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Books: The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3

L >> Leonard Huxley >> The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3




I conceive the first chapter of Genesis to teach--(1) that the species
of plants and animals owe their origin to supernatural acts of
creation; (2) that these acts took place at such times and in such a
manner that all the plants were created first, all the aquatic and
aerial animals (notably birds) next, and all terrestrial animals last.
I am not aware that any Hebrew scholar denies that these propositions
agree with the natural sense of the text. Sixty years ago I was taught,
as most people were then taught, that they are guaranteed by Divine
authority.

On the other hand, in my judgment, natural science teaches no less
distinctly--(1) that the species of animals and plants have originated
by a process of natural evolution; (2) that this process has taken
place in such a manner that the species of animals and plants,
respectively, have come into existence one after another throughout the
whole period since they began to exist on the earth; that the species
of plants and animals known to us are as a whole, neither older nor
younger the one than the other.

The same holds good of aquatic and aerial species, as a whole, compared
with terrestrial species; but birds appear in the geological record
later than terrestrial reptiles, and there is every reason to believe
that they were evolved from the latter.

Until it is shown that the first two propositions are not contained in
the first chapter of Genesis, and that the second pair are not
justified by the present condition of our knowledge, I must continue to
maintain that natural science and the "Mosaic" account of the origin of
animals and plants are in irreconcilable antagonism.

As I greatly desire that this broad issue should not be obscured by the
discussion of minor points, I propose to defer what I may have to say
about the great "shehretz" and "rehmes" question till to-morrow.

[On February 11 he wrote once more, again taking certain broader
aspects of the problem presented by the first chapter of Genesis. He
expressed his belief, as he had expressed it in 1869, that theism is
not logically antagonistic to evolution. If, he continues, the account
in Genesis, as Philo of Alexandria held, is only a poem or allegory,
where is the proof that any one non-natural interpretation is the right
one? and he concludes by pointing out the difficulties in the way of
those who, like the famous thirty-eight, assert the infallibility of
the Bible as guaranteed by the infallibility of the Church.

Apart from letters and occasional controversy, he published this year
only one magazine article and a single volume of collected essays,
though he was busy preparing the Romanes Lecture for 1893, the more so
because there was some chance that Mr. Gladstone would be unable to
deliver the first of the lectures in 1892, and Huxley had promised to
be ready to take his place if necessary.

The volume (called "Controverted Questions") which appeared in 1892,
was a collection of the essays of the last few years, mainly
controversial, or as he playfully called them, "endeavours to defend a
cherished cause," dealing with agnosticism and the demonological and
miraculous element in Christianity. That they were controversial in
tone no one lamented more than himself; and as in the letter to M. de
Varigny, of November 25, 1891, so here in the prologue he apologises
for the fact.]

This prologue,--of which he writes to a friend], "It cost me more time
and pains than any equal number of pages I have ever written,"--[was
designed to indicate the main question, various aspects of which are
dealt with by these seemingly disconnected essays.]

The historical evolution of humanity [he writes], which is generally,
and I venture to think not unreasonably, regarded as progress, has
been, and is being, accompanied by a co-ordinate elimination of the
supernatural from its originally large occupation of men's thought. The
question--How far is this process to go? is, in my apprehension, the
controverted question of our time.

This movement, marked by the claim for the freedom of private judgment,
which first came to its fulness in the Renascence, is here sketched
out, rising or sinking by turns under the pressure of social and
political vicissitudes, from Wiclif's earliest proposal to reduce the
Supernaturalism of Christianity within the limits sanctioned by the
Scriptures, down to the manifesto in the previous year of the
thirty-eight Anglican divines in defence of biblical infallibility,
which practically ends in an appeal to the very principle they reject.

But he does not content himself with pointing out the destructive
effects of criticism upon the evidence in favour of a
"supernature"--"The present incarnation of the spirit of the
Renascence," he writes, "differs from its predecessor in the eighteenth
century, in that it builds up, as well as pulls down. That of which it
has laid the foundation, of which it is already raising the
superstructure, is the doctrine of evolution," a doctrine that "is no
speculation, but a generalisation of certain facts, which may be
observed by any one who will take the necessary trouble." And in a
short dozen pages he sketches out that "common body of established
truths" to which it is his confident belief that "all future
philosophical and theological speculations will have to accommodate
themselves."

There is no need to recapitulate these; they may be read in "Science
and Christian Tradition", the fifth volume of the "Collected Essays";
but it is worth noticing that in conclusion, after rejecting "a great
many supernaturalistic theories and legends which have no better
foundations than those of heathenism," he declares himself as far from
wishing to "throw the Bible aside as so much waste paper" as he was at
the establishment of the School Board in 1870. As English literature,
as world-old history, as moral teaching, as the Magna Charta of the
poor and of the oppressed, the most democratic book in the world, he
could not spare it.] "I do not say," [he adds], "that even the highest
biblical ideal is exclusive of others or needs no supplement. But I do
believe that the human race is not yet, possibly may never be, in a
position to dispense with it."

[It was this volume that led to the writing of the magazine article
referred to above. The republication in it of the "Agnosticism,"
originally written in reply to an article of Mr. Frederic Harrison's,
induced the latter to disclaim in the "Fortnightly Review" the intimate
connection assumed to exist between his views and the system of
Positivism detailed by Comte, and at the same time to offer the olive
branch to his former opponent. But while gratefully accepting the
goodwill implied in the offer, Huxley still declared himself unable to]
"give his assent to a single doctrine which is the peculiar property of
Positivism, old or new," [nor to agree with Mr. Harrison when he
wanted:--]

to persuade us that agnosticism is only the Court of the Gentiles of
the Positivist temple; and that those who profess ignorance about the
proper solution of certain speculative problems ought to call
themselves Positivists of the Gate, if it happens that they also take a
lively interest in social and political questions.

[This essay, "An Apologetic Irenicon," contains more than one passage
of personal interest, which are the more worth quoting here, as the
essay has not been republished. It was to have been included in a tenth
volume of collected Essays, along with a number of others which he
projected, but never wrote.

Thus, begging the Positivists not to regard him as a rival or
competitor in the business of instructing the human race, he says:--]

I aspire to no such elevated and difficult situation. I declare myself
not only undesirous of it, but deeply conscious of a constitutional
unfitness for it. Age and hygienic necessities bind me to a somewhat
anchoritic life in pure air, with abundant leisure to meditate upon the
wisdom of Candide's sage aphorism, "Cultivons notre jardin"--especially
if the term garden may be taken broadly and applied to the stony and
weed-grown ground within my skull, as well as to a few perches of more
promising chalk down outside it. In addition to these effectual bars to
any of the ambitious pretensions ascribed to me, there is another: of
all possible positions that of master of a school, or leader of a sect,
or chief of a party, appears to me to be the most undesirable; in fact,
the average British matron cannot look upon followers with a more evil
eye than I do. Such acquaintance with the history of thought as I
possess, has taught me to regard schools, parties, and sects, as
arrangements, the usual effect of which is to perpetuate all that is
worst and feeblest in the master's, leader's, or founder's work; or
else, as in some cases, to upset it altogether; as a sort of hydrants
for extinguishing the fire of genius, and for stifling the flame of
high aspirations, the kindling of which has been the chief, perhaps the
only, merit of the protagonist of the movement. I have always been, am,
and propose to remain a mere scholar. All that I have ever proposed to
myself is to say, this and this have I learned; thus and thus have I
learned it: go thou and learn better; but do not thrust on my shoulders
the responsibility for your own laziness if you elect to take, on my
authority, conclusions, the value of which you ought to have tested for
yourself.

[Again, replying to the reproach that all his public utterances had
been of a negative character, that the great problems of human life had
been entirely left out of his purview, he defends once more the work of
the man who clears the ground for the builders to come after him:--]

There is endless backwoodsman's work yet to be done, If "those also
serve who only stand and wait," still more do those who sweep and
cleanse; and if any man elect to give his strength to the weeder's and
scavenger's occupation, I remain of the opinion that his service should
be counted acceptable, and that no one has a right to ask more of him
than faithful performance of the duties he has undertaken. I venture to
count it an improbable suggestion that any such person--a man, let us
say, who has well-nigh reached his threescore years and ten, and has
graduated in all the faculties of human relationships; who has taken
his share in all the deep joys and deeper anxieties which cling about
them; who has felt the burden of young lives entrusted to his care, and
has stood alone with his dead before the abyss of the eternal--has
never had a thought beyond negative criticism. It seems to me
incredible that such an one can have done his day's work, always with a
light heart, with no sense of responsibility, no terror of that which
may appear when the factitious veil of Isis--the thick web of fiction
man has woven round nature--is stripped off.

[Challenged to state his "mental bias, pro or con," with regard to such
matters as Creation, Providence, etc., he reiterates his words written
thirty-two years before:--]

So far back as 1860 I wrote:--

"The doctrine of special creation owes its existence very largely to
the supposed necessity of making science accord with the Hebrew
cosmogony"; and that the hypothesis of special creation is, in my
judgment, a "mere specious mask for our ignorance." Not content with
negation, I said:--

"Harmonious order governing eternally continuous progress; the web and
woof of matter and force interweaving by slow degrees, without a broken
thread, that veil which lies between us and the infinite; that universe
which alone we know, or can know; such is the picture which science
draws of the world."

Every reader of Goethe will know that the second is little more than a
paraphrase of the well-known utterance of the "Zeitgeist" in "Faust",
which surely is something more than a mere negation of the clumsy
anthropomorphism of special creation.

Follows a query about "Providence," my answer to which must depend upon
what my questioner means by that substantive, whether alone, or
qualified by the adjective "moral."

If the doctrine of a Providence is to be taken as the expression, in a
way "to be understanded of the people," of the total exclusion of
chance from a place even in the most insignificant corner of Nature, if
it means the strong conviction that the cosmic process is rational, and
the faith that, throughout all duration, unbroken order has reigned in
the universe, I not only accept it, but I am disposed to think it the
most important of all truths. As it is of more consequence for a
citizen to know the law than to be personally acquainted with the
features of those who will surely carry it into effect, so this very
positive doctrine of Providence, in the sense defined, seems to me far
more important than all the theorems of speculative theology. If,
further, the doctrine is held to imply that, in some indefinitely
remote past aeon, the cosmic process was set going by some entity
possessed of intelligence and foresight, similar to our own in kind,
however superior in degree, if, consequently, it is held that every
event, not merely in our planetary speck, but in untold millions of
other worlds, was foreknown before these worlds were, scientific
thought, so far as I know anything about it, has nothing to say against
that hypothesis. It is, in fact, an anthropomorphic rendering of the
doctrine of evolution.

It may be so, but the evidence accessible to us is, to my mind, wholly
insufficient to warrant either a positive or a negative conclusion.

[He remarks in passing upon the entire exclusion of "special"
providences by this conception of a universal "Providence." As for
"moral" providence:--]

So far as mankind has acquired the conviction that the observance of
certain rules of conduct is essential to the maintenance of social
existence, it may be proper to say that "Providence," operating through
men, has generated morality. Within the limits of a fraction of a
fraction of the living world, therefore, there is a "moral" providence.
Through this small plot of an infinitesimal fragment of the universe
there runs a "stream of tendency towards righteousness." But outside
the very rudimentary germ of a garden of Eden, thus watered, I am
unable to discover any "moral" purpose, or anything but a stream of
purpose towards the consummation of the cosmic process, chiefly by
means of the struggle for existence, which is no more righteous or
unrighteous than the operation of any other mechanism.

[This, of course, is the underlying principle of the Romanes Lecture,
upon which he was still at work. It is more specifically expressed in
the succeeding paragraph:--]

I hear much of the "ethics of evolution." I apprehend that, in the
broadest sense of the term "evolution," there neither is, nor can be,
any such thing. The notion that the doctrine of evolution can furnish a
foundation for morals seems to me to be an illusion which has arisen
from the unfortunate ambiguity of the term "fittest" in the formula,
"survival of the fittest." We commonly use "fittest" in a good sense,
with an understood connotation of "best"; and "best" we are apt to take
in its ethical sense. But the "fittest" which survives in the struggle
for existence may be, and often is, the ethically worst.

[Another paragraph explains the sense in which he used to say that the
Romanes Lecture was a very orthodox discourse on the text, "Satan, the
Prince of this world":--]

It is the secret of the superiority of the best theological teachers to
the majority of their opponents that they substantially recognise these
realities of things, however strange the forms in which they clothe
their conceptions. The doctrines of predestination, of original sin, of
the innate depravity of man and the evil fate of the greater part of
the race, of the primacy of Satan in this world, of the essential
vileness of matter, of a malevolent Demiurgus subordinate to a
benevolent Almighty, who has only lately revealed himself, faulty as
they are, appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the "liberal"
popular illusions that babies are all born good, and that the example
of a corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so;
that it is given to everybody to reach the ethical ideal if he will
only try; that all partial evil is universal good, and other optimistic
figments, such as that which represents "Providence" under the guise of
a paternal philanthropist, and bids us believe that everything will
come right (according to our notions) at last.

As to "Immortality" again [he refers his critic to his book on "Hume"].
I do not think I need return to "subjective" immortality, but it may be
well to add that I am a very strong believer in the punishment of
certain kinds of actions, not only in the present, but in all the
future a man can have, be it long or short. Therefore in hell, for I
suppose that all men with a clear sense of right and wrong (and I am
not sure that any others deserve such punishment) have now and then
"descended into hell" and stopped there quite long enough to know what
infinite punishment means. And if a genuine, not merely subjective,
immortality awaits us, I conceive that, without some such change as
that depicted in the fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the
Corinthians, immortality must be eternal misery. The fate of Swift's
Struldbrugs seems to me not more horrible than that of a mind
imprisoned for ever within the flammantia moenia of inextinguishable
memories.

Further, it may be well to remember that the highest level of moral
aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient
Jews--Micah, Isaiah, and the rest--who took no count whatever of what
might or might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me
why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.

[He admits that the generality of mankind will not be satisfied to be
told that there are some topics about which we know nothing now, and do
not seem likely ever to be able to know more; and, consequently, that
in the long-run the world will turn to those who profess to have
conclusions:--]

And that is the pity of it. As in the past, so, I fear, through a very
long future, the multitude will continue to turn to those who are ready
to feed it with the viands its soul lusteth after; who will offer
mental peace where there is no peace, and lap it in the luxury of
pleasant delusions.

To missionaries of the Neo-Positivist, as to those of other professed
solutions of insoluble mysteries, whose souls are bound up in the
success of their sectarian propaganda, no doubt, it must be very
disheartening if the "world," for whose assent and approbation they
sue, stops its ears and turns its back upon them. But what does it
signify to any one who does not happen to be a missionary of any sect,
philosophical or religious, and who, if he were, would have no sermon
to preach except from the text with which Descartes, to go no further
back, furnished us two centuries since? I am very sorry if people will
not listen to those who rehearse before them the best lessons they have
been able to learn, but that is their business, not mine. Belief in
majorities is not rooted in my breast, and if all the world were
against me the fact might warn me to revise and criticise my opinions,
but would not in itself supply a ghost of a reason for forsaking them.
For myself I say deliberately, it is better to have a millstone tied
round the neck and be thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises
of those to whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they
minister to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it
shudders to look at.

[A letter to Mr. N.P. Clayton also discusses the basis of morality.]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, November 5, 1892.

Dear Sir,

I well remember the interview to which you refer, and I should have
replied to your letter sooner, but during the last few weeks I have
been very busy.

Moral duty consists in the observance of those rules of conduct which
contribute to the welfare of society, and by implication, of the
individuals who compose it.

The end of society is peace and mutual protection, so that the
individual may reach the fullest and highest life attainable by man.
The rules of conduct by which this end is to be attained are
discoverable--like the other so-called laws of Nature--by observation
and experiment, and only in that way.

Some thousands of years of such experience have led to the
generalisations, that stealing and murder, for example, are
inconsistent with the ends of society. There is no more doubt that they
are so than that unsupported stones tend to fall. The man who steals or
murders, breaks his implied contract with society, and forfeits all
protection. He becomes an outlaw, to be dealt with as any other feral
creature. Criminal law indicates the ways which have proved most
convenient for dealing with him.

All this would be true if men had no "moral sense" at all, just as
there are rules of perspective which must be strictly observed by a
draughtsman, and are quite independent of his having any artistic sense.

The moral sense is a very complex affair--dependent in part upon
associations of pleasure and pain, approbation and disapprobation
formed by education in early youth, but in part also on an innate sense
of moral beauty and ugliness (how originated need not be discussed),
which is possessed by some people in great strength, while some are
totally devoid of it--just as some children draw, or are enchanted by
music while mere infants, while others do not know "Cherry Ripe" from
"Rule Britannia," nor can represent the form of the simplest thing to
the end of their lives.

Now for this last sort of people there is no reason why they should
discharge any moral duty, except from fear of punishment in all its
grades, from mere disapprobation to hanging, and the duty of society is
to see that they live under wholesome fear of such punishment short,
sharp, and decisive.

For the people with a keen innate sense of moral beauty there is no
need of any other motive. What they want is knowledge of the things
they may do and must leave undone, if the welfare of society is to be
attained. Good people so often forget this that some of them
occasionally require hanging almost as much as the bad.

If you ask why the moral inner sense is to be (under due limitations)
obeyed; why the few who are steered by it move the mass in whom it is
weak? I can only reply by putting another question--Why do the few in
whom the sense of beauty is strong--Shakespere, Raffaele, Beethoven,
carry the less endowed multitude away? But they do, and always will.
People who overlook that fact attend neither to history nor to what
goes on about them.

Benjamin Franklin was a shrewd, excellent, kindly man. I have a great
respect for him. The force of genial common-sense respectability could
no further go. George Fox was the very antipodes of all this, and yet
one understands how he came to move the world of his day, and Franklin
did not.

As to whether we can all fulfil the moral law, I should say hardly any
of us. Some of us are utterly incapable of fulfilling its plainest
dictates. As there are men born physically cripples, and intellectually
idiots, so there are some who are moral cripples and idiots, and can be
kept straight not even by punishment. For these people there is nothing
but shutting up, or extirpation.

I am, yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The peaceful aspect of the "Irenicon" seems to have veiled to most
readers the unbroken nature of his defence, and he writes to his
son-in-law, the Hon. John Collier, suggesting an alteration in the
title of the essay:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, November 8, 1892.

My dear Jack,

It is delightful to find a reader who "twigs" every point as acutely as
your brother has done. I told somebody--was it you?--I rather wished
the printer would substitute o for e in Irenicon. So far as I have seen
any notices, the British critic (what a dull ass he is) appears to have
been seriously struck by my sweetness of temper.

I sent you the article yesterday, so you will judge for yourself.

With love, ever yours affectionately,

T.H. Huxley.

You should see the place I am claiming for Art in the University. I do
believe something will grow out of my plan, which has made all the dry
bones rattle. It is coming on for discussion in the Senate, and I shall
be coming to you to have my wounds dressed after the fight. Don't know
the day yet.

[This allusion to the place of Art in the University refers to the
proposed reorganisation of the London University.

Since the year 1887 the question of establishing a Teaching University
for London had become more and more pressing. London contained many
isolated teaching bodies of various kinds--University College, King's
College, the Royal College of Science, the Medical Schools, Bedford
College, and so forth, while the London University was only an
examining body. Clearly these scattered bodies needed organising; the
educational forces of the metropolis were disintegrated; much
teaching--and this was especially true of the medical schools--that
could have been better done and better paid in a single institution,
was split up among several, none of which, perhaps, could offer
sufficient inducement to keep the best men permanently.