1868.
[In 1868 he published five scientific memoirs, amongst them his
classification of birds and "Remarks upon Archaeopteryx Lithographica"
("Proceedings of the Royal Society" 16 1868 pages 243-248). This
creature, a bird with reptilian characters, was a suggestive object from
which to popularise some of the far-reaching results of his many years'
labour upon the morphology of both birds and reptiles. Thus it led to a
lecture at the Royal Institution, on February 7, "On the Animals which
are most nearly intermediate between Birds and Reptiles."
Of this branch of work Sir M. Foster says: (Obituary Notice "Proceedings
of the Royal Society" volume 59):--
One great consequence of these researches was that science was enriched
by a clear demonstration of the many and close affinities between
reptiles and birds, so that the two henceforward came to be known under
the joint title of Sauropsida, the amphibia being at the same time
distinctly more separated from the reptiles, and their relations to
fishes more clearly signified by the joint title of Ichthyopsida. At the
same time, proof was brought forward that the line of descent of the
Sauropsida clearly diverged from that of the Mammalia, both starting
from some common ancestry. And besides this great generalisation, the
importance of which, both from a classificatory and from an evolutional
point of view, needs no comment, there came out of the same researches
numerous lesser contributions to the advancement of morphological
knowledge, including among others an attempt, in many respects
successful, at a classification of birds.
This work in connection with the reptilian ancestry of birds further
appears in the paleontological papers published in 1869 upon the
Dinosaurs (see Chapter 23), and is referred to in a letter to Haeckel.
His Hunterian lectures on the Invertebrata appeared this year in the
"Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science" (pages 126-129, and
191-201), and in the October number of the same journal appeared his
famous article "On some Organisms living at great depth in the North
Atlantic Ocean," originally delivered before the British Association at
Norwich in this year (1868). The sticky or viscid character of the fresh
mud from the bottom of the Atlantic had already been noticed by Captain
Dayman when making soundings for the Atlantic cable. This stickiness was
apparently due to the presence of innumerable lumps of a transparent,
gelatinous substance, consisting of minute granules without discoverable
nucleus or membranous envelope, and interspersed with cretaceous
coccoliths. After a description of the structure of this substance and
its chemical reactions, he makes a careful proviso against confounding
the statement of fact in the description and the interpretation which he
proceeds to put upon these facts:--]
I conceive that the granulate heaps and the transparent gelatinous
matter in which they are embedded represent masses of protoplasm. Take
away the cysts which characterise the Radiolaria, and a dead Sphaerozoum
would very nearly represent one of this deep-sea "Ur-schleim," which
must, I think, be regarded as a new form of those simple animated beings
which have recently been so well described by Haeckel in his
"Monographie der Moneras" page 210. [(See "Collected Essays" 5 153.)
Of this he writes to Haeckel on October 6, 1868:--]
This paper] is about a new "Moner" which lies at the bottom of the
Atlantic to all appearances, and gives rise to some wonderful calcified
bodies. I have christened it Bathybius Haeckelii, and I hope that you
will not be ashamed of your god-child. I will send you some of the mud
with the paper.
[The explanation was plausible enough on general grounds, if the
evidence had been all that it seemed to be. But it must be noted that
the specimens examined by him and by Haeckel, who two years later
published a full and detailed description of Bathybius, were seen in a
preserved state. Neither of them saw a fresh specimen, though on the
cruise of the "Porcupine," Sir Wyville Thomson and Dr. W. Carpenter
examined the substance in a fresh state, and found no better explanation
to give of it. However, not only were the expectations that it was very
widely distributed over the Atlantic bottom, falsified in 1879 by the
researches of the "Challenger" expedition, but the behaviour of certain
deep-sea specimens gave good ground for suspecting that what had been
sent home before as genuine deep-sea mud, was a precipitate due to the
action on the specimens of the spirit in which they were preserved.
Though Haeckel, with his special experience of Monera, refused to desert
Bathybius, a close parallel to which was found off Greenland in 1876,
the rest of its sponsors gave it up. Whatever it might be as a matter of
possibility, the particular evidence upon which it had been described
was tainted. Once assured of this, Huxley characteristically took the
bull by the horns. Without waiting for any one else to come forward, he
made public renunciation of Bathybius at the British Association in
1879. The "eating of the leek" as recommended to his friend Dohrn (July
7, 1868), was not merely a counsel for others, but was a prescription
followed by himself on occasion:--]
As you know, I did not think you were on the right track with the
Arthropoda, and I am not going to profess to be sorry that you have
finally worked yourself to that conclusion.
As to the unlucky publication in the "Journal of Anatomy and
Physiology," you have read your Shakespeare and know what is meant by
"eating a leek." Well, every honest man has to do that now and then, and
I assure you that if eaten fairly and without grimaces, the devouring of
that herb has a very wholesome cooling effect on the blood, particularly
in people of sanguine temperament.
Seriously you must not mind a check of this kind.
[This incident, one may suspect, was in his mind when he wrote in his
"Autobiography" of the rapidity of thought characteristic of his
mother:--]
That characteristic has been passed on to me in full strength; it has
often stood me in good stead, it has sometimes played me sad tricks, and
it has always been a danger.
[At the Norwich meeting of the Association he also delivered his
well-known lecture to working men "On a Piece of Chalk," a perfect
example of the handling of a common and trivial subject, so as to make
it] "a window into the Infinite." [He was particularly interested in the
success of the meeting, as his friend Hooker was President, and writes
to Darwin, September 12:--]
We had a capital meeting at Norwich, and dear old Hooker came out in
great force as he always does in emergencies.
The only fault was the terrible "Darwinismus" which spread over the
section and crept out when you least expected it, even in Fergusson's
lecture on "Buddhist Temples."
You will have the rare happiness to see your ideas triumphant during
your lifetime.
P.S.--I am preparing to go into opposition; I can't stand it.
[This lecture "On a Piece of Chalk," together with two others delivered
this year, seem to me to mark the maturing of his style into that
mastery of clear expression for which he deliberately laboured, the
saying exactly what he meant, neither too much nor too little, without
confusion and without obscurity. Have something to say, and say it, was
the Duke of Wellington's theory of style; Huxley's was to say that which
has to be said in such language that you can stand cross-examination on
each word. Be clear, though you may be convicted of error. If you are
clearly wrong, you will run up against a fact some time and get set
right. If you shuffle with your subject, and study chiefly to use
language which will give a loophole of escape either way, there is no
hope for you.
This was the secret of his lucidity. In no one could Buffon's aphorism
on style find a better illustration, "Le style c'est l'homme meme." In
him science and literature, too often divorced, were closely united; and
literature owes him a debt for importing into it so much of the highest
scientific habit of mind; for showing that truthfulness need not be
bald, and that real power lies more in exact accuracy than in luxuriance
of diction. Years after, no less an authority than Spedding, in a letter
upon the influence of Bacon on his own style in the matter of
exactitude, the pruning of fine epithets and sweeping statements, the
reduction of numberless superlatives to positives, asserted that, if as
a young man he had fallen in with Huxley's writings before Bacon's, they
would have produced the same effect upon him.
Of the other two discourses referred to, one is the opening address
which he delivered as Principal at the South London Working Men's
College on January 4, "A Liberal Education, and Where to Find It." This
is not a brief for science to the exclusion of other teaching; no essay
has insisted more strenuously on the evils of a one-sided education,
whether it be classical or scientific; but it urged the necessity for a
strong tincture of science and her method, if the modern conception of
the world, created by the spread of natural knowledge, is to be fairly
understood. If culture is the "criticism of life," it is fallacious if
deprived of knowledge of the most important factor which has transformed
the medieval into the modern spirit.
Two of his most striking passages are to be found in this address; one
the simile of the force behind nature as the hidden chess player; the
other the noble description of the end of a true education.
Well known as it is, I venture to quote the latter as an instance of his
style:--]
That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained
in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with
ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of;
whose intellect is a clear cold logic engine, with all its parts of
equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine,
to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as
forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of
the great and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of her
operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but
whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the
servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty,
whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others
as himself.
Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education, for
he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with nature. He will
make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely;
she as his ever-beneficent mother; he as her mouth-piece, her conscious
self, her minister and interpreter.
[The third of these discourses is the address "On the Physical Basis of
Life," of which he writes to Haeckel on January 20, 1869:--]
You will be amused to hear that I went to the holy city, Edinburgh
itself, the other day, for the purpose of giving the first of a series
of Sunday lectures. I came back without being stoned; but Murchison (who
is a Scotchman you know), told me he thought it was the boldest act of
my life. The lecture will be published in February, and I shall send it
to you, as it contains a criticism of materialism which I should like
you to consider.
[In it he explains in popular form a striking generalisation of
scientific research, namely, that whether in animals or plants, the
structural unit of the living body is made up of similar material, and
that vital action and even thought are ultimately based upon molecular
changes in this life-stuff. Materialism! gross and brutal materialism!
was the mildest comment he expected in some quarters; and he took the
opportunity to explain how he held] "this union of materialistic
terminology with the repudiation of materialistic philosophy,"
[considering the latter] "to involve grave philosophic error."
[His expectations were fully justified; in fact, he writes that some
persons seemed to imagine that he had invented protoplasm for the
purposes of the lecture.
Here, too, in the course of a reply to Archbishop Thompson's confusion
of the spirit of modern thought with the system of M. Comte, he launched
his well-known definition of Comtism as Catholicism MINUS Christianity,
which involved him in a short controversy with Mr. Congreve (see "The
Scientific Aspects of Positivism," "Lay Sermons" page 162), and with
another leading Positivist, who sent him a letter through Mr. Darwin.
Huxley replied:--]
Jermyn Street, March 11, 1869.
My dear Darwin,
I know quite enough of Mr. -- to have paid every attention to what he
has to say, even if you had not been his ambassador.
I glanced over his letter when I returned home last night very tired
with my two nights' chairmanship at the Ethnological and the Geological
Societies.
Most of it is fair enough, though I must say not helping me to any novel
considerations.
Two paragraphs, however, contained opinions which Mr. -- is at perfect
liberty to entertain, but not, I think, to express to me.
The one is, that I shaped what I had to say at Edinburgh with a view of
stirring up the prejudices of the Scotch Presbyterians (imagine how many
Presbyterians I had in my audiences!) against Comte.
The other is the concluding paragraph, in which Mr. -- recommends me to
"READ COMTE," clearly implying that I have criticised Comte without
reading him.
You will know how far I am likely to have committed either of the
immoralities thus laid to my charge.
At any rate, I do not think I care to enter into more direct relations
with anyone who so heedlessly and unjustifiably assumes me to be guilty
of them. Therefore I shall content myself with acknowledging the receipt
of Mr. --'s letter through you.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street, March 17, 1869.
My dear Darwin,
After I had sent my letter to you the other day I thought how stupid I
had been not to put in a slip of paper to say it was meant for --'s
edification.
I made sure you would understand that I wished it to be sent on, and
wrote it (standing on the points of my toes and with my tail up very
stiff) with that end in view.
[Sketch of two dogs bristling up.]
I am getting so weary of people writing to propose controversy to me
upon one point or another, that I begin to wish the article had never
been written. The fighting in itself is not particularly objectionable,
but it's the waste of time.
I begin to understand your sufferings over the "Origin." A good book is
comparable to a piece of meat, and fools are as flies who swarm to it,
each for the purpose of depositing and hatching his own particular
maggot of an idea.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[A little later he wrote to Charles Kingsley, who had supported him in
the controversy:--]
Jermyn Street, April 12, 1869.
My dear Kingsley,
Thanks for your hearty bottle-holding.
Congreve is no better than a donkey to take the line he does. I studied
Comte, "Philosophie," "Politique," and all sixteen years ago, and having
formed my judgment about him, put it into one of the pigeon holes of my
brain (about the H[ippocampus] minor [see above.]), and there let it
rest till it was wanted.
You are perfectly right in saying that Comte knew nothing about physical
science--it is one of the points I am going to put in evidence.
The law of the three states is mainly evolved from his own
consciousness, and is only a bad way of expressing that tendency to
personification which is inherent in man.
The Classification of Sciences is bosh--as Spencer has already shown.
Nothing short of madness, however, can have dictated Congreve's
challenge of my admiration of Comte as a man at the end of his article.
Did you ever read Littre's "Life of Comte?" I bought it when it came out
a year or more ago, and I rose from its perusal with a feeling of sheer
disgust and contempt for the man who could treat a noble-hearted woman
who had saved his life and his reason, as Comte treated his wife.
As soon as I have time I will deal with Comte effectually, you may
depend upon that. At the same time, I shall endeavour to be just to what
there is (as I hold), really great and good in his clear conception of
the necessity of reconstructing society from the bottom to the top "sans
dieu ni roi," if I may interpret that somewhat tall phrase as meaning
"with our conceptions of religion and politics on a scientific basis."
Comte in his later days was an apostate from his own creed; his "nouveau
grand Etre supreme," being as big a fetish as ever nigger first made and
then worshipped.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[It is interesting to note how he invariably submitted his writings to
the criticism of his wife before they were seen by any other eye. To her
judgment was due the toning down of many a passage which erred by excess
of vigour, and the clearing up of phrases which would be obscure to the
public. In fact, if an essay met with her approval, he felt sure it
would not fail of its effect when published. Writing to her from Norwich
on August 23, 1868, he confesses himself with reference to the lecture
"On a Piece of Chalk":--]
I met Grove who edits "Macmillan," at the soiree. He pulled the proof of
my lecture out of his pocket and said, "Look here, there is one
paragraph in your lecture I can make neither top nor tail of. I can't
understand what it means." I looked to where his finger pointed, and
behold it was the paragraph you objected to when I read you the lecture
on the sea shore! I told him, and said I should confess, however set up
it might make you.
[At the beginning of September, he rejoined his wife and family at
Littlehampton,] "a grand place for children, because you go UP rather
than DOWN into the sea, and it is quite impossible for them to get into
mischief by falling," [as he described it to his friend Dr. Dohrn, who
came down for ten days, eagerly looking forward "to stimulating walks
over stock and stone, to Tennyson, Herbert Spencer, and Harry's ringing
laugh."
The latter half of the month he spent at or near Dublin, serving upon
the Commission on Science and Art Instruction:--]
Today [he writes on September 16], we shall be occupied in inspecting
the School of Science and the Glasnevin botanical and agricultural
gardens, and to-morrow we begin the session work of examining all the
Irishry, who want jobs perpetrated. It is weary work, and the papers are
already beginning to tell lies about us and attack us.
[The rest of the year he remained in London, except the last four days
of December, when he was lecturing at Newcastle, and stayed with Sir W.
Armstrong at Jesmond.]
[To Professor Haeckel.]
January 21, 1868.
Don't you think we did a right thing in awarding the Copley Medal to
Baer last year? The old man was much pleased, and it was a comfort to me
to think that we had not let him go to his grave without the highest
honour we had to bestow.
I am over head and ears, as we say, in work, lecturing, giving addresses
to the working men and (figurez vous!) to the clergy. [On December 12,
1867, there was a meeting of clergy at Sion House, under the auspices of
Dean Farrar and the Reverend W. Rogers of Bishopsgate, when the bearing
of recent science upon orthodox dogma was discussed. First Huxley
delivered an address; some of the clergy present denounced any
concessions as impossible; others declared that they had long ago
accepted the teachings of geology; whereupon a candid friend inquired,
"Then why don't you say so from your pulpits?" (See "Collected Essays" 3
119.)]
In scientific work the main thing just now about which I am engaged is a
revision of the Dinosauria, with an eye to the "Descendenz Theorie." The
road from Reptiles to Birds is by way of Dinosauria to the Ratitae. The
bird "phylum" was struthious, and wings grew out of rudimentary
forelimbs.
You see that among other things I have been reading Ernst Haeckel's
"Morphologie."
[The next two letters reflect his views on the proper work to be
undertaken by men of unusual scientific capacity:--]
Jermyn Street, January 15, 1868.
My dear Dohrn,
Though the most procrastinating correspondent in existence when a letter
does not absolutely require an answer, I am tolerably well-behaved when
something needs to be said or done immediately. And as that appears to
me to be the case with your letter of the 13th which has this moment
reached me, I lose no time in replying to it.
The Calcutta appointment has been in my hands as well as Turner's, and I
have made two or three efforts, all of which unfortunately have proved
unsuccessful to find: (1) A man who will do for it and at the same time
(2) for whom it will do. Now you fulfil the first condition admirably,
but as to the second I have very great doubts.
In the first place the climate of Calcutta is not particularly good for
anyone who has a tendency to dysentery, and I doubt very much if you
would stand it for six months.
Secondly, we have a proverb that it is not wise to use razors to cut
blocks.
The business of the man who is appointed to that museum will be to get
it into order. If he does his duty he will give his time and attention
to museum work pure and simple, and I don't think that (especially in an
Indian climate), he has much energy left for anything else after the
day's work is done. Naming and arranging specimens is a most admirable
and useful employment, but when you have done it is "cutting blocks,"
and you, my friend, are a most indubitable razor, and I do not wish to
have your edge blunted in that fashion.
If it were necessary for you to win your own bread, one's advice might
be modified. Under such circumstances one must do things which are not
entirely desirable. But for you who are your own master and have a
career before you, to bind yourself down to work six hours a day at
things you do not care about and which others could do just as well,
while you are neglecting the things which you do care for, and which
others could not do so well, would, I think, be amazingly unwise.
Liberavi animam! don't tell my Indian friends I have dissuaded you, but
on my conscience I could give you no other advice.
We have to thank you three times over. In the first place for a portrait
which has taken its place among those of our other friends; secondly for
the great pleasure you gave my little daughter Jessie, by the books you
so kindly sent; and thirdly, for Fanny Lewald's autobiography which
arrived a few days ago.
Jessie is meditating a letter of thanks (a serious undertaking), and
when it is sent the mother will have a word to say for herself.
In the middle of October scarlet fever broke out among my children, and
they have all had it in succession, except Jessie, who took it seven
years ago. The last convalescent is now well, but we had the disease in
the house nearly three months, and have been like lepers, cut off from
all communication with our neighbours for that time.
We have had a great deal of anxiety, and my wife has been pretty nearly
worn out with nursing day and night; but by great good fortune "the
happy family" has escaped all permanent injury, and you might hear as
much laughter in the house as at Swanage.
Will you be so kind as to thank Professor Gegenbaur for a paper on the
development of the vertebral column of Lepidosteum I have just received
from him? He has been writing about the process of ossification and the
"deck-knochen" question, but I cannot make out exactly where. Could you
let me know?
I am anxious for the "Arthropoden Werk," but I expect to gasp when it
comes.
Turn to page 380 of the new edition of our friend Kolliker's "Handbuch,"
and you will find that though a view which I took off the "organon
adamantinae" some twelve or fourteen years ago, and which Kolliker has
up to this time repudiated, turns out, and is now admitted by him, to be
perfectly correct, yet "that I was not acquainted with the facts that
would justify the conclusion." Really, if I had time I could be angry.
Pray remember me most kindly to Haeckel, to all whose enemies I wish
confusion, and believe me, ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
P.S.--I have read a hundred pages or so of Fanny Lewald's first Bd., and
am delighted with her insight into child-life.
[Tyndall was resigning his lectureship at the School of Mines:--]
Jermyn Street, June 10, 1868.
My dear Tyndall,
All I can say is, I am heartily sorry.
If you feel that your lectures here interfere with your original work, I
should not be a true friend either to science or yourself if I said a
word against your leaving us.
But for all that I am and shall remain very sorry.
Ever yours very sincerely,
T.H. Huxley.
If you recommend --, of course I shall be very glad to support him in
any way I can. But at present I am rather disposed to d--n anyone who
occupies your place.
[The following extract is from a letter to Haeckel (November 13, 1868),
with reference to the proposed translation of his "Morphologie" by the
Ray Society:--]
We shall at once look out for a good translator of the text, as the job
will be a long and a tough one. My wife (who sends her best wishes and
congratulations on your fatherhood) will do the bits of Goethe's poetry,
and I will look after the prose citations.
Next as to the text itself. The council were a little alarmed at the
bulk of the book, and it is of the utmost importance that it would be
condensed to the uttermost.
Furthermore, English propriety had taken fright at rumours touching the
aggressive heterodoxy of some passages. (We do not much mind heterodoxy
here, if it does not openly proclaim itself as such.)
And on both these points I had not only to give very distinct
assurances, such as I thought your letters had entitled me to give; but
in a certain sense to become myself responsible for your behaving
yourself like a good boy!
If I had not known you and understood your nature and disposition as I
fancy I do, I should not have allowed myself to be put in this position;
but I have implicit faith in your doing what is wise and right, and so
making it tenable.
There is not the slightest desire to make you mutilate your book or
leave out anything which you conceive to be absolutely essential; and I
on my part should certainly not think of asking you to make any
alteration which would not in my judgment improve the book quite
irrespectively of the tastes of the British public.
[Alterations are suggested.] But I stop. By this time you will be
swearing at me for attacking all your favourite bits. Let me know what
you think about these matters.
I congratulate you and Madame Haeckel heartily on the birth of your boy.
Children work a greater metamorphosis in men than any other condition of
life. They ripen one wonderfully and make life ten times better worth
having than it was.
26 Abbey Place, November 15, 1868.
My dear Darwin,
You are always the bienvenu, and we shall be right glad to see you on
Sunday morning.
We breakfast at 8.30, and the decks are clear before nine. I would offer
you breakfast, but I know it does not suit you to come out unfed; and
besides you would abuse the opportunity to demoralise Harry. [This small
boy of nearly four was a great favourite of Darwin's. When we children
were all staying at Down about this time, Darwin himself would come in
upon us at dinner, and patting him on the head, utter what was become a
household word amongst us, "Make yourself at home, and take large
mouthfuls."]
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[An undated note to Darwin belongs to the very end of this year, or to
the beginning of the next:--]
The two volumes of the new book have just reached me. My best thanks for
them; and if you can only send me a little time for reading within the
next three months you will heighten the obligation twenty-fold. I wish I
had either two heads or a body that needed no rest!