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

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I have no notes of it. I wrote something on Tuesday night, but this
draft is no good, as it was metamorphosed two or three times over on
Wednesday.

[One who was present and aware of the whole situation once described
how he marked the eyes of another interested member of the audience,
who knew that Huxley was to speak, but not what he meant to say,
turning anxiously whenever the president reached a critical phrase in
the address, to see how he would take it. But the expression of his
face told nothing; only those who knew him well could infer a
suppressed impatience from a little twitching of his foot.

Of this occasion Professor Henry F. Osborn, one of his old pupils,
writes in his "Memorial Tribute to Thomas H. Huxley" ("Transactions of
the N.Y. Acad. Society" volume 15):--

Huxley's last public appearance was at the meeting of the British
Association at Oxford. He had been very urgently invited to attend,
for, exactly a quarter of a century before, the Association had met at
Oxford, and Huxley had had his famous encounter with Bishop
Wilberforce. It was felt that the anniversary would be an historic one,
and incomplete without his presence, and so it proved to be. Huxley's
especial duty was to second the vote of thanks for the Marquis of
Salisbury's address--one of the invariable formalities of the opening
meetings of the Association. The meeting proved to be the greatest one
in the history of the Association. The Sheldonian Theatre was packed
with one of the most distinguished scientific audiences ever brought
together, and the address of the Marquis was worthy of the occasion.
The whole tenor of it was the unknown in science. Passing from the
unsolved problems of astronomy, chemistry, and physics, he came to
biology. With delicate irony he spoke of the] "COMFORTING WORD,
EVOLUTION," [and passing to the Weismannian controversy, implied that
the diametrically opposed views so frequently expressed nowadays threw
the whole process of evolution into doubt. It was only too evident that
the Marquis himself found no comfort in evolution, and even entertained
a suspicion as to its probability. It was well worth the whole journey
to Oxford to watch Huxley during this portion of the address. In his
red doctor-of-laws gown, placed upon his shoulders by the very body of
men who had once referred to him as "a Mr. Huxley" (This phrase was
actually used by the "Times".), he sank deeper into his chair upon the
very front of the platform and restlessly tapped his foot. His
situation was an unenviable one. He had to thank an ex-Prime Minister
of England and present Chancellor of Oxford University for an address,
the sentiments of which were directly against those he himself had been
maintaining for twenty-five years. He said afterwards that when the
proofs of the Marquis's address were put into his hands the day before,
he realised that he had before him a most delicate and difficult task.
Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson) one of the most distinguished living
physicists, first moved the vote of thanks, but his reception was
nothing to the tremendous applause which greeted Huxley in the heart of
that University whose cardinal principles he had so long been opposing.
Considerable anxiety had been felt by his friends lest his voice should
fail to fill the theatre, for it had signally failed during his Romanes
Lecture delivered in Oxford the year before, but when Huxley arose he
reminded you of a venerable gladiator returning to the arena after
years of absence. He raised his figure and his voice to its full
height, and, with one foot turned over the edge of the step, veiled an
unmistakable and vigorous protest in the most gracious and dignified
speech of thanks.

Throughout the subsequent special sessions of this meeting Huxley could
not appear. He gave the impression of being aged but not infirm, and no
one realised that he had spoken his last word as champion of the law of
evolution. (See, however, below.)

Such criticism of the address as he actually expressed reappears in the
leading article, "Past and Present," which he wrote for "Nature" to
celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of its foundation (November 1,
1894).

The essence of the criticism is that with whatever demonstrations of
hostility to parts of the Darwinian theory Lord Salisbury covered the
retreat of his party from their ancient positions, he admitted the
validity of the main points for which Darwin contended.]

The essence of this great work (the "Origin of Species") may be stated
summarily thus: it affirms the mutability of species and the descent of
living forms, separated by differences of more than varietal value,
from one stock. That is to say, it propounds the doctrine of evolution
as far as biology is concerned. So far, we have merely a restatement of
a doctrine which, in its most general form, is as old as scientific
speculation. So far, we have the two theses which were declared to be
scientifically absurd and theologically damnable by the Bishop of
Oxford in
1860.

It is also of these two fundamental doctrines that, at the meeting of
the British Association in 1894, the Chancellor of the University of
Oxford spoke as follows:--

"Another lasting and unquestioned effect has resulted from Darwin's
work. He has, as a matter of fact, disposed of the doctrine of the
immutability of species..."

"Few now are found to doubt that animals separated by differences far
exceeding those that distinguished what we know as species have yet
descended from common ancestors."

Undoubtedly, every one conversant with the state of biological science
is aware that general opinion has long had good reason for making the
volte face thus indicated. It is also mere justice to Darwin to say
that this "lasting and unquestioned" revolution is, in a very real
sense, his work. And yet it is also true that, if all the conceptions
promulgated in the "Origin of Species" which are peculiarly Darwinian
were swept away, the theory of the evolution of animals and plants
would not be in the slightest degree shaken.

[The strain of this single effort was considerable] "I am frightfully
tired," [he wrote on August 11,] "but the game was worth the candle."

[Letters to Sir J.D. Hooker and to Professor Lewis Campbell contain his
own account of the affair. The reference in the latter to the priests
is in reply to Professor Campbell's story of one of Jowett's last
sayings. They had been talking of the collective power of the
priesthood to resist the introduction of new ideas; a long pause
ensued, and the old man seemed to have slipped off into a doze, when he
suddenly broke the silence by saying,] "The priests will always be too
many for you."

The Spa, Tunbridge Wells, August 12, 1894.

My dear Hooker,

I wish, as everybody wished, you had been with us on Wednesday evening
at Oxford when we settled accounts for 1860, and got a receipt in full
from the Chancellor of the University, President of the Association,
and representative of ecclesiastical conservatism and orthodoxy.

I was officially asked to second the vote of thanks for the address,
and got a copy of it the night before--luckily--for it was a kittle
business...

It was very queer to sit there and hear the doctrines you and I were
damned for advocating thirty-four years ago at Oxford, enunciated as
matters of course--disputed by no reasonable man!--in the Sheldonian
Theatre by the Chancellor...

Of course there is not much left of me, and it will take a fortnight's
quiet at Eastbourne (whither we return on Tuesday next) to get right.
But it was a pleasant last flare-up in the socket!

With our love to you both.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.H. Huxley.

Hodeslea, August 18, 1894.

My dear Campbell,

I am setting you a good example. You and I are really too old friends
to go on wasting ink in honorary prefixes.

I had a very difficult task at Oxford. The old Adam, of course,
prompted the tearing of the address to pieces, which would have been a
very easy job, especially the latter half of it. But as that procedure
would not have harmonised well with the function of a seconder of a
vote of thanks, and as, moreover, Lord S. was very just and good in his
expressions about Darwin, I had to convey criticism in the shape of
praise.

It was very curious to me to sit there and hear the Chancellor of the
University accept, as a matter of course, the doctrines for which the
Bishop of Oxford coarsely anathematised us thirty-four years earlier. E
pur si muove!

I am not afraid of the priests in the long-run. Scientific method is
the white ant which will slowly but surely destroy their
fortifications. And the importance of scientific method in modern
practical life--always growing and increasing--is the guarantee for the
gradual emancipation of the ignorant upper and lower classes, the
former of whom especially are the strength of the priests.

My wife had a very bad attack of her old enemy some weeks ago, and she
thought she would not be able to go to Oxford. However, she picked up
in the wonderfully elastic way she has, and I believe was less done-up
than I when we left on the Friday morning. I was glad the wife was
there, as the meeting gave me a very kind reception, and it was
probably the last flare-up in the socket.

The Warden of Merton took great care of us, but it was sad to think of
the vacuity of Balliol.

Please remember me very kindly to Father Steffens and the Steeles, and
will you tell Herr Walther we are only waiting for a balloon to visit
the hotel again?

With our affectionate regards to Mrs. Campbell and yourself.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Here also belong several letters of miscellaneous interest. One is to
Mrs. Lewis Campbell at the Maloja.]

Hodeslea, August 20, 1894.

My dear Mrs. Campbell,

What a pity I am not a telepath! I might have answered your inquiry in
the letter I was writing to your husband yesterday.

The flower I found on the island in Sils Lake was a cross between
Gentiana lutea and Gentiana punctata--nothing new, but interesting in
many ways as a natural hybrid.

As to baptizing the island, I am not guilty of usurping ecclesiastical
functions to that extent. I have a notion that the island has a name
already, but I cannot recollect it. Walther would know.

My wife had a bad attack, and we were obliged to give up some visits we
had projected. But she got well enough to go to Oxford with me for a
couple of days, and really stood the racket better than I did.

At present she is fairly well, and I hope the enemy may give her a long
respite. The Colliers come to us at the end of this month, and that
will do her good.

With our affectionate regards to you both and remembrances to our
friends.

Ever yours very truly,

T.H. Huxley.

[The first of the following set refers to a lively piece of nonsense
which Huxley wrote just before going to stay with the Romanes' at
Oxford on the occasion of the Romanes Lecture. (See above.) After
Professor Romanes' death, Mrs. Romanes asked leave to print it in the
biography of her husband. In the other letters, Huxley gives his
consent, but, with his usual care for the less experienced, tried to
prevent any malicious perversion of the fun which might put her in a
false position.]

To Mrs. Romanes.

Hodeslea, September 20, 1894.

I do not think I can possibly have any objection to your using my
letter if you think it worth while--but perhaps you had better let me
look at it, for I remember nothing about it--and my letters to people
whom I trust are sometimes more plain-spoken than polite about things
and men. You know at first there was some talk of my possibly supplying
Gladstone's place in case of his failure, and I would not be sure of my
politeness in that quarter!

Pray do not suppose that your former letter was other than deeply
interesting and touching to me. I had more than half a mind to reply to
it, but hesitated with a man's horror of touching a wound he cannot
heal.

And then I got a bad bout of "liver," from which I am just picking up.

Hodeslea, September 22, 1894.

It's rather a rollicking epistle, I must say, but as my wife (who sends
her love) says she thinks she is the only person who has a right to
complain (and she does not), I do not know why it should not be
published.

P.S.--I fancy very few people will catch the allusion about not
contradicting me. But perhaps it would be better to take the opinion of
some impartial judge on that point.

I do not care the least on my own account, but I see my words might be
twisted into meaning that you had told me something about your previous
guest, and that I referred to what you had said.

Of course you had done nothing of the kind, but as a wary old fox,
experienced sufferer from the dodges of the misrepresenter, I feel
bound not to let you get into any trouble if I can help it.

A regular lady's P.S. this.

P.S.--Letter returned herewith.

To Mr. Leslie Stephen.

Hodeslea, October 16, 1894.

My dear Stephen,

I am very glad you like to have my omnium gatherum, and think the
better of it for gaining me such a pleasant letter of acknowledgment.

It is a great loss to me to be cut off from all my old friends, but
sticking closely to my hermitage, with fresh air and immense quantities
of rest, have become the conditions of existence for me, and one must
put up with them.

I have not paid all the debt incurred in my Oxford escapade yet--the
last "little bill" being a sharp attack of lumbago, out of which I hope
I have now emerged. But my deafness alone should bar me from decent
society. I have not the moral courage to avoid making shots at what
people say, so as not to bore them; and the results are sometimes
disastrous.

I don't see there is any real difference between us. You are charitable
enough to overlook the general immorality of the cosmos on the score of
its having begotten morality in one small part of its domain.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

To Mr. G-- S--. [See above.]

Hodeslea, October 31, 1894.

Dear Mr. S--,

"Liver," "lumbago," and other small ills the flesh is heir to, have
been making me very lazy lately, especially about letter-writing.

You have got into the depths where the comprehensible ends in the
incomprehensible--where the symbols which may be used with confidence
so far begin to get shaky.

It does not seem to me absolutely necessary that matter should be
composed of solid particles. The "atoms" may be persistent whirlpools
of a continuous "substance"--which substance, if at rest, could not
affect us (all sensory impression being dependent on motion) and
subsequently would FOR US = 0. The evolution of matter would be the
getting under weigh of this "nothing for us" until it became the
"something for us," the different motions of which give us the mental
states we call the qualities of things.

But it needs a very steady head to walk safely among these abysses of
thought, and the only use of letting the mind range among them is as a
corrective to the hasty dogmatism of the so-called materialists, who
talk just as glibly of that of which they know nothing as the most
bigoted of the orthodox.

[Here also stand two letters to Lord Farrer, one before, the other
after, his address at the Statistical Society on the Relations between
Morals, Economics and Statistics, which touch on several philosophical
and social questions, always, to his mind, intimately connected, and
wherein wrong modes of thought indubitably lead to wrong modes of
action. Noteworthy is a defence of the fundamental method of Political
Economy, however much its limitations might be forgotten by some of its
exponents. The reference to the Church agitation to introduce dogmatic
teaching into the elementary schools has also a lasting interest.]

Hodeslea, November 6, 1894.

My dear Farrer,

Whenever you get over the optimism of your youthful constitution (I
wish I were endowed with that blessing) you will see that the Gospels
and I are right about the Devil being "Prince" (note the
distinction--not "king") of the Cosmos.

The a priori road to scientific, political, and all other doctrine is
H.R.H. Satan's invention--it is the intellectual, broad, and easy path
which leadeth to Jehannum.

The king's road is the strait path of painful observation and
experiment, and few they be that enter thereon.

R.G. Latham, queerest of men, had singular flashes of insight now and
then. Forty years ago he gravely told me that the existence of the
Established Church was to his mind one of the best evidences of the
recency of the evolution of the human type from the simian.

How much there is to confirm this view in present public opinion and
the intellectual character of those who influence it!

It explains all your difficulties at once, and I regret that I do not
seem to have mentioned it at any of those mid-day symposia which were
so pleasant when you and I were younger.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

P.S.--Apropos of Athelstan Riley and his friends--I fool rather obliged
to them. I assented to the compromise (1) because I felt that English
opinion would not let us have the education of the masses at any
cheaper price; (2) because, with the Bible in lay hands, I was
satisfied that the teaching from it would gradually become modified
into harmony with common sense.

I do not doubt that this is exactly what has happened, and is the
ground of the alarm of the orthodox.

But I do not repent of the compromise in the least. Twenty years of
reasonably good primary education is "worth a mass."

Moreover the Diggleites stand to lose anyhow, and they will lose most
completely and finally if they win at the elections this month. So I am
rather inclined to hope they may.

Hodeslea, Staveley Road, Eastbourne, November 3, 1894.

My dear Mr. Clodd,

They say that the first thing an Englishman does when he is hard up for
money is to abstain from buying books. The first thing I do when I am
liver-y, lumbagy, and generally short of energy, is to abstain from
answering letters. And I am only just emerging from a good many weeks
of that sort of flabbiness and poverty.

Many thanks for your notice of Kidd's book. Some vile punsters called
it an attempt to put a Kid glove on the iron hand of Nature. I thought
it (I mean the book, not the pun) clever from a literary point of view,
and worthless from any other. You will see that I have been giving Lord
Salisbury a Roland for his Oliver in "Nature". But, as hinted, if we
only had been in Section D!

With my wife's and my kind regards and remembrances.

Ever yours very truly,

T.H. Huxley.

Athenaeum Club, December 19, 1894.

My dear Farrer,

I am indebted to you for giving the recording angel less trouble than
he might otherwise have had, on account of the worse than usual
unpunctuality of the London and Brighton this morning. For I have
utilised the extra time in reading and thinking over your very
interesting address.

Thanks for your protest against the mischievous a priori method, which
people will not understand is as gross an anachronism in social matters
as it would be in Hydrostatics. The so-called "Sociology" is
honeycombed with it, and it is hard to say who are worse, the
individualists or the collectivists. But in your just wrath don't
forget that there is such a thing as a science of social life, for
which, if the term had not been so hopelessly degraded, Politics is the
proper name.

Men are beings of a certain constitution, who, under certain
conditions, will as surely tend to act in certain ways as stones will
tend to fall if you leave them unsupported. The laws of their nature
are as invariable as the laws of gravitation, only the applications to
particular cases offer worse problems than the case of the three bodies.

The Political Economists have gone the right way to work--the way that
the physical philosopher follows in all complex affairs--by tracing out
the effects of one great cause of human action, the desire of wealth,
supposing it to be unchecked.

If they, or other people, have forgotten that there are other potent
causes of action which may interfere with this, it is no fault of
scientific method but only their own stupidity.

Hydrostatics is not a "dismal science," because water does not always
seek the lowest level--e.g. from a bottle turned upside down, if there
is a cork in the neck!

There is much need that somebody should do for what is vaguely called
"Ethics" just what the Political Economists have done. Settle the
question of what will be done under the unchecked action of certain
motives, and leave the problem of "ought" for subsequent consideration.

For, whatever they ought to do, it is quite certain the majority of men
will act as if the attainment of certain positive and negative
pleasures were the end of action.

We want a science of "Eubiotics" to tell us exactly what will happen if
human beings are exclusively actuated by the desire of well-being in
the ordinary sense. Of course the utilitarians have laid the
foundations of such a science, with the result that the nicknamer of
genius called this branch of science "pig philosophy," making just the
same blunder as when he called political economy "dismal science."

"Moderate well-being" may be no more the worthiest end of life than
wealth. But if it is the best to be had in this queer world--it may be
worth trying for.

But you will begin to wish the train had been PUNCTUAL!

Draw comfort from the fact that if error is always with us, it is, at
any rate, remediable. I am more hopeful than when I was young. Perhaps
life (like matrimony, as some say) should begin with a little aversion!

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Some years before this, a fund for a "Darwin Medal" had been
established in memory of the great naturalist, the medal to be awarded
biennially for researches in biology. With singular appropriateness,
the first award was made to Dr. A.R. Wallace, the joint propounder of
the theory of Natural Selection, whose paper, entrusted to Darwin's
literary sponsorship, caused the speedy publication of Darwin's own
long-continued researches and speculations. The second, with equal
appropriateness, was to Sir J.D. Hooker, both as a leader in science
and a helper and adviser of Darwin.

Huxley's own view of such scientific honours as medals and diplomas was
that they should be employed to stimulate for the future rather than to
reward for the past; and delighted as he was at the poetic justice of
these two awards, this justice once satisfied, he let his opinion be
known that thenceforward the Darwin Medal ought to be given only to
younger men. But when this year he found the Darwin Medal awarded to
himself "for his researches in biology and his long association with
Charles Darwin," he could not but be touched and gratified by this mark
of appreciation from his fellow-workers in science, this association in
one more scientific record with old allies and true friends--to "have
his niche in the Pantheon" next to Hooker and near to Darwin.

It was a rare instance of the fitness of things that the three men who
had done most to develop and to defend Darwin's ideas should live to
stand first in the list of the Darwin medalists; and Huxley felt this
to be a natural closing of a chapter in his life, a fitting occasion on
which to bid farewell to public life in the world of science. Almost at
the same moment another chapter in science reached its completion in
the "coming of age" of "Nature", a journal which, when scientific
interests at large had grown stronger, had succeeded in realising his
own earlier efforts to found a scientific organ, and with which he had
always been closely associated.

As mentioned above, he wrote for the November number an introductory
article called "Past and Present," comparing the state of scientific
thought of the day with that of twenty-five years before, when the
journal was first started. To celebrate the occasion, a dinner was to
be held this same month of all who had been associated with "Nature",
and this Huxley meant to attend, as well as the more important
anniversary dinner of the Royal Society on St. Andrew's Day.]

I have promised [he writes on November 6 to Sir M. Foster] to go to the
"Nature" dinner if I possibly can. Indeed I should be sorry to be away.
As to the Royal Society nothing short of being confined to bed will
stop me. And I shall be good for a few words after dinner.

Thereafter I hope not to appear again on any stage.

[His letter about the medal expresses his feelings as to the award.]

Hodeslea, November 2, 1894.

My dear Foster,

Didn't I tell the P.R.S., Secretaries, Treasurer, and all the Fellows
thereof, when I spoke about Hooker years ago, that thenceforth the
Darwin Medal was to be given to the young, and not to useless old
extinct volcanoes? I ought to be very angry with you all for coolly
ignoring my wise counsels.

But whether it is vanity or something a good deal better, I am not. One
gets chill old age, and it is very pleasant to be warmed up
unexpectedly even against one's injunctions. Moreover, my wife is very
pleased, not to say jubilant; and if I were made Archbishop of
Canterbury I should not be able to convince her that my services to
Theology were hardly of the sort to be rewarded in that fashion.

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