1861-1863.
[It has been seen that the addition of journalistic work in science to
the mass of original research and teaching work upon which Huxley was
engaged, called forth a remonstrance from both Lyell and Darwin. To
Hooker it seemed still more serious that he was dividing his allegiance,
and going far afield in philosophy, instead of concentrating himself
upon natural science. He writes:--
I am sorry to hear that you are so poorly, and wish I could help you to
sit down and work quietly at pure science. You have got into a
whirlpool, and should stroke vigorously at the proper angle, not attempt
to breast the whole force of the current, nor yet give in to it. Do take
the counsel of a quiet looker on and withdraw to your books and studies
in pure Natural History; let modes of thought alone. You may make a very
good naturalist, or a very good metaphysician (of that I know nothing,
don't despise me), but you have neither time nor place for both.
However, it must be remarked that this love of philosophy, not recently
acquired either, was only part of the passion for general principles
underlying the facts of science which had always possessed him. And the
time expended upon it was not directly taken from the hours of
scientific work; he would read in bed through the small hours of the
night, when sleep was slow in coming to him. In this way he got through
an immense amount of philosophy in the course of several years. Not that
he could "state the views of so and so" upon any given question, or
desired such kind of knowledge; he wished to find out and compare with
his own the answers which other thinkers gave to the problems which
interested himself.
A gentler reproof of this time touches his handwriting, which was never
of the most legible, so that his foreign correspondents in particular
sometimes complained. Haeckel used to get his difficulties deciphered by
his colleague Gegenbaur. I cannot forbear quoting the delicate
remonstrance of Professor Lacaze du Thiers, and the flattering remedy he
proposed:--
March 14.
Je lis l'Anglais imprime, mais vos ecritures anglaises sont si rapides,
qu'il m'est quelquefois difficile de m'en sortir. On me dit que vous
ecrivez si bien le francais que je crois que je vous lirais bien mieux
dans ma langue!
On his return from examining at Dublin, he again looked over proofs for
Mr. Spencer.]
Jermyn Street, August 3, 1861.
My dear Spencer,
I have been absent on a journey to Dublin and elsewhere [Visiting Sir
Philip Egerton at Oulton Park.] nearly all this week, and hence your
note and proof did not reach me till yesterday. I have but just had time
to glance through the latter, and I need hardly say how heartily I
concur in its general tenor. I have, however, marked one or two passages
which I think require some qualification. Then, at page 272, the fact
that the vital manifestations of plants depend as entirely as those of
animals upon the fall towards stable equilibrium of the elements of a
complex protein compound is not sufficiently prominent. It is not so
much that plants are deoxidisers and animals oxidisers, as that plants
are manufacturers and animals consumers. It is true that plants
manufacture a good deal of non-nitrogenous produce in proportion to the
nitrogenous, but it is the latter which is chiefly useful to the animal
consumer and not the former. This point is a very important one, which I
have never seen clearly and distinctly put--the prettiness of Dumas'
circulation of the elements having seduced everybody.
Of course this in no way affects the principle of what you say. The
statements which I have marked at page 276 and 278 should have their
authorities given, I think. I should hardly like to commit myself to
them absolutely.
You will, if my memory does not mislead me, find authority for my note
at page 283 in Stephenson's life. I think old George Stephenson brought
out his views at breakfast at Sir R. Peel's when Buckland was there.
These are all the points that strike me, and I do not keep your proof
any longer (I send it by the same post as this note), because I fear you
may be inconvenienced by the delay.
Tyndall is unfortunately gone to Switzerland, so that I cannot get you
his comments. Whether he might have picked holes in any detail or not I
do not know, but I know his opinions sufficiently well to make sure in
his agreement with the general argument. In fact a favourite problem of
his is--Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or
Faust therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will
solve this easily.
I am grieved to hear such a poor account of your health; I believe you
will have to come at last to the heroic remedy of matrimony, and if
"gynopathy" were a mode of treatment that could be left off if it did
not suit the constitution, I should decidedly recommend it.
But it's worse than opium-eating--once begun and you must go on, and so,
though I ascribe my own good condition mainly to the care my wife takes
of me, I dare not recommend it to you, lest perchance you should get
hold of the wrong medicine.
Beyond spending a night awake now and then I am in very good order, and
I am going to spend my vacation in a spasmodic effort to lick the
"Manual" into shape and work off some other arrears.
My wife is very fairly well, and, I trust, finally freed from all the
symptoms which alarmed me so much. I dread the coming round of September
for her again, but it must be faced.
The babbies are flourishing; and beyond the facts that we have a lunatic
neighbour on one side and an empty house on the other, that it has cost
me about twice as much to get into my house as I expected, that the
cistern began to leak and spoil a ceiling, and such other small
drawbacks, the new house is a decided success.
I forget whether I gave you the address, which is--
26 Abbey Place, St. John's Wood.
You had better direct to me there, as after the 10th of this month I
shall not be here for six weeks.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[October shows an unusual entry in his diary; the sacrifice of a working
evening to hear Jenny Lind sing. Fond though he was of music, as those
may remember who ever watched his face at the Sunday evening gatherings
in Marlborough Place in the later seventies, when there was sure to be
at least a little good music or singing either from his daughters or
some of the guests, he seldom could spare the time for concert-going or
theatre-going, and the occasional notes of his bachelor days, "to the
opera with Spencer," had ceased as his necessary occupations grew more
engrossing.
This year his friend Hooker moved to Kew to act as second in command to
his father, Sir William Hooker, the director of the Botanical Gardens.
This move made meetings between the two friends, except at clubs and
societies, more difficult, and was one of the immediate causes of the
foundation of the x Club. It is this move which is referred to in the
following letters; the "poor client" being the wife of an old messmate
of his on the "Rattlesnake":--]
Jermyn Street, November 17.
My dear Hooker,
My wife wrote to yours yesterday, the enclosed note explaining the
kitchen-revolution which, it seems, must delay our meeting. When she had
done, however, she did not know where to direct it, and I am no wiser,
so I send it to you.
It's a horrid nuisance and I have sworn a few, but that will not cook
the dinner, however much it may prepare me for being cooked elsewhere.
To complete my disgust at things in general, my wife is regularly
knocked up with dining out twice this week, though it was only in the
quietest way. I shall have to lock her up altogether.
X-- has made a horrid mess of it, and I am sorry to say, from what I
know of him, that I cannot doubt where the fault lies. The worst of it
is that he has a wife and three children over here, left without a penny
or any means of support. The poor woman wrote to me the other day, and
when I went to see her I found her at the last shilling and
contemplating the workhouse as her next step. She has brothers in
Australia, and it appeared to me that the only way to do her any good
was to get her out. She cannot starve there, and there will be more hope
for her children than an English poor-house. I am going to see if the
Emigration Commissioners will do anything for her, as of course it is
desirable to cut down the cost of exportation to the smallest amount.
It is most lamentable that a man of so much ability should have so
utterly damned himself as X-- has, but he is hopelessly Celtic.
I shall be at the Phil. Club next Thursday.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
14 Waverley Place, Monday morning [November 1861].
My dear Hooker,
The obstinate manner in which Mrs. Hooker and you go on refusing to give
any address leads us to believe that you are dwelling peripatetically in
a "Wan" with green door and brass knocker somewhere on Wormwood Scrubbs,
and that "Kew" is only a blind. So you see I am obliged to inclose Mrs.
Hooker's epistle to you.
You shall have your own way about the dinner, though we shall have
triumphed over all domestic difficulties by that time, and the first
lieutenant scorns the idea of being "worrited" about anything. I only
grieve it is such a mortal long way for you to come.
I could find it in my heart to scold you well for your generous aid to
my poor client. I assure you I told you all about the case because it
was fresh in my mind, and without the least notion of going to you for
that kind of aid. May it come back to you in some good shape or other.
I find it is no use to look for help from the emigration people, but I
have no fear of being able to get the 50 pounds sterling which will send
them out by the "Walter Hood."
Would it be fair to apply to Bell in such a case? I will have a talk to
you about it at the Phil. Club.
Ever, my dear Hooker, yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[In 1862, in addition to all the work connected with the species
question already detailed, Huxley published three paleontological papers
("On the new Labyrinthodonts from the coal-field of Edinburgh"; "On a
Stalk-eyed Crustacean from the coal-fields of Paisley"; and "On the
Teeth of Diprotodon."), while the paper on the "Anatomy and Development
of Pyrosoma," first read on December 1, 1859, was now published in the
"Proceedings of the Linnean Society."
In the list of work in hand are four paleontological papers, besides the
slowly progressing "Manual of Comparative Anatomy." ("On Indian
Fossils," on "Cephalaspis and Pteraspis," on "Stagonolepis," and a
"Memoir descriptive of Labyrinthodont remains from the Trias and Coal of
Britain," which he first treated of in 1858, "clearly establishing for
the first time the vertebrate nature of these remains."--Sir M. Foster,
Obituary Notice "Proceedings of the Royal Society" 59 55.)
When he went north to deliver his lectures at Edinburgh "On the relation
of Man to the Lower Animals," he took the opportunity of examining
fossils at Forfar, and lectured also at Glasgow; while at Easter he went
to Ireland; on March 15 he was at Dublin, lecturing there on the 25th.
Reference has already been made (in the letter to C. Darwin of May 6,
1862) to the unsatisfactory state of Huxley's health. He was further
crippled by neuralgic rheumatism in his arm and shoulder, and to get rid
of this, went on July 1 to Switzerland for a month's holiday. Reaching
Grindelwald on the 4th, he was joined on the 6th by Dr. Tyndall, and
with him rambled on the glacier and made an expedition to the Faulhorn.
On the 13th they went to the Rhone glacier, meeting Sir J. Lubbock on
their way, at the other side of the Grimsel. Both here and at the
Eggischhorn, where they went a few days later, Huxley confined himself
to easy expeditions, or, as his notebook has it, stayed "quiet" or
"idle," while the hale pair ascended the Galenstock and the Jungfrau.
By July 28 he was home again in time for an examiners' meeting at the
London University the next day, and a viva voce in physiology on the 4th
August, before going to Scotland to serve on the Fishery Commission.
This was the first of the numerous commissions on which he served. With
his colleagues, Dr. Lyon Playfair (afterwards Lord Playfair) and Colonel
Maxwell, he was busy from August 8 to September 16, chiefly on the west
coast, taking evidence from the trawlers and their opponents, and making
direct investigations into the habits of the herring.
The following letter to Mr. (afterwards Sir W.H.) Flower, then Curator
of the Royal College of Surgeons' Museum, refers to this trip and to his
appointment to the examinership in physiology at the College of
Surgeons, for which he had applied in May and which he held until 1870.
Mr. Flower, indeed, was deeply interested at this time in the same
problems as Huxley, and helped his investigations for "Man's Place" by
making a number of dissections to test the disputed relations between
the brain of man and of the apes.]
Hotel de la Jungfrau, Aeggischhorn, July 18, 1862.
My dear Flower,
Many thanks for your letter. I shall make my acknowledgments to the
council in due form when I have read the official announcement on my
return to England. I trust they will not have occasion to repent
declining Dr. --'s offer. At any rate I shall do my best.
I am particularly obliged to you for telling me about the Dijon bones.
Dijon lies quite in my way in returning to England, and I shall stop a
day there for the purpose of making the acquaintance of M. Nodet and his
Schizopleuron. I have a sort of dim recollection that there are some
other remains of extinct South American mammals in the Dijon Museum
which I ought to see.
Your news about the lower jaw made me burst out into such an exclamation
that all the salle-a-manger heard me! I saw the fitness of the thing at
once. The foramen and the shape of the condyle ought to have suggested
it at once.
I have had a very pleasant trip, passing through Grindelwald, the Aar
valley, and the Rhone valley, as far as here; but, up to the day before
yesterday, my health remained very unsatisfactory, and I was terribly
teased by the neuralgia or rheumatism or whatever it is.
On that day, however, I had a very sharp climb involving a great deal of
exertion and a most prodigious sweating, and on the next morning I
really woke up a new man. Yesterday I repeated the dose and I am in
hopes now that I shall come back fit to grapple with all the work that
lies before me.
Ever, my dear Flower, yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[This autumn he gladly took on what appeared to be an additional piece
of work. On October 12 he writes from 26 Abbey Place:--]
I saw Flower yesterday, and I find that my present colleague in the
Hunterian Professorship wishes to get rid of his share in the lectures,
having, I suppose, at the eleventh hour discovered his incompetency. It
looks paradoxical to say so, but it will really be easier for me to give
eighteen or twenty-four lectures than twelve, so that I have professed
my readiness to take as much as he likes off his hands.
[This Professorship had been in existence for more than sixty years, for
when the Museum of the famous anatomist John Hunter was entrusted to the
College of Surgeons by the Government, the condition was made that "one
course of lectures, not less than twenty-four in number, on comparative
anatomy and other subjects, illustrated by the preparations, shall be
given every year by some member of the company." Huxley arranged to
publish from year to year the substance of his lectures on the
vertebrates, "and by that process to bring out eventually a
comprehensive, though condensed, systematic work on 'Comparative
Anatomy'." ("Comparative Anatomy" volume 1 Preface.)
Of the labour entailed in this course, the late Sir W.H. Flower wrote:--
When, in 1862, he was appointed to the Hunterian Professorship at the
College of Surgeons, he took for the subject of several yearly courses
of lectures the anatomy of the vertebrata, beginning with the primates,
and as the subject was then rather new to him, and as it was a rule with
him never to make a statement in a lecture which was not founded upon
his own actual observation, he set to work to make a series of original
dissections of all the forms he treated of. These were carried on in the
workroom at the top of the college, and mostly in the evenings, after
his daily occupation at Jermyn Street (the School of Mines, as it was
then called) was over, an arrangement which my residence in the college
buildings enabled me to make for him. These rooms contained a large
store of material, entire or partially dissected animals preserved in
spirit, which, unlike those mounted in the museum, were available for
further investigation in any direction, and these, supplemented
occasionally by fresh subjects from the Zoological Gardens, formed the
foundation of the lectures...On these evenings it was always my
privilege to be with him, and to assist in the work in which he was
engaged. In dissecting, as in everything else, he was a very rapid
worker, going straight to the point he wished to ascertain with a firm
and steady hand, never diverted into side issues, nor wasting any time
in unnecessary polishing up for the sake of appearances; the very
opposite, in fact, to what is commonly known as "finikin." His great
facility for bold and dashing sketching came in most usefully in this
work, the notes he made being largely helped out with illustrations.
The following is the letter in which he makes himself known to Professor
Haeckel of Jena, who, in his thanks for the specimens, bewails the lot
of "us poor inland Germans, who have to get help from England."]
The Royal School of Mines, Jermyn Street, October 28, 1862.
Sir,
A copy of your exceedingly valuable and beautiful monograph, "Die
Radiolarien," came into my hands two or three days ago, and I have been
devoting the little leisure I possess just at present to a careful study
of its contents, which are to me profoundly interesting and instructive.
Permit me to say this much by way of introduction to a request which I
have to prefer, which is, that you will be good enough to let me have a
copy of your Habitationsschrift, "De Rhizopodum Finibus," if you have
one to spare. If it is sent through Frommans of Jena to the care of
Messrs. Williams and Norgate, London, it will reach me safely.
I observe that in your preface you state that you have no specimen of
the famous Barbadoes deposit. As I happen to possess some from
Schomburgk's own collection, I should be ashamed to allow you any longer
to suffer from that want, and I beg your acceptance of the inclosed
little packet. If this is not sufficient, pray let me know and I will
send you as much more.
If you desire it, I can also send you some of the Oran earth, and as
much as you like of the Atlantic deep-sea soundings, which are almost
entirely made up of Globigerina and Polycistina.
I am, Sir, yours very faithfully,
Thomas H. Huxley.
[The next letter refers to the scientific examinations at the University
of London.]
December 4, 1862.
My dear Hooker,
I look upon you as art and part of the "Natural History Review," though
not ostensibly one of the gang, so I bid you to a feast, partly of
reason and partly of mutton, at my house on December 11 (being this day
week) at half-past six. Do come if you can, for we have not seen your
ugly old phiz for ages, and should be comforted by an inspection
thereof, however brief.
I did my best yesterday to get separate exhibitions for Chemistry,
Botany, and Zoological Biology, at the committee yesterday [At the
London University.], and I suspect from your letter that if you had been
there you would have backed me. However, it is clear that they only mean
to give separate exhibits for Chemistry and Biology as a whole.
Because Botany and Zoology are, philosophically speaking, cognate
subjects, people are under the delusion that it is easier to work both
up at the same time, than it would be to work up, say, Chemistry and
Botany. Just fancy asking a young man who has heaps of other things to
work up for the B.Sc., to qualify himself for honours both in botany,
histological, systematic, and physiological. That is to say, to get a
PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE of both these groups of subjects.
I really think the botanical and zoological examiners ought to
memorialise the senate jointly on the subject. The present system leads
to mere sham and cram.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[The year 1863, notable for the publication of Huxley's first book,
found him plunged deep in an immense quantity of work of all sorts. He
was still examiner in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy at the London
University, a post he held from 1855 to 1863, and again from 1865 to
1870, "making," as Sir Michael Foster says, "even an examination feel
the influence of the new spirit in biology; and among his examinees at
that time there was one at least who, knowing Huxley by his writings,
but by his writings only, looked forward to the viva voce test, not as a
trial, but as an occasion of delight."
In addition to the work mentioned in the following letters, I note three
lectures at Hull on April 6, 8, and 10; a paper on "Craniology" (January
17), and his "Letter on the Human Remains in the Shell Mounds," in the
"Ethnological Society's Transactions," while the Fishery Commission
claimed much of his time, either at the Board of Trade, or travelling
over the north, east, and south coasts from the end of July to the
beginning of October, and again in November and December.]
Jermyn Street, April 30, 1863.
My dear Kingsley,
I am exceedingly pleased to have your good word about the lectures,--and
I think I shall thereby be encouraged to do what a great many people
have wished--that is, to bring out an enlarged and revised edition of
them.
The only difficulty is time--if one could but work five-and-twenty hours
a day!
With respect to the sterility question, I do not think there is much
doubt as to the effect of breeding in and in in destroying fertility.
But the sterility which must be obtained by the selective breeder in
order to convert his morphological species into physiological
species--such as we have in nature--must be quite irrespective of
breeding in and in.
There is no question of breeding in and in between a horse and an ass,
and yet their produce is usually a sterile hybrid.
So if Carrier and Tumbler, e.g., were physiological species equivalent
to Horse and Ass, their progeny ought to be sterile or semi-sterile. So
far as experience has gone, on the contrary, it is perfectly fertile--as
fertile as the progeny of Carrier and Carrier or Tumbler and Tumbler.
From the first time that I wrote about Darwin's book in the "Times" and
in the "Westminster" until now, it has been obvious to me that this is
the weak point of Darwin's doctrine. He HAS shown that selective
breeding is a vera causa for morphological species; he has not yet shown
it a vera causa for physiological species.
But I entertain little doubt that a carefully devised system of
experimentation would produce physiological species by selection--only
the feat has not been performed yet.
I hope you received a copy of "Man's Place in Nature," which I desired
should be sent to you long ago. Don't suppose I ever expect an
acknowledgment of the book--it is one of the greatest nuisances in the
world to have that to do, and I never do it--but as you mentioned the
Lectures and not the other, I thought it might not have reached you. If
it has not, pray let me know and a copy shall be forwarded, as I want
you very much to read Essay Number 2.
I have a great respect for all the old bottles, and if the new wine can
be got to go into them and not burst them I shall be very glad--I
confess I do not see my way to it; on the contrary, the longer I live
and the more I learn the more hopeless to my mind becomes the
contradiction between the theory of the universe as understood and
expounded by Jewish and Christian theologians, and the theory of the
universe which is every day and every year growing out of the
application of scientific methods to its phenomena.
Whether astronomy and geology can or cannot be made to agree with the
statements as to the matters of fact laid down in Genesis--whether the
Gospels are historically true or not--are matters of comparatively small
moment in the face of the impassable gulf between the anthropomorphism
(however refined) of theology and the passionless impersonality of the
unknown and unknowable which science shows everywhere underlying the
thin veil of phenomena.
Here seems to me to be the great gulf fixed between science and
theology--beside which all Colenso controversies, reconcilements of
Scripture a la Pye Smith, etc., cut a very small figure.
You must have thought over all this long ago; but steeped as I am in
scientific thought from morning till night, the contrast has perhaps a
greater vividness to me. I go into society, and except among two or
three of my scientific colleagues I find myself alone on these subjects,
and as hopelessly at variance with the majority of my fellow-men as they
would be with their neighbours if they were set down among the
Ashantees. I don't like this state of things for myself--least of all do
I see how it will work out for my children. But as my mind is
constituted, there is no way out of it, and I can only envy you if you
can see things differently.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street, May 5, 1863.
My dear Kingsley,
My wife and children are away at Felixstow on the Suffolk coast, and as
I run down on Saturday and come back on Monday your MS. has been kept
longer than it should have been. I am quite agreed with the general
tenor of your argument; and indeed I have often argued against those who
maintain the intellectual gulf between man and the lower animals to be
an impassable one, by pointing to the immense intellectual chasm as
compared to the structural differences between two species of bees or
between sheep and goat or dog and wolf. So again your remarks upon the
argument drawn from the apparent absence of progression in animals seem
to me to be quite just. You might strengthen them much by reference to
the absence of progression in many races of men. The West African
savage, as the old voyagers show, was in just the same condition two
hundred years ago as now--and I suspect that the modern Patagonian is as
nearly as possible the unimproved representative of the makers of the
flint implements of Abbeville.
Lyell's phrase is very good, but it is a simple application of Darwin's
views to human history. The advance of mankind has everywhere depended
on the production of men of genius; and that production is a case of
"spontaneous variation" becoming hereditary, not by physical
propagation, but by the help of language, letters and the printing
press. Newton was to all intents and purposes a "sport" of a dull
agricultural stock, and his intellectual powers are to a certain extent
propagated by the grafting of the "Principia," his brain-shoot, on us.
Many thanks for your letter. It is a great pleasure to me to be able to
speak out to any one who, like yourself, is striving to get at truth
through a region of intellectual and moral influences so entirely
distinct from those to which I am exposed.
I am not much given to open my heart to anybody, and on looking back I
am often astonished at the way in which I threw myself and my troubles
at your head, in those bitter days when my poor boy died. But the way in
which you received my heathen letters set up a freemasonry between us,
at any rate on my side; and if they make you a bishop I advise you not
to let your private secretary open any letters with my name in the
corner, for they are as likely as not to contain matters which will make
the clerical hair stand on end.
I am too much a believer in Butler and in the great principle of the
"Analogy" that "there is no absurdity in theology so great that you
cannot parallel it by a greater absurdity of Nature" (it is not commonly
stated in this way), to have any difficulties about miracles. I have
never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against
orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible
antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school.
Nevertheless, I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the
Christian world call, and, so far as I can see, are justified in
calling, atheist and infidel. I cannot see one shadow or tittle of
evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomena of the universe
stands to us in the relation of a Father--loves us and cares for us as
Christianity asserts. On the contrary, the whole teaching of experience
seems to me to show that while the governance (if I may use the term) of
the universe is rigorously just and substantially kind and beneficent,
there is no more relation of affection between governor and governed
than between me and the twelve judges. I know the administrators of the
law desire to do their best for everybody, and that they would rather
not hurt me than otherwise, but I also know that under certain
circumstances they will most assuredly hang me; and that in any case it
would be absurd to suppose them guided by any particular affection for
me.
This seems to me to be the relation which exists between the cause of
the phenomena of this universe and myself. I submit to it with implicit
obedience and perfect cheerfulness, and the more because my small
intelligence does not see how any other arrangement could possibly be
got to work as the world is constituted.
But this is what the Christian world calls atheism, and because all my
toil and pains does not enable me to see my way to any other conclusion
than this, a Christian judge would (if he knew it) refuse to take my
evidence in a court of justice against that of a Christian
ticket-of-leave man.
So with regard to the other great Christian dogmas, the immortality of
the soul, and the future state of rewards and punishments, what possible
objection a priori can I--who am compelled perforce to believe in the
immortality of what we call Matter and Force and in a very unmistakable
PRESENT state of rewards and punishments for all our deeds--have to
these doctrines? Give me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump
at them.
But read Butler, and see to what drivel even his great mind descends
when he has to talk about the immortality of the soul! I have never seen
an argument on that subject which from a scientific point of view is
worth the paper it is written upon. All resolve themselves into this
formula:--The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is very pleasant
and very useful, therefore it is true.
All the grand language about "human aspiration," "consistency with the
divine justice," etc., etc., collapses into this at last--Better the
misery of the "Vale! in aeternum vale!" ten times over than the opium of
such empty sophisms--I have drunk of that cup to the bottom.
I am called away and must close my letter. Don't trouble to answer it
unless you are so minded.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street, May 22, 1863.
My dear Kingsley,
Pray excuse my delay in replying to your letter. I have been very much
pressed for time for these two or three days.
First touching the action of the spermatozoon. The best information you
can find on the subject is, I think, in Newport's papers in the
"Philosophical Transactions" for 1851, 1853, and 1854, especially the
1853 paper. Newport treats only of the Frog, but the information he
gives is very full and definite. Allen Thomson's very accurate and
learned article "Ovum" in Todd's "Cyclopaedia" is also well worth
looking through, though unfortunately it is least full just where you
want most information. In French there is Coste's "Developpement des
Corps organises" and the volume on "Development" by Bischoff in the
French translation of the last edition of Soemmering's "Anatomy."
So much for your inquiries as to the matters of fact. Next, as to
questions of speculation. If any expression of ignorance on my part will
bring us nearer we are likely to come into absolute contact, for the
possibilities of "may be" are, to me, infinite.
I know nothing of Necessity, abominate the word Law (except as meaning
that we know nothing to the contrary), and am quite ready to admit that
there may be some place, "other side of nowhere," par exemple, where 2 +
2 = 5, and all bodies naturally repel one another instead of gravitating
together.
I don't know whether Matter is anything distinct from Force. I don't
know that atoms are anything but pure myths. Cogito, ergo sum is to my
mind a ridiculous piece of bad logic, all I can say at any time being
"Cogito." The Latin form I hold to be preferable to the English "I
think," because the latter asserts the existence of an Ego--about which
the bundle of phenomena at present addressing you knows nothing. In
fact, if I am pushed, metaphysical speculation lands me exactly where
your friend Raphael was when his bitch pupped. In other words, I believe
in Hamilton, Mansell and Herbert Spencer so long as they are
destructive, and I laugh at their beards as soon as they try to spin
their own cobwebs.
Is this basis of ignorance broad enough for you? If you, theologian, can
find as firm footing as I, man of science, do on this foundation of
minus nought--there will be nought to fear for our ever diverging.
For you see I am quite as ready to admit your doctrine that souls
secrete bodies as I am the opposite one that bodies secrete
souls--simply because I deny the possibility of obtaining any evidence
as to the truth and falsehood of either hypothesis. My fundamental axiom
of speculative philosophy is that MATERIALISM AND SPIRITUALISM ARE
OPPOSITE POLES OF THE SAME ABSURDITY--the absurdity of imagining that we
know anything about either spirit or matter.
Cabanis and Berkeley (I speak of them simply as types of schools) are
both asses, the only difference being that one is a black donkey and the
other a white one.
This universe is, I conceive, like to a great game being played out, and
we poor mortals are allowed to take a hand. By great good fortune the
wiser among us have made out some few of the rules of the game, as at
present played. We call them "Laws of Nature," and honour them because
we find that if we obey them we win something for our pains. The cards
are our theories and hypotheses, the tricks our experimental
verifications. But what sane man would endeavour to solve this problem:
given the rules of a game and the winnings, to find whether the cards
are made of pasteboard or goldleaf? Yet the problem of the
metaphysicians is to my mind no saner.
If you tell me that an Ape differs from a Man because the latter has a
soul and the ape has not, I can only say it may be so; but I should
uncommonly like to know how either that the ape has not one or that the
man has.
And until you satisfy me as to the soundness of your method of
investigation, I must adhere to what seems to my mind a simpler form of
notation--i.e. to suppose that all phenomena have the same substratum
(if they have any), and that soul and body, or mental and physical
phenomena, are merely diverse manifestations of that hypothetical
substratum. In this way, it seems to me, I obey the rule which works so
well in practice, of always making the simplest possible suppositions.
On the other hand, if you are of a different opinion, and find it more
convenient to call the x which underlies (hypothetically) mental
phenomena, Soul, and the x which underlies (hypothetically) physical
phenomena, Body, well and good. The two-fluid theory and the one-fluid
theory of electricity both accounted for the phenomena up to a certain
extent, and both were probably wrong. So it may be with the theories
that there is only one x in nature or two x's or three x's.
For, if you will think upon it, there are only four possible ontological
hypotheses now that Polytheism is dead.
1. There is no x = Atheism on Berkeleyan principles.
2. There is only one x = Materialism or Pantheism, according as you turn
it heads or tails.
3. There are two x's: Spirit and Matter = Speculators incertae sedis.
4. There are three x's: God, Souls, Matter = Orthodox Theologians.
To say that I adopt any one of those hypotheses, as a representation of
fact, would to my mind be absurd; but Number 2 is the one I can work
with best. To return to my metaphor, it chimes in better with the rules
of the game of nature than any other of the four possibilities, to my
mind.
But who knows when the great Banker may sweep away table and cards and
all, and set us learning a new game? What will become of all my poor
counters then? It may turn out that I am quite wrong, and that there are
no x's or 20 x's.
I am glad you appreciate the rich absurdities of the new doctrine of
spontogenesis [?]. Against the doctrine of spontaneous generation in the
abstract I have nothing to say. Indeed it is a necessary corollary from
Darwin's views if legitimately carried out, and I think Owen smites him
(Darwin) fairly for taking refuge in "Pentateuchal" phraseology when he
ought to have done one of two things--(a) give up the problem, (b) admit
the necessity of spontaneous generation. It is the very passage in
Darwin's book to which, as he knows right well, I have always strongly
objected. The x of science and the x of genesis are two different x's,
and for any sake don't let us confuse them together. Maurice has sent me
his book. I have read it, but I find myself utterly at a loss to
comprehend his point of view.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The following letter is interesting, as showing his continued interest
in the question of skull structure, as well as his relation to his
friend and fellow-worker, Dr. W.K. Parker.]
Jermyn Street, March 18, 1863.
My dear Parker,
Any conclusion that I have reached will seem to me all the better based
for knowing that you have been near or at it, and I am therefore right
glad to have your letter. If I had only time, nothing would delight me
more than to go over your preparations, but these Hunterian Lectures are
about the hardest bit of work I ever took in hand, and I am obliged to
give every minute to them.
By and by I will gladly go with you over your vast material.
Did you not some time ago tell me that you considered the Y-shaped bone
(so-called presphenoid) in the Pike to be the true basisphenoid? If so,
let me know before lecture to-morrow, that I may not commit theft
unawares.
I have arrived at that conclusion myself from the anatomical relations
of the bone in question to the brain and nerves.
I look upon the proposition opisthotis = turtle's "occipital externe" =
Perch's Rocher (Cuvier) as the one thing needful to clear up the unity
of structure of the bony cranium; and it shall be counted unto me as a
great sin if I have helped to keep you back from it. The thing has been
dawning upon me ever since I read Kolliker's book two summers ago, but I
have never had time to work it out.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The following extracts from a letter to Hooker and a letter to Darwin
describe the pressure of his work at this time.]
1863.
My dear Hooker,
...I would willingly send a paper to the Linnean this year if I could,
but I do not see how it is practicable. I lecture five times a week from
now till the middle of February. I then have to give eighteen lectures
at the College of Surgeons--six on classification, and twelve on the
vertebrate skeleton. I might write a paper on this new Glyptodon, with
some eighteen to twenty plates. A preliminary notice has already gone to
the Royal Society. I have a decade of fossil fish in progress; a fellow
in the country WILL keep on sending me splendid new Labyrinthodonts from
the coal, and that d--d manual must come out.
Ayez pitie de moi.
T.H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street, July 2, 1863.
My Dear Darwin,
I am horribly loth to say that I cannot do anything you want done; and
partly for that reason and partly because we have been very busy here
with some new arrangements during the last day or two, I did not at once
reply to your note.
I am afraid, however, I cannot undertake any sort of new work. In spite
of working like a horse (or if you prefer it, like an ass), I find
myself scandalously in arrear, and I shall get into terrible hot water
if I do not clear off some things that have been hanging about me for
months and years.
If you will send me up the specimens, however, I will ask Flower (whom I
see constantly) to examine them for you. The examination will be no
great trouble, and I am ashamed to make a fuss about it, but I have
sworn a big oath to take no fresh work, great or small, until certain
things are done.
I wake up in the morning with somebody saying in my ear, "A is not done,
and B is not done, and C is not done, and D is not done," etc., and a
feeling like a fellow whose duns are all in the street waiting for him.
By the way, you ask me what I am doing now, so I will just enumerate
some of the A, B, and C's aforesaid.
A. Editing lectures on Vertebrate skull and bringing them out in the
"Medical Times."
B. Editing and re-writing lectures on Elementary Physiology, just
delivered here and reported as I went along. ([Delivered on Friday
evenings from April to June at Jermyn Street, and reported in the
"Medical Times." They formed the basis of his well-known little book on
"Elementary Physiology," published 1866. He writes on April 22:--]
"Macmillan has just been with me, and I am let in for a school book on
physiology based on these lectures of mine. Money arrangements not quite
fixed yet, but he is a good fellow, and will not do me unnecessarily.")
C. Thinking of my course of twenty-four lectures on the Mammalia at the
College of Surgeons in next spring, and making investigations bearing on
the same.
D. Thinking of and working at a "Manual of Comparative Anatomy" (may it
be d--d); which I have had in hand these seven years.
E. Getting heaps of remains of new Labyrinthodonts from the Glasgow
coalfield, which have to be described.
F. Working at a memoir on Glyptodon based on a new and almost entire
specimen at the College of Surgeons.
G. Preparing a new decade upon Fossil fishes for this place.
H. Knowing that I ought to have written long ago a description of a most
interesting lot of Indian fossils sent to me by Oldham.
I. Being blown up by Hooker for doing nothing for the "Natural History
Review."
K. Being bothered by sundry editors just to write articles "which you
know you can knock off in a moment."
L. Consciousness of having left unwritten letters which ought to have
been written long ago, especially to C. Darwin.
M. General worry and botheration. Ten or twelve people taking up my time
all day about their own affairs.
N. O. P. Q. R. S. T. U. V. W. X. Y. Z.
Societies.
Clubs.
Dinners, evening parties, and all the apparatus for wasting time called
"Society." Colensoism and botheration about Moses...Finally pestered to
death in public and private because I am supposed to be what they call a
"Darwinian."
If that is not enough, I could exhaust the Greek alphabet for heads in
addition.
I am glad to hear that Wyman thinks well of my book, as he is very
competent to judge. I hear it is republished in America, but I suppose I
shall get nothing out of it. [In this expectation, however, he was
agreeably disappointed by the action of D. Appleton and Company.
An undated letter to Kingsley, who had suggested that he should write an
article on Prayer, belongs probably to the autumn of 1863:--]
I should like very much to write such an article as you suggest, but I
am very doubtful about undertaking it for "Fraser." Anything I could say
would go to the root of praying altogether, for inasmuch as the whole
universe is governed, so far as I can see, in the same way, and the
moral world is as much governed by laws as the physical--whatever
militates against asking for one sort of blessing seems to me to tell
with the same force against asking for any other.
Not that I mean for a moment to say that prayer is illogical, for if the
whole universe is ruled by fixed laws it is just as logically absurd for
me to ask you to answer this letter as to ask the Almighty to alter the
weather. The whole argument is an "old foe with a new face," the freedom
and necessity question over again.
If I were to write about the question I should have to develop all this
side of the problem, and then having shown that logic, as always happens
when it is carried to extremes, leaves us bombinantes in vacuo, I should
appeal to experience to show that prayers of this sort are not answered,
and to science to prove that if they were they would do a great deal of
harm.
But you know this would never do for the atmosphere of "Fraser." It
would be much better suited for an article in my favourite organ, the
wicked "Westminster."
However, to say truth, I do not see how I am to undertake anything fresh
just at present. I have promised an article for "Macmillan" ages ago;
and Masson scowls at me whenever we meet. I am afraid to go through the
Albany lest Cook should demand certain reviews of books which have been
long in my hands. I am just completing a long memoir for the Linnean
Society; a monograph on certain fossil reptiles must be finished before
the new year. My lectures have begun, and there is a certain "Manual"
looming in the background. And to crown all, these late events [the
death of his brother] have given me such a wrench that I feel I must be
prudent.
[The following reference to Robert Lowe, afterwards Lord Sherbrooke, has
a quasi-prophetic interest:--]
May 7.
Dined at the Smiths' last night. [Dr. (afterwards Sir William) Smith, of
dictionary fame.] Lowe was to have been there, but had a dinner-party of
his own...I have come to the conviction that our friend Bob is a most
admirable, well-judging statesman, for he says I am the only man fit to
be at the head of the British Museum [i.e. of the Natural History
Collections.], and that if he had his way he would put me there.
[Years afterwards, on Sir R. Owen's retirement, he was offered the post,
but declined it, as he greatly disliked the kind of work. At the same
time, he pointed out to the Minister who made the offer that the man of
all others for the post would be the late distinguished holder of it,
Sir W.H. Flower, a suggestion happily acted on.
Early in August a severe loss befell him in the sudden death of his
brother George, who had been his close friend ever since he had returned
from Australia, who had given him all the help and sympathy in his
struggles that could be given by a man of the world without special
interests in science or literature. With brilliancy enough to have won
success if he had had patience to ensure it, he was not only a pleasant
companion, a "clubbable man" in Johnson's phrase, but a friend to trust.
The two households had seen much of one another; the childless couple
regarded their brother's children almost as their own. Thus a real gap
was made in the family circle, and the trouble was not lessened by the
fact that George Huxley's affairs were left in great confusion, and his
brother not only spent a great deal of time in looking after the
interests of the widow, but took upon himself certain obligations in
order to make things straight, with the result that he was even
compelled to part with his Royal Medal, the gold of which was worth 50
pounds sterling.]