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

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As it is one of the Anthropoid apes and yet differs in this respect far
more widely from the gorilla than the gorilla differs from man, it
offers a charming example of the value of cerebral characters.

Flower publishes a paper on the subject in the forthcoming number of the
"N. H. Review."

Might it not be well to allude to the fact that the existence of the
posterior lobe, posterior cornu, and hippocampus in the Orang has been
publicly demonstrated to an audience of experts at the College of
Surgeons?

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The success of "Man's Place" was immediate, despite such criticisms as
that of the "Athenaeum" that "Lyell's object is to make man old,
Huxley's to degrade him." By the middle of February it reached its
second thousand; in July it is heard of as republished in America; at
the same time L. Buchner writes that he wished to translate it into
German, but finds himself forestalled by Victor Carus. From another
aspect, Lord Enniskillen, thanking him for the book, says (March 3), "I
believe you are already excommunicated by book, bell, and candle," while
in an undated note, Bollaert writes, "The Bishop of Oxford the other day
spoke about 'the church having been in danger of late, by such books as
Colenso's, but that it (the church) was now restored.' And this at a
time, he might have added, when the works of Darwin, Lyell, and Huxley
are torn from the hands of Mudie's shopmen, as if they were novels--(see
"Daily Telegraph," April 10)."

At the same time, the impression left by his work upon the minds of the
leading men of science may be judged from a few words of Sir Charles
Lyell, who writes to a friend on March 15, 1863 ("Life and Letters" 2
366):--

Huxley's second thousand is going off well. If he had leisure like you
and me, and the vigour and logic of the lectures, and his address to the
Geological Society, and half a dozen other recent works (letters to the
"Times" on Darwin, etc.), had been all in one book, what a position he
would occupy! I entreated him not to undertake the "Natural History
Review" before it began. The responsibility all falls on the man of
chief energy and talent; it is a quarterly mischief, and will end in
knocking him up.

A similar estimate appears from an earlier letter of March 11, 1859
("Life and Letters" 2 321), when he quotes Huxley's opinion of Mansel's
Bampton Lectures on the "Limits of Religious Thought":--

A friend of mine, Huxley, who will soon take rank as one of the first
naturalists we have ever produced, begged me to read these sermons as
first rate,] "although, regarding the author as a churchman, you will
probably compare him, as I did, to the drunken fellow in Hogarth's
contested election, who is sawing through the signpost at the other
party's public-house, forgetting he is sitting at the other end of it.
But read them as a piece of clear and unanswerable reasoning."

[In the 1894 preface to the re-issue of "Man's Place" in the Collected
Essays, Huxley speaks as follows of the warnings he received against
publishing on so dangerous a topic, of the storm which broke upon his
head, and the small result which, in the long run, it produced (In
September 1887 he wrote to Mr. Edward Clodd--]"All the propositions laid
down in the wicked book, which was so well anathematised a quarter of a
century ago, are now taught in the text-books. What a droll world it
is!"):--

Magna est veritas et praevalebit! Truth is great, certainly, but
considering her greatness, it is curious what a long time she is apt to
take about prevailing. When, towards the end of 1862, I had finished
writing "Man's Place in Nature," I could say with a good conscience that
my conclusions "had not been formed hastily or enunciated crudely." I
thought I had earned the right to publish them, and even fancied I might
be thanked rather than reproved for doing so. However, in my anxiety to
publish nothing erroneous, I asked a highly competent anatomist and very
good friend of mine to look through my proofs, and, if he could, point
out any errors of fact. I was well pleased when he returned them without
criticism on that score; but my satisfaction was speedily dashed by the
very earnest warning as to the consequences of publication, which my
friend's interest in my welfare led him to give. But, as I have
confessed elsewhere, when I was a young man, there was just a little--a
mere soupcon--in my composition of that tenacity of purpose which has
another name; and I felt sure that all the evil things prophesied would
not be so painful to me as the giving up that which I had resolved to
do, upon grounds which I conceived to be right. [(As to this advice not
to publish "Man's Place" for fear of misrepresentation on the score of
morals, he said, in criticising an attack of this sort made upon Darwin
in the "Quarterly" for July 1876:--] "It seemed to me, however, that a
man of science has no raison d'etre at all, unless he is willing to face
much greater risks than these for the sake of that which he believes to
be true; and further, that to a man of science such risks do not count
for much--that they are by no means so serious as they are to a man of
letters, for example.") So the book came out; and I must do my friend
the justice to say that his forecast was completely justified. The
Boreas of criticism blew his hardest blasts of misrepresentation and
ridicule for some years, and I was even as one of the wicked. Indeed, it
surprises me at times to think how anyone who had sunk so low could
since have emerged into, at any rate, relative respectability.
Personally, like the non-corvine personages in the Ingoldsby legend, I
did not feel "one penny the worse." Translated into several languages,
the book reached a wider public than I had ever hoped for; being largely
helped, I imagine, by the Ernulphine advertisements to which I referred.
It has had the honour of being freely utilised without acknowledgment by
writers of repute; and finally it achieved the fate, which is the
euthanasia of a scientific work, of being inclosed among the rubble of
the foundations of later knowledge, and forgotten.

To my observation, human nature has not sensibly changed during the last
thirty years. I doubt not that there are truths as plainly obvious and
as generally denied as those contained in "Man's Place in Nature," now
awaiting enunciation. If there is a young man of the present generation
who has taken as much trouble as I did to assure himself that they are
truths, let him come out with them, without troubling his head about the
barking of the dogs of St. Ernulphus. Veritas praevalebit--some day; and
even if she does not prevail in his time, he himself will be all the
better and wiser for having tried to help her. And let him recollect
that such great reward is full payment for all his labour and pains.

[The following letter refers to the newly published "Man's Place in
Nature." Miss H. Darwin had suggested a couple of corrections:--]

Jermyn Street, February 25, 1863.

My dear Darwin,

Please to say to Miss Henrietta Minos Rhadamanthus Darwin that I plead
guilty to the justice of both criticisms, and throw myself on the mercy
of the court.

As extenuating circumstances with respect to indictment Number 1, see
prefatory notice. Extenuating circumstance Number 2--that I picked up
"Atavism" in Pritchard years ago, and as it is a much more convenient
word than "Hereditary transmission of variations," it slipped into
equivalence in my mind, and I forgot all about the original limitation.

But if these excuses should in your judgment tend to aggravate my
offences, suppress 'em like a friend. One may always hope more from a
lady's tender-heartedness than from her sense of justice.

Publisher has just sent to say that I must give him any corrections for
second thousand of my booklet immediately.

Why did not Miss Etty send any critical remarks on that subject by the
same post? I should be most immensely obliged for them.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[During this period of special work at the anthropological side of the
Evolution theory, Huxley made two important contributions to the general
question.

As secretary of the Geological Society, the duty of delivering the
anniversary address in 1862 fell to him in the absence of the president,
Leonard Horner, who had been driven by ill-health to winter in Italy.

The object at which he aimed appears from the postscript of a brief note
of February 19, 1862, to Hooker:--]

I am writing the body of the address, and I am going to criticise
Paleontological doctrines in general in a way that will flutter their
nerves considerable.

Darwin is met everywhere with--Oh this is opposed to paleontology, or
that is opposed to paleontology--and I mean to turn round and ask, "Now,
messieurs les Paleontologues, what the devil DO you really know?"

I have not changed sex, although the postscript is longer than the
letter.

[The delivery of the address itself on February 21 (On "Geological
Contemporaneity" ("Collected Essays" 8 292).) is thus described by Sir
Charles Lyell (To a note of whose, proposing a talk over the subject,
Huxley replies on May 5], "I am very glad you find something to think
about in my address. That is the best of all praise.") [("Life and
Letters" 2 356):--

Huxley delivered a brilliant critical discourse on what paleontology has
and has not done, and proved the value of negative evidence, how much
the progressive development system has been pushed too far, how little
can be said in favour of Owen's more generalised types when we go back
to the vertebrata and in vertebrata of remote ages, the persistency of
many forms high and low throughout time, how little we know of the
beginning of life upon the earth, how often events called
contemporaneous in Geology are applied to things which, instead of
coinciding in time, may have happened ten millions of years apart, etc.;
and a masterly sketch comparing the past and present in almost every
class in zoology, and sometimes of botany cited from Hooker, which he
said he had done because it was useful to look into the cellars and see
how much gold there was there, and whether the quantity of bullion
justified such an enormous circulation of paper. I never remember an
address listened to with such applause, though there were many private
protests against some of his bold opinions.

The dinner at Willis's was well attended; I should think eighty or more
present...and late in the evening Huxley made them merry by a sort of
mock-modest speech.]

Jermyn Street, May 6, 1862.

My dear Darwin,

I was very glad to get your note about my address. I profess to be a
great stoic, you know, but there are some people from whom I am glad to
get a pat on the back. Still I am not quite content with that, and I
want to know what you think of the argument--whether you agree with what
I say about contemporaneity or not, and whether you are prepared to
admit--as I think your views compel you to do--that the whole Geological
Record is only the skimmings of the pot of life.

Furthermore, I want you to chuckle with me over the notion I find a
great many people entertain--that the address is dead against your
views. The fact being, as they will by and by wake up [to] see that
yours is the only hypothesis which is not negatived by the facts,--one
of its great merits being that it allows not only of indefinite standing
still, but of indefinite retrogression.

I am going to try to work the whole argument into an intelligible form
for the general public as a chapter in my forthcoming "Evidence" (one
half of which I am happy to say is now written) ["Evidence as to Man's
Place in Nature."], so I shall be very glad of any criticisms or hints.

Since I saw you--indeed, from the following Tuesday onwards--I have
amused myself by spending ten days or so in bed. I had an unaccountable
prostration of strength which they called influenza, but which, I
believe, was nothing but some obstruction in the liver.

Of course I can't persuade people of this, and they will have it that it
is overwork. I have come to the conviction, however, that steady work
hurts nobody, the real destroyer of hardworking men being not their
work, but dinners, late hours, and the universal humbug and excitement
of society.

I mean to get out of all that and keep out of it.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The other contribution to the general question was his Working Men's
Lectures for 1862. As he writes to Darwin on October 10--] "I can't find
anything to talk to the working men about this year but your book. I
mean to give them a commentary a la Coke upon Lyttleton."

[The lectures to working men here referred to, six in number, were duly
delivered once a week from November 10 onwards, and published in the
form of as many little pamphlets. Appearing under the general title, "On
our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature," they
wound up with a critical examination of the portion of Mr. Darwin's work
"On the Origin of Species," in relation to the complete theory of the
causes of organic nature.

Jermyn Street, December 2, 1862.

My dear Darwin,

I send you by this post three of my working men's lectures now in course
of delivery. As you will see by the prefatory notice, I was asked to
allow them to be taken down in shorthand for the use of the audience,
but I have no interest in them, and do not desire or intend that they
should be widely circulated.

Sometime hence, may be, I may revise and illustrate them, and make them
into a book as a sort of popular exposition of your views, or at any
rate of my version of your views.

There really is nothing new in them nor anything worth your attention,
but if in glancing over them at any time you should see anything to
object to, I should like to know.

I am very hard worked just now--six lectures a week, and no end of other
things--but as vigorous as a three-year old. Somebody told me you had
been ill, but I hope it was fiction, and that you and Mrs. Darwin and
all your belongings are flourishing.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[In reply, Darwin writes on December 10:--

I agree entirely with all your reservations about accepting the
doctrine, and you might have gone further with perfect safety and
truth...

Touching the "Natural History Review," "Do inaugurate a great
improvement, and have pages cut, like the Yankees do; I will heap
blessings on your head."

And again, December 18:--

I have read Numbers 4 and 5. They are simply perfect. They ought to be
largely advertised; but it is very good in me to say so, for I threw
down Number 4 with this reflection, "What is the good of my writing a
thundering big book, when everything is in this green little book so
despicable for its size?" In the name of all that is good and bad I may
as well shut up shop altogether.

These lectures met with an annoying amount of success. They were not
cast into permanent form, for he grudged the time necessary to prepare
them for the press. However, he gave a Mr. Hardwicke permission to take
them down in shorthand as delivered for the use of the audience. But no
sooner were they printed, than they had a large sale. Writing to Sir
J.D. Hooker early in the following month, he says:]

I fully meant to have sent you all the successive lectures as they came
out, and I forward a set with all manner of apologies for my
delinquency. I am such a 'umble-minded party that I never imagined the
lectures as delivered would be worth bringing out at all, and I knew I
had no time to work them out. Now, I lament I did not publish them
myself and turn an honest penny by them as I suspect Hardwicke is doing.
He is advertising them everywhere, confound him.

I wish when you have read them you would tell me whether you think it
would be worthwhile for me to re-edit, enlarge, and illustrate them by
and by.

[And on January 28 Sir Charles Lyell writes to him:--

I do grudge Hardwicke very much having not only the publisher's but the
author's profits. It so often happens that popular lectures designed for
a class and inspired by an attentive audience's sympathy are better than
any writing in the closet for the purpose of educating the many as
readers, and of remunerating the publisher and author. I would lose no
time in considering well what steps to take to rescue the copyright of
the third thousand.

As for the value of the work thus done in support of Darwin's theory, it
is worth while quoting the words of Lord Kelvin, when, as President of
the Royal Society in 1894, it fell to him to award Huxley the Darwin
Medal:--

To the world at large, perhaps, Mr. Huxley's share in moulding the
thesis of NATURAL SELECTION is less well-known than is his bold
unwearied exposition and defence of it after it had been made public.
And, indeed, a speculative trifler, revelling in the problems of the
"might have been," would find a congenial theme in the inquiry how soon
what we now call "Darwinism" would have met with the acceptance with
which it has met, and gained the power which it has gained, had it not
been for the brilliant advocacy with which in its early days it was
expounded to all classes of men.

That advocacy had one striking mark: while it made or strove to make
clear how deep the new view went down, and how far it reached, it never
shrank from trying to make equally clear the limit beyond which it could
not go.]

CHAPTER 1.16.

1860-1861.

[The letters given in the following chapters illustrate the occupations
and interests of the years 1860 to 1863, apart from the struggle over
the species question.

One of the most important and most engrossing was the launching of a
scientific quarterly to do more systematically and thoroughly what had
been done since 1858 in the fortnightly scientific column of the
"Saturday Review." Its genesis is explained in the following letter:--]

July 17, 1860.

My dear Hooker,

Some time ago Dr. Wright of Dublin talked to me about the "Natural
History Review," which I believe to a great extent belongs to him, and
wanted me to join in the editorship, provided certain alterations were
made. I promised to consider the matter, and yesterday he and Greene
dined with me, and I learned that Haughton and Galbraith were out of the
review--that Harvey was likely to go--that a new series was to begin in
January, with Williams and Norgate for publishers over here--that it was
to become an English and not a Hibernian concern in fact--and finally,
that if I chose to join as one of the editors, the effectual control
would be pretty much in my own hands. Now, considering the state of the
times, and the low condition of natural history journalisation (always
excepting quarterly "Mic. Journal") in this country this seems to me to
be a fine opening for a plastically minded young man, and I am decidedly
inclined to close with the offer, though I shall get nothing but extra
work by it.

To limit the amount of this extra work, however, I must get co-editors,
and I have written to Lubbock and to Rolleston (also plastically minded
young men) to see if they will join. Now up to this point you have been
in a horrid state of disgust, because you thought I was going to ask you
next. But I am not, for rejoiced as I should be to have you, I know you
have heaps of better work to do, and hate journalism.

But can you tell me of any plastic young botanist who would come in all
there glory and no pay, though I think pay may be got if the concern is
properly worked. How about Oliver?

And though you can't and won't be an editor yourself, won't you help us
and pat us on the back?

The tone of the "Review" will be mildly episcopophagous, and you and
Darwin and Lyell will have a fine opportunity if you wish it of slaying
your adversaries.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Several of his elder friends tried to dissuade him from an undertaking
which would inevitably distract him from his proper work. Sir Charles
Lyell prophesied that all the work would drift to the most energetic
member of the staff, and Huxley writes to Hooker, August 2, 1860:--]

Darwin wrote me a very kind expostulation about it, telling me I ought
not to waste myself on other than original work. In reply, however, I
assured him that I MUST waste myself willy-nilly, and that the "Review"
was only a save-all.

The more I think of it the more it seems to me it ought to answer if
properly conducted, and it ought to be of great use.

[The first number appeared in January 1861. Writing on the 6th, Huxley
says:--]

It is pleasant to get such expressions of opinion as I have had from
Lyell and Darwin about the Review. They make me quite hopeful about its
prosperity, as I am sure we shall be able to do better than our first
number.

[It was not long, however, before Lyell's prophecy began to come true.
In June Huxley writes:--]

It is no use letting other people look after the journal. I find unless
I revise every page of it, it goes wrong.

[But in July 1863 he definitely ceased to contribute:--]

I did not foresee all this crush of work [he writes], when the "Review"
was first started, or I should not have pledged myself to any share in
supplying it. [Moreover, with the appointment of paid editors that year,
it seemed to him] that the working editors with the credit and pay must
take the responsibility of all the commissariat of the "Review" upon
their shoulders.

Two years later, in 1865, the "Review" came to an end. As Mr. Murray,
the publisher, remarked, quarterlies did not pay; and this quarterly
became still more financially unsound after the over-worked volunteers,
who both edited and contributed, gave place to paid editors.

But Huxley was not satisfied with one defeat. The quarterly scheme had
failed; he now tried if he could not serve science better by returning
to a more frequent and more popular form of periodical. From 1863 to
1866 he was concerned with the "Reader," a weekly issue (The committee
also included Professor Cairns, F. Galton, W.F. Pollock, and J.
Tyndall.); but this also was too heavy a burden to be borne in addition
to his other work. However, the labour expended in these ventures was
not wholly thrown away. The experience thus gained at last enabled the
present Sir Norman Lockyer, who acted as science editor for the
"Reader," to realise what had so long been aimed at by the establishment
of "Nature" in 1869.

Apart from his contributions to the species question and the foundation
of a scientific review, Huxley published in 1860 only two special
monographs ("On Jacare and Caiman," and "On the Mouth and Pharynx of the
Scorpion," already mentioned as read in the previous year), but he read
"Further Observations on Pyrosoma" at the Linnean Society, and was busy
with paleontological work, the results of which appeared in three papers
the following year, the most important of which was the Memoir called a
"Preliminary Essay on the Arrangement of the Devonian Fishes," in the
report of the Geological Survey, "which," says Sir M. Foster, "though
entitled a Preliminary Essay, threw an entirely new light on the
affinities of these creatures, and, with the continuation published
later, in 1866, still remains a standard work."

The question of the admission of ladies to the learned societies was
already being mooted, and a letter to Sir Charles Lyell gives his ideas
thus early not only on this point, but on the general question of
women's education.]

March 17, 1860.

My dear Sir Charles,

To use the only forcible expression, I "twig" your meaning perfectly,
but I venture to think the parable does not apply. For the Geological
Society is not, to my mind, a place of education for students, but a
place of discussion for adepts; and the more it is applied to the former
purpose the less competent it must become to fulfil the latter--its
primary and most important object.

I am far from wishing to place any obstacle in the way of the
intellectual advancement and development of women. On the contrary, I
don't see how we are to make any permanent advancement while one-half of
the race is sunk, as nine-tenths of women are, in mere ignorant
parsonese superstitions; and to show you that my ideas are practical I
have fully made up my mind, if I can carry out my own plans, to give my
daughters the same training in physical science as their brother will
get, so long as he is a boy. They, at any rate, shall not be got up as
man-traps for the matrimonial market. If other people would do the like
the next generation would see women fit to be the companions of men in
all their pursuits--though I don't think that men have anything to fear
from their competition. But you know as well as I do that other people
won't do the like, and five-sixths of women will stop in the doll stage
of evolution to be the stronghold of parsondom, the drag on
civilisation, the degradation of every important pursuit with which they
mix themselves--"intrigues" in politics, and "friponnes" in science.

If my claws and beak are good for anything they shall be kept from
hindering the progress of any science I have to do with.

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