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Books: The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1

L >> Leonard Huxley >> The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1




I recollect nothing of this beyond the fact of meeting Mr. Wollaston;
and except for Sir Charles's distinct assurance as to "all four," I
should have thought my outrecuidance was probably a counterblast to
Wollaston's conservatism. With regard to Hooker, he was already, like
Voltaire's Habbakuk, capable du tout in the way of advocating Evolution.

As I have already said, I imagine that most of those of my
contemporaries who thought seriously about the matter, were very much in
my own state of mind--inclined to say to both Mosaists and
Evolutionists, "a plague on both your houses!" and disposed to turn
aside from an interminable and apparently fruitless discussion, to
labour in the fertile fields of ascertainable fact. And I may therefore
suppose that the publication of the Darwin and Wallace paper in 1858,
and still more that of the "Origin" in 1859, had the effect upon them of
the flash of light which, to a man who has lost himself on a dark night,
suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes him straight home or
not, certainly goes his way. That which we were looking for, and could
not find, was a hypothesis respecting the origin of known organic forms
which assumed the operation of no causes but such as could be proved to
be actually at work. We wanted, not to pin our faith to that or any
other speculation, but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions
which could be brought face to face with facts and have their validity
tested. The "Origin" provided us with the working hypothesis we sought.
Moreover, it did the immense service of freeing us for ever from the
dilemma--Refuse to accept the creation hypothesis, and what have you to
propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner? In 1857 I had no
answer ready, and I do not think that anyone else had. A year later we
reproached ourselves with dulness for being perplexed with such an
inquiry. My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central
idea of the "Origin" was, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of
that!" I suppose that Columbus' companions said much the same when he
made the egg stand on end. The facts of variability, of the struggle for
existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none
of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem
lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and
the beacon-fire of the "Origin" guided the benighted.

Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of Evolution, as applied
to the organic world, took in Darwin's hands, would prove to be final or
not, was to me a matter of indifference. In my earliest criticisms of
the "Origin" I ventured to point out that its logical foundation was
insecure so long as experiments in selective breeding had not produced
varieties which were more or less infertile; and that insecurity remains
up to the present time. But, with any and every critical doubt which my
sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained
incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if we had
none of us been able to discern the paramount significance of some of
the most patent and notorious of natural facts, until they were, so to
speak, thrust under our noses, what force remained in the
dilemma--creation or nothing? It was obvious that hereafter the
probability would be immensely greater, that the links of natural
causation were hidden from our purblind eyes, than that natural
causation should be incompetent to produce all the phenomena of nature.
The only rational course for those who had no other object than the
attainment of truth was to accept "Darwinism" as a working hypothesis
and see what could be made of it. Either it would prove its capacity to
elucidate the facts of organic life, or it would break down under the
strain. This was surely the dictate of common sense; and, for once,
common sense carried the day.

[Even before the "Origin" actually came out, Huxley had begun to act as
what Darwin afterwards called his "general agent." He began to prepare
the way for the acceptance of the theory of evolution by discussing, for
instance, one of the most obvious difficulties, namely, How is it that
if evolution is ever progressive, progress is not universal? It was a
point with respect to which Darwin himself wrote soon after the
publication of the "Origin":--"Judging from letters...and from remarks,
the most serious omission in my book was not explaining how it is, as I
believe, that all forms do not necessarily advance, how there can now be
SIMPLE organisms existing." (May 22, 1860.)

Huxley's idea, then, was to call attention to the persistence of many
types without appreciable progression during geological time; to show
that this fact was not explicable on any other hypothesis than that put
forward by Darwin; and by paleontological arguments, to pave the way for
consideration of the imperfection of the geological record.

Such were the lines on which he delivered his Friday evening lecture on
"Persistent Types" at the Royal Institution on June 3,1859.

However, the chief part which he took at this time in extending the
doctrines of evolution was in applying them to his own subjects,
Development and Vertebrate Anatomy, and more particularly to the
question of the origin of mankind.

Of all the burning questions connected with the Origin of Species, this
was the most heated--the most surrounded by prejudice and passion. To
touch it was to court attack; to be exposed to endless scorn, ridicule,
misrepresentation, abuse--almost to social ostracism. But the facts were
there; the structural likenesses between the apes and man had already
been shown; and as Huxley warned Darwin,] "I will stop at no point so
long as clear reasoning will carry me further."

[Now two years before the "Origin" appeared, the denial of these facts
by a leading anatomist led Huxley, as was his wont, to re-investigate
the question for himself and satisfy himself one way or the other. He
found that the previous investigators were not mistaken. Without going
out of his way to refute the mis-statement as publicly as it was made,
he simply embodied his results in his regular teaching. But the
opportunity came unsought. Fortified by his own researches, he openly
challenged these assertions when repeated at the Oxford meeting of the
British Association in 1860, and promised to made good his challenge in
the proper place.

We also find him combating some of the difficulties in the way of
accepting the theory laid before him by Sir Charles Lyell. The veteran
geologist had been Darwin's confidant from almost the beginning of his
speculations; he had really paved the way for the evolutionary doctrine
by his own proof of geological uniformity, but he shrank from accepting
it, for its inevitable extension to the descent of man was repugnant to
his feelings. Nevertheless, he would not allow sentiment to stand in the
way of truth, and after the publication of the "Origin" it could be said
of him:--]

Lyell, up to that time a pillar of the anti-transmutationists (who
regarded him, ever afterwards, as Pallas Athene may have looked at Dian,
after the Endymion affair), declared himself a Darwinian, though not
without putting in a serious caveat. Nevertheless, he was a tower of
strength, and his courageous stand for truth as against consistency did
him infinite honour. (T.H. Huxley in "Life of Darwin" volume 2 page
231.)

[To Sir Charles Lyell.]

June 25, 1859.

My dear Sir Charles,

I have endeavoured to meet your objections in the enclosed.

Ever yours, very truly,

T.H. Huxley.

The fixity and definite limitation of species, genera, and larger groups
appear to me to be perfectly consistent with the theory of
transmutation. In other words, I think TRANSMUTATION may take place
without transition.

Suppose that external conditions acting on species A give rise to a new
species, B; the difference between the two species is a certain
definable amount which may be called A-B. Now I know of no evidence to
show that the interval between the two species must NECESSARILY be
bridged over by a series of forms, each of which shall occupy, as it
occurs, a fraction of the distance between A and B. On the contrary, in
the history of the Ancon sheep, and of the six-fingered Maltese family,
given by Reaumur, it appears that the new form appeared at once in full
perfection.

I may illustrate what I mean by a chemical example. In an organic
compound, having a precise and definite composition, you may effect all
sorts of transmutations by substituting an atom of one element for an
atom of another element. You may in this way produce a vast series of
modifications--but each modification is definite in its composition, and
there are no transitional or intermediate steps between one definite
compound and another. I have a sort of notion that similar laws of
definite combination rule over the modifications of organic bodies, and
that in passing from species to species "Natura fecit saltum."

All my studies lead me to believe more and more in the absence of any
real transitions between natural groups, great and small--but with what
we know of the physiology of conditions [?] this opinion seems to me to
be quite consistent with transmutation.

When I say that no evidence, or hardly any, would justify one in
believing in the view of a new species of Elephant, e.g. out of the
earth, I mean that such an occurrence would be so diametrically contrary
to all experience, so opposed to those beliefs which are the most
constantly verified by experience, that one would be justified in
believing either that one's senses were deluded, or that one had not
really got to the bottom of the phenomenon. Of course, if one could vary
the conditions, if one could take a little silex, and by a little
hocus-pocus a la crosse, galvanise a baby out of it as often as one
pleased, all the philosopher could do would be to hold up his hands and
cry, "God is great." But short of evidence of this kind, I don't mean to
believe anything of the kind.

How much evidence would you require to believe that there was a time
when stones fell upwards, or granite made itself by a spontaneous
rearrangement of the elementary particles of clay and sand? And yet the
difficulties in the way of these beliefs are as nothing compared to
those which you would have to overcome in believing that complex organic
beings made themselves (for that is what creation comes to in scientific
language) out of inorganic matter.

I know it will be said that even on the transmutation theory, the first
organic being must have made itself. But there is as much difference
between supposing the passage of inorganic matter into an AMOEBA, e.g.,
and into an ELEPHANT, as there is between supposing that Portland stone
might have built itself up into St. Paul's, and believing that the
Giant's Causeway may have come about by natural causes.

True, one must believe in a beginning somewhere, but science consists in
not believing the having reached that beginning before one is forced to
do so.

It is wholly impossible to prove that any phenomenon whatsoever is not
produced by the interposition of some unknown cause. But philosophy has
prospered exactly as it has disregarded such possibilities, and has
endeavoured to resolve every event by ordinary reasoning.

I do not exactly see the force of your argument that we are bound to
find fossil forms intermediate between men and monkeys in the Rocks.
Crocodiles are the highest reptiles as men are the highest mammals, but
we find nothing intermediate between CROCODILIA and LACERTILIA in the
whole range of the Mesozoic rocks. How do we know that Man is not a
persistent type? And as for implements, at this day, and as, I suppose,
for the last two or three thousand years at least, the savages of
Australia have made their weapons of nothing but bone and wood. Why
should HOMO EOCENUS or OOLITICUS, the fellows who waddied the
AMPHITHERIUM and speared the PHASCOLOTHERIUM as the Australian niggers
treat their congeners, have been more advanced?

I by no means suppose that the transmutation hypothesis is proven or
anything like it. But I view it as a powerful instrument of research.
Follow it out, and it will lead us somewhere; while the other notion is
like all the modifications of "final causation," a barren virgin.

And I would very strongly urge upon you that it is the logical
development of Uniformitarianism, and that its adoption would harmonise
the spirit of Paleontology with that of Physical Geology.


CHAPTER 1.14.

1859-1860.

[The "Origin" appeared in November. As soon as he had read it, Huxley
wrote the following letter to Darwin (already published in "Life of
Darwin" volume 2 page 231):--

Jermyn Street W., November 23, 1859.

My dear Darwin,

I finished your book yesterday, a lucky examination having furnished me
with a few hours of continuous leisure.

Since I read Von Baer's essays, nine years ago, no work on Natural
History Science I have met with has made so great an impression upon me,
and I do most heartily thank you for the great store of new views you
have given me. Nothing, I think, can be better than the tone of the
book--it impresses those who know about the subject. As for your
doctrine, I am prepared to go to the stake, if requisite, in support of
Chapter 9 [The Imperfection of the Geological Record], and most parts of
Chapters 10 [The Geological Succession of Organic Beings], 11, 12
[Geographical Distribution], and Chapter 13 [Classification, Morphology,
Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs] contains much that is most
admirable, but on one or two points I enter a caveat until I can see
further into all sides of the question.

As to the first four chapters [Chapter 1, Variation under Domestication;
2, Variation under Nature; 3, The Struggle for Existence; 4, Operation
of Natural Selection; 5, Laws of Variation], I agree thoroughly and
fully with all the principles laid down in them. I think you have
demonstrated a true cause for the production of species, and have thrown
the onus probandi, that species did not arise in the way you suppose, on
your adversaries.

But I feel that I have not yet by any means fully realised the bearings
of those most remarkable and original Chapters--III, IV, and V, and I
will write no more about them just now.

The only objections that have occurred to me are--1st, That you have
loaded yourself with an unnecessary difficulty in adopting Natura non
facit saltum so unreservedly; and 2nd, It is not clear to me why, if
continual physical conditions are of so little moment as you suppose,
variation should occur at all.

However, I must read the book two or three times more before I presume
to begin picking holes.

I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or
annoyed by the considerable abuse and misrepresentation which, unless I
greatly mistake, is in store for you. Depend upon it, you have earned
the lasting gratitude of all thoughtful men. And as to the curs which
will bark and yelp, you must recollect that some of your friends, at any
rate, are endowed with an amount of combativeness which (though you have
often and justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead.

I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness.

Looking back over my letter, it really expresses so feebly all I think
about you and your noble book, that I am half-ashamed of it; but you
will understand that, like the parrot in the story, "I think the more."

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[A month later, fortune put into his hands the opportunity of striking a
vigorous and telling blow for the newly-published book. Never was
windfall more eagerly accepted. A short account of this lucky chance was
written by him for the Darwin "Life" (volume 1 page 255).]

The "Origin" was sent to Mr. Lucas, one of the staff of the "Times"
writers at that day, in what was I suppose the ordinary course of
business. Mr. Lucas, though an excellent journalist, and at a later
period, editor of "Once a Week," was as innocent of any knowledge of
science as a babe, and be wailed himself to an acquaintance on having to
deal with such a book. Whereupon, he was recommended to ask me to get
him out of his difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly, explaining,
however, that it would be necessary for him formally to adopt anything I
might be disposed to write, by prefacing it with two or three paragraphs
of his own.

I was too anxious to seize upon the opportunity thus offered of giving
the book a fair chance with the multitudinous readers of the "Times," to
make any difficulty about conditions; and being then very full of the
subject, I wrote the article faster, I think, than I ever wrote anything
in my life, and sent it to Mr. Lucas, who duly prefixed his opening
sentences.

When the article appeared, there was much speculation as to its
authorship. The secret leaked out in time, as all secrets will, but not
by my aid; and then I used to derive a good deal of innocent amusement
from the vehement assertions of some of my more acute friends, that they
knew it was mine from the first paragraph!

As the "Times" some years since, referred to my connection with the
review, I suppose there will be no breach of confidence in the
publication of this little history, if you think it worth the space it
will occupy.

[The article appeared on December 26. Only Hooker was admitted into the
secret. In an undated note Huxley writes to him:--]

I have written the other review you wot of, and have handed it over to
my friend to deal as he likes with it...Darwin will laugh over a letter
that I sent him this morning with a vignette of the Jermyn Street "pet"
ready to fight his battle, and the "judicious Hooker" holding the
bottle.

[And on December 31 he writes again:--]

Jermyn Street, December 31, 1859.

My dear Hooker,

I have not the least objection to my share in the "Times" article being
known, only I should not like to have anything stated on my authority.
The fact is, that the first quarter of the first column (down to "what
is a species," etc.) is not mine, but belongs to the man who is the
official reviewer for the "Times" (my "Temporal" godfather I might call
him).

The rest is my ipsissima verba, and I only wonder that it turns out as
well as it does--for I wrote it faster than ever I wrote anything in my
life. The last column nearly as fast as my wife could read the sheets.
But I was thoroughly in the humour and full of the subject. Of course as
a scientific review the thing is worth nothing, but I earnestly hope it
may have made some of the educated mob, who derive their ideas from the
"Times," reflect. And whatever they do, they SHALL respect Darwin.

Pray give my kindest regards and best wishes for the New Year to Mrs.
Hooker, and tell her that if she, of her own natural sagacity and
knowledge of the naughtiness of my heart, affirms that I wrote the
article, I shall not contradict her--but that for reasons of state--I
must not be supposed to say anything. I am pretty certain the Saturday
article was not written by Owen. On internal grounds, because no word in
it exceeds an inch in length; on external, from what Cook said to me.
The article is weak enough and one-sided enough, but looking at the
various forces in action, I think Cook has fully redeemed his promise to
me.

I went down to Sir P. Egerton on Tuesday--was ill when I started, got
worse and had to come back on Thursday. I am all adrift now, but I
couldn't stand being in the house any longer. I wish I had been born an
an-hepatous foetus.

All sorts of good wishes to you, and may you and I and Tyndalides, and
one or two more bricks, be in as good fighting order in 1861 as in 1860.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[Speaking of this period and the half-dozen preceding years, in his 1894
preface to "Man's Place in Nature" he says:--]

Among the many problems which came under my consideration, the position
of the human species in zoological classification was one of the most
serious. Indeed, at that time it was a burning question in the sense
that those who touched it were almost certain to burn their fingers
severely. It was not so very long since my kind friend, Sir William
Lawrence, one of the ablest men whom I have known, had been well-nigh
ostracised for his book "On Man," which now might be read in a Sunday
school without surprising anybody; it was only a few years since the
electors to the chair of Natural History in a famous northern university
had refused to invite a very distinguished man to occupy it because he
advocated the doctrine of the diversity of species of mankind, or what
was called "polygeny." Even among those who considered man from the
point of view, not of vulgar prejudice, but of science, opinions lay
poles asunder. Linnaeus had taken one view, Cuvier another; and among my
senior contemporaries, men like Lyell, regarded by many as
revolutionaries of the deepest dye, were strongly opposed to anything
which tended to break down the barrier between man and the rest of the
animal world.

My own mind was by no means definitely made up about this matter when,
in the year 1857, a paper was read before the Linnean Society "On the
Characters, Principles of Division and Primary Groups of the Class
Mammalia," in which certain anatomical features of the brain were said
to be "peculiar to the genus 'Homo,'" and were made the chief ground for
separating that genus from all other mammals and placing him in a
division, "Archencephala," apart from, and superior to, all the rest. As
these statements did not agree with the opinions I had formed, I set to
work to reinvestigate the subject; and soon satisfied myself that the
structures in question were not peculiar to Man, but were shared by him
with all the higher and many of the lower apes. I embarked in no public
discussion of these matters, but my attention being thus drawn to them,
I studied the whole question of the structural relations of Man to the
next lower existing forms, with much care. And, of course, I embodied my
conclusions in my teaching.

Matters were at this point when the "Origin of Species" appeared. The
weighty sentence, "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his
history" (1st edition page 488), was not only in full harmony with the
conclusions at which I had arrived respecting the structural relations
of apes and men, but was strongly supported by them. And inasmuch as
Development and Vertebrate Anatomy were not among Mr. Darwin's many
specialities, it appeared to me that I should not be intruding on the
ground he had made his own, if I discussed this part of the general
question. In fact, I thought that I might probably serve the cause of
Evolution by doing so.

Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that the necessity
of making things clear to uninstructed people was one of the very best
means of clearing up the obscure corners in one's own mind. So, in 1860,
I took the Relation of Man to the lower Animals for the subject of the
six lectures to working men which it was my duty to deliver. It was also
in 1860 that this topic was discussed before a jury of experts at the
meeting of the British Association at Oxford, and from that time a sort
of running fight on the same subject was carried on, until it culminated
at the Cambridge Meeting of the Association in 1862, by my friend Sir W.
Flower's public demonstration of the existence in the apes of those
cerebral characters which had been said to be peculiar to man.

[The famous Oxford Meeting of 1860 was of no small importance in
Huxley's career. It was not merely that he helped to save a great cause
from being stifled under misrepresentation and ridicule--that he helped
to extort for it a fair hearing; it was now that he first made himself
known in popular estimation as a dangerous adversary in debate--a
personal force in the world of science which could not be neglected.
From this moment he entered the front fighting line in the most exposed
quarter of the field.

Most unluckily, no contemporary account of his own exists of the
encounter. Indeed, the same cause which prevented his writing home the
story of the day's work nearly led to his absence from the scene. It was
known that Bishop Wilberforce, whose first class in mathematics gave
him, in popular estimation, a right to treat on scientific matters,
intended to "smash Darwin"; and, Huxley, expecting that the promised
debate would be merely an appeal to prejudice in a mixed audience,
before which the scientific arguments of the Bishop's opponents would be
at the utmost disadvantage, intended to leave Oxford that very morning
and join his wife at Hardwicke, near Reading, where she was staying with
her sister. But in a letter, quoted below, he tells how, on the Friday
afternoon, he chanced to meet Robert chambers, the reputed author of the
"Vestiges of Creation," who begged him "not to desert them." Accordingly
he postponed his departure; but seeing his wife next morning, had no
occasion to write a letter.