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

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I need not say what I think about your action in the matter, my
faithful old friend. With our love to you both.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

I suppose you are all right again, as you write from the R.S. Liver
permitting I shall attend meeting and dinner. It is very odd that the
Medal should come along with my pronouncement in "Nature", which I hope
you like. I cut out rather a stinging paragraph at the end.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, November 11, 1894.

My dear Donnelly,

Why on earth did I not answer your letter before? Echo (being Irish)
says, "Because of your infernal bad habit of putting off; which is
growing upon you, you wretched old man."

Of course I shall be very glad if anything can be done for S--. Howes
has written to me about him since your letter arrived--and I am
positively going to answer his epistle. It's Sunday morning, and I feel
good.

You will have seen that the R.S. has been giving me the Darwin Medal,
though I gave as broad a hint as was proper the last time I spoke at
the Anniversary, that it ought to go to the young men. Nevertheless,
with ordinary inconsistency of the so-called "rational animal," I am
well pleased.

I hope you will be at the dinner, and would ask you to be my guest--but
as I thought my boys and boys-in-law would like to be there, I have
already exceeded my lawful powers of invitation, and had to get a
dispensation from Michael Foster.

I suppose I shall be like a horse that "stands at livery" for some time
after--but it is positively my last appearance on any stage.

We were very glad to hear from Lady Donnelly that you had had a good
and effectual holiday. With
our love.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

I return Howes' letter in case you want it. I see I need not write to
him again after all. Three cheers!

Please give Lady Donnelly this. A number of estimable members of her
sex have flown at me for writing what I thought was a highly
complimentary letter. But SHE will be just, I know.

"The best of women are apt to be a little weak in the great practical
arts of give-and-take, and putting up with a beating, and a little too
strong in their belief in the efficacy of government. Men learn about
these things in the ordinary course of their business; women have no
chance in home life, and the boards and councils will be capital
schools for them. Again, in the public interest it will be well; women
are more naturally economical than men, and have none of our false
shame about looking after pence. Moreover, they don't job for any but
their lovers, husbands, and children, so that we know the worst."

[The speech at the Royal Society Anniversary dinner--which he evidently
enjoyed making--was a fine piece of speaking, and quite carried away
the audience, whether in the gentle depreciation of his services to
science, or in his profession of faith in the methods of science and
the final triumph of the doctrine of evolution, whatever theories of
its operation might be adopted or discarded in the course of further
investigation.

I quote from the "Times" report of the speech:--]

But the most difficult task that remains is that which concerns myself.
It is 43 years ago this day since the Royal Society did me the honour
to award me a Royal medal, and thereby determined my career. But,
having long retired into the position of a veteran, I confess that I
was extremely astonished--I honestly also say that I was extremely
pleased to receive the announcement that you had been good enough to
award to me the Darwin Medal. But you know the Royal Society, like all
things in this world, is subject to criticism. I confess that with the
ingrained instincts of an old official that which arose in my mind
after the reception of the information that I had been thus
distinguished was to start an inquiry which I suppose suggests itself
to every old official--How can my Government be justified? In
reflecting upon what had been my own share in what are now very largely
ancient transactions, it was perfectly obvious to me that I had no such
claims as those of Mr. Wallace. It was perfectly clear to me that I had
no such claims as those of my lifelong friend Sir Joseph Hooker, who
for 25 years placed all his great sources of knowledge, his sagacity,
his industry, at the disposition of his friend Darwin. And really, I
begin to despair of what possible answer could be given to the critics
whom the Royal Society, meeting as it does on November 30, has lately
been very apt to hear about on December 1. Naturally there occurred to
my mind that famous and comfortable line, which I suppose has helped so
many people under like circumstances, "They also serve who only stand
and wait." I am bound to confess that the standing and waiting, so far
as I am concerned, to which I refer, has been of a somewhat peculiar
character. I can only explain it, if you will permit me to narrate a
story which came to me in my old nautical days, and which, I believe,
has just as much foundation as a good deal of other information which I
derived at the same period from the same source. There was a merchant
ship in which a member of the Society of Friends had taken passage, and
that ship was attacked by a pirate, and the captain thereupon put into
the hands of the member of the Society of Friends a pike, and desired
him to take part in the subsequent action, to which, as you may
imagine, the reply was that he would do nothing of the kind; but he
said that he had no objection to stand and wait at the gangway. He did
stand and wait with the pike in his hands, and when the pirates mounted
and showed themselves coming on board he thrust his pike with the sharp
end forward into the persons who were mounting, and he said, "Friend,
keep on board thine own ship." It is in that sense that I venture to
interpret the principle of standing and waiting to which I have
referred. I was convinced as firmly as I have ever been convinced of
anything in my life, that the "Origin of Species" was a ship laden with
a cargo of rich value, and which, if she were permitted to pursue her
course, would reach a veritable scientific Golconda, and I thought it
my duty, however naturally averse I might be to fighting, to bid those
who would disturb her beneficent operations to keep on board their own
ship. If it has pleased the Royal Society to recognise such poor
services as I may have rendered in that capacity, I am very glad,
because I am as much convinced now as I was 34 years ago that the
theory propounded by Mr. Darwin--I mean that which he propounded, not
that which has been reported to be his by too many ill-instructed, both
friends and foes--has never yet been shown to be inconsistent with any
positive observations, and if I may use a phrase which I know has been
objected to, and which I use in a totally different sense from that in
which it was first proposed by its first propounder, I do believe that
on all grounds of pure science it "holds the field," as the only
hypothesis at present before us which has a sound scientific
foundation. It is quite possible that you will apply to me the remark
that has often been applied to persons in such a position as mine, that
we are apt to exaggerate the importance of that to which our lives have
been more or less devoted. But I am sincerely of opinion that the views
which were propounded by Mr. Darwin 34 years ago may be understood
hereafter as constituting an epoch in the intellectual history of the
human race. They will modify the whole system of our thought and
opinion, our most intimate convictions. But I do not know, I do not
think anybody knows, whether the particular views which he held will be
hereafter fortified by the experience of the ages which come after us;
but of this thing I am perfectly certain, that the present course of
things has resulted from the feeling of the smaller men who have
followed him that they are incompetent to bend the bow of Ulysses, and
in consequence many of them are seeking their salvation in mere
speculation. Those who wish to attain to some clear and definite
solution of the great problems which Mr. Darwin was the first person to
set before us in later times must base themselves upon the facts which
are stated in his great work, and, still more, must pursue their
inquiries by the methods of which he was so brilliant an exemplar
throughout the whole of his life. You must have his sagacity, his
untiring search after the knowledge of fact, his readiness always to
give up a preconceived opinion to that which was demonstrably true,
before you can hope to carry his doctrines to their ultimate issue; and
whether the particular form in which he has put them before us may be
such as is finally destined to survive or not is more, I venture to
think, than anybody is capable at this present moment of saying. But
this one thing is perfectly certain--that it is only by pursuing his
methods, by that wonderful single-mindedness, devotion to truth,
readiness to sacrifice all things for the advance of definite
knowledge, that we can hope to come any nearer than we are at present
to the truths which he struggled to attain.

To Sir J.D. Hooker.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, December 4, 1894.

My dear old Man,

See the respect I have for your six years' seniority! I wished you had
been at the dinner, but was glad you were not. Especially as next
morning there was a beastly fog, out of which I bolted home as fast as
possible.

I shall have to give up these escapades. They knock me up for a week
afterwards. And really it is a pity, just as I have got over my horror
of public speaking, and find it very amusing. But I suppose I should
gravitate into a bore as old fellows do, and so it is as well I am kept
out of temptation.

I will try to remember what I said at the "Nature" dinner. I scolded
the young fellows pretty sharply for their slovenly writing. [A brief
report of this speech is to be found in the "British Medical Journal"
for December 8, 1894, page 1262.]

There will be a tenth volume of Essays some day, and an Index rerum. Do
you remember how you scolded me for being too speculative in my maiden
lecture on Animal Individuality forty odd years ago? "On revient
toujours," or, to put it another way, "The dog returns to his etc. etc."

So I am deep in philosophy, grovelling through Diogenes
Laertius--Plutarch's "Placita" and sich--and often wondering whether
the schoolmasters have any better ground for maintaining that Greek is
a finer language than English than the fact that they can't write the
latter dialect.

So far as I can see, my faculties are as good (including memory for
anything that is not useful) as they were fifty years ago, but I can't
work long hours, or live out of fresh air. Three days of London bowls
me over.

I expect you are in much the same case. But you seem to be able to
stoop over specimens in a way impossible to me. It is that incapacity
has made me give up dissection and microscopic work. I do a lot on my
back, and I can tell you that the latter posture is an immense economy
of strength. Indeed, when my heart was troublesome, I used to spend my
time either in active outdoor exercise or horizontally.

The Stracheys were here the other day, and it was a great pleasure to
us to see them. I think he has had a very close shave with that
accident. There is nobody whom I should more delight to honour--a right
good man all round--but I am not competent to judge of his work. You
are, and I do not see why you should not suggest it. I would give him a
medal for being R. Strachey, but probably the Council would make
difficulties.

By the way, do you see the "Times" has practically climbed down about
the Royal Society--came down backwards like a bear, growling all the
time? I don't think we shall have any more first of December criticisms.

Lord help you through all this screed. With our love to you both.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.H. Huxley.

Abram, Abraham became
By will divine;
Let pickled Brian's name
Be changed to Brine!
"Poetae Minores".

Poor Brian.--Brutal jest!

[(Sir Joseph's son, Brian, had fallen into a pan of brine.)

The following was written to a friend who had alluded to his painful
recollection of a former occasion when he was Huxley's guest at the
anniversary dinner of the Royal Society, and was hastily summoned from
it to find his wife dying.]

I fully understand your feeling about the R.S. Dinner. I have not
forgotten the occasion when you were my guest: still less my brief
sight of you when I called the next day.

These things are the "lachrymae rerum"--the abysmal griefs hidden under
the current of daily life, and seemingly forgotten, till now and then
they come up to the surface--a flash of agony--like the fish that jumps
in a calm pool.

One has one's groan and goes to work again.

If I knew of anything else for it, I would tell you; but all my
experience ends in the questionable thanksgiving, "It's lucky it's no
worse."

With which bit of practical philosophy, and our love, believe me, ever
yours affectionately,

T.H. Huxley.

[Before speaking of his last piece of work, in the vain endeavour to
complete which he exposed himself to his old enemy, influenza, I shall
give several letters of miscellaneous interest.

The first is in reply to Lord Farrer's inquiry as to where he could
obtain a fuller account of the subject tersely discussed in the chapter
he had contributed to the "Life of Owen". ("Which," wrote Lord Farrer,
"is just what I wanted as an outline of the Biological and
Morphological discussion of the last 100 years. But it is 'Pemmican' to
an aged and enfeebled digestion. Is there such a thing as a diluted
solution of it in the shape of any readable book?")]

Hodeslea, January 26, 1895.

My dear Farrer,

Miserable me! Having addressed myself to clear off a heap of letters
that have been accumulating, I find I have not answered an inquiry of
yours of nearly a month's standing. I am sorry to say that I cannot
tell you of any book (readable or otherwise) that will convert my
"pemmican" into decent broth for you.

There are histories of zoology and of philosophical anatomy, but they
all of them seem to me to miss the point (which you have picked out of
the pemmican). Indeed, that is just why I took such a lot of pains over
these 50 or 60 pages. And I am immensely tickled by the fact that among
all the critical notices I have seen, not a soul sees what I have been
driving at as you have done. I really wish you would write a notice of
it, just to show these Gigadibses (vide Right Reverend Blougram) what
blind buzzards they are! [See Browning's "Bishop Blougram's
Apology":--"Gigadibs the literary man" with his
Abstract intellectual plan of life
Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws.]

Enter a maid. "Please sir, Mrs. Huxley says she would be glad if you
would go out in the sun." "All right, Allen." Anecdote for your next
essay on Government!

The fact is, I have been knocked up ever since Tuesday, when our
University Deputation came off; and my good wife (who is laid up
herself) suspects me (not without reason) of failing to take advantage
of a gleam of sunshine.

By the way, can you help us over the University business? Lord Rosebery
is favourable, and there is absolutely nobody on the other side except
sundry Philistines, who, having got their degrees, are desirous of
inflating their market value.

Yours very truly,

T.H. Huxley.

[The next is in answer to an appeal for a subscription, from the Church
Army.]

January 26, 1895.

I regret that I am unable to contribute to the funds of the Church Army.

I hold it to be my duty to do what I can for the cases of distress of
which I have direct knowledge; and I am glad to be able now and then to
give timely aid to the industrious and worthy people with whom, as a
householder, I am brought into personal relation; and who are so often
engaged in a noiseless and unpitied but earnest struggle to do well.

In my judgment, a domestic servant, who is perhaps giving half her
wages to support her old parents, is more worthy of help than
half-a-dozen Magdalens.

Under these circumstances, you will understand that such funds as are
at my disposal are already fully engaged.

[The following is to a gentleman--an American, I think--who sent him a
long manuscript, an extraordinary farrago of nonsense, to read and
criticise, and help to publish. But as he seemed to have acted in sheer
simplicity, he got an answer:--]

Hodeslea, January 31, 1895.

Dear Sir,

I should have been glad if you had taken the ordinary, and, I think,
convenient course of writing for my permission before you sent the
essay which has reached me, and which I return by this post. I should
then have had the opportunity of telling you that I do not undertake to
read, or take any charge of such matters, and we should both have been
spared some trouble.

I the more regret this, since being unwilling to return your work
without examination, I have looked at it, and feel bound to give you
the following piece of advice, which I fear may be distasteful, as good
counsel generally is.

Lock up your essay. For two years--if possible, three--read no popular
expositions of science, but devote yourself to a course of sound
PRACTICAL instruction in elementary physics, chemistry, and biology.

Then re-read your essay; do with it as you think best; and, if
possible, regard a little more kindly than you are likely to do at
present, yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The following passage from a letter to Sir J.D. Hooker refers to a
striking discovery made by Dubois:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, February 14, 1895.

The Dutchmen seem to have turned up something like the "missing link"
in Java, according to a paper I have just received from Marsh. I expect
he was a Socratic party, with his hair rather low down on his forehead
and warty cheeks.

Pithecanthropus erectus Dubois (fossil)

rather Aino-ish about the body, small in the calf, and cheese-cutting
in the shins. Le voici!

CHAPTER 3.14.

1895.

Two months of almost continuous frost, during which the thermometer
fell below zero, marked the winter of 1894-95. Tough, if not strong, as
Huxley's constitution was, this exceptional cold, so lowering to the
vitality of age, accentuated the severity of the illness which followed
in the train of influenza, and at last undermined even his powers of
resistance.

But until the influenza seized him, he was more than usually vigorous
and brilliant. He was fatigued, but not more so than he expected, by
attending a deputation to the Prime Minister in the depth of January,
and delivering a speech on the London University question; and in
February he was induced to write a reply to the attack upon agnosticism
contained in Mr. Arthur Balfour's "Foundations of Belief". Into this he
threw himself with great energy, all the more because the notices in
the daily press were likely to give the reading public a wrong
impression as to its polemic against his own position. Mr. Wilfrid Ward
gives an account of a conversation with him on this subject:--

Some one had sent me Mr. A.J. Balfour's book on the "Foundations of
Belief" early in February 1895. We were very full of it, and it was the
theme of discussion on the 17th of February, when two friends were
lunching with us. Not long after luncheon, Huxley came in, and seemed
in extraordinary spirits, he began talking of Erasmus and Luther,
expressing a great preference for Erasmus, who would, he said, have
impregnated the Church with culture, and brought it abreast of the
thought of the times, while Luther concentrated attention on individual
mystical doctrines. "It was very trying for Erasmus to be identified
with Luther, from whom he differed absolutely. A man ought to be ready
to endure persecution for what he does hold; but it is hard to be
persecuted for what you don't hold." I said that I thought his estimate
of Erasmus's attitude towards the Papacy coincided with Professor R.C.
Jebb's. He asked if I could lend him Jebb's Rede Lecture on the
subject. I said that I had not got it at hand, but I added, "I can lend
you another book, which I think you ought to read--Balfour's
'Foundations of Belief'."

He at once became extremely animated, and spoke of it as those who have
read his criticisms, published in the following month, would expect.]
"You need not lend me that. I have exercised my mind with it a good
deal already. Mr. Balfour ought to have acquainted himself with the
opinions of those he attacks. One has no objection to being abused for
what one DOES hold, as I said of Erasmus; at least, one is prepared to
put up with it. An attack on us by some one who understood our position
would do all of us good--myself included. But Mr. Balfour has acted
like the French in 1870: he has gone to war without any ordnance maps,
and without having surveyed the scene of the campaign. No human being
holds the opinions he speaks of as 'Naturalism.' He is a good debater.
He knows the value of a word. The word 'Naturalism' has a bad sound and
unpleasant associations. It would tell against us in the House of
Commons, and so it will with his readers. 'Naturalism' contrasts with
'supernaturalism.' He has not only attacked us for what we don't hold,
but he has been good enough to draw out a catechism for 'us wicked
people,' to teach us what we MUST hold."

[It was rather difficult to get him to particulars, but we did so by
degrees. He said], "Balfour uses the word phenomena as applying simply
to the outer world and not to the inner world. The only people his
attack would hold good of would be the Comtists, who deny that
psychology is a science. They may be left out of account. They advocate
the crudest eighteenth-century materialism. All the empiricists, from
Locke onwards, make the observation of the phenomena of the mind itself
quite separate from the study of mere sensation. No man in his senses
supposes that the sense of beauty, or the religious feelings [this with
a courteous bow to a priest who was present], or the sense of moral
obligation, are to be accounted for in terms of sensation, or come to
us through sensation." [I said that, as I understood it, I did not
think Mr. Balfour supposed they would acknowledge the position he
ascribed to them, and that one of his complaints was that they did not
work out their premises to their logical conclusions. I added that so
far as one of Mr. Balfour's chief points was concerned--the existence
of the external world--Mill was almost the only man on their side in
this century who had faced the problem frankly, and he had been driven
to say that all men can know is that there are "permanent possibilities
of sensation." He did not seem inclined to pursue the question of an
external world, but said that though Mill's "Logic" was very good,
empiricists were not bound by all his theories.

He characterised the book as a very good and even brilliant piece of
work from a literary point of view; but as a helpful contribution to
the great controversy, the most disappointing he had ever read. I said,
"There has been no adverse criticism of it yet." He answered with
emphasis], "No! BUT THERE SOON WILL BE." ["From you?" I asked.] "I let
out no secrets," [was the reply.

He then talked with great admiration and affection of Mr. Balfour's
brother, Francis. His early death, and W.K. Clifford's (Huxley said),
had been the greatest loss to science--not only in England, but in the
world--in our time.] "Half a dozen of us old fogies could have been
better spared." [He remembered Frank Balfour as a boy at [Harrow] and
saw his unusual talent there.] "Then my friend, Michael Foster, took
him up at Cambridge, and found out that he had real genius for biology.
I used to say there was science in the blood, but this new book of his
brother's," [he added, smiling], "shows I was wrong."

Apropos to his remark about the Comtists, one of the company pointed
out that in later life Comte recognised a science of "the individual,"
equivalent to what Huxley meant by psychology.] "That," [he replied],
"was due to the influence of Clotilde de Vaux. You see," [he added,
with a kind of Sir Charles Grandison bow to my wife], "what power your
sex may have." [As Huxley was going out of the house, I said to him
that Father A.B. (the priest who had been present) had not expected to
find himself in his company.] "No! I trust he had plenty of holy water
with him," [was the reply.

...After he had gone, we were all agreed as to the extraordinary vigour
and brilliancy he had shown. Some one said, "He is like a man who is
what the Scotch call 'fey.'" We laughed at the idea, but we naturally
recalled the remark later on.

The story of how the article was written is told in the following
letters. It was suggested by Mr. Knowles, and undertaken after perusal
of the review of the book in the "Times". Huxley intended to have the
article ready for the March number of the "Nineteenth Century", but it
grew longer than he had meant it to be, and partly for this reason,
partly for fear lest the influenza, then raging at Eastbourne, might
prevent him from revising the whole thing at once, he divided it into
two instalments. He writes to one daughter on March 1:--]

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