Part 8

What can we add to the chorus of appreciation of the great pupil of Christ’s which has come from college, press and pulpit since the opening of this anniversary year? Only a few words of personal impression.

To us, Darwin, more perhaps than any other naturalist, seems greatest in the union of a high order of genius with rare simplicity and transparency of thought. Dwelling on this lucid quality and on the vast range of his observation from the most minute to the grandest relations in nature, does not the image arise of a perfected optical instrument in which all personal equation, aberration and refraction are eliminated and through which, as it were, we gaze with a new vision into the marvellous forms and processes of the living world? With this wondrous lens our countrymen, Cope and Marsh, penetrated far deeper into fossil life than their predecessor Joseph Leidy, and the arid deserts of the Rocky Mountain region gave up their petrified dead as proofs of Darwinism. Through its new powers Hyatt, Morse, Packard and Brooks saw far more than their master Louis Agassiz and drew fresh testimonies of development from the historic waters of New England. From the very end of the new world, where the youthful Darwin received his first impressions of the mutability of the forms of life, we enjoy a clearer vision of the ancient life of Patagonia.

What of Darwin’s future influence?

While it is doubtful if human speculation about life can ever again be so tangential as in our pre-Darwinian past of fifty years ago, it is probable, in fact it is daily becoming more evident, that the destiny of speculation is less the tangent than the maze—the maze of innumerable lesser principles, with as many prophets calling to us to seek this turning or that. There are those who in loyal advocacy of his system feel that we shall not get much nearer to life than Darwin did, but this is to abandon his progressive leadership, for if ever a master defined the unknown and pointed the way of investigation, certainly it was Darwin. In the wonderful round of addresses in his honor of this Centennial Year and in the renewed critical study of his life and writings, the recognition that Darwin opened the way has come to many with the force of a fresh discovery. It is true that he left a system and that he loved it as his own, but his forceful, self-unsparing and suggestive criticism show that if he were living in these days of Waagen, of Weismann, of Mendel and of De Vries, he would be in the front line of inquiry, armed with matchless assemblage of fact, with experiment and verification, and not least with incomparable candor and good will. This bequest of a noble method is hardly less precious than the immortal content of the “Origin of Species” itself.

From a photograph copyright by Elliott and Fry

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY ]

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 1825–1895

To the memory of Balfour and of Huxley, my chief teacher in comparative anatomy, I dedicated my work, “The Age of Mammals.” Huxley set forth the logic of Darwin as applied to palæontology. Only a few men of the last century had the gift of speaking in clear language both to the learned and unlearned, and the greatest of these was Huxley. To write both for the man of one’s own profession and for the layman, to be accurate and abreast of the specialist who knows a subject as well as or better than you do, while intelligible to the non-specialist—there is the difficulty. Many times have I thought how simple it would be to address either audience separately. Yet I consider it fortunate that both are with us, because I share Huxley’s confidence in addressing those who are willing to do a little serious thinking in order to enjoy the vast vistas of interesting truth which come as the reward of effort. I share also his conviction that it is the duty of the man of science to devote a certain part of his time, however absorbed in research he may be, to an honest attempt to scatter scientific truth.

During the winter of 1879–80 I attended Huxley’s full course of lectures on Comparative Anatomy and Evolution, which were delivered in the upper floor of the Royal College of Science. In “A Student’s Reminiscences of Huxley” I especially attempt to describe personal impressions which he made upon me as a lecturer and as a thinker and to record some of the flashes of wit with which he enlivened his lectures. Although intensely occupied at the time with a variety of public education matters and with the pressure of literary and scientific work, Huxley found time, chiefly in his home, to enter into conversation on the subjects flooding his mind. It was there that I heard some of the best stories here recorded.

A STUDENT’S REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

By far the larger number of American students who go abroad pass through the English Channel, obtain a distant view of the mother country and, after from one to three years in Germany, return with an exclusively German education. Neither England nor France having been visited, the implication is that the countries which produced Owen, Darwin, Huxley and Balfour, or Lamarck, Cuvier, St. Hilaire and Pasteur have nothing to offer the American student. This is not the fact; the fact is that England and France are a half-century behind Germany in that kind of university organization which attracts a foreign student and enables him immediately to find his level and enter upon his research. English and French universities until a very recent date either have been not so fully prepared or have met the newcomer with practically insuperable obstacles in the matter of a degree.

None the less, the student who has not breasted these obstacles for the compensating advantages which the English and French schools offer has made a serious mistake. He has brought back not an Old World education, but an exclusively German education, with its splendidly sound and unique features and with many inherent defects. Germany produces the generals and the rank and file of the armies of science, but certainly the commanders-in-chief, in biology at least, have been Englishmen. If we find the highest exponents of purely inductive research in Germany, we certainly find a better union of the inductive and deductive methods in France and England. France leads in expression and style of thought, although, upon the whole, less sound in substance than Germany. England and France in her best period have given us the most far-reaching and permanent generalizations in biology. It follows that the American student who can afford the experience will profit most by placing himself successively in the scientific atmosphere of Germany, France, and England. My own post-graduate education was unfortunately not of this three-sided type. None the less, it has always seemed a most fortunate circumstance that in the spring of 1879 a letter from the venerable Kitchen Parker led me to Cambridge and to the great privilege of sitting under Balfour, the most brilliant and lovable of men. In the following autumn Huxley’s lectures upon Comparative Zoology began in October, and by entering this course I came to know personally this great master and through him to enjoy the rare opportunity of meeting Charles Darwin. After this experience, which was equally open to any serious student of biology at that time, it is natural that I should strongly advise those of you who are planning your foreign studies to spend part of your time in England and endeavor to discern some of the distinctive qualities of English men of science which Huxley so nobly illustrated. You will pardon the personal element in the following recollections of Huxley as a teacher and the rather informal review of his life-work.

Huxley as a teacher can never be forgotten by any of his students. He entered his lecture-room promptly as the clock was striking nine, rather quickly and with his head bent forward “as if oppressive with its mind.” He usually glanced attention to his class of about ninety and began speaking before he reached his chair. He spoke between his lips, with perfectly clear analysis, with thorough interest, and with philosophic insight which was far above the average of his students. He used very few charts, but handled the chalk with great skill, sketching out the anatomy of an animal as if it were a transparent object. As in Darwin’s face, and as in Erasmus Darwin’s, Buffon’s, and many other anatomists with a strong sense of form, his eyes were heavily overhung by a projecting forehead and eyebrows and seemed at times to look inward. His lips were firm and closely set, with the expression of positiveness, and the other feature which most marked him was the very heavy mass of hair falling over his forehead, which he would frequently stroke or toss back. Occasionally he would lighten up the monotony of anatomical description by a bit of humor. I remember one instance which was probably reminiscent of his famous tilt with Bishop Wilberforce at the meeting of the British Association in 1860. Huxley was describing the mammalian heart and had just distinguished between the tricuspid valve, on the right side of the heart, and the bicuspid valve, on the left, which you know resembles a bishop’s mitre, and hence is known as the mitral valve. He said:

It is not easy to recall on which side these respective valves are found, but I recommend this rule: you can easily remember that the mitral is on the left, because a bishop is never known to be on the right.

Huxley was the father of modern laboratory instruction, but in 1879 he was so intensely engrossed with his own researches that he very seldom came through the laboratory, which was ably directed by T. Jeffrey Parker, assisted by G. B. Howes and W. Newton Parker, all of whom are now professors, Howes having succeeded to Huxley’s chair. Each visit therefore inspired a certain amount of terror, which was really unwarranted, for Huxley always spoke in the kindest tones to his students, although sometimes he could not resist making fun at their expense. There was an Irish student who sat in front of me, whose anatomical drawings in water-color were certainly most remarkable productions. Huxley, in turning over his drawing-book, paused at a large blur under which was carefully inscribed “sheep’s liver” and smilingly said: “I am glad to know that is a liver; it reminds me as much of Cologne Cathedral in a fog as of anything I have ever seen before.” Fortunately the nationality of the student enabled him to fully appreciate the humor.

The greatest event in the winter of 1879 was Darwin’s first and only visit to the laboratory. They came in together, Huxley leading slowly down the long, narrow room, pointing out the especial methods of teaching, which he had originated and which are now universally adopted in England and in this country. Darwin was instantly recognized by the class as he entered and sent a thrill of curiosity down the room, for no one present had ever seen him before. There was the widest possible contrast in the two faces. Darwin’s grayish-white hair and bushy eyebrows overshadowed a pair of deeply set blue eyes, which seemed to image his wonderfully calm and deep vision of nature and at the same time to emit benevolence. Huxley’s piercing black eyes and determined and resolute face were full of admiration and, at the same time, protection of his older friend. He said afterward: “You know, I have to take care of him; in fact, I have always been Darwin’s bulldog,” and this exactly expressed one of the many relations which existed so long between the two men.

Huxley was not always fortunate in the intellectual caliber of the men to whom he lectured in the Royal College of Science. Many of the younger generation were studying in the universities, under Balfour at Cambridge and under Rolleston at Oxford. However, Saville Kent, C. Lloyd Morgan, George B. Howes, T. Jeffrey Parker and W. Newton Parker are representative biologists who were directly trained by Huxley. Many others, not his students, have expressed the deepest indebtedness to him. Among these especially are Professor E. Ray Lankester, of Oxford, and Professor Michael Foster, of Cambridge. Huxley once said that he had “discovered Foster.” He not only singled men out, but knew how to direct and inspire them to investigate the most pressing problems of the day. As it was, his thirty-one years of lectures would have produced a far greater effect if they had been delivered from an Oxford, Cambridge or Edinburgh chair. In fact, Huxley’s whole life would have been different, in some ways more effective, in others less so, if the universities had welcomed the young genius who was looking for a post and even cast his eyes toward America in 1850, but in those early days of classical prestige both seats of learning were dead to the science which it was Huxley’s great service in support of Darwin to place beside physics in the lead of all others in England. Moreover, Oxford, if not Cambridge, could not long have sheltered such a wolf in the fold.

Huxley’s public addresses always gave the impression of being largely impromptu, but he once told me: “I always think out carefully every word I am going to say. There is no greater danger than the so-called inspiration of the moment, which leads you to say something which is not exactly true or which you would regret afterward. I sometimes envy your countrymen their readiness and believe that a native American, if summoned out of bed at midnight, could step to his window and speak well upon any subject.” I told him I feared he had been slightly misinformed; I feared that many American impromptu speeches were distinguished more by a flow of language than of ideas. But Huxley was sometimes very impressive when he did not speak. In 1879 he was strongly advocating the removal of the Royal School of Mines from crowded Jermyn street to South Kensington, a matter which is still being agitated. At a public dinner given by the alumni of the school, who were naturally attached to the old buildings, the chairman was indiscreet enough to make an attack upon the policy of removal. He was vigorously applauded, when, to every one’s consternation, Huxley, who was sitting at the chairman’s right, slowly rose, paused a moment, and then silently skirted the tables and walked out of the hall. A solemn pall fell over us, which lasted throughout the dinner, and we were all glad to find an excuse to leave early.

In personal conversation Huxley was full of humor and greatly enjoyed stories at his own expense. Such was the following:

In my early period as a lecturer I had very little confidence in my general powers, but one thing I prided myself upon was clearness. I was once talking of the brain before a large mixed audience and soon began to feel that no one in the room understood me. Finally I saw the thoroughly interested face of a woman auditor and took consolation in delivering the remainder of the lecture directly to her. At the close, my feeling as to her interest was confirmed when she came up and asked if she might put one question upon a single point which she had not quite understood. “Certainly,” I replied. “Now, Professor,” she said, “is the cerebellum inside or outside of the skull?”

A story of his about babies is also characteristic:

When a fond mother calls upon me to admire her baby I never fail to respond, and, while cooing appropriately, I take advantage of an opportunity to gently ascertain whether the soles of its feet turn in and tend to support my theory of arboreal descent.

Huxley’s life is as full of suggestion to the student as were his lectures and his conversation. It illustrates the force of obtaining a very broad view of the animal kingdom before we attempt to enter the plane of higher generalization. Huxley’s training in embryology, vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, palæontology, and geology was not mapped out for him as for the modern university student. His prolonged sea voyage gave him time and material for reflection, and after this he was led from one subject to another until he obtained a grasp of nature as a whole second only to that of Darwin.

Huxley was born in 1825. Like Goethe, he inherited from his mother his brilliantly alert powers of thought, and from his father his courage and tenacity of purpose, a combination of qualities which especially fitted him for the period in which he was to live. There is nothing striking recorded about his boyhood as a naturalist. He preferred engineering but was led into medicine.

At the close of his medical course he secured a navy medical post upon the Rattlesnake. This brought with it, as to Darwin, the training of a four years’ voyage to the South Seas off eastern Australia and west Guinea—a more liberal education to a naturalist than any university affords, even at the present day. This voyage began at twenty-one, and he says of it:

But, apart from experience of this kind and the opportunity afforded for scientific work, to me, personally, the cruise was extremely valuable. It was good for me to live under sharp discipline, to be down on the realities of existence by living on bare necessities, to find out how extremely worth living life seemed to be when one woke from a night’s rest on a soft plank, with the sky for a canopy and cocoa and weevily biscuit the sole prospect for breakfast, and more especially to learn to work for what I got for myself out of it. My brother officers were as good as sailors ought to be and generally are, but naturally they neither knew nor cared anything about my pursuits, nor understood why I should be so zealous in the pursuit of the objects which my friends, the middies, christened “Buffons,” after the title conspicuous on a volume of the “Suites à Buffon,” which stood in a prominent place on my shelf in the chart room.

As the result of this voyage of four years numerous papers were sent home to the Linnæan Society of London, but few were published; upon his return his first great work, “Upon the Anatomy and Affinities of the Medusæ,” was declined for publication by the Admiralty—a fortunate circumstance, for it led to his quitting the navy for good and trusting to his own resources. Upon publication, this memoir at once established his scientific reputation at the early age of twenty-four, just as Richard Owen had won his spurs by his “Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus.” In 1852 Huxley’s preference as a biologist was to turn back to physiology, which had become the favorite study of his medical course. But his fate was to enter and become distinguished in a widely different branch, which had as little attraction for him as for most students of marine life, namely, palæontology. He says of his sudden change of base:

At last, in 1854, on the translation of my warm friend, Edward Forbes, to Edinburgh, Sir Henry de la Beche, the Director-General of the Geological Survey, offered me the post Forbes had vacated of Palæontologist and Lecturer on Natural History. I refused the former point-blank, and accepted the latter only provisionally, telling Sir Henry that I did not care for fossils and that I should give up natural history as soon as I could get a physiological post. But I held the office for thirty-one years, and a large part of my work has been palæontological.