Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews

Part 1

LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, LL.D., F.R.S.

London: MacMillan and Co. London R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor, Printers, Bread Street Hill.

1870

A PREFATORY LETTER.

MY DEAR TYNDALL,

I should have liked to provide this collection of "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews," with a Dedication and a Preface. In the former, I should have asked you to allow me to associate your name with the book, chiefly on the ground that the oldest of the papers in it is a good deal younger than our friendship. In the latter, I intended to comment upon certain criticisms with which some of these Essays have been met.

But, on turning the matter over in my mind, I began to fear that a formal dedication at the beginning of such a volume would look like a grand lodge in front of a set of cottages; while a complete defence of any of my old papers would simply amount to writing a new one--a labour for which I am, at present, by no means fit.

The book must go forth, therefore, without any better substitute for either Dedication, or Preface, than this letter; before concluding which it is necessary for me to notify you, and any other reader, of two or three matters.

The first is, that the oldest Essay of the whole, that "On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences," contains a view of the nature of the differences between living and not-living bodies out of which I have long since grown.

Secondly, in the same paper, there is a statement concerning the method of the mathematical sciences, which, repeated and expanded elsewhere, brought upon me, during the meeting of the British Association at Exeter, the artillery of our eminent friend Professor Sylvester.

No one knows better than you do, how readily I should defer to the opinion of so great a mathematician if the question at issue were really, as he seems to think it is, a mathematical one. But I submit, that the dictum of a mathematical athlete upon a difficult problem which mathematics offers to philosophy, has no more special weight, than the verdict of that great pedestrian Captain Barclay would have had, in settling a disputed point in the physiology of locomotion.

The genius which sighs for new worlds to conquer beyond that surprising region in which "geometry, algebra, and the theory of numbers melt into one another like sunset tints, or the colours of a dying dolphin," may be of comparatively little service in the cold domain (mostly lighted by the moon, some say) of philosophy. And the more I think of it, the more does our friend seem to me to fall into the position of one of those "verstaendige Leute," about whom he makes so apt a quotation from Goethe. Surely he has not duly considered two points. The first, that I am in no way answerable for the origination of the doctrine he criticises: and the second, that if we are to employ the terms observation, induction, and experiment, in the sense in which he uses them, logic is as much an observational, inductive, and experimental science as mathematics; and that, I confess, appears to me to be a reductio ad absurdum of his argument.

Thirdly, the essay "On the Physical Basis of Life" was intended to contain a plain and untechnical statement of one of the great tendencies of modern biological thought, accompanied by a protest, from the philosophical side, against what is commonly called Materialism. The result of my well-meant efforts I find to be, that I am generally credited with having invented "protoplasm" in the interests of "materialism." My unlucky "Lay Sermon" has been attacked by microscopists, ignorant alike of Biology and Philosophy; by philosophers, not very learned in either Biology or Microscopy; by clergymen of several denominations; and by some few writers who have taken the trouble to understand the subject. I trust that these last will believe that I leave the essay unaltered from no want of respectful attention to all they have said.

Fourthly, I wish to refer all who are interested in the topics discussed in my address on "Geological Reform," to the reply with which Sir William Thomson has honoured me.

And, lastly, let me say that I reprint the review of "The Origin of Species" simply because it has been cited as mine by a late President of the Geological Society. If you find its phraseology, in some places, to be more vigorous than seems needful, recollect that it was written in the heat of our first battles over the Novum Organon of biology; that we were all ten years younger in those days; and last, but not least, that it was not published until it had been submitted to the revision of a friend for whose judgment I had then, as I have now, the greatest respect.

Ever, my dear TYNDALL,

Yours very faithfully,

T.H. HUXLEY

LONDON, June 1870.

CONTENTS.

I. PAGE ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE. (A Lay Sermon delivered in St. Martin's Hall, on the evening of Sunday, the 7th of January, 1866, and subsequently published in the Fortnightly Review) 3

II.

EMANCIPATION--BLACK AND WHITE. (The Reader, May 20th, 1865) 23

III.

A LIBERAL EDUCATION: AND WHERE TO FIND IT. (An Address to the South London Working Men's College, delivered on the 4th of January, 1868, and subsequently published in Macmillan's Magazine) 31

IV.

SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION: NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH. (Delivered before the Liverpool Philomathic Society in April 1869, and subsequently published in Macmillan's Magazine) 60

Part 2

ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES. (An Address delivered at St. Martin's Hall, on the 22d July, 1854, and published as a pamphlet in that year) 80

VI.

ON THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY. (A Lecture delivered at the South Kensington Museum, in 1861, and subsequently published by the Department of Science and Art) 104

VII.

ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. (A Lay Sermon delivered in Edinburgh, on Sunday, the 8th of November, 1868, at the request of the late Rev. James Cranbrook; subsequently published in the Fortnightly Review) 132

VIII.

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF POSITIVISM. (A Reply to Mr. Congreve's Attack upon the preceding Paper. Published in the Fortnightly Review. 1869) 162

IX.

ON A PIECE OF CHALK. (A Lecture delivered to the Working Men of Norwich, during the Meeting of the British Association, in 1868. Subsequently published in Macmillan's Magazine) 192

GEOLOGICAL CONTEMPORANEITY AND PERSISTENT TYPES OF LIFE. (The Anniversary Address to the Geological Society for 1862) 223

XI.

GEOLOGICAL REFORM. (The Anniversary Address to the Geological Society for 1869) 251

XII.

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. (The Westminster Review, April 1860) 280

XIII.

CRITICISMS ON "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES." (The Natural History Review, 1864) 328

XIV.

ON DESCARTES' "DISCOURSE TOUCHING THE METHOD OF USING ONE'S REASON RIGHTLY AND OF SEEKING SCIENTIFIC TRUTH." (An Address to the Cambridge Young Men's Christian Society, delivered on the 24th of March, 1870, and subsequently published in Macmillan's Magazine) 351

LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS.

ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE.

This time two hundred years ago--in the beginning of January, 1666--those of our forefathers who inhabited this great and ancient city, took breath between the shocks of two fearful calamities, one not quite past, although its fury had abated; the other to come.

Within a few yards of the very spot on which we are assembled, so the tradition runs, that painful and deadly malady, the plague, appeared in the latter months of 1664; and, though no new visitor, smote the people of England, and especially of her capital, with a violence unknown before, in the course of the following year. The hand of a master has pictured what happened in those dismal months; and in that truest of fictions, "The History of the Plague Year," Defoe shows death, with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through the narrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madder yells of despairing profligates.

But, about this time in 1666, the death-rate had sunk to nearly its ordinary amount; a case of plague occurred only here and there, and the richer citizens who had flown from the pest had returned to their dwellings. The remnant of the people began to toil at the accustomed round of duty, or of pleasure; and the stream of city life bid fair to flow back along its old bed, with renewed and uninterrupted vigour.

The newly kindled hope was deceitful. The great plague, indeed, returned no more; but what it had done for the Londoners, the great fire, which broke out in the autumn of 1666, did for London; and, in September of that year, a heap of ashes and the indestructible energy of the people were all that remained of the glory of five-sixths of the city within the walls.

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