Produced by Sue Asscher asschers@bigpond.com
LIFE AND LETTERS OF THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
BY HIS SON
LEONARD HUXLEY.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOLUME 2.
(PLATE: T.H. HUXLEY, PHOTOGRAPH BY WALKER AND COCKERILL, PH. SC. SIGNED T.H. HUXLEY, 1857.)
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER 2.1. 1870.
CHAPTER 2.2. 1871.
CHAPTER 2.3. 1872.
CHAPTER 2.4. 1873.
CHAPTER 2.5. 1874.
CHAPTER 2.6. 1875-1876.
CHAPTER 2.7. 1875-1876.
CHAPTER 2.8. 1876.
CHAPTER 2.9. 1877.
CHAPTER 2.10. 1878.
CHAPTER 2.11. 1879.
CHAPTER 2.12. 1881.
CHAPTER 2.13. 1882.
CHAPTER 2.14. 1883.
CHAPTER 2.15. 1884.
CHAPTER 2.16. 1884-1885.
CHAPTER 2.17. 1885.
CHAPTER 2.18. 1886.
CHAPTER 2.19. 1886.
CHAPTER 2.1. 1870.
[With 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 scattered 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 convictions 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 championship 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 terrible example of intellectual gravity 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), 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 Bradlaughite."
But now official life began to lay closer hold upon him. He came forward also as a leader in the struggle for educational reform, seeking not only to perfect his own biological teaching, but to show, in theory and practice, how scientific training might be introduced into the general system 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 expressing 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 11 407).
And as another review of the "Lay Sermons" puts it ("Nature" 3 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 the popular mind the leaven of new ideas upon nature and education and the progress of thought, he was still constantly 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 could spare to such research grew less and less. For eight years he was continuously on one Royal Commission 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 occupies 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, Royal Society Obituary Notice). (See Appendix 2.)
The year 1870 itself was one of the busiest he had ever known. He published one biological and four paleontological 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 Ethnological Society, of which he was President, on "The Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind," 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" ("Collected Essays" 7 253). As President also of the Geological Society and of the British Association, he had two important addresses to deliver. In addition to this, he delivered an address before the Y.M.C.A. at Cambridge on "Descartes' Discourse."
How busy he was may be gathered from his refusal of an invitation to
Down:—]
26 Abbey Place, January 21, 1870.
My dear Darwin,
It 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 "Devonshire 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. Huxley.
[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 January 18 to the "Pall Mall Gazette," 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 smartest 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 Devonshire 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 paragraph, 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" (see above), 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, could not bear to think himself forgotten, managed to get a letter out of him—not on scientific business.]
26 Abbey Place, January 30, 1870.
My dear Dohrn,
In one sense I deserve all the hard things you may have said and thought about me, for it is really scandalous 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.
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. [For the first number of "Nature," November 1869.] 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 Geological 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 interest. But I wish you would not take it into your head that Darwin or I, or any one 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 forgotten 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. ("Palaeontology and the Doctrine of Evolution" "Collected Essays" 8.) He took the opportunity to revise his address to the Society in 1862, and pointed out the growth of evidence in favour of evolution theory, and in particular traced the paleontological 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.]
If [he said] the expectation raised by the splints of horses that, in some ancestor of the horses, these splints would be found to be complete digits, has been verified, we are furnished with very strong reasons for looking for a no less complete verification of the expectation that the three-toed Plagiolophus-like "avus" of the horse must have been a five-toed "atavus" at some early period.
[Six years afterwards, this forecast of paleontological research 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 immediate fulfilment of a further prophecy of his will be told in due course.
His address to the Cambridge Y.M.C.A, "A Commentary on Descartes' 'Discourse touching the method of using reason rightly, and of seeking scientific truth,'" was delivered on March 24. This was an attempt to give this distinctively Christian audience some vision of the world of science and philosophy, which is neither Christian nor Unchristian, but Extra-christian, and to show] "by what methods the dwellers therein try to distinguish truth from falsehood, in regard to some of the deepest and most difficult problems that beset humanity, "in order to be clear about their actions, and to walk sure-footedly in this life," as Descartes 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] "introduction 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. 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 Sermons, Addresses and Reviews," which came out, with a dedicatory 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 dear Arnold,
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 unreality 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. Huxley.
26 Abbey Place, May 10, 1870.
[From the 14th to the 24th of April Huxley, accompanied 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 accepted, but then recollected the preliminaries which had to be carried out before his lectures on electricity at the end of the month. So he writes on April 6:—
Royal Institution, 6 April.
My dear Huxley,
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 lectures 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. (On the Pedigree of the Horse" April 8, 1870, which was never brought out in book form.) 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 dear Tyndall,
DAMN
the
L
e
c
t
u
r
e
s.
T.H.H.
That's a practical application of electricity for you.
[In June he writes to his wife, who has 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 Commemoration, and that the proposition has been bitterly and strongly opposed by Pusey. [Huxley ultimately received his D.C.L. in 1885.] They say there has been a regular row in 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 supposed to know nothing of what is going on.
[The situation is further developed in a letter to Darwin:—]
Jermyn Street, June 22, 1870.
My dear 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 proposed; 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. Huxley.
[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 suggested 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 publish until he had made quite sure of his ground. This question and the preparation of the course of Elementary Biology [See below.] led him to carry on a series of investigations lasting over two years, which took shape in a paper upon "Penicillium, Torula, and Bacterium", first read in Section D at the British Association, 1870 ("Quarterly Journal of Micr. Science" 1870 10 pages 355-362.); and in his article on "Yeast" in the "Contemporary Review" for December 1871. 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 [Reverend M.J. Berkeley.] crude discoveries than in the very best of the French and German microscopic verifications 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 Abiogenesis" ("Collected Essays" 8 page 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 evidence 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 hypothesis 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.]
Jermyn Street, April 30, 1870.
My dear Whirlwind,
I 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. [Dr. Dohrn succeeded in establishing such a zoological "station" at Naples.] 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 Liverpool.
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 Kowalesky and his Ascidians, Miklucho-Maclay [A Russian naturalist, and close friend of Haeckel's, who later adventured himself alone among the cannibals of New Guinea.] and his Fish-brains, and you and your Arthropods, I am becoming schwindelsuchtig, and spend my time mainly in that pious ejaculation "Donner and Blitz," in which, as you know, I seek relief. Then there is our Bastian who is making living things by the following combination:—
Prescription: Ammoniae Carbonatis
Sodae Phosphatis
Aquae destillatae
quantum sufficit
Caloris 150 degrees 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.
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, Miklucho-Maclay has been here; I have seen a good deal of him, and he strikes me as a man of very considerable 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 entirely 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 "Tochtervolles 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. Huxley.
All are well, the children so grown you will not know them.
July 18, 1870.
My dear Dohrn,
Notwithstanding the severe symptoms of "Tochterkrankheit" 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 Liverpool hospitality. We have ample provision for the entertainment of the "distinguished foreigner."
Will you be so good as to be my special ambassador with Haeckel and Gegenbauer, 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 that crowned swindler, whose fall I have been looking for ever since the coup d'etat, such a blow as he will never recover from, I will never forgive you. Public opinion in England is not worth much, but at present, it is entirely against France. Even the "Times," which generally 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 pleasure to seeing you in the autumn.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[In addition to this address on September 14, he read his paper on "Penicillium," etc., in Section D on the 20th. 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 experiences 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 Liverpool, 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 detective 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."
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,] "I 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 engagements, 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 he 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 contribution to the success of our meeting [i.e. his lecture "On the 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 correct 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 microscopes 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 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 postponed his Lectures to Working Men in London from October to February 1871. On October 3 he lectured in Leicester 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 "Extinct 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 lectured at the Philosophical Institute upon "The Formation of Coal" ("Collected Essays" 8.).
He was also busy with two Royal Commissions; still, at whatever cost of the energy and time due to his own investigations 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, depended momentous issues—the fostering of the moral and physical well-being of the nation; the quickening of its intelligence and the maintenance of its commercial supremacy. 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; "Collected Essays" 3 page 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 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 ("Collected Essays" 3 page 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 introduction 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 intellectual training. And it should be noted that he did not only regard intellectual training from the utilitarian point of view; he insisted, e.g. on the value of reading for amusement 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 intellectual, 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 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, I must express 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 proposed and carried a motion that no salary be attached to the post. He was himself one of the four members proposed for the Chairmanship; but the choice of the Board fell upon Lord Lawrence. In the words of Dr. Gladstone:—
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 information from such of the old members of the Board as are still living, especially the earl of Harrowby, Bishop Barry, the Reverend 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 comfort; but his colleagues soon came to respect him as a perfectly honest antagonist or supporter, and one who did not allow differences of conviction to interfere with friendly intercourse.
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 conduct,] "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 (Bishop Barry calls particular attention to his attitude on this point, "because," he says, "it is (I think) often misunderstood. In the "Life of the Right Honourable W.H. Smith" (for instance), published not long ago, Huxley is supposed, as a matter of course to have been the leader of the Secularist party.")
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 himself 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 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 educational 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 repudiated 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 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 humorous 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 principles of religion and morality as are suited to the capacities of children," with certain provisos. Several antagonistic amendments were proposed; but Professor Huxley gave his support to Mr. Smith's resolutions, which, however, he thought might be trimmed and amended in a way that the Reverend 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 growing 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 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 redemption from ignorance and barbarism it possessed mainly to the efforts of the clergy of the different denominations. Any system 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 refrained from voting. This basis of religious instruction, practically unaltered, has remained the law of the Board ever since.
There was a controversy in the papers, between Professor Huxley and the Reverend W.H. Fremantle, 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; Fremantle that it should include some species of distinct religious teaching, but not of a denominational character. (Cp. extract from Lord Shaftesbury's journal about this correspondence ("Life and Work of Lord Shaftesbury" 3 282). "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 RELIGION!' Let no one henceforth despair of making things clear and of giving explanations!")
[In taking up this position, Huxley expressly disclaimed any desire for a mere compromise to smooth over a difficulty. He supported what appeared to be the only workable 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 population.
His appreciation of the literary and historical value of the Bible, and the effect it was likely to produce upon the 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." [(As a result of some remarks of Mr. Clodd's on the matter in "Pioneers 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, page 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.'"
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:—]
Sir,
In a leading article of your issue of to-day you state, with perfect accuracy, that I supported the arrangement respecting 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 the speech delivered by Mr. Forster at the Birkbeck Institution in 1870:—
["I have the fullest confidence that in the reading and explaining 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. Huxley.
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, April 28.
[The second is to a correspondent who wrote to ask him whether adhesion to the compromise had not rendered nonsensical 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 "incriminated 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, did He not deserve to be punished?"
Huxley replied on October 16, 1894:—]
Dear Sir,
I am one with you in hating "hush up" as I do all other forms of lying; but I venture to submit that the compromise 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. And 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 teaching of such dogmas as the Incarnation I should have opposed it.
There has never been the slightest ambiguity about my position 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 accepted 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 Annunciation).
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 account 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 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 controversy.
I am, yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[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 speaking 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 democratic 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 unimportant 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. They 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 subjects 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 instruction were divided into two classes, essential and discretionary, the essentials being the Bible, and the principles of religion and 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 lessons, embracing a course of elementary instruction in physical science, and serving as an introduction to the science examinations 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 encouraged 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 advocating 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 education."
[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 without restriction. If it be urged that a man should be content 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 frightful] "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.
Further, although the committee as a whole recommended 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) continued to sit, and on November 30 brought up a report in favour of the Prussian system of separate classrooms, 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 Committee or to the School Management Committee, and on January 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. (Cp. "Scientific Education" "Collected Essays" 3 page 111.) 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 Ultramontanes in their purpose.
Hereupon he was vehemently attacked, for example, in the "Times" for his "injudicious and even reprehensible tone" 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 education?
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 without education at all.
Early in 1872 Huxley retired. For a year he had continued 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 Reverend Dr. Rigg, Canon Miller, Mr. Charles Reed, and Lord Lawrence expressed their deep regret. In the words of Dr. Rigg, "they were losing one of the most valuable members of the Board, not only because of his intellect and trained acuteness, but because of his knowledge of every subject connected with culture and education, and because of his great fairness and impartiality with regard to all subjects that came under his observation."
Though Huxley 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 Athenaeum 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 intellectual 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 Reverend Benjamin 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 important 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, cookery and domestic economy for girls are becoming essentials in our schools. Evening 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 religious question being disposed of—I was able to follow much the same line as his, and I remember being struck not only with his clear-headed ability, but with his strong commonsense, as to what was useful and practicable, and the utter absence in him of doctrinaire aspiration after ideal impossibilities. There was (I think) very little under his chairmanship of strongly-accentuated difference of opinion.
In his action on the Board generally I was struck with these three characteristics:—First, his remarkable power of speaking—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 constantly appears in his writings, even those of the most polemical kind—a singular candour in recognising truths which might seen to militate against his own position, and a power of understanding 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 Reverend 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 following 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…
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 implied 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 some 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 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 making 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 sentiments 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 piggery 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 pounds sterling 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 political career. To one of those who urged him to stand for Parliament, he replied thus:—]
November 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 important, 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 temporarily and partially, to forsake that work again.
I am, dear sir, yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[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, 1898.
Dear Mr. Huxley,
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 astonishing 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 assembly, nor have carried with him by the force of his eloquence, 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 there "une bonne digestion et un mauvais coeur." "Le mauvais coeur" does not appear to be "de toute necessite," 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 lifelong 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 companion of my first Indian journey in 1874-5, he, William Rathbone, paying all your father's expenses. (Of this, Dr. Tyndall wrote to Mrs. Huxley:—"I 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!") Mr. Rathbone made this proposal when he found that Lubbock, with whom I travelled 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 delightful; but to have lived five months with a man of his extraordinary 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, very sincerely yours,
M.E. Grant Duff.]
CHAPTER 2.2.
1871.
["In 1871" (to quote Sir M. Foster), "the post of Secretary 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 administration, 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. (See Appendix 2.)
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 Physiology"; 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" ("Collected Essays" 6). He published one paleontological paper, "Fossil Vertebrates from the Yarrow Colliery" (Huxley and Wright, "Irish Academy Transactions"). In June and July he gave 36 lectures to schoolmasters—that important business of teaching the teachers that they might set about scientific instruction in the right way. (See below.) 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 below), while on October 9 he delivered an address at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, on "Administrative Nihilism" ("Collected Essays" 1). This address, written between September 21 and 28, and remodelled later, was a pendant to his educational campaign on the School Board; a restatement and justification of what he had said and done there. His text was the various 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-theological grounds to any one 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 knowledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run amuck 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 other man,"—I am unable to see that the logical consequence is any such restriction of the power of Government, as its supporters 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 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 comparison of the body politic to the body physical, a comparison vitiated by the fact that "among the higher physiological organisms there is none which is developed by the conjunction of a number of primitively independent existences 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 toleration of error is a good thing in itself, and to be reckoned among the cardinal virtues." [(This bears on his speech against Ultramontanism.)
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 something towards that end indirectly. For example, I can conceive the existence of an Established Church which should be a blessing to the community. A Church in which, week by week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propositions 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 meretricious trappings. [(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 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.)
The usual note of high pressure recurs in the following letter, written to thank Darwin for his new work, "The Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex.">[
Jermyn Street, February 20, 1871.
My dear 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.
No doubt, too, it is full of suggestions just like that I have hit upon by chance at page 212 of volume 1, which connects the periodicity of vital phenomena with antecedent conditions.
Fancy lunacy, etc., 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 improving 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. Huxley.
[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 dear Roscoe,
If you could see the minutes of the Proceedings of the Aid to Science Commission, the Contagious Diseases 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—just 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 subjects has, I hope, secured the future of Elementary Science in London. Cannot you get as much done in Manchester?
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[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, July 30, 1871.
My dear 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 appearance, 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 [aged 13 and 12 respectively] 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 whooping-cough. 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. Huxley.
[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" [Containing his article on "The School Boards," etc.] for 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. Huxley.
26 Abbey Place, July 7, 1871.
My dear Dohrn,
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 tantalising—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 something! 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 1/12 inch 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 "Journal of Queckett Micr. Club" volume 5 page 144.)]
All our children but Jessie have the whooping-cough—Pertussis—I don't know your German name for it. It is distressing 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,
T.H. Huxley.
[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 visitors 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 simply 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 walking, and now his arms went black and blue under the muscular 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 Association; 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, as well as a review of Dana's "Crinoids." The former, which appeared in the "Contemporary Review" for November ("Collected Essays" 2 120-187) was a review of (1) "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," by A.R. Wallace, (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.">[
"I am Darwin's bull-dog," [he once said, and the "Quarterly Reviewer's" treatment of Darwin,] "alike unjust and unbecoming," [provoked him into immediate action.] "I am about sending you," [he writes to Haeckel on November 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 ignorance 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 unlikely 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 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 creation, 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 Disputations 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 asserting 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 astonishment of the librarian, and looking into them as "the careful robin eyes the delver's toil" (vide "Idylls"), 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" 3 148-150). 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 metaphysical-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 commencement.
And again, after "mounting climax on climax," he continues:—"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.
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 suddenly, and could neither work nor think. He refers to this in the following letter:—]
Jermyn Street, December 22, 1871.
My dear 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. Huxley.
PS.—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 2.3.
1872.
[Dyspepsia, that most distressing of maladies, had laid firm hold upon him. He was compelled to take entire rest for a time. 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, April 23, 1873.
My dear Huxley,
I 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 pounds sterling 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 convinced that we act for the public interest, as well as in accordance 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 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,
Charles 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 Physiology at South Kensington were taken over by Dr. Michael Foster, who had already acted as his substitute in the Fullerian 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.]
January 3, 1872.
My dear Dohrn,
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 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, somewhere 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 Gibraltar. 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 "Administrative 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 teaching 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. Huxley.
[He left Southampton on January 11, in the "Malta." On the 16th, he notes in his diary,] "I was up just in time 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 Admiral 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 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 "Nyanza" 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 was able to accept the invitation of two friends to go with them up the Nile as far as Assouan in that most restful of conveyances, a dahabieh.
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 notebook 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 geological 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 surrounding 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 stratified 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 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 surrounding 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 10, 1872.
My dear Arnold,
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 yourself.
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 befell 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 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 universe 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. Huxley.
[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 visited, and two days spent in Rome.]
Hotel de Grande Bretagne, Naples, March 31, 1872.
My dear Tyndall,
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 Athenaeum, and a very pleasant fellow, Charles Ellis, who had taken a dahabieh, and were about to start up the Nile. They invited me 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 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 England. Looking back through the past six months I begin to see that I have had a narrow escape from a bad breakdown, 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 candidates for that honour, the paragraph concluded, "But we understand that at present Professor Huxley has the best chance." It is really too bad if any one 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 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." [Elie de Beaumont "is said to have 'damned himself to everlasting fame' by inventing the nickname of 'la science moussante' for Evolutionism." See "Life of Darwin" 2 185.]
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. Huxley.
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 as soon as he began work again in London, his old enemy returned. Early hours, the avoidance of society and societies, 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) Andrew Clark, followed by another trip abroad, effected a cure. I remember his saying once that he learned by sad experience 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, May 20, 1872.
My dear Dohrn,
I 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 behaved 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 dyspepsia 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 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 pounds sterling a year (and a house) with possible increase to 400 pounds sterling. I do not know any one here who would answer 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. [His work on the development of the Arthropoda or Spider family.] 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. Huxley.
[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 [History of Development.], despise not beefsteaks, nor wives either. They also are good.
Jermyn Street, June 5, 1872.
My dear Dohrn,
I have written to the Governor of Ceylon, and enclosed the first half of your letter to me to him as he understands 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.
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 general 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. Huxley.
[A little later Von Willemoes Suhm] ("why the deuce does he have such a long name, instead of a handy monosyllable are dissyllable like Dohrn or Huxley?") [was recommended for the post. He afterwards was one of the scientific staff of the "Challenger," and died during the voyage.]
Morthoe, near Barnstaple, North Devon, August 5, 1872.
My dear Dohrn,
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 been very busy lecturing daily to a batch of schoolmasters, and looking after their practical instruction 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 (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 commissariat, 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!
Morthoe, Ilfracombe, North Devon, August 23, 1872.
My dear 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. Huxley.
[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 circumstances 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 applicable to the purpose of a laboratory, and I was obliged to content myself, for many years, with what seemed the next best thing, namely, as full an exposition as I could give of the characters of certain plants and animals, selected as types of vegetable and animal organisation, by way of introduction to systematic 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 impressed 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 missionaries," as he described them to Dr. Dohrn.
In the promotion of the practical teaching of biology (writes the late Jeffery Parker, "Natural Science" 8 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 established by the late Professor Rolleston. ("Rolleston (Professor Lankester writes to me) was the first to systematically conduct the study of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy 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 manuscript descriptions. The student went through this series, dissecting fresh specimens for himself. After some ten years' experience Rolleston printed his manuscript 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 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.)
But the biological laboratory, as it is now understood, may be said to date from about 1870, when Huxley, with the cooperation of Professors Foster, Rutherford, Lankester, Martin, and others (T.J. Parker, G.B. Howes, and the present Sir W. Thiselton Dyer, K.C.M.G., C.I.E.,), 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 themselves facts which they had hitherto heard about and taught to their unfortunate pupils from books alone. The naive astonishment 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 Department, was shown a drop of his own blood under the microscope. "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 Kensington, this method was adopted as part of the regular curriculum 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. Huxley was in the full tide of that more than natural energy which preceded his breakdown 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 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, assisted 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, June 4, 1872.
My dear 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 necessary very long) I am the necessary man to carry it on. I could not get a suppleant 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 [In the affair of Dr. Hooker already referred to.] which is very strong and striking, 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 Athenaeum at 4 o'clock.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[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:—
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 any one 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 Professor Jeffery Parker. In the first edition, the lower forms of life were first dealt with; from simple cells—amoeba, yeast-plant, blood-corpuscle—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 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 dear Huxley,
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,
Charles 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 Association are the subject of several letters to Sir Henry Roscoe and Dr. Tyndall.]
26 Abbey Place, April 8, 1872.
My dear Roscoe,
Many thanks for your kind letter of welcome. My long rest has completely restored me. As my doctor told me, I was sound, wind and limb, and had merely worn myself 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 himself to.
I like the look of the "Primers" (of which Macmillan has 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. Huxley.
The wife unites with me in kind regards to Mrs. Roscoe and yourself.
Morthoe, Ilfracombe, North Devon, September 9, 1872.
My dear Tyndall,
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 hyperchondriacal bedevilments that follow in its train, until I am seriously thinking of returning to town to see if 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 Kensington.
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 shall see you.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
26 Abbey Place, September 17, 1872.
My dear Roscoe,
Your letter has followed me from Morthoe here. We had good enough weather in Devon—but my stay there was marred by the continuous dyspepsia and concurrent hyperchondriacal 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 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 faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
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 neighbourhood, 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 decision, 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 story, above the ominous legend, "Staircase forgotten.">[
March 20, 1871.
My dear Burton,
There is something delightfully refreshing 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. Huxley.
[This house, Number 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, 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, distinguished 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 stringent 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 considerably 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 solitary 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 pounds sterling or so for being wholly and absolutely in the right.
[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 inconvenience 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 Street now on the chance of catching you, but I am bound here by an appointment.
[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 empathic 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 expressions 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.
It may be remembered that the 1872 address on "Administrative 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 (September 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 circumvent 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:—
February 26, 1873.
I am not to be deterred by any amount of bribery and corruption, 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 Place, January 11, 1875.
My dear old 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. Huxley.
[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 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 suppressing 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:—]
To Miss Jex Blake.
October 28, 1872.
Dear Madam,
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 completely sympathise with those Professors of Anatomy, Physiology, and Obstetrics, who object to teach such subjects to mixed classes of young men and women brought together without 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 examination must be practical, and I have neither dissecting-room available nor the anatomical license required for human dissection; and thirdly, it is not likely that the University authorities would attach much weight to my report on one or two 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. Huxley.
[The last event of the year was that he was elected by the students Lord Rector of Aberdeen University—a position, 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 in February 1874.
CHAPTER 2.4.
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 dear Tyndall,
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 comfortable 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 drawback 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 careful to have nothing done without Burton's sanction and assurance that I was quite safe in law; and I would have given up anything [rather] 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 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 deduction 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 Spottiswood 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 principles, 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 you 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 any one, who stinketh in the nostrils of orthodoxy, beating a Scotch peer at his own gates in the most 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 Aberdeen 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. Huxley.
[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 governor 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, and with better results. He went with his old friend Hooker to the Auvergne, walking, geologising, sketching, and gradually discarding 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 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 disposition 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 appreciating his remarkable command over himself and his ever-present consideration for his companion. Not a word or gesture of irritation ever escaped him; he exerted himself to obey the instructions 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 accessible, 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 early stage of the manifestations, 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-reverberating 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 cure 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, 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 ascending 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 Ardeche. 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 feeling, politeness, and readiness to assist in many ways.
By the 10th of July, nine days after setting out, I felt satisfied (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 especially 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 "Nature" 8 31, 166, but subsequently found that glaciation had been observed by von Lassaul in 1872 and by Sir William Guise in 1870.)
Lepuy offered a special attraction apart from scenery and geology. In the museum was the skeleton of a prehistoric man that had been found in the breccia of the neighbourhood, associated with the remains of the rhinoceros, 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 Ardeche (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 recommended 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 nothing else did, nor can his chronic illness be attributed to the abuse of tobacco.)
The following letters to Sir H. Roscoe and Dr. Tyndall were written during this tour:—]
Le Puy, Haute Loire, France, July 17, 1873.
My dear Roscoe,
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 inauguration 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. Huxley.
Hotel de France, Baden-Baden, July 30, 1873.
My dear Tyndall,
We find ourselves here after a very successful cruise in the Auvergne and Ardeche, 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 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 diarrhoea. 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 ate 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.H. Huxley.
[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.
Axenstein, Luzerne, August 24, 1873.
My dear Tyndall,
The copies of your booklet ["Principal Forbes and his Biographers.">[ intended for Hooker and me reached me just as I left Baden last Tuesday. Hooker had left me for home a fortnight before, and I hardly know whether to send his to Kew or keep them for him till I return. I have read mine twice, and I think that nothing could be better than the tone you have adopted. I did not suspect that you had such a shot in your locker as the answer to Forbes about the direction of the "crevasses" referred to by Rendu. It is a deadly thrust; and I shall be curious to see what sort of parry the other side will attempt. For of course they will attempt something. Scotland is, I believe, the only country in the world in which you can bring in action for "putting to silence" an adversary who will go on with an obviously hopeless suit. The lawgivers knew the genius of the people; and it is to be regretted that they could not establish a process of the same sort in scientific matters.
I wrote to you a month ago to tell you how we had been getting on in France. Hooker and I were very jolly, notwithstanding the heat, and I think that the Vivarrais is the most instructive country in the world for seeing what water can do in cutting down the hardest rocks. Scrope's book is very good on the whole, though the pictures are a little overdone.
My wife and Leonard met me at Cologne on the 11th. Then we went on to Baden and rested till last Tuesday, when we journeyed to Luzerne and, getting out of that hot and unsavoury hole as fast as we could, came here last Thursday.
We find ourselves very well off. The hotel is perched up 1800 feet above the lake, with a beautiful view of Pilatus on the west and of the Urner See on the south. On the north we have the Schwyz valley, so that we are not shut in, and the air is very good and fresh. There are plenty of long walks to be had without much fatigue, which suits the wife. Leonard promises 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 has plenty of vigour and endurance. But he is not thirteen yet and I do not mean to let him do overmuch, though we are bent on a visit to a glacier. I began to tell him something about the 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. He is the sweetest little fellow imaginable; and either 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 Ambassador 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 decoration I should decline with thanks, but I am told it is a purely scientific and literary affair like the Prussian "pour le merite"; 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,
T.H. Huxley.
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 understand 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.
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, 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 destined 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 managed 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 Kensington 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 (written 1874.), on Amphioxus, a preliminary note, and that a paper read to the Zoological Society in 1876, on Ceratodus Forsteri, was marked Number 1 of the series of Contributions 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 Number 1 was only followed, and that after an interval of seven years, by a brief Number 2. A paper "On the Characters of the Pelvis," in the "Proceedings of the Royal Society," in 1879, is full of suggestive 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 morphology, and are more or less connected with his former researches, 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 evidence 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 unaccomplished.
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 promising 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 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. (Ibid.)
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, February 24, 1873.
My dear 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 undertaking, 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 lawsuit 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, 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. Kleinenberg 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 satisfied 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 indications 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 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. Huxley.
4 Marlborough Place, October 17, 1873.
My dear 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 conclusion until now. I have been incessantly occupied with other things.
I will do for you, and gladly, anything I would do for myself, 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 mention, 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 any one 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 German in which I delight, I am not so sure about your meaning. 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 sea?…
[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. Huxley.
[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 have an 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, September 25, 1873.
My dear Tyndall,
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 [The late Trenham Reeks, Registrar of the School of Mines, and Curator of the Museum of Practical Geology.], 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.
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 parenthese, 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. Huxley.
[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 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., October 16, 1873.
My dear Roscoe,
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 days' 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 success, and I congratulate you heartily. I only wish that I could have been there to see.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[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 line 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:—]
November 18, 1873.
I am glad to learn two things from your note—first, that you are getting better; second, that there is 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, October 16, 1873.
My dear Rolleston,
A note which came from Mrs. Rolleston 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 (except 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. Huxley.
Athenaeum Club, November 3, 1873.
My dear 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 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 judgment 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. Huxley.
CHAPTER 2.5.
1874.
[My father's health continued fairly good in 1874, and while careful to avoid excessive strain he was able to undertake 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, educational 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. (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.) 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 demanded 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 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. [("Collected Essays" 3 189 sqq.)
As for the "so-called 'conflict of studies,'" he exclaims:—]
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 multiplied 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 knowledge 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 lifelong 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 education, culture is not solely dependent upon classics.]
Moreover, I would urge that a thorough study of Human Physiology is in itself an education broader and more comprehensive 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 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 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 I expect that the job will be tougher.
I send you a couple of papers—"Scotsman," 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 meeting of the Council at one o'clock, and before that I am to go and look over laboratories and collections with sundry Professors. 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 villainous 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" ("Collected Essays" 3 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 asked by Professor
Ray Lankester, then a Fellow of Exeter College, if he could not break
his journey there, and inspect the results of his investigations on
Lymnaeus. 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 Lymnaeus 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" ("Collected Essays" 1 199, see also below). The latter was delivered at Belfast before the British Association 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 Place, London, N.W., June 24, 1874.
My dear Tyndall,
I quite agree with your Scotch friend in his estimate of Forbes, and if he were alive and the controversy beginning, I should say draw your picture in your best sepia or lampblack. 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 was 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' 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!" 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 [for many years secretary to the British Association.] 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 staying with us. [Miss Geraldine Jewsbury (1812-1880) the novelist, and friend of the Carlyles. After 1866 she lived at Sevenoaks.] 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 you.
Ever yours sincerely,
T.H. Huxley.
[The next letter is in reply to Tyndall, who had written as follows 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…
PS.—Have just seen the Swiss "Times"; am intensely disgusted to find that while I was brooding over the calamities possibly 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 1st August!!!]
4 Marlborough Place, London, 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, 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 newspapers 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 invitation [to unveil the statue of Joseph Priestley]. 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 opportunity for a little ventilation of wickedness. I cannot say, however, 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 concerned 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 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. [I.e. at the British Association; he actually took "Animals as Automata.">[ If people see that it is Evolution, that is Nature's fault, and not mine.
We are all flourishing, and send our love.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The paper on Animal Automatism is in effect an enlargement 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 physiologist, 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 consciousness first make their appearance in man." [And if the volitions 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 materialists, 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; interest 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 reference 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 offhand 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 audience, 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, 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 delivered 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' arrangements [i.e. for the members of the x club and their wives to club together at Belfast] 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 lodgings here with John Ball for a companion turns out to be a most excellent arrangement. Ca 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 everybody 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 account of me that will amuse you. The writer is evidently disappointed 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. ["On Animals as Automata": see above.] 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 half without notes, the people listening 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 otherwise, 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 dinners or breakfasts or other such fandangoes except those I accepted before leaving home. Sunday I spent quietly here, thinking 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 President of the College, and 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 Section 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 exposition of the series of new facts, and the modifications of the 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 accordance with the views of successive observers, until a graphic epitome of the progress of knowledge on the subject was completed.
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 on 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 Axolotl 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 violence." [Later,] "I am benevolent 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. [Dr. A.C.L.G. Gunther, of the British Museum, where he was appointed Keeper of the Department of Zoology in 1875.] 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 Columella auris in the Frog.] "Your suprahyomandibular 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 combotherations. 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 Amphioxus; 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 education, was evoked by the following circumstances. Miss Jex Blake's difficulties in obtaining a medical education have already been referred to. A further discouragement 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 disabilities 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 practitioner will find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach that standard is like to prove exhausting to an ordinarily intelligent and well-educated young woman.
[The Marine Biological Station at Naples was still struggling for existence, and to my father's interest in it is do you the following letter, one of several to Dr. Dohrn, whose marriage took place this summer:—]
4 Marlborough Place, June 24, 1874.
My dear Dohrn,
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 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 Aesculapius, 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. Huxley.
Pray give my kind remembrances to your father.
4 Marlborough Place, March 31, 1874.
My dear Darwin,
The brain business is more than half done, and I will soon polish it off and send it to you. [A note on the brain in man and the apes for the second edition of the "Descent of Man.">[ 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 present. 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.
The chance of clearing two or three thousand pounds in as many months is not to be sneezed at by a pere de famille. I am getting sick of the state of things here.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
I have heard no more about the spirit photographs!
4 Marlborough Place, April 16, 1874.
My dear 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 [W.G. 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.
I had 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. Huxley.
[The allusion in the letter of March 31 to certain "spirit photographs" refers to a series of these wonderful productions 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 mechanical means.
It was at this gentleman's house that in January a carefully organised seance 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," volume 3 page 187.
It must be noted that he had had fairly extensive experience 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 attended seances and met mediums by whom he was most unfavourably impressed.
Moreover, when invited to join a committee of investigation into spiritualistic manifestations, he replied:—]
I regret that I am unable to accept the invitation of the Committee of the Dialectical Society to cooperate with a committee 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 examining 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 "Spiritualism" 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 seance. [(Quoted from a review in the "Daily News," October 17, 1871, of the Report on Spiritualism of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society.)
To the report above-mentioned, Professor G. Darwin, who also was present, added one or two notes and corrections.]
REPORT ON SEANCE.
January 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 the opposite chair, Mr. G. Darwin on the medium's right, Mr. Huxley on his left, Mr. Z between Mr. Huxley and Mr. (Darwin) Y. 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 medium'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 massiveness 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 happened.
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 discernible 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. "Hoho!" thought I, "Medium's head is well over the table. Now we are going to have some manifestations." Immediately followed 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 occasionally 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 suggested 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 occasion to observe that the guitar was turned round into the position noted in the margin, 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 something." 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 intervals, 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 remarks 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 arm-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 imposter, and I have no more doubt that he got Mr. Y to sit on his right hand, knowing from the turn of his conversation 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. Huxley.
As Mr. G. Darwin wrote of the seance, "it has given me a lesson with respect to the worthlessness of evidence which I shall always remember, and besides will make me very diffident in trusting myself. Unless I had seen it, I could not have believed in the evidence of any one with such perfect bona fides as Mr. Y being so worthless."
[On receiving this report Mr. Darwin wrote ("Life" 2 page 188):—
Though the seance did tire you so much, it was, I think, really worth the exertion, as the same sort of things are done at all the seances…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 thinking 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 Marlborough Place, N.W., June 4, 1874.
My dear Mr. Morley,
I assure you that it was a great disappointment 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 evening discourse to deliver at the British Association—to say nothing 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. Huxley.
4 Marlborough Place, N.W., November 15, 1874.
My dear Morley,
Many thanks for your abundantly sufficient 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 "Fortnightly," 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" 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 December 1 will suit me excellently well.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The year winds up with a New Year's greeting to Professor Haeckel.]
4 Marlborough Place, N.W., December 28, 1874.
My dear Haeckel,
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, unbelieving 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 Review" 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 him as you deal with a "Pfaffe." [Parson.] There are "halb-Pfaffen" as well as "halb-Affen." [Lit. Half-apes; the Prosimiae and Lemurs.] So if what I say about "Anthropogenie" seems very little—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 [The Lancelet.] 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. [Primitive vertebrate.]
Thus the skull of Petromyzon answers to about fourteen segments of the body of Amphioxus, fused together and indistinguishable 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 unlucky for Semper that he has just put Amphioxus out of the Vertebrata altogether—because it is demonstratable that Amphioxus 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 "Anthropogenie." 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. Huxley.
How will you read this scrawl now that Gegenbaur is gone?
[In the article here referred to, a review of a book by Professor 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 it…
You ought to be like one of the blessed gods of Elysium, and let the inferior deities do battle with the infernal powers. Moreover, 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 2.6.
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 Sequard, 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 discrimination. 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 Physiology," urging that beginners should be shown the structures under discussion, examples for which could easily be provided 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 Instruction in Physiology," 1877 ("Collected Essays" 3 300):]
It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to give a formal contradiction 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." [(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.")
[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 recommend boys and girls to perform experiments which are difficult to skilled anatomists, to say nothing of other reasons.
LETTER TO THE "TIMES."
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 contradiction 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 subject of Lord Shaftesbury's misquotation and misrepresentation stands as follows:—
"For the purpose of acquiring a practical, though elementary, acquaintance with physiological anatomy and histology, the organs and tissues of the commonest domestic animals 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 corresponding parts of a sheep; while the phenomena of the circulation, and many of the most important properties of living tissues are better shown by the common frog than by any of the higher animals."
If 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 is not exactly 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 performance 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 conspicuous with his misapprehension of the subject.
LORD SHAFTESBURY'S REPLY.
The letter from Professor Huxley in the "Times" of this morning 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 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 discipline, 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 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 character. ["Huxley, the Professor, has written me a very civil, nay kind, letter. I replied in the same spirit." (Lord Shaftesbury, "Life and Work" 3 373 June 3, 1876.)
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 summer courses of lectures at South Kensington on Biology, Chemistry, Geology, etc., 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 having taken care to avoid inflicting pain in certain previous 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 intimated, 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 Department. 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 dear Donnelly,
It will be the best course, perhaps, if I set down in writing what I have to say respecting the vivisections 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 Sequard, 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 performance 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 commenced, 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 defended Brown Sequard, that I might expect to meet with every description of abuse and misrepresentation if such demonstrations were given.
It did not appear to me, however, that the latter consideration 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 anaesthetics, 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 prohibited 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 undergoes 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-President 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) Donnelly, 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 therefore 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 practises in regard to the question 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 anaesthetics, or deprived of its brain, does; and the teacher who shows his pupils the wonderful phenomena exhibited 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 longitude of their schoolroom.
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 altered 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 consideration 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 good enough to make in your minute removed all my objections to undertaking the Summer 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 experiment, 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 justifiable, 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 indulgent 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" "Collected Essays" 3 300 seq.) 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.
The subject is again dealt with in "The Progress of Science," 1887 ("Collected Essays" 1 122 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 physiologists 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 anything can do to the English school of Physiology, Pathology, and Pharmacology, and therefore to the progress of rational medicine.
[Another 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 discussed at the college debating society.]
Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, September 29, 1890.
Dear Sir,
I am of the opinion that the practice of performing 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 experiments 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 animal 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 sweeping 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 attention 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 myself—suppose you knew that by inflicting prolonged pain on 100 rabbits you could discover a way to the extirpation of leprosy, or consumption, or locomotor ataxy, or of suicidal 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 experimenting on rabbits or dogs.
At the same time, I think that a heavy moral responsibility 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. Huxley.
[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 legislation 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:—]
4 Marlborough Place, January 22, 1875.
My dear Darwin,
I quite agree with your letter about vivisection 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 experimentation 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,
T.H. Huxley.
South Kensington, April 21, 1875.
My dear Darwin,
The day before yesterday I met Playfair at the club, and he told me that he had heard from Miss Elliott that I 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 confirmed 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 Pfluger 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. Huxley.
31 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, May 19, 1875.
My dear 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 draught 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 demonstrations only as could be performed under anaesthetics.
The second clause of the bill, however, by the words "for the purpose of new scientific discovery and for no other purpose," absolutely 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 do. I have an excellent class here, 340 odd, and like the work. Best regards to Mrs. Darwin.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
31 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, June 5, 1875.
My dear Darwin,
I see I have forgotten to return Playfair's letter, which I enclose. 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 Cardwell 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.
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. Huxley.
[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 (afterwards 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, October 30, 1875.
My dear 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.
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 indifference to animal suffering, and said he only gave anaesthetics 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.
I am utterly disgusted with the whole business.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Of course keep the little article on Species. It is in some American Encyclopaedia 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, November 2, 1875.
My dear Darwin,
Our 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 [Where the Commission was sitting.] at 2 o'clock to-morrow. And that I have looked out the highest chair that was to be got for you. [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.]
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[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 page 248) puts it: "The evidence on 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" ("Collected Essays" 3 310).]
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 opportunity 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 circulation 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 Vivisection Act.
So it comes about that, in this year of grace 1877, two persons may be charged with cruelty to animals. One has impaled a frog, and suffered the creature to writhe about in that condition 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 amusing," and the magistrate bids him depart in peace—nay, probably wishes him good sport. The second pleads, "I wanted to impress 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 2.7.
1875-1876.
[Huxley only delivered one address outside his regular work in 1875, on "Some Results of the 'Challenger' Expedition," given at the Royal Institution on January 29. For all through the summer he was away from London, engaged upon the summer course of lectures on Natural History at Edinburgh. This was due to the fact that Professor (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 Animal Kingdom in 54 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 African 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 pages 36 and 37 of his "Life."
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 from them no small amount of mental stimulus. Nor were his expectations disappointed. 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 hundred, 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 amoeba to the genus homo.
It was a large class, ultimately reaching 353 and breaking 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 Bruce's Edinburgh house, which they had lent him.]
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 auditors, 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 present, 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 10 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 pleasantly 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.
To his eldest daughter:—]
Edinburgh, May 16, 1875.
My dearest Jess,
Your mother's letter received this morning reminds me that I have not written to "Cordelia" (I suppose 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 University—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 grandmother'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 Roottle-Tootles have a bigger drawing-room than ours. I should be sorry to believe these young beginners 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. Huxley.
[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 speculations 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.
[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:—]
May hap 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 health during this period, it maintained, on the whole, a satisfactory level, thanks to the regime of which he writes to Professor Baynes:—]