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

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I suppose my time will come; so I am "making hay while the sun shines"
(in point of fact it is raining and blowing a gale outside) and
finishing my counterblast to Balfour before it does come.

Love to all you poor past snivellers from an expectant sniveller.

[And to another:--]

I think the cavalry charge in this month's "Nineteenth" will amuse you.
The heavy artillery and the bayonets will be brought into play next
month.

Dean Stanley told me he thought being made a bishop destroyed a man's
moral courage. I am inclined to think that the practice of the methods
of political leaders destroys their intellect for all serious purposes.

No sooner was the first part safely sent off than the contingency he
had feared came to pass; only, instead of the influenza meaning
incapacity for a fortnight, an unlucky chill brought on bronchitis and
severe lung trouble. (As he wrote on February 28 to Sir M. Foster]: "If
I could compound for a few hours' neuralgia, I would not mind; but
those long weeks of debility make me very shy of the influenza demon.
Here we are practically isolated...I once asked Gordon why he didn't
have the African fever. 'Well,' he said, you see, fellows think they
shall have it, and they do. I didn't think so, and didn't get it.'
Exercise your thinking faculty to that extent.") The second part of the
article was never fully revised for press.]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, February 8, 1895.

My dear Knowles,

Your telegram came before I had looked at to-day's "Times" and the
article on Balfour's book, so I answered with hesitation.

Now I am inclined to think that the job may be well worth doing, in
that it will give me the opportunity of emphasising the distinction
between the view I hold and Spencer's, and perhaps of proving that
Balfour is an agnostic after my own heart. So please send the book.

Only if this infernal weather, which shrivels me up soul and body,
lasts, I do not know how long I may be over the business. However, you
tell me to take my own time.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, February 18, 1895.

My dear Knowles,

I send you by this post an instalment (the larger moiety) of my
article, which I should be glad to have set up at once IN SLIP, and
sent to me as speedily as may be. The rest shall follow in the course
of the next two or three days.

I am rather pleased with the thing myself, so it is probably not so
very good! But you will judge for yourself.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, February 19, 1895.

My dear Knowles,

We send our best congratulations to Mrs. Knowles and yourself on the
birth of a grand-daughter. I forget whether you have had any previous
experience of the "Art d'etre Grandpere" or not--but I can assure you,
from 14 such experiences, that it is easy and pleasant of acquirement,
and that the objects of it are veritable "articles de luxe," involving
much amusement and no sort of responsibility on the part of the
possessor.

You shall have the rest of my screed by to-morrow's post.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, February 20, 1895.

My dear Knowles,

Seven mortal hours have I been hard at work this day to try to keep my
promise to you, and as I find that impossible, I have struck work and
will see Balfour and his "Foundations", and even that ark of literature
the "Nineteenth", at Ballywack, before I do any more.

But the whole affair shall be sent by a morning's post to-morrow. I
have the proofs. I have found the thing getting too long for one paper,
and requiring far more care than I could put into the next two days--so
I propose to divide it, if you see no objection.

And there is another reason for this course. Influenza is raging here.
I hear of hundreds of cases, and if it comes my way, as it did before,
I go to bed and stop there--"the world forgetting and by the world
forgot"--until I am killed or cured. So you would not get your article.

As it stands, it is not a bad gambit. We will play the rest of the game
afterwards, D.V. and K.V.

Hope mother and baby are doing well.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, February 23, 1895, 12.30 P.M.

My dear Knowles,

I have just played and won as hard a match against time as I ever knew
in the days of my youth. The proofs, happily, arrived by the first
post, so I got to work at them before 9, polished them off by 12, and
put them into the post (myself) by 12.5. So you ought to have them by 6
P.M. And, to make your mind easy, I have just telegraphed to you to say
so. But, Lord's sake! let some careful eye run over the part of which I
have had no revise--for I am "capable de tout" in the way of
overlooking errors.

I am very glad you like the thing. The second instalment shall be no
worse.

I grieve to say that my estimation of Balfour, as a thinker, sinks
lower and lower, the further I go.

God help the people who think his book an important contribution to
thought! The Gigadibsians who say so are past divine assistance!

We are very glad to hear the grandchild and mother are getting on so
well.

Ever yours very truly,

T.H. Huxley.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, March 8, 1895.

My dear Knowles,

The proofs have just arrived, but I am sorry to say that (I believe for
the first time in our transactions) I shall have to disappoint you.

Just after I had sent off the manuscript influenza came down upon me
with a swoop. I went to bed and am there still, with no chance of
quitting it in a hurry. My wife is in the same case; item one of the
maids. The house is a hospital, and by great good fortune we have a
capital nurse.

Doctor says its a mild type, in which case I wonder what severe types
may be like. ("But in the matter of aches and pains, restless
paroxysms of coughing and general incapacity, I can give it a high
character for efficiency." [To M. Foster, March 7.]) I find coughing
continuously for fourteen hours or so a queer kind of mildness.

Could you put in an excuse on account of influenza?

Can't write any more.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, March 19, 1895.

My dear Knowles,

I am making use of the pen of my dear daughter and good nurse, in the
first place to thank you for your cheque, in the second place to say
that you must not look for the article this month. I haven't been out
of bed since the 1st, but they are fighting a battle with bronchitis
over my body.

Ever yours very faithfully,

For T.H.H., Sophy Huxley.

[The next four months were a period of painful struggle against
disease, borne with a patience and gentleness which was rare even in
the long experience of the trained nurses who tended him. To natural
toughness of constitution he added a power of will unbroken by the long
strain; and for the sake of others to whom his life meant so much, he
wished to recover and willed to do everything towards recovery. And so
he managed to throw off the influenza and the severe bronchitis which
attended it. What was marvellous at his age, and indeed would scarcely
have been expected in a young man, most serious mischief induced by the
bronchitis disappeared. By May he was strong enough to walk from the
terrace to the lawn and his beloved saxifrages, and to remount the
steps to the house without help.

But though the original attack was successfully thrown off, the lung
trouble had affected the heart; and in his weakened state, renal
mischief ensued. Yet he held out splendidly, never giving in, save for
one hour of utter prostration, all through this weary length of
sickness. His first recovery strengthened him in expecting to get well
from the second attack. And on June 10 he writes brightly enough to Sir
J.D. Hooker:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, June 10, 1895.

My dear Old Friend,

It was cheering to get your letter and to hear that you had got through
winter and diphtheria without scathe.

I can't say very much for myself yet, but I am carried down to a tent
in the garden every day, and live in the fresh air all I can. The thing
that keeps me back is an irritability of the stomach tending to the
rejection of all solid food. However, I think I am slowly getting the
better of it--thanks to my constitutional toughness and careful nursing
and dieting.

What has Spencer been trampling on the "Pour le merite" for, when he
accepted the Lyncei? I was just writing to congratulate him when, by
good luck, I saw he had refused!

The beastly nausea which comes on when I try to do anything warns me to
stop.

With our love to you both,

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[The last time I saw him was on a visit to Eastbourne from June 22-24.
I was astonished to find how well he looked in spite of all; thin,
indeed, but browned with the endless sunshine of the 1895 summer as he
sat every day in the verandah. His voice was still fairly strong; he
was delighted to see us about him, and was cheerful, even merry at
times. As the nurse said, she could not expect him to recover, but he
did not look like a dying man. When I asked him how he was, he said, "A
mere carcass, which has to be tended by other people." But to the last
he looked forward to recovery. One day he told the nurse that the
doctors must be wrong about the renal mischief, for if they were right,
he ought already to be in a state of coma. This was precisely what they
found most astonishing in his case; it seemed as if the mind, the
strong nervous organisation, were triumphing over the shattered body.
Herein lay one of the chief hopes of ultimate recovery.

As late as June 26 he wrote, with shaky handwriting but indomitable
spirit, to relieve his old friend from the anxiety he must feel from
the newspaper bulletins.]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, June 26, 1895.

My dear Hooker,

The pessimistic reports of my condition which have got into the papers
may be giving you unnecessary alarm for the condition of your old
comrade. So I send a line to tell you the exact state of affairs.

There is kidney mischief going on--and it is accompanied by very
distressing attacks of nausea and vomiting, which sometimes last for
hours and make life a burden.

However, strength keeps up very well considering, and of course all
depends upon how the renal business goes. At present I don't feel at
all like "sending in my checks," and without being over sanguine I
rather incline to think that my native toughness will get the best of
it--albuminuria or otherwise.

Ever your faithful friend,

T.H.H.

Misfortunes never come single. My son-in-law, Eckersley, died of yellow
fever the other day at San Salvador--just as he was going to take up an
appointment at Lima worth 1200 pounds a year. Rachel and her three
children have but the slenderest provision.

[The next two days there was a slight improvement but on the third
morning the heart began to fail. The great pain subdued by
anaesthetics, he lingered on about seven hours, and at half-past three
on June 29 passed away very quietly.

He was buried at Finchley, on July 4, beside his brother George and his
little son Noel, under the shadow of the oak, which had grown up into a
stately young tree from the little sapling it had been when the grave
of his first-born was dug beneath it, five and thirty years before.

The funeral was of a private character. An old friend, the Reverend
Llewelyn Davies, came from Kirkby Lonsdale to read the service; the
many friends who gathered at the grave-side were there as friends
mourning the death of a friend, and all touched with the same sense of
personal loss.

By his special direction, three lines from a poem written by his wife,
were inscribed upon his tombstone--lines inspired by his own robust
conviction that, all question of the future apart, this life as it can
be lived, pain, sorrow, and evil notwithstanding, is worth--and well
worth-living:--

Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep;
For still He giveth His beloved sleep,
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best.]

CHAPTER 3.15.

He had intellect to comprehend his highest duty distinctly, and force
of character to do it; which of us dare ask for a higher summary of his
life than that?

[Such was Huxley's epitaph upon Henslow; it was the standard which he
endeavoured to reach in his own life. It is the expression of that
passion for veracity which was perhaps his strongest characteristic; an
uncompromising passion for truth in thought, which would admit no
particle of self-deception, no assertion beyond what could be verified;
for truth in act, perfect straightforwardness and sincerity, with
complete disregard of personal consequences for uttering unpalatable
fact.

Truthfulness, in his eyes, was the cardinal virtue, without which no
stable society can exist. Conviction, sincerity, he always respected,
whether on his own side or against him. Clever men, he would say, are
as common as blackberries; the rare thing is to find a good one. The
lie from interested motives was only more hateful to him than the lie
from self-delusion or foggy thinking. With this he classed the "sin of
faith," as he called it; that form of credence which does not fulfil
the duty of making a right use of reason; which prostitutes reason by
giving assent to propositions which are neither self-evident nor
adequately proved.

This principle has always been far from finding universal acceptance.
One of his theological opponents went so far as to affirm that a
doctrine may be not only held, but dogmatically insisted on, by a
teacher who is, all the time, fully aware that science may ultimately
prove it to be quite untenable.

His own course went to the opposite extreme. In teaching, where it was
possible to let the facts speak for themselves, he did not further urge
their bearing upon wider problems. He preferred to warn beginners
against drawing superficial inferences in favour of his own general
theories, from facts the real meaning of which was not immediately
apparent. Father Hahn (S.J.), who studied under him in 1876, writes:--

One day when I was talking to him, our conversation turned upon
evolution. "There is one thing about you I cannot understand," I said,
"and I should like a word in explanation. For several months now I have
been attending your course, and I have never heard you mention
evolution, while in your public lectures everywhere you openly proclaim
yourself an evolutionist." ("Revue des Questions Scientifiques"
(Brussels), for October 1895.)

Now it would be impossible to imagine a better opportunity for
insisting on evolution than his lectures on comparative anatomy, when
animals are set side by side in respect of the gradual development of
functions. But Huxley was so reserved on this subject in his lectures
that, speaking one day of a species forming a transition between two
others, he immediately added:--]

"When I speak of transition I do not in the least mean to say that one
species turned into a second to develop thereafter into a third. What I
mean is, that the characters of the second are intermediate between
those of the two others. It is as if I were to say that such a
Cathedral, Canterbury, for example, is a transition between York
Minster and Westminster Abbey. No one would imagine, on hearing the
word transition, that a transmutation of these buildings actually took
place from one into other." [(Doubtless in connection with the familiar
warning that intermediate types are not necessarily links in the direct
line of descent.)

But to return to his reply:--]

"Here in my teaching lectures [he said to me] I have time to put the
facts fully before a trained audience. In my public lectures I am
obliged to pass rapidly over the facts, and I put forward my personal
convictions. And it is for this that people come to hear me."

[As to the question whether children should be brought up in entire
disregard to the beliefs rejected by himself, but still current among
the mass of his fellow-countrymen, he was of opinion that they ought to
know] "the mythology of their time and country," [otherwise one would
at the best tend to make young prigs of them; but as they grew up their
questions should be answered frankly. (The wording of a paragraph in
Professor Mivart's "Reminiscences" ("Nineteenth Century", December
1897, P. 993), tends, I think, to leave a wrong impression on this
point.)

The natural tendency to veracity, strengthened by the observation of
the opposite quality in one with whom he was early brought into
contact, received its decisive impulse, as has been told before, from
Carlyle, whose writings confirmed and established his youthful reader
in a hatred of shams and make-believes equal to his own.

In his mind no compromise was possible between truth and untruth. (As
he once said, when urged to write a more eulogistic notice of a dead
friend than he thought deserved], "The only serious temptations to
perjury I have ever known have arisen out of the desire to be of some
comfort to people I cared for in trouble. If there are such things as
Plato's 'Royal Lies' they are surely those which one is tempted to tell
on such occasions. Mrs. -- is such a good devoted little woman, and I
am so doubtful about having a soul, that it seems absurd to hesitate to
peril it for her satisfaction.") [Against authorities and influences he
published "Man's Place in Nature," though warned by his friends that to
do so meant ruin to his prospects. When he had once led the way and
challenged the upholders of conventional orthodoxy, others backed him
up with a whole armoury of facts. But his fight was as far as possible
for the truth itself, for fact, not merely for controversial victory or
personal triumph. Yet, as has been said by a representative of a very
different school of thought, who can wonder that he should have hit out
straight from the shoulder, in reply to violent or insidious attacks,
the stupidity of which sometimes merited scorn as well as anger?

In his theological controversies he was no less careful to avoid any
approach to mere abuse or ribaldry such as some opponents of Christian
dogma indulged in. For this reason he refused to interpose in the
well-known Foote case. Discussion, he said, could be carried on
effectually without deliberate wounding of others' feelings.

As he wrote in reply to an appeal for help in this case (March 12,
1883):--]

I have not read the writings for which Mr. Foote was prosecuted. But,
unless their nature has been grossly misrepresented, I cannot say that
I feel disposed to intervene on his behalf.

I am ready to go great lengths in defence of freedom of discussion, but
I decline to admit that rightful freedom is attacked, when a man is
prevented from coarsely and brutally insulting his neighbours' honest
beliefs.

I would rather make an effort to get legal penalties inflicted with
equal rigour on some of the anti-scientific blasphemers--who are quite
as coarse and unmannerly in their attacks on opinions worthy of all
respect as Mr. Foote can possibly have been.

[The grand result of his determination not to compromise where truth
was concerned, was the securing freedom of thought and speech. One man
after another, looking back on his work, declares that if we can say
what we think now, it is because he fought the battle of freedom. Not
indeed the battle of toleration, if toleration means toleration of
error for its own sake. Error, he thought, ought to be extirpated by
all legitimate means, and not assisted because it is conscientiously
held.

As Lord Hobhouse wrote, soon after his death:--

I see now many laudatory notices of him in papers. But I have not seen,
and I think the younger men do not know, that which (apart from
science) I should put forward as his strongest claim to reverence and
gratitude; and that is the steadfast courage and consummate ability
with which he fought the battle of intellectual freedom, and insisted
that people should be allowed to speak their honest convictions without
being oppressed or slandered by the orthodox. He was one of those,
perhaps the very foremost, who won that priceless freedom for us; and,
as is too common, people enter into the labours of the brave, and do
not even know what their elders endured, or what has been done for
themselves.

With this went a proud independence of spirit, intolerant of patronage,
careless of titular honours, indifferent to the accumulation of worldly
wealth. He cared little even for recognition of his work. "If I had 400
pounds a year" [A sum which might have supported a bachelor, but was
entirely inadequate to the needs of a large family.], he exclaimed at
the outset of his career, "I should be content to work anonymously for
the advancement of science." The only recognition he considered worth
having, was that of the scientific world; yet so little did he seek it,
so little insist on questions of priority, that, as Professor Howes
tells me, there are at South Kensington among the mass of unpublished
drawings from dissections made by him, many which show that he had
arrived at discoveries which afterwards brought credit to other
investigators.

He was as ready to disclaim for himself any merits which really
belonged to his predecessors, whether philosophical or scientific. He
was too well read in their works not to be aware of the debt owed them
by his own generation, and he reminded the world how little the
scientific insight of Goethe, for instance, or the solid labours of
Buffon or Reaumur or Lamarck, deserved oblivion.

The only point on which he did claim recognition was the honesty of his
motives. He was incapable of doing anything underhand, and he could not
bear even the appearance of such conduct towards his friends, or those
with whom he had business relations. In such cases he always took the
bull by the horns, acknowledged an oversight or explained what was
capable of misunderstanding. The choice between Edward Forbes and
Hooker for the Royal Society's medal, or the explanations to Mr.
Spencer for not joining a social reform league of which the latter was
a prominent member, will serve as instances.]

The most considerable difference I note among men [he wrote], is not in
their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to
acknowledge these inevitable lapses.

[For himself, he let no personal feelings stand in the way when fact
negatived his theories: once convinced that they were untenable, he
gave up Bathybius and the European origin of the Horse without
hesitation.

The regard in which he was held by his friends was such that he was
sometimes appealed to by both parties in a dispute. He was a man to be
trusted with the confidence of his friends.] "Yes, you are quite right
about 'loyal,'" [he writes to Mr. Knowles], "I love my friends and hate
my enemies--which may not be in accordance with the Gospel, but I have
found it a good wearing creed for honest men." [But he only regarded as
"enemies" those whom he found to be double-dealers, shufflers,
insincere, untrustworthy; a fair opponent he respected, and he could
agree to differ with a friend without altering his friendship.

A lifelong impression of him was thus summed up by Dr. A.R. Wallace:--

I find that he was my junior by two years, yet he has always seemed to
me to be the older, mainly no doubt, because from the very first time I
saw him (now more than forty years ago), I recognised his vast
superiority in ability, in knowledge, and in all those qualities that
enable a man to take a foremost place in the world. I owe him thanks
for much kindness and for assistance always cordially given, and
although we had many differences of opinion, I never received from him
a harsh or unkind word.

To those who could only judge him from his controversial literature, or
from a formal business meeting, he often appeared hard and
unsympathetic, but never to those who saw beneath the surface. In
personal intercourse, if he disliked a man--and a strong individuality
has strong likes and dislikes--he would merely veil his feelings under
a superabundant politeness of the chilliest kind; but to any one
admitted to his friendship he was sympathy itself. And thus, although I
have heard him say that his friends, in the fullest sense of the word,
could be reckoned on the fingers of one hand, the impression he made
upon all who came within the circle of his friendship was such that
quite a number felt themselves to possess his intimacy, and one wrote,
after his death: "His many private friends are almost tempted to forget
the public loss, in thinking of the qualities which so endeared him to
them all."

Both the speculative and the practical sides of his intellect were
strongly developed. On the one hand, he had an intense love of
knowledge, the desire to attain true knowledge of facts, and to
organise them in their true relations. His contributions to pure
science never fail to illustrate both these tendencies. His earlier
researches brought to light new facts in animal life, and new ideas as
to the affinities of the creatures he studied; his later investigations
were coloured by Darwin's views, and in return contributed no little
direct evidence in favour of evolution. But while the progress of the
evolution theory in England owed more to his clear and unwearied
exposition than to any other cause, while from the first he had
indicated the points, such as the causes of sterility and variation,
which must be cleared up by further investigation in order to complete
the Darwinian theory, he did not add another to the many speculations
since put forward.

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