I must further express my thanks to Bishop Barry for permission to make use of the following passages from the notes contributed by him to Dr. Gladstone:—
I had the privilege of being a member of his committee for defining the curriculum of study, and here also—the religious question being disposed of—I was able to follow much the same line as his, and I remember being struck not only with his clear-headed ability, but with his strong commonsense, as to what was useful and practicable, and the utter absence in him of doctrinaire aspiration after ideal impossibilities. There was (I think) very little under his chairmanship of strongly-accentuated difference of opinion.
In his action on the Board generally I was struck with these three characteristics:—First, his remarkable power of speaking—I may say, of oratory—not only on his own scientific subjects, but on all the matters, many of which were of great practical interest and touched the deepest feelings, which came before the Board at that critical time. Had he chosen—and we heard at that time that he was considering whether he should choose—to enter political life, it would certainly have made him a great power, possibly a leader, in that sphere. Next, what constantly appears in his writings, even those of the most polemical kind—a singular candour in recognising truths which might seen to militate against his own position, and a power of understanding and respecting his adversaries' opinions, if only they were strongly and conscientiously held. I remember his saying on one occasion that in his earlier experience of sickness and suffering, he had found that the most effective helpers of the higher humanity were not the scientist or the philosopher, but] "the parson, and the sister, and the Bible woman." [Lastly, the strong commonsense, which enabled him to see what was] "within the range of practical politics," [and to choose for the cause which he had at heart the line of least resistance, and to check, sometimes to rebuke, intolerant obstinacy even on the side which he was himself inclined to favour. These qualities over and above his high intellectual ability made him, for the comparatively short time that he remained on the Board, one of its leading members.
No less vivid is the impression left, after many years, upon another member of the first School Board, the Reverend Benjamin Waugh, whose life-long work for the children is so well known. From his recollections, written for the use of Professor Gladstone, it is my privilege to quote the following paragraphs:—
I was drawn to him most, and was influenced by him most, because of his attitude to a child. He was on the Board to establish schools for children. His motive in every argument, in all the fun and ridicule he indulged in, and in his occasional anger, was the child. He resented the idea that schools were to train either congregations for churches or hands for factories. He was on the Board as a friend of children. What he sought to do for the child was for the child's sake, that it might live a fuller, truer, worthier life. If ever his great tolerance with men with whom he differed on general principles seemed to fail him for a moment, it was because they seemed to him to seek other ends than the child for its own sake…
His contempt for the idea of the world into which we were born being either a sort of clergyhouse or a market-place, was too complete to be marked by any eagerness. But in view of the market-place idea he was the less calm.
Like many others who had not yet come to know in what high esteem he held the moral and spiritual nature of children, I had thought he was the advocate of mere secular studies, alike in the nation's schools, and in its families. But by contact with him, this soon became an impossible idea. In very early days on the Board a remark I had made to a mutual friend which implied this unjust idea was repeated to him.] "Tell Waugh that he talks too fast," [was his message to me. I was not long in finding out that this was a very just reproof…
The two things in his character of which I became most conscious by contact with him, were his childlikeness and his consideration for intellectual inferiors. His arguments were as transparently honest as the arguments of a child. They might or might not seem wrong to others, but they were never untrue to himself. Whether you agreed with them or not, they always added greatly to the charm of his personality. Whether his face was lighted by his careless and playful humour or his great brows were shadowed by anger, he was alike expressing himself with the honesty of a child. What he counted iniquity he hated, and what he counted righteous he loved with the candour of a child…
Of his consideration for intellectual inferiors I, of course, needed a large share, and it was never wanting. Towering as was his intellectual strength and keenness above me, indeed above the whole of the rest of the members of the Board, he did not condescend to me. The result was never humiliating. It had no pain of any sort in it. He was too spontaneous and liberal with his consideration to seem conscious that he was showing any. There were many men of religious note upon the Board, of some of whom I could not say the same.
In his most trenchant attacks on what he deemed wrong in principles, he never descended to attack either the sects which held them or the individuals who supported them, even though occasionally much provocation was given him. He might not care for peace with some of the theories represented on the Board, but he had certainly and at all times great good-will to men.
As a speaker he was delightful. Few, clear, definite, and calm as stars were the words he spoke. Nobody talked whilst he was speaking. There were no tricks in his talk. He did not seem to be trying to persuade you of something. What convinced him, that he transferred to others. He made no attempt to misrepresent those opposed to him. He sought only to let them know himself…Even the sparkle of his humour, like the sparkle of a diamond, was of the inevitable in him, and was as fair as it was enjoyable.
As one who has tried to serve children, I look back upon having fallen in with Mr. Huxley as one of the many fortunate circumstances of my life. It taught me the importance of making acquaintance with facts, and of studying the laws of them. Under his influence it was that I most of all came to see the practical value of a single eye to those in any pursuit of life. I saw what effect they had on emotions of charity and sentiments of justice, and what simplicity and grandeur they gave to appeals.
My last conversation with him was at Eastbourne some time in 1887 or 1888. I was there on my society's business.] "Well, Waugh, you're still busy about your babies," [was his greeting. "Yes," I responded "and you are still busy about your pigs." One of the last discussions at which he was present at the School Board for London had been on the proximity of a piggery to a site for a school, and his attack on Mr. Gladstone on the Gadarene swine had just been made in the "Nineteenth Century."] "Do you still believe in Gladstone?" [he continued.] "That man has the greatest intellect in Europe. He was born to be a leader of men, and he has debased himself to be a follower of the masses. If working men were to-day to vote by a majority that two and two made five, to-morrow Gladstone would believe it, and find them reasons for it which they had never dreamed of." [He said it slowly and with sorrow.
Two more incidents are connected with his service on the School Board. A wealthy friend wrote to him in the most honourable and delicate terms, begging him, on public grounds, to accept 400 pounds sterling a year to enable him to continue his work on the Board. He refused the offer as simply and straightforwardly as it was made; his means, though not large, were sufficient for his present needs.
Further, a good many people seemed to think that he meant to use the School Board as a stalking horse for a political career. To one of those who urged him to stand for Parliament, he replied thus:—]
November 18, 1871.
Dear Sir,
It has often been suggested to me that I should seek for a seat in the
House of Commons; indeed I have reason to think that many persons
suppose that I entered the London School Board simply as a road to
Parliament.
But I assure you that this supposition is entirely without foundation, and that I have never seriously entertained any notion of the kind.
The work of the School Board involves me in no small sacrifices of various kinds, but I went into it with my eyes open, and with the clear conviction that it was worth while to make those sacrifices for the sake of helping the Education Act into practical operation. A year's experience has not altered that conviction; but now that the most difficult, if not the most important, part of our work is done, I begin to look forward with some anxiety to the time when I shall be relieved of duties which so seriously interfere with what I regard as my proper occupation.
No one can say what the future has in store for him, but at present I know of no inducement, not even the offer of a seat in the House of Commons, which would lead me, even temporarily and partially, to forsake that work again.
I am, dear sir, yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[I give here a letter to me from Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, who also at one period was anxious to induce him to enter Parliament:—
Lexden Park, Colchester, 4th November, 1898.
Dear Mr. Huxley,
I have met men who seemed to me to possess powers of mind even greater than those of your father—his friend Henry Smith for example; but I never met any one who gave me the impression so much as he did, that he would have gone to the front in any pursuit in which he had seen fit to engage. Henry Smith had, in addition to his astonishing mathematical genius, and his great talents as a scholar, a rare faculty of persuasiveness. Your father used to speak with much admiration and some amusement of the way in which he managed to get people to take his view by appearing to take theirs; but he never could have been a power in a popular assembly, nor have carried with him by the force of his eloquence, great masses of men. I do not think that your father, if he had entered the House of Commons and thrown himself entirely into political life, would have been much behind Gladstone as a debater, or Bright as an orator. Whether he had the stamina which are required not only to reach but to retain a foremost place in politics, is another question. The admirers of Prince Bismarck would say that the daily prayer of the statesman should be there "une bonne digestion et un mauvais coeur." "Le mauvais coeur" does not appear to be "de toute necessite," but, assuredly, the "bonne digestion" is. Given an adequate and equal amount of ability in two men who enter the House of Commons together, it is the man of strong digestion, drawing with it, as it usually does, good temper and power of continuous application, who will go furthest. Gladstone, who was inferior to your father in intellect, might have "given points" to the Dragon of Wantley who devoured church steeples. Your father could certainly not have done so, and in that respect was less well equipped for a lifelong parliamentary struggle.
I should like to have seen these two pitted against each other with that "substantial piece of furniture" between them behind which Mr. Disraeli was glad to shelter himself. I should like to have heard them discussing some subject which they both thoroughly understood. When they did cross swords the contest was like nothing that has happened in our times save the struggle at Omdurman. It was not so much a battle as a massacre, for Gladstone had nothing but a bundle of antiquated prejudices wherewith to encounter your father's luminous thought and exact knowledge.
You know, I daresay, that Mr. William Rathbone, then M.P. for Liverpool, once proposed to your father to be the companion of my first Indian journey in 1874-5, he, William Rathbone, paying all your father's expenses. (Of this, Dr. Tyndall wrote to Mrs. Huxley:—"I want to tell you a pleasant conversation I had last night with Jodrell. He and a couple more want to send Hal with Grant Duff to India, taking charge of his duties here and of all necessities ghostly and bodily there!") Mr. Rathbone made this proposal when he found that Lubbock, with whom I travelled a great deal at that period of my life, was unable to go with me to India. How I wish your father had said "Yes." My journey, as it was, turned out most instructive and delightful; but to have lived five months with a man of his extraordinary gifts would have been indeed a rare piece of good fortune, and I should have been able also to have contributed to the work upon which you are engaged a great many facts which would have been of interest to your readers. You will, however, I am sure, take the will for the deed, and believe me, very sincerely yours,
M.E. Grant Duff.]
CHAPTER 2.2.
1871.
["In 1871" (to quote Sir M. Foster), "the post of Secretary to the Royal Society became vacant through the resignation of William Sharpey, and the Fellows learned with glad surprise that Huxley, whom they looked to rather as a not distant President, was willing to undertake the duties of the office." This office, which he held until 1880, involved him for the next ten years in a quantity of anxious work, not only in the way of correspondence and administration, but the seeing through the press and often revising every biological paper that the Society received, as well as reading those it rejected. Then, too, he had to attend every general, council, and committee meeting, amongst which latter the "Challenger" Committee was a load in itself. Under pressure of all this work, he was compelled to give up active connection with other learned societies. (See Appendix 2.)
Other work this year, in addition to the School Board, included courses of lectures at the London Institution in January and February, on "First Principles of Biology," and from October to December on "Elementary Physiology"; lectures to Working Men in London from February to April, as well as one at Liverpool, March 25, on "The Geographical Distribution of Animals"; two lectures at the Royal Institution, May 12 and 19, on "Berkeley on Vision," and the "Metaphysics of Sensation" ("Collected Essays" 6). He published one paleontological paper, "Fossil Vertebrates from the Yarrow Colliery" (Huxley and Wright, "Irish Academy Transactions"). In June and July he gave 36 lectures to schoolmasters—that important business of teaching the teachers that they might set about scientific instruction in the right way. (See below.) He attended the British Association at Edinburgh, and laid down his Presidency; he brought out his "Manual of Vertebrate Anatomy," and wrote a review of "Mr. Darwin's Critics" (see below), while on October 9 he delivered an address at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, on "Administrative Nihilism" ("Collected Essays" 1). This address, written between September 21 and 28, and remodelled later, was a pendant to his educational campaign on the School Board; a restatement and justification of what he had said and done there. His text was the various objections raised to State interference with education; he dealt first with the upholders of a kind of caste system, men who were willing enough to raise themselves and their sons to a higher social plane, but objected on semi-theological grounds to any one from below doing likewise—neatly satirising them and their notions of gentility, and quoting Plato in support of his contention that what is wanted even more than means to help capacity to rise is "machinery by which to facilitate the descent of incapacity from the higher strata to the lower." He repeats in new phrase his warning] "that every man of high natural ability, who is both ignorant and miserable, is as great a danger to society as a rocket without a stick is to people who fire it. Misery is a match that never goes out; genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow: and if knowledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run amuck among friends and foes."
[Another class of objectors will have it that government should be restricted to police functions, both domestic and foreign, that any further interference must do harm.]
Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that we accept the proposition that the functions of the State may be properly summed up in the one great negative commandment—"Thou shalt not allow any man to interfere with the liberty of any other man,"—I am unable to see that the logical consequence is any such restriction of the power of Government, as its supporters imply. If my next-door neighbour chooses to have his drains in such a state as to create a poisonous atmosphere, which I breathe at the risk of typhoid and diphtheria, he restricts my just freedom to just as much as if he went about with a pistol threatening my life; if he is to be allowed to let his children go unvaccinated, he might as well be allowed to leave strychnine lozenges about in the way of mine; and if he brings them up untaught and untrained to earn their living, he is doing his best to restrict my freedom, by increasing the burden of taxation for the support of gaols and workhouses, which I have to pay.
The higher the state of civilisation, the more completely do the actions of one member of the social body influence all the rest, and the less possible is it for any one man to do a wrong thing without interfering, more or less, with the freedom of all his fellow-citizens. So that, even upon the narrowest view of the functions of the State, it must be admitted to have wider powers than the advocates of the police theory are disposed to admit.
[This leads to a criticism of Mr. Spencer's elaborate comparison of the body politic to the body physical, a comparison vitiated by the fact that "among the higher physiological organisms there is none which is developed by the conjunction of a number of primitively independent existences into a complete whole."]
The process of social organisation appears to be comparable, not so much to the process of organic development, as to the synthesis of the chemist, by which independent elements are gradually built up into complex aggregations—in which each element retains an independent individuality, though held in subordination to the whole.
[It is permissible to quote a few more sentences from this address for the sake of their freshness, or as illustrating the writer's ideas.
Discussing toleration,] "I cannot discover that Locke fathers the pet doctrine of modern Liberalism, that the toleration of error is a good thing in itself, and to be reckoned among the cardinal virtues." [(This bears on his speech against Ultramontanism.)
Of Mr. Spencer's comparison of the State to a living body in the interests of individualism:—]
I suppose it is universally agreed that it would be useless and absurd for the State to attempt to promote friendship and sympathy between man and man directly. But I see no reason why, if it be otherwise expedient, the State may not do something towards that end indirectly. For example, I can conceive the existence of an Established Church which should be a blessing to the community. A Church in which, week by week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propositions in theology, but to the setting before men's minds of an ideal of true, just, and pure living; a place in which those who are weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment's rest in the contemplation of the higher life which is possible for all, though attained by so few; a place in which the man of strife and of business should have time to think how small, after all, are the rewards he covets compared with peace and charity. Depend upon it, if such a Church existed, no one would seek to disestablish it.
The sole order of nobility which, in my judgment, becomes a philosopher, is the rank which he holds in the estimation of his fellow-workers, who are the only competent judges in such matters. Newton and Cuvier lowered themselves when the one accepted an idle knighthood, and the other became a baron of the empire. The great men who went to their graves as Michael Faraday and George Grote seem to me to have understood the dignity of knowledge better when they declined all such meretricious trappings. [(On the other hand, he thought it right and proper for officials, in scientific as in other departments, to accept such honours, as giving them official power and status. In his own case, while refusing all simple titular honours, he accepted the Privy Councillorship, because, though incidentally carrying a title, it was an office; and an office in virtue of which a man of science might, in theory at least, be called upon to act as responsible adviser to the Government, should special occasion arise.)
The usual note of high pressure recurs in the following letter, written to thank Darwin for his new work, "The Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex."]
Jermyn Street, February 20, 1871.
My dear Darwin,
Best thanks for your new book, a copy of which I find awaiting me this morning. But I wish you would not bring your books out when I am so busy with all sorts of things. You know I can't show my face anywhere in society without having read them—and I consider it too bad.
No doubt, too, it is full of suggestions just like that I have hit upon by chance at page 212 of volume 1, which connects the periodicity of vital phenomena with antecedent conditions.
Fancy lunacy, etc., coming out of the primary fact that one's nth ancestor lived between tide-marks! I declare it's the grandest suggestion I have heard of for an age.
I have been working like a horse for the last fortnight, with the fag end of influenza hanging about me—and I am improving under the process, which shows what a good tonic work is.
I shall try if I can't pick out from "Sexual Selection" some practical hint for the improvement of gutter-babies, and bring in a resolution thereupon at the School Board.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[This year also saw the inception of a scheme for a series of science primers, under the joint editorship of Professors Huxley, Roscoe, and Balfour Stewart. Huxley undertook the Introductory Primer, but it progressed slowly owing to pressure of other work, and was not actually finished till 1880.]
26 Abbey Place, June 29, 1871.
My dear Roscoe,
If you could see the minutes of the Proceedings of the Aid to Science Commission, the Contagious Diseases Commission and the School Board (to say nothing of a lecture to Schoolmasters every morning), you would forgive me for not having written to you before.
But now that I have had a little time to look at it, I hasten to say that your chemical primer appears to me to be admirable—just what is wanted.
I enclose the sketch for my Primer primus. You will see the bearing of it, rough as it is. When it touches upon chemical matters, it would deal with them in a more rudimentary fashion than yours does, and only prepare the minds of the fledglings for you.
I send you a copy of the Report of the Education Committee, the resolutions based on which I am now slowly getting passed by our Board. The adoption of (c) among the essential subjects has, I hope, secured the future of Elementary Science in London. Cannot you get as much done in Manchester?
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Sir Charles Lyell was now nearly 74 years old, and though he lived four years longer, age was beginning to tell even upon his vigorous powers. A chance meeting with him elicited the following letter:—]
26 Abbey Place, July 30, 1871.
My dear Darwin,
I met Lyell in Waterloo Place to-day walking with Carrick Moore—and although what you said the other day had prepared me, I was greatly shocked at his appearance, and still more at his speech. There is no doubt it is affected in the way you describe, and the fact gives me very sad forebodings about him. The Fates send me a swift and speedy end whenever my time comes. I think there is nothing so lamentable as the spectacle of the wreck of a once clear and vigorous mind!
I am glad Frank enjoyed his visit to us. He is a great favourite here, and I hope he will understand that he is free of the house. It was the greatest fun to see Jess and Mady [aged 13 and 12 respectively] on their dignity with him. No more kissing, I can tell you. Miss Mady was especially sublime.
Six out of our seven children have the whooping-cough. Need I say therefore that the wife is enjoying herself?
With best regards to Mrs. Darwin and your daughter (and affectionate love to Polly) believe me,
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The purchase of the microscope, already referred to, was the subject of another letter to Dr. Dohrn, of which only the concluding paragraph about the School Board, is of general interest. Unfortunately the English microscope did not turn out a success, as compared to the work of the Jena opticians: this is the "optical Sadowa" of the second letter.]
I fancy from what you wrote to my wife that there has been some report of my doings about the School Board in Germany. So I send you the number of the "Contemporary Review" [Containing his article on "The School Boards," etc.] for December that you may see what line I have really taken. Fanatics on both sides abuse me, so I think I must be right.
When is this infernal war to come to an end? I hold for Germany as always, but I wish she would make peace.
With best wishes for the New Year,
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
26 Abbey Place, July 7, 1871.
My dear Dohrn,
I have received your packet, and I will take care that your Report is duly presented to the Association. But the "Happy Family" in general, and myself in particular, are very sorry you cannot come to Scotland. We had begun to count upon it, and the children are immeasurably disgusted with the Insects which will not lay their eggs at the right time.
You have become acclimatised to my bad behaviour in the matter of correspondence, so I shall not apologise for being in arrear. I have been frightfully hard-worked with two Royal Commissions and the School Board all sitting at once, but I am none the worse, and things are getting into shape—which is a satisfaction for one's trouble. I look forward hopefully towards getting back to my ordinary work next year.
Your penultimate letter was very interesting to me, but the glimpses into your new views which it affords are very tantalising—and I want more. What you say about the development of the Amnion in your last letter still more nearly brought "Donner und Blitz!" to my lips—and I shall look out anxiously for your new facts. Lankester tells me you have been giving lectures on your views. I wish I had been there to hear.
He is helping me as Demonstrator in a course of instruction in Biology which I am giving to Schoolmasters—with the view of converting them into scientific missionaries to convert the Christian Heathen of these islands to the true faith.
I am afraid that the English microscope turned out to be by no means worth the money and trouble you bestowed upon it. But the glory of such an optical Sadowa should count for something! I wish that you would get your Jena man to supply me with one of his best objectives if the price is not ruinous—I should like to compare it with my 1/12 inch of Ross. [In this connection it may be noted that he himself invented a combination microscope for laboratory use, still made by Crouch the optician. (See "Journal of Queckett Micr. Club" volume 5 page 144.)]
All our children but Jessie have the whooping-cough—Pertussis—I don't know your German name for it. It is distressing enough for them, but, I think, still worse for their mother. However, there are no serious symptoms, and I hope the change of air will set them right.
They all join with me in best wishes and regrets that you are not coming. Won't you change your mind? We start on July 31st.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The summer holiday of 1871 was spent at St. Andrews, a place rather laborious of approach at that time, with all the impedimenta of a large and young family, but chosen on account of its nearness to Edinburgh, where the British Association met that year. I well remember the night journey of some ten or eleven hours, the freshness of the early morning at Edinburgh, the hasty excursion with my father up the hill from the station as far as the old High Street. The return journey, however, was made easier by the kindness of Dr. Matthews Duncan, who put up the whole family for a night, so as to break the journey.
We stayed at Castlemount, now belonging to Miss Paton, just opposite the ruined castle. Among other visitors to St. Andrews known to my father were Professors Tait and Crum Brown, who inveigled him into making trial of the "Royal and Ancient" game, which then, as now, was the staple resource of the famous little city. I have a vivid recollection of his being hopelessly bunkered three or four holes from home, and can testify that he bore the moral strain with more than usual calm as compared with the generality of golfers. Indeed, despite his naturally quick temper and his four years of naval service at a time when, perhaps, the traditions of a former generation had not wholly died out, he had a special aversion to the use of expletives; and the occasional appearance of a strong word in his letters must be put down to a simply literary use which he would have studiously avoided in conversation. A curious physical result followed the vigour with which he threw himself into the unwonted recreation. For the last twenty years his only physical exercise had been walking, and now his arms went black and blue under the muscular strain, as if they had been bruised.
But the holiday was by no means spent entirely in recreation. One week was devoted to the British Association; another to the examination of some interesting fossils at Elgin; while the last three weeks were occupied in writing two long articles, "Mr. Darwin's Critics," and the address entitled "Administrative Nihilism" referred to above, as well as a review of Dana's "Crinoids." The former, which appeared in the "Contemporary Review" for November ("Collected Essays" 2 120-187) was a review of (1) "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," by A.R. Wallace, (2) "The Genesis of Species," by St. George Mivart, F.R.S., and (3) an article in the "Quarterly" for July 1871, on Darwin's "Descent of Man."]
"I am Darwin's bull-dog," [he once said, and the "Quarterly Reviewer's" treatment of Darwin,] "alike unjust and unbecoming," [provoked him into immediate action.] "I am about sending you," [he writes to Haeckel on November 2,] "a little review of some of Darwin's critics. The dogs have been barking at his heels too much of late." [Apart from this stricture, however, he notes the] "happy change" [which] "has come over Mr. Darwin's critics. The mixture of ignorance and insolence which at first characterised a large proportion of the attacks with which he was assailed, is no longer the sad distinction of anti-Darwinian criticism." [Notes too] "that, in a dozen years, the 'Origin of Species' has worked as complete a revolution in biological science as the 'Principia' did in astronomy—and it has done so, because, in the words of Helmholtz, it contains 'an essentially new creative thought.'"
[The essay is particularly interesting as giving evidence of his skill and knowledge in dealing with psychology, as against the "Quarterly Reviewer," and even with such an unlikely subject as scholastic metaphysics, so that, by an odd turn of events, he appeared in the novel character of a defender of Catholic orthodoxy against an attempt from within that Church to prove that its teachings have in reality always been in harmony with the requirements of modern science. For Mr. Mivart, while twitting the generality of men of science with their ignorance of the real doctrines of his church, gave a reference to the Jesuit theologian Suarez, the latest great representative of scholasticism, as following St. Augustine in asserting, not direct, but derivative creation, that is to say, evolution from primordial matter endued with certain powers. Startled by this statement, Huxley investigated the works of the learned Jesuit, and found not only that Mr. Mivart's reference to the Metaphysical Disputations was not to the point, but that in the "Tractatus de opere sex Dierum," Suarez expressly and emphatically rejects this doctrine and reprehends Augustine for asserting it.]
By great good luck [he writes to Darwin from St. Andrews] there is an excellent library here, with a good copy of Suarez, in a dozen big folios. Among these I dived, to the great astonishment of the librarian, and looking into them as "the careful robin eyes the delver's toil" (vide "Idylls"), I carried off the two venerable clasped volumes which were most promising.
So I have come out in the new character of a defender of Catholic orthodoxy, and upset Mivart out of the mouth of his own prophet.
[Darwin himself was more than pleased with the article, and wrote enthusiastically (see "Life and Letters" 3 148-150). A few of his generous words may be quoted to show the rate at which he valued his friend's championship.
What a wonderful man you are to grapple with those old metaphysical-divinity books…The pendulum is now swinging against our side, but I feel positive it will soon swing the other way; and no mortal man will do half as much as you in giving it a start in the right direction, as you did at the first commencement.
And again, after "mounting climax on climax," he continues:—"I must tell you what Hooker said to me a few years ago. 'When I read Huxley, I feel quite infantile in intellect.'"
This sketch of what constituted his holiday—and it was not very much busier than many another holiday—may possibly suggest what his busy time must have been like.
Till the end of the year the immense amount of work did not apparently tell upon him. He rejoiced in it. In December he remarked to his wife that with all his different irons in the fire, he had never felt his mind clearer or his vigour greater. Within a week he broke down quite suddenly, and could neither work nor think. He refers to this in the following letter:—]
Jermyn Street, December 22, 1871.
My dear Johnny,
You are certainly improving. As a practitioner in the use of cold steel myself, I have read your letter in to-day's "Nature," "mit Ehrfurcht und Bewunderung." And the best evidence of the greatness of your achievement is that it extracts this expression of admiration from a poor devil whose brains and body are in a colloid state, and who is off to Brighton for a day or two this afternoon.
God be with thee, my son, and strengthen the contents of thy gall-bladder!
Ever thine,
T.H. Huxley.
PS.—Seriously, I am glad that at last a protest has been raised against the process of anonymous self-praise to which our friend is given. I spoke to Smith the other day about that dose of it in the "Quarterly" article on Spirit-rapping.
CHAPTER 2.3.
1872.
[Dyspepsia, that most distressing of maladies, had laid firm hold upon him. He was compelled to take entire rest for a time. But his first holiday produced no lasting effect, and in the summer he was again very ill. Then the worry of a troublesome lawsuit in connection with the building of his new house intensified both bodily illness and mental depression. He had great fears of being saddled with heavy costs at the moment when he was least capable of meeting any new expense—hardly able even to afford another much-needed spell of rest. But in his case, as in others, at this critical moment the circle of fellow-workers in science to whom he was bound by ties of friendship, resolved that he should at least not lack the means of recovery. In their name Charles Darwin wrote him the following letter, of which it is difficult to say whether it does more honour to him who sent it or to him who received it:—
Down, Beckenham, Kent, April 23, 1873.
My dear Huxley,
I have been asked by some of your friends (eighteen in number) to inform you that they have placed through Robarts, Lubbock & Company, the sum of 2100 pounds sterling to your account at your bankers. We have done this to enable you to get such complete rest as you may require for the re-establishment of your health; and in doing this we are convinced that we act for the public interest, as well as in accordance with our most earnest desires. Let me assure you that we are all your warm personal friends, and that there is not a stranger or mere acquaintance amongst us. If you could have heard what was said, or could have read what was, as I believe, our inmost thoughts, you would know that we all feel towards you, as we should to an honoured and much loved brother. I am sure that you will return this feeling, and will therefore be glad to give us the opportunity of aiding you in some degree, as this will be a happiness to us to the last day of our lives. Let me add that our plan occurred to several of your friends at nearly the same time and quite independently of one another.
My dear Huxley, your affectionate friend,
Charles Darwin.
It was a poignant moment.] "What have I done to deserve this?" [he exclaimed. The relief from anxiety, so generously proffered, entirely overcame him; and for the first time, he allowed himself to confess that in the long struggle against ill-health, he had been beaten; but, as he said, only enough to teach him humility.
His first trip in search of health was in 1872, when he obtained two months' leave of absence, and prepared to go to the Mediterranean. His lectures to women on Physiology at South Kensington were taken over by Dr. Michael Foster, who had already acted as his substitute in the Fullerian course of 1868. But even on this cruise after health he was not altogether free from business. The stores of biscuit at Gibraltar and Malta were infested with a small grub and its cocoons. Complaints to the home authorities were met by the answer that the stores were prepared from the purest materials and sent out perfectly free from the pest. Discontent among the men was growing serious, when he was requested by the Admiralty to investigate the nature of the grub and the best means of preventing its ravages. In the end he found that the biscuits were packed within range of stocks of newly arrived, unpurified cocoa, from which the eggs were blown into the stores while being packed, and there hatched out. Thereafter the packing was done in another place and the complaints ceased.]
January 3, 1872.
My dear Dohrn,
It is true enough that I am somewhat "erkrankt," though beyond general weariness, incapacity and disgust with things in general, I do not precisely know what is the matter with me.
Unwillingly, I begin to suspect that I overworked myself last year. Doctors talk seriously to me, and declare that all sorts of wonderful things will happen if I do not take some more efficient rest than I have had for a long time. My wife adds her quota of persuasion and admonition, until I really begin to think I must do something, if only to have peace.
What if I were to come and look you up in Naples, somewhere in
February, as soon as my lectures are over?
The "one-plate system" might cure me of my incessant dyspeptic nausea. A detestable grub—larva of Ephestia elatella—has been devouring Her Majesty's stores of biscuits at Gibraltar. I have had to look into his origin, history, and best way of circumventing him—and maybe I shall visit Gibraltar and perhaps Malta. In that case, you will see me turn up some of these days at the Palazzo Torlonia.
Herbert Spencer has written a friendly attack on "Administrative Nihilism," which I will send you; in the same number of the "Fortnightly" there is an absurd epicene splutter on the same subject by Mill's step-daughter, Miss Helen Taylor. I intended to publish the paper separately, with a note about Spencer's criticism, but I have had no energy nor faculty to do anything lately.
Tell Lankester, with best regards, that I believe the teaching of teachers in 1872 is arranged, and that I shall look for his help in due course.
The "Happy family" have had the measles since you saw them, but they are well again.
I write in Jermyn Street, so they cannot send messages; otherwise there would be a chorus from them and the wife of good wishes and kind remembrances.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[He left Southampton on January 11, in the "Malta." On the 16th, he notes in his diary,] "I was up just in time see the great portal of the Mediterranean well. It was a lovely morning, and nothing could be grander than Ape Hill on one side and the Rock on the other, looking like great lions or sphinxes on each side of a gateway."
[The morning after his arrival he breakfasted with Admiral Hornby, who sent him over to Tangier in the "Helicon," giving the Bishop of Gibraltar a passage at the same time. This led him to note down,] "How the naval men love Baxter and all his works." [A letter from Dr. Hooker to Sir John Hay ensured him a most hospitable welcome, though continual rain spoiled his excursions. On the 21st he returned to Gibraltar, leaving three days later in the "Nyanza" for Alexandria, which was reached on February 1. At that "muddy hole" he landed in pouring rain, and it was not till he reached Cairo the following day that he at last got into his longed-for sunshine.
Seeing that three of his eight weeks had been spent in merely getting to sunshine, his wife and doctor conspired to apply for a third month of leave, which was immediately granted, so that he was able to accept the invitation of two friends to go with them up the Nile as far as Assouan in that most restful of conveyances, a dahabieh.
Cairo more than answered his expectations. He stayed here till the 13th, making several excursions in company with Sir W. Gregory, notably to Boulak Museum, where he particularly notes the "man with ape" from Memphis; and, of course, the pyramids, of which he remarks that Cephren's is cased at the top with limestone, not granite. His notebook and sketch-book show that he was equally interested in archeology, in the landscape and scenes of everyday life, and in the peculiar geographical and geological features of the country. His first impression of the Delta was its resemblance to Belgium and Lincolnshire. He has sections and descriptions of the Mokatta hill, and the windmill mound, with a general panorama of the surrounding country and an explanation of it. He remarks at Memphis how the unburnt brick of which the mounds are made up had in many places become remanie into a stratified deposit—distinguishable from Nile mud chiefly by the pottery fragments—and notes the bearing of this fact on the Cairo mounds. It is the same on his trip up the Nile; he jots down the geology whenever opportunity offered; remarks, as indication of the former height of the river, a high mud-bank beyond Edfou, and near Assouan a pot-hole in the granite fifty feet above the present level. Here is a detailed description of the tomb of Aahmes; there a river-scene beside the pyramid of Meidum; or vivid sketches of vulture and jackal at a meal in the desert, the jackal in possession of the carcass, the vulture impatiently waiting his good pleasure for the last scraps; of the natives working at the endless shadoofs; of a group of listeners around a professional story-teller—unfinished, for he was observed sketching them.
Egypt left a profound impression upon him. His artistic delight in it apart, the antiquities and geology of the country were a vivid illustration to his trained eye of the history of man and the influence upon him of the surrounding country, the link between geography and history.
He left behind him for a while a most unexpected memorial of his visit. A friend not long after going to the pyramids, was delighted to find himself thus adjured by a donkey-boy, who tried to cut out his rival with "Not him donkey, sah; him donkey bad, sah; my donkey good; my donkey 'Fessor-uxley donkey, sah." It appears that the Cairo donkey-boys have a way of naming their animals after celebrities whom they have borne on their backs.
While at Thebes, on his way down the river again, he received news of the death of the second son of Matthew Arnold, to whom he wrote the following letter:—]
Thebes, March 10, 1872.
My dear Arnold,
I cannot tell you how shocked I was to see in the papers we received yesterday the announcement of the terrible blow which has fallen upon Mrs. Arnold and yourself.
Your poor boy looked such a fine manly fellow the last time I saw him, when we dined at your house, that I had to read the paragraph over and over again before I could bring myself to believe what I read. And it is such a grievous opening of a wound hardly yet healed that I hardly dare to think of the grief which must have bowed down Mrs. Arnold and yourself.
I hardly know whether I do well in writing to you. If such trouble befell me there are very few people in the world from whom I could bear even sympathy—but you would be one of them, and therefore I hope that you will forgive a condolence which will reach you so late as to disturb rather than soothe, for the sake of the hearty affection which dictates it.
My wife has told me of the very kind letter you wrote her. I was thoroughly broken down when I left England, and did not get much better until I fell into the utter and absolute laziness of dahabieh life. A month of that has completely set me up. I am as well as ever; and though very grateful to Old Nile for all that he has done for me—not least for a whole universe of new thoughts and pictures of life—I begin to feel strongly
'the need of a world of men for me.'
But I am not going to overwork myself again. Pray make my kindest remembrances to Mrs. Arnold, and believe me, always yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Leaving Assouan on March 3, and Cairo on the 18th, he returned by way of Messina to Naples, taking a day at Catania to look at Etna. At Naples he found his friend Dohrn was absent, and his place as host was filled by his father. Vesuvius was ascended, Pozzuoli and Pompeii visited, and two days spent in Rome.]
Hotel de Grande Bretagne, Naples, March 31, 1872.
My dear Tyndall,
Your very welcome letter did not reach me until the 18th of March, when I returned to Cairo from my expedition to Assouan. Like Johnny Gilpin, I "little thought when I set out, of running such a rig"; but while at Cairo I fell in with Ossory of the Athenaeum, and a very pleasant fellow, Charles Ellis, who had taken a dahabieh, and were about to start up the Nile. They invited me to take possession of a vacant third cabin, and I accepted their hospitality, with the intention of going as far as Thebes and returning on my own hook. But when we got to Thebes I found there was no getting away again without much more exposure and fatigue than I felt justified in facing just then, and as my friends showed no disposition to be rid of me, I stuck to the boat, and only left them on the return voyage at Rodu, which is the terminus of the railway, about 150 miles from Cairo.
We had an unusually quick journey, as I was little more than a month away from Cairo, and as my companions made themselves very agreeable, it was very pleasant. I was not particularly well at first, but by degrees the utter rest of this "always afternoon" sort of life did its work, and I am as well and vigorous now as ever I was in my life.
I should have been home within a fortnight of the time I had originally fixed. This would have been ample time to have enabled me to fulfil all the engagements I had made before starting; and Donnelly had given me to understand that "My Lords" would not trouble their heads about my stretching my official leave. Nevertheless I was very glad to find the official extension (which was the effect of my wife's and your and Bence Jones's friendly conspiracy) awaiting me at Cairo. A rapid journey home via Brindisi might have rattled my brains back into the colloid state in which they were when I left England. Looking back through the past six months I begin to see that I have had a narrow escape from a bad breakdown, and I am full of good resolutions.
As the first-fruit of these you see that I have given up the School Board, and I mean to keep clear of all that semi-political work hereafter. I see that Sandon (whom I met at Alexandria) and Miller have followed my example, and that Lord Lawrence is likely to go. What a skedaddle!
It seems very hard to escape, however. Since my arrival here, on taking up the "Times" I saw a paragraph about the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews. After enumerating a lot of candidates for that honour, the paragraph concluded, "But we understand that at present Professor Huxley has the best chance." It is really too bad if any one has been making use of my name without my permission. But I don't know what to do about it. I had half a mind to write to Tulloch to tell him that I can't and won't take any such office, but I should look rather foolish if he replied that it was a mere newspaper report, and that nobody intended to put me up.
Egypt interested me profoundly, but I must reserve the tale of all I did and saw there for word of mouth. From Alexandria I went to Messina, and thence made an excursion along the lovely Sicilian coast to Catania and Etna. The old giant was half covered with snow, and this fact, which would have tempted you to go to the top, stopped me. But I went to the Val del Bove, whence all the great lava streams have flowed for the last two centuries, and feasted my eyes with its rugged grandeur. From Messina I came on here, and had the great good fortune to find Vesuvius in eruption. Before this fact the vision of good Bence Jones forbidding much exertion vanished into thin air, and on Thursday up I went in company with Ray Lankester and my friend Dohrn's father, Dohrn himself being unluckily away. We had a glorious day, and did not descend till late at night. The great crater was not very active, and contented itself with throwing out great clouds of steam and volleys of red-hot stones now and then. These were thrown towards the south-west side of the cone, so that it was practicable to walk all round the northern and eastern lip, and look down into the Hell Gate. I wished you were there to enjoy the sight as much as I did. No lava was issuing from the great crater, but on the north side of this, a little way below the top, an independent cone had established itself as the most charming little pocket-volcano imaginable. It could not have been more than 100 feet high, and at the top was a crater not more than six or seven feet across. Out of this, with a noise exactly resembling a blast furnace and a slowly-working high pressure steam engine combined, issued a violent torrent of steam and fragments of semi-fluid lava as big as one's fist, and sometimes bigger. These shot up sometimes as much as 100 feet, and then fell down on the sides of the little crater, which could be approached within fifty feet without any danger. As darkness set in, the spectacle was most strange. The fiery stream found a lurid reflection in the slowly-drifting steam cloud, which overhung it, while the red-hot stones which shot through the cloud shone strangely beside the quiet stars in a moonless sky.
Not from the top of this cinder cone, but from its side, a couple of hundred feet down, a stream of lava issued. At first it was not more than a couple of feet wide, but whether from receiving accessions or merely from the different form of slope, it got wider on its journey down to the Atrio del Cavallo, a thousand feet below. The slope immediately below the exit must have been near fifty, but the lava did not flow quicker than very thick treacle would do under like circumstances. And there were plenty of freshly cooled lava streams about, inclined at angles far greater than those which that learned Academician, Elie de Beaumont, declared to be possible. Naturally I was ashamed of these impertinent lava currents, and felt inclined to call them "Laves mousseuses." [Elie de Beaumont "is said to have 'damned himself to everlasting fame' by inventing the nickname of 'la science moussante' for Evolutionism." See "Life of Darwin" 2 185.]
Courage, my friend, behold land! I know you love my handwriting. I am off to Rome to-day, and this day-week, if all goes well, I shall be under my own roof-tree again. In fact I hope to reach London on Saturday evening. It will be jolly to see your face again.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
My best remembrances to Hirst if you see him before I do.
[My father reached home on April 6, sunburnt and bearded almost beyond recognition, but not really well, for as soon as he began work again in London, his old enemy returned. Early hours, the avoidance of society and societies, an hour's riding before starting at nine for South Kensington, were all useless; the whole year was poisoned until a special diet prescribed by Dr. (afterwards sir) Andrew Clark, followed by another trip abroad, effected a cure. I remember his saying once that he learned by sad experience that such a holiday as that in Egypt was no good for him. What he really required was mountain air and plenty of exercise. The following letters fill up the outline of this period:—]
26 Abbey Place, May 20, 1872.
My dear Dohrn,
I suppose that you are now back in Naples, perambulating the Chiaja, and looking ruefully on the accumulation of ashes on the foundations of the aquarium! The papers, at any rate, tell us that the ashes of Vesuvius have fallen abundantly at Naples. Moreover, that abominable municipality is sure to have made the eruption an excuse for all sorts of delays. May the gods give you an extra share of temper and patience!
What an unlucky dog our poor Ray is, to go and get fever when of all times in the world's history he should not have had it. However, I hear he is better and on his way home. I hope he will be well enough when he returns not only to get his Fellowship, but to help me in my schoolmaster work in June and July.
I was greatly disgusted to miss you in Naples, but it was something to find your father instead. What a vigorous, genial YOUNGSTER of three score and ten he is. I declare I felt quite aged beside him. We had a glorious day on Vesuvius, and behaved very badly by leaving him at the inn for I do not know how many hours, while we wandered about the cone. But he had a very charming young lady for companion, and possibly had the best of it. I am very sorry that at the last I went off in a hurry without saying "Good-bye" to him, but I desired Lankester to explain, and I am sure he will have sympathised with my anxiety to see Rome.
I returned, thinking myself very well, but a bad fit of dyspepsia seized me, and I found myself obliged to be very idle and very careful of myself—neither of which things are to my taste. But I am right again now, and hope to have no more backslidings. However, I am afraid I may not be able to attend the Brighton meeting. In which case you will have to pay us a visit, wherever we may be—where, we have not yet made up our minds, but it will not be so far as St. Andrews.
Now for a piece of business. The new Governor of Ceylon is a friend of mine, and is proposing to set up a Natural History Museum in Ceylon. He wants a curator—some vigorous fellow with plenty of knowledge and power of organisation who will make use of his great opportunities. He tells me he thinks he can start him with 350 pounds sterling a year (and a house) with possible increase to 400 pounds sterling. I do not know any one here who would answer the purpose. Can you recommend me any one? If you can, let me know at once, and don't take so long in writing to me as I have been in writing to you.
I await the "Prophecies of the Holy Antonius" anxiously. [His work on the development of the Arthropoda or Spider family.] Like the Jews of old, I come of an unbelieving generation, and need a sign. The bread and the oil, also the chamber in the wall shall not fail the prophet when he comes in August: nor Donner and Blitzes either.
I leave the rest of the space for the wife.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[The following is in reply to a jest of Dr. Dohrn's—who was still a bachelor—upon a friend's unusual sort of offering to a young lady.]
I suspected the love affair you speak of, and thought the young damsel very attractive. I suppose it will come to nothing, even if he be disposed to add his hand to the iron and quinine, in the next present he offers…and, oh my Diogenes, happy in a tub of arthropodous Entwickelungsgeschichte [History of Development.], despise not beefsteaks, nor wives either. They also are good.
Jermyn Street, June 5, 1872.
My dear Dohrn,
I have written to the Governor of Ceylon, and enclosed the first half of your letter to me to him as he understands High Dutch. I have told him that the best thing he can do is to write to you at Naples and tell you he will be very happy to see you as soon as you can come. And that if you do come you will give him the best possible advice about his museum, and let him have no rest until he has given you a site for a zoological station.
I have no doubt you will get a letter from him in three weeks or so. His name is Gregory, and you will find him a good-humoured acute man of the world, with a very great general interest in scientific and artistic matters. Indeed in art I believe he is a considerable connoisseur.
I am very grieved to hear of your father's serious illness. At his age cerebral attacks are serious, and when we spent so many pleasant hours together at Naples, he seemed to have an endless store of vigour—very much like his son Anton.
What put it into your head that I had any doubt of your power of work?
I am ready to believe that you are Hydra in the matter of heads and
Briareus in the matter of hands.
…If you go to Ceylon I shall expect you to come back by way of England. It's the shortest route anywhere from India, though it may not look so on the map.
How am I? Oh, getting along and just keeping the devil of dyspepsia at arm's length. The wife and other members of the H.F. are well, and would send you greetings if they knew I was writing to you.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[A little later Von Willemoes Suhm] ("why the deuce does he have such a long name, instead of a handy monosyllable are dissyllable like Dohrn or Huxley?") [was recommended for the post. He afterwards was one of the scientific staff of the "Challenger," and died during the voyage.]
Morthoe, near Barnstaple, North Devon, August 5, 1872.
My dear Dohrn,
I trust you have not been very wroth with me for my long delay in answering your last letter. For the last six weeks I have been very busy lecturing daily to a batch of schoolmasters, and looking after their practical instruction in the laboratory which the Government has, at last, given me. In the "intervals of business" I have been taking my share in a battle which has been raging between my friend Hooker of Kew and his official chief…and moreover I have just had strength enough to get my daily work done and no more, and everything that could be put off has gone to the wall. Three days ago, the "Happy Family," bag and baggage, came to this remote corner, where I propose to take a couple of months' entire rest—and put myself in order for next winter's campaign. It is a little village five miles from the nearest town (which is Ilfracombe), and our house is at the head of a ravine running down to the sea. Our backs are turned to England and our faces to America with no land that I know of between. The country about is beautiful, and if you will come we will put you up at the little inn, and show you something better than even Swanage. There are slight difficulties about the commissariat, but that is the Hausfrau's business, and not mine. At the worst, bread, eggs, milk, and rabbits are certain, and the post from London takes two days!
Morthoe, Ilfracombe, North Devon, August 23, 1872.
My dear Whirlwind,
I promise you all my books, past, present, and to come for the Aquarium. The best part about them is that they will not take up much room. Ask for Owen's by all means; "Fas est etiam ab hoste doceri." I am very glad you have got the British Association publications, as it will be a good precedent for the Royal Society.
Have you talked to Hooker about marine botany? He may be able to help you as soon as X. the accursed (may jackasses sit upon his grandmother's grave, as we say in the East) leaves him alone.
It is hateful that you should be in England without seeing us, and for the first time I lament coming here. The children howled in chorus when they heard that you could not come. At this moment the whole tribe and their mother have gone to the sea, and I must answer your letter before the post goes out, which it does here about half an hour after it comes in.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[In 1872 Huxley was at length enabled to establish in his regular classes a system of science teaching based upon laboratory work by the students, which he had long felt to be the only true method. It involved the verification of every fact by each student, and was a training in scientific method even more than in scientific fact. Had circumstances only permitted, the new epoch in biological teaching might have been antedated by many years. But, as he says in the preface to the "Practical Biology," 1875:—]
Practical work was forbidden by the limitations of space in the building in Jermyn Street, which possessed no room applicable to the purpose of a laboratory, and I was obliged to content myself, for many years, with what seemed the next best thing, namely, as full an exposition as I could give of the characters of certain plants and animals, selected as types of vegetable and animal organisation, by way of introduction to systematic zoology and paleontology.
[There was no laboratory work, but he would show an experiment or a dissection during the lecture or perhaps for a few minutes after, when the audience crowded round the lecture table.
The opportunity came in 1871. As he afterwards impressed upon the great city companies in regard to technical education, the teaching of science throughout the country turned upon the supply of trained teachers. The part to be played by elementary science under the Education Act of 1870, added urgency to the question of proper teaching. With this in view, he organised a course of instruction for those who had been preparing pupils for the examinations of the Science and Art Department, "scientific missionaries," as he described them to Dr. Dohrn.
In the promotion of the practical teaching of biology (writes the late Jeffery Parker, "Natural Science" 8 49), Huxley's services can hardly be overestimated. Botanists had always been in the habit of distributing flowers to their students, which they could dissect or not as they chose; animal histology was taught in many colleges under the name of practical physiology; and at Oxford an excellent system of zoological work had been established by the late Professor Rolleston. ("Rolleston (Professor Lankester writes to me) was the first to systematically conduct the study of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in this country by making use of a carefully selected series of animals. His 'types' were the Rat, the Common Pigeon, the Frog, the Perch, the Crayfish, Blackbeetle, Anodon, Snail, Earthworm, Leech, Tapeworm. He had a series of dissections of these mounted, also loose dissections and elaborate manuscript descriptions. The student went through this series, dissecting fresh specimens for himself. After some ten years' experience Rolleston printed his manuscript directions and notes as a book, called 'Forms of Animal Life.'
"This all preceded the practical class at South Kensington in 1871. I have no doubt that Rolleston was influenced in his plan by your father's advice. But Rolleston had the earlier opportunity of putting the method into practice.
"Your father's series of types were chosen so as to include plants, and he gave more attention to microscopic forms and to microscopic structure than did Rolleston."
It was distinctive of the lectures that they were on biology, on plants as well as animals, to illustrate all the fundamental features of living things.)
But the biological laboratory, as it is now understood, may be said to date from about 1870, when Huxley, with the cooperation of Professors Foster, Rutherford, Lankester, Martin, and others (T.J. Parker, G.B. Howes, and the present Sir W. Thiselton Dyer, K.C.M.G., C.I.E.,), held short summer classes for science teachers at South Kensington, the daily work consisting of an hour's lecture followed by four hours' laboratory work, in which the students verified for themselves facts which they had hitherto heard about and taught to their unfortunate pupils from books alone. The naive astonishment and delight of the more intelligent among them was sometimes almost pathetic. One clergyman, who had for years conducted classes in physiology under the Science and Art Department, was shown a drop of his own blood under the microscope. "Dear me!" he exclaimed, "it's just like the picture in Huxley's 'Physiology.'"
Later, in 1872, when the biological department of the Royal School of Mines was transferred to South Kensington, this method was adopted as part of the regular curriculum of the school, and from that time the teaching "of zoology by lectures alone became an anachronism."
The first of these courses to schoolmasters took place, as has been said, in 1871. Some large rooms on the ground floor of the South Kensington Museum were used for the purpose. There was no proper laboratory, but professor and demonstrators rigged up everything as wanted. Huxley was in the full tide of that more than natural energy which preceded his breakdown in health, and gave what Professor Ray Lankester describes as "a wonderful course of lectures," one every day from ten to eleven for six weeks, in June and half July. The three demonstrators (those named first on the list above) each took a third of the class, about thirty-five apiece. "Great enthusiasm prevailed. We went over a number of plants and of animals—including microscopic work and some physiological experiment. The 'types' were more numerous than in later courses."
In 1872 the new laboratory—the present one—was ready.] "I have a laboratory," [writes Huxley to Dohrn,] "which it shall do your eyes good to behold when you come back from Ceylon, the short way." [(i.e. via England.) here a similar course, under the same demonstrators, assisted by H.N. Martin, was given in the summer, Huxley, though very shaky in health, making a point of carrying them out himself.]
26 Abbey Place, June 4, 1872.
My dear Tyndall,
I MUST be at work on examination papers all day to-day, but to-morrow I am good to lunch with you (and abscond from the Royal Commission, which will get on very well without me) or to go with you and call on your friends, whichever may be most convenient.
Many thanks for all your kind and good advice about the lectures, but I really think they will not be too much for me, and it is of the utmost importance I should carry them on.
They are the commencement of a new system of teaching which, if I mistake not, will grow into a big thing and bear great fruit, and just at this present moment (nobody is necessary very long) I am the necessary man to carry it on. I could not get a suppleant if I would, and you are no more the man than I am to let a pet scheme fall through for the fear of a little risk of self. And really and truly I find that by taking care I pull along very well. Moreover, it isn't my brains that get wrong, but only my confounded stomach.
I have read your memorial [In the affair of Dr. Hooker already referred to.] which is very strong and striking, but a difficulty occurs to me about a good deal of it, and that is that it won't do to quote Hooker's official letters before they have been called for in Parliament, or otherwise made public. We should find ourselves in the wrong officially, I am afraid, by doing so. However we can discuss this when we meet. I will be at the Athenaeum at 4 o'clock.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[As for the teaching by "types," which was the most salient feature of his method, and therefore the most easily applied and misapplied, Professor Parker continues:—
Huxley's method of teaching was based upon the personal examination by the student of certain "types" of animals and plants selected with a view of illustrating the various groups. But, in his lectures, these types were not treated as the isolated things they necessarily appear in a laboratory manual or an examination syllabus; each, on the contrary, took its proper place as an example of a particular grade of structure, and no student of ordinary intelligence could fail to see that the types were valuable, not for themselves, but simply as marking, so to speak, the chapters of a connected narrative. Moreover, in addition to the types, a good deal of work of a more general character was done. Thus, while we owe to Huxley more than to any one else the modern system of teaching biology, he is by no means responsible for the somewhat arid and mechanical aspect it has assumed in certain quarters.