the Anniversary
Meeting and Dinner, because the latter was very pleasant, and
the former, to me, very disagreeable. My distrust of Sabine is
as you know chronic, and I went determined to keep careful
watch on his address, lest some crafty phrase injurious to Dar-
win should be introduced. My suspicions were justified. The
276 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII

only part of the address to Darwin written by Sabine himself
contained the following passage :—

“ Speaking generally and collectively, we have expressly
omitted it (Darwin’s theory) from the grounds of our award.”

Of course this would be interpreted by everybody as mean-
ing that, after due discussion, the council had formally resolved
not only to exclude Darwin’s theory from the grounds of the
award, but to give public notice through the president that they
had done so, and furthermore, that Darwin’s friends had been
base enough to accept an honour for him on the understanding
that in receiving it he should be publicly insulted!

I felt that this would never do, and therefore when the
resolution for printing the address was moved, I made a speech
which I took care to keep perfectly cool and temperate, disavow-
ing all intention of interfering with the liberty of the president
to say what he pleased, but exercising my constitutional right
of requiring the minutes of council making the award to be
read, in order that the Society might be informed whether the
conditions implied by Sabine had been imposed or not.

The resolution was read, and of course nothing of the kind
appeared. Sabine didn’t exactly like it, I believe. Both Busk
and Falconer remonstrated against the passage to him, and I
hope it will be withdrawn when the address is printed.*

If not there will be an awful row, and I for one will show
no mercy.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

The foundation of the + Club towards the end of 1864
was a notable event for Huxley and his circle of scientific
friends. It was growing more and more difficult for them
to see one another except now and again at meetings of the
learned societies, and even that was quite uncertain. The
pressure of Huxley’s own work may be inferred from his
letters at this time (especially to Darwin, July 2, 1863, and
January 16, 1864). Not only society, but societies had to
be almost entirely given up. Moreover, the distance from
one another at which some of these friends lived, added
another difficulty, so that Huxley writes to Hooker in his
“remote province” of Kew: “I wonder if we are ever to
meet again in this world.” Accordingly in January 1864,

 

* The passage stands in the published address, but followed by
another passage which softens it down.
1864 THE xX CLUB 277

Hooker gladly embraced a proposal of Huxley’s to organise
some kind of regular meeting, a proposal which bore fruit
in the establishment of the + Club. On November 3, 1864,
the first meeting was held at St. George’s Hotel, Albe-
marle Street, where they resolved to dine regularly “ except
when Benham cannot have us, in which case dine at the
Atheneum.” In the latter eighties, however, the Athenaum
became the regular place of meeting, and it was here that
the “ coming of age” of the club was celebrated in 1885.

Eight members met at the first meeting; the second
meeting brought their numbers up to nine by the addition
of W. Spottiswoode, but the proposal to elect a tenth mem-
ber was never carried out. On the principle of lucus a non
lucendo, this lent an additional appropriateness to the sym-
bol x, the origin of which Huxley thus describes in his
reminiscences of Tyndall in the Ninctecnth Century for Janu-
ary 1894 :—

. At starting, our minds were terribly exercised over the name
and constitution of our society. As opinions on this grave
matter were no less numerous than the members—indeed more
so—we finally accepted the happy suggestion of our mathema-
ticians to call it the x Club; and the proposal of some genius
among us, that we should have no rules, save the unwritten law
not to have any, was carried by acclamation.

Besides Huxley, the members of the club were as fol-
lows :-—

George Busk, F.R.S. (1807-87), then secretary of the
Linnean Society, a skilful anatomist.*

Edward Frankland (1825-1899), For. Sec. R.S., K.C.B.,
then Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution, and
afterwards at the Royal College of Science.

Thomas Archer Hirst, F.R.S., then mathematical master
at University College School.t

 

* He served as surgeon to the hospital ship Dreadnought at Green-
wich till 1856, when he resigned, and, retiring from practice, devoted
himself to scientific pursuits, and was elected President of the College
of Surgeons in 1871.

+ In 1865 appointed Professor of Physics; in 1867, of Pure Mathe-
matics, at University College, London; and from 1873 to 1883 Director
278 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVIII

Joseph Dalton Hooker, F.R.S., K.C.S.1, Pres. R.S.
1873, the great botanist, then Assistant Director at Kew
Gardens to his father, Sir William Hooker.

Sir John Lubbock, Bart., F.R.S., M.P., the youngest
of the nine, who had already made his mark in archeology,
and was then preparing to bring out his Prehistoric Times.

Herbert Spencer, who had already published Social
Statistics, Principles of Psychology, and First Principles.

William Spottiswoode (1825-1883), F.R.S., Treasurer
and afterwards President R.S. 1878, who carried on the
business of the Queen’s printer as well as being deeply
versed in mathematics, philosophy, and languages.

John Tyndall, F.R.S. (1820-1893), who had been for the
last eleven years Professor of Natural Philosophy at the
Royal Institution, where he succeeded Faraday as super-
intendent.

The one object, then, of the club was to afford a certain
meeting-ground for a few friends who were bound together
by personal regard and community of scientific interests, yet
were in danger of drifting apart under the stress of circum-
stances. They dined together on the first Thursday in each
month, except July, August, and September, before the
meeting of the Royal Society, of which all were members
excepting Mr. Spencer, the usual! dining hour being six, so
that they should be in good time for the society’s meeting at
eight; and a minute of December 5, 1885, when Huxley
was treasurer and revived the ancient custom of making
some note of the conversation, throws light on the habits
of the club. ‘ Got scolded,” he writes, “for dining at 6.30.
Had to prove we have dined at 6.30 for a long time by
evidence of waiter. (At the February meeting, however,
“agreed to fix dinner hour six hereafter.”) Talked politics,
scandal, and the three classes of witnesses—liars, d d
liars, and experts. Huxley gave account of civil list pen-
sion. Sat to the unexampled hour of 10 P.m., except Lub-
bock who had to go to Linnean.”

 

 

of Naval Studies at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich ; an old Mar-
burg student, and intimate friend of Tyndall, whom he had succeeded
at Queenwood College in 1853. He died in 1892.
1864 THE xX CLUB 279

For some time there was a summer meeting, which con-
sisted of a week-end excursion of members and their wives
(x’s + yv’s, as the correct formula ran) to some place like
Burnham or Maidenhead, Oxford or Windsor; but this
grew increasingly difficult to arrange, and dropped before
very long.

Guests were not excluded from the dinners of the club;
men of science or letters of almost every nationality dined
with the at one time or another; Darwin, W. K. Clifford,
Colenso, Strachey, Tollemache, Helps; Professors Bain,
Masson, Robertson Smith, and Bentham the botanist, Mr.
John Morley, Sir D. Galton, Mr. Jodrell, the founder of
several scientific lectureships; Dr. Klein; the Americans
Marsh, Gilman, A. Agassiz, and Youmans, the latter of
whom met here several of the contributors to the [nterna-
tional Science Scrics organized by him; and _ continental
representatives, as Helmholtz, Laugel, and Cornu.

Small as the club. was, the members of it were destined
to play a considerable part in the history of English science.
Five of them received the Royal Medal; three the Copley ;
one the Rumford; six were Presidents of the British Asso-
ciation; three Associates of the Institute of France; and
from amongst them the Royal Society chose a Secretary,
a Foreign Secretary, a Treasurer, and three successive
Presidents.

I think, originally (writes Huxley, l.c.) there was some
vague notion of associating representatives of each branch of
science; at any rate, the nine who eventually came together
could have managed, among us, to contribute most of the articles
to a scientific Encyclopedia.

They included leading representatives of half a dozen
branches of science:—mathematics, physics, philosophy,
chemistry, botany, and biology; and all were animated by
similar ideas of the high function of science, and of the
great Society which should be the chief representative of
science in this country. However unnecessary, it was per-
haps not unnatural that a certain jealousy of the club and
its possible influence grew up in some quarters. But what-
ever influence fell to it as it were incidentally—and earnest

19
280 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVIII

men with such opportunities of mutual understanding and
such ideals of action could not fail to have some influence
on the progress of scientific organization—it was assuredly
not sectarian nor exerted for party purposes during the
twenty-eight years of the club’s existence.

I believe that the + (continues Huxley) had the credit of
being a sort of scientific caucus, or ring, with some people. In
fact, two distinguished scientific colleagues of mine once car-
ried on a conversation (which I gravely ignored) across me,
in the smoking-room of the Athenzum, to this effect, “I say,
A., do you know anything about the x Club?” “Oh yes, B.,
I have heard of it. What do they do?” ‘“ Well, they govern
scientific affairs, and really, on the whole, they don’t do it badly.”
lf my good friends could only have been present at a few of our
meetings, they would have formed a much less exalted idea of
us, and would, I fear, have been much shocked at the sadly
frivolous tone of our ordinary conversation.

The x club is probably unique in the smallness of its
numbers, the intellectual eminence of its members, and the
length of its unchanged existence. The nearest parallel is to
be found in “ The Club.” * Like the s, “The Club ” began
with eight members at its first meeting, and of the original
members Johnson lived twenty years, Reynolds twenty-
eight, Burke thirty-three, and Bennet Langton thirty-seven.
But the ranks were earlier broken. Within ten years Gold-
smith died, and he was followed in a twelvemonth by
Nugent, and five years later by Beauclerk and Chamier.
Moreover, the eight were soon increased to twelve; then to
twenty and finally to forty, while the gaps were filled up as
they occurred.

In the x, on the contrary, nearly nineteen years passed
before the original circle was broken by the death of Spottis-
woode. From 1864 to Spottiswoode’s death in 1883 the
original circle remained unbroken; the meetings “ were
steadily continued for some twenty years, before our ranks
began to thin; and one by one, geistige Naturen such as

 

* Of which Huxley was elected a member in 1884. Tyndall and
Hooker were also members.
1864 THE ¥ CLUB 281

those for which the poet * so willingly paid the ferryman,
silent but not unregarded, took the vacated places.” The
peculiar constitution of the club scarcely seemed to admit
of new members; not, at all events, without altering the
unique relation of friendship joined to common experience
of struggle and success which had lasted so long. After
the death of Spottiswoode and Busk, and the ill-health of
other members, the election of new members was indeed
mooted, but the proposal was ultimately negatived. Hux-
ley’s opinion on this point appears from letters to Sir E.
Frankland in 1886 and to Sir J. D. Hooker in 1888.

As for the filling up the vacancies in the x, I am disposed to
take Tyndall’s view of the matter. Our little club had no very
definite object beyond preventing a few men who were united by
strong personal sympathies from drifting apart by the pressure
of busy lives.

Nobody could have foreseen or expected twenty odd years
ago when we first met, that we were destined to play the parts
we have since played, and it is in the nature of things impossible
that any of the new members proposed (much as we may like
and respect them all), can carry on the work which has so
strangely fallen to us.

An axe with a new head and a new handle may be the same
axe in one sense, but it is not the familiar friend with which one
has cut one’s way through wood and brier.

And in the other letter—

What with the lame dog condition of Tyndall and Hirst and
Spencer and my own recurrent illnesses, the x is not satisfactory.
But I don’t see that much will come from putting new patches
in. The x really has no raison d’étre beyond the personal attach-
ment of its original members. Frankland told me of the names
that had been mentioned, and none could be more personally
welcome to me... but somehow or other they seem out of
place in the x.

 

* Nimm dann Fuhrmann,
Nimm die Miethe
Die Ich gerne dreifach biete ;
Zwei, die eben iiberfuhren
Waren geistige Naturen.
282 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVIII

However, I am not going to stand out against the general
wish, and I shall agree to anything that is desired.

Again—

The club has never had any purpose except the purely per-
sonal object of bringing together a few friends who did not
want to drift apart. It has happened that these cronies had
developed into big-wigs of various kinds, and therefore the club
has incidentally—I might say accidentally—had a good deal
of influence in the scientific world. But if I had to propose to
a man to join, and he were to say, Well, what is your object? I
should have to reply like the needy knife-grinder, “ Object,
God bless you, sir, we’ve none to show.”

As he wrote elsewhere (loc. cit.) :—

Later on, there were attempts to add other members, which
at last became wearisome, and had to be arrested by the agree-
ment that no proposition of that kind should be entertained,
unless the name of the new member suggested contained all
the consonants absent from the names of the old ones. In the
lack of Slavonic friends this decision put an end to the possi-
bility of increase.

After the death, in February 1892, of Hirst, a most
devoted supporter of the club, who “ would, I believe, repre-
sent it in his sole person rather than pass the day over,”
only one more meeting took place, in the-following month.
With five of the six survivors domiciled far from town,
meeting after meeting fell through, until the treasurer wrote,
“ My idea is that it is best to let it die out unobserved, and
say nothing about its decease to anyone.”

Thus it came to pass that the March meeting of the
club in 1893 remained its last. No ceremony ushered it
out of existence. Its end exemplified a saying of Sir J.
Hooker’s, “ At our ages clubs are an anachronism.” It had
met 240 times, yet, curious to say, although the average
attendance up to 1883 was seven out of nine, the full
strength of the club only met on twenty-seven occasions.
CHAPTER XIX
1865

THE progress of the American civil war suggested to
Huxley in 1865 the text for an article, “ Emancipation,
Black and White,” the emancipation of the negro in Amer-
ica and the emancipation of women in England, which ap-
peared in the Readcr of May 20 (Coll. Ess. iii. 66). His main
argument for the emancipation of the negro was that al-
ready given in his letter to his sister (p. 272); namely, that
in accordance with the moral law that no human being can
arbitrarily dominate over another without grievous damage
to his own nature, the master will benefit by freedom more
than the freed-man. And just as the negro will never take
the highest places in civilisation yet need not to be confined
to the lowest, so, he argues, it will be with women. “ Na-
ture’s old salique law will never be repealed, and no change
of dynasty will be effected,” although ‘ whatever argument
justifies a given education for all boys justifies its applica-
tion to girls as well.”

With this may be compared his letter to the Times of
July 8, 1874 (Chapter XX VII). |

No scientific monographs were published in 1865 by
Huxley, but his lectures of the previous winter to working-
men on “ The Various Races of Mankind ” are an indication
of his continued interest in Ethnology, which, set going, as
has been said, by the promise to revise the woodcuts for
Lyell’s book, found expression in such papers as the
“Human Remains in the Shell Mounds,” 1863; the
“Neanderthal Remains” of 1864; the ‘‘ Methods and
Results of Ethnology” of 1865; his Fullerian Lectures of

283
284 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIX

1866-67; papers on “Two Widely Contrasted Forms of
the Human Cranium” of 1866 and 1868; the ‘‘ Patagonian
Skulls” of 1868; and “Some Fixed Points in British
Ethnology ” of 1871—

His published ethnological papers (says Sir Michael Foster)
are not numerous, nor can they be taken as a measure of his in-
fluence on this branch of study. In many ways he has made
himself felt, not the least by the severity with which on the one
hand he repressed the pretensions of shallow persons who, tak-
ing advantage of the glamour of the Darwinian doctrine, talked
nonsense in the name of anthropological science, and on the
other hand, exposed those who in the structure of the brain or
of other parts, saw an impassable gulf between man and the
monkey. The episode of the “ hippocampus ” stirred for a while
not only science but the general public. He used his influence,
already year by year growing more and more powerful, to keep
the study of the natural history of man within its proper lines,
and chiefly with this end in view held the Presidential Chair
of the Ethnological Society in 1869-70. It was mainly through
his influence that this older Ethnological Society was, a year
later, in 1871, amalgamated with a newer rival society, the
Anthropological, under the title of “The Anthropological In-
stitute.”

During this time he was constantly occupied with
paleontological work, as the following letter to Sir C.
Lyell indicates—

JERMYN STREET, Mov. 27, 1865.

My pear Sir Cuartes—I returned last night from a hasty
journey to Ireland, whither I betook myself on Thursday night,
being attracted vulture-wise by the scent of a quantity of car-
boniferous corpses. The journey was as well worth the trouble
as any I ever undertook, seeing that in a morning’s work I
turned out ten genera of vertebrate animals of which five are
certainly new; and of these four are Labyrinthodonts, amphibia
of new types. These four are baptised Ophiderpeton, Lepter-
peton, Ichthyerpeton, Keraterpeton. They all have ossified
spinal columns and limbs. The special interest attaching to the
two first is that they represent a typeof Labyrinthodonts hitherto
unknown, and corresponding with Siren and Amphiuma among
living Amphibia. Ophiderpeton, for example, is like an eel,
about three feet long with small fore legs and rudimentary
hind ones.
1865 LETTERS TO DARWIN 285

In the year of grace 1861, there were three genera of Eu-
ropean carboniferous Labyrinthodonts known, Archegosaurus,
Scleroceplus, Parabatrachus.

The vertebral column of Archegosaurus was alone known,
and it was in a remarkably imperfect state of ossification. Since
that date, by a succession of odd chances, seven new genera
have come into my hands, and of these six certainly have well-
ossified and developed vertebral columns.

I reckon there are now about thirty genera of Labyrintho-
donts known from all parts of the world and all deposits. Of
these eleven have been established by myself in the course of
the last half-dozen years, upon remains which have come into
my hands by the merest chance.

Five and twenty years ago, all the world but yourself be-
lieved that a vertebrate animal of higher organisation than a
fish in the carboniferous rocks never existed. I think the whole
story is not a bad comment upon negative evidence.

Jan. I, 1865.

My pear Darwin—I cannot do better than write my first
letter of the year to you, if it is only to wish you and yours your
fair share (and more than your fair share, if need be) of good
for the New Year. The immediate cause of my writing, how-
ever, was turning out my pocket and finding therein an unan-
swered letter of yours containing a scrap on which is a request
for a photograph, which I am afraid I overlooked. At least I
hope I did, and then my manners won't be so bad. I enclose the
latest version of myself.

I wish I could follow out your suggestion about a book on
zoology. (By the way please to tell Miss Emma that my last
book is a book.* Marry come up! Does her ladyship call it a
pamphlet ?)

But I assure you that writing is a perfect pest to me unless
I am interested, and not only a bore but a very slow process. I
have some popular lectures on Physiology,t which have been

 

* The first volume of his Hunterian Lectures on Comparative Anat-
omy. A second volume never appeared. Miss Darwin, as her father
wrote to Huxley after the delivery of his Working Men’s Lectures in
1862, ‘‘ was reading your Lectures, and ended by saying, ‘I wish he
would write a book.’ I answered, ‘he has just written a great book
on the skull.’ ‘I don’t call that a book,’ she replied, and added, ‘I
want something that people can read ; he does write so well.’”

t See letter of April 22, 1863.
286 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIX

half done for more than a twelvemonth, and I hate the sight of
them because the subject no longer interests me, and my head is
full of other matters. .

So I have just done giving a set of lectures to working-men
on “ The Various Races of Mankind,” which really would make
a book in Miss Emma’s sense of the word, and which I have had
reported. But when am I to work them up? Twenty-four Hun-
terian Lectures loom between me and Easter. I am dying to get
out the second volume of the book that is not a book, but in vain.

I trust you are better, though the last news I had of you
from Lubbock was not so encouraging as I could have wished.

With best wishes and remembrances to Mrs. Darwin—Ever
yours, T. H. Huxtey.

Thanks for “ fin Darwin,” I had it.

26 ABBEY PLAcE, /an. 15, 1865.

My pear Darwin—Many thanks for Deslongchamps’ paper
which I do not possess.

I received another important publication yesterday morning
in the shape of a smull but hearty son, who came to light a little
before six. The wife is getting on capitally, and we are both
greatly rejoiced at having another boy, as your godson ran great
risks of being spoiled by a harem of sisters.

The leader in the Reader is mine, and I am glad you like it.
The more so as it has got me into trouble with some of my
friends. However, the revolution that is going on is not to be
made with rose-water.

I wish if anything occurs to you that would improve the
scientific part of the Reader, you would let me know as I am in
great measure responsible for it.

I am sorry not to have a better account of your health.
With kind remembrances to Mrs. Darwin and the rest of your
circle—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

JERMYN STREET, JZay 1, 1865.
My pear Darwin—I send you by this post a booklet * none
of which is much worth your reading, while of nine-tenths of it
you may say as the man did who had been trying to read John-
son’s Dictionary, “that the words were fine, but he couldn’t
make much of the story.”

 

* Probably ‘‘A Catalogue of the Collection of Fossils in the
Museum of Practical Geology,” etc.
1865 LETTERS TO DARWIN 287

But perhaps the young lady who has been kind enough to
act as taster‘of my books heretofore will read the explanatory
notice, and give me her ideas thereupon (always recollecting
that almost the whole of it was written in the pre-Darwinian
epoch. )

I do not hear very good accounts of you—to my sorrow—
though rumours have reached me that the opus magnum * is
completely developed though not yet born.

I am grinding at the mill and getting a little tired. My
belongings flourishing as I hope you are.—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxzey.

JERMYN STREET, A/ay 29, 1865.

My pear Darwin—I meant to have written to you yesterday
to say how glad I shall be to read whatever you like to send me.

I have to lecture at the Royal Institution this week, but
after Friday, my time will be more at my own disposal than
usual; and as always I shall be most particularly glad to be of
any use to you.

Any glimmer of light on the question you speak of is of the
utmost importance, and I shall be immensely interested in learn-
ing your views. And of course I need not add I will do my best
to upset them. That is the nature of the beast.

Thad a letter from one of the ablest of the younger zoologists
of Germany, Haeckel, the other day, in which this passage
occurs :—

“The Darwinian Theory, the establishment and develop-
ment of which is the object [of] all my scientific labours, has
gained ground immensely in Germany (where it was at first
so misunderstood) during the last two years, and I entertain
no doubt that it will before long be everywhere victorious.”
And he adds that I dealt far too mildly with Kolliker.

With kindest remembrances to Mrs. Darwin and your family
—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

This year, as is seen from the foregoing, he was again
in direct communication with Professor Ernst Haeckel of
Jena, the earliest and strongest champion of Darwinian
ideas in Germany. ‘The latter wished to enlarge his ob-
servations by joining some English scientific expedition, if
any such were in preparation, but was dissuaded by the fol-

 

* On Pangenesis.
288 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XIX

lowing reply. The expected book of Darwin’s was the
Pangenesis, and this is also referred to in the three succeed-
ing letters to Darwin himself.

THE RoyaL SCHOOL OF MINES,
JERMYN STREET, Lonvon, June 7, 1865.

My bear Sir—Many thanks for your letter, and for the wel-
come present of your portrait, which I shall value greatly, and
in exchange for which I enclose my own. Indeed I have delayed
writing to you in order to be able to send the last “ new and im-
proved” edition of myself.

I wish it were in my power to help you to any such appoint-
ment as that you wish for. But I do not think our government
is likely to send out any scientific expedition to the South Seas.
There is a talk about a new Arctic expedition, but I doubt if
it will come to much, and even if it should be organised I could
not recommend your throwing yourself away in an undertaking
which promises more frost-bites than anything else to a natu-
ralist.

In truth, though I have felt and can still feel the attraction of
foreign travel in all its strength, I would counsel you to stop at
home, and as Goethe says, find your America here. There are
plenty of people who can observe and whose places, if they are
expended by fever or shipwreck, can be well enough filled up.
But there are very few who can grapple with the higher prob-
lems of science as you have done and are doing, and we cannot
afford to lose you. It is the organisation of knowledge rather
than its increase which is wanted just now. And I think you
can help in this great undertaking better in Germany than in
New Zealand.

Darwin has been very ill for more than a year past, so ill, in
fact, that his recovery was at one time doubtful. But he con-
trives to work in spite of fate, and I hope that before long we
shall have a new book from him.

By way of consolation I sent him an extract from your letter
touching the progress of his views.

I am glad that you did not think my critique of Kélliker too
severe. He is an old friend of mine, and I desired to be as
gentle as possible, while performing the unpleasant duty of
showing how thoroughly he had misunderstood the question.

I shall look with great interest for your promised book.
Lately I have [been] busy with Ethnological questions, and I
fear I shall not altogether please your able friend Professor
1865 LETTERS TO DARWIN 289

Schleicher in some remarks I have had to make upon the sup-
posed value of philological evidence.

May we hope to see you at the meeting of the British Asso-
ciation at Birmingham? It would give many, and especially
myself, much pleasure to become personally acquainted with
you.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

JERMYN STREET, Jane 1, 1865.

My pear Darwin—Your MS.* reached me safely last
evening.

I could not refrain from glancing over it on the spot, and I
perceive I shall have to put on my sharpest spectacles and best
considering cap.

I shall not write till I have thought well on the whole sub-
ject—Ever yours, T. H. Huxtey.

JERMYN STREET, July 16, 1865.

My pear Darwin—I have just counted the pages of your
MS. to see that they are all right, and packed it up to send you
by post, registered, so I hope it will reach you safely. I should
have sent it yesterday, but people came in and bothered me
about post time.

I did not at all mean by what I said to stop you from pub-
lishing your views, and I really should not like to take that re-
sponsibility. Somebody rummaging among your papers half a
century hence will find Pangenesis and say, “ See this wonderful
anticipation of our modern theories, and that stupid ass Huxley
preventing his publishing them.” And then the Carlyleans of
that day will make me a text for holding forth upon the differ-
ence between mere vulpine sharpness and genius.

I am not going to be made a horrid example of in that way.
But all I say is, publish your views, not so much in the shape of
formed conclusions, as of hypothetical developments of the only
clue at present accessible, and don’t give the Philistines more
chances of blaspheming than you can help.

I am very grieved to hear that you have been so ill again. —
Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

26 Appey PLACE, Oc?. 2, 1865.
My pear Darwin—“ This comes hoping you are well,” and
for no other purpose than to say as much. I am just back from
seven weeks’ idleness at Littlehampton with my wife and chil-

 

* Of Pangenesis.
290 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIX

dren, the first time I have had a holiday of any extent with
them for years.

We are all flourishing—the babies particularly so—and I
find myself rather loth to begin grinding at the mill again.
There is a vein of laziness in me which crops out uncommonly
strong in your godson, who is about the idlest, jolliest young
four year old I know.

You will have been as much grieved as I have been about
dear old Hooker. According to the last accounts, however, he
is mending, and I hope to see him in the pristine vigour again
before long.

My wife is gone to bed or she would join me in the kindest
regards and remembrances to Mrs. Darwin and your family.—
Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

The sound judgment and nice sense of honour for which
Huxley was known among his friends often led those who
were in difficulties to appeal to him for advice. About this
time a dispute arose over an alleged case of unacknowledged
“ conveyance ” of information. Writing to Hooker, he says
the one party to the quarrel failed to “ set the affair straight
with half a dozen words of frank explanation as he might
have done;” as to the other, “like all quiet and mild men
who do get a grievance, he became about twice as ‘ wud’
as Berserks like you and me.” Both came to him, so that
he says, “I have found it very difficult to deal honestly with
both sides without betraying the confidence of either or
making matters worse.” Happily, with his help, matters
reached a peaceful solution, and his final comment is—

I don’t mind fighting to the death in a good big row, but
when A and B are supplying themselves from C’s orchard, I
don’t think it is very much worth while to dispute whether B
filled his pockets directly from the trees or indirectly helped
himself to the contents of A’s basket. If B has so helped him-
self, he certainly ought to say so like a man, but if I were A,
I would not much care whether he did or not.
has been horribly disgusted about it, but I am not sure
the discipline may not have opened his eyes to new and useful
aspects of nature.

 

The summer of 1865 saw the inception of an educational
experiment—an International Education Society—to which
1865 THE INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE 291
Huxley gladly gave his support as a step in the right direc-
tion. He had long been convinced of the inadequacy of:
existing forms of education—survivals from the needs ofa
bygone age—to prepare for the new forms into which in-
tellectual life was passing. That educators should be con-
tent to bring up the young generation in the modes of
thought which satisfied their forefathers three centuries ago,
as if no change had passed over the world since then, filled
him with mingled amazement and horror.

The outcome of the scheme was the International Col-
lege, at Spring Grove, Isleworth, under the headmastership
of Dr. Leonhard Schmitz; one of the chief members of the
committee being Dr. (afterwards Sir) William Smith, while
at the head of the Society was Richard Cobden, under whose
presidency it had been registered some time before. John
Stuart Mill, however, refused to join, consideriny that this
was not the most needed reform in education, atd that he
could not support a school in which the ordinary theology
was taught.

An article in the Readcr for June 17, 1865, sketches the
plan. The design was to give a liberal education to boys
whether intended for a profession or for commerce. The
education for both was the same up to a certain point, cor-
responding to that given in our higher schools, together
with foreign languages and the elements of physical and
social science, after which the courses bifurcated.* Special
stress was laid on modern languages, both for themselves
and as a preparation and help for classical teaching. Ac-
cordingly, the International College was one of three paral-
lel institutions in England, France, and Germany, where a
boy could in turn acquire a sound knowledge of all three
languages while continuing the same course of education.
The Franco-Prussian war of 1870, however, proved fatal to
the scheme.

Some letters to his friend Dr. W. K. Parker,t show the

 

* For a fuller account of the scientific education see p. 330.

+ Aman of whom he wrote (preface to Prof. Jeffery Parker's Life
of W. K. Parker, 1893), that ‘tin him the genius of an artist struggled
with that of a philosopher, and not unfrequently the latter got the
292 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIX

good-fellowship which existed between them, as well as the
interest he took in the style and success of Parker’s work.
Parker was hard at work on Birds, a subject in which his
friond and leader also was deeply interested, and was in-
deed preparing an important book upon it.

Referring to his candidature for the Royal Society, he
writes oa February 21, 1865: “ With reference to your
candidattre, I am ready to bring your name forward when-
ever you Jike, and to back you with ‘all my might, power,
amity, and authority,’ as Essex did Bacon (you need not
serve me js Bacon did Essex afterwards), but my impres-
sion has ben that you did not wish to come forward this

‘

year.” i
And on}/November 2, 1866, congratulating him on his
“ well-earnéd honour ” of the F.R.S.—“ Go on and prosper.

These are,snot the things wise men work for; but it is not
the less pfoper of a wise man to take them when they come
unsought.”

26 ABBEY PLacE, Dec. 3, 1865.

My pEAR ParRKER—I have been so terribly pressed by my
work that I have only just been able to finish the reading of
your paper.

Very few pieces of work which have fallen in my way come
near your account of the Struthious skull in point of clearness
and completeness. It is a most admirable essay, and will make
an epoch in this kind of inquiry.

I want you, however, to remodel the introduction, and to
make some unessential but convenient difference in the arrange-
ment of some of the figures.

Secondly, full as the appendix is of most valuable and in-
teresting matter, I advise you for the present to keep it back.

My reason is that you have done justice neither to yourself
nor to your topics, and that if the appendix is printed as it
stands, your labour will be in great measure lost.

You start subjects enough for half a dozen papers, and
partly from the compression thus resulting, and partly from the

 

worst of the contest.” He speaks too of his ‘‘minute accuracy in
observation and boundless memory for details and imagination which
absolutely rioted in the scenting out of subtle and often far-fetched
analogies.”
1865 LETTER TO DR. PARKER 293

absence of illustrations, I do not believe there are half a dozen
men in Europe who will be able to follow you. Furthermore,
though the appendix is relevant enough—every line of it—to
those who have dived deep, as you and I have—to any one else
it has all the aspects of a string of desultory discussions. ls
your father confessor, I forbid the publication of the appendix.
After having had all this trouble with you I am not going to
have you waste your powers for want of a little method, so I
tell you.

What you are to do is this. You are to rewrite the intro-
duction and to say that the present paper is the first of a series
on the structure of the vertebrate skull; that the second will be
“On the development of the osseous cranium of the Common
Fowl” [and here (if you are good), I will permit you to intro-
duce the episode on cartilage and membrane (illegible)]; the
third will be “On the chief modifications of the cranium ob-
served in the Sauropsida.”

The fourth, “ On the mammalian skull.”

The fifth, “ On the skull of the Ichthyopsida.”

I will give you two years from this time to execute these five
memoirs; and then if you have stood good-temperedly the
amount of badgering and bullying you will get from me when-
ever you come dutifully to report progress, you shall be left to
your own devices in the third year to publish a paper on “ The
general structure and theory of the vertebrate skull.”

You have a brilliant field before you, and a start such that no
one is likely to catch you. Sit deliberately down over against
the city, conquer it and make it your own, and don’t be wasting
powder in knocking down odd bastions with random shells.

I write jestingly, but I really am very much in earnest.
Come and have a talk on the matter as soon as you can, for I
should send in my report. You will find me in Jermyn Street,
Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday mornings, Thursday after-
noon, but not Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon. Send a line
to say when you will come.—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Hux ey.
CHAPTER XX
1866

Besipes his Fullerian lectures on Ethnology at the
Royal Institution this year, Huxley published in February
1866 a paper in the Natural History Review, on the “ Pre-
historic Remains of Caithness,” based upon a quantity of
remains found the previous autumn at Keiss. This, and
the article on the “ Neanderthal Skull” in the Natural
History Review for 1864, attracted some notice among for-
eign anthropologists. Dr. H. Welcker writes about them;
Dr. A. Ecker wants the “ Prehistoric Remains” for his
new Archiv fiir Anthropologic; the Société d’Anthropologie
de Paris elects him a Foreign Associate.

He was asked by Dr. Fayrer to assist in a great scheme
he had proposed to the Asiatic Society,* to gather men of
every tribe from India, the Malayan Peninsula, Persia, Ara-
bia, the Indian Archipelago, etc., for anthropological pur-
poses. It was well received by the Council of the Society
and by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal; anything Hux-
ley could say in its favour would be of great weight. Would
he come out as Dr. Fayrer’s guest?

Unable to go to Calcutta, he sent the following letter :—

JERMYN STREET, LONDON, /ume 14, 1866.
My pear Fayrer—I lose no time in replying to your second
letter, and my first business is to apologise for not having an-
swered the first, but it reached me in the thick of my lectures,
and like a great many other things which ought to have been
done I put off replying to a more convenient season. I have

 

* Comp. Chap. XXII. ad init. and Appendix I.
294 :
1866 GREAT ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCHEME 295

been terribly hard worked this year, and thought I was going
to break down a few weeks ago but luckily I have pulled
through.

I heartily wish that there were the smallest chance of my
being able to accept your kind invitation and take part in your
great scheme at Calcutta. But it is impossible for me to leave
England for more than six weeks or two months, and that only
in the autumn, a time of year when I imagine Calcutta is not
likely to be the scene of anything but cholera patients.

As to your plan itself, I think it a most grand and useful one
if it can be properly carried out. But you do things on so grand
a scale in India that I suppose all the practical difficulties which
suggest themselves to me may be overcome.

It strikes me that it will not do to be content with a single
representative of each tribe. At least four or five will be needed
to eliminate the chances of accident, and even then much will
depend upon the discretion and judgment of the local agent who
makes the suggestion. This difficulty, however, applies chiefly if
not solely to physical ethnology. To the philologer the oppor-
tunities for comparing dialects and checking pronunciation will
be splendid, however [few] the individual speakers of each dia-
lect may be. The most difficult task of all will be to prevent the
assembled Savans from massacring the “specimens” at the end
of the exhibition for the sake of their skulls and pelves!

I am really afraid that my own virtue might yield if so
tempted !

Jesting apart, I heartily wish your plans success, and if there
are any more definite ways in which I can help, let me know,
and I will do my best. You will want, I should think, a physical
and a philological committee to organise schemes: (1) for sys-
tematic measuring, weighing, and portraiture, with observation
and recording of all physical characters; and (2) for uniform
registering of sounds by Roman letters and collection of vocabu-
laries and grammatical forms upon an uniform system.

I should advise you to look into the Museum of the Société
d’Anthropologie of Paris, and to put yourself in communication
with M. Paul Broca, one of its most active members, who has
lately been organising a scheme of general anthropological in-
structions. But don’t have anything to do with the quacks who
are at the head of the “ Anthropological Society” over here.
If they catch scent of what you are about they will certainly
want to hook on to you.

Once more I wish I had the chance of being able to visit
20
296 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XX

your congress. I have been lecturing on Ethnology this year,*
and shall be again this year, and I would give a good deal to be
able to look at the complex facts of Indian Ethnology with my
own eyes.

But as the sage observed, “ what’s impossible can’t be,” and
what with short holidays—a wife and seven children—and miles
of work in arrear, India is an impossibility for me.

You say nothing about yourself, so I trust you are well and
hearty, and all your belongings flourishing—Ever yours faith-
fully, T. H. Huxtey.

In paleontology he published this year papers on the
“Vertebrate Remains from the Jarrow Colliery, Kilkenny ;”
on a new “ Telerpeton from Elgin,’ and on some “ Dino-
saurs from South Africa.” The latter, and many more after-
wards, were sent over by a young man named Alfred Brown,
who had a curious history. A Quaker gentleman came
across him when employed in cleaning tools in Cirencester
College, found that he was a good Greek and Latin scholar,
and got him a tutorship in a clergyman’s family at the Cape.
He afterwards entered the postal service, and being inspired
with a vivid interest in geology, spent all the leave he could
obtain from his office on the Orange River in getting fossils
from the Stormberg Rocks. These, as often as he could
afford to send such weighty packages, he sent to Sir R.
Murchison, to whom he had received a letter of introduction
from his official superior. Sir Roderick, writing to Huxley,
says “that he was proud of his new recruit,” to whom he
sent not only welcome words of encouragement, but the no
less welcome news that the brother of his “ discoverer,”
hearing of the facts from Professor Woodward, offered to
defray his expenses so that he could collect regularly.

On April 2 Huxley was in Edinburgh to receive the
first academic distinction conferred upon him in Britain.
He received the honorary degree of the University in com-
pany with Tyndall and Carlyle. It was part of the fitness of
things that he should be associated in this honour with his
close friend Tyndall; but though he frequently acknowl-

 

* As Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution.
1866 LETTER TO CHARLES KINGSLEY 297

edged his debt to Carlyle as the teacher who in his youth
had inspired him with his undying hatred of shams and
humbugs of every kind, and whom he had gratefully come
to know in after days, Carlyle did not forgive the publica-
tion of Man’s Place in Nature. Years after, near the end
of his life, my father saw him walking slowly and alone
down the opposite side of the street, and touched by his
solitary appearance, crossed over and spoke to him. The
old man looked at him, and merely remarking, ‘ You're
Huxley, aren’t you? the man that says we are all descended
from monkeys,” went on his way.

On July 6 he writes to tell Darwin that he has lodged
a memorial of his about the fossils at the Gallegos river,
which was to be visited by the Nassau * exploring ship,
with the hydrographer direct, instead of sending it in to
the Lords of the Admiralty, who would only have sent it
on to the hydrographer. This letter he heads ‘ Country
orders executed with accuracy and despatch.”

The following letter to Charles Kingsley explains
itself—

JERMYN STREET, April 12, 1866.

My pear KincsLtey—I shall certainly do myself the pleasure
of listening to you when you preach at the Royal Institution. I
wonder if you are going to take the line of showing up the super-
stitions of men of science. Their name is legion, and the exploit
would be a telling one. I would do it myself only I think I am
already sufficiently isolated and unpopular.

However, whatever you are going to do I am sure you will
speak honestly and well, and I shall come and be assistant bottle-
holder.

I am glad you like the working men’s lectures. I suspect
they are about the best things of that line that I have done, and
I only wish I had had the sense to anticipate the run they have
had here and abroad, and I would have revised them properly.

As they stand they are terribly in the rough, from a literary
point of view.

No doubt crib-biting, nurse-biting and original sin in general
are all strictly reducible from Darwinian principles; but don’t
by misadventure run against any academical facts.

 

* Chap. XXII.
298 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XX

Some whales have all the cerebral vertebrae free now, and
every one of them has the full number, seven, whether they are
free or fixed. No doubt whales had hind legs once upon a time.
If when you come up to town you go to the College of Surgeons,
my friend Flower the Conservator (a good man whom you
should know), will show you the whalebone whale’s thigh bones
in the grand skeleton they have recently set up. The legs, to be
sure, and the feet are gone, the battle of life having left private
Cetacea in the condition of a Chelsea pensioner.—Ever yours
faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

This year the British Association met at Nottingham,
and Huxley was president of Section D. In this capacity
he invited Professor Haeckel to attend the meeting, but the
impending war with Austria prevented any Prussian from
leaving his country at the time, though Haeckel managed to
come over later.

Huxley did not deliver a regular opening address to the
section on the Thursday, but on the Friday made a speech,
which was followed by a discussion upon biology and its
several branches, especially morphology and its relation to
physiology (“the facts concerning form are questions of
force, every form is force visible.”) He lamented that the
subdivisions of the section had to meet separately as a re-
sult of specialisation, the reason for which he found in the
want of proper scientific education in schools. And this
was the fault of the universities, for just as in the story,
“Stick won’t beat dog, dog won’t bite pig, and so the old
woman can’t get home,” science would not be taught in
the schools until it is recognised by the universities.

This prepared the way for Dean Farrar’s paper on
science teaching in the public schools. His experience as a
master at Harrow made him strongly oppose the existing
plan of teaching all boys classical composition whether they
were suited for it or no. He wished to exchange a great
deal of Latin verse-making for elementary science.

This paper was doubly interesting to Huxley, as coming
from a classical master in a public school, and he remarked,
“He felt sure that at the present time, the important ques-
tion for England was not the duration of her coal, but the
1866 LETTER TO SPENCER 299

due comprehension of the truths of science, and the labours
of her scientific men.”

On the practical side, however, Mr. J. Payne said the
great difficulty was the want of teachers; and suggested
that if men of science were really in earnest they would
condescend to teach in the schools.

It was to a certain extent in answer to this appeal that
Huxley gave his lectures on Physiography in 1869 (see
Pp. 331), and instituted the course of training for science
teachers in 1871.

He concluded his work at Nottingham by a lecture to
working men.

The following is in reply to Mr. Spencer who had ac-
cused himself of losing his temper in an argument—

26 ABBEY PLACE, Sunday, Nov. 8, 1868.

My vEAR SPpENCER—Your conscience has been treating you
with the most extreme and unjust severity.

I recollect you looked rather savage at one point in our
discussion, but I do assure you that you committed no overt
act of ferocity; and if you had, I think I should have fully de-
served it for joining in the ferocious onslaught we all made
upon you.

What your sins may be in this line to other folk I don’t
know, but so far as I am concerned I assure you I have often
said that I know no one who takes aggravated opposition better
than yourself, and that I have not a few times been ashamed of
the extent to which I have tried your patience.

So you see that you have, what the Buddhists call a stock of
accumulated merit, envers moi—and if you should ever feel
inclined to “d. n my eyes” you can do so and have a bal-
ance left.

Seriously, my old friend, you must not think it necessary to
apologise to me about any such matters, but believe me
(d ned or und——d)—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

 

 

26 ABBEY PLACE, Mov. 11, 1866.
My pear Darwin—I thank you for the new edition of the
Origin, and congratulate you on having done with it for a while,
so as to be able to go on to that book of a portion of which I had
a glimpse years ago. I hear good accounts of your health, in-
300 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XX

deed the last was that you were so rampageous you meant to
come to London and have a spree among its dissipations. May
that be true.

I am in the thick of my work, and have only had time to
glance at your Historical Sketch.

What an unmerciful basting you give “ our mutual friend.”
I did not know he had put forward any claim! and even now
that I read it black and white, I can hardly believe it.

I am glad to hear from Spencer that you are on the right
(that is my) side in the Jamaica business. But it is wonderful
how people who commonly act together are divided about it.

My wife joins with me in kindest wishes to Mrs. Darwin and
yourself—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

You will receive an elementary physiology book, not for
your reading but for Miss Darwin’s. Were you not charmed
with Haeckel?

The “ Jamaica business ” here alluded to was Governor
Eyre’s suppression of a negro rising, in the course of which
he had executed, under martial law, a coloured leader and
member of the Assembly, named Gordon. The question of
his justification in so doing stirred England profoundly. It
became the touchstone of ultimate political convictions.
Men who had little concern for ordinary politics, came for-
ward to defend a great constitutional principle which they
conceived to be endangered. A committee was formed to
prosecute Governor Eyre on a charge of murder, in order to
vindicate the right of a prisoner to trial by due process of
law. Thereupon a counter-committee was organised for the
defence of the man who, like Cromwell, judged that the
people preferred their real security to forms, and had pre-'
sumably saved the white population of Jamaica by striking
promptly at the focus of rebellion.

The Pall Mall Gazette of October 29, 1866, made a
would-be smart allusion to the part taken in the affair by
Huxley, which evoked, in reply, a calm statement of his
reasons for joining the prosecuting committee :—

It is amusing (says the Pall Mall) to see how the rival com-
mittees, the one for the prosecution and the other for the defence
of Mr. Eyre, parade the names of distinguished persons who are
1866 THE JAMAICA COMMITTEE 301

enrolled as subscribers on either side. Mill is set against Car-
lyle, and to counterbalance the adhesion of the Laureate to the
Defence Fund, the Star hastens to announce that Sir Charles
Lyell and Professor Huxley have given their support to the
Jamaica Committee. Everything, of course, depends on the
ground on which the subscriptions are given. One can readily
conceive that Mr. Tennyson has been chiefly moved by a gener-
ous indignation at the vindictive behaviour of the Jamaica Com-
mittee. It would be curious also to know how far Sir Charles
Lyell’s and Mr. Huxley’s peculiar views on the development of
species have influenced them in bestowing on the negro that
sympathetic recognition which they are willing to extend even
to the ape as “a man and a brother.”

The reply appeared in the Pall Mall of October 31 :—

S1r—I learn from yesterday evening’s Pall Mall Gazette that
you are curious to know whether certain “ peculiar views on the
development of species,’ which I am said to hold in the excellent
company of Sir Charles Lyell, have led me to become a member
of the Jamaica Committee.

Permit me without delay to satisfy a curiosity which does
me henour. I have been induced to join that committee neither
by my “ peculiar views on the development of species,” nor by
any particular love for, or admiration of the negro—still less by
any miserable desire to wreak vengeance for recent error upon
a rnan whose early career I have often admired; but because
the course which the committee proposes to take appears to me
to be the only one by which a question of the profoundest prac-
tical importance can be answered. That question is, Does the
killing a man in the way Mr. Gordon was killed constitute mur-
der in the eye of the law, or does it not?

You perceive that this question is wholly independent of
two others which are persistently confused with it, namely—
was Mr. Gordon a Jamaica Hampden or was he a psalm-sing-
ing fire-brand? and was Mr. Eyre actuated by the highest and
noblest motives, or was he under the influence of panic-stricken
rashness or worse impulses?

I do not presume to speak with authority on a legal question;
but, unless I am misinformed, English law does not permit good
persons, as such, to strangle bad persons, as such. On the con-
trary, I understand that, if the most virtuous of Britons, let his
place and authority be what they may, seize and hang up the
greatest scoundrel in Her Majesty’s dominions simply because
302 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XX

he is an evil and troublesome person, an English court of justice
will certainly find that virtuous person guilty of murder. Nor
will the verdict be affected by any evidence that the defendant
acted from the best of motives, and, on the whole, did the State
a service.

Now, it may be that Mr. Eyre was actuated by the best of
motives ; it may be that Jamaica is all the better for being rid of
Mr. Gordon; but nevertheless the Royal Commissioners, who
were appointed to inquire into Mr. Gordon’s case, among other
matters, have declared that :—

The evidence, oral and documentary, appears to us to be
wholly insufficient to establish the charge upon which the pris-
oner took his trial. (Report, p. 37.)

And again that they

Cannot see in the evidence which has been adduced, any suf-
ficient proof, either of his (Mr. Gordon’s) complicity in the out-
break at Morant Bay, or of his having been a party to any
general conspiracy against the Government. (Report, p. 38.)

Unless the Royal Commissioners have greatly erred, there-
fore, the killing of Mr. Gordon can only be defended on the
ground that he was a bad and troublesome man; in short, that
although he might not be guilty, it served him right. v.

I entertain so deeply-rooted an objection to this method of
killing people—the act itself appears to me to be so frightill a
precedent, that I desire to see it stigmatised by the highest pu-
thority as a crime. And I have joined the committee which
proposes to indict Mr. Eyre, in the hope that I may hearja
court of justice declare that the only defence which can be
up (if the Royal Commissioners are right) is no defence, an
that the killing of Mr. Gordon was the greatest offence know
to the law—murder.—I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

Tuomas H. Huxtey.

   

THe ATHEN#UM CLuB, Oct. 30, 1866.

Two letters to friends who had taken the opposite side
in this burning question show how resolutely he set himself
against permitting a difference on matters of principle to
affect personal relations with his warmest opponents.

JERMYN STREET, WVov. 8, 1866.
My vEar KincsLey—The letter of which you have heard,
containing my reasons for becoming a member of the Jamaica
1866 THE JAMAICA COMMITTEE 303
Committee was addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette in reply to
some editorial speculations as to my reasons for so doing.

I forget the date of the number in which my letter appeared,
but I will find it out and send you a copy of the paper.

Mr. Eyre’s personality in this matter is nothing to me; I
know nothing about him, and, if he is a friend of yours, I am
very sorry to be obliged to join in a movement which must be
excessively unpleasant to him,

Furthermore, when the verdict of the jury which will try
him is once given, all hostility towards him on my part will
cease. So far from wishing to see him vindictively punished,
I would much rather, if it were practicable, indict his official
hat and his coat than himself.

I desire to see Mr. Eyre indicted and a verdict of guilty in a
criminal court obtained, because I have, from its commencement,
carefully watched the Gordon case; and because a new study of
all the evidence which has now been collected has confirmed my
first conviction that Gordon’s execution was as bad a specimen
as we have had since Jeffries’ time of political murder.

Don’t suppose that I have any particular admiration for
Gordon. He belongs to a sufficiently poor type of small political
agitator—and very likely was a great nuisance to the Governor
and other respectable persons.

But that is no reason why he should be condemned, by an
absurd tribunal and with a brutal mockery of the forms of jus-
tice, for offences with which impartial judges, after a full in-
vestigation, declare there is no evidence to show that he was
connected.

Ex-Governor Eyre seized the man, put him in the hands of
the preposterous subalterns, who pretended to try him—saw the
evidence and approved of the sentence. He is as much respon-
sible for Gordon’s death as if he had shot him through the head
with his own hand. I daresay he did all this with the best of
motives, and in a heroic vein. But if English law will not
declare that heroes have no more right to kill people in this
fashion than other folk, I shall take an early opportunity of
migrating to Texas or some other quiet place where there is
less hero-worship and more respect for justice, which is to my
mind of much more importance than hero-worship.

In point of fact, men take sides on this question, not so
much by looking at the mere facts of the case, but rather as
their deepest political convictions lead them. And the great use
of the prosecution, and one of my reasons for joining it, is that
304 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XX

it will help a great many people to find out what their profound-
est political beliefs are.

The hero-worshippers who believe that the world is to be
governed by its great men, who are to lead the little ones, justly
if they can; but if not, unjustly drive or kick them the right way,
will sympathise with Mr. Eyre.

The other sect (to which I belong) who look upon hero-
worship as no better than any other idolatry, and upon the
attitude of mind of the hero-worshipper as essentially immoral ;
who think it is better for a man to go wrong in freedom than
to go right in chains; who look upon the observance of inflexible
justice as between man and man as of far greater importance
than even the preservation of social order, will believe that Mr.
Eyre has committed one of the greatest crimes of which a
person in authority can be guilty, and will strain every nerve to
obtain a declaration that their belief is in accordance with the
law of England.

People who differ on fundamentals are not likely to convert
one another. To you, as to my dear friend Tyndall, with whom
I almost always act, but who in this matter is as much opposed
to me as you are, I can only say, let us be strong enough and
wise enough to fight the question out as a matter of principle
and without bitterness.—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Hux.ey.

November g, 1866.

My pear TynpaLt—Many thanks for the kind note which
accompanied your letter to the Jamaica Committee.

When I presented myself at Rogers’ dinner last night I had
not heard of the latter, and Gassiot began poking fun at me, and
declaring that your absence was due to a quarrel between us on
this unhappy subject.

I replied to the jest earnestly enough, that I hoped and
believed our old friendship was strong enough to stand any
strain that might be put on it, much as I grieved that we should
be ranged in opposite camps in this or any other cause.

That you and I have fundamentally different political prin-
ciples must, I think, have become obvious to both of us during
the progress of the American War. The fact is made still more
plain by your printed letter, the tone and spirit of which I
greatly admired without being able to recognise in it any im-
portant fact or argument which had not passed through my
mind before I joined the Jamaica Committee.
1866 LESSONS ON ELEMENTARY PHYSIOLOGY 305

Thus there is nothing for it but for us to agree to differ,
each supporting his own side to the best of his ability, and
respecting his friend's freedom as he would his own, and doing
his best to remove all petty bitterness from that which is at
bottom one of the most important constitutional battles in which
Englishmen have for many years been engaged.

If you and I are strong enough and wise enough, we shall
be able to do this, and yet preserve that love for one another
which I value as one of the good things of my life.

If not, we shall come to grief. I mean to do my best—
Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

Huxley was always of opinion that to write a good
elementary text-book required a most extensive and inti-
mate knowledge of the subject under discussion. Certainly
the Lessons on Elementary Physiology which appeared at the
end of 1866 were the outcome of such knowledge, and met
with a wonderful and lasting success as a text-book. A
graceful compliment was passed upon it by Sir William
Lawrence, when, in thanking the author for the gift of the
book, he wrote (January 24, 1867), “in your modest book
“indocti discant, ament meminisse periti!’”

This was before the days of American copyright, and
English books were usually regarded as fair prey by the
mass of American publishers. Among the exceptions to
this practical rule were the firm of D. Appleton & Co., who
made it a point of honour to treat foreign authors as though
they were legally entitled to some equitable rights. On their
behalf an arrangement was made for an authorised Ameri-
can edition of the Physiology by Dr. Youmans, whose
acquaintance thus made my father did not allow to drop.

It is worth noting that by the year 18098 this little book
had passed through four editions, and been reprinted thirty-
one times.
CHAPTER XXI
1867

It has already been noted that Huxley’s ethnological
work continued this year with a second series of lectures
at the Royal Institution, while he enlarged his paper on
“Two widely contrasted forms of Human Crania,’ and
published it in the Journal of Anatomy. One paleontological
memoir of his appeared this year on Acanthopholis, a fossil
from the chalk marl, an additional piece of work for which
he excuses himself to Sir C. Lyell (January 4, 1867) :—

The new reptile advertised in Geol. Mag. has turned up in
the way of business, and I could not help giving a notice of it,
or I should not have undertaken anything fresh just now.

The Spitzbergen things are very different, and I have taken
sundry looks at them and put them by again to let my thoughts
ripen.

They are Ichthyosaurian, and I am not sure they do not
belong to two species. But it is an awful business to compare
all the Ichthyosaurians. I think that one form is new. Please
to tell Nordenskiold this much.

However, his chief interest was in the anatomy of birds,
at which he had been working for some time, and especially
the development of certain of the cranial bones as a basis
of classification. On April 11, expanding one of his Hun-
terian Lectures, he read a paper on this subject at the
Zoological Society, afterwards published in their Proceed-
ings for 1867.

As he had found the works of Professor Cornay of help
in the preparation of this paper, he was careful to send him
a copy with an acknowledgment of his indebtedness, elicit-

306
1867 LETTER TO PARKER 307

ing the reply, “c'est si beau de trouver chez Vhomme la science
unie @ la justice.”

He followed this up with another paper on “ The Classi-
fication and Distribution of the Alectoromorphae and Hete-
romorphae” in 1868, and to the work upon this the fol-
lowing letter to his ally, W. K. Parker, refers :—

RoyaL GEOLoG. SuRVEY OF GT. Britain,
JERMYN Street, /wdy 17, 1867.

My pear Parker—Nothing short of the direct temptation of
the evil one could lead you to entertain so monstrous a doctrine,
as that you propound about Cariamidae.

I recommend fasting for three days and the application of a
scourge thrice in the twenty-four hours! Do this, and about the
fourth day you will perceive that the cranial differences alone
are as great as those between Cathartes and Serpentarius.

If you want to hear something new and true it is this :—

1. That Memora is more unlike all the other Passerines (i.e.
Coracomorphae) than they are unlike one another, and that it
will have to stand in a group by itself.

It is as much like a wren as you are—less so, in fact, if you
go on maintaining that preposterous fiction about Serpentarius.

2. Wood-peckers are more like crows than they are like
cuckoos.

Aegithognathae

Coracomorphae
Cypselomorphae Gecinomorphae
Desmognathae

Coccygomorphae.

3. Sundevell is the sharpest fellow who has written on the
classification of birds.

4. Nitzsch and W. K. Parker * are the sharpest fellows who
have written on their osteology.

5. Though I do not see how it follows naturally on the above,
still, where can I see a good skeleton of Glareola?

None in college, B.M.S. badly prepared—Ever yours faith-
fully, T. H. Huxtey.

 

* Except in the case of Serpentarius.
308 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXI

An incident which diversified one of the Gilchrist lec-
tures to working men is thus recorded by the Times of
January 23, 1867 :—

A GOOD EXAMPLE. Last night, at the termination of a
lecture on ethnology, delivered by Professor Huxley to an audi-
ence which filled the theatre of the London Mechanics’ Institute
in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, the lecturer said
that he had received a letter as he entered the building which he
would not take the responsibility of declining to read, although
it had no reference to the subject under consideration. He then
read the letter, which was simply signed “ A Regular Attendant
at Your Lectures,” and which in a few words drew attention
to the appalling distress existing among the population out of
work at the East End, and suggested that all those present at
the lecture that night should be allowed the opportunity of con-
tributing 1d. or 2d. each towards a fund for their relief, and that
the professor should become the treasurer for the evening. This
suggestion was received by the audience with marks of approval.
The professor said he would not put pressure on anyone; he
would simply place his own subscription in one of the skulls on
the table. This he did, and all the audience coming on the plat-
form, threw in money in copper and silver until the novel cash
box was filled with coin which amounted to a large sum. A
gentleman present expressed a hope that the example set by
that audience might be followed with good results wherever
large bodies assembled either for educational or recreative
purposes.

At the end of April this year my father spent a week in
Brittany with Dr. Hooker and Sir J. Lubbock, rambling
about the neighbourhood of Rennes and Vannes, and com-
bining the examination of prehistoric remains with the re-
freshment of holiday making.

Few letters of this period exist. The x Club was doing
its work. Most of those to whom he would naturally have
written he met constantly. Two letters to Professor
Haeckel give pieces of his experience. One suggests the
limits of aggressive polemics, as to which I remember his
once saying that he himself had only twice been the ag-
gressor in controversy, without waiting to be personally
attacked; once where he found his opponent was engaged
1867 LETTER TO HAECKEL 309

in a flanking movement; the other when a man of great
public reputation had come forward to champion an un-
tenable position of the older orthodoxy, and a blow dealt
to his pretensions to historical and scientific accuracy would
not only bring the question home to many who neglected
it in an impersonal form, but would also react upon the
value of the historical arguments with which he sought to
stir public opinion in other spheres. The other letter
touches on the influence, at once calming and invigorating,
as he had known it to the full for the last twelve years,
which a wife can bring in the midst of outward struggles
to the inner life of the home.

JeRMyN STREET, Lonpon, J/ay 20, 1867.

My pear HaeckeL—Your letter, though dated the 12th, has
but just reached me. I mention this lest you should think me
remiss, my sin in not writing to you already being sufficiently
great. But your book did not reach me until November, and I
have been hard at work lecturing, with scarcely an intermission
ever since.

Now I need hardly say that the Morphologie is not exactly
a novel to be taken up and read in the intervals of business. On
the contrary, though profoundly interesting, it is an uncom-
monly hard book, and one wants to read every sentence of
it over.

I went through it within a fortnight of its coming into my
hands, so as to get at your general drift and purpose, but up
to this time I have not been able to read it as I feel I ought to
read it before venturing upon criticism. You cannot imagine
how my time is frittered away in these accursed lectures and
examinations.

There can be but one opinion, however, as to the knowledge
and intellectual grasp displayed in the book; and, to me, the
attempt to systematise biology as a whole is especially interest-
ing and valuable.

I shall go over this part of your work with great care by
and by, but I am afraid you must expect that the number of
biologists who will do so, will remain exceedingly small. Our
comrades are not strong in logic and philosophy.

With respect to the polemic excursus, of course, I chuckle
over them most sympathetically, and then say how naughty they
are! I have done too much of the same sort of thing not to
310 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXI

sympathise entirely with you; and I am much inclined to think
that it is a good thing for a man, once at any rate in his life,
to perform a public war-dance against all sorts of humbug and
imposture.

But having satisfied one’s love of freedom in this way, per-
haps the sooner the war-paint is off the better. It has no virtue
except as a sign of one’s own frame of mind and determina-
tion, and when that is once known, is little better than a dis-
traction.

I think there are a few patches of this kind, my dear friend,
which may as well come out in the next edition, e.g. that wonder-
ful note about the relation of God to gas, the gravity of which
greatly tickled my fancy.

I pictured to myself the effect which a translation of this
would have upon the minds of my respectable countrymen!

Apropos of translation. Darwin wrote to me on that sub-
ject, and with his usual generosity, would have made a consider-
able contribution towards the expense if we could have seen
our way to the publication of a translation. But I do not think
it would be well to translate the book in fragments, and, as a
whole, it would be a very costly undertaking, with very little
chance of finding readers.

I do not believe that in the British Islands there are fifty
people who are competent to read the book, and of the fifty, five
and twenty have read it or will read it in German.

What I desire to do is to write a review of it, which will
bring it into some notice on this side of the water, and this I
hope to do before long. If I do not it will be, you well know,
from no want of inclination, but simply from lack of time.

In any case, as soon as I have been able to study the book
carefully, you shall have my honest opinion about all points.

I am glad your journey has yielded so good a scientific
harvest, and especially that you found my Oceanic Hydrozoa of
some use. But I am shocked to find you had no copy of the
book of your own, and I shall take care that one is sent to
you. It is my first-born work, done when I was very raw and
inexperienced, and had neither friends nor help. Perhaps I am
all the fonder of the child on that ground.

A lively memory of you remains in my house, and wife and
children will be very glad to hear that I have news of you when
I go home to dinner.

Keep us in kindly recollection, and believe me—Ever yours
very faithfully, T. H. Hux ey.
1867 LETTER TO HAECKEL 311

July 16, 1867.

My veAR HarecKeL — My wife and I send you our most
hearty congratulations and good wishes. Give your betrothed
a good account of us, for we hope in the future to entertain as
warm a friendship for her as for you. I was very glad to have
the news, for it seemed to me very sad that a man of your warm
affections should be surrounded only by hopeless regrets. Such
surroundings inflict a sort of partial paralysis upon one’s whole
nature, a result which is, to me, far more serious and regrettable
than the mere suffering one undergoes.

The one thing for men, who like you and I stand pretty much
alone, and have a good deal of fighting to do in the external
world, is to have light and warmth and confidence within the
four walls of home. May all these good things await you!

Many thanks for your kind invitation to Jena. I am sure
my wife would be as much pleased as I to accept it, but it is
very difficult for her to leave her children.

We will keep it before us as a pleasant possibility, but I
suspect you and Madame will be able to come to England before
we shall reach Germany.

I wish I had rooms to offer you, but you have seen that troop
of children, and they leave no corner unoccupied.

Many thanks for the Bericht and the genealogical tables.
You seem, as usual, to have got through an immense amount of
work,

I have been exceedingly occupied with a paper on the
“Classification of Birds,’ a sort of expansion of one of my
Hunterian Lectures this year. It has now gone to press, and
I hope soon to be able to send you a copy of it.

Occupation of this and other kinds must be my excuse for
having allowed so much longer a time to slip by than I imagined
had done before writing to you. It is not for want of sym-
pathy, be sure, for my wife and I have often talked of the new
life opening out to you.

This is written in my best hand. I am proud of it, as I can
read every word quite easily myself, which is more than I can
always say for my own MS.—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxzey.

The same experience is attested and enforced in the
correspondence with Dr. Anton Dohrn, which begins this
year. Genial, enthusiastic, as pungent as he was eager in
conversation, the future founder of the Marine Biological

21
312 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXI

Station at Naples, on his first visit to England, made my
father’s acquaintance by accepting his invitation to stay with
him “for as long as you can make it convenient to stay”
at Swanage, “a little country town with no sort of amuse-
ment except what is to be got by walking about a rather
pretty country. But having warned you of this, I repeat
that it will give me much pleasure to see you if you think
it worth while to come so far.”

Dr. Dohrn came, and came into the midst of the family
—seven children, ranging from ten years to babyhood, with
whom he made himself as popular by his farmyard reper-
tory, as he did with the elders by other qualities. The im-
pression left upon him appears from a letter written soon
after—

“Tch habe heute mehrere Capitel in Mill’s Utilitarianism
gelesen and das Wort happiness mehr als einmal gefunden:
hatte ich eine Definition dieses vielumworbenen Wortes irgend
Jemand zu geben, ich wirde sagen:* go and see the Huxley
family at Swanage; and if you would enjoy the same I enjoyed,
you would feel what is happiness, and never more ask for a
definition of this sentiment.”

SWANAGE, Sept. 22, 1867.

My pear Dourn—Thanks to my acquaintance with the
Mikroskopische Anatomie, and to the fact that you employ our
manuscript characters, and not the hieroglyphics of what I ven-
ture to call the “cursed” and not “cursiv” Schrift, your letter
was as easy as it was pleasant to read. We are all glad to have
news of you, though it was really very unnecessary to thank
us for trying to make your brief visit a pleasant one. Your
conscience must be more “ pungent” than your talk, if it pricks
you with so little cause. My wife rejoices saucily to find that
phrase of hers has stuck so strongly in your mind, but you must
remember her fondness for “ Tusch.”

You must certainly marry. In my bachelor days, it was
unsafe for anyone to approach me before mid-day, and for all
intellectual purposes I was barren till the evening. Breakfast
at six would have upset me for the day. You and the lobster
noted the difference the other day.

 

* I have been reading several chapters of Mill’s Utilitarianism
to-day, and met with the word ‘‘happiness” more than once; if J had
to give anybody a definition of this much debated word, I should say—
1867 INFLUENCE OF MARRIAGE 313

Whether it is matrimony or whether it is middle age I don’t
know, but as time goes on you can combine both.

I cannot but accept your kind offer to send me Fanny
Lewald’s works, though it is a shame to rob you of them. In
return my wife insists on your studying a copy of Tennyson,
which we shall send you as soon as we return to civilisation,
which will be next Friday. If you are in London after that date
we shall hope to see you once more before you return to the
bosom of the “ Fatherland.”

I did my best to give the children your message, but I fear I
failed ignominiously in giving the proper bovine vocalisation to
“ Mroo.”

That small curly-headed boy Harry, struck, I suppose by the
kindness you both show to children, has effected a synthesis
between you and Tyndall, and gravely observed the other day,
“Doctor Dohrn-Tyndall do say Mroo.”

My wife .. . sends her kind regards. The “seven” are not
here or they would vote love by acclamation.—Ever yours very
faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

He did not this year attend the British Association,
which was held in Dundee. This was the first occasion on
which an evening was devoted to a working men’s lecture,
a step important as tending towards his own ideal of what
science should be:—not the province of the few, but the
possession of the many.

This first lecture was delivered by Professor Tyndall,
who wrote him an account of the meeting, and in particular
of his reconciliation with Professors Thomson (Lord Kel-
vin) and Tait, with whom he had had a somewhat embit-
tered controversy.

In his reply, Huxley writes :—

To J. TYNDALL

Thanks also for a copy of the Dundce Advertiser containing
your lecture. It seemed to me that the report must be a very
good one, and the lecture reads exceedingly well. You have
inaugurated the working men’s lectures of the Association in a
way that cannot be improved. And it was worth the trouble,
for I suspect they will become a great and noble feature in the
meetings.
314 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXI

Everything seems to have gone well at the meeting, the edu-
cational business carried [i.e. a recommendation that natural
science be made a part of the curriculum in the public schools],
and the anthropologers making fools of themselves in a most
effectual way. So that I do not feel I have anything to reproach
myself with for being absent.

I am very pleased to hear of the reconciliation with Thom-
son and Tait. The mode of it speaks well for them, and the fact
will remove a certain source of friction from amongst the cogs
of your mental machinery.

The following gives the reason for his resigning the
Fullerian lectureship :—

ATHENZUM C.vB, AZay, 1867.

My pear TynpALL—A conversation I had with Bence Jones
yesterday reminded me that I ought to have communicated with
you. But we do not meet so often as we used to do, being, I sup-
pose, both very busy, and I forget to write.

You recollect that the last time we talked together, you
mentioned a notion of Bence Jones’s to make the Fulle-
rian Professorship of Physiology a practically permanent ap-
pointment, and that I was quite inclined to stick by that (if
such arrangement could be carried out), and give up other
things. :

But since I have been engaged in the present course of
lectures I have found reason to change my views. It is very
hard work, and takes up every atom of my time to make the
lectures what they should be; and I find that at this time of year,
being more or less used up, I suppose, with the winter work, I
stand the worry and excitement of the actual lectures very
badly. Add to this that it is six weeks clean gone out of the
only time I have disposable for real scientific progress, and you
will understand how it is that I have made up my mind to
resign.

I put all this clearly before Bence Jones yesterday, with the
proviso that I could and would do nothing that should embarrass
the Institution or himself.

If there is the least difficulty in supplying my place, or if the
managers think I shall deal shadily with them by resigning
before the expiration of my term, of course I go on. And I
hope you all understand that I would do anything rather than
put even the appearance of a slight upon those who were kind
enough to elect me.—Ever yours, T. H. Hux.ey.
1867 FULLERIAN LECTURESHIP 315

He found a substitute for 1868, the last year of the
triennial course, in Dr. (now Sir) Michael Foster. Of his
final lectures in 1867 he used to tell a story against him-
self.

In my early period as a lecturer, I had very little confidence
in my general powers, but one thing I prided myself upon was
clearness. I was once talking of the brain before a large mixed
audience, and soon began to feel that no one in the room under-
stood me. Finally I saw the thoroughly interested face of a
woman auditor, and took consolation in delivering the remainder
of the lecture directly to her. At the close, my feeling as to her
interest was confirmed when she came up and asked if she might
put one question upon a single point which she had not quite
understood. “Certainly,” I replied. ‘‘ Now, Professor,” she
said, “is the cerebellum inside or outside the skull?” (Remii-
niscences of T. H. Huxley, by Professor H. Fairfield Osborn).

Dr. Foster used to add maliciously, that disgust at the
small impression he seemed to have made was the true
reason for the transference of the lectures.
CHAPTER XXII
1868

In 1868 he published five scientific memoirs, amongst
them his classification of birds and “ Remarks upon Arche-
opteryx Lithographica” (Proc. Roy. Soc. xvi. 1868, pp. 243-
248). This creature, a bird with reptilian characters, was a
suggestive object from which to popularise some of the far-
reaching results of his many years’ labour upon the mor-
phology of both birds and reptiles. Thus it led to a lecture
at the Royal Institution, on February 7, “ On the Animals
which are most nearly intermediate between Birds and
Reptiles.”

Of this branch of work Sir M. Foster says: (Obit. Not.
Proc. Roy. Soc. vol. lix.) :—

One great consequence of these researches was that science
was enriched by a clear demonstration of the many and close
affinities between reptiles and birds, so that the two hence-
forward came to be known under the joint title of Sauropsida,
the amphibia being at the same time distinctly more separated
from the reptiles, and their relations to fishes more clearly signi-
fied by the joint title of Ichthyopsida. At the same time, proof
was brought forward that the line of descent of the Sauropsida
clearly diverged from that of the Mammalia, both starting from
some common ancestry. And besides this great generalisation,
the importance of which, both from a classificatory and from an
evolutional point of view, needs no comment, there came out
of the same researches numerous lesser contributions to the
advancement of morphological knowledge, including among
others an attempt, in many respects successful, at a classification
of birds.

This work in connection with the reptilian ancestry of
birds further appears in the paleontological papers published
316
1868 BATHYBIUS 317

in 1869 upon the Dinosaurs (see Chap. X XIII.), and is
referred to in a letter to Haeckel, p. 325.

His Hunterian lectures on the Invertebrata appeared
this year in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science
(pp. 126-129, and 191-201), and in the October number
of the same journal appeared his famous article ‘“‘ On some
Organisms living at great depth in the North Atlantic
Ocean,” originally delivered before the British Association
at Norwich in this year (1868). The sticky or viscid char-
acter of the fresh mud from the bottom of the Atlantic had
already been noticed by Captain Dayman when making
soundings for the Atlantic cable. This stickiness was appar-
ently due to the presence of innumerable lumps of a trans-
parent, gelatinous substance, consisting of minute granules
without discoverable nucleus or membranous envelope,
and interspersed with cretaceous coccoliths. After a de-
scription of the structure of this substance and its chemical
reactions, he makes a careful proviso against confounding
the statement of fact in the description and the interpre-
tation which he proceeds to put upon these facts :—

I conceive that the granulate heaps and the transparent
gelatinous matter in which they are embedded represent masses
of protoplasm. Take away the cysts which characterise the
Radiolaria, and a dead Sphaerozoumwould very nearly represent
one of this deep-sea “ Ur-schleim,” which must, I think, be re-
garded as a new form of those simple animated beings which
have recently been so well described by Haeckel in his Mono-
graphie der Moneras, p. 210.*

Of this he writes to Haeckel on October 6, 1868 :—

[This paper] is about a new “ Moner” which lies at the
bottom of the Atlantic to all appearances, and gives rise to
some wonderful calcified bodies. I have christened it Bathybius
Haeckelii, and I hope that you will not be ashamed of your god-
child. I will send you some of the mud with the paper.

The explanation was plausible enough on general
grounds, if the evidence had been all that it seemed to be.

 

* See Coll. Ess. v. 153.
318 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXII

But it must be noted that the specimens examined by him
and by Haeckel, who two years later published a full and
detailed description of Bathybius, were seen in a preserved
state. Neither of them saw a fresh specimen, though on
the cruise of the Porcupine, Sir Wyville Thomson and Dr.
W. Carpenter examined the substance in a fresh state, and
found no better explanation to give of it. However, not
only were the expectations that it was very widely dis-
tributed over the Atlantic bottom, falsified in 1879 by the
researches of the Challenger expedition, but the behaviour
of certain deep-sea specimens gave good ground for sus-
pecting that what had been sent home before as genuine
deep-sea mud, was a precipitate due to the action on the
specimens of the spirit in which they were preserved.
Though Haeckel, with his special experience of Monera,
refused to desert Bathybius, a close parallel to which was
found off Greenland in 1876, the rest of its sponsors gave
it up. Whatever it might be as a matter of possibility, the
particular evidence upon which it had been described was
tainted. Once assured of this, Huxley characteristically
took the bull by the horns. Without waiting for any one
else to come forward, he made public renunciation of Ba-
thybius at the British Association in 1879.* The “ eating of
the leek” as recommended to his friend Dohrn (July 7,
1868), was not merely a counsel for others, but was a pre-
scription followed by himself on occasion :—

“ As you know, I did not think you were on the right track
with the Arthropoda, and I am not going to profess to be sorry
that you have finally worked yourself to that conclusion.

As to the unlucky publication in the Journal of Anatomy and
Physiology, you have read your Shakespeare and know what is
meant by “eating a leek.” Well, every honest man has to do
that now and then, and I assure you that if eaten fairly and
without grimaces, the devouring of that herb has a very whole-
some cooling effect on the blood, particularly in people of san-
guine temperament.

Seriously you must not mind a check of this kind.

 

* See vol. ii. p. 5, sg.
1868 STYLE 319

This incident, one may suspect, was in his mind when
he wrote in his Autobiography of the rapidity of thought
characteristic of his mother :-—

That characteristic has been passed on to me in full
strength; it has often stood me in good stead, it has sometimes
played me sad tricks, and it has always been a danger.

At the Norwich meeting of the Association he also de-
livered his well-known lecture to working men “On a
Piece of Chalk,” a perfect example of the handling of a
common and trivial subject, so as to make it “a window
into the Infinite.” He was particularly interested in the
success of the meeting, as his friend Hooker was President,
and writes to Darwin, September 12 :—

We had a capital meeting at Norwich, and dear old Hooker
came out in great force as he always does in emergencies.

The only fault was the terrible “ Darwinismus” which
spread over the section and crept out when you least expected
it, even in Fergusson’s lecture on “ Buddhist Temples.”

You will have the rare happiness to see your ideas tri-
umphant during your lifetime.

P.S.—I am preparing to go into opposition; I can’t stand it.

This lecture “ On a Piece of Chalk,” together with two
others delivered this year, seem to me to mark the matur-
ing of his style into that mastery of clear expression for
which he deliberately laboured, the saying exactly what he
meant, neither too much nor too little, without confusion
and without obscurity. Have something to say, and say it,
was the Duke of Wellington’s theory of style; Huxley’s was
to say that which has to be said in such language thaf you
can stand cross-examination on each word. Be clear,
though you may be convicted of error. If you are clearly
wrong, you will run up against a fact some time and get set
right. If you shuffle with your subject, and study chiefly to
use language which will give a loophole of escape either
way, there is no hope for you.

This was the secret of his lucidity. In no one could
Buffon’s aphorism on style find a better illustration, Le style
c'est VPhomme méme. In him science and literature, too often
320 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXII
divorced, were closely united; and literature owes him a
debt for importing into it so much of the highest scientific
habit of mind; for showing that truthfulness need not be
bald, and that real power lies more in exact accuracy than
in luxuriance of diction. Years after, no less an authority
than Spedding, in a letter upon the influence of Bacon on
his own style in the matter of exactitude, the pruning of fine
epithets and sweeping statements, the reduction of number-
less superlatives to positives, asserted that, if as a young
man he had fallen in with Huxley’s writings before Bacon’s,
they would have produced the same effect upon him.*

Of the other two discourses referred to, one is the open-
ing address which he delivered as Principal at the South
London Working Men’s College on January 4, “ A Liberal
Education, and Where to Find It.” This is not a brief for
science to the exclusion of other teaching; no essay has
insisted more strenuously on the evils of a one-sided educa-
tion, whether it be classical or scientific; but it urged the
necessity for a strong tincture of science and her method,
if the modern conception of the world, created by the spread
of natural knowledge, is to be fairly understood. If culture
is the “ criticism of life,” it is fallacious if deprived of knowl-
edge of the most important factor which has transformed
the medieval into the modern spirit.

Two of his most striking passages are to be found in
this address; one the simile of the force behind nature as
the hidden chess player; the other the noble description of
the end of a true education.

Well known as it is, I venture to quote the latter as an
instance of his style :—

That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been
so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will,
and does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechan-
ism it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear cold logic engine,
with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working
order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of
work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of
the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great

 

* See p. 520.
1868-9 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 321

and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of her opera-
tions; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but
whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will,
the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all
beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to
respect others as himself.

Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal edu-
cation, for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with
nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They
will get on together rarely; she as his ever-beneficent mother;
he as her mouth-piece, her conscious self, her minister and
interpreter.

The third of these discourses is the address ‘On the
Physical Basis of Life,” of which he writes to Haeckel on
January 20, 1869 :—

You will be amused to hear that I went to the holy city,
Edinburgh itself, the other day, for the purpose of giving the first
of a series of Sunday lectures. I came back without being
stoned; but Murchison (who is a Scotchman you know), told me
he thought it was the boldest act of my life. The lecture will
be published in February, and I shall send it to you, as it con-
tains a criticism of materialism which I should like you to
consider.

In it he explains in popular form a striking generalisa-
tion of scientific research, namely, that whether in animals
or plants, the structural unit of the living body is made up
of similar material, and that vital action and even thought
are ultimately based upon molecular changes in this life-
stuff. Materialism! gross and brutal materialism! was the
mildest comment he expected in some quarters; and he
took the opportunity to explain how he held “ this union of
materialistic terminology with the repudiation of material-
istic philosophy,” considering the latter “to involve grave
philosophic error.”

His expectations were fully justified; in fact, he writes
that some persons seemed to imagine that he had invented
protoplasm for the purposes of the lecture.

Here, too, in the course of a reply to Archbishop
Thompson’s confusion of the spirit of modern thought with
322 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXII

the system of M. Comte, he launched his well-known defini-
tion of Comtism as Catholicism minus Christianity, which
involved him in a short controversy with Mr. Congreve (see
“The Scientific Aspects of Positivism,” Lay Sermons, p.
162), and with another leading Positivist, who sent him a
letter through Mr. Darwin. Huxley replied -—

JERMYN STREET, March 11, 1869.

My pEAaR Darwin—I know quite enough of Mr. to have
paid every attention to what he has to say, even if you had not
been his ambassador.

I glanced over his letter when I returned home last night
very tired with my two nights’ chairmanship at the Ethnological
and the Geological Societies.

Most of it is fair enough, though I must say not helping me
to any novel considerations.

Two paragraphs, however, contained opinions which Mr.
is at perfect liberty to entertain, but not, I think, to
express to me.

The one is, that I shaped what I had to say at Edinburgh
with a view of stirring up the prejudices of the Scotch Presby-
terians (imagine how many Presbyterians I had in my audi-
ences!) against Comte.

The other is the concluding paragraph, in which Mr.
recommends me to “read Comte,” clearly implying that I have
criticised Comte without reading him.

You will know how far I am likely to have committed either
of the immoralities thus laid to my charge.

At any rate, I do not think I care to enter into more direct
relations with anyone who so heedlessly and unjustifiably as-
sumes me to be guilty of them. Therefore I shall content
myself with acknowledging the receipt of Mr. ’s letter
through you.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

 

 

 

 

JERMYN STREET, AZarch 17, 1869.

My pear Darwin—After I had sent my letter to you the
other day I thought how stupid I had been not to put in a slip
of paper to say it was meant for ’s edification.

I made sure you would understand that I wished it to be
sent on, and wrote it (standing on the points of my toes and
with my tail up very stiff) with that end in view.

[Sketch of two dogs bristling up.]

I am getting so weary of people writing to propose con-

 
1869 HUXLEY'S JUDGMENT OF COMTE 323

troversy to me upon one point or another, that I begin to wish
the article had never been written. The fighting in itself is not
“particularly objectionable, but it’s the waste of time.

I begin to understand your sufferings over the Origin. A
ood book is comparable to a piece of meat, and fools are as
flies who swarm to it, each for the purpose of depositing and
hatching his own particular maggot of an idea—Ever yours,

T. H. Hux ey.

A little later he wrote to Charles Kingsley, who had
supported him in the controversy :—

JERMYN STREET, APri/ 12, 1869.

My pear Kincstey—Thanks for your hearty bottle-holding.

Congreve is no better than a donkey to take the line he does.
I studied Comte, Philosophic, Politique, and all sixteen years
ago, and having formed my judgment about him, put it into
one of the pigeon holes of my brain (about the H.* minor), and
there let it rest till it was wanted.

You are perfectly right in saying that Comte knew nothing
about physical science—it is one of the points I am going to
put in evidence.

The law of the three states is mainly evolved from his own
consciousness, and is only a bad way of expressing that tendency
to personification which is inherent in man.

The Classification of Sciences is bosh—as Spencer has
already shown.

Nothing short of madness, however, can have dictated Con-
greve’s challenge of my admiration of Comte as a man at the
end of his article. Did you ever read Littré’s Life of Comte?
I bought it when it came out a year or more ago, and I rose
from its perusal with a feeling of sheer disgust and contempt
‘for the man who could treat a noble-hearted woman who had
saved his life and his reason, as Comte treated his wife.

As soon as I have time I will deal with Comte effectually,
you may depend upon that. At the same time, I shall endeavour
to be just to what there is (as I hold), really great and good in
his clear conception of the necessity of reconstructing society
from the bottom to the top “ sans dieu ni roi,” if I may interpret
that somewhat tall phrase as meaning “ with our conceptions
of religion and politics on a scientific basis.”

 

* The Hippocampus minor: compare p. 206.
324 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXII

Comte in his later days was an apostate from his own creed;
his “nouveau grand Etre supréme” being as big a fetish as
ever nigger first made and then worshipped.—Ever yours faith-
fully, T. H. Hux.ey.

It is interesting to note how he invariably submitted
his writings to the criticism of his wife before they were
seen by any other eye. To her judgment was due the
toning down of many a passage which erred by excess of
vigour, and the clearing up of phrases which would be
obscure to the public. In fact, if an essay met with her
approval, he felt sure it would not fail of its effect when
published. Writing to her from Norwich on August 23,
1868, he confesses himself with reference to the lecture “ On
a Piece of Chalk” :—

I met Grove who edits Macmillan, at the soirée. He pulled
the proof of my lecture out of his pocket and said, “ Look here,
there is one paragraph in your lecture I can make neither top
nor tail of. I can’t understand what it means.” I looked to
where his finger pointed, and behold it was the paragraph you
objected to when I read you the lecture on the sea shore! I
told him, and said I should confess, however set up it might
make you.

At the beginning of September, he rejoined his wife and
family at Littlehampton, “a grand place for children, be-
cause you go up rather than down into the sea, and it is
quite impossible for them to get into mischief by falling,”
as he described it to his friend Dr. Dohrn, who came down
for ten days, eagerly looking forward “ to stimulating walks
over stock and stone, to Tennyson, Herbert Spencer, and
Harry’s ringing laugh.”

The latter half of the month he spent at or near Dublin,
serving upon the Commission on Science and Art In-
struction :—

To-day (he writes on September 16), we shall be occupied
in inspecting the School of Science and the Glasnevin botanical
and agricultural gardens, and to-morrow we begin the session
work of examining all the Irishry, who want jobs perpetrated.
It is weary work, and the papers are already beginning to tell
lies about us and attack us.
1868 LETTERS TO HAECKEL AND DOHRN 325

The rest of the year he remained in London, except
the last four days of December, when he was lecturing at
Newcastle, and stayed with Sir W. Armstrong at Jesmond.

To ProressorR HAECKEL
Jan, 21, 1868.

Don’t you think we did a right thing in awarding the Copley
Medal to Baer last year? The old man was much pleased, and it
was a comfort to me to think that we had not let him go to his
grave without the highest honour we had to bestow.

I am over head and ears, as we say, in work, lecturing,
giving addresses to the working men and (figurez vous!) to
the clergy.*

In scientific work the main thing just now about which I am
engaged is a revision of the Dinosauria, with an eye to the
“Descendenz Theorie.” The road from Reptiles to Birds is by
way of Dinosauria to the Ratitae. The bird “ phylum” was
struthious, and wings grew out of rudimentary forelimbs.

You see that among other things I have been reading Ernst
Haeckel’s Morphologie.

The next two letters reflect his views on the proper
work to be undertaken by men of unusual scientific ca-
pacity—

JERMYN STREET, Jan. 15, 1868.

My pear DoHrN—Though the most procrastinating corre-
spondent in existence when a letter does not absolutely require
an answer, I am tolerably well-behaved when something needs
to be said or done immediately. And as that appears to me to
be the case with your letter of the 13th which has this moment
reached me, I lose no time in replying to it.

The Calcutta appointment has been in my hands as well as
Turner’s, and I have made two or three efforts, all of which un-
fortunately have proved unsuccessful to find: (1) A man who

 

* On December 12, 1867, there was a meeting of clergy at Sion
House, under the auspices of Dean Farrar and the Rev. W. Rogers of
Bishopsgate, when the bearing of recent science upon orthodox dogma
was discussed. First Huxley delivered an address; some of the
clergy present denounced any concessions as impossible; others
declared that they had long ago accepted the teachings of geology;
whereupon a candid friend inquired, ‘‘Then why don’t you say so
from your pulpits?” (See Col/, Ess. iii. 119.)
326 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXII

will do for it and at the same time (2) for whom it will do.
Now you fulfil the first condition admirably, but as to the second
I have very great doubts.

In the first place the climate of Calcutta is not particularly
good for anyone who has a tendency to dysentery, and I doubt
very much if you would stand it for six months.

Secondly, we have a proverb that it is not wise to use razors
to cut blocks.

The business of the man who is appointed to that museum
will be to get it into order. If he does his duty he will give his
time and attention to museum work pure and simple, and I
don’t think that (especially in an Indian climate), he has much
energy left for anything else after the day’s work is done. Nam-
ing and arranging specimens is a most admirable and useful
employment, but when you have done it is “‘ cutting blocks,” and
you, my friend, are a most indubitable razor, and I do not wish
to have your edge blunted in that fashion.

If it were necessary for you to win your own bread, one’s
advice might be modified. Under such circumstances one must
do things which are not entirely desirable. But for you who
are your own master and have a career before you, to bind
yourself down to work six hours a day at things you do not
care about and which others could do just as well, while you
are neglecting the things which you do care for, and which
others could not do so well, would, I think, be amazingly unwise.

Liberavi animam! don’t tell my Indian friends I have dis-
suaded you, but on my conscience I could give no other advice.

We have to thank you three times over. In the first place
for a portrait which has taken its place among those of our
other friends; secondly for the great pleasure you gave my
little daughter Jessie, by the books you so kindly sent; and
thirdly, for Fanny Lewald’s autobiography which arrived a few
days ago.

Jessie is meditating a letter of thanks (a serious undertak-
ing), and when it is sent the mother will have a word to say
for herself.

In the middle of October scarlet fever broke out among my
children, and they have all had it in succession, except Jessie,
who took it seven years ago. The last convalescent is now well,
but we had the disease in the house nearly three months, and
have been like lepers, cut off from all communication with our
neighbours for that time.

We have had a great deal of anxiety, and my wife has been
1568 HAECKEL'S MORPHOLOGIE 327
pretty nearly worn out with nursing day and night; but by
great good fortune “the happy family” has escaped all perma-
nent injury, and you might hear as much laughter in the house
as at Swanage.

Will you be so kind as to thank Professor Gegenbaur for a
paper on the development of the vertebral column of Lepidos-
teum I have just received from him? He has been writing about
the process of ossification and the ‘“ deck-knochen ” question, but
I cannot make out exactly where. Could you let me know?

I am anxious for the Arthropoden Werk, but I expect to
gasp when it comes.

Turn to p. 380 of the new edition of our friend Kolliker’s
Handbuch, and you will find that though a view which I took
of the “organon adamantinae”’ some twelve or fourteen years
ago, and which Kolliker has up to this time repudiated, turns
out, and is now admitted by him, to be perfectly correct, yet
“that I was not acquainted with the facts that would justify
the conclusion.” Really, if I had time I could be angry.

Pray remember me most kindly to Haeckel, to all whose
enemies I wish confusion, and believe me, ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxrey.

P.S.—I have read a hundred pages or so of Fanny Lewald’s
Ist Bd., and am delighted with her insight into child-life.

Tyndall was resigning his lectureship at the School of

Mines—
JERMYN STREET, Juve 10, 1868.

My pear TynpaLtt—All I can say is, I am heartily sorry.

If you feel that your lectures here interfere with your origi-
nal work, I should not be a true friend either to science or
yourself if I said a word against your leaving us.

But for all that I am and shall remain very sorry.—Ever
yours very sincerely, T. H. Hux ey.

If you recommend , of course I shall be very glad to
support him in any way I can. But at present I am rather dis-
posed to d n anyone who occupies your place.

 

 

The following extract is from a letter to Haeckel
(November 13, 1868), with reference to the proposed trans-
lation of his Morphologie by the Ray Society :-—

We shall at once look out for a good translator of the text,

as the job will be a long and a tough one. My wife (who sends
22
328 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXII

her best wishes and congratulations on your fatherhood) will
do the bits of Goethe’s poetry, and I will look after the prose
citations. :

Next as to the text itself. The council were a little alarmed
at the bulk of the book, and it is of the utmost importance that
it should be condensed to the uttermost.

Furthermore, English propriety had taken fright at rumours
touching the aggressive heterodoxy of some passages. (We do
not much mind heterodoxy here, if it does not openly proclaim
itself as such.)

And on both these points I had not only to give very dis-
tinct assurances, such as I thought your letters had entitled me
to give; but in a certain sense to become myself responsible for
your behaving yourself like a good boy!

If I had not known you and understood your nature and dis-
position as I fancy I do, I should not have allowed myself to be
put in this position; but I have implicit faith in your doing
what is wise and right, and so making it tenable.

There is not the slightest desire to make you mutilate your
book or leave out anything which you conceive to be absolutely
essential; and I on my part should certainly not think of asking
you to make any alteration which would not in my judgment
improve the book quite irrespectively of the tastes of the British
public.

[Alterations are suggested.] But I stop. By this time you
will be swearing at me for attacking all your favourite bits.
Let me know what you think about these matters.

I congratulate you and Madame Haeckel heartily on the
birth of your boy. Children work a greater metamorphosis in
men than any other condition of life. They ripen one wonder-
fully and make life ten times better worth having than it was.

26 ABBEY PLacE, Vov. 15, 1868.

My pear Darwin—You are always the bienvenu, and we
shall be right glad to see you on Sunday morning.

We breakfast at 8.30, and the decks are clear before nine. I
would offer you breakfast, but I know it does not suit you to
come out unfed; and besides you would abuse the opportunity
to demoralise Harry.*—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

 

* This small boy of nearly four was a great favourite of Darwin's.
When we children were all staying at Down about this time, Darwin
1868 NOTE TO DARWIN 329
An undated note to Darwin belongs to the very end of
this year, or to the beginning of the next :—

The two volumes of the new book have just reached me.
My best thanks for them; and if you can only send me a little
time for reading within the next three months you will heighten
the obligation twenty-fold. I wish I had either two heads or a
body that needed no rest!

 

himself would come in upon us at dinner, and patting him on the
head, utter what has become a household word amongst us, ‘‘ Make
yourself at home, and take large mouthfuls.”
CHAPTER XXIII
1869

In 1869 Huxley published five paleontological papers,
chiefly upon the Dinosaurs (see letter above to Haeckel,
January 21, 1868). His physiological researches upon the
development of parts of the skull, are represented by a paper
for the Zoological Society, while the Introduction to the
Classification of Animals was a reprint this year of the sub-
stance of six lectures in the first part of the lectures on
Elementary Comparative Anatomy (1864), which were out of
print, but still in demand by students.

As President of the Ethnological Society, he delivered
an inaugural address ‘‘ On the Ethnology and Archaeology
of India,” on March 9, and another “ On the Ethnology and
Archaeology of North America,” on April 13. As president
of the Society, moreover, he urged upon the Government
the advisability of forming a systematic series of photo-
graphs of the various races comprehended in the British
Empire, and was officially called upon to offer suggestions
for carrying out the project. This appears to be an ampli-
fication of Sir Joseph Fayrer’s plan in 1866, with respect
to all the tribes of India (see p. 294, and Appendix I.).

On April 7 he delivered his “ Scientific Education:
Notes of an After-Dinner Speech” before the Philomathic
Society at Liverpool (Coll. Ess. iii. 3), one part of which
deals with the attitude of the clergy towards physical sci-
ence, and expresses the necessary antagonism between sci-
ence and Roman Catholic doctrine which appears more
forcibly in one of his speeches at the School Board in
1871 (see p. 384).

330
1869 PHYSIOGRAPHY 331

In this and other educational addresses, he had sug-
gested ‘that one of the best ways of imparting to children a
preliminary knowledge of the phenomena of nature would
be a course of what the Germans call ‘* Erdkunde,” or gen-
eral information about the world we live in. It should
reach from our simplest everyday observations to wide gen-
eralisations of physical science; and should supply a back-
ground for the study of history. To this he gave the name
* Physiography,” a name which he believed to be original,
until in 1877 his attention was called to the fact that a
Physiographic had been published in Paris thirty years
before.

The idea was no new one with him. Part of his pre-
liminary lectures at the School of Mines had been devoted
to something of the kind for the last dozen years; he had
served on the Committee of the British Association, ap-
pointed in 1866 as the result of a paper by the present Dean
Farrar, then a Harrow master, “ On the Teaching of Science
in the Public Schools,” * to report upon the whole question.
Moreover, in consultation with Dr. Tyndall, he had drawn
up a scheme in the winter 1868-69, for the science teaching
in the International College, on the Council of which they
both were.

Seven yearly grades were arranged in this scheme, pro-
ceeding from the simplest account of the phenomena of
nature taught chiefly by object lessons, largely through the
elements of Physics and Botany, Chemistry and Human
Physiology—all illustrated with practical demonstrations—
to more advanced work in these subjects, as well as in
Social Science, which embraced not only the theory of
commerce and government, but the Natural History of Man
up to the point at which Ethnology and Archaeology touch
history.

It is interesting to note that the framers of this report
thought it necessary to point out that one master could not
teach all these subjects.

In the three later stages the boys might follow alter-

 

* See p. 298.
332 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIII

native lines of study according to their tastes and capacities ;
but of the earlier part, which was to be obligatory upon all,
the report says:—These four years study, if properly em-
ployed by the teachers, will constitute a complete prepara-
tory scientific course. However slight the knowledge of
details conferred, a wise teacher of any of these subjects will
be able to make that teaching thorough; and to give the
scholar a notion of the methods and of the ideas which he
will meet with in his further progress in all branches of
physical science.

In fact, the fundamental principle was to begin with
Observational Science, facts collected ; to proceed to Classi-
ficatory Science, facts arranged; and to end with Induc-
tive Science, facts reasoned upon and laws deduced.

While he was much occupied with the theoretical and
practical difficulties of such a scheme of science teaching
for general use, he was asked by his friend, the Rev. W.
Rogers of Bishopsgate, if he would not deliver a course of
lectures on elementary science to boys of the schools in
which the latter was interested.

He finally accepted in the following letter, and as the
result, delivered twelve lectures week by week from April
to June to a large audience at the London Institution in
Finsbury Circus, lectures not easily forgotten by the chil-
dren who listened to them nor by their elders :—

JERMYN STREET, Fed. 5, 1869.

My pear Rocers—Upon due reflection I am not indisposed
to undertake the course of lessons we talked about the other
day, though they will cost me a good deal of trouble in various
ways, and at a time of the year when I am getting to the end
of my tether and don’t much like trouble.

But the scheme is too completely in harmony with what (in
conjunction with Tyndall and others) I have been trying to
bring about in schools in general— not to render it a great
temptation to me to try to get it into practical shape.

All I have to stipulate is that we shall have a clear under-
standing on the part of the boys and teachers that the discourses
are to [be] Lessons and not talkee-talkee lectures. I should
like it to be understood that the boys are to take notes and to
be examined at the end of the course. Of course I cannot
1869 “GEOLOGICAL REFORM” 333

undertake to be examiner, but the schools might make some
arrangement on this point.

You see my great object is to set going something which can
be worked in every school in the country in a thorough and
effectual way, and set an example of the manner in which I
think this sort of introduction to science ought to be managed.

Unless this can be done I would rather not embark in a
project which will involve much labour, worry, and interruption
to my regular line of work.

I met Mr. [illegible] last night, and discussed the subject
briefly with him.—Ever yours very faithfully,
T. H. Huxtey.

I enclose a sort of rough programme of the kind of thing I
mean, cut up from a project of instruction for a school about
which I am now busy. The managers might like to see it. But
I shall be glad to have it returned.

These lectures were repeated in November at South
Kensington Museum, as the first part of a threefold course
to women on the elements of physical science, and the
Times reporter naively remarks that under the rather alarm-
ing name of Physiography, many of the audience were no
doubt surprised to hear an exceedingly simple and lucid
description of a river-basin. Want of leisure prevented him
from bringing out the lectures in book form until November
1877. When it did appear, however, the book, like his
other popular works, had a wide sale, and became the fore-
runner of an immense number of school-books on the
subject.

As President of the Geological Society, he delivered an
address (Coll. Ess. viii. 305), at the anniversary meeting,
February 19, upon the “ Geological Reform ” demanded by
the considerations advanced by the physicists, as to the age
of the earth and the duration of life upon it. From the point
of view of biology he was ready to accept the limits sug-
gested, provided that the premisses of Sir William Thom-
son’s * argument were shown to be perfectly reliable; but he
pointed out a number of considerations which might pro-
foundly modify the results of the isolated causes adduced;

 

* Now Lord Kelvin.
334 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXIII

and uttered a warning against the possible degradation of
‘‘a proper reverence for mathematical certainty” into “a
superstitious respect for all arguments arrived at by process
of mathematics.” *

At the close of the year, as his own period of office
came to an end, it was necessary to select a new presi-
dent of the Geological. He strongly urged Professor
(afterwards Sir Joseph) Prestwich to stand, and when
the latter consented, a few weeks, by the way, before
his marriage was to take place, replied :—

JERMYN STREET, Dec. 16, 1869.

My pear PrestwicH—Many thanks for your letter. Your
consent to become our President for the next period will give as
unfeigned satisfaction to the whole body of the Society as it does
to me and your other personal friends.

I have looked upon the affair as settled since our last talk,
and a very great relief it has been to my mind.

There is no doubt public-dinner speaking (and indeed all
public speaking) is nervous work. I funk horribly, though I
never get the least credit for it. But it is like swimming, the
worst of it is in the first plunge; and after you have taken your
“header” it’s not so bad (just like matrimony, by the way;
only don’t be so mean as to go and tell a certain lady I said so,
because I want to stand well in her books).

Of course you may command me in all ways in which I can
possibly be of use. But as one of the chiefs of the Society, and
personally and scientifically popular with the whole body, you
start with an immense advantage over me, and will find no
difficulties before you.

We will consider this business formally settled, and I shall
speak of it officially—Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

I cannot place the following letter to Matthew Arnold
with certainty, but it must have been written about this
period.t Everyone will sympathise with the situation :—

 

* See Coll. Ess. viii. Introd. p. 8.
+ The most probable date being 1869, for on July 1 of that year he
dined with Matthew Arnold at Harrow.
1869 PALEONTOLOGICAL WORK 335

26 ABBEY PLaAce, July 8.

My pear ArnoLtp—Look at Bishop Wilson on the sin of
covetousness and then inspect your umbrella stand. You will
there see a beautiful brown smooth-handled umbrella which is
not your property.

Think of what the excellent prelate would have advised
and bring it with you next time you come to the club. The
porter will take care of it for me—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

The following letter shows how paleontological work
was continually pouring in upon him :—

JERMYN STREET, AZay 7, 1869.

My pear Darwin—Do you recollect recommending * that
the Nassau, which sailed under Capt. Mayne’s command for
Magellan’s Straits some years ago should explore a fossiliferous
deposit at the Gallegos River?

They visited the place the other day as you will see by Cun-
ningham’s letter which I enclose, and got some fossils which
are now in my hands.

The skull to which Cunningham refers, consists of little
more than the jaws, but luckily nearly all the teeth are in place,
and prove it to be an entirely new ungulate mammal with teeth
in uninterrupted series like Anoplotherium, about as big as a
small horse.

What a wonderful assemblage of beasts there seems to have
been in South America! I suspect if we could find them all they
would make the classification of the Mammalia into a horrid
mess.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

And on July 16, 1869, he writes again to Darwin :—

To tell you the truth, what with fossils, Ethnology and the
great question of “ Darwinismus ” which is such a worry to us
all, I have lost sight of the collectors and naturalists “ by grace
of the dredge,” almost as completely as you have.

Indeed, the pressure was so great that he resolved to
give up the Hunterian Lectures at the College of Surgeons,
as he had already given up the Fullerian Professorship at
the Royal Institution. So he writes to Professor (afterwards
Sir William) Flower :—

* See p. 297.

 
336 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXIII

JERMYN STREET, June 7, 1869.
Private, Confidential, Particular.

My pear FLower—I have written to Quain * to tell him that
I do not propose to be put in nomination for the Hunterian Chair
this year. I really cannot stand it with the British Association
hanging over my head. So make thy shoulders ready for the
gown, and practise the goose-step in order to march properly
behind the mace, and I will come and hear your inaugural—
Ever yours, T. H. Huxtey.

The meeting of the Association to which he refers took
place at Exeter, and he writes of it to Darwin (September
28) :—

As usual, your abominable heresies were the means of get-
ting me into all sorts of hot water at the Association. Three
parsons set upon you, and if you were the most malicious of
men you could not have wished them to have made greater. fools
of themselves than they did. They got considerably chaffed,
and that was all they were worth.+

And to Tyndall, whom an accident had kept in Switzer-
land :—

After a sharp fight for Edinburgh, Liverpool was adopted
as the place of meeting for the Association of 1870, and I am
to be President; although the Times says that my best friends
tremble for me. (I hope you are not among that particular lot
of my best friends.)

I think we shall have a good meeting, and you know you are
pledged to give a lecture even if you come with your leg in
a sling.

The foundation of the Metaphysical Society in 1869 was
not without interest as a sign of the times. As in the new
birth of thought which put a period to the Middle Ages,
so in the Victorian Renaissance, a vast intellectual ferment
had taken immediate shape in a fierce struggle with long

 

* President of the Royal College of Surgeons.

+ It is perhaps scarcely worth while exhuming these long-forgotten
arguments in their entirety; but anyone curious enough to consult
the report of the meeting preserved in the files of the Academy, will
find, among other things, an entirely novel theory as to the relation
of the Cherubim to terrestrial creation.
1869 THE METAPIIYSICAL SOCIETY 337

established orthodoxy. But whereas Luther displaced
Erasmus, and the earlier reformers fought out the quarrel
with the weapons of the theologian rather than those of the
Humanist, the latter-day reformation was based upon the
extension of the domain of positive science, upon the force
of historical criticism, and the sudden reorganisation of ac-
cumulated knowledge in the light of a physical theory
adequate to explain it.

These new facts and the new or re-vivified theories based
upon them, remained to be reckoned with after the first
storm of denunciation had passed by, and the meeting at
Sion House in 1867* showed that some at least of the
English clergy besides Colenso and Stanley wished to under-
stand the real meaning of the new movement. Although
the wider effect of the scientific revival in modifying theo-
logical doctrine was not yet fully apparent, the irreconcila-
bles grew fewer and less noisy, while the injustice of their
attempts to stifle the new doctrine and to ostracise its sup-
porters became more glaring.

Thus among the supporters of the old order of thought,
there was one section more or less ready to learn of the
new. Another, seeing that the doctrines of which they were
firmly convinced were thrust aside by the rapid advance
of the new school, thought, as men not unnaturally think
in the like situation, that the latter did not duly weigh what
was said on their side. Hence this section eagerly entered
into the proposal to found a society which should bring to-
gether men of diverse views, and effect, as they hoped, by
personal discussion of the great questtions at issue, in the
manner and with the machinery of the learned societies, a
rapprochement unattainable by written debate.

The scheme was first propounded by Mr. James Knowles,
then editor of the Contemporary Review, now of the Nine-
teenth Century, in conversation with Tennyson and Profess-
or Pritchard (Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford).

Thus the Society came to be composed of men of the
most opposite ways of thinking and of very various occupa-

 

* See p. 3258.
338 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIII

tions in life. The largest group was that of churchmen :—
ecclesiastical dignitaries such as Thompson, the Archbishop
of York, Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, and
Dean Alford; staunch laymen such as Mr. Gladstone, Lord
Selborne, and the Duke of Argyll; while the liberal school
was represented by Dean Stanley, F. D. Maurice, and Mark
Pattison. Three distinguished converts from the English
Church championed Roman Catholic doctrine—Cardinal
Manning, Father Dalgairns, and W. G. Ward, while Uni-
tarianism claimed Dr. James Martineau. At the opposite
pole, in antagonism to Christian theology and theism gener-
ally, stood Professor W. K. Clifford, whose youthful bril-
liancy was destined to be cut short by an untimely death.
Positivism was represented by Mr. Frederic Harrison; and
Agnosticism by such men of science or letters as Huxley
and Tyndall, Mr. John Morley, and Mr. Leslie Stephen.

Something was gained, too, by the variety of callings
followed by the different members. While there were pro-
fessional students of philosophy, like Prof. Henry Sidgwick
or Sir Alexander Grant, the Principal of Edinburgh Univer-
sity, in some the technical knowledge of philosophy was
overlaid by studies in history or letters; in others, by the
practical experience of the law or politics; in others, again,
medicine or biology supplied a powerful psychological in-
strument. This fact tended to keep the discussions in touch
with reality on many sides.

There was Tennyson, for instance, the only poet who
thoroughly understood the movement of modern science, a
stately but silent member; Mr. Ruskin, J. A. Froude,
Shadworth Hodgson, R. H. Hutton of the Spectator, James
Hinton, and the well-known essayist, W. R. Greg; Sir
James Fitzjames Stephen, Sir F. Pollock, Robert Lowe
(Lord Sherbrooke), Sir M. E. Grant Duff, and Lord Arthur
Russell ; Sir John Lubbock, Dr. W. B. Carpenter, Sir Wil-
liam Gull, and Sir Andrew Clark.

Of contemporary thinkers of the first rank, neither John
Stuart Mill nor Mr. Herbert Spencer joined the society.
The letter of the former declining the invitation to join
(given in the Life of W, G. Ward, p. 299) is extremely
’

1869 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 339

characteristic. He considers the object of the projectors
very laudable, “ but it is very doubtful whether it will be
realised in practice.” The undoubted advantages of oral
discussion on such questions are, he continues, best realised
if undertaken in the manner of the Socratic dialogue, be-
tween one and one; but less so in a mixed assembly. He
therefore did not think himself justified in joining the so-
ciety at the expense of other occupations for which his time
was already engaged. And he concludes by defending him-
self against the charge of not paying fair attention to the
arguments of his opponents.

It followed from the composition of the society that the
papers read were less commonly upon technical questions of
metaphysics, such as ‘‘ Matter and Force” or ‘* The Relation
of Will to Thought,” than upon those of more vivid moral or
religious interest, such as ‘‘ What is Death?” ‘‘ The Theory
of a Soul,” “ The Ethics of Belief,’ or “Is God Unknow-
able,” in which wide scope was given to the emotions as
well as the intellect of each disputant.

The method of the Society was for the paper to be
printed and circulated among the members before the
meeting, so that their main criticisms were ready in advance.
The discussions took place after a dinner at which many of
the members would appear; and if the more formal debates
were not more effectual than predicted by J. S. Mill, the
informal discussions, almost conversations, at smaller meet-
ings, and the free course of talk at the dinner table, did
something to realise the primary objects of the society.
The personal rapprochement took place, but not philosophic
compromise or conversion. Whether or not the tone
adopted after this period by the clerical party at large was
affected by the better understanding on the part of their
representatives in the Metaphysical Society of the true aims
of their opponents and the honest and substantial difficulties
which stood in the way of reunion, it is true that the violent
denunciations of the sixties decreased in number and inten-
sity; the right to free expression of reasoned opinion on
serious fact was tacitly acknowledged; and, being less
attacked, Huxley himself began to be regarded in the light
340 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIII

lof a teacher rather than an iconoclast. The question began
to be not whether such opinions are wicked, but whether
from the point of view of scientific method they are irre-
fragably true.

The net philosophical result of the society's work was
to distinguish the essential and the unessential differences
between the opposite parties; the latter were to a great ex-
tent cleared up ; but the former remained all the more clearly
defined in logical nakedness for the.removal of the side
issues and the personal idiosyncrasies which often obscured
the main issues. Indeed, when this point was reached by
both parties, when the origins and consequences of the
fundamental principles on either side had been fully dis-
cussed and mutual misunderstandings removed to the ut-
most, so that only the fundamentals themselves remained
in debate, there was nothing left to be done. The so-
ciety, in fact, as Huxley expressed it, ‘ died of too much
love.”

Indeed, it is to be noticed that, despite the strong an-
tagonism of principle and deductions from principle which
existed among the members, the rule of mutual toleration
was well kept. The state of feeling after ten years’ open
struggle seemed likely to produce active collision between
representatives of the opposing schools at close quarters.
“We all thought it would be a case of Kilkenny cats,” said
Huxley many years afterwards. ‘“ Hats and coats would be
left in the hall, but there would be no owners left to put
them on again.” But only one flash of the sort was elicited.
One of the speakers at an early meeting insisted on the
necessity of avoiding anything like moral disapprobation
in the debates. There was a pause; then W. G. Ward said:
“While acquiescing in this condition as a general rule, I
think it cannot be expected that Christian thinkers shall
give no sign of the horror with which they would view
the spread of such extreme opinions as those advocated
by Mr. Huxley.” Another pause; then Huxley, thus chal-
lenged, replied: “As Dr. Ward has spoken, I must in
fairness say that it will be very difficult for me to con-
ceal my feeling as to the intellectual degradation which
1869 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 341

would come of the general acceptance of such views as
Dr. Ward holds.” *

No amount of argument could have been more effectual
in supporting the claim for mutual toleration than these two
speeches, and thenceforward such forms of criticism were
conspicuous by their absence. And where honesty of con-
viction was patent, mutual toleration was often replaced by
personal esteem and regard. ‘“‘ Charity, brotherly love,”
writes Huxley, “ were the chief traits of the Society. We all
expended so much charity, that, had it been money, we
should every one have been bankrupt.”

The special part played in the society by Huxley was to
show that many of the axioms of current speculation are far
from being axiomatic, and that dogmatic assertion on some
of the cardinal points of metaphysic is unwarranted by the
evidence of fact. To find these seeming axioms set aside
as unproven, was, it appears from his Lifc, disconcerting to
such members of the society as Cardinal Manning, whose
arguments depended on the unquestioned acceptance of
them. It was no doubt the observation of a similar attitude
of mind in Mr. Gladstone towards metaphysical problems
which provoked Huxley to reply, when asked whether Mr.
Gladstone was an expert metaphysician—‘ An expert in
metaphysics? He does not know the meaning of the word.”

In addition to his share in the discussions, Huxley con-
tributed three papers to the society. The first, read Novem-
ber 17, 1869, was on ‘“ The views of Hume, Kant, and
Whately on the logical basis of the doctrine of the Immor-
tality of the Soul,” showing that these thinkers agreed in
holding that no such basis is given by reasoning, apart, for
instance, from revelation. A summary of the argument
appears in the essay on Hume (Coll. Ess. vi. 201, sq.).

On November 8, 1870, he read a paper, “ Has a Frog
a Soul? and if so, of what Nature is that Soul?” Experi-
ment shows that a frog deprived of consciousness and
volition by the removal of the front part of its brain, will,
under the action of various stimuli, perform many acts

 

* Life of W. G. Ward, by Wilfrid Ward, p. 309.

ake
342 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIII

which can only be called purposive, such as moving to
recover its balance when the board on which it stands is
inclined, or scratching where it is made uncomfortable, or
croaking when pressed in a particular spot. If its spinal
cord be severed, the lower limbs, disconnected from the
brain, will also perform actions of this kind. The question
arises, Is the frog entirely a soulless automaton, performing
all its actions directly in response to external stimuli, only
more perfectly and with more delicate adjustment when its
brain remains intact, or is its soul distributed along its
spinal marrow, so that it can be divided into two parts inde-
pendent of one another?

The professed metaphysician might perhaps tend to
regard such consideration as irrelevant; but if the starting-
point of metaphysics is to be found in psychology, psychol-
ogy itself depends to no small extent upon physiology.
This question, however, Huxley did not pretend to solve. |
In the existing state of knowledge he believed it to be in-
soluble. But he thought it was not without its bearing
upon the supposed relations of soul and body in the human
subject, and should serve to give pause to current theories
on the matter.

His third paper, read January 11, 1876, was on the
“ Evidence of the Miracle of the Resurrection,” in which he
argued that there was no valid evidence of actual death
having taken place. His rejection of the miraculous had
led to an invitation from some of his opponents in the
society to write a paper on a definite miracle, and explain
his reasons for not accepting it. His choice of subject was
due to two reasons: firstly, it was a cardinal instance;
secondly, it was a miracle not worked by Christ Himself,
and therefore a discussion of its genuineness could offer no
suggestion of personal fraud, and hence would avoid in-
flicting gratuitous pain upon believers in it.

This certainty that there exist many questions at present
insoluble, upon which it is intellectually, and indeed morally
wrong to assert that we have real knowledge, had long been
with him, but, although he had earned abundant odium by
openly resisting the claims of dogmatic authority, he had
1869 THE NAME AGNOSTIC 343

not been compelled to define his philosophical position until
he entered the Metaphysical Society. How he came to
enrich the English language with the name ‘“ Agnostic” is
explained in his article “ Agnosticism” (Coll. Ess. v. pp.
237-239). ;

After describing how it came about that his mind
“ steadily gravitated towards the conclusions of Hume and
Kant,” so well stated by the latter as follows :—

The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy of
pure reason is, after all, merely negative, since it serves not as
an organon for the enlargement (of knowledge), but as a dis-
cipline for its delimitation; and, instead of discovering truth,
has only the modest merit of preventing error :—

he proceeds—

When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask
myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a ma-
terialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found
that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the
answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had
neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the
last. The one thing in which most of these good people were
agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They
were quite sure they had attained a certain “ gnosis ’—had,
more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while
I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction
that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant
on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding
fast by that opinion... .

This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a
place among the members of that remarkable confraternity of
antagonists, long since deceased, but of green and pious memory,
the Metaphysical Society. Every variety of philosophical and
theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself
with entire openness; most of my colleagues were -ists of one
sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be,
I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could
not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have
beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which
his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated
companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived

23
344 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIII

to be the appropriate title of “agnostic.” It came into my
head as suggestively antithetic to the “ gnostic” of Church his-
tory, who professed to know so much about the very things of
which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of
parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like
the other foxes. To my great satisfaction, the term took; and
when the Spectator had stood godfather to it, any suspicion in
the minds of respectable people that a knowledge of its parent-
age might have awakened was, of course, completely lulled.

As for the dialectical powers he displayed in the de-
bates, it was generally acknowledged that in this, as well
as in the power of conducting a debate, he shared the pre-
eminence with W. G. Ward. Indeed, a proposal was made
that the perpetual presidency in alternate years should be
vested in these two; but time and health forbade.

His part in the “debates is thus described in a letter to
me from Professor Henry Sidgwick :—

Dear Mr. Huxtey—I became a member of the Metaphysical
Society, I think, at its first meeting in 1869; and, though my
engagements in Cambridge did not allow me to attend regularly,
I retain a very distinct recollection of the part taken by your
father in the debates at which we were present together. There
were several members of the Society with whose philosophical
views I had, on the whole, more sympathy; but there was cer-
tainly no one to whom I found it more pleasant and more in-
structive to listen. Indeed I soon came to the conclusion that
there was only one other member of our Society who could
be placed on a par with him as a debater, on the subjects dis-
cussed at our meetings; and that was, curiously enough, a man
of the most diametrically opposite opinions—W. G. Ward, the
well-known advocate of Ultramontanism. Ward was by train-
ing, and perhaps by nature, more of a dialectician; but your
father was unrivalled in the clearness, precision, succinctness,
and point of his statements, in his complete and ready grasp
of his own system of philosophical thought, and the quickness
and versatility with which his thought at once assumed the right
attitude of defence against any argument coming from any
quarter. I used to think that while others of us could perhaps
find, on the spur of the moment, an answer more or less effective
to some unexpected attack, your father seemed always able to
find the answer—I mean the answer that it was reasonable to
1869 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 345

give, consistently with his general view, and much the same
answer that he would have given if he had been allowed the
fullest time for deliberation.

The general tone of the Metaphysical Society was one of
extreme consideration for the feelings of opponents, and your
father’s speaking formed no exception to the general harmony.
At the same time I seem to remember him as the most com-
bative of all the speakers who took a leading part in the debates.
His habit of never wasting words, and the edge naturally given
to his remarks by his genius for clear and effective statement,
partly account for this impression; still I used to think that he
liked fighting, and occasionally liked to give play to his sarcastic
humour—though always strictly within the limits imposed by
courtesy. I remember that on one occasion when I had read to
the Society an essay on the “Incoherence of Empiricism,” I
looked forward with some little anxiety to his criticisms; and
when they came, I felt that my anxiety had not been superfluous ;
he “went for” the weak points of my argument in half a dozen
trenchant sentences, of which I shall not forget the impression.
It was hard hitting, though perfectly courteous and fair.

I wish I could remember what he said, but the memory of all
the words uttered in these debates has now vanished from my
mind, though I recall vividly the general impression that I have
tried briefly to put down.—Believe me, yours very truly,

HENRY SIDGWICK.
CHAPTER XXIV
1870

Wits the year 1870 comes another turning-point in
Huxley’s career. From his return to England in 1850 till
1854 he had endured four years of hard struggle, of hope
deferred ; his reputation as a zoologist had been established
before his arrival, and was more than confirmed by his
personal energy and power. When at length settled in the
professorship at Jermyn Street, he was so far from thinking
himself more than a beginner who had learned to work in
one corner of the field of knowledge, still needing deep
research into all kindred subjects in order to know the true
bearings of his own little portion, that he treated the next
six years simply as years of further apprenticeship. Under
the suggestive power of the Origin of Species all these scat-
tered studies fell suddenly into due rank and order; the
philosophic unity he had so long been seeking inspired his
thought with tenfold vigour, and the battle at Oxford in
defence of the new hypothesis first brought him before the
public eye as one who not only had the courage of his con-
victions when attacked, but could, and more, would, carry
the war effectively into the enemy’s country. And for the
next ten years he was commonly identified with the cham-
pionship of the most unpopular view of the time; a fighter,
an assailant of long-established fallacies, he was too often
considered a mere iconoclast, a subverter of every other
well-rooted institution, theological, educational, or moral.

It is difficult now to realise with what feelings he was
regarded in the average respectable household in the sixties
and early seventies. His name was anathema; he was a

346
1870 LAY SERMONS 347

terrible example of intellectual pravity beyond redemption, a
man with opinions such as cannot be held “ without grave |
personal sin on his part”’ (as was once said of Mill by W.
G. Ward, see p. 451), the representative in his single person
of rationalism, materialism, atheism, or if there be any more
abhorrent “ism ”—in token of which as late as 1892 an
absurd zealot at the headquarters of the Salvation Army
crowned an abusive letter to him at Eastbourne by the
statement, “I hear you have a local reputation as a Brad-
laughite.”

But now official life began to lay closer hold upon him.
He came forward also as a leader in the struggle for edu-
cational reform, seeking not only to perfect his own bio-
logical teaching, but to show, in theory and practice, how
scientific training might be introduced into the general sys-
tem of education. He was more than once asked to stand
for Parliament, but refused, thinking he could do more
useful work for his country outside.

The publication in 1870 of Lay Sermons, the first of a
series of similar volumes, served, by concentrating his moral
and intellectual philosophy, to make his influence as a
teacher of men more widely felt. The “ active scepticism,”
whose conclusions many feared, was yet acknowledged as
the quality of mind which had made him one of the clearest
thinkers and safest scientific guides of his time, while his
keen sense of right and wrong made the more reflective of
those who opposed his conclusions hesitate long before ex-
pressing a doubt as to the good influence of his writings.
This view is very clearly expressed in a review of the book
in the Nation (New York, 1870, xi. 407).

And as another review of the Lay Sermons puts it
(Nature, iii. 22), he began to be made a kind of popular
oracle, yet refused to prophesy smooth things.

During the earlier period, with more public demands
made upon him than upon most men of science of his age
and standing, with the burden of four Royal Commissions
and increasing work in learned societies in addition to his
regular lecturing and official paleontological work, and the
many addresses and discourses in which he spread abroad in
348 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

the popular mind the leaven of new ideas upon nature and
education and the progress of thought, he was still con-
stantly at work on biological researches of his own, many
of which took shape in the Hunterian lectures at the College
of Surgeons from 1863-1870. But from 1870 onward, the
time he would spare to such research grew less and less.
For eight years he was continuously on one Royal Com-
mission after another. His administrative work on learned
societies continued to increase; in 1869-70 he held the
presidency of the Ethnological Society, with a view to
effecting the amalgamation with the Anthropological, “ the
plan,” as he calls it, “ for uniting the Societies which occupy
themselves with man (that excludes “ Society ” which occu-
pies itself chiefly with woman).” He became president of
the Geological Society in 1872, and for nearly ten years,
from 1871 to 1880, he was secretary of the Royal Society,
an office which occupied no small portion of his time and
thought, “ for he had formed a very high ideal of the duties
of the Society as the head of science in this country, and
was determined that it should not at least fall short through
any lack of exertion on his part” (Sir M. Foster, R. S.
Obit. Not.).*

The. year 1870 itself was one of the busiest he had ever
known. He published one biological and four paleonto-
logical memoirs, and sat on two Royal Commissions; one
on the Contagious Diseases Acts, the other on Scientific
Instruction, which continued until 1875.

The three addresses which he gave in the autumn, and
his election to the School Board will be spoken of later; in
the first part of the year he read two papers at the Ethno-
logical Society, of which he was president, on “ The Geo-
graphical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Man-
kind,” March 9—and on “ The Ethnology of Britain,” May
10—the substance of which appeared in the Contemporary
Review for July under the title of “ Some Fixed Points in
British Ethnology ” (Coll. Ess. vii. 253). As president also
of the Geological Society and of the British Association,

 

* See Appendix II.
1870 THE CELT QUESTION 349

he had two important addresses to deliver. In addition to
this, he delivered an address before the Y.M.C.A. at Cam-
bridge on “ Descartes’ Discourse.”

How busy he was may be gathered from his refusal of
an invitation to Down :—

26 ABBEY PLAcE, Jax. 21, 1870.

My pear Darwin—lIt is hard to resist an invitation of yours
—but I dine out on Saturday; and next week three evenings are
abolished by Societies of one kind or another. And there is
that horrid Geological address looming in the future!

I am afraid I must deny myself at present.

I am glad you liked the sermon. Did you see the
shire man’s” attack in the Pall Mall?

I have been wasting my time in polishing that worthy off. I
would not have troubled myself about him, if it were not for the
political bearing of the Celt question just now.

My wife sends her love to all you.—Ever yours,
T. H. Huxtey.

“ Devon-

The reference to the ‘‘ Devonshire Man ” is as follows :—
Huxley had been speaking of the strong similarity between
Gaul and German, Celt and Teuton, before the change of
character brought about by the Latin conquest; and of the
similar commixture, a dash of Anglo-Saxon in the mass of
Celtic, which prevailed in our western borders and many
parts of Ireland, e.g. Tipperary.

The ‘“ Devonshire Man” wrote on Jan. 18 to the Pall
Mall Gasctte, objecting to the statement that ‘“ Devonshire
men are as little Anglo-Saxons as Northumbrians are
Welsh.” Huxley replied on the 21st, meeting his historical
arguments with citations from Freeman, and especially by
completing his opponent’s quotation from Caesar, to show
that under certain conditions, the Gaul was indistinguishable
from the German. The assertion that the Anglo-Saxon
character is midway between the pure French or Irish and
the Teutonic, he met with the previous question, ‘ Who is
the pure Frenchman? Picard, Provencal, or Breton? or the
pure Irish? Milesian, Firbolg, or Cruithneach?”

But the “ Devonshire Man” did not confine himself to
science. He indulged in various personalities, to the smart-
350 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

est of which, a parody of Sydney Smith’s dictum on Dr.
Whewell, Huxley replied :-—

“A Devonshire Man” is good enough to say of me that
“cutting up monkeys is his forte, and cutting up men is his
foible.” With your permission, I propose to cut up “ A Devon-
shire Man”; but I leave it to the public to judge whether, when
so employed, my occupation is to be referred to the former or
to the latter category.

For this he was roundly lectured by the Spectator on
January 29, in an article under the heading “ Pope Huxley.”
Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the controversy, he
was chidden for the abusive language of the above para-
graph, and told that he was a very good anatomist, but had
better not enter into discussions on other subjects.

The same question is developed in the address to the
Ethnological Society later in the year and in “ Some Fixed
Points in British Ethnology ” (Contemporary Review, 1871),
and reiterated in an address from the chair in Section D
at the British Association in 1878 at Dublin, and in a letter
to the Times for October 12, 1887, apropos of a leading
article upon “ British Race-types of To-day.”

Letter-writing was difficult under such pressure of work,
but the claims of absent friends were not wholly forgotten,
though left on one side for a time, and the warm-hearted
Dohrn, who could not bear to think himself forgotten, man-
aged to get a letter out of him—not on scientific business.

26 ABBEY PLACE, Jaz. 30, 1870,

My pear Dourn—In one sense I deserve all the hard things
you may have said and thought about me, for it is really scandal-
ous and indefensible that I have not written to you. But in
another sense, I do not, for I have very often thought about you
and your doings, and as I have told you once before, your
memory always remains green in the “happy family.”

But what between the incessant pressure of work and an
inborn aversion to letter-writing, I become a worse and worse
correspondent the longer I live, and unless I can find one or
two friends who will [be] content to bear with my infirmities
and believe that however long before we meet, I shall be ready
to take them up again exactly where I left off, I shall be a
friendless old man.
1870 PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION 351

As for your old Goethe, you are mistaken. The Scripture
says that “a living dog is better than a dead lion,” and I am a
living dog. By the way I bought Cotta’s edition of him the
other day, and there he stands on my bookcase in all the glory of
gilt, black,and marble edges. Do you know I did a version of his
Aphorisms on Nature into English the other day.* It astonishes
the British Philistines not a little. When they began to read it
they thought it was mine, and that I had suddenly gone mad!

But to return to your affairs instead of my own. I received
your volume on the Arthropods the other day, but I shall not be
able to look at it for the next three weeks, as I am in the midst of
my lectures, and have an annual address to deliver to the Geo-
logical Society on the 18th February, when, I am happy to say,
my tenure of office as President expires.

After that I shall be only too glad to plunge into your doings
and, as always, I shall follow your work with the heartiest in-
terest. But I wish you would not take it into your head that
Darwin or I, or anyone else thinks otherwise than highly of
you, or that you need “ re-establishing ” in any one’s eyes. But
I hope you will not have finished your work before the autumn,
as they have made me President of the British Association this
year, and I shall be very busy with my address in the summer.
The meeting is to take place in Liverpool on the 14th September,
and I live in hope that you will be able to come over. Let me
know if you can, that I may secure you good quarters.

I shall ask the wife to fill up the next half sheet. But for
Heaven’s sake don’t be angry with me in English again. It’s
far worse than a scolding in Deutsch, and I have as little for-
gotten my German as I have my German friends.

On February 18 he delivered his farewell address ¢ to the
' Geological Society, on laying down the office of President.
He took the opportunity to revise his address to the society
in 1862, and pointed out the growth of evidence in favour
of the evolution theory, and in particular traced the paleon-
tological history of the horse, through a series of fossil types
approaching more and more to a generalised ungulate type
and reaching back to a three-toed ancestor, or collateral of
such an ancestor, itself possessing rudiments of the two other
toes which appertain to the average quadruped.

 

* For the first number of Mature, November 1869.
t ‘‘ Paleontology and the Doctrine of Evolution,” Col/. Zss, viii.
352 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

If (he said) the expectation raised by the splints of the
horses that, in some ancestor of the horses, these splints would
be found to be complete digits, has been verified, we are fur-
nished with very strong reasons for looking for a no less com-
plete verification of the expectation that the three-toed Plagio-
lophus-like “avus” of the horse must have been a five-toed
“atavus ” at some early period.

Six years afterwards, this forecast of paleontological re-
search was to be fulfilled, but at the expense of the European
ancestry of the horse. A series of ancestors, similar to these
European fossils, but still more equine, and extending in
unbroken order much farther back in geological time, was
discovered in America. His use of this in his New York
lectures as demonstrative evidence of evolution, and the im-
mediate fulfilment of a further prophecy of his will be told
in due course.

His address to the Cambridge Y.M.C.A., “ A Commen-
tary on Descartes’ ‘ Discourse touching the method of using
reason rightly, and of seeking scientific truth,’ ”’ was deliv-
ered on March 24. This was an attempt to give this dis- _
tinctively Christian audience some vision of the world of
science and philosophy, which is neither Christian nor Un-
christian, but Extra-christian, and to show “ by what meth-
ods the dwellers therein try to distinguish truth from false-
hood, in regard to some of the deepest and most difficult
problems that beset humanity, “in order to be clear about
the actions, and to walk sure-footedly in this life,” as Des-
cartes says. For Descartes had laid the foundation of his
own guiding principle of “active scepticism, which strives
to conquer itself.” :

Here again, as in the Physical Basis of Life, but with
more detail, he explains how far materialism is legitimate,
is, in fact, a sort of shorthand idealism. This essay, too,
contains the often-quoted passage, apropos of the “ intro-
duction of Calvinism into science.”

I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me
always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of
being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning
before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.
1870 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM 353

The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; the
freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest
terms to any one who will take it of me.

This was the latest of the essays included in Lay Ser-
mons, Addresses and Reviews, which came out, with a dedi-
catory letter to Tyndall, in the summer of 1870, and, whether
on account of its subject matter or its title, always remained
his most popular volume of essays.

To the same period belongs a letter to Matthew Arnold
about his book St. Paul and Protestantism.

My bear ArnoLtp—Many thanks for your book which I have
been diving into at odd times as leisure served, and picking up
many good things.

One of the best is what you say near the end about science
gradually conquering the materialism of popular religion.

It will startle the Puritans who always coolly put the matter
the other way; but it is profoundly true.

These people are for the most part mere idolaters with a
Bible-fetish, who urgently stand in need of conversion by Extra-
christian Missionaries.

It takes all one’s practical experience of the importance of
Puritan ways of thinking to overcome one’s feeling of the un-
reality of their beliefs. I had pretty well forgotten how real to
them “the man in the next street” is, till your citation of their
horribly absurd dogmas reminded me of it. If you can persuade
them that Paul is fairly interpretable in your sense, it may be
the beginning of better things, but I have my doubts if Paul
would own you, if he could return to expound his own epistles.

I am glad you like my Descartes article. My business with
my scientific friends is something like yours with the Puritans,
nature being our Paul_—Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.
26 ABBEY PLace, Afay 10, 1870.

From the 14th to the 24th of April Huxley, accom-
panied by his friend Hooker, made a trip to the Eifel
country. His sketch-book is full of rapid sketches of the
country, many of them geological ; one day indeed there are
eight, another nine such.

Tyndall was invited to join the party, and at first ac-
cepted, but then recollected the preliminaries which had to
354 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

be carried out before his lectures on electricity at the end
of the month. So he writes on April 6:—

Roya InstiTuTIon, 6 Agril.
My pear Huxtey—I was rendered drunk by the excess of
prospective pleasure when you mentioned the Eifel yesterday,
and took no account of my lectures. They begin on the 28th,
and I have studiously to this hour excluded them from my
thought. I have made arrangements to see various experiments
involving the practical application of electricity before the lec-
tures begin; I find myself, in short, cut off from the expedition.
My regret on this score is commensurable with the pleasures I
promised myself. Confound the lectures!
And yours * on Friday is creating a pretty hubbub already.
I am torn to pieces by women in search of tickets. Anything
that touches progenitorship interests them. You will have a
crammed house I doubt not.—Yours ever,
JoHN TYNDALL.
Huxley replied :—
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF ENGLAND AND WALES,
April 6, 1870.
My pear TyNDALL—
DAMN
the

s. T. H. H.
That’s a practical application of electricity for you.

In June he writes to his wife, who had taken a sick
child to the seaside :—

I hear a curious rumour (which is not for circulation), that
Froude and I have been proposed for D.C.L.’s at Commemora-
tion, and that the proposition has been bitterly and strongly
opposed by Pusey.t They say there has been a regular row in

 

* On the Pedigree of the Horse, April 8, 1870, which was never
brought out in book form.
+ Huxley ultimately received his D.C.L. in 1885.
1870 , PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 355

Oxford about it. I suppose this is at the bottom of Jowett’s not
writing to me. But I hope that he won’t fancy that I should be
disgusted at the opposition and object to come [i.e. to pay his
regular visit to Balliol]. On the contrary, the more complete
Pusey's success, the more desirable it is that I should show my
face there. Altogether it is an awkward position, as I am sup-
posed to know nothing of what is going on.

The situation is further developed in a letter to Dar-
win :—

JERMYN STREET, /zme 22, 1870.

My pear Darwin—I sent the books to Queen Anne St. this
morning. Pray keep them as long as you like, as I am not using
them.

I am greatly disgusted that you are coming up to London
this week, as we shall be out of town next Sunday. It is the
rarest thing in the world for us to be away, and you have pitched
upon the one day. Cannot we arrange some other day?

I wish you could have gone to Oxford, not for your sake,
but for theirs. There seems to have been a tremendous shindy
in the Hebdomadal board about certain persons who were pro-
posed; and I am told that Pusey came to London to ascertain
from a trustworthy friend who were the blackest heretics out
of the list proposed, and that he was glad to assent to your
being doctored, when he got back, in order to keep out seven
devils worse than that first!

Ever, oh Coryphaeus diabolicus, your faithful follower,

T. H. Hux.ey.

The choice of a subject for his Presidential Address at
the British Association for 1870, a subject which, as he put
it, “has lain chiefly in a land flowing with the abominable,
and peopled with mere grubs and mouldiness,” was sug-
gested by a recent controversy upon the origin of life, in
which the experiments of Dr. Bastian, then Professor of
Pathological Anatomy at University College, London, which
seemed to prove spontaneous generation, were shown by
Professor Tyndall to contain a flaw. Huxley had naturally
been deeply interested from the first ; he had been consulted
by Dr. Bastian, and, I believe, had advised him not to pub-
lish until he had made quite sure of his ground. This ques-
tion and the preparation of the course of Elementary Biol-
356 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

ogy * led him to carry on a series of investigations lasting
over two years, which took shape in a paper upon “ Peni-
cillium, Torula, and Bacterium,” + first read in Section D
at the British Association, 1870; and in his article on
“Yeast” in the Contemporary Review for December 1872.
He laboriously repeated Pasteur’s experiments, and for
years a quantity of flasks and cultures used in this work
remained at South Kensington, until they were destroyed
in the eighties. Of this work Sir J. Hooker writes to
him :—

You have made an immense leap in the association of forms,
and I cannot but suppose you approach the final solution. ...

I have always fancied that it was rather brains and boldness,
than eyes or microscopes that the mycologists wanted, and that
there was more brains in Berkeley’s ¢ crude discoveries than in
the very best of the French and German microscopic verifica-
tions of them, who filch away the credit of them from under
Berkeley's nose, and pooh-pooh his reasoning, but for which
we should be, as we were.

In his Presidential Address, “ Biogenesis and Abiogene-
sis” (Coll. Ess. viii. p. 229), he discussed the rival theories
of spontaneous generation and the universal derivation of
life from precedent life, and professed his belief, as an act
of philosophic faith, that at some remote period, life had
arisen out of inanimate matter, though there was no evi-
dence that anything of the sort had occurred recently, the
germ theory explaining many supposed cases of spontaneous
generation. The history of the subject, indeed, showed “ the
great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hy-
pothesis by an ugly fact—which is so constantly being
enacted under the eyes of philosophers,” and recalled the
warning “that it is one thing to refute a proposition, and
another to prove the truth of a doctrine which, implicitly
or explicitly, contradicts that proposition.”

Two letters to Dr. Dohrn refer to this address and to
the meeting of the Association.

 

* See p. 405, sgq. + Quart. Journ. Micr. Sct., 1870, x. pp. 355-362.
t Rev. W. F. Berkelev.
1870 LETTER TO DOHRN 357

JERMYN STREET, April 30, 1870. .

My peEaR WHIRLWIND—TI have received your two letters;
and I was just revolving in my mind how best to meet your
wishes in regard to the very important project mentioned in
the first, when the second arrived and put me at rest.

I hope I need not say how heartily I enter into all your
views, and how glad I shall be to see your plan for “ Stations ” *
carried into effect. Nothing could have a greater influence upon
the progress of zoology.

A plan was set afoot here some time ago to establish a great
marine Aquarium at Brighton by means of a company. They
asked me to be their President, but I declined, on the ground
that I did not desire to become connected with any commercial
undertaking. What has become of the scheme I do not know,
but I doubt whether it would be of any use to you, even if any
connection could be established.

As soon as you have any statement of your project ready,
send it to me and I will take care that it is brought prominently
before the British public so as to stir up their minds. And then
we will have a regular field-day about it in Section D at Liver-
pool.

Let me know your new ideas about insects and vertebrata as
soon as possible, and I promise to do my best to pull them to
pieces. What between Kowalewsky and his Ascidians, Mikluko-
Maclay and his Fish-brains, and you and your Arthropods, I am
becoming schwindelsuchtig, and spend my time mainly in that
pious ejaculation “ Donner und Blitz,” in which, as you know,
I seek relief. Then there is our Bastian who is making living
things by the following combination :—

BE Ammoniae Carbonatis
Sodae Phosphatis
Aquae destillatae

quantum sufficit
Caloris 150° Centigrade
Vacui perfectissimi
Patientiae.

Transubstantiation will be nothing to this if it turns out to
be true, and you may go and tell your neighbour Januarius to
shut up his shop as the heretics mean to outbid him.

 

* Dr. Dohrn succeeded in establishing such a zoological ‘‘ station”
at Naples.
358 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

Now I think that the best service I can render to all you
enterprising young men is to turn devil’s advocate, and do my
best to pick holes in your work.

By the way Mikluko-Maclay * has been here; I have seen a
good deal of him, and he strikes me as a man of very consider-
able capacity and energy. He was to return to Jena to-day.

My friend Herbert Spencer will be glad to learn that you
appreciate his book. I have been his devil’s advocate for a
number of years, and there is no telling how many brilliant
speculations I have been the means of choking in an embryonic
state.

My wife does not know that I am writing to you, or she
would say apropos of your last paragraph that you are an en-
tirely unreasonable creature in your notions of how friendship
should be manifested, and that you make no allowances for the
oppression and exhaustion of the work entailed by what Jean
Paul calls a “ Téchtervolles Haus.” I hope I may live to see
you with at least ten children, and then my wife and I will be
avenged. Our children will be married and settled by that time,
and we shall have time to write every day and get very wroth
when you do not reply immediately—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

All are well, the children so grown you will not know them.

July 18, 1870.

My pEAR DoHrN—Notwithstanding the severe symptoms of
“ Téchterkrankheit ” under which I labour, I find myself equal
to reply to your letter.

The British Association meets in September on the 14th day
of that month, which falls on a Wednesday. Of course, if you
come you shall be provided for by the best specimen of Liver-
pool hospitality. We have ample provision for the entertain-
ment of the “ distinguished foreigner.”

Will you be so good as to be my special ambassador with
Haeckel and Gegenbaur, and tell them the same thing? It would
give me and all of us particular pleasure to see them and to take
care of them.

But I am afraid that this wretched war will play the very
deuce with our foreign friends. If you Germans do not give

 

* Mikluko-Maclay, a Russian naturalist, and close friend of
Haeckel’s, who later adventured himself alone among the cannibals
of New Guinea. ’
1870 SAVAGERY OF THE LOWER CLASSES 359

that crowned swindler, whose fall I have been looking for ever
since the coup d’état, such a blow as he will never recover from,
IT will never forgive you. Public opinion in England is not
worth much, but at present, it is entirely against France. Even
the Times which general[ly] contrives to be on the baser side
of a controversy is at present on the German side. And my
daughters announced to me yesterday that they had converted
a young friend of theirs from the French to the German side,
which is one gained for you. All look forward with great pleas-
ure to seeing you in the autumn.—Ever yours faithfully,
T. H. Huxtey.

In addition to this address on September 14, he read
his paper on “ Penicillium,” etc., in Section D on the 2oth.
Speaking on the 17th, after a lecture of Sir J. Lubbock’s
on the “Social and Religious Condition of the Lower
Races of Mankind,” he brought forward his own experi-
ences as to the practical results of the beliefs held by the
Australian savages, and from this passed to the increasing
savagery of the lower classes in great towns such as Liver-
pool, which was the great political question of the future,
and for which the only cure lay in a proper system of
education.

The savagery underlying modern civilisation was all the
more vividly before him, because one evening he, together
with Sir J. Lubbock, Dr. Bastian, and Mr. Samuelson, were
taken by the chief of the detective department round some
of the worst slums in Liverpool. In thieves’ dens, doss
houses, dancing saloons, enough of suffering and criminality
was seen to leave a very deep and painful impression. In
one of these places, a thieves’ lodging-house, a drunken man
with a cut face accosted him and asked him whether he
was a doctor. He said “ yes,” whereupon the man asked
him to doctor his face. He had been fighting, and was
terribly excited. Huxley tried to pacify him, but if it had
not been for the intervention of the detective, the man
would have assaulted him. Afterwards he asked the de-
tective if he were not afraid to go alone in these places,
and got the significant answer, “ Lord bless you, sir, drink
and disease take all the strength out of them.”

24
360 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXIV

On the 21st, after the general meeting of the Association,
which wound up the proceedings, the Historical Society
of Lancashire and Cheshire presented a diploma of honorary
membership and a gift of books to Huxley, Sir G. Stokes,
and Sir J. Hooker, the last three Presidents of the British
Association, and to Professors Tyndall and Rankine and
Sir J. Lubbock, the lecturers at Liverpool. Then Huxley
was presented with a mazer bowl lined with silver, made
from part of one of the roof timbers of the cottage occupied
as his headquarters by Prince Rupert during the siege of
Liverpool. He was rather taken aback when he found the
bowl was filled with champagne; after a moment, however,
he drank “ success to the good old town of Liverpool,” and
with a wave of his hand, threw the rest on the floor, saying,
“T pour this as a libation to the tutelary deities of the
town.”

The same evening he was the guest of the Sphinx Club
at dinner at the Royal Hotel, his friend Mr. P. H. Rathbone
being in the chair, and in proposing the toast of the town
and trade of Liverpool, declared that commerce was a
greater civiliser than all the religion and all the science ever
put together in the world, for it taught men to be truthful
and punctual and precise in the execution of their engage-
ments, and men who were truthful and punctual and precise
in the execution of their engagements had put their feet
upon the first rung of the ladder which led to moral and
intellectual elevation.

There were the usual clerical attacks on the address,
among the rest a particularly violent one from a Unitarian
pulpit. Writing to Mr. Samuelson on October 5 he says :—

Be not vexed on account of the godly. They will have their
way. I found Mr. ’s sermon awaiting me on my return
home. It is an able paper, but like the rest of his cloth he will
not take the trouble to make himself acquainted with the ideas
of the man whom he opposes. At least that is the case if he
imagines be brings me under the range of his guns.

On October 2 he writes to Tyndall :—

I have not yet thanked you properly for your great con-
tribution to the success of our meeting [i.e. his lecture “ On the

 
1870 LETTER TO DR. DOHRN 301

Scientific Uses of the Imagination.”] I was nervous over the
passage about the clergy, but those confounded parsons seem to
me to let you say anything while they bully me for a word or a
phrase. It’s the old story, ‘one man may steal a horse while
the other may not look over the wall.”

Tyndall was not to be outdone, and replied :—

The parsons know very well that I mean kindness; if I cor-
rect them I do it in love and not in wrath.

One more extract from a letter to Dr. Dohrn, under
date of November 17. The first part is taken up with a
long and detailed description of the best English micro-
scopes and their price, for Dr. Dohrn wished to get one;
and my father volunteered to procure it for him. The rest
of the letter has a more general interest as giving his views
on the great struggle between France and Germany then
in progress, his distrust_of militarism, and above all, his

eS. Oh eae
hatred of lying, political as much as any other :—

This wretched war is doing infinite mischief, but I do not see
what Germany can do now but carry it out to the end.

I began to have some sympathy with the French after Sedan,
but the Republic lies harder than the Empire did, and the whole
country seems to me to be rotten to the core. The only figure
which stands out with anything like nobility or dignity, on the
French side, is that of the Empress, and she is only a second-
rate Marie-Antoinette. There is no Roland, no Corday, and
apparently no man of any description.

The Russian row is beginning, and the rottenness of English
administration will soon, I suppose, have an opportunity of
displaying itself. Bad days are, I am afraid, in store for all of
us, and the worst for Germany if it once becomes thoroughly
bitten by the military mad dog.

The “happy family” is flourishing and was afflicted, even
over its breakfast, when I gave out the news that you had
been ill.

The wife desires her best remembrances, and we all hope
you are better.

The high pressure under which Huxley worked, and
his abundant output, continued undiminished through the
autumn and winter. Indeed, he was so busy that he post-
362 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

poned his Lectures to Working Men in London from Octo-
ber to February 1871. On October 3 he lectured in Leices-
ter on “ What is to be Learned from a Piece of Coal,” a
parallel lecture to that of 1868 on “A Piece of Chalk.”
On the 17th and 24th he lectured at Birmingham on “ Ex-
tinct Animals intermediate between Reptiles and Birds”
—a subject which he had made peculiarly his own by long
study ; and on December 29 he was at Bradford, and lec-
tured at the Philosophical Institute upon “ The Formation
of Coal” (Coll. Ess. viii.).

He was also busy with two Royal Commissions; still, at
whatever cost of the energy and time due to his own investi-
gations and those additional labours by which he increased
his none too abundant income, he felt it his duty, in the
interests of his ideal of: education, to come forward as a
candidate for the newly-instituted School Board for London.
This was the practical outcome of the rising interest in
education all over the country; on its working, he felt, de-
pended momentous issues—the fostering of the moral and
physical well-being of the nation; the quickening of its in-
telligence and the maintenance of its commercial suprem-
acy. Withal, he desired to temper “ book-learning ” with
something of the direct knowledge of nature: on the one
hand, as an admirable instrument of education, if properly
applied; on the other, as preparing the way for an attitude
of mind which could appreciate the reasons for the immense
changes already beginning to operate in human thought.

Moreover, he possessed a considerable knowledge of the
working of elementary education throughout the country,
owing to his experience as examiner under the Science and
Art Department, the establishment of which he describes as
“a measure which came into existence unnoticed, but which
will, I believe, turn out to be of more importance to the
welfare of the people than many political changes over
which the noise of battle has rent the air” (Scientific
Education, 1869; Coll. Ess. iii. p. 131).

Accordingly, though with health uncertain, and in the
midst of exacting occupations, he felt that he ought not to
stand aside at so critical a moment, and offered himself for

°
1870 THE LONDON SCHOOL BOARD 363

election in the Marylebone division with a secret sense that
rejection would in many ways be a great relief.

The election took place on November 29, and Huxley
came out second on the poll. He had had neither the means
nor the time for a regular canvass of the electors. He was
content to address several public meetings, and leave the
result to the interest he could awaken amongst his hearers. °
His views were further brought before the public by the
action of the editor of the Contemporary Review, who, before
the election, “ took upon himself, in what seemed to him to
be the public interest,’ to send to the newspapers an extract
from Huxley’s article, ‘* The School Boards: what they can
do, and what they may do,” which was to appear in the
December number.

In this article will be found (Coll. Ess. iii. p. 374) a full
account of the programme which he laid down for himself,
and which to a great extent he saw carried into effect, in its
fourfold division—of physical drill and discipline, not only
to improve the physique of the children, but as an intro-
duction to all other sorts of training—of domestic training,
especially for girls—of education in the knowledge of moral
and social laws and the engagement of the affections for
what is good and against what is evil—and finally, of intel-
lectual training. And it should be noted that he did not only
regard intellectual training from the utilitarian point of
view; he insisted, c.g. on the value of reading for amuse-
ment as “one of its most valuable uses to hard-worked
people.”

Much as he desired that this intellectual training should
be efficient, the most cursory perusal of this article will
show how far he placed the moral training above the in-
tellectual, which, by itself, would only turn the gutter-child
into “the subtlest of all the beasts of the field,” and how
wide of the mark is the cartoon at this period representing
him as the professor whose panacea for the ragged children
was to “cram them full of nonsense.”

In the third section are also to be found his arguments
for the retention of Bible-reading in the elementary schools.
He reproached extremists of either party for confounding
304 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

the science, theology, with the affection, religion, and either
crying for more theology under the name of religion, or
demanding the abolition of “ religious” teaching in order
to get rid of theology, a step which he likens to “ burning
your ship to get rid of the cockroaches.”

As regards his actual work on the Board, 1 must ex-
press my thanks to Dr. J. H. Gladstone for his kindness
in supplementing my information with an account based
partly on his own long experience of the Board, partly on
the reminiscences of members contemporary with my father.

The Board met first on December 15, for the purpose
of electing a Chairman. As a preliminary, Huxley pro-
posed and carried a motion that no salary be attached to
the post. He was himself one of the four members pro-
posed for the Chairmanship; but the choice of the Board
fell upon Lord Lawrence. In the words of Dr. Glad-
stone :—

Huxley at once took a prominent part in the proceedings,
and continued to do so till the beginning of the year 1872, when
ill-health compelled him to retire.

At first there was much curiosity both inside and outside the
Board as to how Huxley would work with the old educationists,
the clergy, dissenting ministers, and the miscellaneous body of
eminent men that comprised the first Board. His antagonism
to many of the methods employed in elementary schools was
well known from his various discourses, which had been recently
published together under the title of Lay Sermons, Addresses,
and Reviews. I watched his course with interest at the time;
but for the purpose of this sketch I have lately sought informa-
tion from such of the old members of the Board as are still
living, especially the Earl of Harrowby, Bishop Barry, the Rev.
Dr. Angus, and Mr. Edward North Buxton, together with Mr.
Croad, the Clerk of the Board. They soon found proof of his
great energy, and his power of expressing his views in clear
and forcible language; but they also found that with all his
strong convictions and lofty ideals he was able and willing to
enter into the views of others, and to look at a practical question
from its several sides. He could construct as well as criticise.
Having entered a public arena somewhat late in life, and being
of a sensitive nature, he had scarcely acquired that calmness
and pachydermatous quality which is needful for one’s personal
1870 THE LONDON SCHOOL BOARD 365

comfort; but his colleagues soon came to respect him as a per-
fectly honest antagonist or supporter, and one who did not
allow differences of conviction to interfere with friendly inter-
course,

The various sections of the clerical party indeed looked
forward with great apprehension to his presence on the
Board, but the more liberal amongst them ventured to find
ground for hoping that they and he would not be utterly
opposed so far as the work of practical organisation was
concerned, in the declaration of his belief that true education
was impossible without ‘ religion,’ of which he declared
that all that has an unchangeable reality in it is constituted
by the love of some ethical ideal to govern and guide con-
duct, “ together with the awe and reverence, which have no
kinship with base fear, but rise whenever one tries to pierce
below the surface of things, whether they be material or
spiritual.” And in fact a cleavage took place between him
and the seven extreme “‘ secularists” on the Board (the seven
champions of unchristendom, as their opponents dubbed
them) on the question of the reading of the Bible in schools
(see below, p. 367).*

One of the earliest proposals laid before the Board was
a resolution to open the meetings with prayer. To this
considerable opposition was offered; but a bitter debate was
averted by Huxley pointing out that the proposal was ultra
vires, inasmuch as under the Act constituting the Board the
business for which they were empowered to meet did not
include prayer. Hereupon a requisition—in which he him-
self joined—was made to allow the use of a committee-room
to those who wished to unite in a short service before the
weekly meetings, an arrangement which has continued to
the present time.

At the second meeting, on December 21, he gave notice
of a motion to appoint a committee to consider and report

 

* Bishop Barry calls particular attention to his attitude on this
point, ‘‘ because,” he says, ‘‘it is (I think) often misunderstood. In
the Life (for instance) of the Right Honourable W. I. Smith, published
not long ago, Huxley is supposed, as a matter of course, to have been
the leader of the Secularist party.”
306 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

upon the scheme of education to be adopted in the Board
Schools.

This motion came up for consideration on February
15, 1871. In introducing it, he said that such a committee
ought to consider—

First, the general nature and relations of the schools which
may come under the Board. Secondly, the amount of time to
be devoted to educational purposes in such schools; and Thirdly,
the subject-matter of the instruction or education, or teaching,
or training, which is to be given in these schools.

But this, by itself, he continued, would be incomplete.
At one end of the scale he advocated Infant schools, and
urged a connection with the excellent work of the Ragged
schools. At the other end he desired to see continuation
schools, and ultimately some scheme of technical education.
A comprehensive scheme, indeed, would involve an educa-
tional ladder from the gutter to the university, whereby
children of exceptional ability might reach the place for
which nature had fitted them.

The subject matter of elementary instruction must be
limited by what was practicable and desirable. The revised
code had done too little; it had taught the use of the tools
of learning, while denying all sorts of knowledge on which
to exercise them afterwards. And here incidentally he re-
pudiated the notion that the English child was stupid; on
the contrary, he thought the two finest intellects in Europe
at this time were the English and the Italian.

In particular he advocated the teaching of “the first
elements of physical science”; “ by which I do not mean
teaching astronomy and the use of the globes, and the rest
of the abominable trash—but a little instruction of the child
in what is the nature of common things about him; what
their properties are, and in what relation this actual body of
man stands to the universe outside of it.” “ There is no
form of knowledge or instruction in which children take
greater interest.”

Drawing and music, too, he considered, should be taught
in every elementary school, not to produce painters or
1871 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 367

musicians, but as civilising arts. History, except the most |
elementary notions, he put out of court, as too advanced for
children.

Finally, he proposed a list of members to serve on the
Education Committee in a couple of sentences with a hu-
morous twist in them which disarmed criticism. ‘On a
former occasion I was accused of having a proclivity in
favour of the clergy, and recollecting this, I have only given
them in this instance a fair proportion of the representation.
If, however, I have omitted any gentleman who thinks he
ought to be on the committee, I can only assure him that
above all others I should have been glad to put him on.”

That day week the committee was elected, about a third
of the members of the Board being chosen to serve on it.
At the same meeting, Dr. Gladstone continues—

Mr. W. H. Smith, the well-known member of Parliament,
proposed, and Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., seconded, a resolution
in favour of religious teaching—* That, in the schools provided
by the Board, the Bible shall be read, and there shall be given
therefrom such explanations and such instruction in the prin-
ciples of religion and morality as are suited to the capacities of
children,” with certain provisos. Several antagonistic amend-
ments were proposed; but Prof. Huxley gave his support to
Mr. Smith’s resolutions, which, however, he thought might be
trimmed and amended in a way that the Rev. Dr. Angus had
suggested. His speech, defining his own position, was a very
remarkable one. He said it was assumed in the public mind
that this question of religious instruction was a little family
quarrel between the different sects of Protestantism on the one
hand, and the old Catholic Church on the other. Side by side
with this much shivered and splintered Protestantism of theirs,
and with the united fabric of the Catholic Church (not so strong
temporally as she used to be, otherwise he might not have been
addressing them at that moment) there was a third party grow-
ing up into very considerable and daily increasing significance,
which had nothing to do with either of those great parties, and
which was pushing its own way independent of them, having
its own religion and its own morality, which rested in no way
whatever on the foundations of the other two.” He thought
that “the action of the Board should be guided and influenced
very much by the consideration of this third great aspect of
368 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

things,” which he called the scientific aspect, for want of a
better name.

“It had been very justly said that they had a great mass of
low half-instructed population which owed what little redemp-
tion from ignorance and barbarism it possessed mainly to the
efforts of the clergy of the different denominations. Any sys-
tem of gaining the attention of these people to these matters
must be a system connected with, or not too rudely divorced
from their own system of belief. He wanted regulations, not
in accordance with what he himself thought was right, but in
the direction in which thought was moving.” He wanted an
elastic system, that did not oppose any obstacle to the free play
of the public mind.

Huxley voted against all the proposed amendments, and in
favour of Mr. Smith’s motion. There were only three who
voted against it; while the three Roman Catholic members re-
frained from voting. This basis of religious instruction, prac-
tically unaltered, has remained the law of the Board ever since.

There was a controversy in the papers, between Prof. Hux-
ley and the Rev. W. H. Freemantle, as to the nature of the
explanations of the Bible lessons. Huxley maintained that it
should be purely grammatical, geographical, and historical in
its nature; Freemantle that it should include some species of
distinct religious teaching, but not of a denominational char-
acter.*

In taking up this position, Huxley expressly disclaimed
any desire for a mere compromise to smooth over a diffi-
culty. He supported what appeared to be the only work-
able plan under the circumstances, though it was not his
ideal; for he would not have used the Bible as the agency
for introducing the religious and ethical idea into_education
if he had been dealing with a fresh and untouched popu-
lation.

His appreciation of the literary and historical value of
the Bible, and the effect it was likely to produce upon the

 

* Cp. extract from Lord Shaftesbury’s journal about this corre-
spondence (Life and Work of Lord Shaftesbury, iii. 282). ‘‘ Professor
Huxley has this definition of morality and religion: ‘Teach a child
what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful,
that is region /’ Let no one henceforth despair of making things
clear and of giving explanations!”
ISyI LETTERS ON BIBLE TEACHING 369

school children, circumstanced as they were, is sometimes
misunderstood to be an endorsement of the vulgar idea of it.
But it always remained his belief ‘* that the principle of strict
secularity in State education is sound, and must eventually
prevail.” *

His views on dogmatic teaching in State schools, may
be gathered further from two letters at the period when an
attempt was being made to upset the so-called compromise.

The first appeared in the Times of April 29, 1893 :—

Srr—In a leading article of your issue of to-day you state,
with perfect accuracy, that I supported the arrangement respect-
ing religious instruction agreed to by the London School Board
in 1871, and hitherto undisturbed. But you go on to say that
“the persons who framed the rule” intended it to include
definite teaching of such theological dogmas as the Incarnation.

I cannot say what may have been in the minds of the
framers of the rule; but, assuredly, if I had dreamed that any
such interpretation could fairly be put upon it, I should have
opposed the arrangement to the best of my ability.

In fact, a year before the rule was framed I wrote an article
in the Contemporary Review, entitled “ The School Boards—
what they can do and what they may do,” in which I argued
that the terms of the Education Act excluded such teaching as
it is now proposed to include. And I support my contention by
the following citation from a speech delivered by Mr. Forster
at the Birkbeck Institution in 1870:—

Thave the fullest confidence that in the reading and explain-
ing of the Bible what the children will be taught will be the
great truths of Christian life and conduct, which all of us desire
they should know, and that no efforts will be made to cram into
their poor little minds theological dogmas which their tender
age prevents them from understanding.—I am, Sir, your
obedient servant, T. H. Huxey.

Hoves.ea, Eastpourne, April 28.

 

* Asa result of some remarks of Mr. Clodd’s on the matter in Pyo-
neers of Evolution, a correspondent, some time after, wrote to him as
follows :

“In the report upon State Education in New Zealand, 1895, drawn
up by R. Laishly, the following occurs, p. 13:—‘ Professor Huxley
gives me leave to state his opinion to be that the principle of strict
secularity in State education is sound, and must eventually prevail.’”
370 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

The second is to a correspondent who wrote to ask him
whether adhesion to the compromise had not rendered non-
sensical the teaching given in a certain lesson upon the
finding of the youthful Jesus in the temple, when, after they
had read the verse, “ How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye
not that I must be about my Father’s business? ” the teacher
asked the children the name of Jesus’ father and mother,
and accepted the simple answer, Joseph and Mary. Thus
the point of the story, whether regarded as reality or myth,
is slurred over, the result is perplexity, the teaching, in
short, is bad, apart from all theory as to the value of the
Bible.

In a letter to the Chronicle, which he forwarded, this
correspondent suggested a continuation of the “ incrimi-
nated lesson ” :-—

Suppose, then, that an intelligent child of seven, who has
just heard it read out that Jesus excused Himself to His parents
for disappearing for three days, on the ground that He was about
His Father’s business, and has then learned that His father’s
name was Joseph, had said “ Please, teacher, was this the Jesus
that gave us the Lord’s Prayer?” The teacher answers “ Yes.”
And suppose the child rejoins, “ And is it to His father Joseph
that he bids us pray when we say Our Father?” But there
are boys of nine, ten, eleven years in Board schools, and many
such boys are intelligent enough to take up the subject of the
lesson where the instructor left it. “ Please, teacher,” asks one
of these, “ what business was it that Jesus had to do for His
father Joseph? Had he stopped behind to get a few orders?
Was it true that He had been about Joseph’s business? And,
if it was not true, did He not deserve to be punished?”

Huxley replied on October 16, 1894 :—

Dear Si1r—I am one with you in hating “hush up” as I do
all other forms of lying; but I venture to submit that the compro-
mise of 1871 was not a “hush-up.” If I had taken it to be such
I should have refused to have anything to do with it. Arid more
specifically, I said in a letter to the Times (see Times, 29th
April 1893) at the beginning of the present controversy, that
if I had thought the compromise involved the obligatory teach-
ing of such dogmas as the Incarnation I should have opposed it.

There has never been the slightest ambiguity about my posi-
1871 LETTERS ON BIBLE TEACHING 371

tion in this matter; in fact, if you will turn to one paper on the
School Board written by me before my election in 1870, I think
you will find that I anticipated the pith of the present discussion.

The persons who agreed to the compromise, did exactly
what all sincere men who agree to compromise, do. For the
sake of the enormous advantage of giving the rudiments of a
decent education to several generations of the people, they ac-
cepted what was practically an armistice in respect of certain
matters about which the contending parties were absolutely
irreconcilable.

The clericals have now “denounced” the treaty, doubtless
thinking they can get a new one more favourable to themselves.

From my point of view, I am not sure that it might not be
well for them to succeed, so that the sweep into space which
would befall them in the course of the next twenty-three years
might be complete and final.

As to the case you put to me—permit me to continue the
dialogue in another shape.

Boy.—Please, teacher, if Joseph was not Jesus’ father and
God was, why did Mary say, “ Thy father and I have sought
thee sorrowing”? How could God not know where Jesus was?
How could He be sorry?

Teacher—When Jesus says Father, he means God; but
when Mary says father, she means Joseph.

Boy.—Then Mary didn’t know God was Jesus’ father?

Teacher—Oh, yes, she did (reads the story of the Annun-
ciation).

Boy.—It seems to me very odd that Mary used language
which she knew was not true, and taught her son to call Joseph
father. But there’s another odd thing about her. If she knew
her child was God’s son, why was she alarmed about his safety?
Surely she might have trusted God to look after his own son
in a crowd.

I know of children of six and seven who are quite capable
of following out such a line of inquiry with all the severe logic
of a moral sense which has not been sophisticated by pious
scrubbing.

I could tell you of stranger inquiries than these which have
been made by children in endeavouring to understand the ac-
count of the miraculous conception.

Whence I conclude that even in the interests of what
people are pleased to call Christianity (though it is my firm
conviction that Jesus would have repudiated the doctrine of
372 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

the Incarnation as warmly as that of the Trinity), it may be
well to leave things as they are.

All this is for your own eye. There is nothing in substance
that I have not said publicly, but I do not feel called upon to
say it over again, or get mixed up in an utterly wearisome con-
troversy.—I am, yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

However, he was unsuccessful in his proposal that a
selection be made of passages for reading from the Bible;
the Board refused to become censors. On May 10 he
raised the question of the diversion from the education of
poor children of charitable bequests, which ought to be
applied to the augmentation of the school fund. In speak-
ing to this motion he said that the long account of errors
and crimes of the Catholic Church was greatly redeemed
by the fact that that Church had always borne in mind the
education of the poor, and had carried out the great demo-
cratic idea that the soul of every man was of the same value
in the eyes of his Maker.

The next matter of importance in which he took part
was on June 14, when the Committee on the Scheme
of Education presented its first report. Dr. Gladstone
writes :—

It was a very voluminous document. The Committee had
met every week, and, in the words of Huxley, “what it had
endeavoured to do, was to obtain some order and system and
uniformity in important matters, whilst in comparatively unim-
portant matters they thought some play should be given for the
activity of the bodies of men into whose hands the management
of the various schools should be placed.” The recommendations
were considered on June 21 and July 12, and passed without
any material alterations or additions. jThey were very much
the same as existed in the best elementary schools of the period.
Huxley’s chief interest, it may be surmised, was in the sub-
jects of instruction. It was passed that, in infants’ schools
there should be the Bible, reading, writing, arithmetic, object
lessons of a simple character, with some such exercise of the
hands and eyes as is given in the Kindergarten system, music,
and drill. In junior and senior schools the subjects of instruc-
tion were divided into two classes, essential and discretionary,
the essentials being the Bible, and the principles of religion and
1871 COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 373

morality, reading, writing, and arithmetic, English grammar
and composition, elementary geography, and elementary social
economy, history of England, the principles of book-keeping
in senior schools, with mensuration in senior boys’ schools. All
through the six years there were to be systematised object les-
sons, embracing a course of elementary instruction in physical
science, and serving as an introduction to the science examina-
tions conducted by the Science and Art Department. An
analogous course of instruction was adopted for elementary
evening schools. In moving “ that the formation of science and
art classes in connection with public elementary schools be en-
couraged and facilitated,” Huxley contended strongly for it,
saying, “ The country could not possibly commit a greater error
than in establishing schools in which the direct applications of
science and art were taught before those who entered the classes
were grounded in the principles of physical science.” In advo-
cating object lessons he said, ‘“ The position that science was
now assuming, not only in relation to practical life, but to
thought, was such that those who remained entirely ignorant
of even its elementary facts were in a wholly unfair position as
regarded the world of thought and the world of practical life.”
It was, moreover, “the only real foundation for technical edu-
cation.”

Other points in which he was specially concerned were,
that the universal teaching of drawing was accepted, against
an amendment excluding girls; that domestic economy was
made a discretionary substitute for needlework and cutting-
out; while he spoke in defence of Latin as a discretionary
subject, alternatively with a modern language. It was true
that he would not have proposed it in the first instance,
not because a little Latin is a bad thing, but for fear of
“overloading the boat.” But, on the other hand, there was
great danger if education were not thrown open to all with-
out restriction. If it be urged that a man should be con-
tent with the state of life to which he is called, the obvious
retort is, How do you know what is your state of life, unless
you try what you are called to? There is no more frightiul
“sitting on the safety valve” than in preventing men of
ability from having the means of rising to the positions for
which they, by their talents and industry, could qualify
themselves.
374 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

Further, although the committee as a whole recom-
mended that discretionary subjects should be extras, he
wished them to be covered by the general payment, in which
sense the report was amended.

This Education Committee (proceeds Dr. Gladstone) con-
tinued to sit, and on November 30 brought up a report in favour
of the Prussian system of separate class-rooms, to be tried in
one school as an experiment. This reads curiously now that it
has become the system almost universally adopted in the London
Board Schools.

In regard to examinations Huxley strongly supported the
view that the teaching in all subjects, secular or sacred, should
be periodically tested.

On December 13, Huxley raised the question whether the
selection of books and apparatus should be referred to his Com-
mittee or to the School Management Committee, and on Jan-
uary 10 following, a small sub-committee for that object was
formed. Almost immediately after this he retired from the
Board.

One more speech of his, which created a great stir at
the time, must be referred to, namely his expression of
undisguised hostility to the system of education maintained
by the Ultramontane section of the Roman Catholics.* In
October the bye-laws came up for consideration. One of
them provided that the Board should pay over direct to
denominational schools the fees for poor children. This
he opposed on the ground that it would lead to repeated
contests on the Board, and further, might be used as a tool
by the Ultramontanes for their own purposes. Believing
that their system as set forth in the syllabus, of securing,
complete possession of the minds of those whom they taught
or controlled, was destructive to all that was highest in the
nature of mankind, and inconsistent with intellectual and
political liberty, he considered it his earnest duty to oppose
all measures which would lead to assisting the Ultramon-
tanes in their purpose.

Hereupon he was vehemently attacked, for example, in
the Times for his “ injudicious and even reprehensible tone ”

 

* Cp. ‘Scientific Education,” Cod/. Ess. iii, p. 111.
1871-72 ULTRAMONTANES AND EDUCATION 375

which “ aggravated the difficulties his opponents might have
in giving way to him.” Was this, it was asked, the way to
get Roman Catholic children to the Board schools? Was
it not an abandonment of the ideal of compulsory edu-
cation?

It is hardly necessary to point out that the question was
not between the compulsory inclusion or exclusion of poor
children, but between their admission at the cost of the
Board to schools under the Board’s own control or outside
it. In any case the children of Roman Catholics were not
likely to get their own doctrines taught in Board Schools,
and without this they declared they would rather go with-
out education at all.

Early in 1872 Huxley retired. For a year he had con-
tinued at this task; then his health broke down, and feeling
that he had done his part, from no personal motives of
ambition, but rather at some cost to himself, for what he
held to be national ends, he determined not to resume the
work after the rest which was to restore him to health, and
made his resignation definite.

Dr. Gladstone writes :—

On February 7 a letter of resignation was received from
him, stating that he was “ reluctantly compelled, both on account
of his health and his private affairs, to insist on giving up his
seat at the Board.” The Rev. Dr. Rigg, Canon Miller, Mr.
Charle ad, and Lord Lawrence expressed their deep regret.
In the words of Dy. Rigg, “they were losing one of the most
valuable members of the Board, not only because of his intellect
and trained dcutenéss, but because of his knowledge of every
subject connetted with culture and education, and because of
his gredt faifness and impartiality with regard to all subjects
that came under his observation.”

Though Huey quitted the Board after only fourteen
months’ service, the memory of his words and acts combined to
influence it long afterwards. In various ways he expressed
his opinion on educational matters, publicly and privately. He
frequently talked with me on the subject at the Athenzeum Club,
and shortly after my election to the Board in 1873, I find it
recorded in my diary that he insisted strongly on the necessity
of our building infants’ schools,—“ people may talk about intel-

25

 
 
376 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

lectual teaching, but what we principally want is the moral
teaching.”

As to the sub-committee on books and apparatus, it did
little at first, but at the beginning of the second Board, 1873, it
became better organised under the presidency of the Rev. Benja-
min Waugh. At the commencement of the next triennial term
I became the chairman, and continued to be such for eighteen
years. It was our duty to put into practice the scheme of
instruction which Huxley was mainly instrumental in settling.
We were thus able indirectly to improve both the means and
methods of teaching. The subjects of instruction have all been
retained in the Curriculum of the London School Board, except,
perhaps, “ mensuration ”” and “social economy.” The most im-
portant developments and additions have been in the direction
of educating the hand and eye. Kindergarten methods have
been promoted. Drawing, on which Huxley laid more stress
than his colleagues generally did, has been enormously extended
and greatly revolutionised in its methods. Object lessons and
elementary science have been introduced everywhere, while
shorthand, the use of tools for boys, and cookery and domestic
economy for girls are becoming essentials in our schools. Even-
ing continuation schools have lately been widely extended.
Thus the impulse given by Huxley in the first months of the
Board’s existence has been carried forward by others, and is
now affecting the minds of the half million of boys and girls
in the Board Schools of London, and indirectly the still greater
number in other schools throughout the land.

I must further express my thanks to Bishop Barry for
permission to make use of the following passages from the
notes contributed by him to Dr. Gladstone :—

I had the privilege of being a member of his committee for
defining the curriculum of study, and here also—the réligious
question being disposed of—I was able to follow much the same
line as his, and I remember being struck not ondy with his clear-
headed ability, but with his strong commonsense, as to what was
useful and practicable, and the utter absence in him of doc-
trinaive aspiration after ideal impossibilities. There was (I
think) very little under his chairmanship of strongly accentu-
ated difference of opinion.

In his action on the Board generally I was struck with these
three characteristics :—First, his remarkable power of speaking
1871 HIS ATTITUDE TOWARDS ADVERSARIES 377

—I may say, of oratory—not only on his own scientific subjects,
but on all the matters, many of which were of great practical
interest and touched the deepest feelings, which came before
the Board at that critical time. Had he chosen—and we heard
at that time that he was considering whether he should choose
—to enter political life, it would certainly have made him a
great power, possibly a leader, in that sphere. Next, what con-
stantly appears in his writings, even those of the most polemical
kind—a singular candour in recognising truths which might
seem to militate against his own position, and a power of under-
standing and respecting his adversaries’ opinions, if only they
were strongly and conscientiously held. I remember his saying
on one occasion that in his earlier experience of sickness and
suffering, he had found that the most effective helpers of the
higher humanity were not the scientist or the philosopher, but
“the parson, and the sister, and the Bible woman.” Lastly, the
strong commonsense, which enabled him to see what was
“within the range of practical politics,” and to choose for the
cause which he had at heart the line of least resistance, and to
check, sometimes to rebuke, intolerant obstinacy even on the
side which he was himself inclined to favour. These qualities
over and above his high intellectual ability made him, for the
comparatively short time that he remained on the Board, one
of its leading members.

No less vivid is the impression left, after many years,
upon another member of the first School Board, the Rev.
Benjamin Waugh, whose life-long work for the children is so
well known. From his recollections, written for the use of
Professor Gladstone, it is my privilege to quote the follow-
ing paragraphs :—

I was drawn to him most, and was influenced by him most,
because of his attitude to a child. He was on the Board to
establish schools for children. His motive in every argument,
in all the fun and ridicule he indulged in, and in his occasional
anger, was the child. He resented the idea that schools were to
train either congregations for churches or hands for factories.
He was on the Board as a friend of children. What he sought
to do for the child was for the child’s sake, that it might live a
fuller, truer, worthier life. If ever his great tolerance with men
with whom he differed on general principles seemed to fail him
for a moment, it was because they seemed to him to seek other
ends than the child for its own sake... .
378 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

His contempt for the idea of the world into which we were
born being either a sort of clergyhouse or a market-place, was
too complete to be marked by any eagerness. But in view of the
market-place idea he was the less calm.

Like many others who had not yet come to know in what
high esteem he held the moral and spiritual nature of children,
I had thought he was the advocate of mere secular studies, alike
in the nation’s schools, and in its families. But by contact with
him, this soon became an impossible idea. In very early days on
the Board a remark I had made to a mutual friend which im-
plied this unjust idea was repeated to him. “ Tell Waugh that
he talks too fast,” was his message to me. I was not long in
finding out that this was a very just reproof... .

The two things in his character of which I became most
conscious by contact with him, were his childlikeness and his
consideration for intellectual inferiors. His arguments were as
transparently honest as the arguments of a child. They might
or might not seem wrong to others, but they were never untrue
to himself. Whether you agreed with them or not, they always
added greatly to the charm of his personality. Whether his face
was lighted by his careless and playful humour or his great
brows were shadowed by anger, he was alike expressing himself
with the honesty of a child. What he counted iniquity he hated,
and what he counted righteous he loved with the candour of a
child...

Of his consideration for intellectual inferiors I, of course,
needed a large share, and it was never wanting. Towering as
was his intellectual strength and keenness above me, indeed
above the whole of the rest of the members of the Board, he
did not condescend to me. The result was never humiliating.
It had no pain of any sort in it. He was too spontaneous and
liberal with his consideration to seem conscious that he was
showing any. There were many men of religious note upon the
Board, of some of whom I could not say the same.

In his most trenchant attacks on what he deemed wrong in
principles, he never descended to attack either the sects which
held them or the individuals who supported them, even though
occasionally much provocation was given him. He might not
care for peace with seme of the theories represented on the
Board, but he had certainly and at all times great good-will to
men.

As a speaker he was delightful. Few, clear, definite, and
calm as stars were the words he spoke. Nobody talked whilst
1871 WAUGH'’S ESTIMATE OF HUXLEY 379

he was speaking. There were no tricks in his talk. He did
not seem to be trying to persuade you of something. What
convinced him, that he transferred to others. He made no
attempt to misrepresent those opposed to him. He sought only
to let them know himself. . . . Even the sparkle of his humour,
like the sparkle of a diamond, was of the inevitable in him,
and was as fair as it was enjoyable.

As one who has tried to serve children, I look back upon
having fallen in with Mr. Huxley as one of the many fortunate
circumstances of my life. It taught me the importance of mak-
ing acquaintance with facts, and of studying the laws of them.
Under his influence it was that I most of all came to see the
practical value of a single eye to those in any pursuit of life.
I saw what effect they had on emotions of charity and senti-
ments of justice, and what simplicity and grandeur they gave
to appeals.

My last conversation with him was at Eastbourne some time
in 1887 or 1888. I was there on my society's business. ‘‘ Well,
Waugh, you're still busy about your babies,” was his greeting.
“Yes,” I responded, “and you are still busy about your pigs.”
One of the last discussions at which he was present at the
School Board for London had been on the proximity of a pig-
gery to a site for a school, and his attack on Mr. Gladstone on
the Gadarene swine had just been made in the Nineteenth
Century. “Do you still believe in Gladstone?” he continued.
“That man has the greatest intellect in Europe. He was
born to be a leader of men, and he has debased himself to be
a follower of the masses. If working men were to-day to
vote by a majority that two and two made five, to-morrow
Gladstone would believe it, and find them reasons for it
which they had never dreamed of.” He said it slowly and with
sorrow.

Two more incidents are connected with his service on
the School Board. A wealthy friend wrote to him in the
most honourable and delicate terms, begging him, on public
. grounds, to accept £400 a year to enable him to continue
his work on the Board. He refused the offer as simply
and straightforwardly as it was made; his means, though
not large, were sufficient for his present needs.

Further, a good many people seemed to think that he
meant to use the School Board as a stalking horse for a
380 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXIV

political career. To one of those who urged him to stand
for Parliament, he replied thus :—
Nov. 18, 1871.

Dear Sir—It has often been suggested to me that I should
seek for a seat in the House of Commons; indeed I have reason
to think that many persons suppose that I entered the London
School Board simply as a road to Parliament.

But I assure you that this supposition is entirely without
foundation, and that I have never seriously entertained any
notion of the kind.

The work of the School Board involves me in no small
sacrifices of various kinds, but I went into it with my eyes open,
and with the clear conviction that it was worth while to make
those sacrifices for the sake of helping the Education Act into
practical operation. A year’s experience has not altered that
conviction; but now that the most difficult, if not the most im-
portant, part of our work is done, I begin to look forward with
some anxiety to the time when I shall be relieved of duties
which so seriously interfere with what I regard as my proper
occupation.

No one can say what the future has in store for him, but at
present I know of no inducement, not even the offer of a seat
in the House of Commons, which would lead me, even tem-
porarily and partially, to forsake that work again.—I am, dear
sir, yours very faithfully, T. H. Hux ey.

I give here a letter to me from Sir Mountstuart Grant
Duff, who also at one period was anxious to induce him to
enter Parliament :—

LEXDEN PaRK, COLCHESTER,
4th November 1808.

Dear Mr. Huxtey—I have met men who seemed to me to
possess powers of mind even greater than those of your father
—his friend Henry Smith for example; but I never met any
one who gave me the impression so much as he did, that he
would have gone to the front in any pursuit in which he had
seen fit to engage. Henry Smith had, in addition to his astonish-
ing mathematical genius, and his great talents as a scholar, a
rare faculty of persuasiveness. Your father used to speak with
much admiration and some amusement of the way in which
he managed to get people to take his view by appearing to take
theirs; but he never could have been a power in a popular as-
sembly, nor have carried with him by the force of his eloquence,
1871 LETTER FROM SIR M. E. GRANT DUFF 381

great masses of men. I do not think that your father, if he had
entered the House of Commons and thrown himself entirely into
political life, would have been much behind Gladstone as a
debater, or Bright as an orator. Whether he had the stamina
which are required not only to reach but to retain a foremost
place in politics, is another question. The admirers of Prince
Bismarck would say that the daily prayer of the ‘statesman
should be for “une bonne digestion et un mauvais cceur.” “Le
mauvais cceur”” does not appear to be “de toute necessité,” but,
assuredly, the “bonne digestion” is. Given an adequate and
equal amount of ability in two men who enter the House of
Commons together, it is the man of strong digestion, drawing
with it, as it usually does, good temper and power of continuous
application, who will go furthest. Gladstone, who was inferior
to your father in intellect, might have “given points” to the
Dragon of Wantley who devoured church steeples. Your father
could certainly not have done so, and in that respect was less
well equipped for a life-long parliamentary struggle.

I should like to have seen these two pitted against each
other with that “substantial piece of furniture” between them
behind which Mr. Disraeli was glad to shelter himself. I should
like to have heard them discussing some subject which they
both thoroughly understood. When they did cross swords the
contest was like nothing that has happened in our times save
the struggle at Omdurman. It was not so much a battle as a
massacre, for Gladstone had nothing but a bundle of antiquated
prejudices wherewith to encounter your father’s luminous
thought and exact knowledge.

You know, I daresay, that Mr. William Rathbone, then M.P.
for Liverpool, once proposed to your father to be the com-
panion of my first Indian journey in 1874-5, he, William Rath-
bone, paying all your father’s expenses.* Mr. Rathbone made
this proposal when he found that Lubbock, with whom I trav-
elled a great deal at that period of my life, was unable to go
with me to India. How I wish your father had said “ Yes.”
My journey, as it was, turned out most instructive and de-
lightful; but to have lived five months with a man of his ex-

 

* Of this, Dr. Tyndall wrote to Mrs. Huxley :—‘‘T want to tell you
a pleasant conversation I had last night with Jodrell. He and a
couple more want to send Hal with Grant Duff to India, taking
charge of his duties here and of all necessities ghostly and bodily
there!”
382 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIV

traordinary gifts would have been indeed a rare piece of good
fortune, and I should have been able also to have contributed
to the work upon which you are engaged a great many facts
which would have been of interest to your readers. You will,
however, I am sure, take the will for the deed, and believe me,

i 1
SD enero aca M. E. Grant Durr.
CHAPTER XXV
1871

“Tn 1871” (to quote Sir M. Foster), “ the post of Sec-
retary to the Royal Society became vacant through the
resignation of William Sharpey, and the Fellows learned
with glad surprise that Huxley, whom they looked to rather
as a not distant President, was willing to undertake the
duties of the office.” This office, which he held until 1880,
involved him for the next ten years in a quantity of anxious
work, not only in the way of correspondence and adminis-
tration, but the seeing through the press and often revising
every biological paper that the Society received, as well as
reading those it rejected. Then, too, he had to attend every
general, council, and committee meeting, amongst which
latter the Challenger Committee was a load in itself. Under
pressure of all this work, he was compelled to give up active
connection with other learned societies.*

Other work this year, in addition to the School Board,
included courses of lectures at the London Institution in
January and February, on “ First Principles of Biology,”
and from October to December on “ Elementary Physi-
ology” ; lectures to Working Men in London from February
to April, as well as one at Liverpool, March 25, on ‘‘ The
Geographical Distribution of Animals ” ; two lectures at the
Royal Institution, May 12 and 19, on “ Berkeley on Vision,”
and the “ Metaphysics of Sensation” (Coll. Ess. vi.). He
published one paleontological paper, “ Fossil Vertebrates
from the Yarrow Colliery” (Huxley and Wright, Irish
Acad. Trans.). In June and July he gave 36 lectures to

 

* See Appendix II.
383
384 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXV

schoolmasters—that important business of teaching the
teachers that they might set about scientific instruction in
the right way.* He attended the British Association at
Edinburgh, and laid down his Presidency ; he brought out
his “ Manual of Vertebrate Anatomy,” and wrote a review
of “ Mr. Darwin’s Critics” (see p. 391, sg.), while on Octo-
ber g he delivered an address at the Midland Institute,
Birmingham, on “ Administrative Nihilism ” (Coll. Ess. i.).
This address, written between September 21 and 28, and
remodelled later, was a pendant to his educational cam-
paign on the School Board; a re-statement and justification
of what he had said and done there. His text was the vari-
ous objections raised to State interference with education ;
he dealt first with the upholders of a kind of caste system,
men who were willing enough to raise themselves and their
sons to a higher social plane, but objected on semi-theo-
logical grounds to anyone from below doing likewise—
neatly satirising them and their notions of gentility, and
quoting Plato in support of his contention that what is
wanted even more than means to help capacity to rise is
“machinery by which to facilitate the descent of incapacity
from the higher strata to the lower.” He repeats in new
phrase his warning “that every man of high natural ability,
who is both ignorant and miserable, is as great a danger
to society as a rocket without a stick is to people who fire
it. Misery is a match that never goes out; genius, as an
explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow: and if know-
ledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting,
the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run
a-muck among friends and foes.”

Another class of objectors will have it that government
should be restricted to police functions, both domestic and
foreign, that any further interference must do harm.

Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that we accept
the proposition that the functions of the State may be properly
summed up in the one great negative commandment—* Thou
shalt not allow any man to interfere with the liberty of any

 

* See pp. 389, 405, sg.
1871 THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 385

other man,"—I am unable to see that the logical consequence is
any such restriction of the power of Government, as its sup-
porters imply. If my next-door neighbour chooses to have his
drains in such a state as to create a poisonous atmosphere, which
I breathe at the risk of typhoid and diphtheria, he restricts my
just freedom to live just as much as if he went about with a
pistol threatening my life; if he is to be allowed to let his
children go unvaccinated, he might as well be allowed to leave
strychnine lozenges about in the way of mine; and if he brings
them up untaught and untrained to earn their living, he is
doing his best to restrict my freedom, by increasing the burden
of taxation for the support of gaols and workhouses, which I
have to pay.

The higher the state of civilisation, the more completely do
the actions of one member of the social body influence all the
rest, and the less possible is it for any one man to do a wrong
thing without interfering, more or less, with the freedom of all
his fellow-citizens. So that, even upon the narrowest view of the
functions of the State, it must be admitted to have wider powers
than the advocates of the police theory are disposed to admit.

This leads to a criticism of Mr. Spencer’s elaborate com-
parison of the body politic to the body physical, a compar-
ison vitiated by the fact that ‘““among the higher physio-
logical organisms there is none which is developed by the
conjunction of a number of primitively independent exist-
ences into a complete whole.”

The process of social organisation appears to be comparable,
not so much to the process of organic development, as to the
synthesis of the chemist, by which independent elements are
gradually built up into complex aggregations—in which each
element retains an independent individuality, though held in
subordination to the whole.

It is permissible to quote a few more sentences from this
address for the sake of their freshness, or as illustrating the
writer’s ideas. :

Discussing toleration, “I cannot discover that Locke
fathers the pet doctrine of modern Liberalism, that the tol-
eration of error is a good thing in itself, and to be reck-
oned among the cardinal virtues.” *

 

* This bears on his speech against Ultramontanism. See p. 374.
386 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXV

Of Mr. Spencer’s comparison of the State to a living
body in the interests of individualism :-—

I suppose it is universally agreed that it would be useless
and absurd for the State to attempt to promote friendship and
sympathy between man and man directly. But I see no reason
why, if it be otherwise expedient, the State may not do some-
thing towards that end indirectly. For example, I can conceive
the existence of an Established Church which should be a bless-
ing to the community. A Church in which, week by week,
services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propo-
sitions in theology, but to the setting before men’s minds of an
ideal of true, just, and pure living; a place in which those who
are weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment's
rest in the contemplation of the higher life which is possible
for all, though attained by so few; a place in which the man of
strife and of business should have time to think how small,
after all, are the rewards he covets compared with peace and
charity. Depend upon it, if such a Church existed, no one
would seek to disestablish it.

The sole order of nobility which, in my judgment, becomes
a philosopher, is the rank which he holds in the estimation of
his fellow-workers, who are the only competent judges in such
matters. Newton and Cuvier lowered themselves when the one
accepted an idle knighthood, and the other became a baron of
the empire. The great men who went to their graves as Michael
Faraday and George Grote seem to me to have understood the
dignity of knowledge better when they declined all such mere-
tricious trappings.*

The usual note of high pressure recurs in the following
letter, written to thank Darwin for his new work, The
Descent of Man, and Sexual Selection.

JERMYN STREET, Fed. 20, 1871.
My pear Darwin—Best thanks for your new book, a copy
of which I find awaiting me this morning. But I wish you
would not bring your books out when I am so busy with all sorts
of things. You know I can’t show my face anywhere in society
without having read them—and I consider it too bad.

 

* On the other hand, he thought it right and proper for officials, in
scientific as in other departments, to accept such honours, as giving
them official power and status. In his own case, while refusing all
1871 LETTER TO ROSCOE 387

No doubt, too, it is full of suggestions just like that I have
hit upon by chance at p. 212 of vol. i, which connects the
periodicity of vital phenomena with antecedent conditions.

Fancy lunacy, &c., coming out of the primary fact that one’s
nth ancestor lived between tide-marks! I declare it's the
grandest suggestion I have heard of for an age.

I have been working like a horse for the last fortnight, with
the fag end of influenza hanging about me—and I am improv-
ing under the process, which shows what a good tonic work is.

I shall try if I can’t pick out from “ Sexual Selection ” some
practical hint for the improvement of gutter-babies, and bring
in a resolution thereupon at the School Board.—Ever yours
faithfully, T. H. Hux ey.

This year also saw the inception of a scheme for a series
of science primers, under the joint editorship of Professors
Huxley, Roscoe, and Balfour Stewart. Huxley undertook
the Introductory Primer, but it progressed slowly owing to
pressure of other work, and was not actually finished till
1880.

26 ABBEY PLACE, June 29, 1871.

My bear Roscoe—If you could see the minutes of the Pro-
ceedings of the Aid to Science Commission, the Contagious Dis-
eases Commission and the School Board (to say nothing of a
lecture to Schoolmasters every morning) you would forgive me
for not having written to you before.

But now that I have had a little time to look at it, I hasten
to say that your chemical primer appears to me to be admirable
—yjust what is wanted.

I enclose the sketch for my Primer primus. You will see
the bearing of it, rough as it is. When it touches upon chemical
matters, it would deal with them in a more rudimentary fashion
than yours does, and only prepare the minds of the fledglings
for you.

I send you a copy of the Report of the Education Committee,
the resolutions based on which I am now slowly getting passed
by our Board. The adoption of (c) among the essential sub-

 

simple titular honours, he accepted the Privy Councillorship, because,
though incidentally carrying a title, it was an office; and an office in
virtue of which a man of science might, in theory at least, be called
upon to act as responsible adviser to the Government, should special
occasion arise.
388 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXV

jects has, I hope, secured the future of Elementary Science in
London. Cannot you get as much done in Manchester ?>—Ever
yours faithfully, ; T. H. Huxtey.

Sir Charles Lyell was now nearly 74 years old, and
though he lived four years longer, age was beginning to
tell even upon his vigorous powers. A chance meeting with
him elicited the following letter :-—

26 ABBEY PLACE, /uly 30, 1871.

My pvear Darwin—I met Lyell in Waterloo Place to-day
walking with Carrick Moore—and although what you said the
other day had prepared me, I was greatly shocked at:his ap-
pearance, and still more at his speech. There is no doubt it is
affected in the way you describe, and the fact gives me very
sad forebodings about him. The Fates send me a swift and
speedy end whenever my time comes. I think there is nothing
so lamentable as the spectacle of the wreck. of a once clear and
vigorous mind!

I am glad Frank enjoyed his visit to us. He is a great
favourite here, and I hope he will understand that he is free
of the house. It was the greatest fun to see Jess and Mady *
on their dignity with him. No more kissing, I can tell you.
Miss Mady was especially sublime.

Six out of our seven children have. the ee a
Need I say therefore that the wife is enjoying herself?

With best regards to Mrs. Darwin and your daughter (and
affectionate love to Polly) believe me—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

The purchase of the microscope, already referred to, was
the subject of another letter to Dr. Dohrn, of which only
the concluding paragraph about the School Board, is of
general interest. Unfortunately the English microscope did
not turn out a success, as compared to the work of the
Jena opticians: this is the “ optical Sadowa ” of the second
letter.

I fancy from what you wrote to my wife that there has been
some report of my doings about the School Board in Germany.
So I send you the number of the Contemporary Review + for

 

* Aged 13 and 12 respectively.
¢ Containing his article on ‘‘ The School Boards, ” ete,
1871 LETTERS TO DOHRN 389

December that you may see what line I have really taken.
Fanatics on both sides abuse me, so I think I must be right.
When is this infernal war to come to an end? I hold for
Germany as always, but I wish she would make peace.—With
best wishes for the New Year.—Ever yours,
T. H. Huxtey.

26 ABBEY PLAcE, /u/y 7, 1871.

My pear Dourn—I have received your packet, and I will
take care that your Report is duly presented to the Association.
But the ‘“ Happy Family” in general, and myself in particular,
are very sorry you cannot come to Scotland. We had begun
to count upon it, and the children are immeasurably disgusted
with the Insects which will not lay their eggs at the right
time.

You have become acclimatised to my bad behaviour in the
matter of correspondence, so I shall not apologise for being in
arrear. I have been frightfully hard-worked with two Royal
Commissions and the School Board all sitting at once, but I am
none the worse, and things are getting into shape—which is a
satisfaction for one’s trouble. I look forward hopefully towards
getting back to my ordinary work next year.

Your penultimate letter was very interesting to me, but the
glimpses into your new views which it affords are very tanta-
lising—and I want more. What you say about the development
of the Amnion in your last letter still more nearly brought
“Donner und Blitz!” to my lips—and I shall look out anxiously
for your new facts. Lankester tells me you have been giving
lectures on your views. I wish I had been there to hear.

He is helping me as Demonstrator in a course of instruction
in Biology which I am giving to Schoolmasters—with the view
of converting them into scientific missionaries to convert the
Christian Heathen of these islands to the true faith.

I am afraid that the English microscope turned out to be by
no means worth the money and trouble you bestowed upon it.
But the glory of such an optical Sadowa should count for some-
thing! I wish that you would get your Jena man to supply me
with one of his best objectives if the price is not ruinous—I
should like to compare it with my 7? in, of Ross.*

 

*In this connection it may be noted that he himself invented a
combination microscope for laboratory use, still made by Crouch the
optician. (See Journ. Quechkett Micr. Club, vol. v. p. 144.)
390 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXV

All our children but Jessie have the whooping-cough—Per-
tussis—I don’t know your German name for it—It is distress-
ing enough for them, but, I think, still worse for their mother.
However, there are no serious symptoms, and I hope the change
of air will set them right.

They all join with me in best wishes and regrets that you
are not coming. Won’t you change your mind? We start on
July 31st—Ever yours faithfully, ae Hosea

The summer holiday of 1871 was spent at St. Andrews,
a place rather laborious of approach at that time, with all
the impedimenta of a large and young family, but chosen
on account of its nearness to Edinburgh, where the British
Association met that year. I well remember the night
journey of some ten or eleven hours, the freshness of the
early morning at Edinburgh, the hasty excursion with my
father up the hill from the station as far as the old High
Street. The return journey, however, was made easier by
the kindness of Dr. Matthews Duncan, who put up the
whole family for a night, so as to break the journey.

We stayed at Castlemount, now belonging to Miss
Paton, just opposite the ruined castle. Among other vis-
itors to St. Andrews known to my father were Professors
Tait and Crum Brown, who inveigled him into making trial
of the “ Royal and Ancient”? game, which then, as now,
was the staple resource of the famous little city. I have a
vivid recollection of his being hopelessly bunkered three or
four holes from home, and can testify that he bore the moral
strain with more than usual calm.as compared with the
generality of golfers. Indeed, despite his naturally quick
temper and his four years of naval service at a time when,
perhaps, the traditions of a former generation had not
wholly died out, he had a special aversion to the use of
expletives ; and the occasional appearance of a strong word
in his letters must be put down to a simple literary use
which he would have studiously avoided in conversation.
A curious physical result followed the vigour with which
he threw himself into the unwonted recreation. For the
last twenty years his only physical exercise had been walk-
1871 “MR. DARWIN’S CRITICS” 391

ing, and now his arms went black and blue under the mus-
cular strain, as if they had been bruised.

But the holiday was by no means spent entirely in
recreation. One week was devoted to the British Associa-
tion; another to the examination of some interesting fossils
at Elgin; while the last three weeks were occupied in
writing two long articles, ‘‘ Mr. Darwin’s Critics,” and the
address entitled ‘“ Administrative Nihilism” referred to
above (p. 384), as well as a review of Dana’s Crinoids. The
former, which appeared in the Contemporary Review for
November (Coll. Ess. ii. 120-187) was a review of (1) Con-
tributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, by A. R. Wal-
lace, (2) The Genesis of Species, by St. George Mivart,
F.R.S., and (3) an article in the Quarterly for July 1871, on
Darwin's Descent of Man.

“T am Darwin’s bull-dog,” he once said, and the Quar-
terly Revicwer’s treatment of Darwin, “ alike unjust and un-
becoming,” provoked him into immediate action. “I am
about sending you,” he writes to Haeckel on Nov. 2, “a
little review of some of Darwin’s critics. The dogs have
been barking at his heels too much of late.” Apart from
this stricture, however, he notes the “ happy change ” which
“has come over Mr. Darwin’s critics. The mixture of ig-
norance and insolence which at first characterised a large
proportion of the attacks with which he was assailed, is no
longer the sad distinction of anti-Darwinian criticism.”
Notes too “ that, in a dozen years, the Origin of Species has
worked as complete a revolution in biological science as the
Principia did in astronomy—and it has done so, because,
in the words of Helmholtz, it contains an ‘ essentially new
creative thought.’ ”

The essay is particularly interesting as giving evidence
of his skill and knowledge in dealing with psychology, as
against the Quarterly Reviewer, and even with such an un-
likely subject as scholastic metaphysics, so that, by an odd
turn of events, he appeared in the novel character of a
defender of Catholic orthodoxy against an attempt from
within that Church to prove that its teachings have in reality

always been in harmony with the requirements of modern
26
392 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXV

science. For Mr. Mivart, while twitting the generality of
men of science with their ignorance of the real doctrines of
his church, gave a reference to the Jesuit theologian Suarez,
the latest great representative of scholasticism, as following
St. Augustine in asserting, not direct, but derivative crea-
tion, that is to say, evolution from primordial matter endued
with certain powers. Startled by this statement, Huxley
investigated the works of the learned Jesuit, and found not
only that Mr. Mivart’s reference to the Metaphysical Dis-
putations was not to the point, but that in the “ Tractatus
de opere sex Dierum,” Suarez expressly and emphatically
rejects this doctrine and reprehends Augustine for assert-
ing it.

By great good luck (he writes to Darwin from St. Andrews)
there is an excellent library here, with a good copy of Suarez, in
a dozen big folios. Among these I dived, to the great astonish-
ment of the librarian, and looking into them as “the careful
robin eyes the delver’s toil” (vide [dylls), I carried off the two
venerable clasped volumes which were most promising.

So I have come out in the new character of a defender of
Catholic orthodoxy, and upset Mivart out of the mouth of his
own prophet.

_ Darwin himself was more than pleased with the article,
and wrote enthusiastically (see Life and Letters, iii. 148-150).
A few of his generous words may be quoted to show the
rate at which he valued his friend’s championship.

What a wonderful man you are to grapple with those old
metaphysico-divinity books. . . . The pendulum is now swinging
against our side, but I feel positive it will soon swing the other
way; and no mortal man will do half as much as you in giving
it a start in the right direction, as you did at the first com-
mencement.

And again, after “ mounting climax on climax,” he con-
tinues :—‘ I must tell you what Hooker said to me a few
years ago. ‘When I read Huxley, I feel quite infantile in
intellect.’ ”

This sketch of what constituted his holiday—and it was
not very much busier than many another holiday—may
possibly suggest what his busy time must have been like.
1871 BREAKDOWN IN HEALTH 393

Till the end of the year the immense amount of work
did not apparently tell upon him. He rejoiced in it. In
December he remarked to his wife that with all his different
irons in the fire, he had never felt his mind clearer or his
vigour greater. Within a week he broke down quite sud-
denly, and could neither work nor think. He refers to this
in the following letter :—

JERMYN STREET, Dec. 22, 1871.

My pear JoHNNy—You are certainly improving. As a
practitioner in the use of cold steel myself, I have read your
letter in to-day’s Nature, “ mit Ehrfurcht und Bewunderung.”
And the best evidence of the greatness of your achievement is
that it extracts this expression of admiration from a poor devil
whose brains and body are in a colloid state, and who is off to
Brighton for a day or two this afternoon.

God be with thee, my son, and strengthen the contents of
thy gall-bladder !—Ever thine, T. H. Huxtey.

P.S.—Seriously, I am glad that at last a protest has been
raised against the process of anonymous self-praise to which
our friend is given. I spoke to Smith the other day about that
dose of it in the “ Quarterly” article on Spirit-rapping.
CHAPTER XXVI
1872

' Dyspepsia, that most distressing of maladies, had laid
firm hold upon him. He was compelled to take entire rest
for atime. But his first holiday produced no lasting effect,
and in the summer he was again very ill. Then the worry
of a troublesome lawsuit in connection with the building
of his new house intensified both bodily illness and mental
depression. He had great fears of being saddled with heavy
costs at the moment when he was least capable of meeting
any new expense—hardly able even to afford another much-
needed spell of rest. But in his case, as in others, at this
critical moment the circle of fellow-workers in science to
whom he was bound by ties of friendship, resolved that he
should at least not lack the means of recovery. In their
name Charles Darwin wrote him the following letter, of
which it is difficult to say whether it does more honour to
him who sent it or to him who received it :—

Down, BECKENHAM, KENT, Apri/ 23, 1873.

My pear Huxtey—lI have been asked by some of your
friends (eighteen in number) to inform you that they have
placed through Robarts, Lubbock & Company, the sum of £2100
to your account at your bankers. We have done this to enable
you to get such complete rest as you may require for the re-
establishment of your health; and in doing this we are con-
vinced that we act for the public interest, as well as in accord-
ance with our most earnest desires. Let me assure you that
we are all your warm personal friends, and that there is not a
stranger or mere acquaintance amongst us. If you could have
heard what was said, or could have read what was, as I believe,
our inmost thoughts, you would know that we all feel towards

394
1872 AT GIBRALTAR 395

you, as we should to an honoured and much loved brother. I
am sure that you will return this feeling, and will therefore
be glad to give us the opportunity of aiding you in some degree,
as this will be a happiness to us to the last day of our lives.
Let me add that our plan occurred to several of your friends at
nearly the same time and quite independently of one another.
—My dear Huxley, your affectionate friend,
CuarLes DarwIN.

It was a poignant moment. “ What have I done to
deserve this?” he exclaimed. The relief from anxiety, so
generously proffered, entirely overcame him; and for the
first time, he allowed himself to confess that in the long
struggle against ill-health, he had been beaten; but, as he
said, only enough to teach him humility.

His first trip in search of health was in 1872, when he
obtained two months’ leave of absence, and prepared to go
to the Mediterranean. His lectures to women on Physi-
ology at South Kensington were taken over by Dr. Michael
Foster, who had already acted as his substitute in the Ful-
lerian course of 1868. But even on this cruise after health
he was not altogether free from business. The stores of
biscuit at Gibraltar and Malta were infested with a small
grub and its cocoons. Complaints to the home authorities
were met by the answer that the stores were prepared from
the purest materials and sent out perfectly -free from the
pest. Discontent among the men was growing serious,
when he was requested by the Admiralty to investigate the
nature of the grub and the best means of preventing its
ravages. In the end he found that the biscuits were packed
within range of stocks of newly arrived, unpurified cocoa,
from which the eggs were blown into the stores while being
packed, and there hatched out. Thereafter the packing was
done in another place and the complaints ceased.

Jan, 3, 1872.
My pear Dourn—It is true enough that I am somewhat
“erkrankt,” though beyond general weariness, incapacity and
disgust with things in general, I do not precisely know what
is the matter with me.
Unwillingly, I begin to suspect that I overworked myself
396 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVI

last year. Doctors talk seriously to me, and declare that all
sorts of wonderful things will happen if I do not take some
more efficient rest than I have had for a long time. My wife
adds her quota of persuasion and admonition, until I really begin
to think I must do something, if only to have peace.

What if I were to come and look you up in Naples, some-
where in February, as soon as my lectures are over?

The “one-plate system” might cure me of my incessant
dyspeptic nausea. A detestable grub—larva of Ephestia elatella
—has been devouring Her Majesty’s stores of biscuits at Gibral-
tar. I have had to look into his origin, history, and best way
of circumventing him—and maybe I shall visit Gibraltar and
perhaps Malta. In that case, you will see me turn up some of
these days at the Palazzo Torlonia.

Herbert Spencer has written a friendly attack on “ Adminis-
trative Nihilism,” which I will send you; in the same number of
the Fortnightly there is an absurd epicene splutter on the same
subject by Mill’s step-daughter, Miss Helen Taylor. I intended
to publish the paper separately, with a note about Spencer’s
criticism, but I have had no energy nor faculty to do anything
lately.

Tell Lankester, with best regards, that I believe the teach-
ing of teachers in 1872 is arranged, and that I shall look for
his help in due course.

The “ Happy family’ have had the measles since you saw
them, but they are well again.

I write in Jermyn Street, so they cannot send messages;
otherwise there would be a chorus from them and the wife of
good wishes and kind remembrances.—Ever yours,

T. H. Huxtey.

He left Southampton on January 11, in the Malta. On
the 16th, he notes in his diary, “I was up just in time to
see the great portal of the Mediterranean well. It was a
lovely morning, and nothing could be grander than Ape
Hill on one side and the Rock on the other, looking like
great lions or sphinxes on each side of a gateway.”

The morning after his arrival he breakfasted with Ad-
miral Hornby, who sent him over to Tangier in the Helicon,
giving the Bishop of Gibraltar a passage at the same time.
This led him to note down, “ How the naval men love
Baxter and all his works.” <A letter from Dr. Hooker to
1872 IN EGYPT 397

Sir John Hay ensured him a most hospitable welcome,
though continual rain spoiled his excursions. On the 21st
he returned to Gibraltar, leaving three days later in the
Nyansa for Alexandria, which was reached on February 1.
At that “ muddy hole” he landed in pouring rain, and it
was not till he reached Cairo the following day that he at
last got into his longed-for sunshine.

Seeing that three of his eight weeks had been spent in
merely getting to sunshine, his wife and doctor conspired to
apply for a third month of leave, which was immediately
granted, so that he now had time to go up the Nile as far
as Assouan in that most restful of conveyances, a dahabiah.

Cairo more than answered his expectations. He stayed
here till the 13th, making several excursions in company
with Sir W. Gregory, notably to Boulak Museum, where
he particularly notes the “man with ape” from Memphis;
and, of course, the pyramids, of which he remarks that
Cephren’s is cased at the top with limestone, not granite.
His note-book and sketch-book show that he was equally
interested in archeology, in the landscape and scenes of
everyday life, and in the peculiar geographical and geologi-
cal features of the country. His first impression of the
Delta was its resemblance to Belgium and Lincolnshire.
He has sections and descriptions of the Mokatta hill, and
the windmill mound, with a general panorama of the sur-
rounding country and an explanation of it. He remarks at
Memphis how the unburnt brick of which the mounds are
made up had in many places become remanie into a strati-
fied deposit—distinguishable from Nile mud chiefly by the
pottery fragments—and notes the bearing of this fact on
the Cairo mounds. It is the same on his trip up the Nile;
he jots down the geology whenever opportunity offered;
remarks, as indication of the former height of the river, a
high mud-bank beyond Edfou, and near Assouan a pot-
hole in the granite fifty feet above the present level. Here
is a detailed description of the tomb of Aahmes; there a
river-scene beside the pyramid of Meidum; or vivid sketches
of vulture and jackal at a meal in the desert, the jackal in
possession of the carcass, the vulture impatiently waiting
398 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVI

his good pleasure for the last scraps; of the natives working
at the endless shadoofs; of a group of listeners around a
professional story-teller—unfinished, for he was observed
sketching them.

Egypt left a profound impression upon him. His
artistic delight in it apart, the antiquities and geology of
the country were a vivid illustration to his trained eye of the
history of man and the influence upon him of the surround-
ing country, the link between geography and history.

He left behind him for a while a most unexpected
memorial of his visit. A friend not long after going to the
pyramids, was delighted to find himself thus adjured by a
donkey-boy, who tried to cut out his rival with “ Not him
donkey, sah; him donkey bad, sah; my donkey good; my
donkey ’Fessor-uxley donkey, sah.” It appears that the
Cairo donkey-boys have a way of naming their animals after
celebrities whom they have borne on their backs.

While at Thebes, on his way down the river again, he
received news of the death of the second son of Matthew
Arnold, to whom he wrote the following letter :—

THEBES, March to, 1872.

My pear ArNnoLtp—I cannot tell you how shocked I was to
see in the papers we received yesterday the announcement of
the terrible blow which has fallen upon Mrs. Arnold and your-
self.

Your poor boy looked such a fine manly fellow the last time
I saw him, when we dined at your house, that I had to read the
paragraph over and over again before I could bring myself to
believe what I read. And it is such a grievous opening of a
wound hardly yet healed that I hardly dare to think of the
grief which must have bowed down Mrs. Arnold and yourself.

I hardly know whether I do well in writing to you. If such
trouble befel me there are very few people in the world from
whom I could bear even sympathy—but you would be one of
them, and therefore I hope that you will forgive a condolence
which will reach you so late as to disturb rather than soothe,
for the sake of the hearty affection which dictates it.

My wife has told me of the very kind letter you wrote her.
I was thoroughly broken down when I left England, and did
not get much better until I fell into the utter and absolute
1872 LETTER TO TYNDALL 399

laziness of dahabieh life. A month of that has completely set
me up. I am as well as ever; and though very grateful to Old
Nile for all that he has done for me—not least for a whole uni-
verse of new thoughts and pictures of life—I begin to feel
strongly

‘the need of a world of men for me.’

But I am not going to overwork myself again. Pray make my
kindest remembrances to Mrs. Arnold, and believe me, always
yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

Leaving Assouan on March 3, and Cairo on the 18th,
he returned by way of Messina to Naples, taking a day at
Catania to look at Etna. At Naples he found his friend
Dohrn was absent, and his place as host was filled by his
father. Vesuvius was ascended, Pozzuoli and Pompeii vis-
ited, and two days spent in Rome.

HOTEL DE GRANDE BRETAGNE, NAPLES,
March 31, 1872.

My pear TyNnpALL—Your very welcome letter did not reach
me until the 18th of March, when I returned to Cairo from my
expedition to Assouan. Like Johnny Gilpin, I “little thought,
when I set out, of running such a rig”; but while at Cairo I
fell in with Ossory of the Athenzeum, and a very pleasant fellow,
Charles Ellis, who had taken a dahabieh, and were about to
start up the Nile. They invited mz to take possession of a
vacant third cabin, and I- accepted their hospitality, with the
intention of going as far as Thebes and returning on my own
hook. But when we got to Thebes I found there was no getting
away again without much more exposure and fatigue than I
felt justified in facing just then, and as my friends showed no
disposition to be rid of me, I stuck to the boat, and only left
them on the return voyage at Rodu, which is the terminus of
the railway, about 150 miles from Cairo.

We had an unusually quick journey, as I was little more
than a month away from Cairo, and as my companions made
themselves very agreeable, it was very pleasant. I was not
particularly well at first, but by degrees the utter rest of this
“always afternoon” sort of life did its work, and I am as well
and vigorous now as ever I was in my life.

I should have been home within a fortnight of the time I
had originally fixed. This would have been ample time to have
400 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVI

enabled me to fulfil all the engagements I had made before
starting; and Donnelly had given me to understand that “ My
Lords ” would not trouble their heads about my stretching my
official leave. Nevertheless I was very glad to find the official
extension (which was the effect of my wife’s and your and
Bence Jones’s friendly conspiracy) awaiting me at Cairo. A
rapid journey home via Brindisi might have rattled my brains
back into the colloid state in which they were when I left Eng-
land. Looking back through the past six months I begin to see
that I have had a narrow escape from a bad break-down, and I
am full of good resolutions.

As the first-fruit of these you see that I have given up the
school-board, and I mean to keep clear of all that semi-political
work hereafter. I see that Sandon (whom I met at Alexandria)
and Miller have followed my example, and that Lord Lawrence
is likely to go. What a skedaddle!

It seems very hard to escape, however. Since my arrival
here, on taking up the Times I saw a paragraph about the Lord
Rectorship of St. Andrews. After enumerating a lot of candi-
dates for that honour, the paragraph concluded, ‘“ But we under-
stand that at present Professor Huxley has the best chance.”
It is really too bad if anyone has been making use of my name
without my permission. But I don’t know what to do about
it. I had half a mind to write to Tulloch to tell him that I
can’t and won’t take any such office, but I should look rather
foolish if he replied that it was a mere newspaper report, and
that nobody intended to put me up.

Egypt interested me profoundly, but I must reserve the tale
of all I did and saw there for word of mouth. From Alexandria
I went to Messina, and thence made an excursion along the
lovely Sicilian coast to Catania and Etna. The old giant was
half covered with snow, and this fact, which would have tempted
you to go to the top, stopped me. But I went to the Val del
Bove, whence all the great lava streams have flowed for the
last two centuries, and feasted my eyes with its rugged grandeur.
From Messina I came on here, and had the great good fortune
to find Vesuvius in eruption. Before this fact the vision of
good Bence Jones forbidding much exertion vanished into thin
air, and on Thursday up I went in company with Ray Lankester
and my friend Dohrn’s father, Dohrn himself being unluckily
away. We had a glorious day, and did not descend till late at
night. The great crater was not very active, and contented
itself with throwing out great clouds of steam and volleys of
1872 LETTER TO TYNDALL AOI

red-hot stones now and then. These were thrown towards the
south-west side of the cone, so that it was practicable to walk
all round the northern and eastern lip, and look down into the
Hell Gate. I wished you were there to enjoy the sight as much
as I did. No lava was issuing from the great crater, but on
the north side of this, a little way below the top, an independent
cone had established itself as the most charming little pocket-
volcano imaginable. It could not have been more than 100
feet high, and at the top was a crater not more than six or
seven feet across. Out of this, with a noise exactly resembling
a blast furnace and a slowly-working high pressure steam engine
combined, issued a violent torrent of steam and fragments of
semi-fluid lava as big as one’s fist, and sometimes bigger. These
shot up sometimes as much as 100 feet, and then fell down on
the sides of the little crater, which could be approached within
fifty feet without any danger. As darkness set in, the spectacle
was most strange. The fiery stream found a lurid reflection
in the slowly-drifting steam cloud, which overhung it, while the
red-hot stones which shot through the cloud shone strangely
beside the quiet stars in a moonless sky.

Not from the top of this cinder cone, but from its side, a
couple of hundred feet down, a stream of lava issued. At first
it was not more than a couple of feet wide, but whether from
receiving accessions or merely from the different form of slope,
it got wider on its journey down to the Atrio del Cavallo, a
thousand feet below. The slope immediately below the exit
must have been near fifty, but the lava did not flow quicker than
very thick treacle would do under like circumstances. And
there were plenty of freshly cooled lava streams about, inclined
at angles far greater than those which that learned Academician,
Elie de Beaumont, declared to be possible. Naturally I was
ashamed of these impertinent lava currents, and felt inclined
to call them “‘ Laves mousseuses.”

Courage, my friend, behold land! I know you love my
handwriting. I am off to Rome to-day, and this day-week, if
all goes well, I shall be under my own roof-tree again. In fact
I hope to reach London on Saturday evening. It will be jolly
to see your face again—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

My best remembrances to Hirst if you see him before I do.

My father reached home on April 6, sunburnt and
bearded almost beyond recognition, but not really well, for
402 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVI

as soon as he began to work again in London, his old enemy
returned. Early hours, the avoidance of society and soci-
eties, an hour’s riding before starting at nine for South
Kensington, were all useless; the whole year was poisoned
until a special diet prescribed by Dr. (afterwards Sir) An-
drew Clark, followed by another trip abroad, effected a cure.
I remember his saying once that he learned by sad ex-
perience that such a holiday as that in Egypt was no good
for him. What he really required was mountain air and
plenty of exercise. The following letters fill up the outline
of this period :—
26 ABBEY PLACE, Jay 20, 1872.

My pear Dourn—lI suppose that you are now back in
Naples, perambulating the Chiaja, and looking ruefully on the
accumulation of ashes on the foundations of the aquarium!
The papers, at any rate, tell us that the ashes of Vesuvius have
fallen abundantly at Naples. Moreover, that abominable
municipality is sure to have made the eruption an excuse for
all sorts of delays. May the gods give you an extra share of
temper and patience!

What an unlucky dog our poor Ray is, to go and get fever
when of all times in the world’s history he should not have had
it. However, I hear he is better and on his way home. I hope
he will be well enough when he returns not only to get his
Fellowship, but to help me in my schoolmaster work in June
and July.

I was greatly disgusted to miss you in Naples, but it was
something to find your father instead. What a vigorous, genial
youngster of three score and ten he is. I declare I felt quite
aged beside him. We had a glorious day on Vesuvius, and be-
haved very badly by leaving him at the inn for I do not know
how many hours, while we wandered about the cone. But he
had a very charming young lady for companion, and possibly
had the best of it. I am very sorry that at the last I went off
in a hurry without saying “Good-bye” to him, but I desired
Lankester to explain, and I am sure he will have sympathised
with my anxiety to see Rome.

I returned, thinking myself very well, but a bad fit of dys-
pepsia seized me, and I found myself obliged to be very idle
and very careful of myself—neither of which things are to my
taste. But I am right again now, and hope to have no more
backslidings. However, I am afraid I may not be able to attend
1872 LETTERS TO DOHRN 403

the Brighton meeting. In which case you will have to pay us a
visit, wherever we may be—where, we have not yet made up
our minds, but it will not be so far as St. Andrews.

Now for a piece of business. The new Governor of Ceylon
is a friend of mine, and is proposing to set up a Natural History
Museum in Ceylon. He wants a curator—some vigorous fellow
with plenty of knowledge and power of organisation who will
make use of his great opportunities. He tells me he thinks he
can start him with £350 a year (and a house), with possible
increase to £400. I do not know any one here who would an-
swer the purpose. Can you recommend me any one? If you
can let me know at once, and don’t take so long in writing to
me as I have been in writing to you.

I await the “ Prophecies of the Holy Antonius ” * anxiously.
Like the Jews of old, I come of an unbelieving generation, and
need a sign. The bread and the oil, also the chamber in the
wall, shall not fail the prophet when he comes in August: nor
Donner and Blitzes either.

I leave the rest of the space for the wife.—Ever yours,

T. H. H.

The following is in reply to a jest of Dr. Dohrn’s—who
was still a bachelor—upon a friend’s unusual sort of offering
to a young lady.

I suspected the love affair you speak of, and thought the
young damsel very attractive. I suppose it will come to nothing,
even if he be disposed to add his hand to the iron and quinine,
in the next present he offers. . . . And, oh my Diogenes, happy
in a tub of arthropodous Entwickelungsgeschichte,+ despise not
beefsteaks, nor wives either. They also are good.

JERMYN STREET, June 5, 1872.

My pear Dourn—I have written to the Governor of Ceylon,
and enclosed the first half of your letter to me as he under-
stands High Dutch. I have told him that the best thing he can
do is to write to you at Naples and tell you he will be very
happy to see you as soon as you can come. And that if you do
come you will give him the best possible advice about his
museum, and let him have no rest until he has given you a site
for a zoological station.

 

* His work on the development of the Arthropoda.
+ History of Development.
404 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXVI

I have no doubt you will get a letter from him in three
weeks or so. His name is Gregory, and you will find him a
good-humoured acute man of the world, with a very great gen-
eral interest in scientific and artistic matters. Indeed in art I
believe he is a considerable connoisseur.

I am very grieved to hear of your father’s serious illness.
At his age cerebral attacks are serious, and when we spent so
many pleasant hours together at Naples, he seemed to have an
endless store of vigour—very much like his son Anton.

What put it into your head that I had any doubt of your
power of work? I am ready to believe that you are Hydra in
the matter of heads and Briareus in the matter of hands.

... If you go to Ceylon I shall expect you to come back
by way of England. It’s the shortest route anywhere from
India, though it may not look so on the map.

How am I? Oh, getting along and just keeping the devil of
dyspepsia at arm’s length. The wife and other members of the
H. F. are well, and would send you greetings if they knew I
was writing to you.—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

A little later Von Willemoes Suhm (“why the deuce
does he have such a long name, instead of a handy mono-
syllable or dissylable like Dohrn or Huxley?”’) was recom-
mended for the post. He afterwards was one of the scien-
tific staff of the Challenger, and died during the voyage.

MorRTHOE, NEAR BARNSTAPLE, NORTH DEvon,
Aug. 5, 1872.

My pear Dourn—I trust you have not been very wroth
with me for my long delay in answering your last letter. For
the last six weeks I have beén very busy lecturing daily to a
batch of schoolmasters, and looking after their practical in-
struction in the laboratory which the Government has, at last,
given me. In the “intervals of business” I have been taking
my share in a battle which has been raging between my friend
Hooker of Kew and his official chief. . . . And moreover I have
just had strength enough to get my daily work done and no
more, and everything that could be put off has gone to the
wall. Three days ago, the ‘“ Happy Family,” bag and baggage,
came to this remote corner, where I propose to take a couple
of months’ entire rest—and put myself in order for next winter’s
campaign. It is a little village five miles from the nearest town
1872 CLASSES FOR SCIENCE TEACHERS 405

(which is Ilfracombe), and our house is at the head of a ravine
running down to the sea. Our backs are turned to England
and our faces to America with no land that I know of between.
The country about is beautiful, and if you will come we will
put you up at the little inn, and show you something better than
even Swanage. There are slight difficulties about the commis-
sariat, but that is the Hausfrau’s business, and not mine. At
the worst, bread, eggs, milk, and rabbits are certain, and the
post from London takes two days!

MorruHok, ILFRACOMBE, N. Devon,
Aug, 23, 1872.

My pear WHIRLWIND—I promise you all my books, past,
present, and to come for the Aquarium. The best part about
them is that they will not take up much room. Ask for Owen’s
by all means; ‘“‘ Fas est etiam ab hoste doceri.” I am very glad
you have got the British Association publications, as it will be a
good precedent for the Royal Society.

Have you talked to Hooker about marine botany? He may
be able to help you as soon as X. the accursed (may jackasses
sit upon his grandmother’s grave, as we say in the East) leaves
him alone.

It is hateful that you should be in England without seeing
us, and for the first time I lament coming here. The children
howled in chorus when they heard that you could not come. At
this moment the whole tribe and their mother have gone to the
sea, and I must answer your letter before the post goes out,
which it does here about half an hour after it comes in.—Ever
yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtrey.

In 1872 Huxley was at length enabled to establish in
his regular classes a system of science teaching based upon
laboratory work by the students, which he had long felt to
be the only true method. It involved the verification of
every fact by each student, and was a training in scientific
method even more than in scientific fact. Had circum-
stances only permitted, the new epoch in biological teaching
might have been antedated by many years. But, as he says
in the preface to the Practical Biology, 1875—

Practical work was forbidden by the limitations of space in
the building in Jermyn Street, which possessed no room ap-
plicable to the purpose of a laboratory, and I was obliged to
406 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVI

content myself, for many years, with what seemed the next best
thing, namely, as full an exposition as I could give, of the char-
acters of certain plants and animals, selected as types of vege-
table and animal organisation, by way of introduction to sys-
tematic zoology and paleontology.

There was no laboratory work, but he would show an
experiment or a dissection during the lecture or perhaps
for a few minutes after, when the audience crowded round
the lecture table.

The opportunity came in 1871. As he afterwards im-
pressed upon the great city companies in regard to technical
education, the teaching of science throughout the country
turned upon the supply of trained teachers. The part to be
played by elementary science under the Education Act of
1870, added urgency to the question of proper teaching.
With this in view, he organised a course of instruction for
those who had been preparing pupils for the examinations
of the Science and Art Department, “ scientific mission-
aries,” as he described them to Dr. Dohrn.

In the promotion of the practical teaching of biology (writes
the late Jeffery Parker, Nat. Sci. viii. 49), Huxley’s services
can hardly be overestimated. Botanists had always been in the
habit of distributing flowers to their students, which they could
dissect or not as they chose; animal histology was taught in
many colleges under the name of practical physiology; and at
Oxford an excellent system of zoological work had been estab-
lished by the late Professor Rolleston.* But the biological
laboratory, as it is now understood, may be said to date from
about 1870, when Huxley, with the co-operation of Professors

 

* “ Rolleston (Professor Lankester writes to me) was the first to
systematically conduct the study of Zoology and Comparative Anat-
omy in this country by making use of a carefully selected series of
animals. His ‘types’ were the Rat, the Common Pigeon, the Frog,
the Perch, the Crayfish, Blackbeetle, Anodon, Snail, Earthworm,
Leech, Tapeworm. He had a series of dissections of these mounted,
also loose dissections and elaborate MS. descriptions. The student
went through this series, dissecting fresh specimens for himself.
After some ten years’ experience Rolleston printed his MS. directions
and notes as a book, called Forms of Animal Life.

‘This all preceded the practical class at South Kensington in 1871.
I have no doubt that Rolleston was influenced in his plan by your
1872 THE NEW TEACHING OF BIOLOGY 407

Foster, Rutherford, Lankester, Martin, and others,* held short
summer classes for science teachers at South Kensington, the
daily work consisting of an hour’s lecture followed by four
hours’ laboratory work, in which the students verified for them-
selves facts which they had hitherto heard about and taught to
their unfortunate pupils from books alone. The naive astonish-
ment and delight of the more intelligent among them was
sometimes almost pathetic. One clergyman, who had for years
conducted classes in physiology under the Science and Art De-
partment, was shown a drop of his own blood under the micro-
scope. “Dear me!” he exclaimed, “it’s just like the picture
in Huxley’s Physiology.”

Later, in 1872, when the biological department of the
Royal School of Mines was transferred to South Kensing-
ton, this method was adopted as part of the regular cur-
riculum of the school, and from that time the teaching “ of
zoology by lectures alone became an anachronism.”

The first of these courses to schoolmasters took place,
as has been said, in 1871. Some large rooms on the ground
floor of the South Kensington Museum were used for the
purpose. There was no proper laboratory, but professor
and demonstrators rigged up everything as wanted. Hux-
ley was in the full tide of that more than natural energy
which preceded his break-down in health, and gave what
Professor Ray Lankester describes as “a wonderful course
of lectures,” one every day from ten to eleven for six weeks,
in June and half July. The three demonstrators (those
named first on the list above) each took a third of the class,
about thirty-five apiece. “ Great enthusiasm prevailed. We
went over a number of plants and of animals—including

 

father’s advice. But Rolleston had the earlier opportunity of putting
the method into practice.

“Your father’s series of types were chosen so as to include plants,
and he gave more attention to microscopic forms and to microscopic
Structure than did Rolleston.” .

It was distinctive of the lectures that they were on biology, on
plants as well as animals, to illustrate all the fundamental features of
living things.

* T. J. Parker, G. B. Howes, and Sir W. Thiselton Dyer, K.C.M.G.,
CLE.

27
408 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVI

microscopic work and some physiological experiment. The
‘types’ were more numerous than in later courses.”

In 1872 the new laboratory—the present one—was
ready. “I have a laboratory,” writes Huxley to Dohrn,
“which it shall do your eyes good to behold when you
come back from Ceylon, the short way ” (i.e. via England).
Here a similar course, under the same demonstrators, as-
sisted by H. N. Martin, was given in the summer, Huxley,
though very shaky in health, making a point of carrying
them out himself.

26 ABBEY PLACE, /ume 4, 1872.

My pear TYNDALL—I must be at work on examination
papers all day to-day, but to-morrow I am good to lunch with
you (and abscond from the Royal Commission, which will get
on very well without me) or to go with you and call on your
friends, whichever may be most convenient.

Many thanks for all your kind and good advice about the
lectures, but I really think they will not be too much for me,
and it is of the utmost importance I should carry them on.

They are the commencement of a new system of teaching
which, if I mistake not, will grow into a big thing and bear
great fruit, and just at this present moment (nobody is neces-
sary very long) I am the necessary man to carry it on. I could
not get a suppléant if I would, and you are no more the man
than I am to let a pet scheme fall through for the fear of a
little risk of self. And really and truly I find that by taking
care I pull along very well. Moreover, it isn’t my brains that
get wrong, but only my confounded stomach.

I have read your memorial * which is very strong and strik-
ing, but a difficulty occurs to me about a good deal of it, and
that is that it won't do to quote Hooker’s official letters before
they have been called for in Parliament, or otherwise made
public. We should find ourselves in the wrong officially, I am
afraid, by doing so. However we can discuss this when we
meet. I will be at the Atheneum at 4 o’clock—Ever yours
faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

As for the teaching by “types,” which was the most
salient feature of his method, and therefore the most easily
applied and misapplied, Professor Parker continues :-—

 

* In the affair of Dr. Hooker already referred to.
1872 ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION IN BIOLOGY 409

Huxley’s method of teaching was based upon the personal
examination by the student of certain “types” of animals and
plants selected with a view of illustrating the various groups.
But, in his lectures, these types were not treated as the isolated
things they necessarily appear in a laboratory manual or an
examination syllabus; each, on the contrary, took its proper
place as an example of a particular grade of structure, and no
student of ordinary intelligence could fail to see that the types
were valuable, not for themselves, but simply as marking, so to
speak, the chapters of a connected narrative. Moreover, in
addition to the types, a good deal of work of a more general
character was done. Thus, while we owe to Huxley more than
to anyone else the modern system of teaching biology, he is by
no means responsible for the somewhat arid and mechanical
aspect it has assumed in certain quarters.

The application of the same system to botanical teaching
was inaugurated in 1873, when, being compelled to go
abroad for his health, he arranged that Mr. (now Sir W.)
Thiselton Dyer should take his place and lecture on
botany.

The Elementary Instruction in Biology, published in 1875,
was a text-book based upon this system. This book, in
writing which Huxley was assisted by his demonstrator,
H. N. Martin, was reprinted thirteen times before 1888,
when it was “ Revised and Extended by Howes and Scott,”
his later assistants. The revised edition is marked by one
radical change, due to the insistence of his demonstrator,
the late Prof. Jeffery Parker. In the first edition, the lower
forms of life were first dealt with; from simple cells—
amceba,. yeast-plant, blood-corpuscule — the student was
taken through an ascending series of plants and of animals,
ending with the frog or rabbit. But “the experience of
the Lecture-room and the Laboratory taught me,” writes
Huxley in the new preface, “that philosophical as it might
be in theory, it had defects in practice.” The process might
be regarded as not following the scientific rule of proceeding
from the known to the unknown; while the small and
simple organisms required a skill in handling high power
microscopes which was difficult for beginners to acquire.
Hence the course was reversed, and began with the more
410 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXVI

familiar type of the rabbit or frog. This was Rolleston’s
practice; but it may be noted that Professor Ray Lankester
has always maintained and further developed the “ original
Huxleian plan of beginning with the same microscopic
forms” as being a most important philosophic improvement
on Rolleston’s plan, and giving, he considers, “the truer
‘twist,’ as it were, to a student’s mind.”

When the book was sent to Darwin, he wrote back
(November 12, 1875) :—

My pear Huxteyv—Many thanks for your biology, which
I have read. It was a real stroke of genius to think of such a
plan. Lord, how I wish that I had gone through such a course.
—Ever yours, C. Darwin.

A large portion of his time and energy was occupied
in the organisation of this course of teaching for teachers,
and its elaboration before being launched on a larger scale
in October, when the Biological Department of the Jermyn
Street school was transferred to the new buildings at South
Kensington, fitted with laboratories which were to excite his
friend Dr. Dohrn’s envy. But he was also at work upon his
share of the Science Primers, so far as his still uncertain
health allowed. This and the affairs of the British Associa-
tion are the subject of several letters to Sir Henry Roscoe
and Dr. Tyndall.

26 ABBEY Piace, Agril 8, 1872.

My pear Roscoze—Many thanks for your kind letter of wel-
come. My long rest has completely restored me. As my doctor
told me, I was sound, wind and limb, and had merely worn my-
self out. I am not going to do that again, and you see that I
have got rid of the School Board. It was an awful incubus!

Oddly enough I met the Ashtons in the Vatican, and heard
about your perplexities touching Oxford. I should have advised
you to do as you have done. I think that you have a great
piece of work to do at Owens College, and that you will do it.
If you had gone to Oxford you would have sacrificed all the
momentum you have gained in Manchester; and would have had
to begin de novo, among conditions which, I imagine, it is very
hard for a non-University man to appreciate and adjust him-
self to.

I like the look of the “ Primers” (of which Macmillan has
1872 WORRIED BY HIS AILMENTS 4II

sent me copies to-day) very much, and shall buckle to at mine
as soon as possible. I am very glad you did not wait for me.
I remained in a very shaky condition up to the middle of March,
and could do nothing.—Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

The wife unites with me in kind regards to Mrs. Roscoe and
yourself.

MorTHOE, ILFRACOMBE, N. DEvon,
Sept. g, 1872.

My pear TynpaLtt—I was very glad to have news of you,
and to hear that you are vigorous.

My outing hitherto has not been very successful, so far as
the inward man is concerned at least, for the weather has been
good enough. But I have been worried to death with dyspepsia
and the hypochondriacal bedevilments that follow in its train,
until I am seriously thinking of returning to town to see vf the
fine air of St. John’s Wood (as the man says in Punch) won't
enable me to recover from the effects of the country.

I wish I were going with you to Yankee Land, not to do any
lecturing, God forbid! but to be a quiet spectator in a corner
of the enthusiastic audiences. I am as lazy as a dog, and the
role of looker-on would just suit me. However, I have a good
piece of work to do in organising my new work at South Ken-
sington.

I have just asked my children what message they have to
send to you, and they send their love; very sorry they won’t see
you before you go, and hope you won't come back speaking
through your nose!

I shall be in town this week or next, and therefore shail see
you.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Hux ey.

26 ABBEY PLACE, Set. 17, 1872.

My pear Rosco—E—Your letter has followed me from Mor-
thoe here. We had good enough weather in Devon—but my
stay there was marred by the continuous dyspepsia and concur-
rent hypochondriacal incapacity. At last, I could not stand it
any longer, and came home for “change of air,” leaving the
wife and chicks to follow next week. By dint of living on cocoa
and Revalenta, and giving up drink, tobacco, and all other
things that make existence pleasant, I am getting better.

What was your motive in getting kicked by a horse? I
stopped away from the Association without that; and am not
sorry to have been out of the way of the X. business. What is
412 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXVI

to become of the association if is to monopolise it? And
then there was that scoundrel, Louis Napoleon—to whom no
honest man ought to speak—gracing the scene. I am right glad
I was out of it.

I am at my wits’ end to suggest a lecturer for you. I wish
I could offer myself, but I have refused everything of that sort
on the score of health; and moreover, I am afraid of my wife!

What do you say to Ramsay? He lectures very well. I
have done nothing whatever to the Primer. Stewart sent me
Geikie’s letter this morning, and I have asked Macmillan to
send Geikie the proofs of my Primer so far as they go. We
must not overlap more than can be helped.

I have not seen Hooker yet since my return. While all this
row has been going on, I could not ask him to do anything for
us. And until X. is dead and d—d (officially at any rate), I am
afraid there will be little peace for him.—Ever yours very faith-
fully, . T. H. Hux.ey.

Please remember me very kindly to Mrs. Roscoe.

 

In a letter of September 25 is a reference to the way in
which his increasing family had outgrown his house in
Abbey Place. Early in the preceding year, he had come to
the decision to buy a small house in the same neighbour-
hood, and add to it so as to give elbow-room to each and
all of the family. This was against the advice of his friend
and legal adviser, to whom he wrote announcing his de-
cision, as follows. The letter was adorned with a sketch of
an absurd cottage, “ Ye House!” perched like a windmill
‘on a kind of pedestal, and with members of the family
painfully ascending a ladder to the upper storey, above the
ominous legend, “ Staircase forgotten.”

March 20, 1871.

My pear Burton—There is something delightfully refresh-
ing in rushing into a piece of practical work in the teeth of
one’s legal adviser.

If the lease of a piece of ground whereon I am going to
build mine house come to you, will you see if it’s all right—
Yours wilfully, T. H. Huxtey.

This house, No. 4 Marlborough Place, stands on the
north side of that quiet street, close to its junction with
Abbey Road. It is next door to the Presbyterian. Church,
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1872 HOUSE IN MARLBOROUGH PLACE 413
on the other side of which again is a Jewish synagogue.
The irregular front of the house, with the original cottage,
white-painted and deep-eaved, joined by a big porch to the
new uncompromising square face of yellow brick, distin-
guished only by its extremely large windows, was screened
from the road by a high oak paling, and a well-grown row
of young lime trees. Taken as a whole, it was not without
character, and certainly was unlike most London houses.
It was built for comfort, not beauty ; designed, within strin-
gent limits as to cost, to give each member of the family
room to get away by himself or herself if so disposed.
Moreover, the gain in space made it more possible to see
something of friends or put up a guest, than in the small
and crowded house in Abbey Place.

A small garden lay in front of the house; a consid-
erably larger garden behind, wherein the chief ornament
was then a large apple-tree, that never failed to spread
a cloud of blossom for my father’s birthday, the 4th of
May.

Over the way, too, for many years we were faced by a
long garden full of blossoming pear-trees in which thrushes
and blackbirds sang and nested, belonging to a desolate
house in the Abbey Road, which was tenanted by a soli-
tary old man, supposed to be a male prototype of Miss
Havisham in Great Expectations.

The move was accompanied by a unique and unpleasant
experience. A knavish fellow, living in a cottage close to
the foot of the garden, sought to blackmail the new-comer,
under threat of legal proceedings, alleging that a catchment
well for surface drainage had made his basement damp.
Unfortunately for his case, it could be shown that the pipes
had not yet been connected with the well, and when he
carried out his threat, he gained nothing from his suit in
Chancery and his subsequent appeal, except some stinging
remarks from Vice-Chancellor Malins.

I am afraid the brute is impecunious (wrote my father after
the first suit failed), and that I shall get nothing out of him.
So I shall have had three months’ worry, and be fined £100 or
so for being wholly and absolutely in the right.
414 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVI

Happily the man turned out to have enough means to
pay the bulk of the costs; but that was no compensation
for the mental worry and consequent ill-health entailed from
November to June.

The only amusing point in the whole affair was when
the plaintiff’s solicitors had the face to file an affidavit before
the Vice-Chancellor himself in answer to his strictures upon
the case, “about as regular a proceeding,” reports Mr.
Burton, “as for a middy to reply upon the Post Captain
on his own quarter-deck.”

The move was made in the third week of December
(1872) amid endless rain and mud and with workmen still
in the house. It was attended by one inconvenience. He
writes to Darwin on December 20, 1872 :—

I am utterly disgusted at having only just received your
note of Tuesday. But the fact is, there is a certain inconven-
ience about having four addresses as has been my case for the
most part of this week, in consequence of our moving—and as
I have not been to Jermyn Street before to-day, I have missed
your note. I should run round to Queen Anne St. now on the
chance of catching you, but I am bound here by an appoint-
ment. :

One incident of the move, however, was more agreeable.
Mr. Herbert Spencer took the opportunity of sending a New
Year’s gift for the new house, in the shape of a handsome
clock, wishing, as he said, “to express in some way more
emphatic than by words, my sense of the many kindnesses
I have received at your hands during the twenty years of.
our friendship. Remembrance of the things you have done.
in furtherance of my aims, and of the invaluable critical aid
you have given me, with so much patience and at so much
cost of time, has often made me feel how much I owe you.”

After a generous reference to occasions when the warmth
of debate might have betrayed him into more vigorous ex-
pressions than he intended, he concludes :—

But inadequately as I may ordinarily show it, you will
(knowing that I am tolerably candid) believe me when I say
that there is no one whose judgment on all subjects I so much
respect, or whose friendship I so highly value.
1872 TYNDALL'S LOAN 418

It may be remembered that the 1872 address on “ Ad-
ministrative Nihilism ” led to a reply from the pen of Mr.
Spencer, as the champion of Individualism. When my
father sent him the volume in which this address was printed,
he wrote back a letter (Sept. 29, 1873) which is characterised
by the same feeling. It expresses his thanks for the book,
“and many more for the kind expression of feeling in the
preface. If you had intended to set an example to the
Philistines of the way in which controversial differences
may be maintained without any decrease of sympathy, you
could not have done it more perfectly.”

In connection with the building of the house, Tyndall
had advanced a sum of money to his friend, and with his
usual generosity, not only received interest with the greatest
reluctance, but would have liked to make a gift of the
principal. He writes, “If I remain a bachelor I will cir-
cumvent you—if not—not. It cleaves to me like dirt—and
that is why you wish to get rid of it.” To this he received
answer :—

Feb. 26, 1873.

I am not to be deterred by any amount of bribery and cor-
ruption, from bringing you under the yoke of a “rare and
radiant,’—-whenever I discover one competent to undertake the
ticklish business of governing you. I hope she will be “ radiant,”
—uncommonly “rare” she certainly will be!

Two years later this loan was paid off, with the following
letter :-—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLaAck, Jan. 11, 1875.

My pear oLp SHYLocK—My argosies have come in, and here

“is all that was written in the bond! If you want the pound of

flesh too, you know it is at your service, and my Portia won't

raise that pettifogging objection to shedding a little blood into

the bargain, which that other one did.—Ever yours faithfully,
T. H. Hux.ey.

On October 24 Miss Jex Blake wrote to him to ask his
help for herself and the other women medical students at
Edinburgh. For two years they had only been able to get
anatomical teaching in a mixed class; but wishing to have
a separate class, at least for the present, they had tried to
416 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVI

arrange for one that session. The late demonstrator at the
Surgeons’ Hall, who had given them most of their teaching
before, had undertaken to teach this separate class, but was
refused recognition by the University Court, on the ground
that they had no evidence of his qualifications, while refusing
to let him prove his qualification by examination. This the
women students understood to be an indirect means of sup-
pressing their aspirations; they therefore begged Huxley
to examine their instructor with a view to giving him a
certificate which should carry weight with the University
Court.

He replied :—

Oct, 28, 1872.

Dear Mapam—While I fully sympathise with the efforts
made by yourself and others, to obtain for women the education
requisite to qualify them for medical practice, and while I think
that women who have the inclination and the capacity to follow
the profession of medicine are most unjustly dealt with if any
obstacles beyond those which are natural and inevitable are
placed in their way, I must nevertheless add, that I as com-
pletely sympathise with those Professors of Anatomy, Physi-
ology, and Obstetrics, who object to teach such subjects to
mixed classes of young men and women brought together with-
out any further evidence of moral and mental fitness for such
association than the payment of their fees.

In fact, with rare exceptions, I have refused to admit women
to my own Lectures on Comparative Anatomy for many years
past. But I should not hesitate to teach anything I know to a
class composed of women; and I find it hard to believe that any
one should really wish to prevent women from obtaining efficient
separate instruction, and from being admitted to Examination
for degrees upon the same terms as men.

You will therefore understand that I should be most glad
to help you if I could—and it is with great regret that I feel
myself compelled to refuse your request to examine Mr. H——.

In the first place I am in the midst of my own teaching, and
with health not yet completely re-established I am obliged to
keep clear of all unnecessary work. Secondly, such an examina-
tion must be practical, and I have neither dissecting-room
available nor the anatomical license required for human dis-
section; and thirdly, it is not likely that the University authori-
ties would attach much weight to my report on one or two
1872 MIXED CLASSES IN ANATOMY 417

days’ work—if the fact that Mr. H—— has already filled the
office of anatomical Demonstrator (as I understand from you)
does not satisfy them as to his competency.—I am, dear Madam,
yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxiey

Miss S. Jex BLake.

The last event of the year was that he was elected by
the students Lord Rector of Aberdeen University—a posi-
tion, the duties of which consist partly in attending certain
meetings of the University Court, but more especially in
delivering an address. This, however, was not required for
another twelvemonth, and the address on “‘ Universities,
Actual and Ideal,” was delivered in fulfilment of this duty
on February 1874.
CHAPTER XXVII

1873

THE year opens with a letter to Tyndall, then on a
lecturing tour in America :—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, ABBEY ROAD, N.W.,
January 1, 1872 [1873].

My pear TyNpDALL—I cannot let this day go by without
wishing you a happy New Year, and lamenting your absence
from our customary dinner. But Hirst and Spencer and
Michael Foster are coming, and they shall drink your health in
champagne while I do the like in cold water, making up by the
strength of my good wishes for the weakness of the beverage.

You see I write from the new house. Getting into it was an
awful job, made worse than needful by the infamous weather we
have had for weeks and months, and by the stupid delays of the
workmen whom we had fairly to shove out at last as we came
in. We are settling down by degrees, and shall be very com-
fortable by and by, though I do not suppose that we shall be
able to use the drawing-room for two or three months to come.
I am very glad to have made the change, but there is a draw-
back to everything in “this here wale,” as Mrs. Gamp says,
and my present thorn in the flesh is a neighbour, who says I
have injured him by certain operations in my garden, and is
trying to get something out of me by Chancery proceedings.
Fancy finding myself a defendant in Chancery!

It is particularly hard on me, as I have been especially care-
ful to have nothing done without Burton’s sanction and assur-
ance that I was quite safe in law; and I would have given up
anything than have got into bother of this kind. But “sich
is life.”

You seem to have been making a Royal Progress in Yankee-
land. We have been uncommonly tickled with some of the

418
1373 LETTER TO TYNDALL 419

reports of your lectures which reached us, especially with that
which spoke of your having “a strong English accent.”

The loss of your assistant seems to have been the only de-
duction to be made from your success. I am afraid you must
have felt it much in all ways.

“My Lord” received your telegram only after the business
of “ securing Hirst’ was done. That is one of the bright spots
in a bad year for me. Goschen consulted Spottiswoode and me
independently about the headship of the new Naval College,
and was naturally considerably surprised by the fact that we
coincided in recommending Hirst. ... The upshot was that
Goschen asked me to communicate with Hirst and see if he
would be disposed to accept the offer. So I did, and found to
my great satisfaction that Hirst took to the notion very kindly.
I am sure he is the very best man for the post to be met with
in the three kingdoms, having that rare combination of qualities
by which he gets on with all manner of men, and singularly
attracts young fellows. He will not only do his duty, but be
beloved for doing it, which is what few people can compass.

I have little news to give you. The tail of the X.-Hooker
storm is drifting over the scientific sky in the shape of fresh
attacks by Owen on Hooker. Hooker answered the last
angelically, and I hope they are at an end.

The wife has just come in and sends her love (but is careful
to add “ second-best’). The chicks grow visibly and audibly,
and Jess looks quite a woman. All are well except myself, and I
am getting better from a fresh breakdown of dyspepsia. I find
that if I am to exist at all it must be on strictly ascetic prin-
ciples, so there is hope of my dying in the odour of sanctity
yet. If you recollect, Lancelot did not know that he should “ die
a holy man” till rather late in life. I have forgotten to tell vou
about the Rectorship of Aberdeen. I refused to stand at first,
on the score of health, and only consented on condition that I
should not be called upon to do any public work until after the
long vacation. It was a very hard fight, and although I had an
absolute majority of over fifty, the mode of election is such that
one vote, in one of the four nations, would have turned the
scale by giving my opponent the majority in that nation. We
should then have been ties, and as the chancellor, who has under
such circumstances a casting vote, would have (I believe) given
it against me, I should have been beaten.

As it is, the fact of anyone, who stinketh in the nostrils of
orthodoxy, beating a Scotch peer at his own gates in the most
420 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXvII

orthodox of Scotch cities, is a curious sign of the times. The
reason why they made such a tremendous fight for me, is I
believe, that I may carry on the reforms commenced by Grant
Duff, my predecessor. Unlike other Lord Rectors, he of Aber-
deen is a power and can practically govern the action of the
University during his tenure of office.

I saw Pollock yesterday, and he says that they want you
back again. Curiously the same desire is epidemically prevalent
among your friends, not least here.—Ever yours,

T. H. Huxzey.

In spite of his anxieties, his health was slowly improving
under careful regimen. He published no scientific memoirs
this year, but in addition to his regular lectures, he was
working to finish his Manual of Invertebrate Anatomy and
his Introductory Primer, and to write his Aberdeen address;
he was also at work upon the Pedigree of the Horse and on
Bodily Motion and Consciousness. He delivered a course to
teachers on Psychology and Physiology, and was much
occupied by the Royal Commission on Science. As a gov-
ernor of Owens College he had various meetings to attend,
though his duties did not extend, as some of his friends
seem to have thought, to the appointment of a Professor
of Physiology there.

My life (he writes to Sir Henry Roscoe) is becoming a
burden to me because of Why I do not know, but for
some reason people have taken it into their heads that I have
something to do with appointments in Owens College, and no
fewer than three men of whose opinion I think highly have
spoken or written to me urging ——’s merits very strongly.

 

This summer he again took a long holiday, thanks to
the generosity of his friends (see p. 394), and with better
results. He went with his old friend Hooker to the Au-
vergne, walking, geologising, sketching and gradually dis-
carding doctor’s orders. Sir Joseph Hooker has very kindly
written me a letter from which I give an account of this
trip :-—

It was during the many excursions we took together, either

by ourselves or with one of my boys, that I knew him best at his
best; and especially during one of several weeks’ duration in
1873 WITH HOOKER IN THE AUVERGNE 421

the summer of 1873, which we spent in central France and
Germany. He had been seriously ill, and was suffering from
severe mental depression. For this he was ordered abroad by
his physician, Sir A. Clark, to which step he offered a stubborn
resistance. With Mrs. Huxley’s approval, and being myself
quite in the mood for a holiday, I volunteered to wrestle with
him, and succeeded, holding out as an inducement a visit to the
volcanic region of the Auvergne with Scrope’s classical volume,
which we both knew and admired, as a guide book.

We started on July 2nd, I loaded with injunctions from his
physician as to what his patient was to eat, drink, and avoid,
how much he was to sleep and rest, how little to talk and walk,
etc., that would have made the expedition a perpetual burthen
to me had I not believed that I knew enough of my friend’s dis-
position and ailments to be convinced that not only health but
happiness would be our companions throughout. Sure enough,
for the first few days, including a short stay in Paris, his spirits
were low indeed, but this gave me the opportunity of appreciat-
ing his remarkable command over himself and his ever-present
consideration for his companion. Not a word or gesture of irri-
tation ever escaped him; he exerted himself to obey the in-
structions laid down; nay, more, he was instant in his endeavour
to save me trouble at hotels, railway stations, and ticket offices.
Still, some mental recreation was required to expedite recovery,
and he found it first by picking up at a bookstall, a History of
the Miracles of Lourdes, which were then exciting the religious
fervour of France, and the interest of her scientific public. He
entered with enthusiasm into the subject, getting together all
the treatises upon it, favourable or the reverse, that were acces-
sible, and I need hardly add, soon arrived at the conclusion,
that the so-called miracles were in part illusions and for the
rest delusions. As it may interest some of your readers to
know what his opinion was in this the early stage of the mani-
festations, I will give it as he gave it to me. It was a case of
two peasant children sent in the hottest month of the year into
a hot valley to collect sticks for firewood washed up by a stream,
when one of them after stooping down opposite a heat-rever-
berating rock, was, in rising, attacked with a transient vertigo,
under which she saw a figure in white against the rock. This bare
fact being reported to the curé of the village, all the rest followed.

Soon after our arrival at Clermont Ferrand, your father had
so far recovered his wonted elasticity of spirits that he took
a keen interest in everything around, the museums, the cathedral,
422 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVII

where he enjoyed the conclusion of the service by a military
band which gave selections from the Figlia del Regimento, but
above all he appreciated the walks and drives to the geological
features of the environs. He reluctantly refrained from ascend-
ing the Puy de Dome, but managed the Pic Parion, Gergovia,
Royat, and other points of interest without fatigue. . . .

After Clermont they visited the other four great volcanic
areas explored by Scrope, Mont Dore, the Cantal, Le Puy,
and the valley of the Ardéche. Under the care of his
friend, and relieved from the strain of work, my father’s
health rapidly improved. He felt no bad effects from a
night at Mont Dore, when, owing to the crowd of invalids
in the little town, no better accommodation could be found
than a couple of planks in a cupboard. Next day they
took up their quarters in an unpretentious cabaret at La
Tour d’Auvergne, one of the villages on the slopes of the
mountain, a few miles away.

Here (writes Sir J. Hooker), and for some time afterwards,
on our further travels, we had many interesting and amusing
experiences of rural life in the wilder parts of central France,
its poverty, penury, and too often its inconceivable impositions
and overcharges to foreigners, quite consistently with good feel-
ing, politeness, and readiness to assist in many ways.

By the roth of July, nine days after setting out, I felt satis-
fied (he continues) that your father was equal to an excursion
upon which he had set his heart, to the top of the Pic de Sancy,
4000 feet above La Tour and 7 miles distant.

It was on this occasion that the friends made what they
thought a new discovery, namely evidence of glacial action
in central France. Besides striated stones in the fields or
built into the walls, they noticed the glaciated appearance
of one of the valleys descending from the peak, and espe-
cially some isolated gigantic masses of rock on an open part
of the valley, several miles away, as to which they debated
whether they were low buildings or transported blocks. Sir
Joseph visited them next day, and found they were the latter,
brought down from the upper part of the peak.*

 

* He published an account of these blocks in Mature, xiii. 31, 166,
but subsequently found that glaciation had been observed by von
Lassaul in 1872 and by Sir William Guise in 1870.
1873 TOUR IN THE AUVERGNE 423

Le Puy offered a special attraction apart from scenery
and geology. In the museum was the skeleton of a pre-
historic man that had been found in the breccia of the
neighbourhood, associated with the remains of the rhinoce-
ros, elephant, and other extinct mammals. My father's
sketch-book contains drawings of these bones and of the
ravine where they were discovered, although in spite of
directions from M. Aymard, the curator, he could not find
the exact spot. Under the sketch is a description of the
remains, in which he notes, ‘‘ The bones do not look fresher
than some of those of Elephas and Rhinoceros in the same
or adjacent cases.”

As for the final stage of the excursion :—

After leaving the Ardéche (continues Sir J. Hooker), with
no Scrope to lead or follow, our scientific ardours collapsed. We
had vague views as to future travel. Whatever one proposed
was unhesitatingly acceded to by the other. A more happy-go-
lucky pair of idlers never joined company.

As will be seen from the following letters, they made
their way to the Black Forest, where they stayed till Sir
Joseph’s duties called him back to England, and my
mother came out to join my father for the rest of his
holiday.*

 

* You ask me (Sir Joseph adds) whether your father smoked on the
occasion of this tour. Yes, he did, cigars in moderation. But the
history of his addiction to tobacco that grew upon him later in life,
dates from an earlier excursion that we took together, and I was the
initiator of the practice. It happened in this wise: he had been
suffering from what was supposed to be gastric irritation, and, being
otherwise ‘‘run down,” we agreed to go, in company with Sir John
Lubbock, on a tour to visit the great monoliths of Brittany. This
was in 1867. On arriving at Dinan he suffered so much that I recom-
mended his trying a few cigarettes which I had with me. They acted
as a charm, and this led to cigars, and finally, about 1875 I think, to
the pipe. That he subsequently carried the use of tobacco to excess
is, I think, unquestionable. I repeatedly remonstrated with him, at
last I think (by backing his medical adviser) with effect.

I have never blamed myself for the ‘‘teaching him” to smoke, for
the practice habitually palliated his distressing symptoms when noth-
ing else did, nor can his chronic illness be attributed to the abuse of
tobacco.

28
424 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVII

The following letters to Sir H. Roscoe and Dr. Tyndall
were written during this tour :—

Le Puy, HAuTE Loire, FRANCE,
July 17, 1873.

My pear Roscoz—Your very kind letter reached me just as
I was in the hurry of getting away from England, and I have
been carrying it about in my pocket ever since.

Hooker and I have been having a charming time of it
among the volcanoes of the Auvergne, and we are now on our
way to those of the Velay and Vivarrais. The weather has been
almost perfect. Perhaps a few degrees of temperature could
have been spared now and then, especially at Clermont, of which
somebody once said that having stayed there the climate of hell
would have no terrors for him.

It has been warm in the Mont Dore country and in the
Cantal, as it is here, but we are very high up, and there is a
charming freshness and purity about the air.

I do not expect to be back before the end of September, and
my lectures begin somewhere in the second week of October.
After they commence I shall not be able to leave London even
for a day, but I shall be very glad to come to the inaugura-
tion of your new buildings if the ceremony falls within my
possible time. And you know I am always glad to be your
guest.

I am thriving wonderfully. Indeed all that plagues me now
is my conscience, for idling about when I feel full of vigour.
But I promised to be obedient, and I am behaving better than
Auld Clootie did when he fell sick.

I hope you are routing out the gout. This would be the
place for you—any quantity of mineral waters.

Pray remember me very kindly to Mrs. Roscoe, and believe
me, ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

HoTEL DE FRANCE, BADEN-BADEN,
July 30, 1873.

My pear TynDALL—We find ourselves here after a very
successful cruise in the Auvergne and Ardéche, successful at
least so far as beauty and geological interest go. The heat was
killing, and obliged us to give up all notion of going to Ursines,
as we had at first intended to do. So we turned our faces north
and made for Grenoble, hoping for a breath of cool air from the
mountains of Dauphiny. But Grenoble was hotter even than
1873 LETTERS FROM ABROAD 425
Clermont (which, by the way, quite deserves its reputation as
a competitor with? hell), a neighbour’s drains were adrift close
to the hotel, and we got poisoned before we could escape.
Luckily we got off with nothing worse than a day or two’s diar-
rhea. After this the best thing seemed to be to rush northward
to Gernsbach, which had been described to me as a sort of
earthly paradise. We reached the place last Saturday night,
and found ourselves in a big rambling hotel, crammed full of
people, and planted in the bottom of a narrow valley, all hot
and steaming. A large pigstye “convenient” to the house
mingled its vapours with those of the seventy or eighty people
who eat and drank without any other earthly occupation that
we could discern during the three days we were bound, by stress
of letters and dirty linen, to stop. On Monday we made an
excursion over here, prospecting, and the air was so fresh and
good, and things in general looked so promising that I made up
my mind to put up in Baden-Baden until the wife joins me. She
writes me that you talk of leaving England on Friday, and I
may remark that Baden is on the high road to Switzerland.
Verbum sap.

I am wonderfully better, and really feel ashamed of loafing
about when I might very well be at work. But I have promised
to make holiday, and make holiday I will.

No proof of your answer to Forbes’ biographer reached me
before I left, so I suppose you had not received one in time. I
am dying to see it out.

Hooker is down below, but I take upon myself to send his
love. He is in great force now that he has got rid of his
Grenoble mulligrubs.—Ever yours, T 2, Wester.

After parting company with Hooker, he paid a flying
visit to Professor Bonnet at Geneva; then he was joined by
his wife and son for the last three weeks of the holiday,
which were spent at Baden and in the Bernese Oberland.
Before this, he writes home :—

I feel quite a different man from what I was two months ago,
and you will say that you have a much more creditable husband
than the broken-down old fellow who has been a heart-ache to
you so long, when you see me. The sooner you can get away
the better. If the rest only does you as much good as it does
me, I shall be very happy.
426 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXV

AXENSTEIN, LUZERNE, Aug. 24, 1873.

My pear Tynpatt—The copies of your®booklet * intende
for Hooker and me reached me just as I left Baden last Tuesda:
Hooker had left me for home a fortnight before, and I hardl
know whether to send his to Kew or keep them for him till
return. I have read mine twice, and I think that nothing coul
be better than the tone you have adopted. I did not suspec
that you had such a shot in your locker as the answer to Forbe
about the direction of the ‘‘ crevasses” referred to by Rendt
It is a deadly thrust; and I shall be curious to see what sort o
parry the other side will attempt. For of course they wil
attempt something. Scotland is, I believe, the only country i:
the world in which you can bring an action for “ putting t
silence” an adversary who will go on with an obviously hope
less suit. The lawgivers knew the genius of the people; an
it is to be regretted that they could not establish a process o
the same sort in scientific matters.

I wrote to you a month ago to tell you how we had bee:
getting on in France. Hooker and I were very jolly, notwith
standing the heat, and I think that the Vivarrais is the mos
instructive country in the world for seeing what water can di
in cutting down the hardest rocks. Scrope’s book is very goo
on the whole, though the pictures are a little overdone.

My wife and Leonard met me at Cologne on the 11th. The
we went on to Baden and rested till last Tuesday, when w:
journeyed to Luzerne and, getting out of that hot and un
savoury hole as fast as we could, came here last Thursday.

We find ourselves very well off. The hotel is perched up 18
feet above the lake, with a beautiful view of Pilatus on the wes
and of the Urner See on the south. On the north we have th:
Schwyz valley, so that we are not shut in, and the air is ver:
good and fresh. There are plenty of long walks to be ha
without much fatigue, which suits the wife. Leonard promise
to have very good legs of his own with plenty of staying power
I have given him one or two sharp walks, and I find he ha
plenty of vigour and endurance. But he is not thirteen yet am
I do not mean to let him do overmuch, though we are bent on ;
visit to a glacier. I began to tell him something about th:
glaciers the other day, but I was promptly shut up with, “Oh
yes! I know all about that. It’s in Dr. Tyndall’s book ’”—
which said book he seems to me to have got by heart. Hei

 

* “ Principal Forbes and his Biographers.”
1873 LETTER TO HIS WIFE 427

the sweetest little fellow imaginable; and cither he has developed
immensely in the course of the last year, or I have never been
so much thrown together with him alone, and have not had the
opportunity of making him out.

You are a fatherly old bachelor, and will not think me a
particularly great donkey for prattling on in this way about my
swan, who probably to unprejudiced eyes has a power of goose
about him.

I suppose you know that in company with yourself and
Hooker, the paternal gander (T. H. H.) has been honoured by
the King of Sweden and made into a Polar Goose by the order
of the North Star. Hooker has explained to the Swedish Am-
bassador that English officials are prohibited by order in Council
from accepting foreign orders, and I believe keeps the cross
and ribbon on these conditions. If it were an ordinary decora-
tion I should decline with thanks, but I am told it is a purely
scientific and literary affair like the Prussian “ pour le mérite ”’;
so when I get back I shall follow Hooker's line.

I met Laugel on board the Luzerne steamboat the other day,
and he told me that you were at the Belalp—gallivanting as
usual, and likely to remain there for some time. So I send this
on the chance of finding you. With best love from us all, ever
yours, VB, AUR tex:

I am as well as I ever was in my life—regularly set up—
in token whereof I have shaved off my beard.

In another letter to his wife, dated August 8, from Baden,
there is a very interesting passage about himself and his
aims. He has just been speaking about his son’s doings
at school :—

I have been having a great deal of talk with myself about
my future career too, and I have often thought over what you
say in the letter you wrote to the Puy. I don’t quite under-
stand what meant about the disputed reputation, unless
it is a reputation for getting into disputes. But to say truth I
am not greatly concerned about any reputation except that of
being entirely honest and straightforward, and that reputation
I think and hope I have. 28

For the rest . . . the part I have to play is not to found a
new school of thought or to reconcile the antagonisms of the
old schools. We are in the midst of a gigantic movement
greater than that which preceded and produced the Reformation,

 
428 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVII

and really only the continuation of that movement. But there
is nothing new in the ideas which lie at the bottom of the
movement, nor is any reconcilement possible between free
thought and traditional authority. One or other will have to
succumb after a struggle of unknown duration, which will have
as side issues vast political and social troubles. I have no more
doubt that free thought will win in the long run than I have
that I sit here writing to you, or that this free thought will
organise itself into a coherent system, embracing human life
and the world as one harmonious whole. But this organisation
will be the work of generations of men, and-those who further
it most will be those who teach men to rest in no lie, and to
rest in no verbal delusions. I may be able to help a little in
this direction—perhaps I may have helped already. For the
present, however, I am disposed to draw myself back entirely
into my own branch of physical science. There is enough and
to spare for me to do in that line, and, for years to come, I do
not mean to be tempted out of it.

Strangely enough, this was the one thing he was des-
tined not to do. Official work multiplied about him. From
1870 to 1884 only two years passed without his serving on
one or two Royal Commissions. He was Secretary of the
Royal Society from 1871 to 1880, and President from 1883
to his retirement, owing to ill-health, in 1885. He became
Dean as well as Professor of Biology in the College of
Science, and Inspector of Fisheries. Though he still man-
aged to find some time for anatomical investigations, and
would steal a precious hour or half hour by driving back
from the Home Office to his laboratory at South Kensing-
ton before returning home to St. John’s Wood, the amount
of such work as he was able to publish could not be very
great.

His most important contributions during this decennium
(writes Sir M. Foster) were in part continuations of his former
labours, such as the paper and subsequent full memoir on
Stagonolepis, which appeared in 1875 and 1877, and papers on
the Skull. The facts that he called a communication to the
Royal Society, in 1875,* on Amphioxus, a preliminary note,
and that a paper read to the Zoological Society in 1876, on

 

* Written 1874.
1873 SCIENTIFIC WORK AFTER 1870 429

Ceratodus Forsteri, was marked No. 1 of the series of Con-
tributions to Morphology, showed that he still had before him
the prospect of much anatomical work, to be accomplished when
opportunity offered; but, alas! the opportunity which came was
small, the preliminary note had no full successor, and No. 1
was only followed, and that after an interval of seven years,
by a brief No. 2. A paper “On the Characters of the Pelvis,”
in the Procecdings of the Royal Socicty, in 1879, is full of sug-
gestive thought, but its concluding passages seem to suggest
that others, and not he himself, were to carry out the ideas.
Most of the papers of this decennium deal with vertebrate mor-
phology, and are more or less connected with his former re-
searches, but in one respect, at least, he broke quite fresh
ground. He had chosen the crayfish as one of the lessons for
the class in general biology spoken of above, and was thus
drawn into an interesting study of crayfishes, by which he was
led to a novel and important analysis of the gill plumes as evi-
dence of affinity and separation. He embodied the main results
of his studies in a paper to the Zoological Society, and treated
the whole subject in a more popular style in a book on the
Crayfish. In a somewhat similar way, having taken the dog as
an object lesson in mammalian anatomy for his students, he was
led to a closer study of that common animal, resulting in papers
on that subject to the Zoological Society in 1880, and in two
lectures at the Royal Institution in 1880. He had intended so
to develop this study of the dog as to make it tell the tale of
mammalian morphology; but this purpose, too, remained unac-
complished.

Moreover, though he sent one paper (on Hyperodapedon
Gordoni) to the Geological Society as late as 1887, yet the
complete breakdown of his health in 1885, which released
him from nearly all his official duties, at the same time
dulled his ardour for anatomical pursuits. Stooping over
his work became an impossibility.

Though he carried about him, as does every man of like
calibre and experience, a heavy load of fragments of inquiry
begun but never finished, and as heavy a load of ideas for prom-
ising investigations never so much as even touched, though his
love of science and belief in it might never have wavered, though
he never doubted the value of the results which further research
would surely bring him, there was something working within
430 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVII

him which made his hand, when turned to anatomical science,
so heavy that he could not lift it. Not even that which was so
strong within him, the duty of fulfilling a promise, could bring
him to the work. In his room at South Kensington, where for
a quarter of a century he had laboured with such brilliant effect,
there lay on his working table for months, indeed for years,
partly dissected specimens of the rare and little studied marine
animal, Spirula, of which he had promised to contribute an
account to the Reports ‘of the “ Challenger” Expedition, and
hard by lay the already engraven plates; there was still wanted
nothing more than some further investigation and the working
out of the results. But it seemed as if some hidden hands were
always being stretched out to keep him from the task; and
eventually another labourer had to complete it. (Jbid.)

The remaining letters of this year include several to Dr.
Dohrn, which show the continued interest my father took in
the great project of the Biological Station at Naples, which
was carried through in spite of many difficulties. He had
various books and proceedings of learned societies sent out
at Dr. Dohrn’s request (I omit the details) and proposed a
scheme for raising funds towards completing the building
when the contractor failed. The scheme, however, was not
put into execution.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Fed. 24, 1873.

My pear DoHRN—I was very glad to receive the fine sealed
letter, and to get some news of you—though to be sure there is
not much of you in the letter, but all is “ Station, Station.”

I congratulate you heartily on your success with your under-
taking, and I only wish I could see England represented among
the applicants for tables. But you see England is so poor, and
the present price of coals obliges her to economise.

I envy you your visit from “ Pater Anchises” Baer, and
rejoice to hear that the grand old man is well and strong enough
to entertain such a project. I wish I could see my way to doing
the like. I have had a long bout of illness—ever since August
—but I am now very much better, indeed, I hope I may say quite
well. The weariness of all this has been complicated by the
trouble of getting into a new house, and in addition a law-suit
brought by a knavish neighbour, in the hope of extracting money
out of me.

I am happy to say, however, that he has just been thoroughly
and effectually defeated. It has been a new experience for me,
1873 LETTERS TO DOTIRN 431

and I hope it may be my last as well as my first acquaintance
with English law, which is a luxury of the most expensive
character.

If Dr. Nleinenberg is with you, please to tell him, with my
compliments and thanks for the copy of his Memoir, that I went
over his Hydra paper pretty carefully in the summer, and satis-
fied myself as to the correctness of his statements about the
structure of the ectoderm and about the longitudinal fibres.
About the Endoderm I am not so clear, and I often found indi-
cations of delicate circular fibres in close apposition with the
longitudinal ones. However, I had not time to work all this
out, and perhaps might as well say nothing about it.

Pray make my very kind remembrances to Mr. Grant. I
trust that his dramas may have a brilliant reception.

The Happy Family flourishes. But we shall look to your
coming to see us. The house is big enough now to give you a
bedroom, and you know you will have no lack of a welcome.

I have said nothing about my wife (who has been in a state
not only of superhuman, but of superfeminine, activity for the
last three months) meaning to leave her the last page to speak
for herself.

With best compliments to the “ladies downstairs,” ever
yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Oct. 17, 1873.

My pear DoHRN—Your letter reached me nearly a week
ago, and I have been turning over its contents in my mind as
well as I could, but have been able to come to no clear conclu-
sion until now. I have been incessantly occupied with other
things.

I will do for you, and gladly, anything I would do for my-
self, but I could not apply on my own behalf to any of those rich
countrymen of mine, unless they were personally well known to
me, and I had the opportunity of feeling my way with them.
But if you are disposed to apply to any of the people you men-
tion, I shall be only too glad to back your application with all the
force I am master of. You may make use of my name to any
extent as guarantor of the scientific value and importance of
your undertaking and refer anyone to whom you may apply to
me. It may be, in fact, that this is all you want, but as you
have taken to the caprice of writing in my tongue instead of in
that vernacular, idiomatic and characteristically Dohrnian Ger-
man, in which I delight, I am not so sure about your meaning.
432 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVII

There is a rub for you. If you write to me in English again I
will send the letter back without paying the postage.

In any case let me have a precise statement of your financial
position. I may have a chance of talking to some Croesus, and
the first question he is sure to ask me is—How am I to know
that this is a stable affair, and that I am not throwing my money
into the sear...

(Referring to an unpleasant step it seemed necessary to
take) . .. you must make up your mind to act decidedly and
take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world
by hesitation... .

I hope you are physically better. Look sharply after your
diet, take exercise and defy the blue-devils, and you will weather
the storm.—Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

Tyndall, who had not attended the 1873 meeting of the
British Association, had heard that some local opposition
had been offered to his election as President for the Belfast
meeting in 1874, and had written :—

I wish to heaven you had not persuaded me to accept that
Belfast duty. They do not want me. ... But Spottiswoode
assures me that no individual offered the slightest support to
the two unscientific persons who showed opposition.

The following was written in reply :-—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Seft. 25, 1873.

My pear TynpaLtt—I am sure you are mistaken about the
Belfast people. That blundering idiot of —— wanted to make
himself important and get up a sort of “ Home Rule” agitation
in the Association, but nobody backed him and he collapsed. I
am at your disposition for whatever you want me to do, as you
know, and I am sure Hooker is of the same mind. We shall not
be ashamed when we meet our enemies in the gate.

The grace of God cannot entirely have deserted you since
you are aware of the temperature of that ferocious epistle.
Reeks,* whom I saw yesterday, was luxuriating in it, and said
(confound his impudence) that it was quite my style. I forgot
to tell him, by the bye, that I had resigned in your favour ever
since the famous letter to Carpenter. Well, so long as you are
better after it there is no great harm done.

 

* The late Trenham Reeks, Registrar of the School of Mines, and
Curator of the Museum of Practical Geology.
1873 IMPROVEMENT IN HEALTH 433

Somebody has sent me the two numbers of Scribner with
Blauvelt’s articles on ‘“ Modern Skepticism.” They seem to be
very well done, and he has a better appreciation of the toughness
of the job before him than any of the writers of his school with
whom I have met. But it is rather cool of you to talk of his
pitching into Spencer when you are chief target yourself. I
come in only par parenthése, and I am glad to see that people
are beginning to understand my real position, and to separate
me from such raging infidels as you and Spencer.—Ever thine,

T. H. Huxcey.

 

He was unable to attend the opening of Owens College
this autumn, and having received but a scanty account of
the proceedings, wrote as follows :—

4 MarvporouGH Priace, Lonpon, N.W.,
Oct. 16, 1873.

My pear Roscor—I consider myself badly used. Nobody
has sent me a Manchester paper with the proceedings of the
day of inauguration when, I hear, great speeches were made.

I did get two papers containing your opening lecture, and the
“Fragment of a Morality,” for which I am duly grateful, but
two copies of one day’s proceedings are not the same thing as
one copy of two days’ proceedings, and I consider it is very
disrespectful to a Governor (large G) not to let him know what
went on.

By all accounts which have reached me it was a great suc-
cess, and I congratulate you heartily. I only wish that I could
have been there to see.—Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

The autumn brought a slow improvement in health—

I am travelling (he writes) between the two stations of
dyspepsia and health thus (illustrated by a zigzag with “ mean
‘Tine ascending”).

The sympathy of the convalescent appears in various
letters to friends who were ill. Thus, in reply to Mr. Hyde
Clarke, the philologist and, like himself, a member of the
Ethnological Society, he writes :—

(Nov. 18, 1873)—I am glad to learn two things from your
note—first, that you are getting better; second, that there is
434 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXVII

hope of some good coming out of that Ashantee row, if only
in the shape of rare vocables.

My attention is quite turned away from Anthropological
matters at present, but I will bear your question in mind if
opportunity offers.

A letter to Professor Rolleston at Oxford gives a lively
account of his own ailments, which could only have been
written by one now recovering from them, while the illness
of another friend raised a delicate point of honour, which he
laid before the judgment of Mr. Darwin, more especially as
the latter had been primarily concerned in the case.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Oct. 16, 1873.

My pear RoLteston—A note which came from Mrs. Rolles-
ton to my wife the other day, kindly answering some inquiries
of ours about the Oxford Middle Class Examination, gave us
but a poor account of your health.

This kind of thing won't do, you know. Here is ill,
and I doing all I can to persuade him to go away and take care
of himself, and now comes ill news of you.

Is it dyspeps again? If so follow in my steps. I mean to go
about the country, with somebody who can lecture, as the
“horrid example ”—cured. Nothing but gross and disgusting
intemperance, Sir, was the cause of all my evil. And now that
I have been a teetotaller for nine months, and have cut down
my food supply to about half of what I used to eat, the enemy
is beaten.

I have carried my own permissive bill, and no canteen (ex-
cept for my friends who still sit in darkness) is allowed on the
premises. And as this is the third letter I have written before
breakfast (a thing I never could achieve in the days when I
wallowed in the stye of Epicurus), you perceive that I am as
vigorous as ever I was in my life.

Let me have news of you, and believe me—Ever yours very
faithfully, T. H. H.

 

ATHEN4UM CuuB, WVov. 3, 1873.
My pear Darwin—You will have heard (in fact I think I
mentioned the matter when I paid you my pleasant visit the
other day) that is ill and obliged to go away for six months
to a warm climate. It is a great grief to me, as he is a man
for whom I have great esteem and affection, apart from his

 
1873 IMPROVEMENT IN HEALTH 435

high scientific merits, and his symptoms are such as cause very
grave anxiety. I shall be happily disappointed if that accursed
consumption has not got hold of him.

The college authorities have behaved as well as they possibly
could to him, and I do not suppose that his enforced retirement
for a while gives him the least pecuniary anxiety as his people
are all well off, and he himself has an income apart from his
college pay. Nevertheless, under such circumstances, a man
with half a dozen children always wants all the money he can
lay hands on; and whether he does or no, he ought not to be
allowed to deprive himself of any, which leads me to the gist of
my letter. His name was on your list as one of those hearty
friends who came to my rescue last year, and it was the only
name which made me a little uneasy, for I doubted whether it
was right for a man with his responsibilities to make sacrifices
of this sort. However, I stifled that feeling, not seeing what
else I could do without wounding him. But now my conscience
won't let me be, and I do not think that any consideration ought
to deter me from getting his contribution back to him somehow
or other. There is no one to whose judgmenf on a point of
honour I would defer more readily than yours, and I am quite
sure you will agree with me. I really am quite unhappy and
ashamed to think of myself as vigorous and well at the expense
of his denying himself any rich man’s caprice he might take a
fancy to.

So, my dear, good friend, let me know what his contribution
was, that I may get it back to him somehow or other, even if I
go like Nicodemus privily and by night to his bankers—Ever
yours faithfully, T. H. H.
CHAPTER XXVIII

1874

My father’s health continued fairly good in 1874, and
while careful to avoid excessive strain he was able to under-
take nearly as much as before his illness outside his regular
work at South Kensington, the Royal Society, and on the
Royal Commission. To this year belong three important
essays, educaigonal and philosophical. From February 25
to March 3 he was at Aberdeen, staying first with Professor
Bain, afterwards with Mr. Webster, in fulfilment of his first
duty as Lord Rector * to deliver an address to the students.
Taking as his subject “ Universities, Actual and Ideal,” he
then proceeded to vindicate, historically and philosophically,
the claims of natural science to take the place from which
it had so long been ousted in the universal culture which
a University professes to give. More especially he de-
manded an improved system of education in the medical ©
school, a point to which he gave practical effect in the
Council of the University.

In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able
to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in
the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In
such a University the force of living example should fire the
student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned
men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields
of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged

 

* It may be noted that between 1860 and 1890 he and Professor
Bain were the only Lord Rectors of Aberdeen University elected on
non-political grounds.

436
Portrait from a Photograph by Elliott and Fry ;
Steel Engraving in Nature, February 5, 1874.
 
1874 LORD RECTOR OF ABERDEEN 437

with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity,
which is a greater possession than much learning; a nobler gift
than the power of increasing knowledge; by so much greater
and nobler than these, as the moral nature of man is greater
than the intellectual; for veracity is the heart of morality.
(Coll. Ess. ii, 189, sqq.)

”

As for the “so-called ‘conflict of studies,” he ex-

claims—

One might as well inquire which of the terms of a Rule of
Three sum one ought to know in order to get a trustworthy
result. Practical life is such a sum, in which your duty multi-
plied into your capacity and divided by your circumstances gives
you the fourth term in the proportion, which is your deserts,
with great accuracy.

The knowledge on which medical practice should be
based is “the sort of practical, familiar, finger-end know-
ledge which a watchmaker has of a watch,” the knowledge
gained in the dissecting-room and laboratory,

Until each of the greater truths of anatomy and physiology
has become an organic part of your minds—until you would
know them if you were roused and questioned in the middle of
the night, as a man knows the geography of his native place and
the daily life of his home. That is the sort of knowledge which,
once obtained, is a life-long possession. Other occupations may
fill your minds—it may grow dim and seem to be forgotten—
but there it is, like the inscription on a battered and defaced
coin, which comes out when you warm it.

Hence the necessity to concentrate the attention on
these cardinal truths, and to discard a number of extraneous
subjects commonly supposed to be requisite whether for
general culture of the medical student or to enable him to
correct the possible mistakes of druggists. Against this
“Latin fetish” in medical education, as he used to call it,
he carried on a lifelong campaign, as may be gathered from
his published essays on medical education, and from letters
given in later chapters of this book. But there is another
side to such limitation in professional training. Though
literature is an essential in the preliminary, general educa-
tion, culture is not solely dependent upon classics.
438 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVIII

Moreover, I would urge that a thorough study of Human
Physiology is in itself an education broader and more compre-
hensive than much that passes under that name. There is no
side of the intellect which it does not call into play, no region
of human knowledge into which either its roots or its branches
do not extend; like the Atlantic between the Old and the New
Worlds, its waves wash the shores of the two worlds of matter
and of mind; its tributary streams flow from both; through its
waters, as yet unfurrowed by the keel of any Columbus, lies the
road, if such there be, from the one to the other; far away
from that North-west Passage of mere speculation, in which
so many brave souls have been hopelessly frozen up.

Of the address he writes to his wife, February 27 :-—

I have just come back from the hall in which the address
was delivered, somewhat tired. The hall was very large, and
contained, I suppose, a couple of thousand people, and the
students made a terrific row at intervals, though they were quiet
enough at times. As the address took me an hour and a half
to deliver, and my voice has been very shaky ever since I have
been here, I did not dare to put too much strain upon it, and
I suspect that the people at the end of the hall could have heard
very little. However, on the whole, it went off better than I
expected.

And to Professor Baynes :—

I am very glad you liked my address. The students were
abnormally quiet for the first half hour, and then made up for
their reticence by a regular charivari for the rest of the time.
However, I was consoled by hearing that they were much
quieter than usual.

Dr. John Muir’s appreciation is worth having. It did not
occur to me that what I had to say would interest people out of
Britain, but to my surprise I had an application from a German
for permission to translate the address the other day.

Again to his wife, March 1 :-—

. . . I was considerably tired after my screed on Friday, but
Bain and I took a long walk, and I was fresh again by dinner-
time. I dined with the Senators at a hotel in the town, and of
course had to make a speech or two. However I cut all that as
fast as I could. They were all very apologetic for the row the
students made. After the dinner one of the Professors came
1874 ADDRESS ON “JOSEPH PRIESTLEY” 439

to ask me if I would have any objection to attend service in
the College Chapel on Sunday as the students would like it.
I said I was quite ready to do anything it was customary for the
Rector to do, and so this morning in half an hour's time I shall
be enduring the pains and penalties of a Presbyterian service.

There was to have been another meeting of the University
Court yesterday, but the Principal was suffering so much from
an affection of the lungs that I adjourned the meeting till to-
morrow. Did I tell you that I carried all my resolutions about
improving the medical curriculum? Fact, though greatly to my
astonishment. To-morrow we go in for some reforms in the
arts curriculum, and J expect that the job will be tougher.

I send you a couple of papers—Scotsiman, with a very good
leading article, and the Aberdeen Herald also with a leading
article, which is as much favourable as was to be expected... .
The Websters are making me promise to bring you and one of
the children here next autumn. They are wonderfully kind
people.

March 2.—My work here finishes to-day. There is a meet-
ing of the Council at one o’clock, and before that I am to go
and look over laboratories and collections with sundry Pro-
fessors. Then there is the supper at half-past eight and the
inevitable speeches, for which I am not in the least inclined at
present. I went officially to the College Chapel yesterday, and
went through a Presbyterian service for the first time in my
life. May it be the last!

Then to lunch at Professor Struthers’ and back here for a
small dinner party. I am standing it all well, for the weather
is villanous and there is no getting any exercise. I shall leave
here by the twelve o'clock train to-morrow.

On August 2 he delivered an address on “ Joseph
Priestley ” (Coll. Ess. iii. 1), at Birmingham, on the occasion
of the presentation of a statue of Priestley to that town.
The biography of this pioneer of science and of political
reform, who was persecuted for opinions that have in less
than a century become commonplaces of orthodox thought,
suggested a comparison between those times and this, and
evoked a sincere if not very enthusiastic tribute to one who
had laboured to better the world, not for the sake of worldly
honour, but for the sake of truth and right.

As the way to Birmingham lay through Oxford, he was

29
440 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVIII

asked by Professor Ray Lankester, then a Fellow of Uni-
versity College, if he could not break his journey there,
and inspect the results of his investigations on Lymnezus.
The answer was as follows :—

We go to Birmingham on Friday by the three o’clock train,
but there is no chance of stopping at Oxford either going or
coming, so that unless you bring a Lymneus or two (under
guise of periwinkles for refreshment) to the carriage door I
shall not be able to see them.

The following letters refer both to this address on
Priestley, and to the third of the important addresses of this
year, that “ On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata,
and its History” (Coll. Ess. i. 199, see also p. 442 below).
The latter was delivered at Belfast before the British Asso-
ciation under Tyndall’s presidency. It appears that only
a month before, he had not so much as decided upon his
subject—indeed, was thinking of something quite different.

The first allusion in these letters is to a concluding
phase of Tyndall’s controversy upon the claims of the late
Principal Forbes in the matter of Glacier theory :—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLaAcE, Lonpon, N.W.,
; June 24, 1874.

My bear TynpaLL—I quite agree with your Scotch friend
in his estimate of Forbes, and if he were alive and the con-
troversy beginning I should say draw your picture in your best
sepia or lamp black. But I have been thinking over this matter
a good deal since I received your letter, and my verdict is, leave
that tempting piece of portraiture alone.

The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all
its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental, and the
more severely true your portrait might be the more loud would
be the outcry against it. I should say publish a new edition of
your Glaciers of the Alps, make a clear historical statement of
all the facts showing Forbes’s relations to Rendu and Agassiz,
and leave the matter to the judgment of your contemporaries.
That will sink in and remain when all the hurly-burly is over.

I wonder if that address is begun, and if you are going to
be as wise and prudent as I was at Liverpool. When I think of
the temptation I resisted on that occasion, like Clive when he was
charged with peculation, “I marvel at my own forbearance!”
1874 LETTERS TO TYNDALL 44I

Let my example be a burning and a shining light to you. I
declare I have horrid misgivings of your kicking over the traces.

The “ x” comes off on Saturday next, so let your ears burn,
for we shall be talking about you. I have just begun my lectures
to Schoolmasters, and I wish they were over, though I am very
well on the whole.

Griffith wrote to ask for the title of my lecture at Belfast,
and I had to tell him I did not know yet. I shall not begin to
think of it till the middle of July when these lectures are over.

The wife would send her love, but she has gone to Kew to
one of Hooker’s receptions, taking Miss Jewsbury,* who is stay-
ing with us. I was to have gone to the College of Physicians’
dinner to-night, but I was so weary when I got home that I
made up my mind to send an excuse. And then came the
thought that I had not written to youu—Ever yours sincerely,

T. H. Huxtey.

The following is in reply to Tyndall, who had written
from Switzerland on July 15 :—

I confess to you that I am far more anxious about your
condition than about my own; for I fear that after your London
labour the labour of this lecture will press heavily upon you.
I wish to Heaven it could be transferred to other shoulders.

I wish I could get rid of the uncomfortable idea that I have
drawn upon you at a time when your friend and brother ought
to be anxious to spare you every labour... .

P.S.—Have just seen the Swiss Times; am intensely dis-
gusted to find that while I was brooding over the calamities pos-
sibly consequent on your lending me a hand, that you have been
at the Derby Statue, and are to make an oration apropos of the
Priestley Statue in Birmingham on the rst August!!!

4 Marisoroucu PLace, Lonpon, N.W.,
July 22, 1874.

My DEAR TYNDALL—I hope you have been taking more care
of your instep than you did of your leg in old times. Don’t try
mortifying the flesh again.

I was uncommonly amused at your disgustful wind up after
writing me such a compassionate letter. I am as jolly as a
sandboy so long as I live on a minimum and drink no alcohol,

 

* Miss Geraldine Jewsbury (1812-80) the novelist, and friend of the
Carlyles. After 1866 she lived at Sevenoaks.
442 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY — cHapP. XXVIII

and as vigorous as ever I was in my life. But a late dinner
wakes up my demoniac colon and gives me a fit of blue devils
with physical precision.

Don’t believe that I am at all the places in which the news-
papers put me. For example, I was not at the Lord Mayor’s
dinner last night. As for Lord Derby’s statue, I wanted to get
a lesson in the art of statue unveiling. I help to pay Dizzie’s
salary, so I don’t see why I should not get a wrinkle from that
artful dodger.

I plead guilty to having accepted the Birmingham invita-
tion.* I thought they deserved to be encouraged for having
asked a man of science to do the job instead of some noble swell ;
and, moreover, Satan whispered that it would be a good oppor-
tunity for a little ventilation of wickedness. I cannot say, how-
ever, that I can work myself up into much enthusiasm for the
dry old Unitarian who did not go very deep into anything. But
I think I may make him a good peg whereon to hang a discourse
on the tendencies of modern thought.

I was not at the Cambridge pow-wow—not out of prudence,
but because I was not asked. I suppose that decent respect
towards a secretary of the Royal Society was not strong enough
to outweigh University objections to the incumbent of that
office. It is well for me that I expect nothing from Oxford
or Cambridge, having burned my ships so far as they were con-
cerned long ago.

I sent your note on to Knowles as soon as it arrived, but I
have heard nothing from him. I wrote to him again to-night
to say that he had better let me see it in proof if he is going to
print it. I am right glad you find anything worth reading again
in my old papers. I stand by the view I took of the origin of
species now as much as ever.

Shall I not see the address? It is tantalising to hear of your
progress, and not to know what is in it.

I am thinking of taking Development for the subject of my
evening lecture,+ the concrete facts made out in the last thirty
years without reference to Evolution. If people see that it is
Evolution, that is Nature’s fault, and not mine.

Weare all flourishing, and send our love-—Ever yours faith-
fully, T. H. Huxtey.

 

* To deliver the address at the opening of the Mason College. It
was on Joseph Priestley.

tie. At the British Association, he actually took ‘‘ Animals as
Automata.”
1874 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM 443

The paper on Animal Automatism is in effect an en-
largement of a short paper read before the Metaphysical
Society in 1871, under the title of “ Has a Frog a Soul?”
It begins with a vindication of Descartes as a great physi-
ologist, doing for the physiology of motion and sensation
that which Harvey had done for the circulation of the blood.
A series of propositions which constitute the foundation and
essence of the modern physiology of the nervous system, are
fully expressed and illustrated in the writings of Descartes.
Modern physiological research, which has shown that many
apparently purposive acts are performed by animals, and
even by men, deprived of consciousness, and therefore of
volition, is at least compatible with the theory of automatism
in animals, although the doctrine of continuity forbids the
belief that “ such complex phenomena as those of conscious-
ness first make their appearance in man.” And if the voli-
tions of animals do not enter into the chain of causation
of their actions at all, the fact lays at rest the question,
“How is it possible to imagine that volition, which is a
state of consciousness, and, as such, has not the slightest
community of nature with matter in motion, can act upon
the moving matter of which the body is composed, as it is
assumed to do in voluntary acts?”

As for man, the argumentation, if sound, holds equally
good. States of consciousness are immediately caused by
molecular changes of the brain-substance, and our mental
conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the
changes which take place automatically in the organism.

As for the bugbear of the “ logical consequences ” of this
conviction, “I may be permitted to remark (he says), that
logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the
beacons of wise men.” And if St. Augustine, Calvin, and
Jonathan Edwards have held in substance the view that
men are conscious automata, to hold this view does not
constitute a man a fatalist, a materialist, nor an atheist.
And he takes occasion once more to declare that he ranks
among none of these philosophers.

Not among fatalists, for I take the conception of necessity to
have a logical, and not a physical foundation; not among ma-
444 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVIII

terialists, for I am utterly incapable of conceiving the existence
of matter if there is no mind in which to picture that existence;
not among atheists, for the problem of the ultimate cause of
existence is one which seems to me to be hopelessly out of reach
of my poor powers. Of all the senseless babble I have ever had
occasion to read, the demonstrations of these philosophers who
undertake to tell us all about the nature of God would be the
worst, if they were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities
of the philosophers who try to prove that there is no God.

This essay was delivered as an evening address on
August 24, the Monday of the Association week. A vast
stir had been created by the treatment of deep reaching
problems in Professor Tyndall’s presidential address; in-
terest was still further excited by this unexpected excursion
into metaphysics. ‘I remember,” writes Sir M. Foster,
“having a talk with him about the lecture before he gave
it. I think I went to his lodgings—and he sketched out
what he was going to say. The question was whether, in
view of the Tyndall row, it was wise in him to take the line
he had marked out. In the end I remember his saying,
‘Grasp your nettle, that is what I have got to do.’” But
apart from the subject, the manner of the address struck
the audience as a wonderful tour de force. The man who
at first disliked public speaking, and always expected to
break down on the platform, now, without note or refer-
ence of any kind, discoursed for an hour and a half upon
a complex and difficult subject, in the very words which
he had thought out and afterwards published.

This would have been a remarkable achievement if he
had planned to do so and had learned up his speech; but
the fact was that he was compelled to speak off-hand on the
spur of the moment. He describes the situation in a letter
of February 6, 1894, to Professor Ray Lankester :—

I knew that I was treading on very dangerous ground, so I
wrote out uncommonly full and careful notes, and had them in
my hand when I stepped on to the platform.

Then, I suddenly became aware of the bigness of the audi-
ence, and the conviction came upon me that, if I looked at my
notes, not one half would hear me. It was a bad ten seconds,
1874 A DIFFICULT SPEECH 445

but I made my election and turned the notes face downwards
on the desk.

To this day, I do not exactly know how the thing managed
to roll itself out; but it did, as you say, for the best part of an
hour and a half.

There's a story pour vous encourager if you are ever in a
like fix.

He writes home on August 20 :—

Johnny’s address went off exceedingly well last night.
There was a mighty gathering in the Ulster Hall, and he deliv-
ered his speech very well. The meeting promises to be a good
one, as there are over 1800 members already, and I daresay they
will mount up to 2000 before the end. The Hookers’ arrange-
ments * all went to smash as I rather expected they would, but
I have a very good clean lodging well outside the town where
I can be quiet if I like, and on the whole I think that is better,
as I shall be able to work up my lectures in peace... .

August 21.—Everything is going on very well here. The
weather is delightful, and under these circumstances my lodg-
ings here with John Ball for a companion turns out to be a
most excellent arrangement. I need not say that I was speaking
more or less all day long. (a va sans dire, though, by the way,
that is a bull induced by the locality. I am not going on any
of the excursions on Sunday. I am going to have a quiet day
here when everybody will suppose that I have accepted every-
body else’s invitation to be somewhere else. The Ulster Hall,
in which the addresses are delivered, seems to me to be a terrible
room to speak in, and I mean to nurse my energies all Monday.
I sent you a cutting from one of the papers containing an ac-
count of me that will amuse you. The writer is evidently dis-
appointed that I am not a turbulent savage.

August 25 :—

. . . My work is over and I start for Kingstown, where I
mean to sleep to-night, in an hour. I have just sent you a full
and excellent report of my lecture.t I am glad to say it was a
complete success. I never was in better voice in my life, and I
spoke for an hour and a hali without notes, the people listening

 

*7.e. for the members of the x-club and their wives to club together
at Belfast.
+ ‘‘On Animals as Automata”; see above.
446 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY — cuap. xxVIII

as still as mice. There has been a great row about Tyndall’s
address, and I had some reason to expect that I should have
to meet a frantically warlike audience. But it was quite other-
wise, and though I spoke my mind with very great plainness
I never had a warmer reception. And I am not without hope
that I have done something to allay the storm, though, as you
may be sure, I did not sacrifice plain speaking to that end... . I
have been most creditably quiet here, and have gone to no din-
ners or breakfasts or other such fandangoes except those I ac-
cepted before leaving home. Sunday I spent quietly here, think-
ing over my lecture and putting my peroration, which required
a good deal of care, into shape. I wandered out into the fields
in the afternoon, and sat a long time thinking of all that had
happened since I was here a young beginner, two and twenty,
and... you were largely in my thoughts, which were full of
blessings and tender memories.

I had a good night’s work last night. I dined with the Presi-
dent of the College, then gave my lecture. After that I smoked
a bit with Foster till eleven o’clock, and then I went to the
Northern Whig office to see that the report of my lecture was
all right. It is the best paper here, and the Editor had begged
me to see to the report, and I was anxious myself that I should
be rightly represented. So I sat there till a quarter past one
having the report read and correcting it when necessary. Then
I came home and got to bed about two. I have just been to the
section and read my paper there to a large audience who cannot
have understood ten words of it, but who looked highly edified,
and now I have done. Our lodging has turned out admirably,
and Ball’s company has been very pleasant. So that the fiasco
of our arrangements was all for the best.

I take the account of this last mentioned paper in Sec-
tion D from the report in Nature:—

Professor Huxley opened the last day of the session with an
account of his recent observations on the development of the
Columella auris in Amphibia. (He described it as an outgrowth
of the periotic capsule, and therefore unconnected with any
visceral arch). ...

In the absence of Mr. Parker there was no one competent
to criticise the paper from personal knowledge; but a word
dropped as to the many changes in the accepted homologies of
the ossicula auditus, elicited a masterly and characteristic ex-
position of the series of new facts, and the modifications of the
1874 LETTER TO PARKER 447

theory they have led to, from Reichert’s first observations down
to the present time. The embryonic‘structures grew and shaped
themselves on the board, and shifted their relations in accord-
ance with the views of successive observers, until a graphic
epitome of the progress of knowledge on the subject was com-
pleted.

He and Parker indeed (to whom he signs himself,
“Ever yours amphibially”) had been busy, not only
throughout 1874, but for several years earlier, examining
the development of the Amphibia, with a particular view to
the whole theory of the vertebrate skull, for which he had
done similar work in 1857 and 1858. Thus in May 4, 1870,
he writes to Parker :—

I read all the most important part of your Frog-paper last
night, and a grand piece of work it is—more important, I think,
in all its bearings than anything you have done yet.

From which premisses I am going to draw a conclusion
which you do not expect, namely, that the paper must by no
manner of means go into the Royal Society in its present shape.
And for the reasons following :—

In the first place, the style is ultra-Parkerian. From a
literary point of view, my dear friend, you remind me of nothing
so much as a dog going home. He has a goal before him which
he will certainly reach sooner or later, but first he is on this
side the road, and now on that; anon, he stops to scratch at an
ancient rat-hole, or maybe he catches sight of another dog, a
quarter of a mile behind, and bolts off to have a friendly, or
inimical sniff. In fact, his course is ... (here a tangled maze
is drawn) not In the second place, you must begin with
an earlier stage. ... That is the logical starting-point of the
whole affair.

Will you come and dine at 6 on Saturday, and talk over the
whole business?

If you have drawings of earlier stages you might bring them.
I suspect that what is wanted might be supplied in plenty of
time to get the paper in. ‘

 

In 1874 he re-dissects the skull of Arolotl to clear up
the question as to the existence of the “ventral head or
pedicle ” which Parker failed to observe: “If you disbelieve
in that pedicle again, I shall be guilty of an act of personal
448 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXVIII

violence.” Later, “I am penevolent to all the world, being
possessed of a dozen live axolotls and four or five big dead
mesobranchs. Moreover, I am going to get endless Frogs
and Toads by judicious exchange with Gunther. We will
work up the Amphibia as they have not been done since
they were crea—I mean evolved.” *

The question of the pedicle comes up again when he
simplifies some of Parker’s results as to the development
of the Coluwmella auris in the Frog. “ Your suprahyoman-
dibular is nothing but the pedicle of the suspensorium over
again. It has nothing whatever to do with the columella
auris. .. . The whole thing will come out as simply as
possible without any of your coalescences and combothera-
tions. How you will hate me and the pedicle.”

Tracing the development of the columella was a long
business, but it grew clearer as young frogs of various ages
were examined. “ Don’t be aggravated with yourself,” he
writes to Parker in July, “ it’s tough work, this here Frog.”
And on August 5: “I have worked over Toad and I have
worked over Frog, and I tell an obstinate man that s.h.m.
(suprahyomandibular) is a figment—or a vessel, whichever
said obstinate man pleases.” The same letter contains what
he calls his final views on the columella, but by the end of
the year he has gone further, and writes :—

Be prepared to bust-up with all the envy of which your
malignant nature is capable. The problem of the vertebrate
skull is solved. Fourteen segments or thereabouts in Am-
phioxus; all but one (barring possibilities about the ear capsule)
aborted in higher vertebrata. Skull and brain of Amphioxus
shut up like an opera-hat in higher vertebrata. So! (Sketch
in illustration).

P.S.—I am sure you will understand the whole affair from
this. Probably published it already in Nature!

A letter to the Times of July 8, 1874, on women’s edu-
cation, was evoked by the follewing circumstances. Miss
Jex Blake’s difficulties in obtaining a medical education

 

* Dr. A. C. L. G. Gunther, of the British Museum, where he was
appointed Keeper of the Department of Zoology in 1875.
1874 LETTER TO THE 7/A/ES 449

have already been referred to (p. 415). A further discour-
agement was her rejection at the Edinburgh examination.
Her papers, however, were referred to Huxley, who decided
that certain answers were not up to the standard.

As Miss Jex Blake may possibly think that my decision was
influenced by prejudice against her cause, allow me to add that
such prejudice as I labour under lies in the opposite direction.
Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the
average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men,
I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much
better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am
at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public
policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish
of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigour
and capacity.

We have heard a great deal lately about the physical dis-
abilities of women. Some of these alleged impediments, no
doubt, are really inherent in their organisation, but nine-tenths
of them are artificial—the products of their modes of life. I
believe that nothing would tend so effectually to get rid of these
creations of idleness, weariness, and that ‘‘ over stimulation of
the emotions” which, in plainer-spoken days, used to be called
wantonness, than a fair share of healthy work, directed towards
a definite object, combined with an equally fair share of healthy
play, during the years of adolescence; and those who are best
acquainted with the acquirements of an average medical prac-
titioner will find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach
that standard is like to prove exhausting to an ordinarily in-
telligent and well-educated young woman.

The Marine Biological Station at Naples was still strug-
gling for existence, and to my father’s interest in it is due
the following letter, one of several to Dr. Dohrn, whose
marriage took place this summer :—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, /zne 24, 1874.
My pear DourN—Are you married yet or are you not? It
is very awkward to congratulate a man upon what may not have
happened to him, but I shall assume that you are a benedict, and
send my own and my wife’s and all the happy family’s good
wishes accordingly. May you have as good a wife and as much
a “happy family” as I have, though I would advise you—the
450. LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVIII

hardness of the times being considered—to be satisfied with
fewer than seven members thereof.

I hear excellent accounts of the progress of the Station from
Lankester, and I hope that it is now set on its legs permanently.
As for the English contribution, you must look upon it simply as
the expression of the hearty goodwill of your many friends in
the land of fogs, and of our strong feeling that where you had
sacrificed so much for the cause of science, we were, as a matter
of duty,—quite apart from goodwill to you personally—bound to
do what we could, each according to his ability.

Darwin is, in all things, noble and generous—one of those
people who think it a privilege to let him help. I know he was’
very pleased with what you said to him. He is working away
at a new edition of the Descent of Man, for which I have given
him some notes on the brain question.

And apropos of that how is your own particular brain? I
back la belle M against all the physicians in the world—
even against mine own particular sculapius, Dr. Clark—to
find the sovereignest remedy against the blue devils.

Let me hear from you—most abominable of correspondents
as I am. And why don’t you send Madame’s photograph that
you have promised?—Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

Pray give my kind remembrances to your father.

 

4 MarvporoucH PiAcz, March 31, 1874.

My pear Darwin—The brain business * is more than half
done, and I will soon polish it off and send it to you. We are
going down to Folkestone for a week on Thursday, and I shall
take it with me.

I do not know what is doing about Dohrn’s business at pres-
ent. Foster took it in hand, but the last time I heard he was
waiting for reports from Dew and Balfour.

You have been very generous as always; and I hope that
other folk may follow your example, but like yourself I am not
sanguine.

I have had an awfully tempting offer to go to Yankee-land
on a lecturing expedition, and I am seriously thinking of making
an experiment next spring.

 

* A note on the brain in man and the apes for the second edition
of the Descent of Man.
1874 LETTERS TO DARWIN 451

The chance of clearing two or three thousand pounds in as
many months is not to be sneezed at by a pére de famille. I am
getting sick of the state of things here—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

Ihave heard no more about the spirit photographs !

4 MarLporouGH PLace, April 16, 1874.

My pear Darwin—Put my contribution into the smallest
type possible, for it will be read by none but anatomists; and
never mind where it goes.

I am glad you agree with me about the hand and foot and
skull question. As Ward * said of Mill's opinions, you can only
account for the views of Messrs. and Co. on the supposition
of “ grave personal sin” on their part.

Thad a letter from Dohrn a day or two ago in which he tells
me he has written to you. I suspect he has been very ill.

Let us know when you are in town, and believe me,—Ever
yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

 

The allusion in the letter of March 31, to certain “ spirit
photographs” refers to a series of these wonderful produc-
tions sent to him by a connection of Mr. Darwin’s, who was
interested in these matters, and to whom he replied, showing
how the effect might have been produced by simple me-
chanical means.

It was at this gentleman’s house that in January a care-
fully organised séance was held, at which my father was
present incognito, so far as the medium was concerned, and
on which he wrote the following report to Mr. Darwin,
referred to in his Life, vol. iii. p. 187.

It must be noted that he had had fairly extensive ex-
perience of spiritualism; he had made regular experiments
with Mrs. Haydon at his brother George’s house (the paper
on which these are recorded is undated, but it must have
been before 1863); he was referred to as a disbeliever in
an article in the Pall Mall Gazette during January 1869, as
a sequel to which a correspondent sent him an account of
the confessions of the Fox girls, who had started spiritualism
forty years before. At the houses of other friends, he had

 

* W.G. Ward. (See p. 338.)
452 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXVIII

attended séances and met mediums, by whom he was most
unfavourably impressed.

Moreover, when invited to join a committee of investi-
gation into spiritualistic manifestations, he replied :—

I regret that I am unable to accept the invitation of the
Committee of the Dialectical Society to co-operate with a com-
mittee for the investigation of “ Spiritualism”; and for two
reasons. In the first place, I have not time for such an inquiry,
which would involve much trouble and (unless it were unlike
all inquiries of that kind I have known) much annoyance. In
the second place, I take no interest in the subject. The only
case of “ Spiritualism” I have had the opportunity of examin-
ing into for myself, was as gross an imposture as ever came
under my notice. But supposing the phenomena to be genuine
—they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with
the faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates
in the nearest cathedral town, I should decline the privilege,
having better things to do. And if the folk in the spiritual world
do not talk more wisely and sensibly than their friends report
them to do, I put them in the same category. The only good
that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of “ Spiritual-
ism” is to furnish an additional argument against suicide.
Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk
twaddle by a “ medium” hired at a guinea a séance.*

To the report above mentioned, Prof. G. Darwin, who
also was present, added one or two notes and corrections.

REPORT ON SEANCE
Jan. 27, 1874.

We met in a small room at the top of the house with a
window capable of being completely darkened by a shutter and
curtains opposite the door. A small light table with two flaps
and four legs, unsteady and easily moved, occupied the middle
of the room, leaving not much more than enough space for the
chairs at the sides. There was a chair at each end, two chairs
on the fireplace side, and one on the other. Mr. X (the medium)
was seated in the chair at the door end, Mr. Y (the host) in

 

* Quoted from a review in the Daily News, October 17, 1871, of the
Report on Spiritualism of the Committee of the London Dialectical
Society.
1874 A SPIRITUALISTIC SEANCE 453

the opposite chair, Mr. G. Darwin on the medium’s right, Mr.
Huxley on his left, Mr. Z between Mr. Huxley and Mr. Darwin.
The table was small enough to allow these five people to rest
their hands on it, linking them together. On the table was a
guitar which lay obliquely across it, an accordion on the medi-
um’s side of the guitar, a couple of paper horns, a Japanese fan,
a matchbox, and a candlestick with a candle.

At first the room was slightly darkened (leaving plenty of
light from the window, however) and we all sat round for half
an hour. My right foot was against the medium’s left foot, and
two fingers of my right hand had a good grip of the little finger
of his left hand. I compared my hand (which is not small and
is strong) with his, and was edified by its much greater massive-
ness and strength. (No, we didn’t link until the darkness.
G. D.)

G. D.’s left hand was, as I learn, linked with medium’s
right hand, and left foot on medium’s left [right] foot.

We sat thus for half an hour as aforesaid and nothing hap-
pened.

The room was next thoroughly darkened by shutting the
shutters and drawing the curtains. Nevertheless, by great good
fortune I espied three points of light, coming from the lighted
passage outside the door. One of these came beneath the door
straight to my eye, the other two were on the wall (or on a
press) obliquely opposite. By still greater good fortune, these
three points of light had such a position in reference to my eye
that they gave me three straight lines traversing and bounding
the space in which the medium sat, and I at once saw that if
medium moved his body forwards or backwards he must occult
one of my three rays. While therefore taking care to feel his
foot and keep a good grip of his hand, I fixed my eyes intently
on rays A and B. For I felt sure that I could trust to G. D.
keeping a sharp look-out on the right hand and foot; and so
no instrument of motion was left to the medium but his body
and head, the movements of which could not have been dis-
cernible in absolute darkness. Nothing happened for some time.
At length a very well executed muscular twitching of the arm
on my side began, and I amused myself by comparing it with the
convulsions of a galvanised frog’s leg, but at the same time kept
a very bright look-out on my two rays A and B.

The twitchings ceased, and then after a little time A was
shut out. B then became obscure, and A became visible. “ Ho
ho!” thought I, ‘“‘ Medium’s head is well over the table. Now
454 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXVIII

we are going to have some manifestations.” Immediately fol-
jowed a noise obviously produced by the tumbling over of the
accordion and some shifting of the position of the guitar. Next
came a twanging—very slight, but of course very audible—of
some of the strings, during which B was invisible. By and by
B and A became visible again, and Medium’s voice likewise
showed that he had got back to his first position. But after he
had returned to this position there was a noise of the guitar
and other things on the table being stirred, and creeping noises
like something light moving over the table. But no more actual
twanging.

To my great disgust G. D. now began to remark that he saw
-two spots of light, which I suppose must have had the same
origin as my rays A and B, and, moreover, that something occa-
sionally occulted one or other of them. (Note: No, not till we
changed places, G. H. D.) I blessed him for spoiling my game,
but the effect was excellent. Nothing more happened. By and
by, after some talk about these points of light, the medium sug-
gested that this light was distracting, and that we had better
shut it out. The suggestion was very dexterously and indirectly
made, and was caught up more strongly (I think by Mr. Z).
Anyhow, we agreed to stop out all light. The circle was broken,
and the candle was lighted for this purpose. I then took occa-
sion to observe that the guitar was turned round into the posi-
tion noted in the miargin, the end being near my left hand. On
examining it I found a longish end of one of the catgut strings
loose, and I found that by sweeping this end over the strings
I could make quite as good twangs as we heard. I could have
done this just as well with my mouth as with my hand—and I
could have pulled the guitar about by the end of the catgut in
my mouth and so have disturbed the other things—as they were
disturbed.

Before the candle was lighted some discussion arose as to
why the spirits would not do any better (started by Mr. Y and
Mr. Z, I think), in which the medium joined. It appeared that
(in the opinion of the spirits as interpreted by the medium) we
were not quite rightly placed. When the discussion arose I
made a bet with myself that the result would be that either I
or G. D. would have to change places with somebody else. And
I won my wager (I have just paid it with the remarkably good
cigar I am now smoking). G. D. had to come round to my
side, Mr. Z went to the end, and Mr. Y took G. D.’s place.
“Good, Medium,” said I to myself. “ Now we shall see some-
1874 A SPIRITUALISTIC SEANCE 455

thing.” We were in pitch darkness, and all I could do was to
bring my sense of touch to bear with extreme tension upon the
medium's hand—still well in my grip.

Before long Medium became a good deal convulsed at in-
tervals, and soon a dragging sound was heard, and Mr. Y told
us that the arm-chair (mark its position) had moved up against
his leg, and was shoving against him. By degrees the arm-
chair became importunate, and by the manner of Mr. Y's re-
marks it was clear that his attention was entirely given to its
movements.

Then I felt the fingers of the medium’s left hand become
tense—in such a manner as to show that the muscles of the left
arm were contracting sympathetically with those of the other
arm on which a considerable strain was evidently being put.
Mr. Y's observations upon the eccentricities of the arm-chair
became louder—a noise was heard as of the chair descending
on the table and shoving the guitar before it (while at the same
time, or just before, there was a crash of a falling thermometer),
and the tension of the left arm ceased. The chair had got on to
the table. Says the Medium to Mr. Y, “ Your hand was against
mine all the time.” ‘“ Well, no,” replied Mr. Y, “not quite. For
a moment as the chair was coming up I don’t think it was.”
But it was agreed that this momentary separation made no
difference. I said nothing, but, like the parrot, thought the
more. After this nothing further happened. But conversation
went on, and more than once the medium was careful to point
out that the chair came upon the table while his hand was really
in contact with Mr. Y’s.

G. D. will tell you if this is a fair statement of the facts. I
believe it is, for my attention was on the stretch for those mortal
two hours and a half, and I did not allow myself to be distracted
from the main points in any way. My conclusion is that Mr. X
is a cheat and an impostor, and I have no more doubt that he got
Mr. Y to sit on his right hand, knowing from the turn of his con-
versation that it would be easy to distract his attention, and
that he then moved the chair against Mr. Y with his leg, and
finally coolly lifted (it) on to the table than that I am writing
these lines. T. H. H.

As Mr. G. Darwin wrote of the séance, “It has given me a
lesson with respect to the worthlessness of evidence which I
shall always remember, and besides will make me very difficult
in trusting myself. Unless I had seen it, I could not have be-

30
456 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY — cuap. xxviii

lieved in the evidence of anyone with such perfect bona fides as
Mr. Y being so worthless.

On receiving this report Mr. Darwin wrote (Life, ii. p.
188) :—

Though the séance did tire you so much it was, I think,
really worth the exertion, as the same sort of things are done
at all the séances.... and now to my mind an enormous
weight of evidence would be requisite to make me believe in
anything beyond mere trickery.

The following letter to Mr. Morley, then editor of the
Fortnightly Review, shows that my father was already think-
ing of writing upon Hume, though he did not carry out
this intention till 1878.

The article referred to in the second letter is that on
animals as automata.

4 MariBoroucH Prac, N.W., June 4, 1874.

My pear Mr. Mortzy—I assure you that it was a great dis-
appointment to me not to be able to visit you, but we had an
engagement of some standing for Oxford.

Hume is frightfully tempting—I thought so only the other
day when I saw the new edition advertised—and now I would
gladly write about him in the Fortnightly if I were only sure
of being able to keep any engagement to that effect I might
make.

But I have yet a course of lectures before me, and an even-
ing discourse to deliver at the British Association—to say noth-
ing of opening the Manchester Medical School in October—and
polishing off a lot of scientific work. So you see I have not a
chance of writing about Hume for months to come, and you
had much better not trust to such a very questionable reed as
I am.—Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, N.W., ov. 15, 1874.

My pear Mortey—Many thanks for your abundantly suffi-
cient cheque—rather too much, I think, for an article which had
been gutted by the newspapers.

I am always very glad to have anything of mine in the Fort-
nightly, as it is sure to be in good company; but I am becoming
as spoiled as a maiden with many wooers. However, as far as
the Fortnightly which is my old love, and the Contemporary
1874 LETTER TO HAECKEL 457

which is my new, are concerned, I hope to remain as constant as
a persistent bigamist can be said to be.
It will give me great pleasure to dine with you, and Dec. I
will suit me excellently well—Ever yours very faithfully,
T. H. Huxzey.

The year winds up with a New Year’s greeting to
Professor Haeckel.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Lonpon, N.W.,
Mee, 28, 594s

My pear Haecket—This must reach you in time to wish
you and yours a happy New Year in English fashion. May
your shadow never be less, and may all your enemies, unbeliev-
ing dogs who resist the Prophet of Evolution, be defiled by the
sitting of jackasses upon their grandmothers’ graves ! an oriental
wish appropriate to an ex-traveller in Egypt.

I have written a notice of the “ Anthropogenie” for the
Academy, but I am so busy that I am afraid I should never have
done it—but for being put into a great passion—by an article
in the Quarterly Revicw for last July, which I read only a few
days ago. My friend Mr. , to whom I had to administer a
gentle punishment some time ago, has been at the same tricks
again, but much worse than his former performance—you will
see that I have dealt with as you deal with a “ Pfaffe.” * There
are “halb-Pfaffen” as well as ‘“halb-Affen.” + So if what I
say about “ Anthropogenie” seems very littlR—to what I say
about the Quarterly Review—do not be offended. It will all
serve the good cause.

I have been working very hard lately at the lower vertebrata,
and getting out results which will interest you greatly. Your
suggestion that Rathke’s canals in Amphioxus ¢ are the Wolffian
ducts was a capital shot, but it just missed the mark because
Rathke’s canals do not exist. Nevertheless there are two half
canals, the dorsal walls of which meet in the raphe described
by Stieda, and the plaited lining of this wall (a) is, I believe,
the renal organ. Moreover, I have found the skull and brain of
Amphioxus, both of which are very large (like a vertebrate
embryo’s) instead of being rudimentary as we all have thought,

and exhibit the primitive segmentation of the “ Urwirbelthier ” *
skull.

 

 

* Parson. + Lit. half-apes; the Prosimiz and Lemurs.
¢ The Lancelet. * Primitive vertebrate.
458 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXVIII

Thus the skull of Petromyzon answers to about fourteen
segments of the body of Amphioxus, fused together and indis-
tinguishable in even the earliest embryonic state of the higher
vertebrata.

Does this take your breath away? Well, in due time you
shall be convinced. I sent in a brief notice to the last meeting
of the Royal Society, which will soon be in your hands.

I need not tell you of the importance of all this. It is un-
lucky for Semper that he has just put Amphioxus out of the
Vertebrata altogether—because it is demonstrable that Am-
phioxus is nearer than could have been hoped to the condition
of the primitive vertebrate—a far more regular and respectable
sort of ancestor than even you suspected. For you see
“ Acrania ” will have to go.

I think we must have an English translation of the An-
thropogenie. There is great interest in these questions now, and
your book is very readable, to say nothing of its higher qualities.

My wife (who sends her kindest greetings) and I were
charmed with the photograph. [As for our] publication in that
direction, the seven volumes are growing into stately folios.
You would not know them.—Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxzey.

How will you read this scrawl now that Gegenbaur is gone?

In the article here referred to, a review of a book by
Prof. G. H. Darwin, a personal attack of an unjustifiable
character was made upon him, and through him, upon
Charles Darwin. The authorship of the review in question
had come to be known, and Huxley writes to his friend :—

I entirely sympathise with your feeling about the attack on
George. If anybody tries that on with my boy L., the old wolf
will show all the fangs he has left by that time, depend upon
1b so 6548

You ought to be like one of the blessed gods of Elysium, and
let the inferior deities do battle with the infernal powers. More-
over, the severest and most effectual punishment for this sort of
moral assassination is quietly to ignore the offender and give
him the cold shoulder. He knows why he gets it, and society
comes to know why, and though society is more or less of a
dunderhead it has honourable instincts, and the man in the cold
finds no cloak that will cover him.
CHAPTER XXIX
1875-1876

In the year 1875 the bitter agitation directed against
experimental physiology came to a head. It had existed
in England for several years. In 1870, when President of
the British Association, Huxley had been violently attacked
for speaking in defence of Brown Séquard, the French
physiologist. The name of vivisection, indifferently applied
to all experiments on animals, whether carried out by the
use of the knife or not, had, as Dr. (afterwards Sir) William
Smith put it, the opposite effect on many minds to that of
the “blessed word Mesopotamia.” Misrepresentation was
rife even among the most estimable and well-meaning of the
opponents of vivisection, because they fancied they saw
traces of the practice everywhere, all the more, perhaps, for
not having sufficient technical knowledge for proper dis-
crimination. One of the most flagrant instances of this
kind of thing was a letter in the Record charging Huxley
with advocating vivisections before children, if not by them.
Passages from the Introduction to his Elementary Physi-
ology, urging that beginners should be shown the structures
under discussion, examples for which could easily be pro-
vided from the domestic animals, were put side by side with
later passages in the book, such, for instance, as statements
of fact as to the behaviour of severed nerves under irritation.
A sinister inference was drawn from this combination, and
published as fact without further verification. Of this he
remarks emphatically in his address on “ Elementary In-
struction in Physiology,” 1877 (Collected Essays, iii. 300):

459
460 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXIX

It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to give a formal contradic-
tion to the silly fiction, which is assiduously circulated by the
fanatics who not only ought to know, but do know, that their
assertions are untrue, that I have advocated the introduction
of that experimental discipline which is absolutely indispensable
to the professed physiologist, into elementary teaching.

Moreover, during the debates on the Vivisection Bill in
1876, the late Lord Shaftesbury made use of this story.
Huxley was extremely indignant, and wrote home :—

Did you see Lord Shaftesbury’s speech in Tuesday’s Times?
I saw it by chance,* and have written a sharp letter to the
Times. 7

This letter appeared on May 26, when he wrote again :—

You will have had my note, and know all about Lord
Shaftesbury and his lies by this time. Surely you could not
imagine on any authority that I was such an idiot as to recom-
mend boys and girls to perform experiments which are difficult
to skilled anatomists, to say nothing of other reasons.

LETTER TO THE Tymes

In your account of the late debate in the House of Lords on
the Vivisection Bill, Lord Shaftesbury is reported to have said
that in my Lessons in Elementary Physiology, it is strongly
insisted that such experiments as those subjoined shall not
merely be studied in the manual, but actually repeated, either
by the boys and girls themselves or else by the teachers in their
presence, as plainly appears from the preface to the second
edition.

I beg leave to give the most emphatic and unqualified contra-
diction to this assertion, for which there is not a shadow of
justification either in the preface to the second edition of my
Lessons or in anything I have ever said or written elsewhere.
The most important paragraph of the preface which is the sub-
ject of Lord Shaftesbury’s misquotation and misrepresentation
stands as follows :—

“For the purpose of acquiring a practical, though ele-
mentary, acquaintance with physiological anatomy and_his-

 

* Being in Edinburgh, he had been reading the Scotch papers, and
‘the reports of the Scotch papers as to what takes place in Parliament
are meagre.”
1376 CONTROVERSY WITH LORD SHAFTESBURY 461

tology, the organs and tissues of the commonest domestic ani-
mals afford ample materials. The principal points in the
structure and mechanism of the heart, the lungs, the kidneys,
or the eye of man may be perfectly illustrated by the correspond-
ing parts of a sheep; while the phenomena of the circulation,
many of the most important properties of living tissues are
better shown by the common frog than by any of the higher
animals.”

Ii Lord Shaftesbury had the slightest theoretical or practical
acquaintance with the subject about which he is so anxious to
legislate, he would know that physiological anatomy 1s not ex-
actly the same thing as experimental physiology; and he would
be aware that the recommendations of the paragraph I have
quoted might be fully carried into effect without the perform-
ance of even a solitary “ vivisection.”” The assertion that I have
ever suggested or desired the introduction of vivisection into
the teaching of elementary physiology in schools, is, I repeat,
contrary to fact.

On the next day (May 27) appeared a reply from Lord
Shaftesbury, in which his entire good faith is equally con-
spicuous with his misapprehension of the subject.

Lorp SHAFTESBURY'S REPLY

The letter from Professor Huxley in the Times of this morn-
ing demands an immediate reply.

The object that I supposed the learned professor had in view
was gathered from the prefaces to the several editions of his
work on Elementary Physiology.

The preface to the first edition states that “the following
lessons in elementary physiology are, primarily, intended to
serve the purpose of a text-book for teachers and learners in
boys’ and girls’ schools.”

It was published, therefore, as a manual for the young, as
well as the old.

Now, any reader of the preface to the first edition would
have come to the conclusion that teachers and learners could
acquire something solid, and worth having, from the text-book
before them. But the preface to the second edition nearly
destroys that expectation. Here is the passage:—“It will be
well for those who attempt to study elementary physiology to
bear in mind the important truth that the knowledge of science
462 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXIX

which is attainable by mere reading, though infinitely better
than ignorance, is knowledge of a very different kind from
that which arises from direct contact with fact.”

“Direct contact with fact!” What can that mean (so, at
least, very many ask) but a declaration, on high authority, to
teachers and learners that vivisection alone can give them any
real and effective instruction?

But the subsequent passage is still stronger, for it states
“that the worth of the pursuit of science, as an intellectual dis-
cipline, is almost lost by those who only seek it in books.”

Is not language like this calculated to touch the zeal and
vanity of teachers and learners at the very quick, and urge them
to improve their own minds and stand well in the eyes of the
profession and the public by positive progress in experimental
physiology? Ordinary readers, most people would think, could
come to no other conclusion.

But a disclaimer from Professor Huxley is enough; I am
sorry to have misunderstood him; and I must ask his pardon. I
sincerely rejoice to have received such an assurance that his
great name shall never be used for such a project as that which
excited our fears.

On this he wrote :—

You will have seen Lord Shaftesbury’s reply to my letter.
I thought it frank and straightforward, and I have written a
private letter * to the old boy of a placable and proper char-
acter.

In 1874 he had also had a small passage of arms with the
late Mr. W. E. Forster, then Vice-President of the Council,
upon the same subject. Mr, Forster was about to leave
office, and when he gave his official authorisation for sum-
mer courses of lectures at South Kensington on Biology,
Chemistry, Geology, ete., he did so with the special proviso
that there be no vivisection experiments in any of the
courses, and further, appended a Memorandum, explaining
the reasons on which he acted.

Now, although Huxley was mentioned by name as hav-
ing taken care to avoid inflicting pain in certain previous

 

* “ Huxley, the Professor, has written me a very civil, nay kind,
letter. I replied in the same spirit.” (Lord Shaftesbury, Life and
Work, iii. 373, June 3, 1876.)
1874 VIVISECTION 463

experiments which had come to Mr. Forster's knowledge,
the memorandum evoked from him a strong protest to the
Lord President, to whom, as Mr. Forster expressly inti-
mated, an appeal might properly be made.

To begin with, the memorandum contained a mistake in
fact, referring to his regular course at South Kensington,
experiments which had taken place two years before at one
of the Courses to Teachers. This course was non-official ;
Huxley’s position in it was simply that of a private person
to whom the Department offered a contract, subject to
official control and criticism, so far as touched that course,
and entirely apart from his regular position at the School
of Mines. The experiments of 1872 were performed, as
he had reason to believe, with the full sanction of the De-
partment. If the Board chose to go back. upon what had
happened two years before, he was of course subject to
their criticism, but then he ought in justice to be allowed to
explain in what these experiments really consisted. What
they were, appears from a note to Sir J. Donnelly :—

My pear DonnELLY—It will be the best course, perhaps, if
I set down in writing what I have to say respecting the vivi-
sections for physiological purposes which have been performed
here, and concerning which you made me a communication from
the Vice-President of the Council this morning.

I have always felt it my duty to defend those physiologists
who, like Brown Séquard, by making experiments on living
animals, have added immensely not only to scientific physiology,
but to the means of alleviating human suffering, against the
often ignorant and sometimes malicious clamour which has been
raised against them.

But personally, indeed I may say constitutionally, the per-
formance of experiments upon living and conscious animals is
extremely disagreeable to me, and I have never followed any
line of investigation in which such experiments are required.

When the course of instruction in Physiology here was com-
menced, the question of giving experimental demonstrations
became a matter of anxious consideration with me. It was clear
that, without such demonstrations, the subject could not be
properly taught. It was no less clear from what had happened
to me when, as President of the British Association, I had de-
464 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXIX

fended Brown Séquard, that I might expect to meet with every
description of abuse and misrepresentation if such demonstra-
tions were given.

It did not appear to me, however, that the latter considera-
tion ought to weigh with me, and I took such a course as I
believe is defensible against everything but misrepresentation.

I gave strict instructions to the Demonstrators who assisted
me that no such experiments were to be performed, unless the
animal were previously rendered insensible to pain either by
destruction of the brain or by the administration of anzsthetics,
and I have every reason to believe that my instructions were
carried out. I do not see what I can do beyond this, or how I
can give Mr. Forster any better guarantee than is given in my
assurance that my dislike to the infliction of pain both as a
matter of principle and of feeling is quite as strong as his own
can be.

If Mr. Forster is not satisfied with this assurance, and with
its practical result that our experiments are made only on non-
sentient animals, then I am afraid that my position as teacher
of Physiology must come to an end.

If I am to act in that capacity I cannot consent to be pro-
hibited from showing the circulation in a frog’s foot because the
frog is made slightly uncomfortable by being tied up for that
purpose; nor from showing the fundamental properties of
nerves, because extirpating the brain of the same animal inflicts
one-thousandth part of the prolonged suffering which it under-
goes when it makes its natural exit from the world by being
slowly forced down the throat of a duck, and crushed and
asphyxiated in that creature’s stomach.

I shall be very glad to wait upon Mr. Forster if he desires
to see me. Of course I am most anxious to meet his views as
far as I can, consistently with my position as a person bound
to teach properly any subject in which he undertakes to give
instruction. But I am quite clear as to the amount of freedom
of action which it is necessary I should retain, and if you will
kindly communicate the contents of this letter to the Vice-Presi-
dent of the Council, he will be able to judge for himself how
far his sense of what is right will leave me that freedom, or
render it necessary for me to withdraw from what I should
regard as a false position.

But there was a further and more vital question. He
had already declared through Major (now Sir John) Don-
1874 VIVISECTION 465

nelly, that he would only undertake a course which involved
no vivisection. Further to require an official assurance that
he would not do that which he had explicitly affirmed he
did not intend to do, affected him personally, and he there-
fore declined the proposal made to him to give the course
in question,

It followed from the fact that experiments on animals
formed no part of his official course, and from his refusal
under the circumstances to undertake the non-official course,
that his opinions and present practices in regard to the ques-
tion of vivisection, did not come under their Lordships’
jurisdiction, and he protested against the introduction of
his name, and of the approbation or disapprobation of his
views, into an official document relating to a matter with
which he had nothing to do.

In an intermediate paragraph of the same document, he
could not resist asking for an official definition of vivisection
as forbidden, in its relation to the experiments he had made
to the class of teachers.

I should have to ask whether it means that the teacher who
has undertaken to perform no “ vivisection experiments” is
thereby debarred from inflicting pain, however slight, in order
to observe the action of living matter; for it might be said to be
unworthy quibbling, if, having accepted the conditions of the
minute, he thought himself at liberty to inflict any amount of
pain, so long as he did not actually cut.

But if such is the meaning officially attached to the word
“vivisection,” the teacher would be debarred from showing the
circulation in a frog’s foot or in a tadpole’s tail; he must not
show an animalcule, uncomfortably fixed under the microscope,
nor prick his own finger for the sake of obtaining a drop of
living blood. The living particles which float in that liquid
undoubtedly feel as much (or as little) as a frog under the
influence of anzsthetics, or deprived of its brain, does; and the
teacher who shows his pupils the wonderful phenomena ex-
hibited by dying blood, might be charged with gloating over the
agonies of the colourless corpuscles, with quite as much justice
as I have been charged with inciting boys and girls to cruelty
by describing the results of physiological experiments, which
they are as likely to attempt as they are to determine the longi-
tude of their schoolroom.
466 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIX

However, I will not trouble your Lordship with any further
indication of the difficulties which, as I imagine, will attend the
attempt to carry the Minute into operation, if instruction is to
be given in Physiology, or even in general Biology.

The upshot of the matter was that the Minute was al-
tered so as to refer solely to future courses, and on February
20 he wrote to Mr. Forster :—

I cannot allow you to leave office without troubling you with
the expression of my thanks for the very great kindness and con-
sideration which I have received from you on all occasions, and
particularly in regard to the question of vivisection, on which I
ventured to some extent, though I think not very widely or
really, to differ from you.

The modification which you were aed enough to make in
your minute removed all my objections to undertaking the Sum-
mer Course.

And I am sure that if that course had happened to be a
physiological one I could do all I want to do in the way of ex-
periment, without infringing the spirit of your minute, though I
confess that the letter of it would cause me more perplexity.

As to his general attitude to the subject, it must be
noted, as said above in the letter to Sir J. Donnelly, that he
never followed any line of research involving experiments
on living and conscious animals. Though, as will be seen
from various letters, he considered such experiments justi-
fiable, his personal feelings prevented him from performing
them himself. Like Charles Darwin, he was very fond of
animals, and our pets in London found in him an indul-
gent master.

But if he did not care to undertake such experiments
personally, he held it false sentiment to blame others who
did disagreeable work for the good of humanity, and false
logic to allow pain to be inflicted in the cause of sport while
forbidding it for the cause of science. (See his address on
“Instruction in Elementary Physiology,” Coll. Essays, iii.
300 seg.) Indeed, he declared that he trusted to the fox-
hunting instincts of the House of Commons rather than to
any real interest in science in that body, for a moderate
treatment of the question of vivisection.
1375 VIVISECTION 467

The subject is again dealt with in “ The Progress of
Science,” 1887 (Coll. Essays, i. 122 seq), from which I may
quote two sentences :—

The history of all branches of science proves that they must
attain a considerable stage of development before they yield
practical “ fruits”; and this is eminently true of physiology.

Unless the fanaticism of philozoic sentiment overpowers the
voice of humanity, and the love of dogs and cats supersedes that
of one’s neighbour, the progress of experimental physiology and
pathology will, indubitably, in course of time, place medicine
and hygiene upon a rational basis.

The dangers of prohibition by law are discussed in a
letter to Sir W. Harcourt :—

You wish me to say what, in my opinion, would be the effect
of the total suppression of experiments on living animals on the
progress of physiological science in this country.

I have no hesitation in replying that it would almost entirely
arrest that progress. Indeed, it is obvious that such an effect
must follow the measure, for a man can no more develop a true
conception of living action out of his inner consciousness than
he can that of a camel. Observation and experiment alone can
give us a real foundation for any kind of Natural Knowledge,
and any one who is acquainted with the history of science is
aware that not a single one of all the great truths of modern
physiology has been established otherwise than by experiment
on living things.

Happily the abolition of physiological experiment in this
country, should such a fatal legislative mistake ever be made,
will be powerless to arrest the progress of science elsewhere.
But we shall import our physiology as we do our hock and our
claret from Germany and France; those of our young physi-
ologists and pathologists who can afford to travel will carry
on their researches in Paris and in Berlin, where they will be
under no restraint whatever, or it may be that the foreign
laboratories will carry out the investigations devised here by
the few persons who have the courage, in spite of all obstacles,
to attempt to save British science from extinction.

I doubt if such a result will contribute to the diminution of
animal suffering. I am sure that it will do as much harm as any-
thing can do to the English school of Physiology, Pathology,
468 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIX

and Pharmacology, and therefore to the progress of rational
medicine.

Auother letter on the subject may be given, which was
written to a student at a theological college, in reply to a
request for his opinion on vivisection, which was to be dis-
cussed at the college debating society.

GranD HOTEL, EASTBOURNE, Sept. 29, 1890.

Dear Sir—I am of the opinion that the practice of perform-
ing experiments on living animals is not only reconcilable with
true humanity, but under certain circumstances is imperatively
demanded by it.

Experiments on living animals are of two kinds. First,
those which are made upon animals which, although living, are
incapable of sensation, in consequence of the destruction or the
paralysis of the sentient machinery.

I am not aware that the propriety of performing experi-
ments of this kind is seriously questioned, except in so far as
they may involve some antecedent or subsequent suffering. Of
course those who deny that under any circumstances it can be
right to inflict suffering on other sentient beings for our own
good, must object to even this much of what they call cruelty.
And when they prove their sincerity by leaving off animal food;
by objecting to drive castrated horses, or indeed to employ ani-
mal labour at all; and by refusing to destroy rats, mice, fleas,
bugs and other sentient vermin, they may expect sensible people
to listen to them, and sincere people to think them other than
sentimental hypocrites.

As to experiments of the second kind, which do not admit of
the paralysis of the sentient mechanism, and the performance of
which involves severe prolonged suffering to the more sensitive
among the higher animals, I should be sorry to make any sweep-
ing assertion. I am aware of a strong personal dislike to them,
which tends to warp my judgment, and I am prepared to make
any allowance for those who, carried away by still more intense
dislike, would utterly prohibit these experiments.

But it has been my duty to give prolonged and careful atten-
tion to this subject, and putting natural sympathy aside, to try
and get at the rights and wrongs of the business from a higher
point of view, namely, that of humanity, which is often very
different from that of emotional sentiment.

I ask myselfi—suppose you knew that by inflicting prolonged
1875 THE PROTECTION BILL 469

pain on 100 rabbits you could discover a way to the extirpation
of leprosy, or consumption, or locomotor ataxy, or of siccidal
melancholia among human beings, dare you refuse to inflict
that pain? Now I am quite unable to say that I dare. That
sort of daring would seem to me to be extreme moral cowardice,
to involve gross inconsistency.

For the advantage and protection of society, we all agree to
inflict pain upon man—pain of the most prolonged and acute
character—in our prisons, and on our battlefields. If England
were invaded, we should have no hesitation about inflicting the
maximum of suffering upon our invaders for no other object
than our own good.

But if the good of society and of a nation is a sufficient plea
for inflicting pain on men, I think it may suffice us for experi-
menting on rabbits or dogs.

At the same time, I think that a heavy moral respon-
sibility rests on those who perform experiments of the second
kind.

The wanton infliction of pain on man or beast is a crime;
pity is that so many of those who (as I think rightly) hold this
view, seem to forget that the criminality lies in the wantonness
and not in the act of inflicting pain per se.—I am, sir, yours
faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

So far back as 1870 a committee had been appointed by
the British Association, and reported upon the conditions
under which they considered experiments on living animals
justifiable. In the early spring of 1875 a bill to regulate
physiological research was introduced into the Upper House
by Lord Hartismere, but not proceeded with. When legis-
lation seemed imminent Huxley, in concert with other men
of science, interested himself in drawing up a petition to
Parliament to direct opinion on the subject and provide a
fair basis for future legislation, which indeed took shape
immediately after in a bill introduced by Dr. Lyon Playfair
(afterwards Lord Playfair), Messrs. Walpole and Ashley.
This bill, though more just to science, did not satisfy many
scientific men, and was withdrawn upon the appointment of
a Royal Commission.

The following letters to Mr. Darwin bear on this
period :—
470 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXI1X

4 MarvporoucH Ptace, Jan. 22, 1875.

My pear Darwin—I quite agree with your letter about vivi-
section as a matter of right and justice in the first place, and
secondly as the best method of taking the wind out of the
enemy’s sails. I will communicate with Burdon Sanderson and
see what can be done.

My reliance as against —— and her fanatical following is
not in the wisdom and justice of the House of Commons, but in
the large number of fox-hunters therein. If physiological ex-
perimentation is put down by law, hunting, fishing and shooting,
against which a much better case can be made out, will soon
follow.—Ever yours, very faithfully, fH. Hoxie,

SouTtH KENSINGTON, Agri/ 21, 1875.

My pear Darwin—The day before yesterday I met Playfair
at the club, and he told me that he had heard from Miss Elliott
that J was getting up what she called a “ Vivisector’s Bill,” and
that Lord Cardwell was very anxious to talk with some of us
about the matter.

So you see that there is no secret about our proceedings. I
gave him a general idea of what was doing, and he quite con-
firmed what Lubbock said about the impossibility of any action
being taken in Parliament this session.

Playfair said he should like very much to know what we
proposed doing, and I should think it would be a good thing to
take him into consultation.

On my return I found that Pfliiger had sent me his memoir
with a note such as he had sent to you.

I read it last night, and I am inclined to think that it is a
very important piece of work.

He shows that frogs absolutely deprived of oxygen give off
carbonic acid for twenty-five hours, and gives very strong
reasons for believing that the evolution of carbonic acid by
living matter in general is the result of a process of internal
rearrangement of the molecules of the living matter, and not
of direct oxidation.

His speculations about the origin of living matter are the
best I have seen yet, so far as I understand them. But he
plunges into the depths of the higher chemistry in which I am
by no means at home. Only this I can see, that the paper is
worth careful study—Ever yours faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.
1875 LETTERS TO DARWIN 47I

31 RoyAL TERRACE, EpinpurcH, AZay 19, 1875.

My pear Darwin—Playfair has sent a copy of his bill to
me, and I am sorry to find that its present wording is such as
to render it very unacceptable to all teachers of physiology. In
discussing the draft with Litchfield I recollect that I insisted
strongly on the necessity of allowing demonstrations to students,
but I agreed that it would be sufficient to permit such demon-
strations only as could be performed under anesthetics.

The second clause of the bill, however, by the words “ for the
purpose of new scientific discovery and for no other purpose,” ab-
solutely prohibits any kind of demonstration. It would debar me
from showing the circulation in the web of a frog’s foot or from
exhibiting the pulsations of the heart in a decapitated frog.

And by its secondary effect it would prohibit discovery.
Who is to be able to make discoveries unless he knows of his
own knowledge what has been already made out? It might
as well be ruled that a chemical student should begin with
organic analysis.

Surely Burdon Sanderson did not see the draft of the bill as
it now stands. The Professors here are up in arms about it,
and as the papers have associated my name with the bill I shall
have to repudiate it publicly unless something can be done. But
what in the world is to be done? I have not written to Playfair
yet, and shall wait to hear from you before I go. I have an ex-
cellent class here, 340 odd, and like the work. Best regards to
Mrs. Darwin.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

31 RoyaL TERRACE, EDINBURGH, June 5, 1875.
My pear Darwin—I see I have forgotten to return Play-
fair’s letter, which I inclose. He sent me a copy of his last letter
to you, but it did not reach me till some days after my return
from London. In the meanwhile I saw him and Lord Card-
well at the House of Commons on Friday (last week).
Playfair seems rather disgusted at our pronunciamento
against the bill, and he declares that both Sanderson and
Sharpey assented to it. What they were dreaming about I cannot
imagine. To say that no man shall experiment except for purpose
of original discovery is about as reasonable as to ordain that no
man shall swim unless he means to go from Dover to Calais.
However the Commission is to be issued, and it is everything
to gain time and let the present madness subside a little. I
vowed I would never be a member of another Commission if I
could help it, but I suppose I shall have to serve on this.
31
472 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIX

I am very busy with my lectures, and am nearly half
through. I shall not be sorry when they are over, as I have been
grinding away now since last October.—With kindest regards

to Mrs. Darwin, ever yours very faithfully,
T. H. Huxtey.

He was duly asked to serve on the Commission. Though
his lectures in Edinburgh prevented him from attending
till the end of July no difficulty was made over this, as the
first meetings of the Commission, which began on June 30,
were to be devoted to taking the less controversial evidence.
In accepting his nomination he wrote to Mr. Cross (after-
wards Lord Cross), at that time Home Secretary :—

If I can be of any service I shall be very glad to act on the
Commission, sympathising as I do on the one hand with those
who abhor cruelty to animals, and, on the other, with those who
abhor the still greater cruelty to man which is involved in any
attempt to arrest the progress of physiology and of rational
medicine.

The other members of the Commission were Lords
Cardwell and Winmarleigh, Mr. W. E. Forster, Sir J. B.
Karslake, Professor Erichssen, and Mr. R. H. Hutton.

The evidence given before the Commission bore out the
view that English physiologists inflicted no more pain upon
animals than could be avoided; but one witness, not an
Englishman, and not having at that time a perfect command
of the English language, made statements which appeared
‘to the Commission at least to indicate that the witness was
indifferent to animal suffering. Of this incident Huxley
writes to Mr. Darwin at the same time as he forwarded a
formal invitation for him to appear as a witness before the
Commission :—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Oct. 30, 1875.

My prar Darwin—The inclosed tells its own story. I have
done my best to prevent your being bothered, but for various
reasons which will occur to you I did not like to appear too
obstructive, and I was asked to write to you. The strong feeling
of my colleagues (and my own I must say also) is that we ought
to have your opinions in our minutes. At the same time there is a
no less strong desire to trouble you as little as possible, and under
no circumstances to cause you any risk of injury to health,
1875 VIVISECTION COMMISSION 473

What with occupation of time, worry and vexation, this
horrid Commission is playing the deuce with me. I have felt
it my duty to act as counsel for Science, and was well satisfied
with the way things were going. But on Thursday when I was
absent at the Council of the Royal Society was examined,
and if what I hear is a correct account of the evidence he gave
I may as well throw up my brief.

I am told that he openly professed the most entire indiffer-
ence to animal suffering, and said he only gave anesthetics to
keep animals quiet !

I declare to you I did not believe the man lived who was
such an unmitigated cynical brute as to profess and act upon
such principles, and I would willingly agree to any law which
would send him to the treadmill.

The impression his evidence made on Cardwell and Forster
is profound, and I am powerless (even if I had the desire which
I have not) to combat it. He has done more mischief than all
the fanatics put together.

Iam utterly disgusted with the whole business.—Ever yours,

T. H. Huxzey.

Of course keep the little article on Species. It is in some
American Encyclopedia published by Appleton. And _ best
thanks for your book. I shall study it some day, and value it as
I do every line you have written. Don’t mention what I have
told you outside the circle of discreet Darwindom.

 

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Wov. 2, 1875.

My pear Darwin—Otur secretary has telegraphed to you to
Down, and written to Queen Anne Street.

But to make sure, I send this note to say that we expect you
at 13 Delahay Street * at 2 o’clock to-morrow. And that I have
looked out the highest chair that was to be got for you.t—Ever
yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

The Commission reported early in 1876, and a few
months after Lord Carnarvon introduced a bill intituled
“ An Act to amend the law relating to Cruelty to Animals.”
It was a more drastic measure than was demanded. As a
writer in Nature (1876, p. 248) puts it: “ The evidence on

 

* Where the Commission was sitting.

+ Mr. Darwin was long in the leg. When he came to our house
the biggest hassock was always placed in an arm-chair to give it the
requisite height for him,
474 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXIX

the strength of which legislation was recommended went
beyond the facts, the report went beyond the evidence, the
recommendations beyond the report, and the bill can hardly
be said to have gone beyond the recommendations, but
rather to have contradicted them.”

As to the working of the law Huxley referred to it the
following year in the address, already cited, on “ Elementary
Instruction in Physiology ” (Coll. Essays, iii. 310).

But while I should object to any experimentation which can
justly be called painful, and while as a member of a late Royal
Commission I did my best to prevent the infliction of needless
pain for any purpose, I think it is my duty to take this oppor-
tunity of expressing my regret at a condition of the law which
permits a boy to troll for pike or set lines with live frog bait
for idle amusement, and at the same time lays the teacher of
that boy open to the penalty of fine and imprisonment if he uses
the same animal for the purpose of exhibiting one of the most
beautiful and instructive of physiological spectacles—the cir-
culation in the web of the foot. No one could undertake to
affirm that a frog is not inconvenienced by being wrapped up
in a wet rag and having his toes tied out, and it cannot be denied
that inconvenience is a sort of pain. But you must not inflict
the least pain on a vertebrated animal for scientific purposes
(though you may do a good deal in that way for gain or for
sport) without due licence of the Secretary of State for the
Home Department, granted under the authority of the Vivi-
section Act.

So it comes about that, in this year of grace 1877, two per-
sons may be charged with cruelty to animals. One has impaled
a frog, and suffered the creature to writhe about in that con-
dition for hours; the other has pained the animal no more than
one of us would be pained by tying strings round his fingers
and keeping him in the position of a hydropathic patient. The
first offender says, “I did it because I find fishing very amus-
‘ing,” and the magistrate bids him depart in peace—nay, probably
wishes him good sport. The second pleads, “I wanted to im-
press a scientific truth with a distinctness attainable in no
other way on the minds of my scholars,” and the magistrate
fines him five pounds.

I cannot but think that this is an anomalous and not wholly
creditable state of things.
CHAPTER XXN
1875-1876

Hux ey only delivered one address outside his regular
work in 1875, on “ Some Results of the * Challenger’ Ex-
pedition,” given at the Royal Institution on January 29.
For all through the summer he was away irom London,
engaged upon the summer course of lectures on Natural
History at Edinburgh. This was due to the fact that Pro-
fessor (afterwards Sir) Wyville Thomson was still absent
on the Challenger expedition, and Professor Victor Carus,
who had acted as his substitute before, was no longer
available. Under these circumstances the Treasury granted
Huxley leave of absence from South Kensington. His
course began on May 3. and ended on July 23. and he
thought it a considerable feat to deal with the whole Ani-
mal Kingdom in =4 lectures. No doubt both he and his
students worked at high pressure, especially when the latter
came scantily prepared for the task, like the late Joseph
Thomson, afterwards distinguished as an Airican traveller,
who has left an account of his experience in this class.
Thomson's particular weak point was his Greek, and the
terminology of the lectures seems to have been a thorn in
his side. This account, which actually tells of the 1876
course, Occurs on pp. 36 and 37 of his “ Lite.”

The experience of studying personally under Huxley was a
privilege to which he had been looking forward with eager
anticipation ; for he had already been fascinated with the charm
of Huxley's writings, and had received irom them no small
amount of mental stimulus. Nor were his expectations disap-

475
476 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXX

pointed. But he found the work to be unexpectedly hard, and
very soon he had the sense of panting to keep pace with the
demands of the lecturer. It was not merely that the texture of
scientific reasoning in the lectures was so closely knit,—although
that was a very palpable fact,—but the character of Huxley’s
terminology was entirely strange to him. It met him on his
weakest side, for it presupposed a knowledge of Greek (being
little else than Greek compounds with English terminations)
and of Greek he had none.

Huxley’s usual lectures, he writes, are something awful to
listen to. One half of the class, which numbers about four hun-
dred, have given up in despair from sheer inability to follow
him. The strain on the attention of each lecture is so great as
to be equal to any ordinary day’s work. I feel quite exhausted
after them. And then to master his language is something
dreadful. But, with all these drawbacks, I would not miss them,
even if they were ten times as difficult. They are something
glorious, sublime!

Again he writes :—

Huxley is still very difficult to follow, and I have been four
times in his lectures completely stuck and utterly helpless. But
he has given us eight or nine beautiful lectures on the frog. .. .
If you only heard a few of the lectures you would be surprised
to find that there were so few missing links in the chain of life,
from the amceba to the genus homo.

It was a large class, ultimately reaching 353 and break-
ing the record of the Edinburgh classes without having
recourse to the factitious assistance proposed in the letter
of May 16.

His inaugural lecture was delivered under what ought
to have been rather trying circumstances. On the way
from London he stopped a night with his old friends, John
Bruce and his wife (one of the Fannings), at their home,
Barmoor Castle, near Beal. He had to leave at 6 next
morning, reaching Edinburgh at 10, and lecturing at 2.
“ Nothing,” he writes, “could be much worse, but I am
going through it with all the cheerfulness of a Christian
martyr.”

On May 3 he writes to his wife from the Bruces’ Edin-
burgh house, which they had lent him.
1875 HIS EDINBURGH COURSE 477

I know that you will be dying to hear how my lecture went
off to-day—so I sit down to send you a line, though you did
hear from me to-day.

The theatre was crammed. I am told there were 600 audi-
tors, and I could not have wished for more thorough attention.
But I had to lecture in gown and Doctor's hood and the heat
was awful. The Principal and the chief Professors were pres-
ent, and altogether it was a state affair. I was in great force,
although I did get up at six this morning and travelled all the
way from Barmoor. But I won't do that sort of thing again, it’s
tempting Providence.

May 5.—Fanny and her sisters and the Governess flit to
Barmoor to-day and I shall be alone in my glory. I shall be
very comfortable and well cared for, so make your mind easy,
and if I fall ill I am to send for Clark. He expressly told me to
do so as I left him!

I gave my second lecture yesterday to an audience filling
the theatre. The reason of this is that everybody who likes—
comes for the first week and then only those who have tickets
are admitted. How many will become regular students I don’t
know yet, but there is promise of a big class. The Lord send
three extra—to make up for ... (a sudden claim upon his
purse before he left home).

And he writes of this custom to Professor Baynes on
June 12 :—

My class is over 350 and I find some good working material
among them. Parsons mustered strong in the first week, but
I fear they came to curse and didn’t remain to pay.

He was still Lord Rector of Aberdeen University, and
on May Io writes how he attended a business meeting
there :—

I have had my run to Aberdeen and back—got up at 5,
started from Edinburgh at 6.25, attended the meeting of the
Court at 1. Then drove out with Webster to Edgehill in a great
storm of rain and was received with their usual kindness. I
did not get back till near 8 o’clock last night and, thanks to The
Virginians and a good deal of Virginia, I passed the time pleas-
antly enough. .. . There are 270 tickets gone up to this date,
so I suppose I may expect a class of 300 men. 300 X 4 = 1200.
Hooray.
478 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXX

To wis ELpEst DAUGHTER

EpInBuRGH, Jay 16, 1875.

My bearest Jess—Your mother’s letter received this morn-
ing reminds me that I have not written to “ Cordelia” (I sup-
pose she means Goneril) by a message from that young person
—so here is reparation. |

I have 330 students, and my class is the biggest in the Uni-
versity—but I am quite cast down and discontented because it
is not 351,—being one more than the Botany Class last year—
which was never so big before or since.

I am thinking of paying 21 street boys to come and take the
extra tickets so that I may crow over all my colleagues.

Fanny Bruce is going to town next week to her grand-
mother’s and I want you girls to make friends with her. It
seems to me that’ she is very nice—but that is only a fallible
man’s judgment, and Heaven forbid that I should attempt to
forestall Miss Cudberry’s decision on such a question. Anyhow
she has plenty of energy and, among other things, works very
hard at German.

M says that the Rootle-Tootles have a bigger drawing-
room than ours. I should be sorry to believe these young be-
ginners guilty of so much presumption, and perhaps you will
tell them to have it made smaller before I visit them.

A Scotch gentleman has just been telling me that May is the
worst month in the year, here; so pleasant! but the air is soft
and warm to-day, and I look out over the foliage to the castle
and don’t care.

Love to all, and specially M Mind you don’t tell her
that I dine out to-day and to-morrow—positively for the first
and last times—Ever your loving father,

 

 

T. H. Hux ey.

However, the class grew without such adventitious aid,
and he writes to Mr. Herbert Spencer on June 15 :—

... I have a class of 353, and instruct them in dry facts—
particularly warning them to keep free of the infidel specula-
tions which are current under the name of evolution.

I expect an “ examiner’s call” from a Presbytery before the
course is over, but I am afraid that the pay is not enough to
induce me to forsake my “larger sphere of influence” in
London.
1335 LETTERS 479

In the same letter he speaks of a flying visit to town
which he was about to make on the following Thursday,
returning on the Saturday for lack of a good Sunday train:

Mayhap I may chance to see you at the club—but I shall
be torn to pieces with things to do during my two days’ stay.

If Moses had not existed I should have had three days in
town, which is a curious concatenation of circumstances.

As for his health during this period, it maintained, on
the whole, a satisfactory level, thanks to the regime of which
he writes to Professor Baynes:

I am very sorry to hear that you have been so seriously ill.
You will have to take to my way of living—a mutton chop a
day and no grog, but much baccy. Don't begin to pick up your
threads too fast.

No wonder you are uneasy if you have crabs on your con-
science.* Thank Heaven they are not on mine!

I am glad to hear you are getting better, and I sincerely
trust that you may find all the good you seek in the baths.

As to coming back a “new man,” who knows what that
might be? Let us rather hope for the old man in a state of
complete repair—A1 copper bottomed.

Excuse my nautical language.

The following letters also touch on his Edinburgh lec-
tures :-—

CRAGSIDE, MORPETH, -lugust II, 1875.

My pear Foster—We are staying here with Sir W. Arm-
strong—the whole brood. Miss Matthaei and the majority of
the chickens being camped at a farm-house belonging to our
host about three miles off. It is wetter than it need be, other-
wise we are very jolly.

I finished off my work in Edinburgh on the 23rd and posi-
tively polished off the Animal Kingdom in 54 lectures. French
without a master in twelve lessons is nothing to this feat. The
men worked very well on the whole, and sent in some creditable
examination papers. I stayed a few davs to finish up the ab-
stracts of my lectures for the \fedical Times; then picked up
the two elder girls who were at Barmoor and brought them on
here to join the wife and the rest.

 

* fe. an article for the Encyclopedia Britannica.
480 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXX

How is it that Dohrn has been and gone? I have been
meditating a letter to him for an age. He wanted to see me,
and I did not know how to manage to bring about a meeting.

Edinburgh is greatly exercised in its mind about the vivi-
section business, and “ Vagus” “ swells wisibly ” whenever the
subject is mentioned. I think there is an inclination to regard
those who are ready to consent to legislation of any kind as
traitors, or, at any rate, trimmers. It sickens me to reflect on
the quantity of time and worry I shall have to give to that sub-
ject when I get back.

I see that —— has been blowing the trumpet at the Medical
Association. He has about as much tact as a flyblown bull.

I have just had a long letter from Wyville Thomson. The
Challenger inclines to think that Bathybius is a mineral precipi-
tate! in which case some enemy will probably say that it is a
product of my precipitation. So mind, I was the first to make
that “goak.” Old Ehrenberg suggested something of the kind
to me, but I have not his letter here. I shall eat my leek hand-
somely, if any eating has to be done. They have found pseudo-
podia in Globigerina.

With all good wishes from ours to yours—Ever yours faith-
fully, T. H. Huxtey.

CRAGSIDE, MORPETH, August 13, 1875.

My bDEAR TyNnDALL—I find that in the midst of my work in
Edinburgh I omitted to write to De Vrij, so I have just sent him
a letter expressing my pleasure in being able to co-operate in
any plan for doing honour to old Benedict,* for whom I have
a most especial respect.

I am not sure that I won’t write something about him to
stir up the Philistines.

My work at Edinburgh got itself done very satisfactorily,
and I cleared about £1000 by the transaction, being one of the
few examples known of a’Southern coming north and pillaging
the Scots. However, I was not sorry when it was all over, as
I had been hard at work since October and began to get tired.

The wife and babies from the south, and I from the north,
met here a fortnight ago and we have been idling very pleasantly
ever since. The place is very pretty and our host kindness
itself. Miss Matthaei and five of the bairns are at Cartington—
a moorland farm-house three miles off—and in point of rosy

 

* Spinoza, a memorial to whom was being raised in Holland.
1875 LETTERS 481

cheeks and appetites might compete with any five children of
their age and weight. Jess and Mady are here with us and
have been doing great execution at a ball at Newcastle. I
really don’t know myself when I look at these young women,
and my hatred of possible sons-in-law is deadly. All send their
love.-—Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

Wish you joy of Bristol.

The following letter to Darwin was written when the
Polar Expedition under Sir George Nares was in prepara-
tion. It illustrates the range of observation which his friends
had learned to expect in him :—

ATHENEUM CLUB, Jam. 22, 1875.

My pear Darwin—I write on behalf of the Polar Com-
mittee of the Royal Society to ask for any suggestions you may
be inclined to offer us as instructions to the naturalists who are
to accompany the new expedition.

The task of drawing up detailed instructions is divided
among a lot of us; but you are as full of ideas as an egg is full
of meat, and are shrewdly suspected of having, somewhere
in your capacious cranium, a store of notions which would be
of great value to the naturalists.

All I can say is, that if you have not already “collated
facts” on this topic, it will be the first subject I ever suggested
to you on which you had not.

Of course we do not expect you to put yourself to any great
trouble—nor ask for such a thing—but if you will jot down any
notes that occur to you we shall be thankful.

We must have everything in hand for printing by March 15.
—Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

 

The following letter dates from soon after the death of
Charles Kingsley :—

ScIENCE SCHOOLS, S. KENSINGTON, Oct. 22, 1875.

Dear Miss KincsLeYy—I sincerely trust that you believe I
have been abroad and prostrated by illness, and have thereby
accounted for receiving no reply to your letter of a fortnight
back.

The fact is that it has only just reached me, owing to the
neglect of the people in Jermyn Street, who ought to have sent
it on here.
482 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXX

I assure you I have not forgotten the brief interview to
which you refer, and I have often regretted that the hurry and
worry of life (which increases with the square of your distance
from youth) never allowed me to take advantage of your kind
father’s invitation to become better acquainted with him and
his. I found his card in Jermyn Street when I returned last
year, with a pencilled request that I would call on him at West-
minster.

I meant to do so, but the whirl of things delayed me until,
as I bitterly regret, it was too late.

I am not sure that I have any important letter of your
father’s but one, written to me some fifteen years ago, on the
occasion of the death of a child who was then my only son. It
was in reply to a letter of my own written in a humour of
savage grief. Most likely he burned the letter, and his reply
would be hardly intelligible without it. Moreover, I am not at
all sure that I can lay my hands upon your father’s letter in a
certain chaos of papers which I have never had the courage to
face for years. But if you wish I will try.

I am very grieved to hear of Mrs. Kingsley’s indisposition.
Pray make my kindest remembrances to her, and believe me
yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxzey.

P.S—By the way, letters addressed to my private residence,
4 MarvzoroucH Prace, N.W.,

are sure not to be delayed. And I have another reason for
giving the address—the hope that when you come to Town
you will let my wife and daughters make your acquaintance.

His continued interest in the germ-theory and the ques-
tion of the origin of life (Address at the British Association,
1870, see p. 355, 5q.), appears from the following :—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Oct. 15, 1875.
My pear TyNnDALL—Will you bring with you to the x to-
morrow a little bottle full of fluid containing the bacteria you
have found developed in your infusions? I mean a good char-
acteristic specimen. It will be useful to you, I think, if I de-
termine the forms with my own microscope, and make drawings
of them which you can use.—Ever yours,
T. H. Huxtey.

I can’t tell you how delighted I was with the experiments.
1875 LETTERS TO BAYNES 483

Throughout this period, and for some time later, he was
in frequent communication with Thomas Spencer Baynes,
Professor of Logic and English Literature at St. Andrews
University, the editor of the new Encyclopedia Britannica,
work upon which was begun at the end of 1873. From the
first Huxley was an active helper, both in classifying the
biological subjects which ought to be treated of, suggesting
the right men to undertake the work, and himself writing
several articles, notably that on Evolution.*

Extracts from his letters to Professor Baynes between
the years 1873 and 1884, serve to illustrate the work which
he did and the relations he maintained with the genial and
learned editor.

Nov. 2, 1873.—I have been spending my Sunday morning in
drawing up a list of headings, which will I think exhaust biology
from the Animal point of view, and each of which does not in-
volve more than you are likely to get from one man. In many
cases, 1.¢. Insecta, Entomology, I have subdivided the subjects,
because, by an unlucky peculiarity of workers in these subjects,
men who understand zoology from its systematic side are often
ignorant of anatomy, and those who know fossils are often weak
in recent forms.

But of course the subdivision does not imply that one man
should not take the whole if he is competent to do so. And if
separate contributors supply articles on these several subdivi-
sions, somebody must see that they work in harmony.

But with all the good will in the world, he was too hard
pressed to get his quota done as quickly as he wished. He
suggests at once that ‘“ Hydrozoa” and “ Actinozoa,” in
his list, should be dealt with by the writer of the article
“ Coelenterata.”

Shunting “ Actinozoa” to “Ccelenterata” would do no
harm, and would have the great merit of letting me breathe a
little. But if you think better that “ Actinozoa” should come
in its place under A, I will try what I can do.

December 30, 1873.—As to Anthropology, I really am afraid
to promise. At present I am plunged in Amphibia, doing a lot

* Others were Actinozoa, Amphibia, Animal Kingdom, and Biology.
484 . LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXX

of original work to settle questions which have been hanging
vaguely in my mind for years. If Amphibia is done by the end
of January it is as much as it will be.

In February I must give myself—or at any rate my spare
selfi—up to my Rectorial Address,* which (tell it not in Gath)
I wish at the bottom of the Red Sea. And I do not suppose
I shall be able to look seriously at either Animal Kingdom or
Anthropology before the address is done with. And all depends
on the centre of my microcosm—intestinum colon—which plays
me a trick every now and then.

I will do what I can if you like, but if you trust me it is
at your proper peril.

Feb. 8, 1874.—How astonished folks will be if eloquent pas-
sages out of the address get among the Amphibia, and comments
on Frog anatomy into the address. As I am working at both
just now this result is not improbable.

Meanwhile the address and the ten days’ stay at Aber-
deen had been “ playing havoc with the Amphibia,” but on
returning home, he went to work upon the latter, and
writes on March 12 :—

I did not care to answer your last letter until I had an instal-
ment of Amphibia ready. Said instalment was sent off to you,
care of Messrs. Black, yesterday, and now I feel like Dick
Swiveller, when happy circumstances having enabled him to
pay off an old score he was able to begin running up another.

June 8.—I have had sundry proofs and returned them. My
writing is lamentable when I am in a hurry, but I never pro-
voked a strike before! I declare I think I write as well as the
editor, on ordinary occasions.

He was pleased to find someone who wrote as badly as,
or worse than, himself, and several times rallies Baynes on
that score. Thus, when Mrs. Baynes had acted as her
husband’s amanuensis, he writes (February 11, 1878) :—

My respectful compliments to the “mere machine,” whose
beautiful caligraphy (if that isn’t a tautology) leaves no doubt
in my mind that whether the writing of your letters by that
agency is good for you or not it is admirable for your corre-
spondents.

Why people can’t write a plain legible hand I can’t imagine.*

 

* His Rectorial Address at Aberdeen. (See p. 436.)
+ NV.B.—This sentence is written purposely in a most illegible hand.
1875 LETTERS TO BAYNES 485

And on another occasion he adds a postscript to say,
“You write worse than ever. So do I.”
However, the article got finished in course of time :—

Aug. 5—I have seen and done with all Amphibia but the
last sheet, and that only waits revise. Considering it was to be
done in May, I think I am pretty punctual.

The next year, immediately before taking Sir Wyville
Thomson’s lectures at Edinburgh, he writes about another
article which he had in hand :—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, N.W., March 16, 1875.

My pear Baynes—I am working against time to get a lot of
things done—amongst others BIOQLOGY—before I go north.
I have written a large part of said article, and it would facilitate
my operation immensely if what is done were set up and I had
two or three proofs, one for Dyer, who is to do part of the
article.

Now, if I send the MS. to North Bridge will you swear by
your gods (0O—I—3—I1 or any greater number as the case may
be) that I shall have a proof swiftly and not be kept waiting for
weeks till the whole thing has got cold, and I am at something
else a hundred miles away from Biology ?

If not I will keep the MS. till it is all done, and you know
what that means.—Ever yours very truly,

T. H. Huxtey.

CraGsIDE, MorPETH, Aug. 12, 1875.

My pear Baynes—The remainder of the proof of “ Biol-
ogy” is posted to-day—‘ Praise de Lor’.”

I have a dim recollection of having been led by your soft
and insinuating ways to say that I would think (only think)
about some other article. What the deuce was it?

I have told the Royal Society people to send you a list of
Fellows, addressed to Black’s.

We have had here what may be called bad weather for Eng-
land, but it has been far better than the best Edinburgh weather
known to my experience.

All my friends are out committing grouse-murder. As a
vivisection Commissioner I did not think I could properly ac-
company them.—Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.
486 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXX

CRAGSIDE, MoRPETH, Aug. 24, 1875.

My pear Baynes—I think is like enough to do the
“ Coelenterata” well if you can make sure of his doing it at all.
He is a man of really great knowledge of the literature of
Zoology, and if it had not been for the accident of being a pro-
crastinating impracticable ass, he could have been a distin-
guished man. But he is a sort of Balaam-Centaur with the
asinine stronger than the prophetic moiety.

I should be disposed to try him, nevertheless.

I don’t think I have had final revise of Biology yet.

I do not know that “ Coelenterata” is Lankester’s specialty.
However, he is sure to do it well if he takes it up—Ever yours
very faithfully, T. H. Huxzey.

 

4 MARLBOROUGH PLAcE, N.W., Oct. 12, 1875.

My pear Baynes—Do you remember my telling you that I
should before long be publishing a book, of which general con-
siderations on Biology would form a part, and that I should
have to go over the same ground as in the article for the Ency-
clopzdia ?

Well, that prediction is about to be verified, and I want to
know what I am to do.

You see, as I am neither dealing with Theology, nor History,
nor Criticism, I can’t take a fresh departure and say something
entirely different from what I have just written.

On the other hand, if I republish what stands in the article,
the Encyclopedia very naturally growls.

What do the sweetest of Editors and the most liberal of
Proprietors say ought to be done under the circumstances?

I pause for a reply.

I have carried about Stanley’s* note in my pocket-book
until I am sorry to say the flyleaf has become hideously
stained.

The wife and daughters could make nothing of it, but I,
accustomed to the MS. of certain correspondents, have no doubt
as to the fourth word of the second sentence. It is “ Canter-
bury.” + Nothing can be plainer.

Hoping the solution is entirely satisfactory,—Believe me,
ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

 

* The Dean’s handwriting was proverbial.
+ The writing of this word is carefully slurred until it is almost as
illegible as the original.
1877 LETTERS TO BAYNES 487

Though he refused to undertake the article on Distri-
bution, he managed to write that on Evolution (republished
in Collected Essays, ii. 187). Thus on July 28, 1877, he
writes :— t

I ought to do “ Evolution,” but I mightn’t and I shouldn't.
Don't see how it is practicable to do justice to it with the time
at my disposal, though I really should like to do it, and I am
at my wits’ end to think of anybody who can be trusted with it.

Perhaps something may turn up, and if so I will let you
know.

The something in the way of more time did turn up by
dint of extra pressure, and the article got written in the
course of the autumn, as appears from the following of
December 29, 1877 :—

I send you the promised skeleton (with a good deal of the
flesh) of Evolution. It is costing me infinite labour in the way
of reading, but I am glad to be obliged to do the work, which
will be a curious and instructive chapter in the history of Sci-
ence.

The lawyer-like faculty of putting aside a subject when
done with, which is indicated in the letter of March 16,
1875, reappears in the following :—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLAcE, N.W., AZarch 18, 1878.

My pear Baynes—Your printers are the worst species of
that diabolic genus I know of. It is at least a month since I
sent them a revise of “ Evolution” by no means finished, and
from that time to this I have had nothing from them.

I shall forget all about the subject, and then at the last
moment they will send me a revise in a great hurry, and expect
it back by return of post.

But if they get it, may I go to their Father !—Ever yours
very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

Later on, the pressure of work again forbade him to
undertake further articles on Harvey, Hunter, and Instinct.

I am sorry to say that my hands are full, and I have sworn
by as many gods as Hume has left me, to undertake nothing
more for a long while beyond what I am already pledged to do,
a small book anent Harvey being one of these things.

32
488 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXX

And on June 9 :—

After nine days’ meditation (directed exclusively to the
Harvey and Hunter question) I am not any “ forrarder,” as the
farmer said after his third bottle of Gladstone claret. So per-
haps I had better mention the fact. I am very glad you have
limed Flower for “ Mammalia” and “ Horse ’”’—nobody could
be better.

4 MarporouGH Pace, N.W., ely 1, 1879.

My pear Baynes—On Thursday last I sought for you at
the Athenzum in the middle of the day, and told them to let me
know if you came in in the evening when I was there again.
But I doubt not you were plunged in dissipation.

My demonstrator Parker showed me to-day a letter he had
received from Black’s, asking him to do anything in the small
Zoology way between H and L.

He is a modest man, and so didn’t ask what the H——L he
was to do, but he looked it.

Will you enlighten him or me, and I will convey the in-
formation on?

I had another daughter married yesterday. She was a great
pet and it is very hard lines on father and mother. The only
consolation is that she has married a right good fellow, John
Collier the artist—Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

July 19, 1879.—Many thanks for your and Mrs. Baynes’
congratulations. I am very well content with my son-in-law,
and have almost forgiven him for carrying off one of my pets,
which shows a Christian spirit hardly to be expected of me.

SouTH KeEnsincTon, July 2, 1880.
My veaR Baynes—I have been thinking over the matter of
Instinct, and have come to the conclusion that I dare not under
take anything fresh.
There is an address at Birmingham in the autumn iments
large, and ghosts of unfinished work flitter threateningly—Ever
yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxzey.
CHAPTER XXXI
1876

THE year 1876 was again a busy one, almost as busy as
any that went before. As in 1875, his London work was
cut in two by a course of lectures in Edinburgh, and sittings
of the Royal Commission on Scottish Universities, and fur-
thermore, by a trip to America in his summer vacation.

In the winter and early spring he gave his usual lectures
at South Kensington; a course to working men “ On the
Evidence as to the Origin of Existing Vertebrated Animals,”
from February to April (Nature, vols. xiii. and xiv.); a lec-
ture at the Royal Institution (January 28) “ On the Border
. Territory between the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms ”
(Coll. Essays, viii. 170); and another at Glasgow (February
15) “ On the Teleology and Morphology of the Hand.”

In this lecture, which he never found time to get into
final shape for publication, but which was substantially re-
peated at the Working Men’s College in 1878, he touched
upon one of the philosophic aspects of the theory of evolu-
tion, namely, how far is it consistent with the argument
from design?

Granting provisionally the force of Paley’s argument in
individual cases of adaptation, and illustrating it by the hand
and its representative in various of the Mammalia, he pro-
ceeds to show by the facts of morphology that the argu-
ment, as commonly stated, fails ; that each mechanism, each
animal, was not specially made to suit the particular purpose
we find it serving, but was developed from a single com-
mon type. Yet in a limited and special sense he finds
teleology to be not inconsistent with morphology. The

489
490 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXI

two sets of facts flow from a common cause, evolution.
Descent by modification accounts for similarity of structure ;
the process of gradual adaptation to conditions accounts for
the existing adaptation to purpose. To be a teleologist
and yet accept evolution it is only necessary “to suppose
that the original plan was sketched out—that the purpose
was foreshadowed in the-molecular arrangements out of
which the animals have come.”

This was no new view of his. While, ever since his
first review of the Origin in 1859 (Coll. Ess. ii. 6), he had
declared the commoner and coarser forms of teleology to
find their most formidable opponent in the theory of evo-
lution, and in 1869, addressing the Geological Society, had
spoken of “those final causes, have been named barren
virgins, but which might be more fitly termed the hetaire
of philosophy, so constantly have they led men astray”
(ib. viii. 80; cp. ii. 21, 36), he had, in his Criticism of the
Origin (1864, ii. 86), and the Genealogy of Animals (1869,
ii. 109, $qq.), shown “how perhaps the most remarkable
service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Dar-
win is the reconciliation of teleology and morphology, and
the explanation of the facts of both which his views offer

. the wider teleology, which is actually based upon the
fundamental proposition of evolution.”

His note-book shows that he was busy with Reptilia
from Elgin and from India; and with his Manual of In-
vertebrate Anatomy, which was published the next year;
while he refused to undertake a course of ten lectures at
the Royal Institution, saying that he had already too much
other work to do, and would have no time for original
work.

About this time, also, in answer to a request from a
believer in miracles, ‘‘ that those who fail to perceive the
cogency of the evidence by which the occurrence of miracles
is supported, should not confine themselves to the discussion
of general principles, but should grapple with some par-
ticular case of an alleged miracle,” he read before the Meta-
physical Society a paper dealing with the evidence for the
miracle of the resurrection. (See p. 342.)
1876 VISIT TO EDINBURGH 491

Some friends wished him to publish the paper as a con-
tribution to criticism; but his own doubts as to the oppor-
tuneness of so doing were confirmed by a letter from Mr.
John Morley, then editor of the Fortnightly Review, to which
he replied (January 18) :—

To say truth, most of the considerations you put so forcibly
had passed through my mind—but one always suspects oneself
of cowardice when one’s own interests may be affected.

At the beginning of May he went to Edinburgh. He
writes home on May 8:—

I am in hopes of being left to myself this time, as nobody
has called but Sir Alexander Grant the Principal, Crum Brown,
whom I met in the street just now, and Lister, who has a patient
in the house. I have been getting through an enormous quan-
tity of reading, some tough monographs that I brought with me,
the first volume of Forster’s Life of Swift, Goodsir’s Life, and a
couple of novels of George Sand, with a trifle of Paul Heyse.
You should read George Sand’s Césarine Dietrich and La Mare
au Diable that I have just finished. She is bigger than George
Eliot, more flexible, a more thorough artist. It is a queer thing,
by the way, that I have never read Consuelo. I shall get it here.
When I come back from my lecture I like to rest for an hour
or two over a good story. It freshens me wonderfully.

However, social Edinburgh did not leave him long to
himself, but though he might thus lose something of work-
ing time, this loss was counterbalanced by the dispelling
of some of the fits of depression which still assailed him
from time to time.

On May 25 he writes :—

The General Assembly is sitting now, and I thought I would
look in. It was very crowded and I had to stand, so I was soon
spied out and invited to sit beside the Lord High Commissioner,
who represents the Crown in the Assembly, and there I heard an
ecclesiastical row about whether a certain church should be
allowed to have a cover with IHS on the Communion Table or
not. After three hours’ discussion the IHSers were beaten. I
was introduced to the Commissioner Lord Galloway, and asked
to dine to-night. So I felt bound to go to the special levee at
Holyrood with my colleagues this morning, and I shall have to
go to my Lady Galloway’s reception in honour of the Queen’s
492 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXI

birthday to-morrow. Luckily there will* be no more of it.
Vanity of Vanities! Saturday afternoon I go out to Lord
Young’s place to spend Sunday. I have been in rather a hypo-
chondriacal state of mind, and I will see if this course of medi-
cine will drive the seven devils out.

One of the chief friendships which sprang from this
residence in Edinburgh was that with Dr. (afterwards Sir
John) Skelton, widely known under his literary pseudonym
of “ Shirley.” A civil servant as well as a man of letters,
he united practical life with literature, a combination that
appealed particularly to Huxley, so that he was a constant
visitor at Dr. Skelton’s picturesque house, the Hermitage
of Braid, near Edinburgh. A number of letters addressed
to Skelton from 1875 to 1891 show that with him Huxley
felt the stimulus of an appreciative correspondent.

4 MELVILLE STREET, EDINBURGH, /June 23, 1876.

My pear SKELTON—I do not understand how it is that your
note has been so long in reaching me; but I hasten to repel the
libellous insinuation that I have vowed a vow against dining at
the Hermitage.

I wish I could support that repudiation by at once accepting
your invitation for Saturday or Sunday, but my Saturdays and
Sundays are mortgaged to one or other of your judges (good
judges, obviously).

Shall you be at home on Monday or Tuesday? If so, I
would put on a kilt (to be as little dressed as possible), and find
my way out and back; happily improving my mind on the
journey with the tracts you mention—Ever yours very faith-
fully, T. H. Huxtey.

4 MELVILLE STREET, EDINBURGH, July 1, 1876.
My pear SKELTON—Very many thanks for the copy of the
Comedy of the Noctes, which reached me two or three days ago.
Turning over the pages I came upon the Shepherd’s “ Terrible
Journey of Timbuctoo,” which I enjoyed as much as when I first
read it thirty odd years ago.—Ever yours very faithfully,
T. H. Huxzey.
On June 23 he writes home :—

Did you read Gilman’s note asking me to give the inaugural
discourse at the Johns Hopkins University, and offering £100 on
1876 VISITS AMERICA 493

the part of the trustees? I am minded to do it on our way back
from the south, but don’t much like taking money for the per-
formance. Tell me what you think about this at once, as I must
reply.

This visit to America had been under discussion for some
time. It is mentioned as a possibility in a letter to Darwin
two years before. Early in 1876 Mr. Frederic Harrison
was commissioned by an American correspondent—who, by
the way, had named his son Thomas Huxley—to give my
father the following message :—‘ The whole nation is elec-
trified by the announcement that Professor Huxley is to
visit us next fall. We will make infinitely more of him than
we did of the Prince of Wales and his retinue of lords and
dukes.” Certainly the people of the States gave him an
enthusiastic welcome; his writings had made him known
far and wide; as the manager of the Californian department
at the Philadelphia Exhibition told him, the very miners of
California read his books over their camp fires; and his
visit was so far like a royal progress, that unless he entered
a city disguised under the name of Jones or Smith, he was
liable not merely to be interviewed, but to be called upon
to “address a few words” to the citizens.

Leaving their family under the hospitable care of Sir W.
and Lady Armstrong at Cragside, my father and mother
started on July 27 on board the Germanic, reaching New
York on August 5. My father sometimes would refer, half
jestingly, to the trip as his second honeymoon, when, for
the first time in twenty years, he and my mother set forth
by themselves, free from all family cares. And indeed, there
was the underlying resemblance that this too came at the
end of a period of struggle to attain, and marked the be-
ginning of a more settled period. His reception in America
may be said to emphasise his definite establishment in the
first rank of English thinkers. It was a signal testimony
to the wide extent of his influence, hardly suspected, in-
deed, by himself; an influence due above all to the fact that
he did not allow his studies to stand apart from the moving
problems of existence, but brought the new and regener-
ating ideas into contact with life at every point, and that his
494 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXI

championship of the new doctrines had at the same time
been a championship of freedom and sincerity in thought
and word against shams and self-deceptions of every kind.
It was not so much the preacher of new doctrines who was
welcomed, as the apostle of veracity—not so much the stu-
dent of science as the teacher of men.

Moreover, another sentiment coloured this holiday visit.
He was to see again the beloved sister of his boyhood. She
had always prophesied his success, and now after thirty
years her prophecy was fulfilled by his coming, and, in-
deed, exceeded by the manner of it.

Mr. Smalley, then London correspondent of the New
York Tribune, was a fellow passenger of his on board the
Germanic, and tells an interesting anecdote of him :—

Mr. Huxley stood on the deck of the Germanic as she
steamed up the harbour of New York, and he enjoyed to the
full that marvellous panorama. At all times he was on intimate
terms with Nature and also with the joint work of Nature
and Man; Man’s Place in Nature being to him interesting from
more points of view than one. As we drew near the city—
this was in 1876, you will remember—he asked what were the
tall tower and tall building with a cupola, then the two most
conspicuous objects. I told him the Tribune and the Western
Union Telegraph buildings. “Ah,” he said, “that is interest-
ing; that is American. In the Old World the first things you see
as you approach a great city are steeples; here you see, first,
centres of intelligence.” Next to those the tug-boats seemed to
attract him as they tore fiercely up and down and across the
bay. He looked long at them and finally said, “If I were not a
man I think I should like to be a tug.” They seemed to him
the condensation and complete expression of the energy and
force in which he delighted.

The personal welcome he received from the friends he
visited was of the warmest. On the arrival of the Germanic
the travellers were met by Mr. Appleton the publisher, and
carried off to his country house at Riverdale. While his
wife was taken to Saratoga to see what an American summer
resort was like, he himself went on the 9th to New Haven,
to inspect the fossils at Yale College, collected from the
Tertiary deposits of the Far West by Professor Marsh, with
1876 AT YALE 495

great labour and sometimes at the risk of his scalp. Pro-
fessor Marsh told me how he took him to the University,
and proposed to begin by showing him over the buildings.
He refused. ‘Show me what you have got inside them;
I can see plenty of bricks and mortar in my own country.”
So they went straight to the fossils, and as Professor Marsh
writes :—*

One of Huxley’s lectures in New York was to be on the
genealogy of the horse, a subject which he had already written
about, based entirely upon European specimens. My own ex-
plorations had led me to conclusions quite different from his,
and my specimens seemed to me to prove conclusively that the
horse originated in the New World and not in the Old, and that
its genealogy must be worked out here. With some hesitation,
I laid the whole matter frankly before Huxley, and he spent
nearly two days going over my specimens with me, and testing
each point I made.

At each inquiry, whether he had a specimen to illustrate
such and such a point or exemplify a transition from earlier
and less specialised forms to later and more specialised ones,
Professor Marsh would simply turn to his assistant and bid
him fetch box number so and so, until Huxley turned upon
him and said, “I believe you are a magician; whatever I
want, you just conjure it up.”

The upshot of this examination was that he recast a
great part of what he meant to say at New York. When he
had seen the specimens, and thoroughly weighed their im-
port, continues Professor. Marsh—

He then informed me that all this was new to him, and that
my facts demonstrated the evolution of the horse beyond ques-
tion, and for the first time indicated the direct line of descent
of an existing animal. With the generosity of true greatness,
he gave up his own opinions in the face of new truth, and took
my conclusions as the basis of his famous New York lecture
on the horse. He urged me to prepare without delay a volume
on the genealogy of the horse, based upon the specimens I had
shown him. This I promised, but other work and new duties
have thus far prevented.

 

* American Journal of Science, vol. 1. August 1895.
496 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXXI

A letter to his wife describes his visit to Yale :—

My excellent host met me at the station, and seems as if he
could not make enough of me. I am installed in apartments
which were occupied by his uncle, the millionaire Peabody, and
am as quiet as if I were in my own house. We have had a pre-
liminary canter over the fossils, and I have seen some things
which were worth all the journey across.

This is the most charmingly picturesque town, with the
streets lined by avenues of elm trees which meet overhead. I
have never seen anything like it, and you must come and look
at it. There is fossil work enough to occupy me till the end
of the week, and I have arranged to go to Springfield on Mon-
day to examine the famous footprints of the Connecticut Valley.

The Governor has called upon me, and I shall have to go
and do pretty-behaved chez lui to-morrow. An application has
come for an autograph, but I have not been interviewed !

This immunity, however, did not last long. He appears
to have been caught by the interviewer the next day, for he
writes on the 11th :—

I have not seen the notice in the World you speak of. You
will be amused at the article written by the interviewer. He was
evidently surprised to meet with so little of the “highfalutin ”
philosopher in me, and says I am “affable” and of “the com-
mercial or mercantile” type. That is something I did not know,
and I am rather proud of it. We may be rich yet.

As to his work at Yale Museum, he writes in the same
letter :—

.

We are hard at work still. Breakfast at 8.30—go over to the
Museum with Marsh at 9 or 10—work till 1.30—dine—go back
to Museum to work till 6. Then Marsh takes me for a drive to
see the views about the town, and back to tea about half-past
eight. He is a wonderfully good fellow, full of fun and stories
about his Western adventures, and the collection of fossils is
the most wonderful thing I ever saw. I wish I could spare
three weeks instead of one to study it.

To-morrow evening we are to have a dinner by way of
winding up, and he has asked a lot of notables to meet me. I
‘assure you I am being “ made of,” as I thought nobody but the
little wife was foolish enough to do.
1876 LETTERS FROM NEWPORT 497

On the 16th he left to join the “ Alexander Agassiz” at
Newport, whence he wrote the following letters :—

Newport, Aug. 17, 1876.
My pear Marsu—TI really cannot say how much I enjoyed
my visit to New Haven. My recollections are sorting them-
selves out by degrees and I find how rich my store is. The
more I think of it the more clear it is that your great work is
the settlement of the pedigree of the horse.
My wife joins with me in kind regards. I am yours very
faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

To Mr. CLARENCE KING

NEwportT, Aug. 19, 1876.

My bear Sir—In accordance with your wish, I very will-
ingly put into writing the substance of the opinion as to the
importance of Professor Marsh’s collection of fossils which I
expressed to you yesterday. As you are aware, I devoted four
or five days to the examination of this collection, and was en-
abled by Prof. Marsh’s kindness to obtain a fair conception of
the whole.

I am disposed to think that whether we regard the abun-
dance of material, the number of complete skeletons of the vari-
ous species, or the extent of geological time covered by the
collection, which I had the good fortune to see at New Haven,
there is no collection of fossil vertebrates in existence, which
can be compared with it. I say this without forgetting Mont-
martre, Siwalik, or Pikermi—and I think that I am quite safe
in adding that no collection which has been hitherto formed
approaches that made by Professor Marsh, in the completeness
of the chain of evidence by which certain existing mammals
are connected with their older tertiary ancestry.

It is of the highest importance to the progress of Biological
Science that the publication of this evidence, accompanied by
illustrations of such fulness as to enable palzontologists to form
their own judgment as to its value, should take place without
delay.—I am yours very faithfully,

Tuomas H. Huxtey.

Breaking their journey at Boston, they went from
Newport to Petersham, in the highlands of Worcester
County, where they were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. John
498 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXI

Fiske, at their summer home. Among the other visitors
were the eminent musical composer Mr. Paine, the poet
Cranch, and daughters of Hawthorne and Longfellow, so
that they found themselves in the midst of a particularly
cheerful and delightful party. From Petersham they pro-
ceeded to Buffalo, the meeting-place that year of the Ameri-
can Association for the Advancement of Science, which my
father had promised to attend. Here they stayed with Mr.
Marshall, a leading lawyer, who afterwards visited them in
England.

A week was spent at Niagara, partly in making holiday,
partly in shaping the lectures which had to be delivered at
the end of the trip. As to the impression made upon him
by the Falls—an experience which, it is generally presumed,
every traveller is bound to. record—I may note that after
the first disappointment at their appearance, inevitable
wherever the height of a waterfall is less than the breadth,
he found in them an inexhaustible charm and fascination.
As in duty bound, he, with my mother, completed his experi-
ences by going under the wall of waters to the “ Cave of the
Winds.” But of all things nothing pleased him more than
to sit of an evening by the edge of the river, and through
the roar of the cataract to listen for the under-sound of the
beaten stones grinding together at its foot.

Leaving Niagara on September 2, they travelled to Cin-
cinnati, a 20-hours’ journey, where they rested a day; on the
4th another 10 hours took them to Nashville, where they
were to meet his sister, Mrs. Scott. Though 11 years his
senior, she maintained her vigour and brightness undimmed,
as indeed she did to the end of her life, surviving him by
a few weeks. As she now stood on the platform at Nash-
ville, Mrs. Huxley, who had never seen her, picked her out
from among all the people by her piercing black eyes, so
like those of her mother as described in the Autobiograph-
ical sketch (Coll. Ess. i.).

Nashville, her son’s home, had been chosen as the meet-
ing-place by Mrs. Scott, because it was not so far south nor
so hot as Montgomery, where she was then living. Never-
theless in Tennessee the heat of the American summer was
1876 ADDRESS AT BALTIMORE ~ 499

very trying, and the good people of the town further drew
upon the too limited opportunities of their guest's brief visit
by sending a formal deputation to beg that he would either
deliver an address, or be entertained at a public dinner, or
“state his views ’—to an interviewer I suppose. He could
not well refuse one of the alternatives; and the greater part
of one day was spent in preparing a short address on the
geology of Tennessee, which was delivered on the evening
of September 7. He spoke for twenty minutes, but had
scarcely any voice, which was not to be wondered at, as he
was so tired that he had kept his room the whole day, while
his wife received the endless string of callers.

The next day they returned to Cincinnati; and on the
gth went on to Baltimore, where they stayed with Mr.
Garrett, then President of the Baltimore and Ohio railway.

The Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, for which
he was to deliver the opening address, had been instituted
by its founder on a novel basis. It was devoted to post-
graduate study; the professors and lecturers received in-
comes entirely independent of the pupils they taught. Men
came to study for the sake of learning, not for the sake
of passing some future examination. The endowment was
devoted in the first place to the furtherance of research;
the erection of buildings was put into the background. “ It
has been my fate,” commented Huxley, “to see great edu-
cational funds fossilise into mere bricks and mortar in the
petrifying springs of architecture, with nothing left to work
them. A great warrior is said to have made a desert and
called it peace. Trustees have sometimes made a palace
and called it a university.”

Half the fortune of the founder had gone to this univer-
sity; the other half to the foundation of a great and splen-
didly equipped hospital for Baltimore. This was the reason
why the discussion of medical training occupies fully half of
the address upon the general principles of education, in
which, indeed, lies the heart of his message to America, a
message already delivered to the old country, but specially
appropriate for the new nation developing so rapidly in size
and physical resources.
500 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXI

I cannot say. that I am in the slightest degree impressed by
your bigness or your material resources, as such. Size is not
grandeur, territory does not make a nation. The great issue,
about which hangs a true sublimity, and the terror of overhang-
ing fate, is, what are you going to do with all these things? ...

The one condition of success, your sole safeguard, is the
moral worth and intellectual clearness of the individual citizen.
Education cannot give these, but it can cherish them and bring
them to the front in whatever station of society they are to be
found, and the universities ought to be and may be, the fortresses
of the higher life of the nation.

This address was delivered under circumstances of pecul-
iar difficulty. The day before, an expedition had been made
to Washington, from which Huxley returned very tired,
only to be told that he was to attend a formal dinner and
reception the same evening. “I don’t know how I shall
stand it,” he remarked. Going to his room, he snatched an
hour or two of rest, but was then called upon to finish his
address before going out. It seems that it had to be ready
for simultaneous publication in the New York papers. Now
the lecture was not written out; it was to be given from
notes only. So he had to deliver it im extenso to the re-
porter, who took it down in shorthand, promising to let him
have a longhand copy in good time the next morning. It
did not come till the last moment. Glancing at it on his
way to the lecture theatre, he discovered to his horror that
it was written upon “ flimsy ” from which he would not be
able to read it with any success. He wisely gave up the
attempt, and made up his mind to deliver the lecture as
best he could from memory. The lecture as delivered was
very nearly the same as that which he had dictated the
night before, but with some curious discrepancies between
the two accounts, which, he used to say, occurring as they
did in versions both purporting to have been taken down
from his lips, might well lead the ingenious critic of the
future to pronounce them both spurious, and to declare that
the pretended original was never delivered under the cir-
cumstances alleged.* ‘

 

* Cp. the incident at Belfast, p. 444.
1876 LECTURES AT NEW YORK 501

There was an audience of some 2,000, and I am told that
when he began to speak of the time that would come when
they too would experience the dangers of over-population
and poverty in their midst, and would then understand what
Europe had to contend with more fully than they did, a
pin could have been heard to drop. At the end of the lec-
ture, amid the enthusiastic applause of the crowd, he made
his way to the front of the box where his hosts and their
party were, and received their warm congratulations. But
he missed one voice amongst them, and turning to where
his wife sat in silent triumph almost beyond speech, he said,
“ And have you no word for me?” then, himself also deeply
moved, stooped down and kissed her.

This address. was delivered on Tuesday, September 12.
On the 14th he went to Philadelphia, and on the 15th to
New York, where he delivered his three lectures on Evo-
lution on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, September 18,
20, and 22.

These lectures are very good examples of the skill with
which he could present a complicated subject in a simple
form, the subject seeming to unroll itself by the force of its
own naked logic, and carrying conviction the further
through the simplicity of its presentation. Indeed, an un-
friendly critic once paid him an unintended compliment,
when trying to make out that he was no great speaker;
that all he did was to set some interesting theory unadorned
before his audience, when such success as he attained was
due to the compelling nature of the subject itself.

Since his earlier lectures to the public on evolution, the
paleontological evidences had been accumulating; the case
could be stated without some of the reservations of former
days; and he brings forward two telling instances in con-
siderable detail, the one showing how the gulf between two
such apparently distinct groups as Birds and Reptiles is
bridged over by ancient fossils intermediate in form; the
other illustrating from Professor Marsh’s new collections
the lineal descent of the specialised Horse from the more
general type of quadruped.

The farthest back of these was a creature with four toes
502 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXI

on the front limb and three on the hind limb. Judging
from the completeness of the series or forms so far, he
ventured to indulge in a prophecy.

Thus, thanks to these important researches, it has become
evident that, so far as our present knowledge extends, the his-
tory of the horse-type is exactly and precisely that which could
have been predicted from a knowledge of the principles of
evolution. And the knowledge we now possess justifies us com-
pletely in the anticipation that when the still lower Eocene
deposits, and those which belong to the Cretaceous epoch, have
yielded up their remains of ancestral equine animals, we shall
find, first, a form with four complete toes and a rudiment of the
innermost or first digit in front, with, probably, a rudiment of
the fifth digit in the hind foot; while, in still older forms, the
series of the digits will be more and more complete, until we
come to the five-toed animals, in which, if the doctrine of evo-
lution is well founded, the whole series must have taken its
origin. :

Seldom has prophecy been sooner fulfilled. Within two
months, Professor Marsh had discovered a new genus of
equine mammals, Eohippus, from the lowest Eocene de-
posits of the West, which corresponds very nearly to the
description given above.

He continues :—

That is what I mean by demonstrative evidence of evolu-
tion. An inductive hypothesis is said to be demonstrated when
the facts are shown to be in entire accordance with it. If that is
not scientific proof, there are no merely inductive conclusions
which can be said to be proved. And the doctrine of evolution,
at the present time, rests upon exactly as secure a foundation
as the Copernican theory of the motions of the heavenly bodies
did at the time of its promulgation. Its logical basis is of pre-
cisely the same character—the coincidence of the observed facts
with theoretical requirements.

He left New York on September 23. “TI had a very
pleasant trip in Yankee-land,” he writes to Professor Baynes,
“and did not give utterance to a good deal that I am re-
ported to have said there.” He reached England in good
time for the beginning of his autumn lectures, and his
1876 LETTER TO PROFESSOR MARSH 503

ordinary busy life absorbed him again. He did not fail to
give his London audiences the results of the recent dis-
coveries in American paleontology, and on December 4
delivered a lecture at the London Institution, “ On Recent
Additions to the Knowledge of the Pedigree of the Horse.”
In connection with this he writes to Professor Marsh :—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLAcE, Lonpon, N.W.,
Dec. 27, 1876.

My pear Marsu—lI hope you do not think it remiss of me
that I have not written to you since my return, but you will
understand that I plunged into a coil of work, and will forgive
me. But I do not mean to let the year slip away without sending
you all our good wishes for its successor—which I hope will not
vanish without seeing you among us.

I blew your trumpet the other day at the London Institution
in a lecture about the Horse question. I did not know then that
you had got another step back as I see you have by the note to
my last lecture, which Youmans has just sent me.

I must thank you very heartily for the pains you have taken
over the woodcuts of the lectures. It is a great improvement
to have the patterns of the grinders.

I have promised to give a lecture at the Royal Institution
on the 2Ist January next, and I am thinking of discoursing on
the Birds with teeth. Have you anything new to tell on that
subject? I have implicit faith in the inexhaustibility of the
contents of those boxes.

Our voyage home was not so successful as that out. The
weather was cold and I got a chill which laid me up for several
days, in fact I was not well for some weeks after my return.
But I am vigorous again now.

Pray remember me kindly to all New Haven friends. My
wife joins with me in kindest regards and good wishes for the
new year. “Tell him we expect to see him next year.”—I am,
yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

On December 16 he delivered a lecture “On the Study
of Biology,” in connection with the Loan Collection of
Scientific Apparatus at South Kensington (Coll. Essays, iii.
262), dealing with the origin of the name Biology, its re-
lation to Sociology— we have allowed that province of
Biology to become autonomous; but I should like you to

33
504 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXI

recollect that this is a sacrifice, and that you should not be
surprised ‘if it occasionally happens that you see a biologist
apparently trespassing in the region of philosophy or poli-
tics; or meddling with human education; because, after all,
that is a part of his kingdom which he has only volun-
tarily forsaken ”—how to learn biology, the use of Muse-
ums, and above all, the utility of biology, as helping to give
right ideas in this world, which “ is after all, absolutely gov-
erned by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most
hypothetical ideas.”

This lecture on Biology was first published among the
American Addresses in 1877.

It was about this time that an extremely Broad Church
divine was endeavouring to obtain the signatures of men
of science to a document he had drawn up protesting
against certain orthodox doctrines. Huxley, however, re-
fused to sign the protest, and wrote the following letter of
explanation, a copy of which he sent to Mr. Darwin.

Nov, 18, 1876.

DEAR Si1r—I have read the “ Protest,” with a copy of which
you have favoured me, and as you wish that I should do so, I
will trouble you with a brief statement of my reasons for my
inability to sign it.

I object to clause 2 on the ground long since taken by
Hume that the order of the universe such as we observe it
to be, furnishes us with the only data upon which we can
base any conclusion as to the character of the originator
thereof. :

As a matter of fact, men sin, and the consequences of their
sins affect endless generations of their progeny. Men are
tempted, men are punished for the sins of others without merit
or demerit of their own; and they are tormented for their evil
deeds as long as their consciousness lasts.

The theological doctrines to which you refer, therefore, are
simply extensions of generalisations as well based as any in
physical science. Very likely they are illegitimate extensions of
these generalisations, but that does not make them wrong in
principle.

And I should consider it waste of time to “ protest” against
that which is.
1876 THE HALF-AND-HALF SCHOOL 505

As regards No. 3 I find that as a matter of experience,
erroneous beliefs are punished, and right beliefs are rewarded
—though very often the erroneous belief is based upon a more
conscientious study of the facts than the right belief. I do not
see why this should not be as true of theological beliefs as any
others. And as I said before, I do not care to protest against
that which is.

Many thanks for your congratulations. My tour was very
pleasant and taught me a good deal.—I am yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

P.S.—You are at liberty to make what use you please of
this letter.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Nov. 19, 1876.

My pear Darwin—I confess I have less sympathy with the
half-and-half sentimental school which he represents than I
have with thoroughgoing orthodoxy.

If we are to assume that anybody has designedly set this
wonderful universe going, it is perfectly clear to me that he is
no more entirely benevolent and just in any intelligible sense
of the words, than that he is malevolent and unjust. Infinite
benevolence need not have invented pain and sorrow at all—
infinite malevolence would very easily have deprived us of the
large measure of content and happiness that falls to our lot.
After all, Butler’s ‘“ Analogy” is unassailable, and there is
nothing in theological dogmas more contradictory to our moral
sense, than is to be found in the facts of nature. From which,
however, the Bishop’s conclusion that the dogmas are true
doesn’t follow.—With best remembrances to Mrs. Darwin, ever
yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

This incident suggests the story of a retort he once
made upon what he considered an unseasonable protest in
church, a story which exemplifies, by the way, his strong
sense of the decencies of life, appearing elsewhere in his
constant respect for the ordinary conventions and his dislike
for mere Bohemianism as such.

Once in a country house he was sitting at dinner next
to his hostess, a lady who, as will sometimes happen, liked
to play the part of Lady Arbitress of the whole neighbour-
hood. She told him how much she disapproved of the
Athanasian Creed, and described how she had risen and left
506 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXI

the village church when the parson began to read it; and
thinking to gain my father’s assent, she turned to him and
said graciously, “ Now, Mr. Huxley, don’t you think I was
quite right to mark my disapproval?”

“My dear Lady ” he replied, “I should as soon
think of rising and leaving your table because I disapproved
of one of the entrées,”

 
CHAPTER XXXII

1877

In this year he delivered lectures and addresses on the
Geological History of Birds, at the Zoological Society’s
Gardens, June 7; on “ Starfishes and their Allies,” at the
Royal Institution, March 7; at the London Institution,
Dec. 17, on Belemnites (a subject on which he had written
in 1864, and which was doubtless suggested anew by his
autumn holiday at Whitby, where the Lias cliffs are full of
these fossils); at the Anthropological Conference, May 22,
on Elementary Instruction in Physiology (Coll. Ess. iii. 294),
with special reference to the recent legislation as to experi-
ments on living animals; and on Technical Education to the
Working Men’s Club and Institute, December 1 (Coll. Ess.
iii, 404): a perilous subject, indeed, considering, as he re-
marks, that “any candid observer of the phenomena of
modern society will readily admit that bores must be classed
among the enemies of the human race; and a little con-
sideration will probably lead him to the further admission,
that no species of that extensive genus of noxious creatures
is more objectionable than the educational bore. . . . In the
course of the last ten years, to go back no farther, I am
afraid to say how often I have ventured to speak of edu-
cation ; indeed, the only part of this wide region into which,
as yet, I have not adventured, is that into which I propose
to intrude to-day.”

The choice of subject for this address was connected
with a larger campaign for the establishment of technical
education on a proper footing, which began with his work
on the School Board, or was this year brought prominently

5°07
508 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXII

before the public by another address delivered at the Society
of Arts. The Clothworkers Company had already been as-
sisting the Society of Arts in their efforts for the spread
of technical education ; and in July 1877 a special committee
of the Guilds applied to him, amongst half a dozen others,
to furnish them with a report as to the objects and methods
of a scheme of technical education. This paper fills sixteen
pages in the Report of the Livery Companies’ Committee
for 1878. The fundamental principles on which he bases
his practical recommendations are contained in the following
paragraph :—

It appears to me that if every person who is engaged in an
industry had access to instruction in the scientific principles on
which that industry is based; in the mode of applying these
principles to practice; in the actual use of the means and appli-
ances employed; in the language of the people who know as
much about the matter as we do ourselves; and lastly, in the
art of keeping accounts, Technical Education would have done
all that can be required of it.

And his suggestion about buildings was at once adopted
by the Committee, namely, that they should be erected at a
future date, regard being had primarily rather to what is
wanted in the inside than what will look well from the
outside.

Now the Guilds formed a very proper body to set such
a scheme on foot, because only such wealthy and influential
members of the first mercantile city in the world could
afford to let themselves be despised and jeered at for pro-
fessing to teach English manufacturers and English mer-
chants that they needed to be taught; and to spend £25,000
a year towards that end for some time without apparent
result.

That they eventually succeeded, is due no little to the
careful plans drawn out by Huxley. He may be described
as “ really the engineer of the City and Guilds Institute; for
without his advice,” declared one of the leading members,
“we should not have known what to have done.”

At the same time he warned them against indiscriminate
zeal; “though under-instruction is a bad thing, it is not
1877 TECHNICAL EDUCATION 509

impossible that over-instruction may be worse.” The aim of
the Livery Companies should specially be to aid the practical
teaching of science, so that at bottom the question turns
mainly on the supply of teachers.

On December 11, 1879, he found a further opportu-
nity of urging the cause of Technical Education. A lecture
on Apprenticeships was delivered before the Society of Arts
by Professor Silvanus Thompson. Speaking after the lec-
ture (see report in Nature, 1879, p. 139) he discussed the
necessity of supplying the place of the old apprenticeships
by educating children in the principles of their particular
crafts, beyond the time when they were forced to enter the
workshops. This could be done by establishing schools in
each centre of industry, connected with a central institution,
such as was to be found in Paris or Zurich. As for com-
plaints of deficient teaching of handicrafts in the Board
Schools, it was more important for them to make intelligent
men than skilled workmen, as again was indicated in the
French system.

As President of the Royal Society, he was on the above-
mentioned Committee of the Guilds from 1883 to 1885, and
on December Io, 1883, distributed the prizes in connection
with the institution in the Clothworkers’ Hall. After sketch-
ing the inception of the whole scheme, he referred to the
Central Institute, then in course of building (begun in 1882,
it was finished in 1884; the Technical College, Finsbury,
was older by a year), and spoke of the difficulties in the
way of organising such an institution :—

That building is simply the body, not the flesh and bones, but
the bricks and stones, of the Central Institute, and the business
upon which Sir F. Bramwell and my other colleagues on the
Committee have been so much occupied, is the making a soul
for this body; and I can assure you making a soul for anything
is an amazingly difficult operation. You are always in danger
of doing as the man in the story of Frankenstein did, and making
something which will eventually devour you instead of being
useful to you.

And here I may give a letter which refers to the move-
ment for technical education, and the getting the City Com-
510 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXII

panies under way in the matter. In the words of Mr. George
Howell, M.P.,* it has an additional interest “as indicating
the nature of his own epitaph”; as a man “ whose highest
ambition ever was to uplift the masses of the people and
promote their welfare intellectually, socially, and indus-
trially.”

4 MarLBoroucH P ace, N.W., Jan. 2, 1880.

Dear Mr. Howett—Your letter is a welcome New Year’s
gift. There are two things I really care about—one is the
progress of scientific thought, and the other is the bettering of
the condition of the masses of the people by bettering them in
the way of lifting themselves out of the misery which has
hitherto been the lot of the majority of them. Posthumous fame
is not particularly attractive to me, but, if I am to be remem-
bered at all, I would rather it should be as “a man who did
his best to help the people” than by other title. So you see
it is no small pleasure and encouragement to me to find that
I have been, and am, of any use in this direction.

Ever since my experience on the School Board, I have been
convinced that I should lose rather than gain by entering direct-
ly into politics. ... But I suppose I have some ten years of
activity left in me, and you may depend upon it I shall lose no
chance of striking a blow for the cause I have at heart. I
thought the time had come the other day at the Society of Arts,
and the event proves I was not mistaken. The animal is mov-
ing, and by a judicious exhibition of carrots in front and kicks
behind, we shall get him into a fine trot presently. In the mean-
time do not let the matter rest.... The (City) companies
should be constantly reminded that a storm is brewing. There
are excellent men among them, who want to do what is right,
and need help against the sluggards and reactionaries. It will
be best for me to be quiet for a while, but you will understand
that I am watching for the turn of events.—I am, yours very
faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

This summer, too, he delivered a course on Biology for
Teachers at South Kensington, and published not only his
American Addresses, but also the Physiography, founded
upon the course delivered seven weeks before. The book,
of which 3386 copies were sold in the first six weeks, was
fruitful in two ways; it showed that a geographical subject

 

* Who sent it to the Zémes (July 3, 1895) just after Huxley’s death.
1877 SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES COMMISSION S11

could be invested with interest, and it set going what was
almost a new branch of teaching in natural science, even
in Germany, the starting place of most educational methods,
where it was immediately proposed to bring out an adapta-
tion of the book, substituting, ¢.g. the Elbe for the Thames,
as a familiar example of river action.

He was immensely pleased by a letter from Mr. John
Morley, telling how his step-son, a boy of non-bookish
tastes, had been taken with it. ‘* My step-son was reading
it the other night. I said, ‘Isn't it better to read a novel
before going to bed, instead of worrying your head over
a serious book like that?’ * Oh,’ said he, ‘I’m at an awfully
interesting part, and I can't leave off.’” It was, Mr. Morley
continued, ‘‘ the way of making Nature, as she comes before
us every day, interesting and intelligible to young folks.”

To this he replied on December 14 :—

I shall get as vain as a peacock if discreet folk like you say
such pretty things to me as you do about the Physiography.

But it is very pleasant to me to find that I have succeeded
in what I tried to do. I gave the lectures years ago to show
what I thought was the right way to lead young people to the
study of nature—but nobody would follow suit-~so now I have
tried what the book will do.

Your step-son is a boy of sense, and I hope he may be taken
as a type of the British public!

A good deal of time was taken up in the first half of the
year by the Scottish Universities Commission, which neces-
sitated his attendance in Edinburgh the last week in Feb-
tuary, the first week in April, and the last week in July.
He had hoped to finish off the necessary business at the
first of these meetings, but no sooner had he arrived in
Edinburgh, after a pleasant journey down with J. A. Froude,
than he learned that ‘‘the chief witness we were to have
examined to-day, and whose due evisceration was one of
the objects of my coming, has telegraphed to say he can’t
be here.” Owing to this and to the enforced absence of the
judges on the Commission from some of the sittings, it was
found necessary to have the additional meetings at Easter,
much to his disgust. He writes :—
512 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXII

I am sorry to say I shall have to come here again in Easter
week. It is the only time the Lord President is free from his
courts, and although we all howled privately, there was no help
for it. Whether we finish then or not will depend on the decision
of the Government, as to our taking up the case of you trouble-
sdme women, who want admission into the University (very
rightly too I think). If we have to go into this question it will
involve the taking of new evidence and no end of bother. I
find my colleagues very reasonable, and I hope some good may
be done, that is the only consolation.

I went out with Blackie last evening to dine with the
Skeltons, at a pretty place called the Hermitage, about three
miles from here. . . . Blackie and I walked home with snow on
the ground and a sharp frost. I told you it would turn cold
as soon as I got here, but I am none the worse.

It was just the same in April :—

It is quite cold here as usual, and there was ice on the ponds
we passed this morning. . . . I am much better lodged than I
was last time, for the same thanks to John Bruce, but I do
believe that the Edinburgh houses are the coldest in the uni-
verse. In spite of a good breakfast and a good fire, the half
of me that is writing to you is as cold as charity.

April 4—We toil at the Commission every day, and don’t
make any rapid progress. An awful fear creeps over me that
we shall not finish this bout.

While he was in Edinburgh for the third time, his at-
tention was called to an article in the Echo, the organ of the
anti-vivisection party. He writes :—

The Echo is pretty. It is one of a long series of articles
from the same hand, but I don’t think they hurt anybody and

they evidently please the writer. For some reason or other
they have not attacked me yet, but I suppose my turn will come.

Again :—
Thank you for sending me John Bright’s speeches. They

are very good, but hardly up to his old mark of eloquence. Some
parts are very touching.

His health was improving, as he notes with satisfaction:

Every day this week we have had about four hours of the
Commission, and I have dined out four days out of the six.
1877 HONORARY DEGREE FOR DARWIN 513

But I'm no the waur, and the late dinners have not been visited
by fits of morning blue devils. So I am in hopes that I am
getting back to the normal state that Clark prophesied for me.

4 Mar.poroucu PLacg, Lonpon, N.W.,

April 29, 1877.
My pear SKELTon—Best thanks for your second edition.
- You paint the system * in such favourable colours, that I am
thinking of taking advantage of it for my horde of “ young
barbarians.” I am sure Scotch air would be of service to them
—and in after-life they might have the inestimable advantage of
a quasi-Scotch nationality—that greatest of all practical ad-
vantages in Britain.

We are to sit again in the end of July when Mrs. Skelton
and you if you are wise, will be making holiday.

Your invitation is most tempting, and if I had no work to do
I should jump at it.

But alas! I shall have a deal of work, and I must go to my
Patmos in George Street. Ingrained laziness is the bane of my
existence ; and you don’t suppose that with the sun shining down
into your bosky dell, and Mrs. Skelton radiant, and Froude and
yourself nicotiant, I am such a Philistine as to do a stroke of
work ?—Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Hux.ey,

From Edinburgh he went to St. Andrews to make ar-
rangements for his elder son to go to the University there
as a student the following winter. Then he paid a visit to
Sir W. Armstrong in Northumberland, afterwards spending
a month at Whitby. His holiday work consisted in a great
part of the article on “ Evolution” for the Encyclopedia
Britannica, which is noted as finished on October 24, though
not published till the next year.

In November the honorary degree of LL.D. was con-
ferred upon Charles Darwin at Cambridge, “a great step
for Cambridge, though it may not seem much in itself,” he
writes to Dohrn, November 21. In the evening after the
public ceremony there was a dinner of the Philosophical
Club, at which he spoke in praise of Darwin’s services to
science. Darwin himself was unable to be present, but re-

 

* 7.2, of Scotch education.
514 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXXII

ceived an enthusiastic account of the proceedings from his
son, and wrote to thank Huxley, who replied :—

4 MarLBorouGH PLAce, Mov. 21, 1877.

- My pear Darwin—Nothing ever gave me greater pleasure
than the using the chance of speaking my mind about you and
your work which was afforded me at the dinner the other night.
I said not a word beyond what I believe to be strictly accurate:
and, please Sir, I didn’t sneer at anybody. There was only a
little touch of the whip at starting, and it was so tied round with
ribbons that it took them some time to find out where the flick
had hit. T. H. Huxtey.

He writes to his wife :—

I will see if I can recollect the speech. I made a few notes
sitting in Dewar’s room before the dinner. But as usual I did
not say some things I meant to say, and said others that came
up on the spur of the moment.

And again :—

Please I didn’t say that Réaumur was the other greatest
scientific man since Aristotle. But I said that in a certain
character of his work he was the biggest man between Aristotle
and Darwin. I really must write out an “authorised version”
of my speech. I hear the Latin oration is to be in Nature this
week, and Lockyer wanted me to give him the heads of my
speech, but I did not think it would be proper to do so, and
refused. I have written out my speech as well as I can recollect
it. I do not mind any friend seeing it, but you must not let it
get about as the dinner. was a private one.

The notes of his speech run as follows :—

Mr. PrEsIDENT—I rise with pleasure and with alacrity to
respond to the toast which you have just proposed, and I may
say that I consider one of the greatest honours which have be-
fallen me, to be called upon to represent my distinguished friend
Mr. Darwin upon this occasion. I say to represent Mr. Darwin,
for I cannot hope to personate him, or to say all that would be
dictated by a mind conspicuous for its powerful humility and
strong gentleness.

Mr. Darwin’s work had fully earned the distinction you
have to-day conferred upon him four and twenty years ago;
but I doubt not that he would have been found in that circum-
1877 DARWIN'S DISTINCTIVE MERITS 515

stance an exemplification of the wise foresight of his revered
intellectual mother. Instead of offering her honours when they
ran a chance of being crushed beneath the accumulated marks
of approbation of the whole civilised world, the University has
waited until the trophy was finished, and has crowned the edifice
with the delicate wreath of academic appreciation.

This is what I suppose Mr. Darwin might have said had he
been happily able to occupy my place. Let me now speak in my
own person and in obedience to your suggestion, let me state as
briefly as possible what appear to me to be Mr. Darwin's dis-
tinctive merits.

From the time of Aristotle to the present day I know of but
one man who has shown himself Mr. Darwin’s equal in one field
of research—and that is Réaumur. In the breadth of range of
Mr. Darwin’s investigations upon the ways and works of ani-
mals and plants, in the minute patient accuracy of his observa-
tions, and in the philosophical ideas which have guided them, I
know of no one who is to be placed in the same rank with him
except Réaumur.

Secondly, looking back through the same long period of
scientific history, I know of but one man, Lyonnet, who not being
from his youth a trained anatomist, has published such an
admirable minute anatomical research as is contained in Mr.
Darwin's work on the Cirripedes.

Thirdly, in that region which lies between Geology and
Biology, and is occupied by the problem of the influence of life
on the structure of the globe, no one, so far as I know, has done
a more brilliant and far-reaching piece of work than the famous
book upon Coral Reefs.

I add to these as incidental trifles the numerous papers on
Geology, and that most delightful of popular scientific books,
the Journal of a Naturalist, and I think I have made out my
case for the justification of to-day’s proceedings.

But I have omitted something. There is the Origin of
Species, and all that has followed it from the same marvellously
fertile brain.

Most people know Mr. Darwin only as the author of this
work, and of the form of evolutional doctrine which it advocates.
I desire to say nothing about that doctrine. My friend Dr.
Humphry has said that the University has by to-day’s proceed-
ings committed itself to the doctrine of evolution. I can only
say “I am very glad to hear it.” But whether that doctrine be
true or whether it be false, I wish to express the deliberate
516 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXII

opinion, that from Aristotle’s great summary of the Biological
knowledge of his time down to the present day, there is nothing
comparable to the Origin of Species, as a connected survey of
the phenomena of life permeated and vivified by a central idea.
In remote ages the historian of science will dwell upon it as
the starting-point of the Biology of his present and our future,

My friend Dr. Humphry has adverted to somebody about
whom I know nothing, who says that the exact and critical
studies pursued in this University are ill-calculated to preserve
a high tone of mind. ,

I presume that this saying must proceed from some one
wholly unacquainted with Cambridge. Whoever he may be, I
beg him, if he can, to make the acquaintance of Charles Darwin.

In Mr. Darwin’s name I beg leave to thank you for the
honour you have done him.

It happened that the quadrennial election of a Lord
Rector at St. Andrews University fell in this year, and on
behalf of a number of students, Huxley received a telegram
from his son, now newly entered at St. Andrews, asking
him to stand. He writes to his wife :—

That boy of yours has just sent me a telegram, which I
enclose. I sent back message to say that as a Commissioner on
the Scotch Universities I could not possibly stand. The cockerel
is beginning to crow early. I do believe that to please the boy
I should have assented to it if it had not been for the R. Com-
mission.

Apropos of controversies (November 23)

We had a grand discussion at the Royal Society last
night between Tyndall and Burdon Sanderson. The place was
crammed, and we had a late sitting. I’m not sure, however,
that we had got much further at the end than at the beginning,
which is a way controversies have.

The following story is worth recording, as an illustration
not only of the way in which Huxley would give what help
was in his power to another man of science in distress, but
of the ready aid proffered on this, as on many other occa-
sions, by a wealthy northern merchant who was interested
in science. A German scientific worker in England, whom
we will call H., had fallen into distress, and applied to him
1877 A FRIEND IN NEED 517

for help, asking if some work could not be put in his way.
Huxley could think of nothing immediate but to suggest
some lessons in German literature to his children, though
in fact they were well provided for with a German govern-
ess; nevertheless he thought it a proper occasion to avail
himself of his friend’s offer to give help in deserving cases.
He writes to his wife :—

I made up my mind to write to X. the day before yesterday ;
this morning by return of post he sends me a cheque not only
for the £60 which I said H. needed, but £5 over for his present
needs with a charming letter.

It came in the nick of time, as H. came an hour or two
after it arrived, and with many apologies told me he was quite
penniless. The poor old fellow was quite overcome when I
told him how matters stood, and it was characteristic that as
soon as he got his breath again, he wanted to know when he
would begin teaching the children! I sent him to get an order
on the Naples bank for the discharge of his debt there. X.’s
express stipulation was that his name should not be mentioned,
so mind you say not a word about his most kind and gener-
ous act.

The following letters of miscellaneous interest were
written in this year :—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Mov. 21, 1877.

My pear Mortry—I am always at the command of the
Fortnightly so long as you are editor, but I don’t think that the
Belemnite * business would do for you. The story would hardly
be intelligible without illustrations.

There are two things I am going to do which may be more
to the purpose. One is a screed on Technical Education which
I am going to give to the Working Men’s Union on the Ist
December. :

The other is a sort of Eloge on Harvey at the Royal Insti-
tution in March apropos of his 300th birthday—which was All-
fools Day.

You shall have either of these you like, but I advise Harvey ;
as if I succeed in doing what I shall aim at it will be interesting.

Why the deuce do you live at Brighton? St. John’s Wood
is far less cockneyfied, and its fine and Alpine air would be

 

* The lecture at the London Institution mentioned above.
518 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXXII

much better for you, and I believe for Mrs. Morley, than the
atmosphere of the melancholy main, the effects of which on the
human constitution have been so well expounded by that emi-
nent empiric, Dr. Dizzy.

Anyhow, I wish we could see something of you now and
then.—Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxiey.

Darwin got his degree with great éclat on Saturday. I had
to return thanks for his health at the dinner of the Philosophical
Society; and oh! I chaffed the dons so sweetly.

4 MarvporoucH Puiace, N.W., Wov. 27, 1877.

My pear Mortey—You shall have both the articles—if it is
only that I may enjoy the innocent pleasure of Knowles’ face
when I let him know what has become of them.

Stormy ocean, forsooth! I back the storm and rain through
which I came home to-night against anything London-super-
mare has to show.

I will send the MS. to Virtue as soon as it is in a reasonable
state—Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Hux.ey.

4 MareorouGH Pracz, N.W., Jan. 8, 1878.

My pear MortEy—Many thanks for the cheque. In my
humble judgment it is quite as much as the commodity is worth.

It was a great pleasure to us all to have you with us on New
Year’s Day. My wife claims it as her day, and I am not sup-
‘posed to know anything about the guests except Spencer and
Tyndall. None but the very elect are invited to the sacred
feast—so you see where you stand among the predestined who
cannot fall away from the state of grace.

Ihave not seen Spencer in such good form and good humour
combined for an age.

I am working away at Harvey, and will send the MS. to
Virtue’s as soon as I am sufficiently forward—Ever yours very
faithfully, T. H. Hux.ey.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Dec. 9, 1877.
My pear Tynpatt—I am so sorry to have been out when
Mrs. Tyndall called to-day. By what we heard at the x on
Thursday, I imagined you were practically all right again, or I
should have been able to look after you to-day.
But what I bother you with this note for is to beg you not to
lecture at the London Institution to-morrow, but to let me
1877 “BOTTLED LIFE” 519

change days with you, and so give yourself a week to recover.
And if you are seedy, then I am quite ready to give them another
lecture on the Hokypotamus or whatever else may turn up.

But don't go and exert yourself in your present condition.
These severe colds have often nothing very tangible about them,
but are not to be trifled with when folks are past fifty.

Let me have an answer to say that I may send a telegram to
Nicholson first thing to-morrow morning to say that I will lec-
ture vice you. My “ bottled life,” as Hutton calls it in the Spec-
tator * this week, is quite ready to go off.

Now be a sane man and take my advice.—Ever yours very
faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

 

* The Spectator for Dec. 8, 1877, began an article thus :—‘‘ Pro-
fessor Huxley delivered a very amusing address last Saturday at the
Society of Arts, on the very unpromising subject of technical educa-
tion; but we believe that if Professor Huxley were to become the
President of the Social Science Association, or of the International
Statistical Congress, he would still be amusing, so much bottled life
does he infuse into the driest topic on which human beings ever con-
trived to prose.”

34
CHAPTER XXXIII
1878

THE year 1878 was the tercentenary of Harvey’s birth,
and Huxley was very busy with the life and work of that
great physician. He spoke at the memorial meeting at the
College of Physicians (July 18), he gave a lecture on Harvey
at the Royal Institution on January 25, afterwards published
in Nature and the Fortnightly Review, and intended to write
a book on him in a projected English Men of Science series
(see p. 536).

I am very glad you like “ Harvey” (he writes to Prof.
Baynes on Feb. 11). He is one of the biggest scientific minds
we have had. I expect to get well vilipended not only by the
anti-vivisection folk, for the most of whom I have a hearty con-
tempt, but apropos of Bacon. I have been oppressed by the
humbug of the “ Baconian Induction” all my life, and at last
the worm has turned.

Now in this lecture he showed that Harvey employed
vivisection to establish the doctrine of the circulation of the
blood, and furthermore, that he taught this doctrine. before
the Novum Organum was published, and that his subsequent
Exercitatio displays no trace of being influenced by Bacon’s
work. After glancing at the superstitious reverence for the
“ Baconian Induction,” he pointed out Bacon’s ignorance of
the progress of science up to his time, and his inability to
divine the importance of what he knew by hearsay of the
work of Copernicus, or Kepler, or Galileo; of Gilbert, his
contemporary, or of Galen; and wound up by quoting Ellis’s
severe judgment of Bacon in the General Preface to the
Philosophic Works, in Spedding’s classical edition (p. 38) :—

520
18738 THE BACONIAN METHOD 521

“That his method is impracticable cannot, I think, be de-
nied, if we reflect, not only that it never has produced any
result, but also that the process by which scientific truths
have been established cannot be so presented as even to
appear to be in accordance with it.”

How early this conviction had forced itself upon him, I
cannot say; but it was certainly not later than 1859, when
the Origin of Species was constantly met with “ Oh, but this
is contrary to the Baconian method.” He had long felt
what he expresses most clearly in the * Progress of Science ”
(Coll. Ess. i, 46-57) that Bacon's ** majestic eloquence and
fervid vaticinations "" which * drew the attention of all the
world to the ‘new birth of Time’ ” were yet, for all prac-
tical results on discovery, ‘a magnificent failure.” The
desire for “ fruits’ has not been the great motive of the
discoverer; nor has discovery waited upon collective re-
search. ‘ Those who refuse to go beyond fact,” he writes,
“rarely get as far as fact; and any one who has studied the
history of science knows that almost every great step therein
has been made by the ‘anticipation of nature,’ that is, by
the invention of hypotheses, which, though verifiable, often
had very little foundation to start with; and, not unfre-
quently, in spite of a long career of usefulness, turned out
to be wholly erroneous in the long-run.”

Thus he had been led to a settled disbelief in Bacon's
scientific greatness, that reasoned “ prejudice * against which
Spedding himself was moved to write twice in defence of
Bacon. In his first letter he criticised a passage in the
lecture touching this question. On the one hand, he re-
marks, “ Bacon would probably have agreed with you as
to his pretensions as a scientific discoverer (he calls him-
self a bellman to call other wits together, or a trumpeter,
or a maker of bricks for others to build with).””. On the
other hand, he asks, ought a passage from a fragment—the
Temporis partus masculus—unpublished in Bacon’s lifetime,
to be treated as one of his representative opinions?

In his second letter he adduces, on other grounds, his
own more favourable impression of Bacon’s philosophical
influence. A peculiar interest of this letter lies in its testi-
522 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXIIL

mony to the influence of Huxley’s writings even on his elder
contemporaries,

ie 0 IN
From JAMES SPEDDING Fh nee.

... When you admit that you study Bacon with a preju-
dice, you mean of course an unfavourable opinion previously
formed on sufficient grounds. Now I am myself supposed to
have studied him with a prejudice the other way: but this I
cannot admit, in any sense of the word; for when I first made
his acquaintance I had no opinion or feeling about him at all
—more than the ordinary expectation of a young man to find
what he is told to look for. My earliest impression of his
character came probably from Thompson—whose portrait of
him, except as touched and softened by the tenderer hand of
“the sweet-souled poet of the Seasons,” did not differ from the
ordinary one. It was not long indeed before I did begin to
form an opinion of my own; one of those after-judgments which
are liable to be mistaken for prejudices by those who judge
differently, and which, being formed, do, no doubt, tell upon the
balance. For it was not long before I found myself indebted
to him for the greatest benefit probably that any man, living or
dead, can confer on another. In my school and college days I
_ had been betrayed by an ambition to excel in themes and decla-
mations into the study, admiration, and imitation of the rheto-
ricians. In the course of my last long vacation—the autumn of
1830—I was inspired with a new ambition, namely, to think
justly about everything which I thought about at all, and to act
accordingly ; a conviction for which I cannot cease to feel grate-
ful, and which I distinctly trace to the accident of having in
the beginning. of that same vacation given two shillings at
a second-hand bookstall for a little volume of Dove’s classics,
containing the Advancement of Learning. And if I could tell
you how many superlatives I have since that time degraded
into the positive; how many innumerables and infinites I have
replaced by counted numbers and estimated quantities; how
many assumptions, important to the argument in hand, I have
withdrawn because I found on more consideration that the fact
might be explained otherwise; and how many effective epithets
I have discarded when I found that I could not fully verify
them; you would think it no less than just that I should claim
for myself and concede to others the right of being judged by
the last edition rather than the first. That a persistent en-
1878 THE AFGHAN WAR ; 523

deavour to free myself from what you regard as Bacon's charac-
teristic vice should have been the fruit of a desire to follow his
example, will seem strange to you, but it is fact. Perhaps you
will think it not less strange, but it is my real belief, that if your
own writings had been in existence and come in my way at the
same critical stage of my moral and mental development, they
would have taught me the same lesson and inspired me with the
same ambition; for in that particular (if I may say it without
offence) I look upon you both as eminent examples of the same
virtue.

To the lecture he refers once more in a letter to Mr.
John Morley. The political situation touched on in this
and the next letter, is that of the end of the Russo-Turkish
war and the beginning of the Afghan war.

SCIENCE SCHOOLS, SOUTH KENSINGTON,
Feb, 7, 1878.

My pear Mortey—Many thanks for the cheque, and still
more for the good word for the article.* I knew it would
“draw ” Hutton, and his ingenuity has as usual made the best
of the possibilities of attack. I am glad to find, however, that
he does not think it expedient to reiterate his old story about
the valuelessness of vivisection in the establishment of the doc-
trine of the circulation.

I hear that that absurd creature R goes about declar-
ing that I have made all sorts of blunders. Could not somebody
be got to persuade him to put what he has to say in black and
white?

Controversy is as abhorrent to me as gin to a reclaimed
drunkard; but oh dear! it would be so nice to squelch that pomp-
ous impostor.

I hope you admire the late aspects of the British Lion. His
tail goes up and down from the intercrural to the stiffly erect
attitude per telegram, while his head is sunk in the windbag of
the House of Commons.

I am beginning to think that a war would be a good thing
if only for the inevitable clean sweep of all the present govern-
ing people which it would bring about—Ever yours very faith-
fully, T. H. Hux ey.

 

 

* On Harvey.
524 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXXII

To nis Etprest DAUGHTER

ScIENCE SCHOOLS, SOUTH KENSINGTON,
Dec. 7, 1878.

Dearest JEss—You are a badly used young person—you
are; and nothing short of that conviction would get a letter
out of your still worse used Pater the béte noire of whose exist-
ence is letter-writing.

Catch me discussing the Afghan question with you you little
pepper pot. No, not if I know it. Read Fitzjames Stephen’s
letter in the Times, also Bartle Frere’s memorandum, also
Napier of Magdala’s memo. Them’s my sentiments.

Also read the speech of Lord Hartington on the address.
He is a man of sense like his father, and you will observe that
he declares that the Government were perfectly within their
right in declaring war without calling Parliament together. ...

If you had lived as long as I have and seen as much of men,
you would cease to be surprised at the reputations men of essen-
tially commonplace powers—aided by circumstances and some
amount of cleverness—obtain.

I am as strong for justice as any one can be, but it is real
justice, not sham conventional justice which the sentimentalists
howl for.

At this present time real justice requires that the power of
England should be used to maintain order and introduce civilisa- -
tion wherever that power extends.

The Afghans are a pack of disorderly treacherous blood-
thirsty thieves and caterans who should never have been allowed
to escape from the heavy hand we laid upon them, after the
massacre of twenty thousand of our men, women (and) children
in the Khoord Cabul Pass thirty years ago.

We have let them be, and the consequence is they now lend
themselves to the Russians, and are ready to stir up disorder
and undo all the good we have been doing in India for the last
generation.

They are to India exactly what the Highlanders of Scotland
were to the Lowlanders before 1745; and we have just as much
right to deal with them in the same way.

I am of opinion that our Indian Empire is a curse to us. But
so long as we make up our minds to hold it, we must also make
up our minds to do those things which are needful to hold it
effectually, and in the long-run it will be found that so doing is
1878 SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES COMMISSION 525

real justice both for ourselves, our subject population, and the
Afghans themselves.
There, you plague——Ever your affec. Daddy,
T. H. Huxtey.

A few days later he writes to his son :—

The Liberals are making fools of themselves, and “ the
family ” declare I am becoming a Jingo! Another speech from
Gladstone is expected to complete my conversion.

Among other occupations he still had to attend the
Scottish Universities Commission, for which he wrote the
paragraph on examinations in its report; he lectured on the
Hand at the Working Men’s College; prepared new editions
of the Physiography, Elementary Physiology, and Vertebrate
Anatomy, and at length brought out the Jutroductory Primer
in the Science Primer Series, in quite a different form from
what he had originally sketched out. But his chief interest
lay in the Invertebrata. From April 29 to June 3 he lec-
tured to working men at Jermyn Street upon the Crayfish ;
read a paper on the Classification and Distribution of Cray-
fishes at the Zoological Society on June 4, and lectured at
the Zoological Gardens weekly from May 17 to June 21 on
Crustaceous Animals. In all this work lay the foundations
of his subsequent book on the Crayfish, which I find
jotted down in the notes of this year to be written as an
introduction to Zoology, together with the ‘“‘ Dog,” as an
introduction to the Mammalia, and Man—already dealt with
in Man’s Place in Nature—as an introduction to Anthro-
pology. This projected series is completed with a half
erased note of an introduction to Psychology, which per-
haps found some expression in parts of the Hume, also
written this year.

He notes down also, work on the Ascidians, and on the
morphology of the Mollusca and Cephalopods brought back
by the Challenger, in connection with which he now began
the monograph on the rare creature Spirula, a remarkable
piece of work, being based upon the dissections of a single
specimen, but destined never to be completed by his hand,
though his drawings were actually engraved, and nothing
526 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXXiII

remained but to put a few finishing touches and to write
detailed descriptions of the plates.

Letters to W. K. Parker and Professor Haeckel touch on
this part of his work; the former, indeed, offering a close
parallel to a story, obviously of the same period, which the
younger Parker tells in his reminiscences, to illustrate the
way in which he would be utterly engrossed in a subject for
the time being. Jeffery Parker, while demonstrator of biol-
ogy, came to him with a question about the brain of the
codfish at a time when he was deep in the investigation of
some invertebrate group. “ Codfish?’’ he replied, “ that’s
a vertebrate, isn’t it? Ask me a fortnight hence, and I'll
consider it.”

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Sept. 25, 1878.

My pear Parker—As far as I recollect Ammniocates is a
vertebrated animal—and I ignore it.

The paper you refer to was written by my best friend—a
carefulish kind of man—and I am sure that he saw what he
says he saw, as if I had seen it myself.

But what the fact may mean and whether it is temporary
or permanent—is thy servant a dog that he should worry him-
self about other things with backbones? Not if I know it.

Churchill has got over a whole batch of the American edi-
tion of the Vertebrata, so I have a respite. Mollusks are far
more interesting—bugs sweeter—while the dinner crayfish hath
no parallel for intense and absorbing interest in the three king-
doms of Nature.

What saith the Scripture? “Go to the Ant thou sluggard.”
In other words, study the Invertebrata——Ever yours very faith-
fully, T. H. Huxtey.

[Sketch of a vast winged ant advancing on a midget, and
saying, as it looks through a pair of eyeglasses, “ well, really,
what an absurd creature!!” ]

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, LoNDON,
April 28, 1878.

My pear HarcKeL—Since the receipt of your letter three
months ago, I have been making many inquiries about Meduse
for you, but I could hear of none—and so I have delayed my
reply, until I doubt not you have been blaspheming my apparent
neglect. :
1$78 LETTER TO HAECKEL 527

My * Sammlung "!!* My dear friend, my cabin on board
H.M.S. Rattlesnake was 7 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 5 feet 6
inches high. When my bed and my clothes were in it, there
Was not much room for any collection, except the voluntary
one made by some thousands of specimens of Blatta Orientalis,t
with whose presence I should have been very glad to dispense.

My .edus@ were never published. I have heaps of notcs
and drawings and half-a-dozen engraved plates. But after the
publication of the Oceanic Hydrosoa I was obliged to take to
quite other occupations, and all that material is like the * full
many a flower, born to blush unseen,” of our poet.

If you would pay us a visit you should look through the
whole mass, if you liked, and you might find something in-
teresting.

«At present, Iam very busy about Crayfishes (Flusskrebse )
working out the relations between their structure and their
Geographical Distribution, which are very curious and inter-
esting.

I have also nearly finished the anatomy of Spirula for the
Challenger. It is essentially a cuttlefish, and the shell is really
internal. With only one specimen, is has been a long and
troublesome job—but I shall establish all the essential points
and give half-a-dozen plates of anatomy.

You will recollect my eldest little daughter? She is going
to be married next Saturday. It is the first break in our family,
and we are very sad to lose her—though well satisfied with
her prospects. She is but just twenty and a charming girl,
though you may put that down to fatherly partiality if
you like.

The second daughter has taken to art, and will make a
painter if she be wise enough not to marry for some years.

My eldest son who comes next is taller than Iam. He has
been at one of the Scotch Universities for the last six months;
and one of these fine days, next month, you will see a fair-haired
stripling asking for Herr Professor Haeckel.

I am going to send him to Jena for three months to pick up
your noble vernacular; and in the meanwhile to continue his
Greek and Mathematics, in which the young gentleman is fairly
proficient. If you can recommend any Professor under whom
he can carry on his studies, it will be a great kindness.

I will give him a letter to you, and while I beg you not to

 

* Collection. t+ The cockroach.
528 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXXII

give yourself any trouble about him, I need not say I shall be
very grateful for any notice you may take of him.

I am giving him as much independence of action as possible,
in order that he may learn to take care of himself.

Now that is enough about my children. Yours must yet be
young-—and you have not yet got to the marriage and university
stage—which I assure you is much more troublesome than the
measles and chicken-pox period.

My wife unites with me in kindest remembrances and good
wishes.—Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey. ©

An outbreak of diphtheria among his children made the,
spring of 1878 a time of overwhelming anxiety. How it
told upon his strong and self-contained chief is related by
T. J. Parker—“I never saw a man more crushed than he
was during the dangerous illness of one of his daughters,
and he told me that, having then to make an after-dinner
speech, he broke down for the first time in his life, and for
one painful moment forgot where he was and what he had
to say.” This was one of the few occasions of his absence
from College during the seventies. ‘“ When, after two days,
he looked in at the laboratory,” writes Professor Howes,
“his dejected countenance and tired expression beto-
kened only too plainly the intense anxiety he had under-
gone.”

The history of the outbreak was very instructive. Hux-
ley took a leading part in organising an enquiry and in
looking into the matter with the health officer. ‘“ As soon
as I can get all the facts together,” he writes on Dec. 10,
“Tam going to make a great turmoil about our outbreak
of diphtheria—and see whether I cannot get our happy-go-
lucky local government mended.” As usual, the epidemic
was due to culpable negligence. In the construction of
some drains, too small a pipe was laid down. The sewage
could not escape, and flooded back in a low-lying part of
Kilburn. Diphtheria soon broke out close by. While it
was raging there, a St. John’s Wood dairyman running
short of milk, sent for more to an infected dairy in Kilburn.
Every house which he supplied that day with Kilburn milk
was attacked with diphtheria.
1878 VISIT FROM PROFESSOR MARSH 529

But with relief from this heavy strain, his spirits instantly
revived, and he writes to Tyndall.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLAcE, JZay 20, 1878.
My pear TynpALL—I wrote you a most downhearted letter
this morning about Madge, and not without reason. But having
been away four hours, I come home to find a wonderful and
blessed change. The fever has abated and she is looking like
herself. If she could only make herself heard, I should have
some sauciness. I see it in her eyes.
If you will be so kind as to kiss everybody you meet on my
account it will be a satisfaction to me. You may begin with
Mrs. Tyndall !—Ever yours, T. H. Houxtey.

Professor Marsh, with whom Huxley had stayed at Yale
College in 1876, paid his promised visit to England imme-
diately after this.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLacE, N.W.,
June 24, 1878. (Evening.)

My pear MarsH—Welcome to England! I am delighted to
hear of your arrival—but the news has only just reached me, as
I have been away since Saturday with my wife and sick daugh-
ter who are at the seaside. A great deal has happened to us in
the last six or seven weeks. My eldest daughter married, and
then a week after an invasion of diphtheria, which struck down
my eldest son, my youngest daughter, and my eldest remaining
daughter all together. Two of the cases were light, but my
poor Madge suffered terribly, and for some ten days we were
in sickening anxiety about her. She is slowly gaining strength
now, and I hope there is no more cause for alarm—but my
household is all to pieces—the Lares and Penates gone, and
painters and disinfectors in their places.

You will certainly have to run down to Margate and see my
wife—or never expect forgiveness in this world.

I shall be at the Science Schools, South Kensington, to-
morrow till four—and if I do not see you before that time I
shall come and look you up at the Palace Hotel.—I am, yours
very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

“Ts it not provoking,” he writes to his wife, “ that we
should all be dislocated when I should have been so glad to
show him a little attention?” Still, apart from this week-
530 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY — cnap, xxxiit

end at the seaside, Professor Marsh was not entirely neg-
lected. He writes in his Recollections (p. 6) :—

How kind Huxley was to everyone who could claim his
friendship, I have good cause to know. Of the many instances
which occur to me, one will suffice. One evening in London at
a grand annual reception of the Royal Academy, where celebri-
ties of every rank were present, Huxley said to me, “ When I
was in America, you showed me every extinct animal that I had
read about, or even dreamt of. Now, if there is a single living
lion in all Great Britain that you wish to see, I will show him
to you in five minutes.” He kept his promise, and before the
reception was over, I had met many of the most noted men of
' England, and from that evening, I can date a large number of
acquaintances, who have made my subsequent visits to that
country an ever-increasing pleasure.

As for his summer occupations, he writes to his eldest
daughter on July 2:—

No, young woman, you don’t catch me attending any con-
gresses I can avoid, not even if F. is an artful committee-man.
I must go to the British Association at Dublin—for my sins—
and after that we have promised to pay a visit in Ireland to Sir
Victor Brooke. After that I must settle myself down in Pen-
maenmawr and write a little book about David Hume—hefore
the grindery of the winter begins.

The meeting of the British Association took place this
year in the third week of August at Dublin. Huxley gave
an address in the Anthropological subsection,* and on the
2oth received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Dublin
University, the Public Orator presenting him in the follow-
ing words :-—

Presento vobis Thomam Henricum Huxley—hominem vere
physicum—hominem facundum, lepidum, venustum—eundem
autem nihil (philosophia modo sua lucem preferat) reformidan-
tem—ne illud quidem Ennianum,

Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis.

 

* “Tnformal Remarks on the Conclusions of Anthropology,” B.A.
Report, 1878, pp. 573-578.
1878 HIS BOOK ON HUME 531

The extract above given contains the first reference to
the book on Hume,* written this summer as a holiday
occupation at Penmaenmawr. The speed at which it was
composed is remarkable, even allowing for his close knowl-
edge of the subject, acquired many years before. Though
he had been “picking at it” earlier in the summer, the
whole of the philosophical part was written during Sep-
tember, leaving the biographical part to be done later.

The following letters from Marlborough Place show him
at work upon the book :—

March 31, 1878.

My pear Mortey—I like the notion of undertaking your
Hume book, and I don't see why I should not get it done this
autumn. But you must not consider me pledged on that point,
as I cannot quite command my time.

Tulloch sent me his book on Pascal. It was interesting as
everything about Pascal must be, but Tulloch is not a model
of style.

I have looked into Bruton’s book, but I shall now get it and

study it. Hume’s correspondence with Rousseau seems to me
typical of the man’s sweet, easy-going nature. Do you mean
to have a portrait of each of your men? I think it is a great
comfort in a biography to get a notion of the subject in the
flesh.
' I have rather made it a rule not to part with my property
in my books—but I daresay that can be arranged with Mac-
millan. Anyhow I shall be content to abide by the general
arrangement if you have made one.

We have had a bad evening. Clifford has been here, and
he is extremely ill—in fact I fear the worst for him.

It is a thousand pities, for he has a fine nature all round,
and time would have ripened him into something very consid-
erable. We are all very fond of him.—Ever yours very faith-
fully, T. H. Huxtey.

July 6, 1878.
My pear MortEy—Very many thanks for Diderot. I have
made a plunge into the first volume and found it very interesting.
I wish you had put a portrait of him as a frontispiece. I have
seen one—a wonderful face, something like Goethe’s.

 

*In the ‘‘English Men of Letters” series, edited by Mr. John
Morley.
532 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXXIII

I am picking at Hume at odd times. It seems to me that I
had better make an analysis and criticism of the “ Inquiry,” the
backbone of the essay—as it touches all the problems which
interest us most just now. I have already sketched out a chap-
ter on Miracles, which will, I hope, be very edifying in conse-
quence of its entire agreement with the orthodox arguments
against Hume’s a priori reasonings against miracles.

Hume wasn’t half a sceptic after all. And so long as he got
deep enough to worry Orthodoxy, he did not care to go to the
bottom of things.

He failed to see the importance of suggestions already made
both by Locke and Berkeley.—Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Hux ey.

7 Sept. 30, 1878.

My pear Mortey—Praise me! I have been hard at work at
Hume at Penmaenmawr, and I have got the hard part of the
business—the account of his philosophy—blocked out in the
bodily shape of about 180 pages foolscap MS.

But I find the job as tough as it is interesting. Hume’s
diamonds, before the public can see them properly, want a
proper setting in a methodical and consistent shape—and that
implies writing a small psychological treatise of one’s own, and
then cutting it down into as unobtrusive a form as possible.

So I am working away at my draught—from the point of
view of an esthetic jeweller.

As soon as I get it into such a condition as will need only
verbal trimming, I should like to have it set up in type. For it
is a defect of mine that I can never judge properly of any com-
position of my own in manuscript.

Moreover (don’t swear at this wish) I should very much
like to send it to you in that shape for criticism.

The Life will be an easy business.. I should like to get the
book out of hand before Christmas, and will do so if possible.
But my lectures begin on Tuesday, and I cannot promise.—Ever
yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

7 Oct. 21, 1878.
My pear Moriry—I have received slips up to chap. ix.
of Hume, and so far I do not think (saving your critical pre-
sence) that there will be much need of much modification or in-
terpolation.
I have made all my citations from a 4-vol. edition of Hume,
1878 HIS BOOK ON HUME 533

published by Black and Tait in 1826, which has long been in my
possession.

Do you think I ought to quote Green and Grose’s edition? It
will be a great bother, and I really don’t think that the under-
standing of Hume is improved by going back to eighteenth-
century spelling.

I am at work upon the Life, which should not take long.
But I wish that I had polished that off at Penmaenmawr as well.
What with lecturing five days a week, and toiling at two ana-
tomical monographs, it is hard to find time.

As soon as I have gone through all the eleven chapters about
the Philosophy—I will send them to you and get you to come
and dine some day—after you have looked at them—and go into
it—Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Hux rey.

SCIENCE SCHOOLS, S. KENSINGTON, Oct. 29, 1878.

My pear Mortey—Your letter has given me great pleasure.
For though I have thoroughly enjoyed the work, and seemed to
myself to have got at the heart of Hume’s way of thinking, I
could not tell how it would appear to others, still less could I
pretend to judge of the literary form of what I had written.
And as I was quite prepared to accept your judgment if it had
been unfavourable, so being what it is, I hug myself propor-
tionately and begin to give myself airs as a man of letters.

I am through all the interesting part of Hume’s life—that
is, the struggling part of it—and David the successful and the
féted begins rather to bore me, as I am sorry to say most suc-
cessful people do. I hope to send the first chapter to press in
another week.

Might it not be better, by the way, to divide the little book
into two parts?

Part I.—Life, Literary and Political work.

Part II.—Philosophy,
subdividing the latter into chapters or sections? Please tell me
what you think.

I have not received the last chapter from the printer yet.
When I do I will finish revising, and then ask you to come and
have a symposium over it——Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

P.S.—Macmillan has a lien on “ The Hand.” I gave part
of the lecture in another shape at Glasgow two years ago, and
M. had it reported for his magazine. If he is good and patient
he will get it in some shape some day!
534 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHA?. XXXIII

4 MARLBOROUGH PLacE, N.W., Nov. 5, 1878.

My pear Mortey—“ Davie's ” philosophy is now all in print,
and all but a few final pages of his biography.

So I think the time has come when that little critical sym-
posium may take place.

Can you come and dine on Tuesday next (12) at 7, or if
any day except Wednesday 15th, next week, will suit you better,
it will do just as well for me. There will be nobody but my wife
and daughters, so don’t dress—Ever yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxtey.

P.S.—Will you be disgusted if in imitation of the “ English
Men of Letters” I set a-going an “ English Men of Science.”
Few people have any conception of the part Englishmen have
played in science, and I think it would be both useful and in-
teresting to bring the truth home to the English mind.

I had about three thousand people to hear me on Saturday
at Manchester, and it would have done you good to hear how
they cheered at my allusion to personal rule. I had to stop and
let them ease their souls.

Behold my P.S. is longer than my letter. It’s the strong
feminine element in my character oozing out. “ Desinit in
piscem ” though, and a mighty queer fish too.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Jan. 12, 1879.

Dear Lecxy—I am very much obliged for your suggestion
about the note at p. 9. J am ashamed to say that though the
eleven day correction was familiar enough to me, I had never
thought about the shifting of the beginning of the year till you
mentioned it. It is a law of nature, I believe, that when a man
says what he need not say he is sure to blunder. The note shall
go out.

All I know about Sprat is as the author of a dull history of
the Royal Society, so 1 was surprised to meet with Hume’s esti-
mate of him.

No doubt about the general hatred of the Scotch, but you
will observe that I make Millar responsible for the peace-making
assurance.

What you said to me in conversation some time ago led me
to look at Hume’s position as a moralist with some care, and
I quoted the passage at p. 206 that no doubt might be left on the
matter.

The little book threatened to grow to an undue length, and
1878 “ENGLISH MEN OF SCIENCE” SERIES 535

therefore the question of morals is treated more briefly than
was perhaps desirable—Ever yours very faithfully,
T. H. Huxtey.

Early in November I find the first reference to a pro-
posed, but never completed, “ English Men of Science”
series in the letter to Mr. Morley above. The following
letters, especially those to Sir H. Roscoe, with whom he
was concerting the series, give some idea of its scope :—

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, N.W., Dec. 10, 1878.
My pear Roscoze—You will think that I have broken out
into letter-writing in a very unwonted fashion, but I forgot half
of what I had to say this morning.
After a good deal of consultation with Macmillans, who
were anxious that the “ English Men of Science” series should
not be too extensive, I have arranged the books as follows :—

Roger Bacon.

. Harvey and the Physiologists of the 17th century.

Robert Boyle and the Royal Society.

Isaac Newton.

Charles Darwin.

. English Physicists, Gilbert, Young, Faraday, Joule.

. English Chemists, Black, Priestley, Cavendish, Davy,

Dalton.

. English Physiologists and Zoologists of the 18th century,
Hunter, etc.

g. English Botanists, Ray, Crew, Hales, Brown.

10. English Geologists, Hutton, Smith, Lyell.

eo YVoaupwny

We may throw in the astronomers if the thing goes.

Green of Leeds will undertake 10; Dyer, with Hooker’s aid,
9g; M. Foster 8; and I look to you for 7.

Tyndall has half promised to do Boyle, and I hope he will.
Clerk Maxwell can’t undertake Newton, and hints X. But I
won't have X.—he is too much of a bolter to go into the tandem.
I am thinking of asking Moulton, who is strongly recommended
by Spottiswoode, and is a very able fellow, likely to put his
strength into it.”

Do you know anything about Chrystal of St. Andrews? *

 

* Now Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh.
35
530 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXXIII

I forget whether I asked you before. From all I hear of him I
expect he would do No. 6 very well. I have written to Adamson
by this post.

I shall get off with Harvey and Darwin to my share.
Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxzey.

4 MargoroucH Puacg, N.W., Dec. 26, 1878.

My pear Roscoz—I was very loth to lump the chemists
together, but Max was very strong about not having too many
books in the series; and on the other hand, I had my doubts
how far the chemists were capable of “ dissociation” without
making the book too technical.

But I do not regard the present arrangement as unalterable,
and if you think the early chemists and the later chemists would
do better in two separate groups, the matter is quite open to
consideration.

Maxwell says he is overdone with work already, and alto-
gether declines to take anything new. I shall have to look
about me for a man to do the Physikers.

Of course Adamson will have to take in a view of the sci-
ence of the middle ages. That will be one of the most interest-
ing parts of the book, and I hope he will do it well. I suppose
he knows his Dante.

The final cause of boys is to catch something or other. I
trust that yours is demeasling himself properly—Ever yours
very faithfully, T. H. Huxzey.

4 MarLporoucH PLAcE, Dec. 1878.

My pear TyNpDALL—I consider your saying the other even-
ing that you would see “anyone else d——d first,” before you
would assent to the little proposal I made to you, as the most
distinct and binding acceptance you are capable of. You have
nothing else to swear by, and so you swear at everybody but me
when you want to pledge yourself.

It will release me of an immense difficulty if you will under-
take R. Boyle and the Royal Society (which of course includes
Hooke) ; and the subject is a capital one.

The book should not exceed about 200 pages, and you need
not be ready before this time next year. There could not be a
more refreshing piece of work just to enliven the dolce far
niente of the Bel Alp. (That is quite 4 la Knowles, and I begin
to think I have some faculty as an editor.)
1578 ILLNESS OF W. Kk. CLIFFORD 537

Settle your own terms with Macmillan. They will be as
joyful as I shall be to know you are going to take part in the
enterprise.—Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Dec. 31, 1878.

My pear TynpaLt—I would sooner have your Boyle, how-
ever long we may have to wait for it, than anybody else’s d d
simmer. (Now that’s a “ goak,” and you must ask Mrs. Tyn-
dall to explain it to you.)

Two years will I give you from this blessed New Year's eve,
1878, and if it isn’t done on New Year's Day 1881 you shall
not be admitted to the company of the blessed, but your dinner
shall be sent to you between two plates to the most pestiferous
corner of the laboratory of the Royal Institution. I am very
glad you will undertake the job, and feel that I have a proper
New Year's gift.

By the way, you ought to have had Hume ere this. Mac-
millan sent me two or three copies, just to keep his word, on
Christmas Day, and I thought I should have a lot more at once.

But there is no sign—not even an advertisement—and I
don’t know what has become of the edition. Perhaps the bishops
have bought it up.—With all good wishes, Ever yours,

T. H. Hux.ey.

 

Two letters—both to Tyndall—show his solicitude for
his friends. The one speaks of a last and unavailing at-
tempt made by W. kK. Clifford's friends to save his life by
sending him on a voyage (he died not long after at Ma-
deira); the other urges Tyndall himself to be careful of his
health.

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, 4f7i/ 2, 1878.

My pear TynpALL—We had a sort of council about Clifford
at Clark’s house yesterday morning—H. Thompson, Corfield,
Payne, Pollock, and myself, and I am sure you will be glad to
hear the result.

From the full statement of the nature of his case made by
Clark and Corfield, it appears that though grave enough in all
conscience, it is not so bad as it might be, and that there is a
chance, I might almost say a fair chance, for him yet. It
appears that the lung mischief has never gone so far as the
formation of a cavity, and that it is at present quiescent, and no
other organic disease is discoverable. The alarming symptom
538 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, XXXIII

is a general prostration—very sadly obvious when he was with
us on Sunday—which, as I understand, rather renders him
specially obnoxious to a sudden and rapid development of the
lung disease than is itself to be feared.

It was agreed that they should go at once to Gibraltar by the
P. and O., and report progress when he gets there. If strong
enough he is to go on a cruise round the Mediterranean, and if
he improves by this he is to go away for a year to Bogota (in
S. America) which appears to be a favourable climate for such
cases as his.

If he gets worse he can but return. I have done my best to
impress upon him and his wife the necessity of extreme care,
and I hope they will be wise.

It is very pleasant to find how good and cordial everybody is,
helpful in word and deed to the poor young people. I know it
will rejoice the cockles of your generous old heart to hear it.

As for yourself, I trust you are mending and allowing your-
self to be taken care of by your household goddess.

With our united love to her and yourself,—Ever yours
faithfully, T. H. Huxtey.

I sent your cheque to Yeo.

May, 1878.

My pear TYNDALL—You were very much wanted on Satur-
day, as your wife will have told you, but for all that I would not
have had you come on any account. You want a thorough long
rest and freedom from excitement of all sorts, and I am rejoiced
to hear that you are going out of the hurly-burly of London as
soon as possible; and, not to be uncivil, I do hope you will stay
away as long as possible, and not be deluded into taking up any
exciting pursuit as soon as you feel lively again among your
mountains.

Pray give up Dublin. If you don’t, I declare I will try if
I have enough influence with the council to get you turned out
of your office of Lecturer, and superseded.

Do seriously consider this, as you will be undoing the good
results of your summer’s rest. I believe your heart is as sound
as your watch was when you went on your memorable slide,*
but if you go slithering down avalanches of work and worry
you can’t always expect to pick up “ the little creature” none

 

* On the Piz Morteratsch: Hours of Exercise in the Alps, by J.
Tyndall, ch. xix.
~
*

ov]
wD

PARENTAL ADVICE 539

the worse. The apparatus is by one of the best makers, but it
has been some years in use, and can't be expected to stand rough
work.

You will be glad to hear that we had cheerier news of
Clifford on Saturday. He was distinctly better, and setting out
on his Mediterranean voyage——Ever yours very faithfully,

i E. ALENPEN:

A birthday letter to his son concludes the vear:

4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, N. W.. Dec. 10, 1575.

Your mother reminds me that to-morrow is your eighteenth
birthday. and though I know that my “happy returns” will
reach you a few hours too late I cannot but send them.

You are touching manhood now, my dear laddie, and I
trust that as a man your mother and I may always find reason
to regard you as we have done throughout your boyhood.

The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happi-
ness as to earn peace and self-respect. I have not troubled you
much with paternal didactics—but that bit is “ ower true” and
worth thinking over.

END OF NOL. I