I saw another wonderful thing in La Brenon. About the middle of its length there is a step like this of about 20 or 30 feet in height. In the lower part (B) the structural planes are vertical; in the upper (A) they dip at a considerable angle. I thought I had found a case of unconformability, indicating a slip of one portion of the glacier over another, but when I came to examine the intermediate region (X) carefully, I found the structural planes at every intermediate angle, and consequently a perfect transition from the one to the other.
I returned by Aosta, the great St. Bernard, and the Col de Balme. Old Simond was quite affectionate in his discourse about you, and seemed quite unhappy because you would not borrow his money. He had received your remittance, and asked me to tell you so. He was distressed at having forgotten to get a certificate from you, so I said in mine I was quite sure you were well satisfied with him.
On our journey he displayed his characteristic qualities, Je ne sais pas being the usual answer to any topographical inquiries with a total absence of nerve, and a general conviction that distances were very great and that the weather would be bad. However, we got on very well, and I was sorry to part with him.
I came home by way of Neuchatel, paying a visit to the Pierre a Bot, which I have long wished to see. My financial calculations were perfect in theory, but nearly broke down in practice, inasmuch as I was twice obliged to travel first-class when I calculated on second. The result was that my personal expenses between Paris and London amounted to 1.50!! and I arrived at my own house hungry and with a remainder of a few centimes. I should think that your fate must have been similar.
Many thanks for writing to my wife. She sends her kindest remembrances to you.
Ever yours,
T.H.H.
[The year 1857 was the last in which Huxley apparently had time to go so far in journal-writing as to draw up a balance-sheet at the year's end of work done and work undone. Though he finds] "as usual a lamentable difference between agenda and acta; many things proposed to be done not done, and many things not thought of finished," [still there is enough noted to satisfy most energetic people. Mention has already been made of his lectures—sixty-six at Jermyn Street, twelve Fullerian, and as many more to prepare for the next year's course; seven to working men, and one at the Royal Institution, together with the rearrangement of specimens at the Jermyn Street Museum, and the preparation of the Explanatory Catalogue, which this year was published to the extent of the Introduction and the Tertiary collections. To these may be added examinations at the London University, where he had succeeded Dr. Carpenter as examiner in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy in 1856, reviews, translations, a report on Deep Sea Soundings, and ten scientific memoirs.
The most important of the unfinished work consists of the long-delayed "Oceanic Hydrozoa," the "Manual of Comparative Anatomy," and a report on Fisheries. The rest of the unfinished programme shows the usual commixture of technical studies in anatomy and paleontology, with essays on the philosophical and educational bearings of his work. On the one hand are memoirs of Daphnia, Nautilus, and the Herring, the affinities of the Paleozoic Crustacea, the Ascidian Catalogue and Positive Histology; on the other, the Literature of the Drift, a review of the present state of philosophical anatomy, and a scheme for arranging the Explanatory Catalogue to serve as an introductory textbook to the Jermyn Street lectures and the paleontological demonstrations. Here, too, would fall a proposed "Letter on the Study of Comparative Anatomy," to do for those subjects what Henslow had done in his "Letter" for Botany.
In addition to the fact of his being forced to take up Paleontology, it was perhaps the philosophic breadth of view with which he regarded his subject at any time, and the desire of getting to the bottom of each subsidiary problem arising from it, that made him for many years seem constantly to spring aside from his own subject, to fly off at a tangent from the line in which he was assured of unrivalled success did he but devote to it his undivided powers. But he was prepared to endure the charge of desultoriness with equanimity. In part, he was still studying the whole field of biological science before he would claim to be a master in one department; in part, he could not yet tell to what post he might succeed when he left—as he fully expected to leave—the Professorship at Jermyn Street.
One characteristic of his early papers should not pass unnoticed. This was his familiarity with the best that had been written on his subjects abroad as well as in England. Thoroughness in this respect was rendered easier by the fact that he read French and German with almost as much facility as his mother tongue. "It is true, of course, that scientific men read French and German before the time of Huxley; but the deliberate consultation of all the authorities available has been maintained in historical succession since Huxley's earliest papers, and was absent in the papers of his early contemporaries." (P. Chalmers Mitchell in "Natural Science" August 1895.)
About this time his activity in several branches of science began to find recognition from scientific societies at home and abroad. In 1857 he was elected honorary member of the Microscopical Society of Giessen; and in the same year, of a more important body, the Academy of Breslau (Imperialis Academia Caesariana Naturae Curiosum). He writes to Hooker:—]
14 Waverley Place, April 3, 1857.
Having subsided from standing upon my head—which was the immediate causation of your correspondence about the co-extension Imperialis Academia Caesariana Naturae Curiosum (don't I know their thundering long title well!)—I have to say that I was born on the 4th of May of the year 1825, whereby I have now more or less mis-spent thirty-one years and a bittock, nigh on thirty-two.
Furthermore, my locus natalis is Ealing, in the county of Middlesex. Upon my word, it is very obliging of the "curious naturals," and I must say wholly surprising and unexpected.
I shall hold up my head immensely to-morrow when (blessed be the Lord) I give my last Fullerian.
Among other things, I am going to take Cuvier's crack case of the
'Possum of Montmartre as an illustration of MY views.
I wondered what had become of you, but the people have come talking about me this last lecture or two, so I supposed you had erupted to Kew.
My glacier article is out; tell me what you think of it some day.
I wrote a civil note to Forbes yesterday, charging myself with my crime, and I hope that is the end of the business. [Principal James Forbes, with whose theory of glaciers Huxley and Tyndall disagreed.]
My wife is mending slowly, and if she were here would desire to be remembered to you.
[In December 1858 he became a Fellow of the Linnean, and the following month not only Fellow but Secretary of the Geological Society.
In 1858 also he was elected to the Athenaeum Club under Rule 2, which provides that the committee shall yearly elect a limited number of persons distinguished in art, science, or letters. His proposer was Sir R. Murchison, who wrote:—
Athenaeum, January 26.
My dear Huxley,
I had a success as to you that I never had or heard of before. Nineteen persons voted, and of these eighteen voted for you and no one against you. You, of course, came in at the head of the poll; no other having, i.e. Cobden, more than eleven.
Yours well satisfied,
Rod. I. Murchison.
[From this time forth he corresponded with many foreign men of science; in these years particularly with Victor Carus, Lacaze Duthiers, Kolliker, and de Quatrefages, in reference to their common interest in the study of the invertebrates.
At home, the year 1857 opened very brightly for Huxley with the birth of his first child, a son, on the eve of the New Year. A Christmas child, the boy was named Noel, and lived four happy years to be the very sunshine of home, the object of passionate devotion, whose sudden loss struck deeper and more ineffaceably than any other blow that befell Huxley during all his life.
As he sat alone that December night, in the little room that was his study in the house in Waverley Place, waiting for the event that was to bring him so much happiness and so much sorrow, he made a last entry in his journal, full of hope and resolution. In the blank space below follows a note of four years later, when "the ground seemed cut from under his feet," yet written with restraint and without bitterness.]
December 31, 1856.
…1856-7-8 must still be "Lehrjahre" to complete training in principles of Histology, Morphology, Physiology, Zoology, and Geology by Monographic Work in each department. 1860 will then see me well grounded and ready for any special pursuits in either of these branches.
It is impossible to map out beforehand how this must be done. I must seize opportunities as they come, at the risk of the reputation of desultoriness.
In 1860 I may fairly look forward to fifteen or twenty years "Meisterjahre," and with the comprehensive views my training will have given me, I think it will be possible in that time to give a new and healthier direction to all Biological Science.
To smite all humbugs, however big; to give a nobler tone to science; to set an example of abstinence from petty personal controversies, and of toleration for everything but lying; to be indifferent as to whether the work is recognised as mine or not, so long as it is done:—are these my aims? 1860 will show.
Willst du dir ein hubsch Leben zimmern,
Musst dich ans Vergangene nicht bekummern;
Und ware dir auch was Verloren,
Musst immer thun wie neugeboren.
Was jeder Tag will, sollst du fragen;
Was jeder Tag will, wird er sagen.
Musst dich an eigenem Thun ergotzen;
Was andere thun, das wirst du schatzen.
Besonders keinen Menschen hassen
Und das Ubrige Gott uberlassen.
[Wilt shape a noble life? Then cast
No backward glances to the past.
And what if something still be lost?
Act as new-born in all thou dost.
What each day wills, that shalt thou ask;
Each day will tell its proper task;
What others do, that shalt thou prize,
In thine own work thy guerdon lies.
This above all: hate none.
The rest—Leave it to God.
He knoweth best.]
Half-past ten at night.
Waiting for my child. I seem to fancy it the pledge that all these things shall be.
Born five minutes before twelve. Thank God. New Year's Day, 1857.
September 20, 1860.
And the same child, our Noel, our first-born, after being for nearly four years our delight and our joy, was carried off by scarlet fever in forty-eight hours. This day week he and I had a great romp together. On Friday his restless head, with its bright blue eyes and tangled golden hair, tossed all day upon his pillow. On Saturday night the fifteenth, I carried him here into my study, and laid his cold still body here where I write. Here too on Sunday night came his mother and I to that holy leave-taking.
My boy is gone, but in a higher and better sense than was in my mind when I wrote four years ago what stands above—I feel that my fancy has been fulfilled. I say heartily and without bitterness—Amen, so let it be.
CHAPTER 1.12.
1859-1860.
[The programme laid down in 1857 was steadily carried out through a
great part of 1859. Huxley published nine monographs, chiefly on fossil
Reptilia, in the proceedings of the Geological Society and of the
Geological Survey, one on the armour of crocodiles at the Linnean, and
"Observations on the Development of some Parts of the Skeleton of
Fishes," in the "Journal of Microscopical Science."
Among the former was a paper on Stagonolepis, a creature from the Elgin beds, which had previously been ranked among the fishes. From some new remains, which he worked out of the stone with his own hands, Huxley made out that this was a reptile closely allied to the Crocodiles; and from this and the affinities of another fossil, Hyperodapedon, from neighbouring beds, determined the geological age to which the Elgin beds belonged. A good deal turned upon the nature of the scales from the back and belly of this animal, and a careful comparison with the scales of modern crocodiles—a subject till then little investigated—led to the paper at the Linnean already mentioned.
The paper on fish development was mainly based upon dissections of the young of the stickleback. Fishes had been divided into two classes according as their tails are developed evenly on either side of the line of the spine, which was supposed to continue straight through the centre of the tail, or lopsided, with one tail fin larger than the other. This investigation showed that the apparently even development was only an extreme case of lopsidedness, the continuation of the "chorda," which gives rise to the spine, being at the top of the upper fin, and both fins being developed on the same side of it. Lopsidedness as such, therefore, was not to be regarded as an embryological character in ancient fishes; what might be regarded as such was the absence of a bony sheath to the end of the "chorda" found in the more developed fishes. Further traces of this bony structure were shown to exist, among other piscine resemblances, in the Amphibia. Finally the embryological facts now observed in the development of the bones of the skull were of great importance,] "as they enable us to understand, on the one hand, the different modifications of the palato-suspensorial apparatus in fishes, and on the other hand the relations of the components of this apparatus to the corresponding parts in other Vertebrata," [fishes, reptiles, and mammals presenting a well-marked series of gradations in respect to this point.
This part of the paper had grown out of the investigations begun for the essay on the Vertebrate Skull, just as that on Jacare and Caiman from inquiry into the scales of Stagonolepis.
Thus he was still able to devote most of his time to original research. But though in his letter of March 27, 1855, below, he says,] "I never write for the Reviews now, as original work is much more to my taste," [it appears from jottings in his 1859 notebook, such as "Whewell's 'History of Scientific Ideas,' as a Peg on which to hang Cuvier article," [that he again found it necessary to supplement his income by writing. He was still examiner at London University, and delivered six lectures on Animal Motion at the London Institution and another at Warwick. This lecture he had offered to give at the Warwick Museum as some recognition of the willing help he had received from the assistants when he came down to examine certain fossils there. On the way he visited Rolleston at Oxford. The knowledge of Oxford life gained from this and a later visit led him to write:—]
The more I see of the place the more glad I am that I elected to stay in London. I see much to admire and like; but I am more and more convinced that it would not suit me as a residence.
[Two more important points remain to be mentioned among the occupations of the year. In January Huxley was elected Secretary of the Geological Society, and with this office began a form of administrative work in the scientific world which ceased only with his resignation of the Presidency of the Royal Society in 1885.
Part of the summer Huxley spent in the North. On August 3 he went to Lamlash Bay in Arran. Here Dr. Carpenter had, in 1855, discovered a convenient cottage on Holy Island—the only one, indeed, on the island—well suited for naturalists; the bay was calm and suitable both for the dredge and for keeping up a vivarium. He proposed that either the Survey should rent the whole island at a cost of some 50 pounds sterling, or, failing this, that he would take the cottage himself, if Huxley would join him for two or three seasons and share the expense. Huxley laid the plan before Sir R. Murchison, the head of the Survey, who consented to try the plan for a course of years, during three months in each year. "But," [he added,] "keep it experimental; for there are no USEFUL fisheries such as delight Lord Stanley." [Here, then, with an ascent of Goatfell for variety on the 21st, a month was passed in trawling, and experiments on the spawning of the herring appear to have been continued for him during the winter in Bute.
On the 29th Huxley left Lamlash for a trip through central and southern Scotland, continuing his geological work for the Survey; and wound up by attending the meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen, leaving his wife and the three children at Aberdour, on the Fifeshire coast.
From Aberdeen, where Prince Albert was President of the Association,
Huxley writes on September 15:—]
Owen's brief address on giving up the presidential chair was exceedingly good…I shall be worked like a horse here. There are all sorts of new materials from Elgin, besides other things, and I daresay I shall have to speak frequently. In point of attendance and money this is the best meeting the Association ever had. In point of science, we shall see…Tyndall has accepted the Physical chair with us, at which I am greatly delighted.
[In this connection the following letter to Tyndall is interesting:—]
Aberdour, Fife, N. B., September 5, 1859.
My dear Tyndall,
I met Faraday on Loch Lomond yesterday, and learned from him that you had returned, whereby you are a great sinner for not having written to me. Faraday told me you were all sound, wind and limb, and had carried out your object, which was good to hear.
Have you had any letter from Sir Roderick? If not, pray call in Jermyn Street and see Reeks as soon as possible. [Mr. Trenham Reeks, who died in 1879, was Registrar of the School of Mines, and Curator and Librarian of the Museum of Practical Geology.]
The thing I have been hoping for for years past has come about,—Stokes having resigned the Physical Chair in our place, in consequence of his appointment to the Cambridge University Commission. This unfortunately occurred only after our last meeting for the session, and after I had left town, but Reeks wrote to me about it at once. I replied as soon as I received his letter, and told him that I would take upon myself the responsibility of saying that you would accept the chair if it were offered you. I thought I was justified in this by various conversations we have had; and, at any rate, I felt sure that it was better that I should get into a mess than that you should lose the chance.
I know that Sir Roderick has written to you, but I imagine the letter has gone to Chamounix, so pray put yourself into communication with Reeks at once.
You know very well that the having you with us at Jermyn Street is a project that has long been dear to my heart, partly on your own account, but largely for the interest of the school. I earnestly hope that there is no impediment in the way of your coming to us. How I am minded towards you, you ought to know by this time; but I can assure you that all the rest of us will receive you with open arms. Of that I am quite sure.
Let me have a line to know your determination. I am on tenterhooks till the thing is settled.
Can't you come up this way as you go to Aberdeen?
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
P.S.—I thought I might mention the Jermyn Street matter to Faraday privately, and did so. He seemed pleased that the offer had been made.
[The acceptance of the lectureship at the School of Mines brought Tyndall into the closest contact with Huxley for the next nine years, until he resigned his lectureship in 1868 on succeeding Faraday as superintendent of the Royal Institution.
On September 17 he writes:—]
Yesterday Owen and I foregathered in Section D. He read a very good and important paper, and I got up afterwards and spoke exactly as I thought about it, and praising many parts of it strongly. In his reply he was unco civil and complimentary, so that the people who had come in hopes of a row were (as I intended they should be) disappointed.
[A number of miscellaneous letters of this period are here grouped together.]
14 Waverley Place, January 30, 1858.
My dear Hooker,
…I wish you wouldn't be apologetic about criticism from people who have a right to criticise. I always look upon any criticism as a compliment, not but what the old Adam in T.H.H. WILL arise and fight vigorously against all impugnment, and irrespective of all odds in the way of authority, but that is the way of the beast.
Why I value your and Tyndall's and Darwin's friendship so much is, among other things, that you all pitch into me when necessary. You may depend upon it, however blue I may look when in the wrong, it's wrath with myself and nobody else.
[To his sister.]
The Government School of Mines, Jermyn Street, March 27, 1858.
My dearest Lizzie,
It is a month since your very welcome letter reached me. I had every inclination and every intention to answer it at once, but the wear and tear of incessant occupation (for your letter arrived in the midst of my busiest time) has, I will not say deprived me of the leisure, but of that tone of mind which one wants for writing a long letter. I fully understand—no one should be better able to comprehend—how the same causes may operate on you, but do not be silent so long again; it is bad for both of us. I have loved but few people in my life, and am not likely to care for any more unless it be my children. I desire therefore rather to knit more firmly than to loosen the old ties, and of these which is older or stronger than ours? Don't let us drift asunder again.
Your letter came just after the birth of my second child, a little girl. I registered her to-day in the style and title of Jessie Oriana Huxley. The second name is a family name of my wife's and not, as you might suppose, taken from Tennyson. You will know why my wife and I chose the first. We could not make you a godmother, as my wife's mother is one, and a friend of ours had long since applied for the other vacancy, but perhaps this is a better tie than that meaningless formality. My little son is fifteen months old; a fair-haired, blue-eyed, stout little Trojan, very like his mother. He looks out on the world with bold confident eyes and open brow, as if he were its master. We shall try to make him a better man than his father. As for the little one, I am told she is pretty, and slavishly admit the fact in the presence of mother and nurse, but between ourselves I don't see it. To my carnal eyes her nose is the image of mine, and you know what that means. For though wandering up and down the world and work have begun to sow a little silver in my hair, they have by no means softened the outlines of that remarkable feature.
You want to know what I am and where I am—well, here's a list of titles. T.H.H., Professor of Natural History, Government School of Mines, Jermyn Street; Naturalist to the Geological Survey; Curator of the Paleontological collections (NON-OFFICIAL maid-of-all-work in Natural Science to the Government); Examiner in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy to the University of London; Fullerian Professor of Physiology to the Royal Institution (but that's just over); F.R.S., F.G.S., etc. Member of a lot of Societies and Clubs, all of which cost him a mint of money. Considered a rising man and not a bad fellow by his friends—per contra greatly over-estimated and a bitter savage critic by his enemies. Perhaps they are both right. I have a high standard of excellence and am no respecter of persons, and I am afraid I show the latter peculiarity rather too much. An internecine feud rages between Owen and myself (more's the pity) partly on this account, partly from other causes.
This is the account any third person would give you of what I am and of what I am doing. He would probably add that I was very ambitious and desirous of occupying a high place in the world's estimation. Therein, however, he would be mistaken. An income sufficient to place me above care and anxiety, and free scope to work, are the only things I have ever wished for or striven for. But one is obliged to toil long and hard for these, and it is only now that they are coming within my grasp. I gave up the idea of going to Edinburgh because I doubted whether leaving London was wise. Recently I have been tempted to put up for a good physiological chair which is to be established at Oxford; but the Government propose to improve my position at the School of Mines, and there is every probability that I shall now permanently remain in London. Indeed, it is high time that I should settle down to one line of work. Hitherto, as you see by the somewhat varied list of my duties, etc., above, I have been ranging over different parts of a very wide field. But this apparent desultoriness has been necessary, for I knew not for what branch of science I should eventually have to declare myself. There are very few appointments open to men of science in this country, and one must take what one can get and be thankful.
My health was very bad some years ago, and I had great fear of becoming a confirmed dyspeptic, but thanks to the pedestrian tours in the Alps I have taken for the past two years, I am wonderfully better this session, and feel capable of any amount of work. It was in the course of one of these trips that I went, as you have rightly heard, half way up Mont Blanc. But I was not in training and stuck at the Grands Mulets, while my three companions went on. I spent seventeen hours alone on that grand pinnacle, the latter part of the time in great anxiety, for I feared my friends were lost; and as I had no guide my own neck would have been in considerable jeopardy in endeavouring to return amidst the maze of crevasses of the Glacier des Bois. But it was glorious weather and the grandest scenery in the world. In the previous year I saw much of the Bernese and Monte Rosa country, journeying with a great friend of mine well known as a natural philosopher, Tyndall, and partly seeking health and partly exploring the glaciers. You will find an article of mine on that subject in the "Westminster Review" for 1857.
I used at one time to write a good deal for that Review, principally the Quarterly notice of scientific books. But I never write for the Reviews now, as original work is much more to my taste. The articles you refer to are not mine, as, indeed, you rightly divined. The only considerable book I have translated is Kolliker's Histology—in conjunction with Mr. Busk, an old friend of mine. All translation and article writing is weary work, and I never do it except for filthy lucre. Lecturing I do not like much better; though one way or another I have to give about sixty or seventy a year.
Now then, I think that is enough about my "Ich." You shall have a photographic image of him and my wife and child as soon as I can find time to have them done…
1 Eldon Place, Broadstairs, September 5, 1858.
My dear Hooker,
I am glad Mrs. Hooker has found rest for the sole of her foot. I returned her Tyndall's letter yesterday.
Wallace's impetus seems to have set Darwin going in earnest, and I am rejoiced to hear we shall learn his views in full, at last. I look forward to a great revolution being effected. Depend upon it, in natural history, as in everything else, when the English mind fully determines to work a thing out, it will do it better than any other.
I firmly believe in the advent of an English epoch in science and art, which will lick the Augustan (which, by the bye, had neither science nor art in our sense, but you know what I mean) into fits. So hooray, in the first place, for the Genera plantarum. I can quite understand the need of a new one, and I am right glad you have undertaken it. It seems to me to be in all respects the sort of work for you, and exactly adapted to your environment at Kew. I remember you mentioned to me some time ago that you were thinking of it.
I wish I could even hope that such a thing would be even attempted in the course of this generation for animals.
But with animal morphology in the state in which it is now, we have no terminology that will stand, and consequently concise and comparable definitions are in many cases impossible.
If old Dom. Gray [John Edward Gray (1800-1875) appointed Keeper of the Zoological Collections in the British Museum in 1840.) were but an intelligent activity instead of being a sort of zoological whirlwind, what a deal he might do. And I am hopeless of Owen's comprehending what classification means since the publication of the wonderful scheme which adorns the last edition of his lectures.
As you say, I have found this a great place for "work of price." I have finished the "Oceanic Hydrozoa" all but the bookwork, for which I must have access to the B. M. Library—but another week will do him. My notes are from eight to twelve years old, and really I often have felt like the editor of somebody else's posthumous work.
Just now I am busy over the "Croonian," which must be done before I return. I have been pulling at all the arguments as a spider does at his threads, and I think they are all strong. If so the thing will do some good.
I am perplexed about the N. H. Collections. The best thing, I firmly believe, would be for the Economic Zoology and a set of well selected types to go to Kensington, but I should be sorry to see the scientific collection placed under any such auspices as those which govern the "Bilers." I don't believe the clay soil of the Regent's Park would matter a fraction—and to have a grand scientific zoological and paleontological collection for working purposes close to the Gardens where the living beasts are, would be a grand thing. I should not wonder if the affair is greatly discussed at the B. A. at Leeds, and then, perhaps, light will arise.
Have you seen that madcap Tyndall's letter in the "Times?" He'll break his blessed neck some day, and that will be a great hole in the efficiency of my scientific young England. We mean to return next Saturday, and somewhere about the 16th of 17th I shall go down to York, where I want to study Plesiosaurs. I shall return after the British Association. The interesting question arises, Shall I have a row with the Great O. there? What a capital title that is they give him of the BRITISH Cuvier. He stands in exactly the same relation to the French as British brandy to cognac.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Am I to send the "Gardener's Chronicle" on, and where? please. I have mislaid the address.
Jermyn Street, October 25, 1858.
My dear Spencer,
I read your article on the "Archetype" the other day with great delight, particularly the phrase which puts the Owenian and Cummingian interpolations on the same footing. It is rayther strong, but quite just.
I do not remember a word to object to, but I think I could have strengthened your argument in one or two places. Having eaten the food, will you let me have back the dish? I am winding up the "Croonian," and want "L'Archetype" to refer to. So if you can let me have it I shall be obliged. When do you return?
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
14 Waverley Place, January 1, 1859.
My dearest Lizzie,
If intentions were only acts, the quantity of letter paper covered with my scrawl which you should have had by this time should have been something wonderful. But I live at high pressure, with always a number of things crying out to be done, and those that are nearest and call loudest get done, while the others, too often, don't. However, this day shall not go by without my wishing you all happiness in the new year, and that wish you know necessarily includes all belonging to you, and my love to them.
I have been long wanting to send you the photographs of myself, wife, and boy, but one reason or other (Nettie's incessant ill-health being, I am sorry to say, the chief) has incessantly delayed the procuring of the last. However, at length, we have obtained a tolerably successful one, though you must not suppose that Noel has the rather washed out look of his portrait. That comes of his fair hair and blue gray eyes—for the monkey is like his mother and has not an atom of resemblance to me.
He was two years old yesterday, and is the apple of his father's eye and chief deity of his mother's pantheon, which at present contains only a god and goddess. Another is expected shortly, however, so that there is no fear of Olympus looking empty.
…Here is the 26th of January and no letter gone yet…Since I began this letter I have been very busy with lectures and other sorts of work, and besides, my whole household almost has been ill—chicks with whooping cough, mother with influenza, a servant ditto. I don't know whether you have such things in Tennessee.
Let me see what has happened to me that will interest you since I last wrote. Did I tell you that I have finally made up my mind to stop in London—the Government having made it worth my while to continue in Jermyn Street? They give me 600 pounds sterling a year now, with a gradual rise up to 800 pounds sterling, which I reckon as just enough to live on if one keeps very quiet. However, it is the greatest possible blessing to be paid at last, and to be free from all the abominable anxieties which attend a fluctuating income. I can tell you I have had a sufficiently hard fight of it.
When Nettie and I were young fools we agreed we would marry whenever we had 200 pounds sterling a year. Well, we have had more than twice that to begin upon, and how it is we have kept out of the Bench is a mystery to me. But we HAVE, and I am inclined to think that the Missus has got a private hoard (out of the puddings) for Noel.
I shall leave Nettie to finish this rambling letter. In the meanwhile, my best love to you and yours, and mind you are a better correspondent than your affectionate brother,
Tom.
[To Professor Leuckart.]
The Government School of Mines, Jermyn Street, London, January 30, 1859.
My dear Sir,
Our mutual friend, Dr. Harley, informs me that you have expressed a wish to become possessed of a separate copy of my lectures, published in the "Medical Times." I greatly regret that I have not one to send you. The publisher only gave me half a dozen separate copies of the numbers of the journal in which the Lectures appeared. Of these I sent one to Johannes Muller and one to Professor Victor Carus, and the rest went to other friends.
I am sorry to say that a mere fragment of what I originally intended to have published has appeared, the series having been concluded when I reached the end of the Crustacea. To say truth, the Lectures were not fitted for the journal in which they appeared.
I did not know that anyone in Germany had noticed them until I received the copy of your "Bericht" for 1856, which you were kind enough to send me. I owe you many thanks for the manner in which you speak of them, and I assure you it was a source of great pleasure and encouragement to me to find so competent a judge as yourself appreciating and sympathising with my objects.
Particular branches of zoology have been cultivated in this country with great success, as you are well aware, but ten years ago I do not believe that there were half a dozen of my countrymen who had the slightest comprehension of morphology, and of what you and I should call "Wissenschaftliche Zoologie."
Those who thought about the matter at all took Owen's osteological extravaganzas for the ne plus ultra of morphological speculation.
I learned the meaning of Morphology and the value of development as the criterion of morphological views—first, from the study of the Hydrozoa during a long voyage, and secondly, from the writings of Von Baer. I have done my best, both by precept and practice, to inaugurate better methods and a better spirit than had long prevailed. Others have taken the same views, and I confidently hope that a new epoch for zoology is dawning among us. I do not claim for myself any great share in the good work, but I have not flinched when there was anything to be done.
Under these circumstances you will imagine that it was very pleasant to find on your side a recognition of what I was about.
I sent you, through the booksellers, some time ago a copy of my memoir on Aphis. I find from Moleschott's "Untersuchungen" that you must have been working at this subject contemporaneously with myself, and it was very satisfactory to find so close a concordance in essentials between our results. Your memoirs are extremely interesting, and to some extent anticipated results at which my friend, Mr. Lubbock [The present Sir John Lubbock, M.P.] (a very competent worker, with whose paper on Daphnia you are doubtless acquainted), had arrived.
I should be very glad to know what you think of my views of the composition of the articulate head.
I have been greatly interested also in your Memoir on Pentastomum. There can be no difficulty about getting a notice of it in our journals, and, indeed, I will see to it myself. Pray do me the favour to let me know whenever I can serve you in this or other ways.
I shall do myself the pleasure of forwarding to you immediately, through the booksellers, a lecture of mine on the Theory of the Vertebrate Skull, which is just published, and also a little paper on the development of the tail in fishes.
I am sorry to say that I have but little time for working at these matters now, as my position at the School of Mines obliges me to confine myself more and more to Paleontology.
However, I keep to the anatomical side of that sort of work, and so, now and then, I hope to emerge from amidst the fossils with a bit of recent anatomy.
Just at present, by the way, I am giving my disposable hours to the completion of a monograph on the Calycophoridae and Physophoridae observed during my voyage. The book ought to have been published eight years ago. But for three years I could get no money from the Government, and in the meanwhile you and Kolliker, Gegenbaur and Vogt, went to the shores of the Mediterranean and made sad havoc with my novelties. Then came occupations consequent on my appointment to the chair I now hold; and it was only last autumn that I had leisure to take up the subject again.
However, the plates, which I hope you will see in a few months have, with two exceptions, been engraved five years.
Pray make my remembrances to Dr. Eckhard. I was sorry not to have seen him again in London.
Ever, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Professor Leuckart.
[At this time Sir J. Hooker was writing, as an introduction to his "Flora of Tasmania," his essay on the "Flora of Australia," published in 1859—a book which owed its form to the influence of Darwin, and in return lent weighty support to evolutionary theory from the botanical side. He sent his proofs for Huxley to read.
14 Waverley Place, N.W., April 22, 1859.
My dear Hooker,
I have read your proofs with a great deal of attention and interest. I was greatly struck with the suggestions in the first page, and the exposure of the fallacy "that cultivated forms recur to wild types if left alone" is new to me and seems of vast importance.
The argument brought forward in the note is very striking and as simple as the egg of Columbus, when one sees it. I have marked one or two passages which are not quite clear to me…
I have been accused of writing papers composed of nothing but heads of chapters, and I think you tend the same way. Please take the trouble to make the two lines I have scored into a paragraph, so that poor devils who are not quite so well up in the subject as yourself may not have to rack their brains for an hour to supply all the links of your chain of argument…
You see that I am in a carping humour, but the matter of the essays seems to me to be so very valuable that I am jealous of the manner of it.
I had a long visit from Greene of Cork yesterday. He is very Irish, but very intelligent and well-informed, and I am in hopes he will do good service. He is writing a little book on the Protozoa, which (so far as I have glanced over the proof sheets as yet) seems to show a very philosophical turn of mind. It is very satisfactory to find the ideas one has been fighting for beginning to take root.
I do not suppose my own personal contributions to science will ever be anything very grand, but I shall be well content if I have reason to believe that I have done something to stir up others.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[To the same:—]
April, 1859.
My dear Hooker,
…I pity you—as for the MSS. it is one of those cases for which penances were originally devised. What do you say to standing on your head in the garden for one hour per diem for the next week? It would be a relief…
I suppose you will be at the Phil. Club next Monday. In the meanwhile don't let all the flesh be worried off your bones (there isn't much as it is).
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
14 Waverley Place, July 29, 1859.
My dear Hooker,
I meant to have written to you yesterday, but things put it out of my head. If there is to be any fund raised at all, I am quite of your mind that it should be a scientific fund and not a mere naturalists' fund. Sectarianism in such matters is ridiculous, and besides that, in this particular case it is bad policy. For the word "Naturalist" unfortunately includes a far lower order of men than chemist, physicist, or mathematician. You don't call a man a mathematician because he has spent his life in getting as far as quadratics; but every fool who can make bad species and worse genera is a "Naturalist"!—save the mark! Imagine the chemists petitioning the Crown for a Pension for P— if he wanted one! and yet he really is a philosopher compared to poor dear A—.
"Naturalists" therefore are far more likely to want help than any other class of scientific men, and they would be greatly damaging their own interests if they formed an exclusive fund for themselves.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
CHAPTER 1.13.
1859.
[In November 1859 the "Origin of Species" was published, and a new direction was given to Huxley's activities. Ever since Darwin and Wallace had made their joint communication to the Linnean Society in the preceding July, expectation had been rife as to the forthcoming book. Huxley was one of the few privileged to learn Darwin's argument before it was given to the world; but the greatness of the book, mere instalment as it was of the long accumulated mass of notes, almost took him by surprise. Before this time, he had taken up a thoroughly agnostic attitude with regard to the species question, for he could not accept the creational theory, yet sought in vain among the transmutationists for any cause adequate to produce transmutation. He had had many talks with Darwin, and though ready enough to accept the main point, maintained such a critical attitude on many others, that Darwin was not by any means certain of the effect the published book would produce upon him. Indeed, in his 1857 notebook, I find jotted down under the head of his paper on Pygocephalus (read at the Geological Society),] "anti-progressive confession of faith." [Darwin was the more anxious, as, when he first put pen to paper, he had fixed in his mind three judges, by whose decision he determined mentally to abide. These three were Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley. If these three came round, partly through the book, partly through their own reflections, he could feel that the subject was safe. "No one," writes Darwin on November 13, "has read it, except Lyell, with whom I have had much correspondence. Hooker thinks him a complete convert, but he does not seem so in his letters to me; but is evidently deeply interested in the subject." And again: "I think I told you before that Hooker is a complete convert. If I can convert Huxley I shall be content." ("Life" volume 2 page 221.)
On all three, the effect of the book itself, with its detailed arguments and overwhelming array of evidence, was far greater than that of previous discussions. With one or two reservations as to the logical completeness of the theory, Huxley accepted it as a well-founded working hypothesis, calculated to explain problems otherwise inexplicable.
Two extracts from the chapter he contributed to the "Life of Darwin" show very clearly his attitude of mind when the "Origin of Species" was first published:—]
Extract from "The Reception of the 'Origin of Species'" in "Life and
Letters of Charles Darwin" volume 2 pages 187-90 and 195-97.
I think I must have read the "Vestiges" before I left England in 1846; but, if I did, the book made very little impression upon me, and I was not brought into serious contact with the "Species" question until after 1850. At that time, I had long done with the Pentateuchal cosmogony, which had been impressed upon my childish understanding as Divine truth, with all the authority of parents and instructors, and from which it had cost me many a struggle to get free. But my mind was unbiassed in respect of any doctrine which presented itself, if it professed to be based on purely philosophical and scientific reasoning. It seemed to me then (as it does now) that "creation," in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence; and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some pre-existing Being. Then, as now, the so-called a priori arguments against Theism; and, given a Deity, against the possibility of creative acts, appeared to me to be devoid of reasonable foundation. I had not then, and I have not now, the smallest a priori objection to raise to the account of the creation of animals and plants given in "Paradise Lost," in which Milton so vividly embodies the natural sense of Genesis. Far be it from me to say that it is untrue because it is impossible. I confine myself to what must be regarded as a modest and reasonable request for some particle of evidence that the existing species of animals and plants did originate in that way, as a condition of my belief in a statement which appears to me to be highly improbable.
And, by way of being perfectly fair, I had exactly the same answer to give to the evolutionists of 1851-8. Within the ranks of the biologists, at that time, I met with nobody, except Dr. Grant of University College, who had a word to say for Evolution—and his advocacy was not calculated to advance the cause. Outside these ranks, the only person known to me whose knowledge and capacity compelled respect, and who was, at the same time, a thorough-going evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert Spencer, whose acquaintance I made, I think, in 1852, and then entered into the bonds of a friendship which, I am happy to think, has known no interruption. Many and prolonged were the battles we fought on this topic. But even my friend's rare dialectic skill and copiousness of apt illustration could not drive me from my agnostic position. I took my stand upon two grounds:—Firstly, that up to that time, the evidence in favour of transmutation was wholly insufficient; and secondly, that no suggestion respecting the causes of transmutation assumed, which had been made, was in any way adequate to explain the phenomena. Looking back at the state of knowledge at that time, I really do not see that any other conclusion was justifiable.
In those days I had never even heard of Treviranus' "Biologie." However, I had studied Lamarck attentively and I had read the "Vestiges" with due care; but neither of them afforded me any good ground for changing my negative and critical attitude. As for the "Vestiges," I confess that the book simply irritated me by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific habit of mind manifested by the writer. If it had any influence on me at all, it set me against Evolution; and the only review I ever have qualms of conscience about, on the ground of needless savagery, is one I wrote on the "Vestiges" while under that influence…
But, by a curious irony of fate, the same influence which led me to put as little faith in modern speculations on this subject as in the venerable traditions recorded in the first two chapters of Genesis, was perhaps more potent than any other in keeping alive a sort of pious conviction that Evolution, after all, would turn out true. I have recently read afresh the first edition of the "Principles of Geology"; and when I consider that this remarkable book had been nearly thirty years in everybody's hands, and that it brings home to any reader of ordinary intelligence a great principle and a great fact,—the principle that the past must be explained by the present, unless good cause be shown to the contrary; and the fact that so far as our knowledge of the past history of life on our globe goes, no such cause can be shown—I cannot but believe that Lyell, for others, as for myself, was the chief agent in smoothing the road for Darwin. For consistent uniformitarianism postulates Evolution as much in the organic as in the inorganic world. The origin of a new species by other than ordinary agencies would be a vastly greater "catastrophe" than any of those which Lyell successfully eliminated from sober geological speculation.
Thus, looking back into the past, it seems to me that my own position of critical expectancy was just and reasonable, and must have been taken up, on the same grounds, by many other persons. If Agassiz told me that the forms of life which have successively tenanted the globe were the incarnations of successive thoughts of the Deity; and that he had wiped out one set of these embodiments by an appalling geological catastrophe as soon as His ideas took a more advanced shape, I found myself not only unable to admit the accuracy of the deductions from the facts of paleontology, upon which this astounding hypothesis was founded, but I had to confess my want of any means of testing the correctness of his explanation of them. And besides that, I could by no means see what the explanation explained. Neither did it help me to be told by an eminent anatomist that species had succeeded one another in time, in virtue of "a continuously operative creational law." That seemed to me to be no more than saying that species had succeeded one another in the form of a vote-catching resolution, with "law" to catch the man of science, and "creational" to draw the orthodox. So I took refuge in that "thatige Skepsis" which Goethe has so well defined; and, reversing the apostolic precept to be all things to all men, I usually defended the tenability of the received doctrines when I had to do with the transmutationist; and stood up for the possibility of transmutation among the orthodox—thereby, no doubt, increasing an already current, but quite undeserved, reputation for needless combativeness.
I remember, in the course of my first interview with Mr. Darwin, expressing my belief in the sharpness of the lines of demarcation between natural groups and in the absence of transitional forms, with all the confidence of youth and imperfect knowledge. I was not aware, at that time, that he had then been many years brooding over the species-question; and the humorous smile which accompanied his gentle answer, that such was not altogether his view, long haunted and puzzled me. But it would seem that four or five years' hard work had enabled me to understand what it meant; for Lyell, writing to Sir Charles Bunbury (under date of April 30, 1856), says:—
"When Huxley, Hooker, and Wollaston were at Darwin's last week they (all four of them) ran a tilt against species—further, I believe, than they are prepared to go."
I recollect nothing of this beyond the fact of meeting Mr. Wollaston; and except for Sir Charles's distinct assurance as to "all four," I should have thought my outrecuidance was probably a counterblast to Wollaston's conservatism. With regard to Hooker, he was already, like Voltaire's Habbakuk, capable du tout in the way of advocating Evolution.
As I have already said, I imagine that most of those of my contemporaries who thought seriously about the matter, were very much in my own state of mind—inclined to say to both Mosaists and Evolutionists, "a plague on both your houses!" and disposed to turn aside from an interminable and apparently fruitless discussion, to labour in the fertile fields of ascertainable fact. And I may therefore suppose that the publication of the Darwin and Wallace paper in 1858, and still more that of the "Origin" in 1859, had the effect upon them of the flash of light which, to a man who has lost himself on a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes him straight home or not, certainly goes his way. That which we were looking for, and could not find, was a hypothesis respecting the origin of known organic forms which assumed the operation of no causes but such as could be proved to be actually at work. We wanted, not to pin our faith to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions which could be brought face to face with facts and have their validity tested. The "Origin" provided us with the working hypothesis we sought. Moreover, it did the immense service of freeing us for ever from the dilemma—Refuse to accept the creation hypothesis, and what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner? In 1857 I had no answer ready, and I do not think that anyone else had. A year later we reproached ourselves with dulness for being perplexed with such an inquiry. My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the "Origin" was, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" I suppose that Columbus' companions said much the same when he made the egg stand on end. The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the "Origin" guided the benighted.
Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of Evolution, as applied to the organic world, took in Darwin's hands, would prove to be final or not, was to me a matter of indifference. In my earliest criticisms of the "Origin" I ventured to point out that its logical foundation was insecure so long as experiments in selective breeding had not produced varieties which were more or less infertile; and that insecurity remains up to the present time. But, with any and every critical doubt which my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if we had none of us been able to discern the paramount significance of some of the most patent and notorious of natural facts, until they were, so to speak, thrust under our noses, what force remained in the dilemma—creation or nothing? It was obvious that hereafter the probability would be immensely greater, that the links of natural causation were hidden from our purblind eyes, than that natural causation should be incompetent to produce all the phenomena of nature. The only rational course for those who had no other object than the attainment of truth was to accept "Darwinism" as a working hypothesis and see what could be made of it. Either it would prove its capacity to elucidate the facts of organic life, or it would break down under the strain. This was surely the dictate of common sense; and, for once, common sense carried the day.
[Even before the "Origin" actually came out, Huxley had begun to act as what Darwin afterwards called his "general agent." He began to prepare the way for the acceptance of the theory of evolution by discussing, for instance, one of the most obvious difficulties, namely, How is it that if evolution is ever progressive, progress is not universal? It was a point with respect to which Darwin himself wrote soon after the publication of the "Origin":—"Judging from letters…and from remarks, the most serious omission in my book was not explaining how it is, as I believe, that all forms do not necessarily advance, how there can now be SIMPLE organisms existing." (May 22, 1860.)
Huxley's idea, then, was to call attention to the persistence of many types without appreciable progression during geological time; to show that this fact was not explicable on any other hypothesis than that put forward by Darwin; and by paleontological arguments, to pave the way for consideration of the imperfection of the geological record.
Such were the lines on which he delivered his Friday evening lecture on
"Persistent Types" at the Royal Institution on June 3,1859.
However, the chief part which he took at this time in extending the doctrines of evolution was in applying them to his own subjects, Development and Vertebrate Anatomy, and more particularly to the question of the origin of mankind.
Of all the burning questions connected with the Origin of Species, this was the most heated—the most surrounded by prejudice and passion. To touch it was to court attack; to be exposed to endless scorn, ridicule, misrepresentation, abuse—almost to social ostracism. But the facts were there; the structural likenesses between the apes and man had already been shown; and as Huxley warned Darwin,] "I will stop at no point so long as clear reasoning will carry me further."
[Now two years before the "Origin" appeared, the denial of these facts by a leading anatomist led Huxley, as was his wont, to re-investigate the question for himself and satisfy himself one way or the other. He found that the previous investigators were not mistaken. Without going out of his way to refute the mis-statement as publicly as it was made, he simply embodied his results in his regular teaching. But the opportunity came unsought. Fortified by his own researches, he openly challenged these assertions when repeated at the Oxford meeting of the British Association in 1860, and promised to made good his challenge in the proper place.
We also find him combating some of the difficulties in the way of accepting the theory laid before him by Sir Charles Lyell. The veteran geologist had been Darwin's confidant from almost the beginning of his speculations; he had really paved the way for the evolutionary doctrine by his own proof of geological uniformity, but he shrank from accepting it, for its inevitable extension to the descent of man was repugnant to his feelings. Nevertheless, he would not allow sentiment to stand in the way of truth, and after the publication of the "Origin" it could be said of him:—]
Lyell, up to that time a pillar of the anti-transmutationists (who regarded him, ever afterwards, as Pallas Athene may have looked at Dian, after the Endymion affair), declared himself a Darwinian, though not without putting in a serious caveat. Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength, and his courageous stand for truth as against consistency did him infinite honour. (T.H. Huxley in "Life of Darwin" volume 2 page 231.)
[To Sir Charles Lyell.]
June 25, 1859.
My dear Sir Charles,
I have endeavoured to meet your objections in the enclosed.
Ever yours, very truly,
T.H. Huxley.
The fixity and definite limitation of species, genera, and larger groups appear to me to be perfectly consistent with the theory of transmutation. In other words, I think TRANSMUTATION may take place without transition.
Suppose that external conditions acting on species A give rise to a new species, B; the difference between the two species is a certain definable amount which may be called A-B. Now I know of no evidence to show that the interval between the two species must NECESSARILY be bridged over by a series of forms, each of which shall occupy, as it occurs, a fraction of the distance between A and B. On the contrary, in the history of the Ancon sheep, and of the six-fingered Maltese family, given by Reaumur, it appears that the new form appeared at once in full perfection.
I may illustrate what I mean by a chemical example. In an organic compound, having a precise and definite composition, you may effect all sorts of transmutations by substituting an atom of one element for an atom of another element. You may in this way produce a vast series of modifications—but each modification is definite in its composition, and there are no transitional or intermediate steps between one definite compound and another. I have a sort of notion that similar laws of definite combination rule over the modifications of organic bodies, and that in passing from species to species "Natura fecit saltum."
All my studies lead me to believe more and more in the absence of any real transitions between natural groups, great and small—but with what we know of the physiology of conditions [?] this opinion seems to me to be quite consistent with transmutation.
When I say that no evidence, or hardly any, would justify one in believing in the view of a new species of Elephant, e.g. out of the earth, I mean that such an occurrence would be so diametrically contrary to all experience, so opposed to those beliefs which are the most constantly verified by experience, that one would be justified in believing either that one's senses were deluded, or that one had not really got to the bottom of the phenomenon. Of course, if one could vary the conditions, if one could take a little silex, and by a little hocus-pocus a la crosse, galvanise a baby out of it as often as one pleased, all the philosopher could do would be to hold up his hands and cry, "God is great." But short of evidence of this kind, I don't mean to believe anything of the kind.
How much evidence would you require to believe that there was a time when stones fell upwards, or granite made itself by a spontaneous rearrangement of the elementary particles of clay and sand? And yet the difficulties in the way of these beliefs are as nothing compared to those which you would have to overcome in believing that complex organic beings made themselves (for that is what creation comes to in scientific language) out of inorganic matter.
I know it will be said that even on the transmutation theory, the first organic being must have made itself. But there is as much difference between supposing the passage of inorganic matter into an AMOEBA, e.g., and into an ELEPHANT, as there is between supposing that Portland stone might have built itself up into St. Paul's, and believing that the Giant's Causeway may have come about by natural causes.
True, one must believe in a beginning somewhere, but science consists in not believing the having reached that beginning before one is forced to do so.
It is wholly impossible to prove that any phenomenon whatsoever is not produced by the interposition of some unknown cause. But philosophy has prospered exactly as it has disregarded such possibilities, and has endeavoured to resolve every event by ordinary reasoning.
I do not exactly see the force of your argument that we are bound to find fossil forms intermediate between men and monkeys in the Rocks. Crocodiles are the highest reptiles as men are the highest mammals, but we find nothing intermediate between CROCODILIA and LACERTILIA in the whole range of the Mesozoic rocks. How do we know that Man is not a persistent type? And as for implements, at this day, and as, I suppose, for the last two or three thousand years at least, the savages of Australia have made their weapons of nothing but bone and wood. Why should HOMO EOCENUS or OOLITICUS, the fellows who waddied the AMPHITHERIUM and speared the PHASCOLOTHERIUM as the Australian niggers treat their congeners, have been more advanced?
I by no means suppose that the transmutation hypothesis is proven or anything like it. But I view it as a powerful instrument of research. Follow it out, and it will lead us somewhere; while the other notion is like all the modifications of "final causation," a barren virgin.
And I would very strongly urge upon you that it is the logical development of Uniformitarianism, and that its adoption would harmonise the spirit of Paleontology with that of Physical Geology.
CHAPTER 1.14.
1859-1860.
[The "Origin" appeared in November. As soon as he had read it, Huxley wrote the following letter to Darwin (already published in "Life of Darwin" volume 2 page 231):—
Jermyn Street W., November 23, 1859.
My dear Darwin,
I finished your book yesterday, a lucky examination having furnished me with a few hours of continuous leisure.
Since I read Von Baer's essays, nine years ago, no work on Natural History Science I have met with has made so great an impression upon me, and I do most heartily thank you for the great store of new views you have given me. Nothing, I think, can be better than the tone of the book—it impresses those who know about the subject. As for your doctrine, I am prepared to go to the stake, if requisite, in support of Chapter 9 [The Imperfection of the Geological Record], and most parts of Chapters 10 [The Geological Succession of Organic Beings], 11, 12 [Geographical Distribution], and Chapter 13 [Classification, Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs] contains much that is most admirable, but on one or two points I enter a caveat until I can see further into all sides of the question.
As to the first four chapters [Chapter 1, Variation under Domestication; 2, Variation under Nature; 3, The Struggle for Existence; 4, Operation of Natural Selection; 5, Laws of Variation], I agree thoroughly and fully with all the principles laid down in them. I think you have demonstrated a true cause for the production of species, and have thrown the onus probandi, that species did not arise in the way you suppose, on your adversaries.
But I feel that I have not yet by any means fully realised the bearings of those most remarkable and original Chapters—III, IV, and V, and I will write no more about them just now.
The only objections that have occurred to me are—1st, That you have loaded yourself with an unnecessary difficulty in adopting Natura non facit saltum so unreservedly; and 2nd, It is not clear to me why, if continual physical conditions are of so little moment as you suppose, variation should occur at all.
However, I must read the book two or three times more before I presume to begin picking holes.
I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable abuse and misrepresentation which, unless I greatly mistake, is in store for you. Depend upon it, you have earned the lasting gratitude of all thoughtful men. And as to the curs which will bark and yelp, you must recollect that some of your friends, at any rate, are endowed with an amount of combativeness which (though you have often and justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead.
I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness.
Looking back over my letter, it really expresses so feebly all I think about you and your noble book, that I am half-ashamed of it; but you will understand that, like the parrot in the story, "I think the more."
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[A month later, fortune put into his hands the opportunity of striking a vigorous and telling blow for the newly-published book. Never was windfall more eagerly accepted. A short account of this lucky chance was written by him for the Darwin "Life" (volume 1 page 255).]
The "Origin" was sent to Mr. Lucas, one of the staff of the "Times" writers at that day, in what was I suppose the ordinary course of business. Mr. Lucas, though an excellent journalist, and at a later period, editor of "Once a Week," was as innocent of any knowledge of science as a babe, and be wailed himself to an acquaintance on having to deal with such a book. Whereupon, he was recommended to ask me to get him out of his difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly, explaining, however, that it would be necessary for him formally to adopt anything I might be disposed to write, by prefacing it with two or three paragraphs of his own.
I was too anxious to seize upon the opportunity thus offered of giving the book a fair chance with the multitudinous readers of the "Times," to make any difficulty about conditions; and being then very full of the subject, I wrote the article faster, I think, than I ever wrote anything in my life, and sent it to Mr. Lucas, who duly prefixed his opening sentences.