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

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[Nevertheless, the doctrine seemed to take almost everybody by
surprise. The drift of the lecture was equally misunderstood by critics
of opposite camps. Huxley was popularly supposed to hold the same views
as Mr. Spencer--for were they not both Evolutionists? On general
attention being called to the existing difference between their views,
some jumped to the conclusion that Huxley was offering a general
recantation of evolution, others that he had discarded his former
theories of ethics. On the one hand he was branded as a deserter from
free thought; on the other, hailed almost as a convert to orthodoxy. It
was irritating, but little more than he had expected. The conditions of
the lecture forbade any reference to politics or religion; hence much
had to be left unsaid, which was supplied next year in the Prolegomena
prefacing the re-issue of the lecture.

After all possible trimming and compression, he still feared the
lecture would be too long, and would take more than an hour to deliver,
especially if the audience was likely to be large, for the numbers must
be considered in reference to the speed of speaking. But he had taken
even more pains than usual with it.] "The Lecture," [he writes to
Professor Romanes on April 19], "has been in type for weeks, if not
months, as I have been taking an immensity of trouble over it. And I
can judge of nothing till it is in type." [But this very precaution led
to unexpected complications. When the proposition to lecture was first
made to him, he was not sent a copy of the statute ordering that
publication in the first instance should lie with the University Press;
and in view of the proviso that "the Lecturer is free to publish on his
own behalf in any other form he may like," he had taken Professor
Romanes' original reference to publication by the Press to be a
subsidiary request to which he gladly assented. However, a satisfactory
arrangement was speedily arrived at with the publishers; Huxley
remarking:--]

All I have to say is, do not let the University be in any way a loser
by the change. If the V.-C. thinks there is any risk of this, I will
gladly add to what Macmillan pays. That matter can be settled between
us.

[However, he had not forgotten the limitation of his subject in respect
of religion and politics, and he repeatedly refers to his careful
avoidance of these topics as an "egg-dance." And wishing to reassure
Mr. Romanes on this head, he writes on April 22:--]

There is no allusion to politics in my lecture, nor to any religion
except Buddhism, and only to the speculative and ethical side of that.
If people apply anything I say about these matters to modern
philosophies, except evolutionary speculation, and religions, that is
not my affair. To be honest, however, unless I thought they would, I
should never have taken all the pains I have bestowed on these 36 pages.

[But these words conjured up terrible possibilities, and Mr. Romanes
wrote back in great alarm to ask the exact state of the case. The two
following letters show that the alarm was groundless:--]

Hodeslea, April 26, 1893.

My dear Romanes,

I fear, or rather hope, that I have given you a very unnecessary scare.

You may be quite sure, I think, that, while I should have refused to
give the lecture if any pledge of a special character had been proposed
to me, I have felt very strongly bound to you to take the utmost care
that no shadow of a just cause for offence should be given, even to the
most orthodox of Dons.

It seems to me that the best thing I can do is to send you the lecture
as it stands, notes and all. But please return it within two days at
furthest, and consider it STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL between us two (I am
not excluding Mrs. Romanes, if she cares to look at the paper). No
consideration would induce me to give any ground for the notion that I
had submitted the lecture to any one but yourself.

If there is any phrase in the lecture which you think likely to get you
into trouble, out it shall come or be modified in form.

If the whole thing is too much for the Dons' nerves--I am no judge of
their delicacy--I am quite ready to give up the lecture.

In fact I do not know whether I shall be able to make myself heard
three weeks hence, as the influenza has left its mark in hoarseness and
pain in the throat after speaking.

So you see if the thing is altogether too wicked there is an easy way
out of it.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Hodeslea, April 28, 1893.

My dear Romanes,

My mind is made easy by such a handsome acquittal from you and the Lady
Abbess, your coadjutor in the Holy Office.

My wife, who is my inquisitor and confessor in ordinary, has gone over
the lecture twice, without scenting a heresy, and if she and Mrs.
Romanes fail--a fico for a mere male don's nose!

From the point of view of the complete argument, I agree with you about
note 19. But the dangers of open collision with orthodoxy on the one
hand and Spencer on the other, increased with the square of the
enlargement of the final pages, and I was most anxious for giving no
handle to any one who might like to say I had used the lecture for
purposes of attack. Moreover, in spite of all reduction, the lecture is
too long already.

But I think it not improbable that in spite of my meekness and
peacefulness, neither the one side nor the other will let me alone. And
then you see, I shall have an opportunity of making things plain, under
no restriction. You will not be responsible for anything said in the
second edition, nor can the Donniest of Dons grumble.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

The double negative is Shakspearian. See Hamlet, act 2 scene 2.

[Unfortunately for the entire success of the lecture, he was suffering
from the results of influenza, more especially a loss of voice. He
writes (April 18):--]

After getting through the winter successfully I have had the
ill-fortune to be seized with influenza. I believe I must have got it
from the microbes haunting some of the three hundred doctors at the
Virchow dinner. [On the 16th March.]

I had next to no symptoms except debility, and though I am much better
I cannot quite shake that off. As usual with me it affects my voice. I
hope this will get right before this day month, but I expect I shall
have to nurse it. I do not want to interfere with any of your
hospitable plans, and I think if you will ensure me quiet on the
morning of the 18th (I understand the lecture is in the afternoon) it
will suffice. After the thing is over I am ready for anything from
pitch and toss onwards.

[Two more letters dated before the 18th of May touch on the
circumstances of the lecture. One is to his son-in-law, John Collier;
the other to his old friend Tyndall, the last he ever wrote him, and
containing a cheery reference to the advance of old age.]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, May 9, 1893.

My dear Jack,

...M-- is better, and I am getting my voice back. But may St.
Ernulphus' curse descend on influenza microbes! They tried to work
their way out at my nose, and converted me into a disreputable Captain
Costigan-looking person ten days ago. Now they are working at my lips.

For the credit of the family I hope I shall be more reputable by the
18th.

I hope you will appreciate my dexterity. The lecture is a regular
egg-dance. That I should discourse on Ethics to the University of
Oxford and say all I want to say, without a word anybody can quarrel
with, is decidedly the most piquant occurrence in my career...

Ever yours affectionately, Pater.

To Professor Tyndall.

P.S. to be read first.

Eastbourne, May 15, 1893.

My dear Tyndall,

There are not many apples (and those mostly of the crab sort) left upon
the old tree, but I send you the product of the last shaking. Please
keep it out of any hands but your wife's and yours till Thursday, when
I am to "stand and deliver" it, if I have voice enough, which is
doubtful. The sequelae of influenza in my case have been mostly pimples
and procrastination, the former largely on my nose, so that I have been
a spectacle. Besides these, loss of voice. The pimples are mostly gone
and the procrastination is not much above normal, but what will happen
when I try to fill the Sheldonian Theatre is very doubtful.

Who would have thought thirty-three years ago, when the great "Sammy"
fight came off, that the next time I should speak at Oxford would be in
succession to Gladstone, on "Evolution and Ethics" as an invited
lecturer?

There was something so quaint about the affair that I really could not
resist, though the wisdom of putting so much strain on my creaky
timbers is very questionable. Mind you wish me well through it at 2.30
on Thursday.

I wish we could have better news of you. As to dying by inches, that is
what we are all doing, my dear old fellow; the only thing is to
establish a proper ratio between inch and time. Eight years ago I had
good reason to say the same thing of myself, but my inch has lengthened
out in a most extraordinary way. Still I confess we are getting older;
and my dear wife has been greatly shaken by repeated attacks of violent
pain which seizes her quite unexpectedly. I am always glad, both on her
account and my own, to get back into the quiet and good air here as
fast as possible, and in another year or two, if I live so long, I
shall clear out of all engagements that take me away...

T.H. Huxley.

NOT TO BE ANSWERED, and you had better get Mrs. Tyndall to read it to
you or you will say naughty words about the scrawl.

[Sanguine as he had resolved to be about the recovery of his voice, his
fear lest "1000 out of the 2000 won't hear" was very near realisation.
The Sheldonian Theatre was thronged before he appeared on the platform,
a striking presence in his D.C.L. robes, and looking very leonine with
his silvery gray hair sweeping back in one long wave from his forehead,
and the rugged squareness of his features tempered by the benignity of
an old age which has seen much and overcome much. He read the lecture
from a printed copy, not venturing, as he would have liked, upon the
severe task of speaking it from memory, considering its length and the
importance of preserving the exact wording. He began in a somewhat low
tone, nursing his voice for the second half of the discourse. From the
more distant parts of the theatre came several cries of "speak up"; and
after a time a rather disturbing migration of eager undergraduates
began from the galleries to the body of the hall. The latter part was
indeed more audible than the first; still a number of the audience were
disappointed in hearing imperfectly. However, the lecture had a large
sale; the first edition of 2000 was exhausted by the end of the month;
and another 700 in the next ten days.

After leaving Oxford, and paying a pleasant visit to one of the
Fannings (his wife's nephew) at Tew, Huxley intended to visit another
of the family, Mrs. Crowder, in Lincolnshire, but on reaching London
found himself dead beat, and had to retire to Eastbourne, whence he
writes to Sir M. Foster and to Mr. Romanes.]

Hodeslea, May 26, 1893.

My dear Foster,

Your letter has been following me about. I had not got rid of my
influenza at Oxford, so the exertion and the dinner parties together
played the deuce with me.

We had got so far as the Great Northern Hotel on our way to some
connections in Lincolnshire, when I had to give it up and retreat here
to begin convalescing again.

I do not feel sure of coming to the Harvey affair after all. But if I
do, it will be alone, and I think I had better accept the hospitality
of the college; which will by no means be so jolly as Shelford, but
probably more prudent, considering the necessity of dining out.

The fact is, my dear friend, I am getting old.

I am very sorry to hear you have been doing your influenza also. It's a
beastly thing, as I have it, no symptoms except going flop.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

Nobody sees that the lecture is a very orthodox production on the text
(if there is such a one), "Satan the Prince of this world."

I think the remnant of influenza microbes must have held a meeting in
my corpus after the lecture, and resolved to reconquer the territory.
But I mean to beat the brutes.

"I shall be interested," [he writes to Mr. Romanes,] "in the article on
the lecture. The papers have been asinine." This was an article which
Mr. Romanes had told him was about to appear in the "Oxford Magazine".
And on the 30th he writes again.]

Many thanks for the "Oxford Magazine". The writer of the article is
about the only critic I have met with yet who understands my drift. My
wife says it is a "sensible" article, but her classification is a very
simple one--sensible articles are those that contain praise, "stupid"
those that show insensibility to my merits!

Really I thought it very sensible, without regard to the plums in the
pudding.

[But the criticism, "sensible" not merely in the humorous sense, which
he most fully appreciated was that of Professor Seth, in a lecture
entitled "Man and Nature." He wrote to him on October 27:--]

Dear Professor Seth,

A report of your lecture on "Man and Nature" has just reached me.
Accept my cordial thanks for defending me, and still more for
understanding me.

I really have been unable to understand what my critics have been
dreaming of when they raise the objection that the ethical process
being part of the cosmic process cannot be opposed to it.

They might as well say that artifice does not oppose nature, because it
is part of nature in the broadest sense.

However, it is one of the conditions of the "Romanes Lecture" that no
allusion shall be made to religion or politics. I had to make my
omelette without breaking any of those eggs, and the task was not easy.

The prince of scientific expositors, Faraday, was once asked, "How much
may a popular lecturer suppose his audience knows?" He replied
emphatically, "NOTHING." Mine was not exactly a popular audience, but I
ought not to have forgotten Faraday's rule.

Yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[A letter of congratulation to Lord Farrer on his elevation to the
peerage contains an ironical reference to the general tone of the
criticisms on his lecture:--]

Hodeslea, June 5, 1893.

CI DEVANT CITOYEN PETION (autrefois le vertueux),

You have lost all chance of leading the forces of the County Council to
the attack of the Horse-Guards.

You will become an emigre, and John Burns will have to content himself
with the heads of the likes of me. As the Jacobins said of Lavoisier,
the Republic has no need of men of science.

But this prospect need not interfere with sending our hearty
congratulations to Lady Farrer and yourself.

As for your criticisms, don't you know that I am become a reactionary
and secret friend of the clerics?

My lecture is really an effort to put the Christian doctrine that Satan
is the Prince of this world upon a scientific foundation.

Just consider it in this light, and you will understand why I was so
warmly welcomed in Oxford. (N.B.--The only time I spoke before was in
1860, when the great row with Samuel came off!!)

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, July 15, 1893.

My dear Skelton,

I fear I must admit that even a Gladstonian paper occasionally tells
the truth. They never mean to, but we all have our lapses from the rule
of life we have laid down for ourselves, and must be charitable.

The fact is, I got influenza in the spring, and have never managed to
shake right again, any tendency that way being well counteracted by the
Romanes lecture and its accompaniments.

So we are off to the Maloja to-morrow. It mended up the shaky old
heart-pump five years ago, and I hope will again.

I have been in Orkney, and believe in the air, but I cannot say quite
so much for the scenery. I thought it just a wee little bit, shall I
say, bare? But then I have a passion for mountains.

I shall be right glad to know what your H.O.M. [The "Old Man of Hoy," a
pseudonym under which Sir J. Skelton wrote.] has to say about Ethics
and Evolution. You must remember that my lecture was a kind of
egg-dance. Good manners bound me over to say nothing offensive to the
Christians in the amphitheatre (I was in the arena), and truthfulness,
on the other hand, bound me to say nothing that I did not fully mean.
Under these circumstances one has to leave a great many i's undotted
and t's uncrossed.

Pray remember me very kindly to Mrs. Skelton, and believe me,

Yours ever,

T.H. Huxley.

[And again on October 17:--]

Ask your Old Man of Hoy to be so good as to suspend judgment until the
Lecture appears again with an appendix in that collection of volumes
the bulk of which appals me.

Didn't I see somewhere that you had been made Poor Law pope, or
something of the sort? I congratulate the poor more than I do you, for
it must be a weary business trying to mend the irremediable. (No, I am
NOT glancing at the whitewashing of Mary.)

[Here may be added two later letters bearing in part upon the same
subject:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, March 23, 1894.

Dear Sir,

I ought to have thanked you before now for your letter about
Nietzsche's works, but I have not much working time, and I find
letter-writing a burden, which I am always trying to shirk.

I will look up Nietzsche, though I must confess that the profit I
obtain from German authors on speculative questions is not usually
great.

As men of research in positive science they are magnificently laborious
and accurate. But most of them have no notion of style, and seem to
compose their books with a pitchfork.

There are two very different questions which people fail to
discriminate. One is whether evolution accounts for morality, the other
whether the principle of evolution in general can be adopted as an
ethical principle.

The first, of course, I advocate, and have constantly insisted upon.
The second I deny, and reject all so-called evolutional ethics based
upon it.

I am yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Thomas Common, Esq.

Hodeslea, August 31, 1894.

Dear Professor Seth,

I have come to a stop in the issue of my essays for the present, and I
venture to ask your acceptance of the set which I have desired my
publishers to send you.

I hope that at present you are away somewhere, reading novels or
otherwise idling, in whatever may be your pet fashion.

But some day I want you to read the "Prolegomena" to the reprinted
Romanes Lecture.

Lately I have been re-reading Spinoza (much read and little understood
in my youth).

But that noblest of Jews must have planted no end of germs in my
brains, for I see that what I have to say is in principle what he had
to say, in modern language.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The following letters with reference to the long unfinished memoir on
"Spirula" for the "Challenger" reports tell their own story. Huxley was
very glad to find some competent person to finish the work which his
illness had incapacitated him from completing himself. It had been a
burden on his conscience; and now he gladly put all his plates and
experience at the disposal of Professor Pelseneer, though he had
nothing written and would not write anything. He had no wish to claim
even joint authorship for the completed paper; when the question was
first raised, he desired merely that it should be stated that such and
such drawings were made by him; but when Professor Pelseneer insisted
that both names should appear as joint authors, he consented to this
solution of the question.]

Hodeslea, September 17, 1893.

Dear Mr. Murray [Now K.C.B. Director of the "Reports of the
'Challenger'."],

If the plates of Spirula could be turned to account a great burthen
would be taken off my mind.

Professor Pelseneer is every way competent to do justice to the
subject; and he has just what I needed, namely another specimen to
check and complete the work; and besides that, the physical capacity
for dissection and close observation, of which I have had nothing left
since my long illness.

Will you be so good as to tell Professor Pelseneer that I shall be glad
to place the plates at his disposal and to give him all the
explanations I can of the drawings, whenever it may suit his
convenience to take up the work?

Nothing beyond mere fragments remained of the specimen.

I am, yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

I return Pelseneer's letter.

Hodeslea, September 30, 1893.

Dear Professor Pelseneer,

I send herewith (by this post) a full explanation of the plates of
Spirula (including those of which you have unlettered copies). I trust
you will not be too much embarrassed by my bad handwriting, which is a
plague to myself as well as to other people.

My hope is that you will be good enough to consider these figures as
materials placed in your hands, to be made useful in the memoir on
Spirula, which I trust you will draw up, supplying the defects of my
work and checking its accuracy.

You will observe that a great deal remains to be done. The muscular
system is untouched; the structure and nature of the terminal
circumvallate papilla have to be made out; the lingual teeth must be
re-examined; and the characters of the male determined. If I recollect
rightly, Owen published something about the last point.

If I can be of any service to you in any questions that arise, I shall
be very glad; but as I am putting the trouble of the work on your
shoulders, I wish you to have the credit of it.

So far as I am concerned, all that is needful is to say that such and
such drawings were made by me.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Hodeslea, October 12, 1893.

Dear Professor Pelseneer,

I am very glad to hear from you that the homology of the cephalopod
arms with the gasteropod foot is now generally admitted. When I
advocated that opinion in my memoir on the "Morphology of the Cephalous
Mollusca," some forty years ago, it was thought a great heresy.

As to publication; I am quite willing to agree to whatever arrangement
you think desirable, so long as you are kind enough to take all trouble
(but that of "consulting physician") off my shoulders. Perhaps putting
both names to the memoir, as you suggest, will be the best way. I
cannot undertake to write anything, but if you think I can be of any
use as an adviser or critic, do not hesitate to demand my services.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Although in February he had stayed several days in town with the
Donnellys, who "take as much care of me as if I were a piece of old
china," and had attended a levee and a meeting of his London University
Association, had listened with interest to a lecture of Professor
Dewar, who "made liquid oxygen by the pint," and dined at Marlborough
House, the influenza had prevented him during the spring from
fulfilling several engagements in London; but after his return from
Oxford he began to recruit in the fine weather, and found delightful
occupation in putting up a rockery in the garden for his pet Alpine
plants.

In mid June he writes to his wife, then on a visit to one of her
daughters:--]

What a little goose you are to go having bad dreams about me--who am
like a stalled ox--browsing in idle comfort--in fact, idle is no word
for it. Sloth is the right epithet. I can't get myself to do anything
but potter in the garden, which is looking lovely.

On June 21 he went to Cambridge for the Harvey Celebration at Gonville
and Caius College, and made a short speech.]

The dinner last night [he writes] was a long affair, and I was the last
speaker; but I got through my speech very well, and was heard by
everybody, I am told.

[But as is the way with influenza, it was thrown off in the summer only
to return the next winter, and on the eve of the Royal Society
Anniversary Dinner he writes to Sir M. Foster:--]

I am in rather a shaky and voiceless condition, and unless I am more up
to the mark to-morrow morning I shall have to forgo the dinner, and,
what is worse, the chat with you afterwards.

[One consequence of the spring attack of influenza was that this year
he went once more to the Maloja, staying there from July 21 to August
25.]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, July 9, 1893.

My dear Hooker,

What has happened to the x meeting you proposed? However, it does not
matter much to me now, as Hames, who gave me a thorough overhauling in
London, has packed me off to the Maloja again, and we start, if we can,
on the 17th.

It is a great nuisance, but the dregs of influenza and the hot weather
between them have brought the weakness of my heart to the front, and I
am gravitating to the condition in which I was five or six years ago.
So I must try the remedy which was so effectual last time.

We are neither of us very fit, and shall have to be taken charge of by
a courier. Fancy coming to that!

Let me be a warning to you, my dear old man. Don't go giving lectures
at Oxford and making speeches at Cambridge, and above all things don't,
oh don't go getting influenza, the microbes of which would be seen
under a strong enough microscope to have this form.

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