1865.
[The progress of the American civil war suggested to Huxley in 1865 the
text for an article, "Emancipation, Black and White," the emancipation
of the negro in America and the emancipation of women in England, which
appeared in the "Reader" of May 20 ("Collected Essays" 3 66). His main
argument for the emancipation of the negro was that already given in his
letter to his sister; namely, that in accordance with the moral law that
no human being can arbitrarily dominate over another without grievous
damage to his own nature, the master will benefit by freedom more than
the freed-man. And just as the negro will never take the highest places
in civilisation yet need not to be confined to the lowest, so, he
argues, it will be with women.] "Nature's old salique law will never be
repealed, and no change of dynasty will be effected," [although]
"whatever argument justifies a given education for all boys justifies
its application to girls as well."
[With this may be compared his letter to the "Times" of July 8, 1874
(Chapter 28).
No scientific monographs were published in 1865 by Huxley, but his
lectures of the previous winter to working-men on "The various Races of
Mankind" are an indication of his continued interest in Ethnology,
which, set going, as has been said, by the promise to revise the
woodcuts for Lyell's book, found expression in such papers as the "Human
Remains in the Shell Mounds," 1863; the "Neanderthal Remains" of 1864;
the "Methods and Results of Ethnology" of 1865; his Fullerian Lectures
of 1866-67; papers on "Two Widely Contrasted Forms of the Human Cranium"
of 1866 and 1868; the "Patagonian Skulls" of 1868; and "Some Fixed
Points in British Ethnology" of 1871:--
His published ethnological papers (says Sir Michael Foster) are not
numerous, nor can they be taken as a measure of his influence on this
branch of study. In many ways he has made himself felt, not the least by
the severity with which on the one hand he repressed the pretensions of
shallow persons who, taking advantage of the glamour of the Darwinian
doctrine, talked nonsense in the name of anthropological science, and on
the other hand, exposed those who in the structure of the brain or of
other parts, saw an impassable gulf between man and the monkey. The
episode of the "hippocampus" stirred for a while not only science but
the general public. He used his influence, already year by year growing
more and more powerful, to keep the study of the natural history of man
within its proper lines, and chiefly with this end in view held the
Presidential Chair of the Ethnological Society in 1869-70. It was mainly
through his influence that this older Ethnological Society was, a year
later, in 1871, amalgamated with a newer rival society, the
Anthropological, under the title of "The Anthropological Institute."
During this time he was constantly occupied with paleontological work,
as the following letter to Sir Charles Lyell indicates:--]
Jermyn Street, November 27, 1865.
My dear Sir Charles,
I returned last night from a hasty journey to Ireland, whither I betook
myself on Thursday night, being attracted vulture-wise by the scent of a
quantity of carboniferous corpses. The journey was as well worth the
trouble as any I ever undertook, seeing that in a morning's work I
turned out ten genera of vertebrate animals of which five are certainly
new; and of these four are Labyrinthodonts, amphibia of new types. These
four are baptised Ophiderpeton, Lepterpeton, Ichthyerpeton,
Keraterpeton. They all have ossified spinal columns and limbs. The
special interest attaching to the two first is that they represent a
type of Labyrinthodonts hitherto unknown, and corresponding with Siren
and Amphiuma among living Amphibia. Ophiderpeton, for example, is like
an eel, about three feet long with small fore legs and rudimentary hind
ones.
In the year of grace 1861, there were three genera of European
carboniferous Labyrinthodonts known, Archegosaurus, Scleroceplus,
Parabatrachus.
The vertebral column of Archegosaurus was alone known, and it was in a
remarkably imperfect state of ossification. Since that date, by a
succession of odd chances, seven new genera have come into my hands, and
of these six certainly have well-ossified and developed vertebral
columns.
I reckon there are now about thirty genera of Labyrinthodonts known from
all parts of the world and all deposits. Of these eleven have been
established by myself in the course of the last half-dozen years, upon
remains which have come into my hands by the merest chance.
Five and twenty years ago, all the world but yourself believed that a
vertebrate animal of higher organisation than a fish in the
carboniferous rocks never existed. I think the whole story is not a bad
comment upon negative evidence.
January 1, 1865.
My dear Darwin,
I cannot do better than write my first letter of the year to you, if it
is only to wish you and yours your fair share (and more than your fair
share, if need be) of good for the New Year. The immediate cause of my
writing, however, was turning out my pocket and finding therein an
unanswered letter of yours containing a scrap on which is a request for
a photograph, which I am afraid I overlooked. At least I hope I did, and
then my manners won't be so bad. I enclose the latest version of myself.
I wish I could follow out your suggestion about a book on zoology. (By
the way please to tell Miss Emma that my last book IS a book. [The first
volume of his Hunterian Lectures on "Comparative Anatomy." A second
volume never appeared. Miss Darwin, as her father wrote to Huxley after
the delivery of his Working Men's Lectures in 1862, "was reading your
Lectures, and ended by saying, 'I wish he would write a book.' I
answered, 'he has just written a great book on the skull.' 'I don't call
that a book,' she replied, and added, 'I want something that people can
read; he does write so well.'"] Marry come up! Does her ladyship call it
a pamphlet?)
But I assure you that writing is a perfect pest to me unless I am
interested, and not only a bore but a very slow process. I have some
popular lectures on Physiology, which have been half done for more than
a twelvemonth, and I hate the sight of them because the subject no
longer interests me, and my head is full of other matters. [See letter
of April 22, 1863.]
So I have just done giving a set of lectures to working-men on "The
Various Races of Mankind," which really would make a book in Miss Emma's
sense of the word, and which I have had reported. But when am I to work
them up? Twenty-four Hunterian Lectures loom between me and Easter. I am
dying to get out the second volume of the book that is not a book, but
in vain.
I trust you are better, though the last news I had of you from Lubbock
was not so encouraging as I could have wished.
With best wishes and remembrances to Mrs. Darwin.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Thanks for "fur Darwin," I had it.
26 Abbey Place, January 15, 1865.
My dear Darwin,
Many thanks for Deslongchamps' paper which I do not possess.
I received another important publication yesterday morning in the shape
of a small but hearty son, who came to light a little before six. The
wife is getting on capitally, and we are both greatly rejoiced at having
another boy, as your godson ran great risks of being spoiled by a harem
of sisters.
The leader in the "Reader" IS mine, and I am glad you like it. The more
so as it has got me into trouble with some of my friends. However, the
revolution that is going on is not to be made with rose-water.
I wish if anything occurs to you that would improve the scientific part
of the "Reader," you would let me know as I am in great measure
responsible for it.
I am sorry not to have a better account of your health. With kind
remembrances to Mrs. Darwin and the rest of your circle.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street, May 1, 1865.
My dear Darwin,
I send you by this post a booklet none of which is much worth your
reading, while of nine-tenths of it you may say as the man did who had
been trying to read Johnson's "Dictionary," "that the words were fine,
but he couldn't make much of the story." [Probably "A Catalogue of the
Collection of Fossils in the Museum of Practical Geology," etc.]
But perhaps the young lady who has been kind enough to act as taster of
my books heretofore will read the explanatory notice, and give me her
ideas thereupon (always recollecting that almost the whole of it was
written in the pre-Darwinian epoch.)
I do not hear very good accounts of you--to my sorrow--though rumours
have reached me that the opus magnum is completely developed though not
yet born. [On "Pangenesis."]
I am grinding at the mill and getting a little tired. My belongings
flourishing as I hope you are.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street, May 29, 1865.
My dear Darwin,
I meant to have written to you yesterday to say how glad I shall be to
read whatever you like to send me.
I have to lecture at the Royal Institution this week, but after Friday,
my time will be more at my own disposal than usual; and as always I
shall be most particularly glad to be of any use to you.
Any glimmer of light on the question you speak of is of the utmost
importance, and I shall be immensely interested in learning your views.
And of course I need not add I will do my best to upset them. That is
the nature of the beast.
I had a letter from one of the ablest of the younger zoologists of
Germany, Haeckel, the other day, in which this passage occurs:--
"The Darwinian Theory, the establishment and development of which is the
object [of] all my scientific labours, has gained ground immensely in
Germany (where it was at first so misunderstood) during the last two
years, and I entertain no doubt that it will before long be everywhere
victorious." And he adds that I dealt far too mildly with Kolliker.
With kindest remembrances to Mrs. Darwin and your family.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[This year, as is seen from the foregoing, he was again in direct
communication with Professor Ernst Haeckel of Jena, the earliest and
strongest champion of Darwinian ideas in Germany. The latter wished to
enlarge his observations by joining some English scientific expedition,
if any such were in preparation, but was dissuaded by the following
reply. The expected book of Darwin's was the "Pangenesis," and this is
also referred to in the three succeeding letters to Darwin himself.]
The Royal School of Mines, Jermyn Street, London, June 7, 1865.
My dear Sir,
Many thanks for your letter, and for the welcome present of your
portrait, which I shall value greatly, and in exchange for which I
enclose my own. Indeed I have delayed writing to you in order to be able
to send the last "new and improved" edition of myself.
I wish it were in my power to help you to any such appointment as that
you wish for. But I do not think our government is likely to send out
any scientific expedition to the South Seas. There is a talk about a new
Arctic expedition, but I doubt if it will come to much, and even if it
should be organised I could not recommend your throwing yourself away in
an undertaking which promises more frost-bites than anything else to a
naturalist.
In truth, though I have felt and can still feel the attraction of
foreign travel in all its strength, I would counsel you to stop at home,
and as Goethe says, find your America here. There are plenty of people
who can observe and whose places, if they are expended by fever or
shipwreck, can be well enough filled up. But there are very few who can
grapple with the higher problems of science as you have done and are
doing, and we cannot afford to lose you. It is the organisation of
knowledge rather than its increase which is wanted just now. And I think
you can help in this great undertaking better in Germany than in New
Zealand.
Darwin has been very ill for more than a year past, so ill, in fact,
that his recovery was at one time doubtful. But he contrives to work in
spite of fate, and I hope that before long we shall have a new book from
him.
By way of consolation I sent him an extract from your letter touching
the progress of his views.
I am glad that you did not think my critique of Kolliker too severe. He
is an old friend of mine, and I desired to be as gentle as possible,
while performing the unpleasant duty of showing how thoroughly he had
misunderstood the question.
I shall look with great interest for your promised book. Lately I have
been busy with Ethnological questions, and I fear I shall not altogether
please your able friend Professor Schleicher in some remarks I have had
to make upon the supposed value of philological evidence.
May we hope to see you at the meeting of the British Association at
Birmingham? It would give many, and especially myself, much pleasure to
become personally acquainted with you.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
The Royal School of Mines, Jermyn Street, June 1, 1865.
My dear Darwin,
Your MS. [of "Pangenesis"] reached me safely last evening.
I could not refrain from glancing over it on the spot, and I perceive I
shall have to put on my sharpest spectacles and best considering cap.
I shall not write till I have thought well on the whole subject.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street, July 16, 1865.
My dear Darwin,
I have just counted the pages of your MS. to see that they are all
right, and packed it up to send you by post, registered, so I hope it
will reach you safely. I should have sent it yesterday, but people came
in and bothered me about post time.
I did not at all mean by what I said to stop you from publishing your
views, and I really should not like to take that responsibility.
Somebody rummaging among your papers half a century hence will find
"Pangenesis" and say, "See this wonderful anticipation of our modern
theories, and that stupid ass Huxley preventing his publishing them."
And then the Carlyleans of that day will make me a text for holding
forth upon the difference between mere vulpine sharpness and genius.
I am not going to be made a horrid example of in that way. But all I say
is, publish your views, not so much in the shape of formed conclusions,
as of hypothetical developments of the only clue at present accessible,
and don't give the Philistines more chances of blaspheming than you can
help.
I am very grieved to hear that you have been so ill again.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
26 Abbey Place, October 2, 1865.
My dear Darwin,
"This comes hoping you are well," and for no other purpose than to say
as much. I am just back from seven weeks' idleness at Littlehampton with
my wife and children, the first time I have had a holiday of any extent
with them for years.
We are all flourishing--the babies particularly so--and I find myself
rather loth to begin grinding at the mill again. There is a vein of
laziness in me which crops out uncommonly strong in your godson, who is
about the idlest, jolliest young four year old I know.
You will have been as much grieved as I have been about dear old Hooker.
According to the last accounts, however, he is mending, and I hope to
see him in the pristine vigour again before long.
My wife is gone to bed or she would join me in the kindest regards and
remembrances to Mrs. Darwin and your family.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The sound judgment and nice sense of honour for which Huxley was known
among his friends often led those who were in difficulties to appeal to
him for advice. About this time a dispute arose over an alleged case of
unacknowledged "conveyance" of information. Writing to Hooker, he says
the one party to the quarrel failed to "set the affair straight with
half a dozen words of frank explanation as he might have done;" as to
the other, "like all quiet and mild men who do get a grievance, he
became about twice as 'wud' as Berserks like you and me." Both came to
him, so that he says, "I have found it very difficult to deal honestly
with both sides without betraying the confidence of either or making
matters worse." Happily, with his help, matters reached a peaceful
solution, and his final comment is:--]
I don't mind fighting to the death in a good big row, but when A and B
are supplying themselves from C's orchard, I don't think it is very much
worth while to dispute whether B filled his pockets directly from the
trees or indirectly helped himself to the contents of A's basket. If B
has so helped himself, he certainly ought to say so like a man, but if I
were A, I would not much care whether he did or not.
-- has been horribly disgusted about it, but I am not sure the
discipline may not have opened his eyes to new and useful aspects of
nature.
[The summer of 1865 saw the inception of an educational experiment--an
International Education Society--to which Huxley gladly gave his support
as a step in the right direction. He had long been convinced of the
inadequacy of existing forms of education--survivals from the needs of a
bygone age--to prepare for the new forms into which intellectual life
was passing. That educators should be content to bring up the young
generation in the modes of thought which satisfied their forefathers
three centuries ago, as if no change had passed over the world since
then, filled him with mingled amazement and horror.
The outcome of the scheme was the International College, at Spring
Grove, Isleworth, under the headmastership of Dr. Leonhard Schmitz; one
of the chief members of the committee being Dr. (afterwards Sir) William
Smith, while at the head of the Society was Richard Cobden, under whose
presidency it had been registered some time before. John Stuart Mill,
however, refused to join, considering that this was not the most needed
reform in education, and that he could not support a school in which the
ordinary theology was taught.
An article in the "Reader" for June 17, 1865, sketches the plan. The
design was to give a liberal education to boys whether intended for a
profession or for commerce. The education for both was the same up to a
certain point, corresponding to that given in our higher schools,
together with foreign languages and the elements of physical and social
science, after which the courses bifurcated. (For a fuller account of
the scientific education see below.) Special stress was laid on modern
languages, both for themselves and as a preparation and help for
classical teaching. Accordingly, the International College was one of
three parallel institutions in England, France, and Germany, where a boy
could in turn acquire a sound knowledge of all three languages while
continuing the same course of education. The Franco-Prussian war of
1870, however, proved fatal to the scheme.
Some letters to his friend Dr. W.K. Parker, show the good-fellowship
which existed between them, as well as the interest he took in the style
and success of Parker's work. (A man of whom he wrote (preface to
Professor Jeffery Parker's "Life of W.K. Parker" 1893), that "in him the
genius of an artist struggled with that of a philosopher, and not
unfrequently the latter got the worst of the contest." He speaks too of
his "minute accuracy in observation and boundless memory for details and
imagination which absolutely rioted in the scenting out of subtle and
often far-fetched analogies.") Parker was hard at work on Birds, a
subject in which his friend and leader also was deeply interested, and
was indeed preparing an important book upon it.
Referring to his candidature for the Royal Society, he writes on
February 21, 1865:] "With reference to your candidature, I am ready to
bring your name forward whenever you like, and to back you with 'all my
might, power, amity, and authority,' as Essex did Bacon (you need not
serve me as Bacon did Essex afterwards), but my impression has been that
you did not wish to come forward this year."
[And on November 2, 1866, congratulating him on his] "well-earned
honour" [of the F.R.S.]--"Go on and prosper. These are not the things
wise men work for; but it is not the less proper of a wise man to take
them when they come unsought."
26 Abbey Place, December 3, 1865.
My dear Parker,
I have been so terribly pressed by my work that I have only just been
able to finish the reading of your paper.
Very few pieces of work which have fallen in my way come near your
account of the Struthious skull in point of clearness and completeness.
It is a most admirable essay, and will make an epoch in this kind of
inquiry.
I want you, however, to remodel the introduction, and to make some
unessential but convenient difference in the arrangement of some of the
figures.
Secondly, full as the appendix is of most valuable and interesting
matter, I advise you for the present to keep it back.
My reason is that you have done justice neither to yourself nor to your
topics, and that if the appendix is printed as it stands, your labour
will be in great measure lost.
You start subjects enough for half a dozen papers, and partly from the
compression thus resulting, and partly from the absence of
illustrations, I do not believe there are half a dozen men in Europe who
will be able to follow you. Furthermore, though the appendix is relevant
enough--every line of it--to those who have dived deep, as you and I
have--to any one else it has all the aspects of a string of desultory
discussions. AS YOUR FATHER CONFESSOR, I FORBID THE PUBLICATION OF THE
APPENDIX. After having had all this trouble with you I am not going to
have you waste your powers for want of a little method, so I tell you.
What you are to do is this. You are to rewrite the introduction and to
say that the present paper is the first of a series on the structure of
the vertebrate skull; that the second will be "On the development of the
osseous cranium of the Common Fowl" (and here (if you are good), I will
permit you to introduce the episode on cartilage and membrane
[illegible]); the third will be "On the chief modifications of the
cranium observed in the Sauropsida."
The fourth, "On the mammalian skull."
The fifth, "On the skull of the Ichthyopsida."
I will give you two years from this time to execute these five memoirs;
and then if you have stood good-temperedly the amount of badgering and
bullying you will get from me whenever you come dutifully to report
progress, you shall be left to your own devices in the third year to
publish a paper on "The general structure and theory of the vertebrate
skull."
You have a brilliant field before you, and a start such that no one is
likely to catch you. Sit deliberately down over against the city,
conquer it and make it your own, and don't be wasting powder in knocking
down odd bastions with random shells.
I write jestingly, but I really am very much in earnest. Come and have a
talk on the matter as soon as you can, for I should send in my report.
You will find me in Jermyn Street, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday
mornings, Thursday afternoon, but not Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon.
Send a line to say when you will come.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.