[The following gives the reason for his resigning the Fullerian lectureship:—]
Athenaeum Club, May, 1867.
My dear Tyndall,
A conversation I had with Bence Jones yesterday reminded me that I ought to have communicated with you. But we do not meet so often as we used to do, being, I suppose, both very busy, and I forget to write.
You recollect that the last time we talked together, you mentioned a notion of Bence Jones's to make the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology a practically permanent appointment, and that I was quite inclined to stick by that (if such arrangement could be carried out), and give up other things.
But since I have been engaged in the present course of lectures I have found reason to change my views. It is very hard work, and takes up every atom of my time to make the lectures what they should be; and I find that at this time of year, being more or less used up, I suppose, with the winter work, I stand the worry and excitement of the actual lectures very badly. Add to this that it is six weeks clean gone out of the only time I have disposable for real scientific progress, and you will understand how it is that I have made up my mind to resign.
I put all this clearly before Bence Jones yesterday, with the proviso that I could and would do nothing that should embarrass the Institution or himself.
If there is the least difficulty in supplying my place, or if the managers think I shall deal shadily with them by resigning before the expiration of my term, of course I go on. And I hope you all understand that I would do anything rather than put even the appearance of a slight upon those who were kind enough to elect me.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[He found a substitute for 1868, the last year of the triennial course, in Dr. (now Sir) Michael Foster. Of his final lectures in 1867 he used to tell a story against himself.]
In my early period as a lecturer, I had very little confidence in my general powers, but one thing I prided myself upon was clearness. I was once talking of the brain before a large mixed audience, and soon began to feel that no one in the room understood me. Finally I saw the thoroughly interested face of a woman auditor, and took consolation in delivering the remainder of the lecture directly to her. At the close, my feeling as to her interest was confirmed when she came up and asked if she might put one question upon a single point which she had not quite understood. "Certainly," I replied. "Now, Professor," she said, "is the cerebellum inside or outside the skull?" ("Reminiscences of T.H. Huxley" by Professor H. Fairfield Osborn).
[Dr. Foster used to add maliciously, that disgust at the small impression he seemed to have made was the true reason for the transference of the lectures.]
CHAPTER 1.22.
1868.
[In 1868 he published five scientific memoirs, amongst them his classification of birds and "Remarks upon Archaeopteryx Lithographica" ("Proceedings of the Royal Society" 16 1868 pages 243-248). This creature, a bird with reptilian characters, was a suggestive object from which to popularise some of the far-reaching results of his many years' labour upon the morphology of both birds and reptiles. Thus it led to a lecture at the Royal Institution, on February 7, "On the Animals which are most nearly intermediate between Birds and Reptiles."
Of this branch of work Sir M. Foster says: (Obituary Notice "Proceedings of the Royal Society" volume 59):—
One great consequence of these researches was that science was enriched by a clear demonstration of the many and close affinities between reptiles and birds, so that the two henceforward came to be known under the joint title of Sauropsida, the amphibia being at the same time distinctly more separated from the reptiles, and their relations to fishes more clearly signified by the joint title of Ichthyopsida. At the same time, proof was brought forward that the line of descent of the Sauropsida clearly diverged from that of the Mammalia, both starting from some common ancestry. And besides this great generalisation, the importance of which, both from a classificatory and from an evolutional point of view, needs no comment, there came out of the same researches numerous lesser contributions to the advancement of morphological knowledge, including among others an attempt, in many respects successful, at a classification of birds.
This work in connection with the reptilian ancestry of birds further appears in the paleontological papers published in 1869 upon the Dinosaurs (see Chapter 23), and is referred to in a letter to Haeckel.
His Hunterian lectures on the Invertebrata appeared this year in the "Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science" (pages 126-129, and 191-201), and in the October number of the same journal appeared his famous article "On some Organisms living at great depth in the North Atlantic Ocean," originally delivered before the British Association at Norwich in this year (1868). The sticky or viscid character of the fresh mud from the bottom of the Atlantic had already been noticed by Captain Dayman when making soundings for the Atlantic cable. This stickiness was apparently due to the presence of innumerable lumps of a transparent, gelatinous substance, consisting of minute granules without discoverable nucleus or membranous envelope, and interspersed with cretaceous coccoliths. After a description of the structure of this substance and its chemical reactions, he makes a careful proviso against confounding the statement of fact in the description and the interpretation which he proceeds to put upon these facts:—]
I conceive that the granulate heaps and the transparent gelatinous matter in which they are embedded represent masses of protoplasm. Take away the cysts which characterise the Radiolaria, and a dead Sphaerozoum would very nearly represent one of this deep-sea "Ur-schleim," which must, I think, be regarded as a new form of those simple animated beings which have recently been so well described by Haeckel in his "Monographie der Moneras" page 210. [(See "Collected Essays" 5 153.)
Of this he writes to Haeckel on October 6, 1868:—]
This paper] is about a new "Moner" which lies at the bottom of the Atlantic to all appearances, and gives rise to some wonderful calcified bodies. I have christened it Bathybius Haeckelii, and I hope that you will not be ashamed of your god-child. I will send you some of the mud with the paper.
[The explanation was plausible enough on general grounds, if the evidence had been all that it seemed to be. But it must be noted that the specimens examined by him and by Haeckel, who two years later published a full and detailed description of Bathybius, were seen in a preserved state. Neither of them saw a fresh specimen, though on the cruise of the "Porcupine," Sir Wyville Thomson and Dr. W. Carpenter examined the substance in a fresh state, and found no better explanation to give of it. However, not only were the expectations that it was very widely distributed over the Atlantic bottom, falsified in 1879 by the researches of the "Challenger" expedition, but the behaviour of certain deep-sea specimens gave good ground for suspecting that what had been sent home before as genuine deep-sea mud, was a precipitate due to the action on the specimens of the spirit in which they were preserved. Though Haeckel, with his special experience of Monera, refused to desert Bathybius, a close parallel to which was found off Greenland in 1876, the rest of its sponsors gave it up. Whatever it might be as a matter of possibility, the particular evidence upon which it had been described was tainted. Once assured of this, Huxley characteristically took the bull by the horns. Without waiting for any one else to come forward, he made public renunciation of Bathybius at the British Association in 1879. The "eating of the leek" as recommended to his friend Dohrn (July 7, 1868), was not merely a counsel for others, but was a prescription followed by himself on occasion:—]
As you know, I did not think you were on the right track with the Arthropoda, and I am not going to profess to be sorry that you have finally worked yourself to that conclusion.
As to the unlucky publication in the "Journal of Anatomy and Physiology," you have read your Shakespeare and know what is meant by "eating a leek." Well, every honest man has to do that now and then, and I assure you that if eaten fairly and without grimaces, the devouring of that herb has a very wholesome cooling effect on the blood, particularly in people of sanguine temperament.
Seriously you must not mind a check of this kind.
[This incident, one may suspect, was in his mind when he wrote in his "Autobiography" of the rapidity of thought characteristic of his mother:—]
That characteristic has been passed on to me in full strength; it has often stood me in good stead, it has sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has always been a danger.
[At the Norwich meeting of the Association he also delivered his well-known lecture to working men "On a Piece of Chalk," a perfect example of the handling of a common and trivial subject, so as to make it] "a window into the Infinite." [He was particularly interested in the success of the meeting, as his friend Hooker was President, and writes to Darwin, September 12:—]
We had a capital meeting at Norwich, and dear old Hooker came out in great force as he always does in emergencies.
The only fault was the terrible "Darwinismus" which spread over the section and crept out when you least expected it, even in Fergusson's lecture on "Buddhist Temples."
You will have the rare happiness to see your ideas triumphant during your lifetime.
P.S.—I am preparing to go into opposition; I can't stand it.
[This lecture "On a Piece of Chalk," together with two others delivered this year, seem to me to mark the maturing of his style into that mastery of clear expression for which he deliberately laboured, the saying exactly what he meant, neither too much nor too little, without confusion and without obscurity. Have something to say, and say it, was the Duke of Wellington's theory of style; Huxley's was to say that which has to be said in such language that you can stand cross-examination on each word. Be clear, though you may be convicted of error. If you are clearly wrong, you will run up against a fact some time and get set right. If you shuffle with your subject, and study chiefly to use language which will give a loophole of escape either way, there is no hope for you.
This was the secret of his lucidity. In no one could Buffon's aphorism on style find a better illustration, "Le style c'est l'homme meme." In him science and literature, too often divorced, were closely united; and literature owes him a debt for importing into it so much of the highest scientific habit of mind; for showing that truthfulness need not be bald, and that real power lies more in exact accuracy than in luxuriance of diction. Years after, no less an authority than Spedding, in a letter upon the influence of Bacon on his own style in the matter of exactitude, the pruning of fine epithets and sweeping statements, the reduction of numberless superlatives to positives, asserted that, if as a young man he had fallen in with Huxley's writings before Bacon's, they would have produced the same effect upon him.
Of the other two discourses referred to, one is the opening address which he delivered as Principal at the South London Working Men's College on January 4, "A Liberal Education, and Where to Find It." This is not a brief for science to the exclusion of other teaching; no essay has insisted more strenuously on the evils of a one-sided education, whether it be classical or scientific; but it urged the necessity for a strong tincture of science and her method, if the modern conception of the world, created by the spread of natural knowledge, is to be fairly understood. If culture is the "criticism of life," it is fallacious if deprived of knowledge of the most important factor which has transformed the medieval into the modern spirit.
Two of his most striking passages are to be found in this address; one the simile of the force behind nature as the hidden chess player; the other the noble description of the end of a true education.
Well known as it is, I venture to quote the latter as an instance of his style:—]
That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear cold logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.
Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education, for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely; she as his ever-beneficent mother; he as her mouth-piece, her conscious self, her minister and interpreter.
[The third of these discourses is the address "On the Physical Basis of
Life," of which he writes to Haeckel on January 20, 1869:—]
You will be amused to hear that I went to the holy city, Edinburgh itself, the other day, for the purpose of giving the first of a series of Sunday lectures. I came back without being stoned; but Murchison (who is a Scotchman you know), told me he thought it was the boldest act of my life. The lecture will be published in February, and I shall send it to you, as it contains a criticism of materialism which I should like you to consider.
[In it he explains in popular form a striking generalisation of scientific research, namely, that whether in animals or plants, the structural unit of the living body is made up of similar material, and that vital action and even thought are ultimately based upon molecular changes in this life-stuff. Materialism! gross and brutal materialism! was the mildest comment he expected in some quarters; and he took the opportunity to explain how he held] "this union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation of materialistic philosophy," [considering the latter] "to involve grave philosophic error."
[His expectations were fully justified; in fact, he writes that some persons seemed to imagine that he had invented protoplasm for the purposes of the lecture.
Here, too, in the course of a reply to Archbishop Thompson's confusion of the spirit of modern thought with the system of M. Comte, he launched his well-known definition of Comtism as Catholicism MINUS Christianity, which involved him in a short controversy with Mr. Congreve (see "The Scientific Aspects of Positivism," "Lay Sermons" page 162), and with another leading Positivist, who sent him a letter through Mr. Darwin. Huxley replied:—]
Jermyn Street, March 11, 1869.
My dear Darwin,
I know quite enough of Mr. — to have paid every attention to what he has to say, even if you had not been his ambassador.
I glanced over his letter when I returned home last night very tired with my two nights' chairmanship at the Ethnological and the Geological Societies.
Most of it is fair enough, though I must say not helping me to any novel considerations.
Two paragraphs, however, contained opinions which Mr. — is at perfect liberty to entertain, but not, I think, to express to me.
The one is, that I shaped what I had to say at Edinburgh with a view of stirring up the prejudices of the Scotch Presbyterians (imagine how many Presbyterians I had in my audiences!) against Comte.
The other is the concluding paragraph, in which Mr. — recommends me to "READ COMTE," clearly implying that I have criticised Comte without reading him.
You will know how far I am likely to have committed either of the immoralities thus laid to my charge.
At any rate, I do not think I care to enter into more direct relations with anyone who so heedlessly and unjustifiably assumes me to be guilty of them. Therefore I shall content myself with acknowledging the receipt of Mr. —'s letter through you.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street, March 17, 1869.
My dear Darwin,
After I had sent my letter to you the other day I thought how stupid I had been not to put in a slip of paper to say it was meant for —'s edification.
I made sure you would understand that I wished it to be sent on, and wrote it (standing on the points of my toes and with my tail up very stiff) with that end in view.
[Sketch of two dogs bristling up.]
I am getting so weary of people writing to propose controversy to me upon one point or another, that I begin to wish the article had never been written. The fighting in itself is not particularly objectionable, but it's the waste of time.
I begin to understand your sufferings over the "Origin." A good book is comparable to a piece of meat, and fools are as flies who swarm to it, each for the purpose of depositing and hatching his own particular maggot of an idea.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[A little later he wrote to Charles Kingsley, who had supported him in the controversy:—]
Jermyn Street, April 12, 1869.
My dear Kingsley,
Thanks for your hearty bottle-holding.
Congreve is no better than a donkey to take the line he does. I studied Comte, "Philosophie," "Politique," and all sixteen years ago, and having formed my judgment about him, put it into one of the pigeon holes of my brain (about the H[ippocampus] minor [see above.]), and there let it rest till it was wanted.
You are perfectly right in saying that Comte knew nothing about physical science—it is one of the points I am going to put in evidence.
The law of the three states is mainly evolved from his own consciousness, and is only a bad way of expressing that tendency to personification which is inherent in man.
The Classification of Sciences is bosh—as Spencer has already shown.
Nothing short of madness, however, can have dictated Congreve's challenge of my admiration of Comte as a man at the end of his article. Did you ever read Littre's "Life of Comte?" I bought it when it came out a year or more ago, and I rose from its perusal with a feeling of sheer disgust and contempt for the man who could treat a noble-hearted woman who had saved his life and his reason, as Comte treated his wife.
As soon as I have time I will deal with Comte effectually, you may depend upon that. At the same time, I shall endeavour to be just to what there is (as I hold), really great and good in his clear conception of the necessity of reconstructing society from the bottom to the top "sans dieu ni roi," if I may interpret that somewhat tall phrase as meaning "with our conceptions of religion and politics on a scientific basis."
Comte in his later days was an apostate from his own creed; his "nouveau grand Etre supreme," being as big a fetish as ever nigger first made and then worshipped.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[It is interesting to note how he invariably submitted his writings to the criticism of his wife before they were seen by any other eye. To her judgment was due the toning down of many a passage which erred by excess of vigour, and the clearing up of phrases which would be obscure to the public. In fact, if an essay met with her approval, he felt sure it would not fail of its effect when published. Writing to her from Norwich on August 23, 1868, he confesses himself with reference to the lecture "On a Piece of Chalk":—]
I met Grove who edits "Macmillan," at the soiree. He pulled the proof of my lecture out of his pocket and said, "Look here, there is one paragraph in your lecture I can make neither top nor tail of. I can't understand what it means." I looked to where his finger pointed, and behold it was the paragraph you objected to when I read you the lecture on the sea shore! I told him, and said I should confess, however set up it might make you.
[At the beginning of September, he rejoined his wife and family at Littlehampton,] "a grand place for children, because you go UP rather than DOWN into the sea, and it is quite impossible for them to get into mischief by falling," [as he described it to his friend Dr. Dohrn, who came down for ten days, eagerly looking forward "to stimulating walks over stock and stone, to Tennyson, Herbert Spencer, and Harry's ringing laugh."
The latter half of the month he spent at or near Dublin, serving upon the Commission on Science and Art Instruction:—]
Today [he writes on September 16], we shall be occupied in inspecting the School of Science and the Glasnevin botanical and agricultural gardens, and to-morrow we begin the session work of examining all the Irishry, who want jobs perpetrated. It is weary work, and the papers are already beginning to tell lies about us and attack us.
[The rest of the year he remained in London, except the last four days of December, when he was lecturing at Newcastle, and stayed with Sir W. Armstrong at Jesmond.]
[To Professor Haeckel.]
January 21, 1868.
Don't you think we did a right thing in awarding the Copley Medal to Baer last year? The old man was much pleased, and it was a comfort to me to think that we had not let him go to his grave without the highest honour we had to bestow.
I am over head and ears, as we say, in work, lecturing, giving addresses to the working men and (figurez vous!) to the clergy. [On December 12, 1867, there was a meeting of clergy at Sion House, under the auspices of Dean Farrar and the Reverend W. Rogers of Bishopsgate, when the bearing of recent science upon orthodox dogma was discussed. First Huxley delivered an address; some of the clergy present denounced any concessions as impossible; others declared that they had long ago accepted the teachings of geology; whereupon a candid friend inquired, "Then why don't you say so from your pulpits?" (See "Collected Essays" 3 119.)]
In scientific work the main thing just now about which I am engaged is a revision of the Dinosauria, with an eye to the "Descendenz Theorie." The road from Reptiles to Birds is by way of Dinosauria to the Ratitae. The bird "phylum" was struthious, and wings grew out of rudimentary forelimbs.
You see that among other things I have been reading Ernst Haeckel's
"Morphologie."
[The next two letters reflect his views on the proper work to be undertaken by men of unusual scientific capacity:—]
Jermyn Street, January 15, 1868.
My dear Dohrn,
Though the most procrastinating correspondent in existence when a letter does not absolutely require an answer, I am tolerably well-behaved when something needs to be said or done immediately. And as that appears to me to be the case with your letter of the 13th which has this moment reached me, I lose no time in replying to it.
The Calcutta appointment has been in my hands as well as Turner's, and I have made two or three efforts, all of which unfortunately have proved unsuccessful to find: (1) A man who will do for it and at the same time (2) for whom it will do. Now you fulfil the first condition admirably, but as to the second I have very great doubts.
In the first place the climate of Calcutta is not particularly good for anyone who has a tendency to dysentery, and I doubt very much if you would stand it for six months.
Secondly, we have a proverb that it is not wise to use razors to cut blocks.
The business of the man who is appointed to that museum will be to get it into order. If he does his duty he will give his time and attention to museum work pure and simple, and I don't think that (especially in an Indian climate), he has much energy left for anything else after the day's work is done. Naming and arranging specimens is a most admirable and useful employment, but when you have done it is "cutting blocks," and you, my friend, are a most indubitable razor, and I do not wish to have your edge blunted in that fashion.
If it were necessary for you to win your own bread, one's advice might be modified. Under such circumstances one must do things which are not entirely desirable. But for you who are your own master and have a career before you, to bind yourself down to work six hours a day at things you do not care about and which others could do just as well, while you are neglecting the things which you do care for, and which others could not do so well, would, I think, be amazingly unwise.
Liberavi animam! don't tell my Indian friends I have dissuaded you, but on my conscience I could give you no other advice.
We have to thank you three times over. In the first place for a portrait which has taken its place among those of our other friends; secondly for the great pleasure you gave my little daughter Jessie, by the books you so kindly sent; and thirdly, for Fanny Lewald's autobiography which arrived a few days ago.
Jessie is meditating a letter of thanks (a serious undertaking), and when it is sent the mother will have a word to say for herself.
In the middle of October scarlet fever broke out among my children, and they have all had it in succession, except Jessie, who took it seven years ago. The last convalescent is now well, but we had the disease in the house nearly three months, and have been like lepers, cut off from all communication with our neighbours for that time.
We have had a great deal of anxiety, and my wife has been pretty nearly worn out with nursing day and night; but by great good fortune "the happy family" has escaped all permanent injury, and you might hear as much laughter in the house as at Swanage.
Will you be so kind as to thank Professor Gegenbaur for a paper on the development of the vertebral column of Lepidosteum I have just received from him? He has been writing about the process of ossification and the "deck-knochen" question, but I cannot make out exactly where. Could you let me know?
I am anxious for the "Arthropoden Werk," but I expect to gasp when it comes.
Turn to page 380 of the new edition of our friend Kolliker's "Handbuch," and you will find that though a view which I took off the "organon adamantinae" some twelve or fourteen years ago, and which Kolliker has up to this time repudiated, turns out, and is now admitted by him, to be perfectly correct, yet "that I was not acquainted with the facts that would justify the conclusion." Really, if I had time I could be angry.
Pray remember me most kindly to Haeckel, to all whose enemies I wish confusion, and believe me, ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
P.S.—I have read a hundred pages or so of Fanny Lewald's first Bd., and am delighted with her insight into child-life.
[Tyndall was resigning his lectureship at the School of Mines:—]
Jermyn Street, June 10, 1868.
My dear Tyndall,
All I can say is, I am heartily sorry.
If you feel that your lectures here interfere with your original work, I should not be a true friend either to science or yourself if I said a word against your leaving us.
But for all that I am and shall remain very sorry.
Ever yours very sincerely,
T.H. Huxley.
If you recommend —, of course I shall be very glad to support him in any way I can. But at present I am rather disposed to d—n anyone who occupies your place.
[The following extract is from a letter to Haeckel (November 13, 1868), with reference to the proposed translation of his "Morphologie" by the Ray Society:—]
We shall at once look out for a good translator of the text, as the job will be a long and a tough one. My wife (who sends her best wishes and congratulations on your fatherhood) will do the bits of Goethe's poetry, and I will look after the prose citations.
Next as to the text itself. The council were a little alarmed at the bulk of the book, and it is of the utmost importance that it would be condensed to the uttermost.
Furthermore, English propriety had taken fright at rumours touching the aggressive heterodoxy of some passages. (We do not much mind heterodoxy here, if it does not openly proclaim itself as such.)
And on both these points I had not only to give very distinct assurances, such as I thought your letters had entitled me to give; but in a certain sense to become myself responsible for your behaving yourself like a good boy!
If I had not known you and understood your nature and disposition as I fancy I do, I should not have allowed myself to be put in this position; but I have implicit faith in your doing what is wise and right, and so making it tenable.
There is not the slightest desire to make you mutilate your book or leave out anything which you conceive to be absolutely essential; and I on my part should certainly not think of asking you to make any alteration which would not in my judgment improve the book quite irrespectively of the tastes of the British public.
[Alterations are suggested.] But I stop. By this time you will be swearing at me for attacking all your favourite bits. Let me know what you think about these matters.
I congratulate you and Madame Haeckel heartily on the birth of your boy. Children work a greater metamorphosis in men than any other condition of life. They ripen one wonderfully and make life ten times better worth having than it was.
26 Abbey Place, November 15, 1868.
My dear Darwin,
You are always the bienvenu, and we shall be right glad to see you on
Sunday morning.
We breakfast at 8.30, and the decks are clear before nine. I would offer you breakfast, but I know it does not suit you to come out unfed; and besides you would abuse the opportunity to demoralise Harry. [This small boy of nearly four was a great favourite of Darwin's. When we children were all staying at Down about this time, Darwin himself would come in upon us at dinner, and patting him on the head, utter what was become a household word amongst us, "Make yourself at home, and take large mouthfuls."]
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[An undated note to Darwin belongs to the very end of this year, or to the beginning of the next:—]
The two volumes of the new book have just reached me. My best thanks for them; and if you can only send me a little time for reading within the next three months you will heighten the obligation twenty-fold. I wish I had either two heads or a body that needed no rest!
CHAPTER 1.23.
1869.
[In 1869 Huxley published five paleontological papers, chiefly upon the Dinosaurs (see letter above to Haeckel, January 21, 1868). His physiological researches upon the development of parts of the skull, are represented by a paper for the Zoological Society, while the "Introduction to the Classification of Animals" was a reprint this year of the substance of six lectures in the first part of the lectures on "Elementary Comparative Anatomy" (1864), which were out of print, but still in demand by students.
As President of the Ethnological Society, he delivered an inaugural address "On the Ethnology and Archeology of India," on March 9, and another "On the Ethnology and Archeology of North America," on April 13. As president of the Society, moreover, he urged upon the Government the advisability of forming a systematic series of photographs of the various races comprehended in the British Empire, and was officially called upon to offer suggestions for carrying out the project. This appears to be an amplification of Sir Joseph Fayrer's plan in 1866, with respect to all the tribes of India (see Appendix 1.)
On April 7 he delivered his "Scientific Education: Notes of an After-Dinner Speech" before the Philomathic Society at Liverpool ("Collected Essays" 3 3), one part of which deals with the attitude of the clergy towards physical science, and expresses the necessary antagonism between science and Roman Catholic doctrine which appears more forcibly in one of his speeches at the School Board in 1871.
In this and other educational addresses, he had suggested that one of the best ways of imparting to children a preliminary knowledge of the phenomena of nature would be a course of what the Germans call "Erdkunde," or general information about the world we live in. It should reach from our simplest everyday observations to wide generalisations of physical science; and should supply a background for the study of history. To this he gave the name "Physiography," a name which he believed to be original, until in 1877 his attention was called to the fact that a "Physiographie" had been published in Paris thirty years before.
The idea was no new one with him. Part of his preliminary lectures at the School of Mines had been devoted to something of the kind for the last dozen years; he had served on the Committee of the British Association, appointed in 1866 as the result of a paper by the present Dean Farrar, then a Harrow master, "On the Teaching of Science in the Public Schools," to report upon the whole question. Moreover, in consultation with Dr. Tyndall, he had drawn up a scheme in the winter 1868-69, for the science teaching in the International College, on the Council of which they both were.
Seven yearly grades were arranged in this scheme, proceeding from the simplest account of the phenomena of nature taught chiefly by object lessons, largely through the elements of Physics and Botany, Chemistry and Human Physiology—all illustrated with practical demonstrations—to more advanced work in these subjects, as well as in Social Science, which embraced not only the theory of commerce and government, but the Natural History of Man up to the point at which Ethnology and Archeology touch history.
It is interesting to note that the framers of this report thought it necessary to point out that one master could not teach all these subjects.
In the three later stages the boys might follow alternative lines of study according to their tastes and capacities; but of the earlier part, which was to be obligatory upon all, the report says:—These four years study, if properly employed by the teachers, will constitute a complete preparatory scientific course. However slight the knowledge of details conferred, a wise teacher of any of these subjects will be able to make that teaching thorough; and to give the scholar a notion of the methods and of the ideas which he will meet with in his further progress in all branches of physical science.
In fact, the fundamental principle was to begin with Observational Science, facts collected; to proceed to Classificatory Science, facts arranged; and to end with Inductive Science, facts reasoned upon and laws deduced.
While he was much occupied with the theoretical and practical difficulties of such a scheme of science teaching for general use, he was asked by his friend, the Reverend W. Rogers of Bishopsgate, if he would not deliver a course of lectures on elementary science to boys of the schools in which the latter was interested.
He finally accepted in the following letter, and as the result, delivered twelve lectures week by week from April to June to a large audience at the London Institution in Finsbury Circus, lectures not easily forgotten by the children who listened to them nor by their elders:—]
Jermyn Street, February 5, 1869.
My dear Rogers,
Upon due reflection I am not indisposed to undertake the course of lessons we talked about the other day, though they will cost me a good deal of trouble in various ways, and at a time of the year when I am getting to the end of my tether and don't much like trouble.
But the scheme is too completely in harmony with what (in conjunction with Tyndall and others) I have been trying to bring about in schools in general—not to render it a great temptation to me to try to get it into practical shape.
All I have to stipulate is that we shall have a clear understanding on the part of the boys and teachers that the discourses are to [be] LESSONS and not talkee-talkee lectures. I should like it to be understood that the boys are to take notes and to be examined at the end of the course. Of course I cannot undertake to be examiner, but the schools might make some arrangement on this point.
You see my great object is to set going something which can be worked in every school in the country in a thorough and effectual way, and set an example of the manner in which I think this sort of introduction to science ought to be managed.
Unless this can be done I would rather not embark in a project which will involve much labour, worry, and interruption to my regular line of work.
I met Mr. [illegible] last night, and discussed the subject briefly with him.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
I enclose a sort of rough programme of the kind of thing I mean, cut up from a project of instruction for a school about which I am now busy. The managers might like to see it. But I shall be glad to have it returned.
[These lectures were repeated in November at South Kensington Museum, as the first part of a threefold course to women on the elements of physical science, and the "Times" reporter naively remarks that under the rather alarming name of Physiography, many of the audience were no doubt surprised to hear an exceedingly simple and lucid description of a river-basin. Want of leisure prevented him from bringing out the lectures in book form until November 1877. When it did appear, however, the book, like his other popular works, had a wide sale, and became the forerunner of an immense number of school-books on the subject.
As President of the Geological Society, he delivered an address ("Collected Essays" 8 305), at the anniversary meeting, February 19, upon the "Geological Reform" demanded by the considerations advanced by the physicists, as to the age of the earth and the duration of life upon it. From the point of view of biology he was ready to accept the limits suggested, provided that the premises of Sir William Thomson's (Now Lord Kelvin.) argument were shown to be perfectly reliable; but he pointed out a number of considerations which might profoundly modify the results of the isolated causes adduced; and uttered a warning against the possible degradation of "a proper reverence for mathematical certainty" into "a superstitious respect for all arguments arrived at by process of mathematics." (See "Collected Essays" 8 Introduction page 8.)
At the close of the year, as his own period of office came to an end, it was necessary to select a new president of the Geological. He strongly urged Professor (afterwards Sir Joseph) Prestwich to stand, and when the latter consented, a few weeks, by the way, before his marriage was to take place, replied:—]
Jermyn Street, December 16, 1869.
My dear Prestwich,
Many thanks for your letter. Your consent to become our President for the next period will give as unfeigned satisfaction to the whole body of the Society as it does to me and your other personal friends.
I have looked upon the affair as settled since our last talk, and a very great relief it has been to my mind.
There is no doubt public-dinner speaking (and indeed all public speaking) is nervous work. I funk horribly, though I never get the least credit for it. But it is like swimming, the worst of it is in the first plunge; and after you have taken your "header" it's not so bad (just like matrimony, by the way; only don't be so mean as to go and tell a certain lady I said so, because I want to stand well in her books.)
Of course you may command me in all ways in which I can possibly be of use. But as one of the chiefs of the Society, and personally and scientifically popular with the whole body, you start with an immense advantage over me, and will find no difficulties before you.
We will consider this business formally settled, and I shall speak of it officially.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[I cannot place the following letter to Matthew Arnold with certainty, but it must have been written about this period. (The most probable date being 1869, for on July 1 of that year he dined with Matthew Arnold at Harrow.) Everyone will sympathise with the situation:—]
26 Abbey Place, July 8.
My dear Arnold,
Look at Bishop Wilson on the sin of covetousness and then inspect your umbrella stand. You will there see a beautiful brown smooth-handled umbrella which is NOT your property.
Think of what the excellent prelate would have advised and bring it with you next time you come to the club. The porter will take care of it for me.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The following letter shows how paleontological work was continually pouring in upon him:—]
Jermyn Street, May 7, 1869.
My dear Darwin,
Do you recollect recommending that the "Nassau," which sailed under Captain Mayne's command for Magellan's Straits some years ago should explore a fossiliferous deposit at the Gallegos River?
They visited the place the other day as you will see by Cunningham's letter which I enclose, and got some fossils which are now in my hands.
The skull to which Cunningham refers, consists of little more than the jaws, but luckily nearly all the teeth are in place, and prove it to be an entirely new ungulate mammal with teeth in uninterrupted series like Anoplotherium, about as big as a small horse.
What a wonderful assemblage of beasts there seems to have been in South America! I suspect if we could find them all they would make the classification of the Mammalia into a horrid mess.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[And on July 16, 1869, he writes again to Darwin:—]
To tell you the truth, what with fossils, Ethnology and the great question of "Darwinismus" which is such a worry to us all, I have lost sight of the collectors and naturalists "by grace of the dredge," almost as completely as you have.
[Indeed, the pressure was so great that he resolved to give up the
Hunterian Lectures at the College of Surgeons, as he had already given
up the Fullerian Professorship at the Royal Institution. So he writes to
Professor (afterwards Sir William) Flower:—]
Jermyn Street, June 7, 1869.
PRIVATE, CONFIDENTIAL, PARTICULAR.
My dear Flower,
I have written to Quain [President of the Royal College of Surgeons.] to tell him that I do not propose to be put in nomination for the Hunterian Chair this year. I really cannot stand it with the British Association hanging over my head. So make thy shoulders ready for the gown, and practise the goose-step in order to march properly behind the mace, and I will come and hear your inaugural.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[The meeting of the Association to which he refers took place at Exeter, and he writes of it to Darwin (September 28):—]
As usual, your abominable heresies were the means of getting me into all sorts of hot water at the Association. Three parsons set upon you, and if you were the most malicious of men you could not have wished them to have made greater fools of themselves than they did. They got considerably chaffed, and that was all they were worth. [(It is perhaps scarcely worth while exhuming these long-forgotten arguments in their entirety; but anyone curious enough to consult the report of the meeting preserved in the files of the "Academy," will find, among other things, an entirely novel theory as to the relation of the Cherubim to terrestrial creation.)
And to Tyndall, whom an accident had kept in Switzerland:—]
After a sharp fight for Edinburgh, Liverpool was adopted as the place of meeting for the Association of 1870, and I am to be President; although the "Times" says that my best friends tremble for me. (I hope you are not among that particular lot of my best friends.)
I think we shall have a good meeting, and you know you are pledged to give a lecture even if you come with your leg in a sling.
[The foundation of the Metaphysical Society in 1869 was not without interest as a sign of the times. As in the new birth of thought which put a period to the Middle Ages, so in the Victorian Renaissance, a vast intellectual ferment had taken immediate shape in a fierce struggle with long established orthodoxy. But whereas Luther displaced Erasmus, and the earlier reformers fought out the quarrel with the weapons of the theologian rather than those of the Humanist, the latter-day reformation was based upon the extension of the domain of positive science, upon the force of historical criticism, and the sudden reorganisation of accumulated knowledge in the light of a physical theory adequate to explain it.
These new facts and the new or re-vivified theories based upon them, remained to be reckoned with after the first storm of denunciation had passed by, and the meeting at Sion House in 1867 showed that some at least of the English clergy besides Colenso and Stanley wished to understand the real meaning of the new movement. Although the wider effect of the scientific revival in modifying theological doctrine was not yet fully apparent, the irreconcilables grew fewer and less noisy, while the injustice of their attempts to stifle the new doctrine and to ostracise its supporters became more glaring.
Thus among the supporters of the old order of thought, there was one section more or less ready to learn of the new. Another, seeing that the doctrines of which they were firmly convinced were thrust aside by the rapid advance of the new school, thought, as men not unnaturally think in the like situation, that the latter did not duly weigh what was said on their side. Hence this section eagerly entered into the proposal to found a society which should bring together men of diverse views, and effect, as they hoped, by personal discussion of the great questions at issue, in the manner and with the machinery of the learned societies, a rapprochement unattainable by written debate.
The scheme was first propounded by Mr. James Knowles, then editor of the "Contemporary Review," now of the "Nineteenth Century," in conversation with Tennyson and Professor Pritchard (Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford).
Thus the Society came to be composed of men of the most opposite ways of thinking and of very various occupations in life. The largest group was that of churchmen:—ecclesiastical dignitaries such as Thompson, the Archbishop of York, Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, and Dean Alford; staunch laymen such as Mr. Gladstone, Lord Selborne, and the Duke of Argyll; while the liberal school was represented by Dean Stanley, F.D. Maurice, and Mark Pattison. Three distinguished converts from the English Church championed Roman Catholic doctrine—Cardinal Manning, Father Dalgairns, and W.G. Ward, while Unitarianism claimed Dr. James Martineau. At the opposite pole, in antagonism to Christian theology and theism generally, stood Professor W.K. Clifford, whose youthful brilliancy was destined to be cut short by an untimely death. Positivism was represented by Mr. Frederic Harrison; and Agnosticism by such men of science or letters as Huxley and Tyndall, Mr. John Morley, and Mr. Leslie Stephen.
Something was gained, too, by the variety of callings followed by the different members. While there were professional students of philosophy, like Professor Henry Sidgwick or Sir Alexander Grant, the Principal of Edinburgh University, in some the technical knowledge of philosophy was overlaid by studies in history or letters; in others, by the practical experience of the law or politics; in others, again, medicine or biology supplied a powerful psychological instrument. This fact tended to keep the discussions in touch with reality on many sides.
There was Tennyson, for instance, the only poet who thoroughly
understood the movement of modern science, a stately but silent member;
Mr. Ruskin, J.A. Froude, Shadworth Hodgson, R.H. Hutton of the
"Spectator," James Hinton, and the well-known essayist, W.R. Greg; Sir
James FitzJames Stephen, Sir F. Pollock, Robert Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke),
Sir M.E. Grant Duff, and Lord Arthur Russell; Sir John Lubbock, Dr. W.B.
Carpenter, Sir William Gull, and Sir Andrew Clark.
Of contemporary thinkers of the first rank, neither John Stuart Mill nor Mr. Herbert Spencer joined the society. The letter of the former declining the invitation to join (given in the "Life of W.G. Ward" page 299) is extremely characteristic. He considers the object of the projectors very laudable, "but it is very doubtful whether it will be realised in practice." The undoubted advantages of oral discussion on such questions are, he continues, best realised if undertaken in the manner of the Socratic dialogue, between one and one; but less so in a mixed assembly. He therefore did not think himself justified in joining the society at the expense of other occupations for which his time was already engaged. And he concludes by defending himself against the charge of not paying fair attention to the arguments of his opponents.
It followed from the composition of the society that the papers read were less commonly upon technical questions of metaphysics, such as "Matter and Force" or "The Relation of Will to Thought," than upon those of more vivid moral or religious interest, such as "What is Death?" "The Theory of a Soul," "The Ethics of Belief," or "Is God Unknowable," in which wide scope was given to the emotions as well as the intellect of each disputant.
The method of the Society was for the paper to be printed and circulated among the members before the meeting, so that their main criticisms were ready in advance. The discussions took place after a dinner at which many of the members would appear; and if the more formal debates were not more effectual than predicted by J.S. Mill, the informal discussions, almost conversations, at smaller meetings, and the free course of talk at the dinner table, did something to realise the primary objects of the society. The personal rapprochement took place, but not philosophic compromise or conversion. Whether or not the tone adopted after this period by the clerical party at large was affected by the better understanding on the part of their representatives in the Metaphysical Society of the true aims of their opponents and the honest and substantial difficulties which stood in the way of reunion, it is true that the violent denunciations of the sixties decreased in number and intensity; the right to free expression of reasoned opinion on serious fact was tacitly acknowledged; and, being less attacked, Huxley himself began to be regarded in the light of a teacher rather than an iconoclast. The question began to be not whether such opinions are wicked, but whether from the point of view of scientific method they are irrefragably true.
The net philosophical result of the society's work was to distinguish the essential and the unessential differences between the opposite parties; the latter were to a great extent cleared up; but the former remained all the more clearly defined in logical nakedness for the removal of the side issues and the personal idiosyncrasies which often obscured the main issues. Indeed, when this point was reached by both parties, when the origins and consequences of the fundamental principles on either side had been fully discussed and mutual misunderstandings removed to the utmost, so that only the fundamentals themselves remained in debate, there was nothing left to be done. The society, in fact, as Huxley expressed it,] "died of too much love."
[Indeed, it is to be noticed that, despite the strong antagonism of principle and deductions from principle which existed among the members, the rule of mutual toleration was well kept. The state of feeling after ten years' open struggle seemed likely to produce active collision between representatives of the opposing schools at close quarters.] "We all thought it would be a case of Kilkenny cats," [said Huxley many years afterwards.] "Hats and coats would be left in the hall, but there would be no owners left to put them on again." [But only one flash of the sort was elicited. One of the speakers at an early meeting insisted on the necessity of avoiding anything like moral disapprobation in the debates. There was a pause; then W.G. Ward said: "While acquiescing in this condition as a general rule, I think it cannot be expected that Christian thinkers shall give no sign of the horror with which they would view the spread of such extreme opinions as those advocated by Mr. Huxley." Another pause; then Huxley, thus challenged, replied: "As Dr. Ward has spoken, I must in fairness say that it will be very difficult for me to conceal my feeling as to the intellectual degradation which would come of the general acceptance of such views as Dr. Ward holds." ("Life of W.G. Ward" by Wilfrid Ward page 309.)
No amount of argument could have been more effectual in supporting the claim for mutual toleration than those two speeches, and thenceforward such forms of criticism were conspicuous by their absence. And where honesty of conviction was patent, mutual toleration was often replaced by personal esteem and regard. "Charity, brotherly love," writes Huxley, "were the chief traits of the Society. We all expended so much charity, that, had it been money, we should every one have been bankrupt."
The special part played in the society by Huxley was to show that many of the axioms of current speculation are far from being axiomatic, and that dogmatic assertion on some of the cardinal points of metaphysic is unwarranted by the evidence of fact. To find these seeming axioms set aside as unproven, was, it appears from his "Life," disconcerting to such members of the society as Cardinal Manning, whose arguments depended on the unquestioned acceptance of them. It was no doubt the observation of a similar attitude of mind in Mr. Gladstone towards metaphysical problems which provoked Huxley to reply, when asked whether Mr. Gladstone was an expert metaphysician—"An expert in metaphysics? He does not know the meaning of the word."
In addition to his share in the discussions, Huxley contributed three papers to the society. The first, read November 17, 1869, was on "The views of Hume, Kant, and Whately on the logical basis of the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul," showing that these thinkers agreed in holding that no such basis is given by reasoning, a part, for instance, from revelation. A summary of the argument appears in the essay on Hume ("Collected Essays" 6 201 sq.)
On November 8, 1870, he read a paper, "Has a Frog a Soul? and if so, of what Nature is that Soul?" Experiment shows that a frog deprived of consciousness and volition by the removal of the front part of its brain, will, under the action of various stimuli, perform many acts which can only be called purposive, such as moving to recover its balance when the board on which it stands is inclined, or scratching where it is made uncomfortable, or croaking when pressed in a particular spot. If its spinal cord be severed, the lower limbs, disconnected from the brain, will also perform actions of this kind. The question arises, Is the frog entirely a soulless automaton, performing all its actions directly in response to external stimuli, only more perfectly and with more delicate adjustment when its brain remains intact, or is its soul distributed along its spinal marrow, so that it can be divided into two parts independent of one another?
The professed metaphysician might perhaps tend to regard such consideration as irrelevant; but if the starting-point of metaphysics is to be found in psychology, psychology itself depends to no small extent upon physiology. This question, however, Huxley did not pretend to solve. In the existing state of knowledge he believed it to be insoluble. But he thought it was not without its bearing upon the supposed relations of soul and body in the human subject, and should serve to give pause to current theories on the matter.
His third paper, read January 11, 1876, was on the "Evidence of the Miracle of the Resurrection," in which he argued that there was no valid evidence of actual death having taken place. His rejection of the miraculous had led to an invitation from some of his opponents in the society to write a paper on a definite miracle, and explain his reasons for not accepting it. His choice of subject was due to two reasons: firstly, it was a cardinal instance; secondly, it was a miracle not worked by Christ Himself, and therefore a discussion of its genuineness could offer no suggestion of personal fraud, and hence would avoid inflicting gratuitous pain upon believers in it.
This certainty that there exist many questions at present insoluble, upon which it is intellectually, and indeed morally wrong to assert that we have real knowledge, had long been with him, but, although he had earned abundant odium by openly resisting the claims of dogmatic authority, he had not been compelled to define his philosophical position until he entered the Metaphysical Society. How he came to enrich the English language with the name "Agnostic" is explained in his article "Agnosticism" ("Collected Essays" 5 pages 237-239).
After describing how it came about that his mind] "steadily gravitated towards the conclusions of Hume and Kant," [so well stated by the latter as follows:—
The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy of pure reason is, after all, merely negative, since it serves not as an organon for the enlargement (of knowledge), but as a discipline for its delimitation; and, instead of discovering truth, has only the modest merit of preventing error:—
he proceeds:—]
When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis"—had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion…
This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a place among the members of that remarkable confraternity of antagonists, long since deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Metaphysical Society. Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were -ists of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. To my great satisfaction, the term took; and when the "Spectator" had stood godfather to it, any suspicion in the minds of respectable people that a knowledge of its parentage might have awakened was, of course, completely lulled.
[As for the dialectical powers he displayed in the debates, it was generally acknowledged that in this, as well as in the power of conducting a debate, he shared the pre-eminence with W.G. Ward. Indeed, a proposal was made that the perpetual presidency in alternate years should be vested in these two; but time and health forbade.
His part in the debates is thus described in a letter to me from
Professor Henry Sidgwick:—
Dear Mr. Huxley,
I became a member of the Metaphysical Society, I think, at its first meeting in 1869; and, though my engagements in Cambridge did not allow me to attend regularly, I retain a very distinct recollection of the part taken by your father in the debates at which we were present together. There were several members of the Society with whose philosophical views I had, on the whole, more sympathy; but there was certainly no one to whom I found it more pleasant and more instructive to listen. Indeed I soon came to the conclusion that there was only one other member of our Society who could be placed on a par with him as a debater, on the subjects discussed at our meetings; and that was, curiously enough, a man of the most diametrically opposite opinions—W.G. Ward, the well-known advocate of Ultramontanism. Ward was by training, and perhaps by nature, more of a dialectician; but your father was unrivalled in the clearness, precision, succinctness, and point of his statements, in his complete and ready grasp of his own system of philosophical thought, and the quickness and versatility with which his thought at once assumed the right attitude of defence against any argument coming from any quarter. I used to think that while others of us could perhaps find, on the spur of the moment, AN answer more or less effective to some unexpected attack, your father seemed always able to find THE answer—I mean the answer that it was reasonable to give, consistently with his general view, and much the same answer that he would have given if he had been allowed the fullest time for deliberation.
The general tone of the Metaphysical Society was one of extreme consideration for the feelings of opponents, and your father's speaking formed no exception to the general harmony. At the same time I seem to remember him as the most combative of all the speakers who took a leading part in the debates. His habit of never wasting words, and the edge naturally given to his remarks by his genius for clear and effective statement, partly account for this impression; still I used to think that he liked fighting, and occasionally liked to give play to his sarcastic humour—though always strictly within the limits imposed by courtesy. I remember that on one occasion when I had read to the Society an essay on the "Incoherence of Empiricism," I looked forward with some little anxiety to his criticisms; and when they came, I felt that my anxiety had not been superfluous; he "went for" the weak points of my argument in half a dozen trenchant sentences, of which I shall not forget the impression. It was hard hitting, though perfectly courteous and fair.
I wish I could remember what he said, but the memory of all the words uttered in these debates has now vanished from my mind, though I recall vividly the general impression that I have tried briefly to put down.
Believe me, yours very truly,
Henry Sidgwick.