Chapter 2.11.

1879.

Great interest attaches to this paper. He had always wondered how Aristotle, in dissecting a heart, had come to assert that it contained only three chambers; and the desire to see for himself what stood in the original, uncommented on by translators who were not themselves anatomists, was one of the chief reasons (I think the wish to read the Greek Testament in the original was another) which operated in making him take up the study of Greek late in middle life. His practice was to read in his book until he had come to ten new words; these he looked out, parsed, and wrote down together with their chief derivatives. This was his daily portion.

When at last he grappled with the passage in question, he found that Aristotle had correctly described what he saw under the special conditions of his dissection, when the right auricle actually appears as he described it, an enlargement of the "great vein." So that this, at least, ought to be removed from the list of Aristotle's errors. The same is shown to be the case with his statements about respiration. His own estimate of Aristotle as a physiologist is between the panegyric of Cuvier and the depreciation of Lewes: "he carried science a step beyond the point at which he found it; a meritorious, but not a miraculous, achievement." And it will interest scholars to know that from his own experience as a lecturer, Huxley was inclined to favour the theory that the original manuscripts of the "Historia Animalium," with their mingled accuracy and absurdity, were notes taken by some of his students. This essay was reprinted in "Science and Culture" page 180.

This year he brought out his second volume of essays on various subjects, written from 1870 to 1878, under the title of "Critiques and Addresses," and later in the year, his long-delayed and now entirely recast "Introductory Primer" in the Science Primer Series.]

6 Barnepark Terrace, Teignmouth, September 12, 1879.

My dear Roscoe,

I send you by this post my long-promised Primer, and a like set of sheets goes to Stewart. [Balfour Stewart, Professor of Natural Philosophy in Owens College, Manchester.]

You will see that it is quite different from my first sketch, Geikie's primer having cut me out of that line--but I think it much better.

You will see that the idea is to develop Science out of common observation, and to lead up to Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Psychology.

I want the thing to be good as far as it goes, so don't spare criticism.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Best remembrances from us all, which we are jolly.

As for other pressure of work [he writes to Dr. Dohrn, February 16], with the exception of the Zoological Society, I never have anything to do with the affairs of any society but the Royal now--I find the latter takes up all my disposable time...Take comfort from me. I find 53 to be a very youthful period of existence. I have been better physically, and worked harder mentally, this last twelve month than in any year of my life. So a mere boy, not yet 40 like you, may look to the future hopefully.

Professor G.J. Romanes was asked to join, but refused on the ground that even if the negations which he supposed the society would promulgate, were true, it was not expedient to offer them to the multitude. To this Huxley wrote the following reply (January 2, 1879):--]

Many thanks for your letter. I think it is desirable to explain that our Society is by no means intended to constitute a propaganda of negations, but rather to serve as a centre of free thought.

Of course I have not a word to say in respect of your decision. I quite appreciate your view of the matter, though it is diametrically opposed to my own conviction that the more rapidly truth is spread among mankind the better it will be for them.

Only let us be sure that it is truth.

After careful consideration of the whole circumstances of the case, I have definitely arrived at the conclusion that it is not expedient to go on with the undertaking.

I therefore resign my Presidency, and I will ask you to be so good as to intimate my withdrawal from the association to my colleagues.

I shall be glorious in a red gown at Cambridge to-morrow, and hereafter look to be treated as a PERSON OF RESPECTABILITY.

I have done my best to avoid that misfortune, but it's of no use.

Science and Art Department, South Kensington, June 11, 1879.

My dear Mr. Sandys,

I beg your acceptance of the inclosed photograph, which is certainly the best ever executed of me.

And by way of a memento of the claim which you established not only to the eloquence but also the insight of a prophet, I have added an impression of the seal with "Tenax propositi" writ plain, if not large. As I mentioned to you, it belonged to my eldest brother, who has been dead for many years. I trust that the Heralds' College may be as well satisfied as he was about his right to the coat of arms and crest.

My own genealogical inquiries have taken me so far back that I confess the later stages do not interest me.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

In supporting a vote of thanks to Dr. Allman, the President, for his address, he said (see "Nature" August 28, 1879):--]

I will ask you to allow me to say one word rather upon my own account, in order to prevent a misconception which, I think, might arise, and which I should regret if it did arise. I daresay that no one in this room, who has attained middle life, has been so fortunate as to reach that age without being obliged, now and then, to look back upon some acquaintance, or, it may be, intimate ally of his youth, who has not quite verified the promises of that youth. Nay, let us suppose he has done quite the reverse, and has become a very questionable sort of character, and a person whose acquaintance does not seem quite so desirable as it was in those young days; his way and yours have separated; you have not heard much about him; but eminently trustworthy persons have assured you he has done this, that, or the other; and is more or less of a black sheep, in fact. The President, in an early part of his address, alluded to a certain thing--I hardly know whether I ought to call it a thing or not--of which he gave you the name Bathybius, and he stated, with perfect justice, that I had brought that thing into notice; at any rate, indeed, I christened it, and I am, in a certain sense, its earliest friend. For some time after that interesting Bathybius was launched into the world, a number of admirable persons took the little thing by the hand, and made very much of it, and as the President was good enough to tell you, I am glad to be able to repeat and verify all the statements, as a matter of fact, which I had ventured to make about it. And so things went on, and I thought my young friend Bathybius would turn out a credit to me. But I am sorry to say, as time has gone on, he has not altogether verified the promise of his youth.

In the first place, as the President told you, he could not be found when he was wanted; and in the second place, when he was found, all sorts of things were said about him. Indeed, I regret to be obliged to tell you that some persons of severe minds went so far as to say that he was nothing but simply a gelatinous precipitate of slime, which had carried down organic matter. If that is so, I am very sorry for it, for whoever may have joined in this error, I am undoubtedly primarily responsible for it. But I do not know at the present time of my own knowledge how the matter stands. Nothing would please me more than to investigate the matter afresh in the way it ought to be investigated, but that would require a voyage of some time, and the investigation of this thing in its native haunts is a kind of work for which, for many years past, I have had no opportunity, and which I do not think I am very likely to enjoy again. Therefore my own judgment is in an absolute state of suspension about it. I can only assure you what has been said about this friend of mine, but I cannot say whether what is said is justified or not. But I feel very happy about the matter. There is one thing about us men of science, and that is, no one who has the greatest prejudice against science can venture to say that we ever endeavour to conceal each other's mistakes. And, therefore, I rest in the most entire and complete confidence that if this should happen to be a blunder of mine, some day or other it will be carefully exposed by somebody. But pray let me remind you whether all this story about Bathybius be right or wrong, makes not the slightest difference to the general argument of the remarkable address put before you to-night. All the statements your President has made are just as true, as profoundly true, as if this little eccentric Bathybius did not exist at all.

The following acknowledges the receipt of "Essays in Romance":--]

4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., January 1879.

My dear Skelton,

Being the most procrastinating letter-writer in existence, I thought, or pretended to think, when I received your "Essays in Romance" that it would not be decent to thank you until I had read the book. And when I had done myself that pleasure, I further pretended to think that it would be much better to wait till I could send you my Hume book, which as it contains a biography, is the nearest approach to a work of fiction of which I have yet been guilty.

The "Hume" was sent, and I hope reached you a week ago; and as my conscience just now inquired in a very sneering and unpleasant tone whether I had any further pretence for not writing on hand, I thought I might as well stop her mouth at once.

You will see oddly enough that I have answered your question about dreams in a sort of way on page 96. [Cp. "Essays in Romance" page 329; Huxley's "Hume" page 96.]

You will get nothing but praise for your book, and I shall be vilipended for mine. Is that fact, or is it not, an evidence of a special Providence and Divine Government?

Pray remember me very kindly to Mrs. Skelton. I hope your interrupted visit will yet become a fact. We have a clean bill of health now.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Scottish University Commission, 31 Queen Street, Edinburgh, April 2, 1879.

My dear Skelton,

I shall be delighted to dine with you on Wednesday, and take part in any discussion either moral or immoral that may be started.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

March 15, 1879.

My dear Mrs. Tyndall,

Your hearty letter is as good as a bottle of the best sunshine. Yes, I will lunch with you on Friday with pleasure, and Jess proposes to attend on the occasion...Her husband is in Gloucester, and so doesn't count. The absurd creature declares she must go back to him on Saturday--stuff and sentiment. She has only been here six or seven weeks. There is nothing said in scripture about a wife cleaving to her husband!

With all our loves, ever yours very sincerely,

T.H. Huxley.

South Kensington, April 21, 1879.

My dear Boy,

I was very glad to get your good news this morning, and I need not tell you whether M-- was pleased or not.

But the light of nature doth not inform us of the value and duration of the "Guthrie"--and from a low and material point of view I should like to be informed on that subject. However, this is "mere matter of detail" as the Irishman said when he was asked HOW he had killed his landlord. The pleasure to us is that you have made good use of your opportunities, and finished this first stage of your journey so creditably.

I am about to write to the Master of Balliol for advice as to your future proceedings. In the meanwhile, go in for the enjoyment of your holiday with a light heart. You have earned it.

Ever your loving father,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, July 19, 1879.

My dear Lucy,

I am just off to Gloucester to fetch M-- back, and I shall have a long talk with that sage little woman over your letter.

In the meanwhile keep quiet and do nothing. I feel the force of what you say very strongly--so strongly, in fact, that I must morally ice myself and get my judgment clear and cool before I advise you what is to be done.

I am very sorry to hear you have been so ill. For the present dismiss the matter from your thoughts and give your mind to getting better. Leave it all to be turned over in the mind of that cold-blooded, worldly, cynical old fellow, who signs himself,

Your affectionate Pater.

4 Marlborough Place, Abbey Road, N.W., December 21, 1879.

My dear Mr. Clodd,

I have been spending all this Sunday afternoon over the book you have been kind enough to send me, and being a swift reader, I have travelled honestly from cover to cover.

It is the book I have been longing to see; in spirit, matter and form it appears to me to be exactly what people like myself have been wanting. For though for the last quarter of a century I have done all that lay in my power to oppose and destroy the idolatrous accretions of Judaism and Christianity, I have never had the slightest sympathy with those who, as the Germans say, would "throw the child away along with the bath"--and when I was a member of the London School Board I fought for the retention of the Bible, to the great scandal of some of my Liberal friends--who can't make out to this day whether I was a hypocrite, or simply a fool on that occasion.

But my meaning was that the mass of the people should not be deprived of the one great literature which is open to them--not shut out from the perception of their relations with the whole past history of civilised mankind--not excluded from such a view of Judaism and Jesus of Nazareth as that which at last you have given us.

I cannot doubt that your work will have a great success not only in the grosser, but the better sense of the word.

I am yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

However, he was soon about again, and wrote as follows in answer to a letter from Sir Thomas (afterwards Lord) Farrer, which called his attention, as an old Fishery Commissioner, to a recent report on the sea-fisheries.]

4 Marlborough Place, January 9, 1880.

My dear Farrer,

I shall be delighted to take a dive into the unfathomable depths of official folly; but your promised document has not reached me.

Your astonishment at the tenacity of life of fallacies, permit me to say, is shockingly unphysiological. They, like other low organisms, are independent of brains, and only wriggle the more, the more they are smitten on the place where the brains ought to be--I don't know B., but I am convinced that A. has nothing but a spinal cord, devoid of any cerebral development. Would Mr. Cross give him up for purposes of experiment? Lingen and you might perhaps be got to join in a memorial to that effect.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

I wish it were not such a long story that I could tell you all about the dogs. They will make out such a case for "Darwinismus" as never was. From the South American dogs at the bottom (C. vetulus, cancrivorus, etc.) to the wolves at the top, there is a regular gradual progression the range of variation of each "species" overlapping the ranges of those below and above. Moreover, as to the domestic dogs, I think I can prove that the small dogs are modified jackals, and the big dogs ditto wolves. I have been getting capital material from India, and working the whole affair out on the basis of measurements of skulls and teeth.

However, my paper for the Zoological Society is finished, and I hope soon to send you a copy of it...

The following letters deal with the collection of specimens for examination:--]

4 Marlborough Place, January 17, 1880.

My dear Flower,

I happened to get hold of two foxes this week--a fine dog fox and his vixen wife; and among other things, I have been looking up Cowper's glands, the supposed absence of which in the dogs has always "gone agin' me." Moreover, I have found them (or their representatives) in the shape of two small sacs, which open by conspicuous apertures into the urethra immediately behind the bulb. If your Icticyon was a male, I commend this point to your notice.

ITEM.

If you have not already begun to macerate him, do look for the "marsupial" fibro-cartilages, which I have mentioned in my "Manual," but the existence of which blasphemers have denied. I found them again at once in both Mr. and Mrs. Vulpes. You spot them immediately by the pectineus which is attached to them.

The dog-fox's caecum is so different from the vixen's that Gray would have made distinct genera of them.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., May 2, 1880.

My dear Fayrer,

I am greatly obliged for the skulls, and I hope you will offer my best thanks to your son for the trouble he has taken in getting them.

The "fox" is especially interesting because it is not a fox, by any manner of means, but a big jackal with some interesting points of approximation towards the cuons.

I do not see any locality given along with the specimens. Can you supply it?

I have got together some very curious evidence of the wider range of variability of the Indian jackal, and the "fox" which your son has sent is the most extreme form in one direction I have met with.

I wish I could get some examples from the Bombay and Madras Presidencies and from Ceylon, as well as from Central India. Almost all I have seen yet are from Bengal.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

My dear Darwin,

You are the cheeriest letter-writer I know, and always help a man to think the best of his doings.

I hope you do not imagine because I had nothing to say about "Natural Selection," that I am at all weak of faith on that article. On the contrary, I live in hope that as paleontologists work more and more in the manner of that "second Daniel come to judgment," that wise young man M. Filhal, we shall arrive at a crushing accumulation of evidence in that direction also. But the first thing seems to me to be to drive the fact of evolution into people's heads; when that is once safe, the rest will come easy.

I hear that ce cher X. is yelping about again; but in spite of your provocative messages (which Rachel retailed with great glee), I am not going to attack him nor anybody else.

More important were two other essays delivered this year. The "Method of Zadig" ("Collected Essays" 4 1), an address at the Working Men's College, takes for its text Voltaire's story of the philosopher at the Oriental court, who, by taking note of trivial indications, obtains a perilous knowledge of things which his neighbours ascribe either to thievery or magic. This introduces a discourse on the identity of the methods of science and of the judgments of common life, a fact which, twenty-six years before, he had briefly stated in the words,] "Science is nothing but trained and organised common sense" [("Collected Essays" 3 45).

The other is "Science and Culture" ("Collected Essays" 3 134), which was delivered on October 1, as the opening address of the Josiah Mason College at Birmingham, and gave its name to a volume of essays published in the following year. Here was a great school founded by a successful manufacturer, which was designed to give an education at once practical and liberal, such as the experience of its founder approved, to young men who meant to embark upon practical life. A "mere" literary training--i.e. in the classical languages--was excluded, but not so the study of English literature and modern languages. The greatest stress was laid on training in the scientific theory and practice on which depend the future of the great manufactures of the north.

The question dealt with in this address is whether such an education can give the culture demanded of an educated man to-day. The answer is emphatically Yes. English literature is a field of culture second to none, and for solely literary purposes, a thorough knowledge of it, backed by some other modern language, will amply suffice. Combined with this, a knowledge of modern science, its principles and results, which have so profoundly modified society and have created modern civilisation, will give a "criticism of life," as Matthew Arnold defined "the end and aim of all literature," that is to say culture, unattainable by any form of education which neglects it. In short, although the "culture" of former periods might be purely literary, that of to-day must be based, to a great extent, upon natural science.

This autumn several letters passed between him and Darwin. The latter, contrary to his usual custom, wrote a letter to "Nature," in reply to an unfair attack which had been made upon evolution by Sir Wyville Thomson in his Introduction to "The Voyage of the Challenger" (see Darwin "Life and Letters" 3 242), and asked Huxley to look over the concluding sentences of the letter, and to decide whether they should go with the rest to the printer or not. "My request," he writes (November 5), "will not cost you much trouble--i.e. to read two pages--for I know that you can decide at once." Huxley struck them out, replying on the 14th,] "Your pinned-on paragraph was so good that, if I had written it myself, I should have been unable to refrain from sending it on to the printer. But it is much easier to be virtuous on other people's account; and though Thomson deserved it and more, I thought it would be better to refrain. If I say a savage thing, it is only 'Pretty Fanny's way'; but if you do, it is not likely to be forgotten."

The papers in re Wallace have arrived, and I lose no time in assuring you that all my "might, amity, and authority," as Essex said when that sneak Bacon asked him for a favour, shall be exercised as you wish.

On December 11 he sends Darwin the draft of a memorial on the subject, and on the 28th suggests that the best way of moving the official world would be for Darwin himself to send the memorial, with a note of his own, to Mr. Gladstone, who was then Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury:--]

Mr. G. can do a thing gracefully when he is so minded, and unless I greatly mistake, he will be so minded if you write to him.

The rest of the letter to Darwin of December 28 is characteristic of his own view of life. As he wrote four years before (see above), he was no pessimist any more than he was a professed optimist. If the vast amount of inevitable suffering precluded the one view, the gratuitous pleasures, so to speak, of life preclude the other. Life properly lived is worth living, and would be even if a malevolent fate had decreed that one should suffer, say, the pangs of toothache two hours out of every twenty-four. So he writes:--]

We have had all the chicks (and the husbands of such as are therewith provided) round the Christmas table once more, and a pleasant sight they were, though I say it that shouldn't. Only the grand-daughter left out, the young woman not having reached the age when change and society are valuable.

I don't know what you think about anniversaries. I like them, being always minded to drink my cup of life to the bottom, and take my chance of the sweets and bitters.

4 Marlborough Place, November 14, 1880.

My dear Skelton,

When the "Crooked Meg" reached me I made up my mind that it would be a shame to send the empty acknowledgment which I give (or don't give) for most books that reach me.

But I am over head and ears in work--time utterly wasted in mere knowledge getting and giving--and for six weeks not an hour for real edification with a wholesome story.

But this Sunday afternoon being, by the blessing of God, as beastly a November day as you shall see, I have attended to my spiritual side and been visited by a blessing in the shape of some very pretty and unexpected words anent mysel'. [The passage referred to stands on page 72 of "The Crookit Meg," and describes the village naturalist and philosopher, Adam Meldrum, "who in his working hours cobbled old boats, and knew by heart the plays of Shakespeare and the 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica' of Sir Thomas Browne."

"For the rest it will be enough to add that this long, gaunt, bony cobbler of old boats was--was--(May I take the liberty, Mr. Professor?) a village Huxley of the year One. The colourless brilliancy of the great teacher's style, the easy facility with which the drop of light forms itself into a perfect sphere as it falls from his pen, belong indeed to a consummate master of the art of expression, which Adam of course was not; but the mental lucidity, justice, and balance, as well as the reserve of power, and the Shakespearean gaiety of touch, which made the old man one of the most delightful companions in the world, were essentially Huxleian."]

In truth, it is a right excellent story, though, distinctly in love with Eppie, I can only wonder how you had the heart to treat her so ill. A girl like that should have had two husbands--one "wisely ranged for show" and t'other de par amours.

Don't ruin me with Mrs. Skelton by repeating this, but please remember me very kindly to her.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall, S.W., December 2, 1880.

My dear Tyndall,

I must tell you the ins and outs of this "Nineteenth Century" business. I was anxious to help Knowles when he started the journal, and at his earnest and pressing request I agreed to do what I have done. But being quite aware of the misinterpretation to which I should be liable if my name "sans phrase" were attached to the article, I insisted upon the exact words which you will find at the head of it; and which seemed, and still seem to me, to define my position as a mere adviser of the editor.

Moreover, by diligently excluding any expression of opinion on the part of the writers of the compilation, I thought that nobody could possibly suspect me of assuming the position of an authority even on the subjects with which I may be supposed to be acquainted, let alone those such as physics and chemistry, of which I know no more than any one of the public may know.

Therefore your remarks came upon me to-night with the sort of painful surprise which a man feels who is accused of the particular sin of which he flatters himself he is especially NOT GUILTY, and "roused my corruption" as the Scotch have it. But there is no need to say anything about that, for you were generous and good as I have always found you. Only I pray you, if hereafter it strikes you that any doing of mine should be altered or amended, tell me yourself and privately, and I promise you a very patient listener, and what is more a very thankful one.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

At the very end of the year, George Eliot died. A proposal was immediately set on foot to inter her remains in Westminster Abbey, and various men of letters pressed the matter on the Dean, who was unwilling to stir without a very strong and general expression of opinion. To Mr. Herbert Spencer, who had urged him to join in memorialising the Dean, Huxley replied as follows:--]

4 Marlborough Place, December 27, 1880.

My dear Spencer,

Your telegram which reached me on Friday evening caused me great perplexity, inasmuch as I had just been talking with Morley, and agreeing with him that the proposal for a funeral in Westminster Abbey had a very questionable look to us, who desired nothing so much as that peace and honour should attend George Eliot to her grave.

It can hardly be doubted that the proposal will be bitterly opposed, possibly (as happened in Mill's case with less provocation), with the raking up of past histories, about which the opinion even of those who have least the desire or the right to be pharisaical is strongly divided, and which had better be forgotten.

With respect to putting pressure on the Dean of Westminster, I have to consider that he has some confidence in me, and before asking him to do something for which he is pretty sure to be violently assailed, I have to ask myself whether I really think it a right thing for a man in his position to do.

Now I cannot say I do. However much I may lament the circumstance, Westminster Abbey is a Christian Church and not a Pantheon, and the Dean thereof is officially a Christian priest, and we ask him to bestow exceptional Christian honours by this burial in the Abbey. George Eliot is known not only as a great writer, but as a person whose life and opinions were in notorious antagonism to Christian practice in regard to marriage, and Christian theory in regard to dogma. How am I to tell the Dean that I think he ought to read over the body of a person who did not repent of what the Church considers mortal sin, a service not one solitary proposition in which she would have accepted for truth while she was alive? How am I to urge him to do that which, if I were in his place, I should most emphatically refuse to do?

You tell me that Mrs. Cross wished for the funeral in the Abbey. While I desire to entertain the greatest respect for her wishes, I am very sorry to hear it. I do not understand the feeling which could create such a desire on any personal grounds, save those of affection, and the natural yearning to be near even in death to those whom we have loved. And on public grounds the wish is still less intelligible to me. One cannot eat one's cake and have it too. Those who elect to be free in thought and deed must not hanker after the rewards, if they are to be so called, which the world offers to those who put up with its fetters.

Thus, however I look at the proposal it seems to me to be a profound mistake, and I can have nothing to do with it.

I shall be deeply grieved if this resolution is ascribed to any other motives than those which I have set forth at more length than I intended.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.