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

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Two paragraphs, however, contained opinions which Mr. -- is at perfect
liberty to entertain, but not, I think, to express to me.

The one is, that I shaped what I had to say at Edinburgh with a view of
stirring up the prejudices of the Scotch Presbyterians (imagine how many
Presbyterians I had in my audiences!) against Comte.

The other is the concluding paragraph, in which Mr. -- recommends me to
"READ COMTE," clearly implying that I have criticised Comte without
reading him.

You will know how far I am likely to have committed either of the
immoralities thus laid to my charge.

At any rate, I do not think I care to enter into more direct relations
with anyone who so heedlessly and unjustifiably assumes me to be guilty
of them. Therefore I shall content myself with acknowledging the receipt
of Mr. --'s letter through you.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Jermyn Street, March 17, 1869.

My dear Darwin,

After I had sent my letter to you the other day I thought how stupid I
had been not to put in a slip of paper to say it was meant for --'s
edification.

I made sure you would understand that I wished it to be sent on, and
wrote it (standing on the points of my toes and with my tail up very
stiff) with that end in view.

[Sketch of two dogs bristling up.]

I am getting so weary of people writing to propose controversy to me
upon one point or another, that I begin to wish the article had never
been written. The fighting in itself is not particularly objectionable,
but it's the waste of time.

I begin to understand your sufferings over the "Origin." A good book is
comparable to a piece of meat, and fools are as flies who swarm to it,
each for the purpose of depositing and hatching his own particular
maggot of an idea.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[A little later he wrote to Charles Kingsley, who had supported him in
the controversy:--]

Jermyn Street, April 12, 1869.

My dear Kingsley,

Thanks for your hearty bottle-holding.

Congreve is no better than a donkey to take the line he does. I studied
Comte, "Philosophie," "Politique," and all sixteen years ago, and having
formed my judgment about him, put it into one of the pigeon holes of my
brain (about the H[ippocampus] minor [see above.]), and there let it
rest till it was wanted.

You are perfectly right in saying that Comte knew nothing about physical
science--it is one of the points I am going to put in evidence.

The law of the three states is mainly evolved from his own
consciousness, and is only a bad way of expressing that tendency to
personification which is inherent in man.

The Classification of Sciences is bosh--as Spencer has already shown.

Nothing short of madness, however, can have dictated Congreve's
challenge of my admiration of Comte as a man at the end of his article.
Did you ever read Littre's "Life of Comte?" I bought it when it came out
a year or more ago, and I rose from its perusal with a feeling of sheer
disgust and contempt for the man who could treat a noble-hearted woman
who had saved his life and his reason, as Comte treated his wife.

As soon as I have time I will deal with Comte effectually, you may
depend upon that. At the same time, I shall endeavour to be just to what
there is (as I hold), really great and good in his clear conception of
the necessity of reconstructing society from the bottom to the top "sans
dieu ni roi," if I may interpret that somewhat tall phrase as meaning
"with our conceptions of religion and politics on a scientific basis."

Comte in his later days was an apostate from his own creed; his "nouveau
grand Etre supreme," being as big a fetish as ever nigger first made and
then worshipped.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[It is interesting to note how he invariably submitted his writings to
the criticism of his wife before they were seen by any other eye. To her
judgment was due the toning down of many a passage which erred by excess
of vigour, and the clearing up of phrases which would be obscure to the
public. In fact, if an essay met with her approval, he felt sure it
would not fail of its effect when published. Writing to her from Norwich
on August 23, 1868, he confesses himself with reference to the lecture
"On a Piece of Chalk":--]

I met Grove who edits "Macmillan," at the soiree. He pulled the proof of
my lecture out of his pocket and said, "Look here, there is one
paragraph in your lecture I can make neither top nor tail of. I can't
understand what it means." I looked to where his finger pointed, and
behold it was the paragraph you objected to when I read you the lecture
on the sea shore! I told him, and said I should confess, however set up
it might make you.

[At the beginning of September, he rejoined his wife and family at
Littlehampton,] "a grand place for children, because you go UP rather
than DOWN into the sea, and it is quite impossible for them to get into
mischief by falling," [as he described it to his friend Dr. Dohrn, who
came down for ten days, eagerly looking forward "to stimulating walks
over stock and stone, to Tennyson, Herbert Spencer, and Harry's ringing
laugh."

The latter half of the month he spent at or near Dublin, serving upon
the Commission on Science and Art Instruction:--]

Today [he writes on September 16], we shall be occupied in inspecting
the School of Science and the Glasnevin botanical and agricultural
gardens, and to-morrow we begin the session work of examining all the
Irishry, who want jobs perpetrated. It is weary work, and the papers are
already beginning to tell lies about us and attack us.

[The rest of the year he remained in London, except the last four days
of December, when he was lecturing at Newcastle, and stayed with Sir W.
Armstrong at Jesmond.]

[To Professor Haeckel.]

January 21, 1868.

Don't you think we did a right thing in awarding the Copley Medal to
Baer last year? The old man was much pleased, and it was a comfort to me
to think that we had not let him go to his grave without the highest
honour we had to bestow.

I am over head and ears, as we say, in work, lecturing, giving addresses
to the working men and (figurez vous!) to the clergy. [On December 12,
1867, there was a meeting of clergy at Sion House, under the auspices of
Dean Farrar and the Reverend W. Rogers of Bishopsgate, when the bearing
of recent science upon orthodox dogma was discussed. First Huxley
delivered an address; some of the clergy present denounced any
concessions as impossible; others declared that they had long ago
accepted the teachings of geology; whereupon a candid friend inquired,
"Then why don't you say so from your pulpits?" (See "Collected Essays" 3
119.)]

In scientific work the main thing just now about which I am engaged is a
revision of the Dinosauria, with an eye to the "Descendenz Theorie." The
road from Reptiles to Birds is by way of Dinosauria to the Ratitae. The
bird "phylum" was struthious, and wings grew out of rudimentary
forelimbs.

You see that among other things I have been reading Ernst Haeckel's
"Morphologie."

[The next two letters reflect his views on the proper work to be
undertaken by men of unusual scientific capacity:--]

Jermyn Street, January 15, 1868.

My dear Dohrn,

Though the most procrastinating correspondent in existence when a letter
does not absolutely require an answer, I am tolerably well-behaved when
something needs to be said or done immediately. And as that appears to
me to be the case with your letter of the 13th which has this moment
reached me, I lose no time in replying to it.

The Calcutta appointment has been in my hands as well as Turner's, and I
have made two or three efforts, all of which unfortunately have proved
unsuccessful to find: (1) A man who will do for it and at the same time
(2) for whom it will do. Now you fulfil the first condition admirably,
but as to the second I have very great doubts.

In the first place the climate of Calcutta is not particularly good for
anyone who has a tendency to dysentery, and I doubt very much if you
would stand it for six months.

Secondly, we have a proverb that it is not wise to use razors to cut
blocks.

The business of the man who is appointed to that museum will be to get
it into order. If he does his duty he will give his time and attention
to museum work pure and simple, and I don't think that (especially in an
Indian climate), he has much energy left for anything else after the
day's work is done. Naming and arranging specimens is a most admirable
and useful employment, but when you have done it is "cutting blocks,"
and you, my friend, are a most indubitable razor, and I do not wish to
have your edge blunted in that fashion.

If it were necessary for you to win your own bread, one's advice might
be modified. Under such circumstances one must do things which are not
entirely desirable. But for you who are your own master and have a
career before you, to bind yourself down to work six hours a day at
things you do not care about and which others could do just as well,
while you are neglecting the things which you do care for, and which
others could not do so well, would, I think, be amazingly unwise.

Liberavi animam! don't tell my Indian friends I have dissuaded you, but
on my conscience I could give you no other advice.

We have to thank you three times over. In the first place for a portrait
which has taken its place among those of our other friends; secondly for
the great pleasure you gave my little daughter Jessie, by the books you
so kindly sent; and thirdly, for Fanny Lewald's autobiography which
arrived a few days ago.

Jessie is meditating a letter of thanks (a serious undertaking), and
when it is sent the mother will have a word to say for herself.

In the middle of October scarlet fever broke out among my children, and
they have all had it in succession, except Jessie, who took it seven
years ago. The last convalescent is now well, but we had the disease in
the house nearly three months, and have been like lepers, cut off from
all communication with our neighbours for that time.

We have had a great deal of anxiety, and my wife has been pretty nearly
worn out with nursing day and night; but by great good fortune "the
happy family" has escaped all permanent injury, and you might hear as
much laughter in the house as at Swanage.

Will you be so kind as to thank Professor Gegenbaur for a paper on the
development of the vertebral column of Lepidosteum I have just received
from him? He has been writing about the process of ossification and the
"deck-knochen" question, but I cannot make out exactly where. Could you
let me know?

I am anxious for the "Arthropoden Werk," but I expect to gasp when it
comes.

Turn to page 380 of the new edition of our friend Kolliker's "Handbuch,"
and you will find that though a view which I took off the "organon
adamantinae" some twelve or fourteen years ago, and which Kolliker has
up to this time repudiated, turns out, and is now admitted by him, to be
perfectly correct, yet "that I was not acquainted with the facts that
would justify the conclusion." Really, if I had time I could be angry.

Pray remember me most kindly to Haeckel, to all whose enemies I wish
confusion, and believe me, ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

P.S.--I have read a hundred pages or so of Fanny Lewald's first Bd., and
am delighted with her insight into child-life.

[Tyndall was resigning his lectureship at the School of Mines:--]

Jermyn Street, June 10, 1868.

My dear Tyndall,

All I can say is, I am heartily sorry.

If you feel that your lectures here interfere with your original work, I
should not be a true friend either to science or yourself if I said a
word against your leaving us.

But for all that I am and shall remain very sorry.

Ever yours very sincerely,

T.H. Huxley.

If you recommend --, of course I shall be very glad to support him in
any way I can. But at present I am rather disposed to d--n anyone who
occupies your place.

[The following extract is from a letter to Haeckel (November 13, 1868),
with reference to the proposed translation of his "Morphologie" by the
Ray Society:--]

We shall at once look out for a good translator of the text, as the job
will be a long and a tough one. My wife (who sends her best wishes and
congratulations on your fatherhood) will do the bits of Goethe's poetry,
and I will look after the prose citations.

Next as to the text itself. The council were a little alarmed at the
bulk of the book, and it is of the utmost importance that it would be
condensed to the uttermost.

Furthermore, English propriety had taken fright at rumours touching the
aggressive heterodoxy of some passages. (We do not much mind heterodoxy
here, if it does not openly proclaim itself as such.)

And on both these points I had not only to give very distinct
assurances, such as I thought your letters had entitled me to give; but
in a certain sense to become myself responsible for your behaving
yourself like a good boy!

If I had not known you and understood your nature and disposition as I
fancy I do, I should not have allowed myself to be put in this position;
but I have implicit faith in your doing what is wise and right, and so
making it tenable.

There is not the slightest desire to make you mutilate your book or
leave out anything which you conceive to be absolutely essential; and I
on my part should certainly not think of asking you to make any
alteration which would not in my judgment improve the book quite
irrespectively of the tastes of the British public.

[Alterations are suggested.] But I stop. By this time you will be
swearing at me for attacking all your favourite bits. Let me know what
you think about these matters.

I congratulate you and Madame Haeckel heartily on the birth of your boy.
Children work a greater metamorphosis in men than any other condition of
life. They ripen one wonderfully and make life ten times better worth
having than it was.

26 Abbey Place, November 15, 1868.

My dear Darwin,

You are always the bienvenu, and we shall be right glad to see you on
Sunday morning.

We breakfast at 8.30, and the decks are clear before nine. I would offer
you breakfast, but I know it does not suit you to come out unfed; and
besides you would abuse the opportunity to demoralise Harry. [This small
boy of nearly four was a great favourite of Darwin's. When we children
were all staying at Down about this time, Darwin himself would come in
upon us at dinner, and patting him on the head, utter what was become a
household word amongst us, "Make yourself at home, and take large
mouthfuls."]

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[An undated note to Darwin belongs to the very end of this year, or to
the beginning of the next:--]

The two volumes of the new book have just reached me. My best thanks for
them; and if you can only send me a little time for reading within the
next three months you will heighten the obligation twenty-fold. I wish I
had either two heads or a body that needed no rest!

CHAPTER 1.23.

1869.

[In 1869 Huxley published five paleontological papers, chiefly upon the
Dinosaurs (see letter above to Haeckel, January 21, 1868). His
physiological researches upon the development of parts of the skull, are
represented by a paper for the Zoological Society, while the
"Introduction to the Classification of Animals" was a reprint this year
of the substance of six lectures in the first part of the lectures on
"Elementary Comparative Anatomy" (1864), which were out of print, but
still in demand by students.

As President of the Ethnological Society, he delivered an inaugural
address "On the Ethnology and Archeology of India," on March 9, and
another "On the Ethnology and Archeology of North America," on April 13.
As president of the Society, moreover, he urged upon the Government the
advisability of forming a systematic series of photographs of the
various races comprehended in the British Empire, and was officially
called upon to offer suggestions for carrying out the project. This
appears to be an amplification of Sir Joseph Fayrer's plan in 1866, with
respect to all the tribes of India (see Appendix 1.)

On April 7 he delivered his "Scientific Education: Notes of an
After-Dinner Speech" before the Philomathic Society at Liverpool
("Collected Essays" 3 3), one part of which deals with the attitude of
the clergy towards physical science, and expresses the necessary
antagonism between science and Roman Catholic doctrine which appears
more forcibly in one of his speeches at the School Board in 1871.

In this and other educational addresses, he had suggested that one of
the best ways of imparting to children a preliminary knowledge of the
phenomena of nature would be a course of what the Germans call
"Erdkunde," or general information about the world we live in. It should
reach from our simplest everyday observations to wide generalisations of
physical science; and should supply a background for the study of
history. To this he gave the name "Physiography," a name which he
believed to be original, until in 1877 his attention was called to the
fact that a "Physiographie" had been published in Paris thirty years
before.

The idea was no new one with him. Part of his preliminary lectures at
the School of Mines had been devoted to something of the kind for the
last dozen years; he had served on the Committee of the British
Association, appointed in 1866 as the result of a paper by the present
Dean Farrar, then a Harrow master, "On the Teaching of Science in the
Public Schools," to report upon the whole question. Moreover, in
consultation with Dr. Tyndall, he had drawn up a scheme in the winter
1868-69, for the science teaching in the International College, on the
Council of which they both were.

Seven yearly grades were arranged in this scheme, proceeding from the
simplest account of the phenomena of nature taught chiefly by object
lessons, largely through the elements of Physics and Botany, Chemistry
and Human Physiology--all illustrated with practical demonstrations--to
more advanced work in these subjects, as well as in Social Science,
which embraced not only the theory of commerce and government, but the
Natural History of Man up to the point at which Ethnology and Archeology
touch history.

It is interesting to note that the framers of this report thought it
necessary to point out that one master could not teach all these
subjects.

In the three later stages the boys might follow alternative lines of
study according to their tastes and capacities; but of the earlier part,
which was to be obligatory upon all, the report says:--These four years
study, if properly employed by the teachers, will constitute a complete
preparatory scientific course. However slight the knowledge of details
conferred, a wise teacher of any of these subjects will be able to make
that teaching thorough; and to give the scholar a notion of the methods
and of the ideas which he will meet with in his further progress in all
branches of physical science.

In fact, the fundamental principle was to begin with Observational
Science, facts collected; to proceed to Classificatory Science, facts
arranged; and to end with Inductive Science, facts reasoned upon and
laws deduced.

While he was much occupied with the theoretical and practical
difficulties of such a scheme of science teaching for general use, he
was asked by his friend, the Reverend W. Rogers of Bishopsgate, if he
would not deliver a course of lectures on elementary science to boys of
the schools in which the latter was interested.

He finally accepted in the following letter, and as the result,
delivered twelve lectures week by week from April to June to a large
audience at the London Institution in Finsbury Circus, lectures not
easily forgotten by the children who listened to them nor by their
elders:--]

Jermyn Street, February 5, 1869.

My dear Rogers,

Upon due reflection I am not indisposed to undertake the course of
lessons we talked about the other day, though they will cost me a good
deal of trouble in various ways, and at a time of the year when I am
getting to the end of my tether and don't much like trouble.

But the scheme is too completely in harmony with what (in conjunction
with Tyndall and others) I have been trying to bring about in schools in
general--not to render it a great temptation to me to try to get it into
practical shape.

All I have to stipulate is that we shall have a clear understanding on
the part of the boys and teachers that the discourses are to [be]
LESSONS and not talkee-talkee lectures. I should like it to be
understood that the boys are to take notes and to be examined at the end
of the course. Of course I cannot undertake to be examiner, but the
schools might make some arrangement on this point.

You see my great object is to set going something which can be worked in
every school in the country in a thorough and effectual way, and set an
example of the manner in which I think this sort of introduction to
science ought to be managed.

Unless this can be done I would rather not embark in a project which
will involve much labour, worry, and interruption to my regular line of
work.

I met Mr. [illegible] last night, and discussed the subject briefly with
him.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

I enclose a sort of rough programme of the kind of thing I mean, cut up
from a project of instruction for a school about which I am now busy.
The managers might like to see it. But I shall be glad to have it
returned.

[These lectures were repeated in November at South Kensington Museum, as
the first part of a threefold course to women on the elements of
physical science, and the "Times" reporter naively remarks that under
the rather alarming name of Physiography, many of the audience were no
doubt surprised to hear an exceedingly simple and lucid description of a
river-basin. Want of leisure prevented him from bringing out the
lectures in book form until November 1877. When it did appear, however,
the book, like his other popular works, had a wide sale, and became the
forerunner of an immense number of school-books on the subject.

As President of the Geological Society, he delivered an address
("Collected Essays" 8 305), at the anniversary meeting, February 19,
upon the "Geological Reform" demanded by the considerations advanced by
the physicists, as to the age of the earth and the duration of life upon
it. From the point of view of biology he was ready to accept the limits
suggested, provided that the premises of Sir William Thomson's (Now Lord
Kelvin.) argument were shown to be perfectly reliable; but he pointed
out a number of considerations which might profoundly modify the results
of the isolated causes adduced; and uttered a warning against the
possible degradation of "a proper reverence for mathematical certainty"
into "a superstitious respect for all arguments arrived at by process of
mathematics." (See "Collected Essays" 8 Introduction page 8.)

At the close of the year, as his own period of office came to an end, it
was necessary to select a new president of the Geological. He strongly
urged Professor (afterwards Sir Joseph) Prestwich to stand, and when the
latter consented, a few weeks, by the way, before his marriage was to
take place, replied:--]

Jermyn Street, December 16, 1869.

My dear Prestwich,

Many thanks for your letter. Your consent to become our President for
the next period will give as unfeigned satisfaction to the whole body of
the Society as it does to me and your other personal friends.

I have looked upon the affair as settled since our last talk, and a very
great relief it has been to my mind.

There is no doubt public-dinner speaking (and indeed all public
speaking) is nervous work. I funk horribly, though I never get the least
credit for it. But it is like swimming, the worst of it is in the first
plunge; and after you have taken your "header" it's not so bad (just
like matrimony, by the way; only don't be so mean as to go and tell a
certain lady I said so, because I want to stand well in her books.)

Of course you may command me in all ways in which I can possibly be of
use. But as one of the chiefs of the Society, and personally and
scientifically popular with the whole body, you start with an immense
advantage over me, and will find no difficulties before you.

We will consider this business formally settled, and I shall speak of it
officially.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[I cannot place the following letter to Matthew Arnold with certainty,
but it must have been written about this period. (The most probable date
being 1869, for on July 1 of that year he dined with Matthew Arnold at
Harrow.) Everyone will sympathise with the situation:--]

26 Abbey Place, July 8.

My dear Arnold,

Look at Bishop Wilson on the sin of covetousness and then inspect your
umbrella stand. You will there see a beautiful brown smooth-handled
umbrella which is NOT your property.

Think of what the excellent prelate would have advised and bring it with
you next time you come to the club. The porter will take care of it for
me.

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