In July 1890, Sir J.G.T. Sinclair wrote to him, calling his attention to a statement of Babbage's that after a certain point his famous calculating machine, contrary to all expectation, suddenly introduced a new principle of numeration into a series of numbers (Extract from Babbage's Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. Babbage shows that a calculating machine can be constructed which, after working in a correct and orderly manner up to 100,000,000, then leaps, and instead of continuing the chain of numbers unbroken, goes at once to 100,010,002. "The law which seemed at first to govern the series failed at the hundred million and second term. This term is larger than we expected by 10,000. The law thus changes:—
100,000,001 100,010,002 100,030,003 100,060,004 100,100,005 100,150,006 100,210,007 100,280,008.
For a hundred or even a thousand terms they continued to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers, but after watching them for 2761 terms we find that this law fails at the 2762nd term.
If we continue to observe we shall discover another law then coming into action which also is different, dependent, but in a different manner, on triangular numbers because a number of points agreeing with their term may be placed in the form of a triangle, thus:—
(1 dot.) (3 dots in the form of a triangle.) (6 dots in the form of a triangle.) (10 dots in the form of a triangle.) (one, three, six, ten).
This will continue through about 1430 terms, when a new law is again introduced over about 950 terms, and this too, like its predecessors, fails and gives place to other laws which appear at different intervals."), and asking what effect this phenomenon had upon the theory of Induction. Huxley replied as follows:—]
Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, July 21, 1890.
Dear Sir,
I knew Mr. Babbage, and am quite sure that he was not the man to say anything on the topic of calculating machines which he could not justify.
I do not see that what he says affects the philosophy of induction as rightly understood. No induction, however broad its basis, can confer certainty—in the strict sense of the word. The experience of the whole human race through innumerable years has shown that stones unsupported fall to the ground, but that does not make it certain that any day next week unsupported stones will not move the other way. All that it does justify is the very strong expectation, which hitherto has been invariably verified, that they will do just the contrary.
Only one absolute certainty is possible to man—namely, that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.
All other so-called certainties are beliefs of greater or less intensity.
Do not suppose that I am following Abernethy's famous prescription, "take my pills," if I refer you to an essay of mine on "Descartes," and a little book on Hume, for the fuller discussion of these points. Hume's argument against miracles turns altogether on the fallacy that induction can give certainty in the strict sense.
We poor mortals have to be content with hope and belief in all matters past and present—our sole certainty is momentary.
I am yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Sir J.G.T. Sinclair, Bart.
[Except for a last visit to London to pack his books, which proved a heavier undertaking than he had reckoned upon, Huxley did not leave Eastbourne this autumn, refusing Sir J. Donnelly's hospitable invitation to stay with him in Surrey during the move, of which he exclaims:—]
Thank Heaven that is my last move—except to a still smaller residence of a subterranean character!
Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, September 19, 1890.
My dear Donnelly,
And my books—and watch-dog business generally?
How is that to be transacted whether as in-patient or out-patient at
Firdale? Much hospitality hath made thee mad.
Seriously, it's not to be done nohow. What between papers that don't come, and profligate bracket manufacturers who keep you waiting for months and then send the wrong things—and a general tendency of everybody to do nothing right or something wrong—it is as much as the two of us will do—to get in, and all in the course of the next three weeks.
Of course my wife has no business to go to London to superintend the packing—but I should like to see anybody stop her. However, she has got the faithful Minnie to do the actual work; and swears by all her Gods and Goddesses she will only direct.
It would only make her unhappy if I did not make pretend to believe, and hope no harm may come of it.
Tout a vous,
T.H. Huxley.
[Another discussion which sprang up in the "Times", upon Medical Education, evoked a letter from him ("Times" August 7), urging that the preliminary training ought to be much more thorough and exact. The student at his first coming is so completely habituated to learn only from books or oral teaching, that the attempt to learn from things and to get his knowledge at first hand is something new and strange. Thus a large proportion of medical students spend much of their first year in learning how to learn, and when they have done that, in acquiring the preliminary scientific knowledge, with which, under any rational system of education, they would have come provided.
He urged, too, that they should have received a proper literary education instead of a sham acquaintance with Latin, and insisted, as he had so often done, on the literary wealth of their own language.
Every one has his own ideas of what a liberal education ought to include, and a correspondent wrote to ask him, among other things, whether he did not think the higher mathematics ought to be included. He replied:—]
Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, August 16, 1890.
I think mathematical training highly desirable, but advanced mathematics, I am afraid, would be too great a burden in proportion to its utility, to the ordinary student.
I fully agree with you that the incapacity of teachers is the weak point in the London schools. But what is to be expected when a man accepts a lectureship in a medical school simply as a grappling-iron by which he may hold on until he gets a hospital appointment?
Medical education in London will never be what it ought to be, until the "Institutes of Medicine," as the Scotch call them, are taught in only two or three well-found institutions—while the hospital schools are confined to the teaching of practical medicine, surgery, obstetrics, and so on.
[The following letters illustrate Huxley's keenness to correct any misrepresentation of his opinions from a weighty source, amid the way in which, without abating his just claims, he could make the peace gracefully.
In October Dr. Abbott delivered an address on "Illusions," in which, without, of course, mentioning names, he drew an unmistakable picture of Huxley as a thorough pessimist. A very brief report appeared in the "Times" of October 9, together with a leading article upon the subject. Huxley thereupon wrote to the "Times" a letter which throws light both upon his early days and his later opinions:—]
The article on "Illusions" in the "Times" of to-day induces me to notice the remarkable exemplification of them to which you have drawn public attention. The Reverend Dr. Abbott has pointed the moral of his discourse by a reference to a living man, the delicacy of which will be widely and justly appreciated. I have reason to believe that I am acquainted with this person, somewhat intimately, though I can by no means call myself his best friend—far from it.
If I am right, I can affirm that this poor fellow did not escape from the "narrow school in which he was brought up" at nineteen, but more than two years later; and, as he pursued his studies in London, perhaps he had as many opportunities for "fruitful converse with friends and equals," to say nothing of superiors, as he would have enjoyed elsewhere.
Moreover, whether the naval officers with whom he consorted were book-learned or not, they were emphatically men, trained to face realities and to have a wholesome contempt for mere talkers. Any one of them was worth a wilderness of phrase-crammed undergraduates. Indeed, I have heard my misguided acquaintance declare that he regards his four years' training under the hard conditions and the sharp discipline of his cruise as an education of inestimable value.
As to being a "keen-witted pessimist out and out," the Reverend Dr. Abbott's "horrid example" has shown me the following sentence:—"Pessimism is as little consonant with the facts of sentient existence as optimism." He says he published it in 1888, in an article on "Industrial Development," to be seen in the "Nineteenth Century". But no doubt this is another illusion. No superior person, brought up "in the Universities," to boot, could possibly have invented a myth so circumstantial.
[The end of the correspondence was quite amicable. Dr. Abbott explained that he had taken his facts from the recently published "Autobiography," and that the reporters had wonderfully altered what he really said by large omissions. In a second letter ("Times" October 11) Huxley says:—]
I am much obliged to Dr. Abbott for his courteous explanation. I myself have suffered so many things at the hands of so many reporters—of whom it may too often be said that their "faith, unfaithful, makes them falsely true"—that I can fully enter into what his feelings must have been when he contemplated the picture of his discourse, in which the lights on "raw midshipmen," "pessimist out and out," "devil take the hindmost," and "Heine's dragoon," were so high, while the "good things" he was kind enough to say about me lay in the deep shadow of the invisible. And I can assure Dr. Abbott that I should not have dreamed of noticing the report of his interesting lecture, which I read when it appeared, had it not been made the subject of the leading article which drew the attention of all the world to it on the following day.
I was well aware that Dr. Abbott must have founded his remarks on the brief notice of my life which (without my knowledge) has been thrust into its present ridiculous position among biographies of eminent musicians; and most undoubtedly anything I have said there is public property. But erroneous suppositions imaginatively connected with what I have said appear to me to stand upon a different footing, especially when they are interspersed with remarks injurious to my early friends. Some of the "raw midshipmen and unlearned naval officers" of whom Dr. Abbott speaks, in terms which he certainly did not find in my "autobiography," are, I am glad to say, still alive, and are performing, or have performed, valuable services to their country. I wonder what Dr. Abbott would think, and perhaps say, if his youthful University friends were spoken of as "raw curates and unlearned country squires."
When David Hume's housemaid was wroth because somebody chalked up "St David's" on his house, the philosopher is said to have remarked,—" Never mind, lassie, better men than I have been made saints of before now." And, perhaps, if I had recollected that "better men than I have been made texts of before now," a slight flavour of wrath which may be perceptible would have vanished from my first letter. If Dr. Abbott has found any phrase of mine too strong, I beg him to set it against "out and out pessimist" and "Heine's dragoon," and let us cry quits. He is the last person with whom I should wish to quarrel.
[Two interesting criticisms of books follow; one "The First Three
Gospels", by the Reverend Estlin Carpenter; the other on "Use and
Disuse", directed against the doctrine of use-inheritance, by Mr. Platt
Ball, who not only sent the book but appealed to him for advice as to
his future course in undertaking a larger work on the evolution of man.]
Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, October 11, 1890.
My dear Mr. Carpenter,
Accept my best thanks for "The First Three Gospels", which strikes me as an admirable exposition of the case, full, clear, and calm. Indeed the latter quality gives it here and there a touch of humour. You say the most damaging things in a way so gentle that the orthodox reader must feel like the eels who were skinned by the fair Molly—lost between pain and admiration.
I am certainly glad to see that the book has reached a second edition; it will do yeoman's service to the cause of right reason.
A friend of mine was in the habit of sending me his proofs, and I sometimes wrote on them "no objection except to the whole"; and I am afraid that you will think what I am about to say comes to pretty much the same thing—at least if I am right in the supposition that a passage in your first preface (page 7) states your fundamental position, and that you conceive that when criticism has done its uttermost there still remains evidence that the personality of Jesus was the leading cause—the conditio sine qua non—of the evolution of Christianity from Judaism.
I long thought so, and having a strong dislike to belittle the heroic figures of history, I held by the notion as long as I could, but I find it melting away.
I cannot see that the moral and religious ideal of early Christianity is new—on the other hand, it seems to me to be implicitly and explicitly contained in the early prophetic Judaism and the later Hellenised Judaism; and though it is quite true that the new vitality of the old ideal manifested in early Christianity demands "an adequate historic cause," I would suggest that the word "cause" may mislead if it is not carefully defined.
Medical philosophy draws a most useful and necessary distinction between "exciting" and "predisposing" causes—and nowhere is it more needful to keep this distinction in mind than in history—and especially in estimating the action of individuals on the course of human affairs. Platonic and Stoical philosophy—prophetic liberalism—the strong democratic socialism of the Jewish political system—the existence of innumerable sodalities for religious and social purposes—had thrown the ancient world into a state of unstable equilibrium. With such predisposing causes at work, the exciting cause of enormous changes might be relatively insignificant. The powder was there—a child might throw the match which should blow up the whole concern.
I do not want to seem irreverent, still less depreciatory, of noble men, but it strikes me that in the present case the Nazarenes were the match and Paul the child.
An ingrained habit of trying to explain the unknown by the known leads me to find the key to Nazarenism in Quakerism. It is impossible to read the early history of the Friends without seeing that George Fox was a person who exerted extraordinary influence over the men with whom he came in contact; and it is equally impossible (at least for me) to discover in his copious remains an original thought.
Yet what with the corruption of the Stuarts, the Phariseeism of the Puritans, and the Sadduceeism of the Church, England was in such a state, that before his death he had gathered about him a vast body of devoted followers, whose patient endurance of persecution is a marvel. Moreover, the Quakers have exercised a prodigious influence on later English life.
But I have scribbled a great deal too much already. You will see what I mean.
To Mr. W. Platt Ball.
Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, October 27, 1890.
Dear Sir,
I have been through your book, which has greatly interested me, at a hand-gallop; and I have by no means given it the attention it deserves. But the day after to-morrow I shall be going into a new house here, and it may be some time before I settle down to work in it—so that I prefer to seem hasty, rather than indifferent to your book and still more to your letter.
As to the book, in the first place. The only criticism I have to offer—in the ordinary depreciatory sense of the word—is that pages 128 to 137 seem to me to require reconsideration, partly from a substantial and partly from a tactical point of view. There is much that is disputable on the one hand, and not necessary to your argument on the other.
Otherwise it seems to me that the case could hardly be better stated.
Here are a few notes and queries that have occurred to me.
Page 41. Extinction of Tasmanians—rather due to the British colonist, who was the main agent of their extirpation, I fancy.
Page 67. Birds' sternums are a great deal more than surfaces of origin for the pectoral muscles—e.g. movable lid of respiratory bellows. This not taken into account by Darwin.
Page 85. "Inferiority of senses of Europeans" is, I believe, a pure delusion. Professor Marsh told me of feats of American trappers equal to any savage doings. It is a question of attention. Consider wool-sorters, tea-tasters, shepherds who know every sheep personally, etc. etc.
Page 85. I do not understand about the infant's sole; since all men become bipeds, all must exert pressure on sole. There is no disuse.
Page 88. Has not "muscardine" been substituted for "pebrine"? I have always considered this a very striking case. Here is apparent inheritance of a diseased state through the mother only, quite inexplicable till Pasteur discovered the rationale.
Page 155. Have you considered that State Socialism (for which I have little enough love) may be a product of Natural Selection? The societies of Bees and Ants exhibit socialism in excelsis.
The unlucky substitution of "survival of fittest" for "natural selection" has done much harm in consequence of the ambiguity of "fittest"—which many take to mean "best" or "highest"—whereas natural selection may work towards degradation: vide epizoa.
You do not refer to the male mamma—which becomes functional once in many million cases, see the curious records of Gynaecomasty. Here practical disuse in the male ever since the origin of the mammalia has not abolished the mamma or destroyed its functional potentiality in extremely rare cases.
I absolutely disbelieve in use-inheritance as the evidence stands. Spencer is bound to it a priori—his psychology goes to pieces without it.
Now as to the letter. I am no pessimist—but also no optimist. The world might be much worse, and it might be much better. Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture—and very much to our credit.
If you will accept the results of the experience of an old man who has had a very chequered existence—and has nothing to hope for except a few years of quiet downhill—there is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections), nothing that satisfies quiet reflection—except the sense of having worked according to one's capacity and light, to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts. That was the lesson I learned from Carlyle's books when I was a boy, and it has stuck by me all my life.
Therefore, my advice to you is go ahead. You may make more of failing to get money, and of succeeding in getting abuse—until such time in your life as (if you are teachable) you have ceased to care much about either. The job you propose to undertake is a big one, and will tax all your energies and all your patience.
But, if it were my case, I should take my chance of failing in a worthy task rather than of succeeding in lower things.
And if at any time I can be of use to you (even to the answering of letters) let me know. But in truth I am getting rusty in science—from disuse.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
P.S.—Yes—Mr. Gladstone has dug up the hatchet. We shall see who gets the scalps.
By the way, you have not referred to plants, which are a stronghold for you. What is the good of use-inheritance, say, in orchids?
[The interests which had formerly been divided between biology and other branches of science and philosophy, were diverted from the one channel only to run stronger in the rest. Stagnation was the one thing impossible to him; his rest was mental activity without excessive physical fatigue; and he felt he still had a useful purpose to serve, as a friend put it, in patrolling his beat with a vigilant eye to the loose characters of thought. Thus he writes on September 29 to Sir J. Hooker:—]
I wish quietude of mind were possible to me. But without something to do that amuses me and does not involve too much labour, I become quite unendurable—to myself and everybody else.
Providence has, I believe, specially devolved on Gladstone, Gore, and
Co. the function of keeping "'ome 'appy" for me.
I really can't give up tormenting ces droles.
However, I have been toiling at a tremendously scientific article about the "Aryan question" absolutely devoid of blasphemy.
[This article appeared in the November number of the "Nineteenth Century" ("Collected Essays" 7 271) and treats the question from a biological point of view, with the warning to readers that it is essentially a speculation based upon facts, but not assuredly proved. It starts from the racial characteristics of skull and stature, not from simply philological considerations, and arrives at a form of the "Sarmatian" theory of Aryan origins. And for fear lest he should be supposed to take sides in the question of race and language, or race and civilisation, he remarks:—]
The combination of swarthiness with stature above the average and a long skull, confer upon me the serene impartiality of a mongrel.
The Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, August 12, 1890.
My dear Evans,
I have read your address returned herewith with a great deal of interest, as I happen to have been amusing myself lately with reviewing the "Aryan" question according to the new lights (or darknesses).
I have only two or three remarks to offer on the places I have marked A and B.
As to A, I would not state the case so strongly against the probabilities of finding pliocene man. A pliocene Homo skeleton might analogically be expected to differ no more from that of modern men than the Oeningen Canis from modern Canes, or pliocene horses from modern horses. If so, he would most undoubtedly be a man—genus Homo—even if you made him a distinct species. For my part I should by no means be astonished to find the genus Homo represented in the Miocene, say the Neanderthal man with rather smaller brain capacity, longer arms and more movable great toe, but at most specifically different.
As to B, I rather think there were people who fought the fallacy of language being a test of race before Broca—among them thy servant—who got into considerable hot water on that subject for a lecture on the forefathers and forerunners of the English people, delivered in 1870. Taylor says that Cuno was the first to insist upon the proposition that race is not co-extensive with language in 1871. That is all stuff. The same thesis had been maintained before I took it up, but I cannot remember by whom. [Cp. letter to Max Muller of June 15, 1865 volume 1.]
Won't you refer to the Blackmore Museum? I was very much struck with it when at Salisbury the other day.
Hope they gave you a better lunch at Gloucester than we did here. We'll treat you better next time in our own den. With the wife's kindest regards.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The remark in a preceding letter about "Gladstone, Gore, and Co." turned out to be prophetic as well as retrospective. Mr. Gladstone published this autumn in "Good Words" his "Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture," containing an attack upon Huxley's position as taken up in their previous controversy of 1889.
The debate now turned upon the story of the Gadarene swine. The question at issue was not, at first sight, one of vital importance, and one critic at least remarked that at their age Mr. Gladstone and Professor Huxley might be better occupied than in fighting over the Gadarene pigs:—]
If these too famous swine were the only parties to the suit, I for my part (writes Huxley, "Collected Essays" 5 414) should fully admit the justice of the rebuke. But the real issue (he contends) is whether the men of the nineteenth century are to adopt the demonology of the men of the first century, as divinely revealed truth, or to reject it as degrading falsity.
[A lively encounter followed:—]
The G.O.M. is not murdered [he writes on November 20], only "fillipped with a three-man beetle," as the fat knight has it.
[This refers to the forthcoming article in the December "Nineteenth
Century", "The Keepers of the Herd of Swine," which was followed in
March 1891 by "Mr. Gladstone's Controversial Methods" (see "Collected
Essays" 5 366 sqq.), the rejoinder to Mr. Gladstone's reply in February.
The scope of this controversy was enlarged by the intervention in the January "Nineteenth Century" of the Duke of Argyll, to whom he devoted the concluding paragraphs of his March article. But it was scarcely well under way when another, accompanied by much greater effusion of ink and passion, sprang up in the columns of the "Times". His share in it, published in 1891 as a pamphlet under the title of "Social Diseases and Worse Remedies," is to be found in "Collected Essays" 9 237.]
I have a new row on hand in re Salvation Army! [he writes on December 2]. It's all Mrs. —'s fault; she offered the money.
[In fact, a lady who was preparing to subscribe 1000 pounds to "General" Booth's "Darkest England" scheme, begged Huxley first to give her his opinion of the scheme and the likelihood of its being properly carried out. A careful examination of "Darkest England" and other authorities on the subject, convinced him that it was most unwise to create an organisation whose absolute obedience to an irresponsible leader might some day become a serious danger to the State; that the reforms proposed were already being undertaken by other bodies, which would be crippled if this scheme were floated; and that the financial arrangements of the Army were not such as provide guarantees for the proper administration of the funds subscribed:—]
And if the thing goes on much longer, if Booth establishes his Bank, you will have a crash some of these fine days, comparable only to Law's Mississippi business, but unfortunately ruining only the poor.
[On the same day he writes to his eldest son:—]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, December 8, 1890.
Attacking the Salvation Army may look like the advance of a forlorn hope, but this old dog has never yet let go after fixing his teeth into anything or anybody, and he is not going to begin now. And it is only a question of holding on. Look at Plumptre's letter exposing the Bank swindle.
The "Times", too, is behaving like a brick. This world is not a very lovely place, but down at the bottom, as old Carlyle preached, veracity does really lie, and will show itself if people won't be impatient.
[No sooner had he begun to express these opinions in the columns of the "Times" than additional information of all kinds poured in upon him, especially from within the Army, much of it private for fear of injury to the writers if it were discovered that they had written to expose abuses; indeed in one case the writer had thought better of even appending his signature to his letter, and had cut off his name from the foot of it, alleging that correspondence was not inviolable. So far were these persons from feeling hostility to the organisation to which they belonged, that one at least hailed the Professor as the divinely-appointed redeemer of the Army, whose criticism was to bring it back to its pristine purity.
To his elder son:—]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, January 8, 1891.
Dear Lens,
It is very jolly to think of J. and you paying us a visit. It is proper, also, the eldest son should hansel the house.
Is the Mr. Sidgwick who took up the cudgels for me so gallantly in the "St. James'" one of your Sidgwicks? If so, I wish you would thank him on my account. (The letter was capital.) [Mr. William C. Sidgwick had written (January 4) an indignant letter to protest against the heading of an article in the "Speaker", Professor Huxley as Titus Oates." "To this monster of iniquity the "Speaker" compares an honourable English gentleman, because he has ventured to dissuade his countrymen from giving money to Mr. William Booth…Mr. Huxley's views on theology may be wrong, but nobody doubts that he honestly holds them; they do not bring Mr. Huxley wealth and honours, nor do they cause the murder of the innocent. To insinuate a resemblance which you dare not state openly is an outrage on common decency…] Generally people like me to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them, but don't care to take any share in the burning of the fingers.
But the Boothites are hard hit, and may be allowed to cry out.
I begin to think that they must be right in saying that the Devil is at work to destroy them. No other theory sufficiently accounts for the way they play into my hands. Poor Clibborn-Booth has a long—columns long—letter in the "Times" to-day, in which, all unbeknownst to himself, he proves my case.
I do believe it is a veritable case of the herd of swine, and I shall have to admit the probability of that miracle.
Love to J. and Co. from us all.
Ever your affectionate Pater.
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, January 11, 1891.
My dear Mr. Clodd,
I am very much obliged to you for the number of the "St. James's Gazette", which I had not seen. The leading article expresses exactly the same conclusions as those at which I had myself arrived from the study of the deed of 1878. But of course I was not going to entangle myself in a legal discussion. However, I have reason to know that the question will be dealt with by a highly qualified legal expert before long. The more I see of the operations of headquarters the worse they look. I get some of my most valuable information and heartiest encouragement from officers of the Salvation Army; and I knew, in this way, of Smith's resignation a couple of days before it was announced! But the poor fellows are so afraid of spies and consequent persecution, that some implore me not to notice their letters, and all pledge me to secrecy. So that I am Vice-Fontanelle with my hand full of truth, while I can only open my little finger.
It is a case of one down and t'other come on, just now. "—" will get his deserts in due time. But, oh dear, what a waste of time for a man who has not much to look to. No; "waste" is the wrong word; it's useful, but I wish that somebody else would do it and leave me to my books.
My wife desires her kind regards. I am happy to say she is now remarkably well. If you are this way, pray look in at our Hermitage.
Yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, January 30, 1891.
My dear Hooker,
I trust I have done with Booth and Co. at last. What an ass a man is to try to prevent his fellow-creatures from being humbugged! Surely I am old enough to know better. I have not been so well abused for an age. It's quite like old times.
And now I have to settle accounts with the Duke and the G.O.M. I wonder when the wicked will let me be at peace.
Ever yours affectionately,
T.H. Huxley.
[Other letters touch upon the politics of the hour, especially upon the sudden and dramatic fall of Parnell. He could not but admire the power and determination of the man, and his political methods, an admiration rashly interpreted by some journalist as admiration of the objects to which these political methods were applied. (See Volume 2.)]
Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, November 26, 1890.
My dear Lecky,
Very many thanks for your two volumes, which I rejoice to have, especially as a present from you. I was only waiting until we were settled in our new house—as I hope we shall be this time next week—to add them to the set which already adorn my shelves, and I promise myself soon to enjoy the reading of them.
The Unionist cause is looking up. What a strange thing it is that the Irish malcontents are always sold, one way or the other, by their leaders.
I wonder if the G.O.M. ever swears! Pity if he can't have that relief just now.
With our united kind regards to Mrs. Lecky and yourself.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, November 29, 1890.
My dear Hooker,
I have filled up and sent your and my copies of entry for Athenaeum.
Carpenter has written the best popular statement I know of, of the results of criticism, in a little book called "The First Three Gospels", which is well worth reading. [See above.]
I have promised to go to the Royal Society dinner and propose Stokes' health on Monday, but if the weather holds out as Arctic as it is now, I shall not dare to venture. The driving east wind, blowing the snow before it here, has been awful; for ten years they have had nothing like it. I am glad to say that my little house turns out to be warm. We go in next Wednesday, and I fear I cannot be in town on Thursday even if the weather permits.
I have had pleurisy that was dangerous and not painful, then pleurisy that was painful and not dangerous; there is only one further combination, and I don't want that.
Politics now are immensely interesting. There must be a depth of blackguardism in me, for I cannot help admiring Parnell. I prophesy that it is Gladstone who will retire for a while, and then come back to Parnell's heel like a whipped hound. His letter was carefully full of loopholes.
Ever yours affectionately,
T.H. Huxley.
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, December 2, 1890.
My dear Hooker,
The question of questions now is whether the Unionists will have the sense to carry a measure settling the land question at once. If they do that, I do not believe it will be in the power of man to stir them further. And my belief is that Parnell will be quite content with that solution. He does not want to be made a nonentity by Davitt or the Irish Americans.
But what ingrained liars they all are! That is the bottom of all Irish trouble. Fancy Healy and Sexton going to Dublin to swear eternal fidelity to their leader, and now openly declaring that they only did so because they believed he would resign.
Ever yours affectionately,
T.H. Huxley.
Hodeslea, January 10, 1891.
My dear Foster,
I am trying to bring the Booth business to an end so far as I am concerned, but it's like getting a wolf by the ears; you can't let him go exactly when you like.
But the result is quite worth the trouble. Booth, Stead, Tillett,
Manning and Co. have their little game spoilt for the present.
You cannot imagine the quantity of letters I get from the Salvation Army subordinates, thanking me and telling me all sorts of stories in strict confidence. The poor devils are frightened out of their lives by headquarter spies. Some beg me not to reply, as their letters are opened.
I knew that saints were not bad hands at lying before; but these Booth people beat Banagher.
Then there is — awaits skinning, and I believe the G.O.M. is to be upon me! Oh for a quiet life.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[But by February 17 the Booth business was over, the final rejoinder to
Mr. Gladstone sent to press; and he writes to Sir J. Hooker:—]
Please the pigs, I have now done with them—wiped my month, and am going to be good—till next time.
But in truth I am as sick of controversy as a confectioner's boy of tarts.
I rather think I shall set up as a political prophet. Gladstone and all the rest are coming to heel to their master.
Years ago one of the present leaders of the anti-Parnellites said to me: "Gladstone is always in the hands of somebody stronger than himself; formerly it was Bright, now it is Parnell."
CHAPTER 3.8.
1890-1891.
[The new house at Eastbourne has been several times referred to. As usually happens, the move was considerably delayed by the slowness of the workmen; it did not actually take place till the beginning of December.
He writes to his daughter, Mrs. Roller, who also had just moved into a new house:—]
You have all my sympathies on the buy, buy question. I never knew before that when you go into a new house money runs out at the heels of your boots. On former occasions, I have been too busy to observe the fact. But I am convinced now that it is a law of nature.
[The origin of the name given to the house appears from the following letter:—]
Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, October 15, 1890.
My dear Foster,
Best thanks for the third part of the "Physiology," which I found when I ran up to town for a day or two last week. What a grind that book must be.
How's a' wi' you? Let me have a line.
We ought to have been in our house a month ago, but fitters, paperers, and polishers are like bugs or cockroaches, you may easily get 'em in, but getting 'em out is the deuce. However, I hope to clear them out by the end of this week, and get in by the end of next week.
One is obliged to have names for houses here. Mine will be "Hodeslea," which is as near as I can go to "Hodesleia," the poetical original shape of my very ugly name.
There was a noble scion of the house of Huxley of Huxley who, having burgled and done other wrong things (temp. Henry IV.), asked for benefit of clergy. I expect they gave it him, not in the way he wanted, but in the way they would like to "benefit" a later member of the family.
[Rough sketch of one priest hauling the rope taut over the gallows, while another holds a crucifix before the suspended criminal.]
Between this gentleman and my grandfather there is unfortunately a complete blank, but I have none the less faith in him as my ancestor.
My wife, I am sorry to say, is in town—superintending packing up—no stopping her. I have been very uneasy about her at times, and shall be glad when we are quietly settled down. With kindest regards to Mrs. Foster.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[His own principal task was in getting his library ready for the move.]
Most of my time [he writes on November 16] for the last fortnight has been spent in arranging books and tearing up papers till my back aches and my fingers are sore.
[However, he did not take all his books with him. There was a quantity of biological works of all sorts which had accumulated in his library and which he was not likely to use again; these he offered as a parting gift to the Royal College of Science. On December 8, the Registrar conveys to him the thanks of the Council for "the valuable library of biological works," and further informs him that it was resolved:—
That the library shall be kept in the room formerly occupied by the
Dean, which shall be called "The Huxley Laboratory for Biological
Research," and be devoted to the prosecution of original researches in
Biological Science, with which the name of Professor Huxley is
inseparably associated.
Huxley replied as follows:—]
Dear Registrar,
I beg you convey my hearty thanks to the Council for the great kindness of the minute and resolution which you have sent me. My mind has never been greatly set on posthumous fame; but there is no way of keeping memory green which I should like so well as that which they have adopted towards me.
It has been my fate to receive a good deal more vilipending than (I hope) I deserve. If my colleagues, with whom I have worked so long, put too high a value upon my services, perhaps the result may be not far off justice.
Yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
In addition to the directly controversial articles in the early part of the year, two other articles on controversial subjects belong to 1891. "Hasisadra's Adventure," published in the "Nineteenth Century" for June, completed his long-contemplated examination of the Flood myth. In this he first discussed the Babylonian form of the legend recorded upon the clay tablets of Assurbanipal—a simpler and less exaggerated form as befits an earlier version, and in its physical details keeping much nearer to the bounds of probability.
The greater part of the article, however, is devoted to a wider question—How far does geological and geographical evidence bear witness to the consequences which must have ensued from a universal flood, or even from one limited to the countries of Mesopotamia? And he comes to the conclusion that these very countries have been singularly free from any great changes of the kind for long geological periods.
The sarcastic references in this article to those singular reasoners who take the possibility of an occurrence to be the same as scientific testimony to the fact of its occurrence, lead up, more or less, to the subject of an essay, "Possibilities and Impossibilities," which appeared in the "Agnostic Annual" for 1892, actually published in October 1891, and to be found in "Collected Essays", 5 192.
This was a restatement of the fundamental principles of the agnostic position, arising out of the controversies of the last two years upon the demonology of the New Testament. The miraculous is not to be denied as impossible; as Hume said, "Whatever is intelligible and can be distinctly conceived implies no contradiction, and can never be proved false by any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning a priori," and these combinations of phenomena are perfectly conceivable. Moreover, in the progress of knowledge, the miracles of to-day may be the science of to-morrow. Improbable they are, certainly, by all experience, and therefore they require specially strong evidence. But this is precisely what they lack; the evidence for them, when examined, turns out to be of doubtful value.]
I am anxious [he says] to bring about a clear understanding of the difference between "impossibilities" and "improbabilities," because mistakes on this point lay us open to the attacks of ecclesiastical apologists of the type of the late Cardinal Newman.
When it is rightly stated, the Agnostic view of "miracles" is, in my judgment, unassailable. We are NOT justified in the a priori assertion that the order of nature, as experience has revealed it to us, cannot change. In arguing about the miraculous, the assumption is illegitimate, because it involves the whole point in dispute. Furthermore, it is an assumption which takes us beyond the range of our faculties. Obviously, no amount of past experience can warrant us in anything more than a correspondingly strong expectation for the present and future. We find, practically, that expectations, based upon careful observations of past events, are, as a rule, trustworthy. We should be foolish indeed not to follow the only guide we have through life. But, for all that, our highest and surest generalisations remain on the level of justifiable expectations; that is, very high probabilities. For my part, I am unable to conceive of an intelligence shaped on the model of that of men, however superior it might be, which could be any better off than our own in this respect; that is, which could possess logically justifiable grounds for certainty about the constancy of the order of things, and therefore be in a position to declare that such and such events are impossible. Some of the old mythologies recognised this clearly enough. Beyond and above Zeus and Odin, there lay the unknown and inscrutable Fate which, one day or other, would crumple up them and the world they ruled to give place to a new order of things.
I sincerely hope that I shall not be accused of Pyrrhonism, or of any desire to weaken the foundations of rational certainty. I have merely desired to point out that rational certainty is one thing, and talk about "impossibilities," or "violation of natural laws," another. Rational certainty rests upon two grounds; the one that the evidence in favour of a given statement is as good as it can be; the other, that such evidence is plainly insufficient. In the former case, the statement is to be taken as true, in the latter as untrue; until something arises to modify the verdict, which, however properly reached, may always be more or less wrong, the best information being never complete, and the best reasoning being liable to fallacy.
To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to object to live one's life, with due thought for the morrow, because no man can be sure he will be alive an hour hence. Such are the conditions imposed upon us by nature, and we have to make the best of them. And I think that the greatest mistake those of us who are interested in the progress of free thought can make is to overlook these limitations, and to deck ourselves with the dogmatic feathers which are the traditional adornment of our opponents. Let us be content with rational certainty, leaving irrational certainties to those who like to muddle their minds with them.
[As for the difficulty of believing miracles in themselves, he gives in this paper several examples of a favourite saying of his, that Science offers us much greater marvels than the miracles of theology; only the evidence for them is very different.
The following letter was written in acknowledgment of a paper by the Reverend E. McClure, which endeavoured to place the belief in an individual permanence upon the grounds that we know of no leakage anywhere in nature; that matter is not a source, but a transmitter of energy; and that the brain, so far from originating thought, is a mere machine responsive to something external to itself, a revealer of something which it does not produce, like a musical instrument. This "something" is the universal of thought, which is identified with the general logos of the fourth gospel. Moral perfection consists in assimilation to this; sin is the falling short of perfect revealing of the eternal logos.
Huxley's reply interested his correspondent not only for the brief opinion on the philosophic question, but for the personal touch in the explanation of the motives which had guided his life-work, and his "kind feeling towards such of the clergy as endeavoured to seek honestly for a natural basis to their faith."
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, March 17, 1891.
Dear Mr. McClure,
I am very much obliged for your letter, which belongs to a different category from most of those which I receive from your side of the hedge that, unfortunately, separates thinking men.
So far as I know myself, after making due deduction for the ambition of youth and a fiery temper, which ought to (but unfortunately does not) get cooler with age, my sole motive is to get at the truth in all things.
I do not care one straw about fame, present or posthumous, and I loathe notoriety, but I do care to have that desire manifest and recognised.
Your paper deals with a problem which has profoundly interested me for years, but which I take to be insoluble. It would need a book for full discussion. But I offer a remark only on two points.
The doctrine of the conservation of energy tells neither one way nor the other. Energy is the cause of movement of body, i.e. things having mass. States of consciousness have no mass, even if they can be conceded to be movable. Therefore even if they are caused by molecular movements, they would not in any way affect the store of energy.
Physical causation need not be the only kind of causation, and when Cabanis said that thought was a function of the brain, in the same way as bile secretion is a FUNCTION of the liver, he blundered philosophically. Bile is a product of the transformation of material energy. But in the mathematical sense of the word "function," thought may be a function of the brain. That is to say, it may arise only when certain physical particles take on a certain order.
By way of a coarse analogy, consider a parallel-sided piece of glass through which light passes. It forms no picture. Shape it so as to be bi-convex, and a picture appears in its focus.
Is not the formation of the picture a "function" of the piece of glass thus shaped?
So, from your own point of view, suppose a mind-stuff—logos—-a noumenal cosmic light such as is shadowed in the fourth gospel. The brain of a dog will convert it into one set of phenomenal pictures, and the brain of a man into another. But in both cases the result is the consequence of the way in which the respective brains perform their "functions."
Yet one point.
The actions we call sinful are as much the consequence of the order of nature as those we call virtuous. They are part and parcel of the struggle for existence through which all living things have passed, and they have become sins because man alone seeks a higher life in voluntary association.
Therefore the instrument has never been marred; on the contrary, we are trying to get music out of harps, sacbuts, and psalteries, which never were in tune and seemingly never will be.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Few years passed without some utterance from Huxley on the subject of education, especially scientific education. This year we have a letter to Professor Ray Lankester touching the science teaching at Oxford.]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, January 28, 1891.
Dear Lankester,
I met Foster at the Athenaeum when I was in town last week, and we had some talk about your "very gentle" stirring of the Oxford pudding. I asked him to let you know when occasion offered, that (as I had already said to Burdon Sanderson) I drew a clear line apud biology between the medical student and the science student.
With respect to the former, I consider it ought to be kept within strict limits, and made simply a Vorschule to human anatomy and physiology.
On the other hand, the man who is going out in natural science ought to have a much larger dose, especially in the direction of morphology. However, from what I understood from Foster, there seems a doubt about the "going out" in "Natural Science", so I had better confine myself to the medicos. Their burden is already so heavy that I do not want to see it increased by a needless weight even of elementary biology.
Very many thanks for the "Zoological articles" just arrived.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Don't write to the "Times" about anything; look at the trouble that comes upon a harmless man for two months, in consequence.
[The following letter, which I quote from the "Yorkshire Herald" of
April 11, 1891, was written in answer to some inquiries from Mr. J.
Harrison, who read a paper on Technical Education as applied to
Agriculture, before the Easingwold Agricultural Club.]
I am afraid that my opinion upon the subject of your inquiry is worth very little—my ignorance of practical agriculture being profound. However, there are some general principles which apply to all technical training; the first of these, I think, is that practice is to be learned only by practice. The farmer must be made by and through farm work. I believe I might be able to give you a fair account of a bean plant and of the manner and condition of its growth, but if I were to try to raise a crop of beans, your club would probably laugh consumedly at the result. Nevertheless, I believe that you practical people would be all the better for the scientific knowledge which does not enable me to grow beans. It would keep you from attempting hopeless experiments, and would enable you to take advantage of the innumerable hints which Dame Nature gives to people who live in direct contact with things. And this leads me to the second general principle which I think applies to all technical teaching for school-boys and school-girls, and that is, that they should be led from the observation of the commonest facts to general scientific truths. If I were called upon to frame a course of elementary instruction preparatory to agriculture, I am not sure that I should attempt chemistry, or botany, or physiology or geology, as such. It is a method fraught with the danger of spending too much time and attention on abstraction and theories, on words and notions instead of things. The history of a bean, of a grain of wheat, of a turnip, of a sheep, of a pig, or of a cow properly treated—with the introduction of the elements of chemistry, physiology, and so on as they come in—would give all the elementary science which is needed for the comprehension of the processes of agriculture in a form easily assimilated by the youthful mind, which loathes everything in the shape of long words and abstract notions, and small blame to it. I am afraid I shall not have helped you very much, but I believe that my suggestions, rough as they are, are in the right direction.
[The remaining letters of the year are of miscellaneous interest. They show him happily established in his retreat at Eastbourne in very fair health, on his guard against any further repetition of his "jubilee honour" in the shape of his old enemy pleurisy; unable to escape the more insidious attacks of influenza, but well enough on the whole to be in constant good spirits.]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, January 13, 1891.
My dear Skelton,
Many thanks to you for reminding me that there are such things as "Summer Isles" in the universe. The memory of them has been pretty well blotted out here for the last seven weeks. You see some people can retire to "Hermitages" as well as other people; and though even Argyll cum Gladstone powers of self-deception could not persuade me that the view from my window is as good as that from yours, yet I do see a fine wavy chalk down with "cwms" and soft turfy ridges, over which an old fellow can stride as far as his legs are good to carry him.
The fact is, that I discovered that staying in London any longer meant for me a very short life, and by no means a merry one. So I got my son-in-law to build me a cottage here, where my wife and I may go down-hill quietly together, and "make our sowls" as the Irish say, solaced by an occasional visit from children and grandchildren.
The deuce of it is, that however much the weary want to be at rest the wicked won't cease from troubling. Hence the occasional skirmishes and alarms which may lead my friends to misdoubt my absolute detachment from sublunary affairs. Perhaps peace dwells only among the fork-tailed Petrels!
I trust Mrs. Skelton and you are flourishing, and that trouble will keep far from the hospitable doors of Braid through the New Year.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[No sooner had he settled down in his new country home, than a strange piece of good fortune, such as happens more often in a story-book than in real life, enabled him at one stroke to double his little estate, to keep off the unwelcome approach of the speculative builder, and to give himself scope for the newly-discovered delights of the garden. The sale of the house in Marlborough Place covered the greater part of the cost of Hodeslea; but almost on the very day on which the sale was concluded, he became the possessor of another house at Worthing by the death of Mr. Anthony Rich, the well-known antiquarian. An old man, almost alone in the world, his admiration for the great work done recently in natural science had long since led him to devise his property to Darwin and Huxley, to the one his private fortune, to the other his house and its contents, notably a very interesting library.
As a matter of feeling, Huxley was greatly disinclined to part with this house, Chapel Croft, as soon as it had come into his hands. A year earlier, he might have made it his home; but now he had settled down at Eastbourne, and Chapel Croft, as it stood, was unlikely to find a tenant. Accordingly he sold it early in July, and with the proceeds bought the piece of land adjoining his house. Thus he writes to Sir J. Hooker:—]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, May 17, 1891.
My dear Hooker,
My estate is somewhat of a white elephant. There is about a couple of acres of ground well situated and half of it in the shape of a very pretty lawn and shrubbery, but unluckily, in building the house, dear old Rich thought of his own convenience and not mine (very wrong of him!), and I cannot conceive anybody but an old bachelor or old maid living in it. I do not believe anybody would take it as it stands. No doubt the site is valuable, and it would be well worth while to anybody with plenty of cash to spare to build on to the house and make it useful. But I neither have the cash, nor do I want the bother. However, Waller is going to look at the place for me and see what can be done. It seems hardly decent to sell it at once; and moreover the value is likely to increase. I suppose at present it is worth 2000 pounds, but that is only a guess.
Apropos of naval portrait gallery, can you tell me if there is a portrait of old John Richardson anywhere extant? I always look upon him as the founder of my fortunes, and I want to hang him up (just over your head) on my chimney breast. Voici! [sketch showing the position of the pictures above the fireplace]:—
By your fruits ye shall judge them! My cold was influenza, I have been in the most preposterously weak state ever since; and at last my wife lost patience and called in the doctor, who is screwing me up with nux vomica.
Sound wind and limb otherwise.
Ever yours affectionately,
T.H. Huxley.
[And again on July 3:—]
I have just been offered 2800 pounds for Anthony Rich's place and have accepted it. It is probably worth 3000 pounds, but if I were to have it on my hands and sell by auction I should get no more out of the transaction.
I am greatly inclined to put some of the money into a piece of land—a Naboth's vineyard—in front of my house and turn horticulturist. I find nailing up creepers a delightful occupation.
[In the same letter he describes two meetings with old friends:—]
Last Friday I ran down to Hindhead to see Tyndall. He was very much better than I hoped to find him, after such a long and serious illness, quite bright and "Tyndalloid" and not aged as I feared he would be…The local doctor happened to be there during my visit and spoke very confidently of his speedy recovery. The leg is all right again, and he even talks of Switzerland, but I begged Mrs. Tyndall to persuade him to keep quiet and within reach of home and skilled medical attendance.
Saturday to Monday we were at Down, after six or seven years' interruption of our wonted visits. It was very pleasant if rather sad. Mrs. Darwin is wonderfully well—naturally aged—but quite bright and cheerful as usual. Old Parslow turned up on Sunday, just eighty, but still fairly hale. Fuimus fuimus!
[(Parslow was the old butler who had been in Mr. Darwin's service for many years.)
To his daughter, Mrs. Roller.]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, May 5, 1891.
You dear people must have entered into a conspiracy, as I had letters from all yesterday. I have never been so set up before, and begin to think that fathers (like port) must improve in quality with age. (No irreverent jokes about their getting crusty, Miss.)
Julian and Joyce taken together may perhaps give a faint idea of my perfections as a child. I have not only a distinct recollection of being noticed on the score of my good looks, but my mother used to remind me painfully of them in my later years, looking at me mournfully and saying, "And you were such a pretty boy!"
[Much as he would have liked to visit the Maloja again this year, the state of his wife's health forbade such a long journey. He writes just after his attack of influenza to Sir M. Foster, who had been suffering in the same way:—]
Hodeslea, May 12, 1891.
My dear Foster,
I was very glad to hear from you. Pray don't get attempting to do anything before you are set up again.
I am in a ridiculous state of weakness, and bless my stars that I have nothing to do. I find it troublesome to do even that.
I wish ballooning had advanced so far as to take people to Maloja, for I do not think my wife ought to undertake such a journey, and yet I believe the high air would do us both more good than anything else….
The University of London scheme appears to be coming to grief, as I never doubted it would.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[So instead of going abroad, he stayed in Eastbourne till the end of August, receiving a short visit from his old friend Jowett, who, though sadly enfeebled by age, still persisted in travelling by himself, and a longer visit from his elder son and his family. But from September 11 to the 26th he and his wife made a trip through the west country, starting from Salisbury, which had so delighted him the year before, and proceeding by way of the Wye valley, which they had not visited since their honeymoon, to Llangollen. The first stage on the return journey was Chester, whence they made pious pilgrimage to the cradle of his name, Old Huxley Hall, some nine miles from Chester. Incorporated with a modern farm-house, and forming the present kitchen, are some solid stone walls, part of the old manor-house, now no longer belonging to any one of the name. From here they went to Coventry, where he had lived as a boy, and found the house which his father had occupied still standing.
A letter to an old pupil contains reflections upon the years of work to which he had devoted so much of his energies.]
To Professor T. Jeffery Parker, Otago.
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, August 11, 1891.
My dear Parker,
It is a long time since your letter reached me, but I was so unwise as to put off answering it until the book arrived and I had read it. The book did not reach me for a long time, and what with one thing and another I have but just finished it. I assure you I am very proud of having my name connected with such a thorough piece of work, no less than touched by the kindness of the dedication.
Looking back from the aged point of view, the life which cost so much wear and tear in the living seems to have effected very little, and it is cheering to be reminded that one has been of some use.
Some years of continued ill-health, involving constant travelling about in search of better conditions than London affords, and long periods of prostration, have driven me quite out of touch with science. And indeed except for a certain toughness of constitution I should have been driven out of touch with terrestrial things altogether.
It is almost indecent in a man at my time of life who has had two attacks of pleurisy, followed by a dilated heart, to be not only above ground but fairly vigorous again. However, I am obliged to mind my P's and Q's; avoid everything like hard work, and live in good air.
The last condition we have achieved by setting up a house close to the downs here; and I begin to think with Candide that "cultivons notre jardin" comprises the whole duty of man.
I was just out of the way of hearing anything about the University College chair; and indeed, beyond attending the Council of the school when necessary, and meetings of Trustees of the British Museum, I rarely go to London.
I have had my innings, and it is now for the younger generation to have theirs.
With best wishes, ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[As for being no longer in touch with the world of science, he says the same thing in a note to Sir M. Foster, forwarding an inquiry after a scientific teacher (August 1).]
Please read the enclosed, and if you know of anybody suitable please send his name to Mr. Thomas.
I have told him that I am out of the way of knowing, and that you are physiologically omniscient, so don't belie the character!
[This year a number of Huxley's essays were translated into French. "Nature" for July 23, 1891 (volume 44 page 272),—notes the publication of "Les Sciences Naturelles et l'Education," with a short preface by himself, dwelling upon the astonishing advance which had been made in the recognition of science as an instrument of education, but warning the younger generation that the battle is only half won, and bidding them beware of relaxing their efforts before the place of science is entirely assured. In the issue for December 31 ("Nature" 46 397), is a notice of "La Place de l'Homme dans la Nature," a re-issue of a translation of more than twenty years before, together with three ethnological essays, newly translated by M. H. de Varigny, to whom the following letters are addressed.]
To H. De Varigny.
May 17, 1891.
I am writing to my publishers to send you "Lay Sermons", "Critiques", "Science and Culture", and "American Addresses", pray accept them in expression of my thanks for the pains you are taking about the translation. "Man's Place in Nature" has been out of print for years, so I cannot supply it.
I am quite conscious that the condensed and idiomatic English into which I always try to put my thoughts must present many difficulties to a translator. But a friend of mine who is a much better French scholar than I am, and who looked over two or three of the essays, told me he thought you had been remarkably successful.