Autobiography and Selected Essays

ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE (1868)

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[ On the Physical Basis of Life: from Methods and Results; also published in Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews. "The substance of this paper was contained in a discourse which was delivered in Edinburgh on the evening of Sunday, the 8th of November, 1868—being the first of a series of Sunday evening addresses upon non-theological topics, instituted by the Rev. J. Cranbrook. Some phrases, which could possess only a transitory and local interest, have been omitted; instead of the newspaper report of the Archbishop of York's address, his Grace's subsequently published pamphlet On the Limits of Philosophical inquiry is quoted, and I have, here and there, endeavoured to express my meaning more fully and clearly than I seem to have done in speaking—if I may judge by sundry criticisms upon what I am supposed to have said, which have appeared. But in substance, and, so far as my recollection serves, in form, what is here written corresponds with what was there said."—Huxley.]

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[ Finner whale: a name given to a whale which has a dorsal fin. A Finner whale commonly measures from 60 to 90 feet in length.]

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[ A fortiori: with stronger reason: still more conclusively.]

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[ well-known epigram: from Goethe's Venetianische Epigramme. The following is a translation of the passage: Why do the people push each other and shout? They want to work for their living, bring forth children; and feed them as well as they possibly can. . . . No man can attain to more, however much he may pretend to the contrary.]

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[ Maelstroms: a celebrated whirlpool or violent current in the Arctic Ocean, near the western coast of Norway, between the islands of Moskenaso and Mosken, formerly supposed to suck in and destroy everything that approached it at any time, but now known not to be dangerous except under certain conditions. Century Dictionary. Cf. also Poe's Descent into the Maelstrom.]

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[ Milne-Edwards (1800-1885): a French naturalist. His Elements de Zoologie won him a great reputation.]

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[ with such qualifications as arises: a typographical error.]

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[ De Bary (1831-1888): a German botanist noted especially for his researches in cryptogamic botany.]

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[ No Man's Land: Huxley probably intends no specific geographical reference. The expression is common as a designation of some remote and unfrequented locality.]

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[ Kuhne (1837-1900): a German physiologist and professor of science at Amsterdam and Heidelberg.]

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[ Debemur morti nos nostraque: Horace—Ars Poetica, line 63.

Martin's translation.]

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[ peau de chagrin: skin of a wild ass.]

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[ Balzac (1799-1850): a celebrated French novelist of the realistic school of fiction.]

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[ Barmecide feast: the allusion is to a story in the Arabian Nights in which a member of the Barmecide family places a succession of empty dishes before a beggar, pretending that they contain a rich repast.]

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[ modus operandi: method of working.]

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[ Martinus Scriblerus: a reference to Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus written principally by John Arbuthnot, and published in 1741. The purpose of the papers is given by Warburton and Spence in the following extracts quoted from the Preface to the Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus in Elwin and Courthope's edition of Pope's works, vol. x, p. 273:— "Mr. Pope, Dr. Arbuthnot, and Dr. Swift, in conjunction, formed the project of a satire on the abuses of human learning; and to make it better received, proposed to execute it in the manner of Cervantes (the original author of this species of satire) under a continued narrative of feigned adventures. They had observed that those abuses still kept their ground against all that the ablest and gravest authors could say to discredit them; they concluded, therefore, the force of ridicule was wanting to quicken their disgrace; and ridicule was here in its place, when the abuses had been already detected by sober reasoning; and truth in no danger to suffer by the premature use of so powerful an instrument."]

"The design of this work, as stated by Pope himself, is to ridicule all the false tastes in learning under the character of a man of capacity enough, that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in each. It was begun by a club of some of the greatest wits of the age—Lord Oxford, the Bishop of Rochester, Pope, Congreve, Swift, Arbuthnot, and others. Gay often held the pen; and Addison liked it very well, and was not disinclined to come into it."]

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[ accounted for the operation of the meat-jack: from the paper "To the learned inquisitor into nature, Martinus Scriblerus: the society of free thinkers greeting." Elwin and Courthope, Pope's works, vol. ?, p. 332.]

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[ The remainder of the essay endeavors to meet the charge of materialism. The following is the conclusion:—"In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phaenomena of matter in terms of spirit; or the phaenomena of spirit in terms of matter: matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property of matter—each statement has a certain relative truth. But with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in every way to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other phaenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those physical conditions, or concomitants of thought, which are more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought, as we already possess in respect of the material world; whereas, the alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas.

"Thus there can be little doubt, that the further science advances, the more extensively and consistently will all the phaenomena of Nature be represented by materialistic formulae and symbols. But the man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these formulae and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician, who should mistake the x's and y's with which he works his problems, for real entities—and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of a life."]

ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS (1870)

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[ On Coral and Coral Reefs: from Critiques and Addresses. The essay was published in 1870.]

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[ Sic et curalium: Thus also the coral, as soon as it touches the air turns hard. It was a soft plant under the water.]

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[ Boccone (1633-1704): a noted Sicilian naturalist.]

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[ Marsigli (1658-1730): an Italian soldier and naturalist. He wrote A Physical History of the Sea.]

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[ "Traite du Corail": "I made the coral bloom in vases full of sea-water, and I noticed that what we believe to be the flower of this so-called plant was in reality only an insect similar to a little nettle or polype. I had the pleasure to see the paws or feet of this nettle move, and having placed the vase full of water in which the coral was, near the fire, at a moderate heat, all the little insects expanded, the nettle stretched out its feet and formed what M. de Marsigli and I had taken for the petals of the flower. The calyx of this so-called flower is the very body of the animal issued from its cell."]

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[ Reaumur (1683-1757): a French physiologist and naturalist, best known as the inventor of the Reaumur thermometer. He was a member of the French Academy of Science.]

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[ Bishop Wilson: Thomas Wilson (1663-1755), bishop of the Isle of Man. Details of his life are given in the folio edition of his works (1782). An appreciation of his religious writings is given by Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy. Bishop Wilson's words, "To make reason and the will of God prevail," are the theme of Arnold's essay, Sweetness and Light.]

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[ An eminent modern writer: Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), eldest son of Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby; a distinguished critic and poet, and professor of poetry at Oxford. The allusion is to Arnold's essay, Sweetness and Light. The phrase, "sweetness and light," is one which Aesop uses in Swift's Battle of the Books to sum up the superiority of the ancients over the moderns. "As for us, the ancients, we are content, with the bee, to pretend to nothing of our own beyond our wings and our voice, that is to say, our flights and our language; for the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is, that instead of dirt and poison we have rather chose to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest things, which are sweetness and light." Arnold's purpose in the essay is to define the cultured man as one who endeavors to make beauty and intelligence prevail everywhere.]

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[ Abbe Trembley (1700-1784): a Swiss naturalist. He wrote "Memoires pour servir a l'histoire d'un genre de polypes d'eau douce, a bras en forme de cornes."]

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[ Bernard de Jussieu (1699-1776): a French botanist; founder of the natural classification of plants. He was superintendent of the Trianon Gardens.]

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[ Guettard (1715-1786): a French naturalist.]

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[ Monte Nuovo within the old crater of Somma: Monte Nuovo, a mountain west of Naples; Somma, a mountain north of Vesuvius which with its lofty, semicircular cliff encircles the active cone of Vesuvius.]

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[ Mauritius: an island in the Indian Ocean; Huxley visited the island when on the voyage with the Rattlesnake. He wrote to his mother of his visit: "This island is, you know, the scene of Saint Pierre's beautiful story of Paul and Virginia, over which I suppose most people have sentimentalized at one time or another of their lives. Until we reached here I did not know that the tale was like the lady's improver—a fiction founded on fact, and that Paul and Virginia were at one time flesh and blood, and that their veritable dust was buried at Pamplemousses in a spot considered as one of the lions of the place, and visited as classic ground."]

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[ Mr. Darwin's coral reefs: The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, published in 1848.]

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[ Professor Jukes (1811-1869): an English geologist.]

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[ Mr. Dana (1813-1895): a well-known American geologist and mineralogist; a professor at Yale from 1845. He wrote a number of books among which is Coral and Coral Reefs.]

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[ Jurassic period: that part of the geological series which is older than the Cretaceous and newer than the Triassic; so called from the predominance of rocks of this age in the Jura Mountains. The three great divisions of fossiliferous rocks are called the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous.]

REFERENCE BOOKS

The following reference books are suggested for a more complete treatment of various points in the text:—Andrews' History of England. Green's Short History of the English People. Traill's Social England. Roger's A Student's History of Philosophy. Royce's The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. Huxley's Life and Letters. Smalley's Mr. Huxley, in Scribner's Magazine for October, 1905. Darwin's Life and Letters.