CITIZEN, ORATOR, AND ESSAYIST
Huxley's Activity in Public Affairs--Official in Scientific
Societies--Royal Commissions--Vivisection--Characteristics of his
Public Speaking--His Method of Exposition--His
Essays--Vocabulary--Phrase-Making--His Style Essentially one of
Ideas.
A great body of fine work in science and literature has been produced
by persons who may be described as typically academic. Such persons
confine their interest in life within the boundaries of their own
immediate pursuits; they are absorbed so completely by their
avocations that the hurly-burly of the world seems needlessly
distracting and a little vulgar. No doubt the thoughts of those who
cry out most loudly against disturbance by the intruding claims of the
world are, for the most part, hardly worth disturbing; the attitude to
extrinsic things of those who are absorbed by their work is aped not
infrequently by those who are absorbed only in themselves. None the
less it is important to recognise that a genuine aversion from affairs
is characteristic of many fine original investigators, and it is on
such persons that the idea of the simple and childlike nature of
philosophers, a simplicity often reaching real incapacity for the
affairs of life, is based. There was no trace of this natural
isolation in the character of Huxley. He was not only a serious
student of science but a keen and zealous citizen, eagerly conscious
of the great social and political movements around him, with the full
sense that he was a man living in society with other men and that
there was a business of life as well as a business of the laboratory.
We have seen with what zeal he brought his trained intelligence to
bear not only on his own province of scientific education, but on the
wider problems of general education, and yet the time he gave to these
was only a small part of that which he spared from abstract science
for affairs. In scientific institutions as in others, there is always
a considerable amount of business, involving the management of men and
the management of money, and Huxley's readiness and aptitude led to
his being largely occupied with these. For many years he was Dean of
the Royal College of Science at South Kensington, and for a
considerable time he served the Geological Society and the Royal
Society as secretary. In all these posts, Huxley displayed great
capacity as a leader of men and as a manager of affairs, and
contributed largely to the successful working of the institutions
which he served.
In England, when troublesome questions press and seem to call for new
legislation, it frequently happens that the collection and sifting of
evidence preliminary to legislation is a task for which the methods
and routine of Parliament are unsuitable. The Queen, acting through
her responsible advisers, appoints a Royal Commission, consisting of a
small body of men, to which is entrusted the preliminary task of
collecting and weighing evidence, or of making recommendations on
evidence already collected. To such honourable posts Huxley was
repeatedly called. He served on the following Commissions: 1. Royal
Commission on the Operation of Acts relating to Trawling for Herrings
on the Coast of Scotland, 1862. 2. Royal Commission to Enquire into
the Sea Fisheries of the United Kingdom, 1864-65. 3. Commission on the
Royal College of Science for Ireland, 1866. 4. Commission on Science
and Art Instruction in Ireland, 1868. 5. Royal Commission on the
Administration and Operation of the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1870-71.
6. Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of
Science, 1870-75. 7. Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting
Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes, 1876. 8. Royal
Commission to Enquire into the Universities of Scotland, 1876-78. 9.
Royal Commission on the Medical Acts, 1881-82. 10. Royal Commission on
Trawl, Net, and Beam-Trawl Fishing, 1884. This is a great record for
any man, especially for one in whose life work of this kind was
outside his habitual occupation. It was no doubt in special
recognition of the important services given his country by such work,
as well as in general recognition of his distinction in science, that
he was sworn a member of Her Majesty's Privy Council, so attaining a
distinction more coveted than the peerage.
The voluminous reports of the Commissions shew that Huxley, very far
from being a silent member of them, took a large part in framing the
questions which served to direct witnesses into useful lines, and that
his clear and orderly habit of thought proved as useful in the
elucidation of these subjects as they were in matters of scientific
research. For the most part, the problems brought before the
Commissions have lost their interest for readers of later years, but
there are matters still unsettled on which the opinions of Huxley as
expressed then remain useful. The Commission of 1876, for instance,
dealt with vivisection, a matter on which the conscience of the
ordinary man is not yet at rest. Although Huxley was intensely
interested in the problems of physiology, and although at one time he
hoped to devote his life to them, fortune directed otherwise, and the
investigations for which he is famed did not in any way involve the
kind of experiments known as vivisection. The greater part of his work
was upon the remains of creatures dead for thousands of years or upon
the lifeless skeletons of modern forms. On the other hand, he was
keenly interested in the progress of physiological science, he had
personal acquaintance with most of the distinguished workers in
physiology of his time at home and abroad, and from this knowledge of
their character and aspirations he was well able to judge of the
wholesale and reckless accusations brought against them. He was a man
full of the finest humanity, with an unusual devotion to animals as
pets, and with knowledge of the degrees of pain involved in
experimenting on living creatures. He insisted strongly on the
necessity of limiting or abolishing pain, wherever it was possible; he
agreed that any experiments which involved pain should not be
permitted for the purpose of demonstrating known elementary facts.
But, from his knowledge of the incalculable benefits which had been
gained from experimental research, and from his confidence in those
who conducted it, he declined to give support to the misguided
fanatics who desired to make such experimental research a penal
offence, even when conducted by the most skilled experts for the
highest purposes.
Huxley contributed his share to the great questions which agitated
the public not only by service on Commissions, but by delivering a
large number of public addresses and writing a large number of essays
on topics of special interest. Much of his work on scientific,
educational, and general subjects took its first shape in the form of
addresses given to some public audience. University audiences in
England, Scotland, and America were familiar to him, and from time to
time he addressed large gatherings of a mixed character. But probably
his favourite audience was composed of working men, and he had the
greatest respect for the intelligence and sympathy of hearers who like
himself passed the greater portion of their time in hard work.
Professor Howes, his pupil, friend, and successor, writes of him:
"He gave workmen of his best. The substance of _Man's Place in
Nature_, one of the most successful and popular of his writings,
and of his _Crayfish_, perhaps the most perfect zoölogical
treatise ever published, was first communicated to them. In one
of the last communications I had with him, I asked his views as
to the desirability of discontinuing the workmen's lectures at
Jermyn Street, since the development of workmen's colleges and
institutes was regarded by some as rendering their continuance
unnecessary. He replied, almost with indignation, 'With our
central situation and resources we ought to be in a position to
give the workmen that which they cannot get elsewhere,' adding
that he would deeply deplore any such discontinuance."
Huxley had no natural facility for speech. He tells us that at first
he disliked it, and that he had a firm conviction that he would break
down every time he opened his mouth. The only two possible faults of a
public speaker which he believed himself to be without, were "talking
at random and indulging in rhetoric." With practice, he lost this
earlier hesitancy, and before long became known as one of the finest
speakers of his time. Certain natural gifts aided him; his well-set
figure and strong features, of which the piercing eyes and firm,
trap-like mouth were the most striking, riveted attention, while his
voice had a wide range and was beautifully modulated. But it was above
all things the matter and not the manner of his speech that commanded
success. He cared little or nothing for the impression he might
make--everything for the ideas which he wished to convey. He was
concerned only to set forth these ideas in their clear and logical
order, convinced in his own mind that, were the facts as he knew them
placed before the minds of his hearers, only one possible result could
follow. The facts had convinced him: they must equally convince any
honest and intelligent person placed in possession of them. He had not
the smallest intention of overbearing by authority or of swaying by
skilfully aroused emotion. Such weapons of the orator seemed to him
dishonest in the speaker and most perilous to the audience. For him,
speaking on any subject was merely a branch of scientific exposition;
when emotion was to be roused or enthusiasm to be kindled the
inspiration was to come from the facts and not from the orator. The
arts he allowed himself were those common to all forms of exposition;
he would explain a novel set of ideas by comparison with simpler ideas
obvious to all his listeners; and he sought to arrest attention or to
drive home a conclusion by some brilliant phrase that bit into the
memory. These two arts, the art of the phrase-maker and the art of
explaining by vivacious and simple comparison, he brought to a high
perfection. The fundamental method of his exposition was simply the
method of comparative anatomy, the result of a habit of thinking which
makes it impossible to have any set of ideas brought into the mind
without an immediate, almost unconscious, overhauling of the memory
for any other ideas at all congruous. In a strict scientific
exposition Huxley would choose from the multitude of possible
comparisons that most simple and most intelligible to his audience;
when in a lighter vein, he gave play to a natural humour in his
choice. Instances of his method of exposition by comparison abound in
his published addresses. Let us take one or two. In the course of an
address to a large mixed audience so early in his public career as
1854, in making plain to them the proposition, somewhat novel for
those days, that the natural history sciences had an educational
value, he explained that the faculties employed in that subject were
simply those of the common sense of every-day life.
"The vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical
faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are
practised by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs
of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks
made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by
which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from
fragments of their bones. Nor does that process of induction and
deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of a peculiar kind on
her dress, concludes that somebody has upset the inkstand
thereon, differ in any way, in kind, from that by which Adams and
Leverrier discovered a new planet."
In one of his addresses to working men on _Man's Place in Nature_ he
shewed that from time to time in the history of the world average
persons of the human race have accepted some kind of answer to the
insoluble riddles of existence, but that from time to time the race
has outgrown the current answers, ceasing to take comfort from them.
"In a well-worn metaphor a parallel is drawn between the life of
man and the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly; but
the comparison may be more just as well as more novel, if for its
former term we take the mental progress of the race. History
shews that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of
knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical
coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments,
as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too
narrow skin and assumes another, itself but temporary. Truly, the
imago state of man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult
is a step gained, and of such there have been many."
As another instance, the following from his address on a "Liberal
Education" may be taken. He had been discussing the intellectual
advantage to be derived from classical studies, and had been
comparing, to the disadvantage of the latter, the intellectual
discipline which might be got from a study of fossils with the
discipline claimed by the ordinary experts upon education to be the
results of classical training. He wished to anticipate the obvious
objection to his argument: that the subject-matter of palæontology had
no direct bearing on human interests and emotions, while the classical
authors were rich in the finest humanity.
"But it will be said that I forget the beauty and the human
interest, which appertain to classical studies. To this I reply
that it is only a very strong man who can appreciate the charms
of landscape as he is toiling up a steep hill, along a bad road.
What with short-windedness, stones, nits, and a pervading sense
of the wisdom of rest and be thankful, most of us have little
enough sense of the beautiful under these circumstances. The
ordinary schoolboy is precisely in this case. He finds Parnassus
uncommonly steep, and there is no chance of his having much time
or inclination to look about him till he gets to the top. And
nine times out of ten he does not get to the top."
The last example we shall take comes from a speech made after dinner
at a much later period of his life. The occasion was a complimentary
dinner to the editor of the English scientific periodical _Nature_,
which had been for long the leading semi-popular journal of English
science. Huxley, in proposing the health of the editor, declared that
he did not quite know how to say what he wanted to say, but that he
would explain by a story.
"A poor woman," he said, "was brought into one of our hospitals
in a shockingly battered condition. When her wounds had been
cleaned and sewn, and when the care of the surgeons had restored
her to comparative comfort, someone said to her, 'I am afraid
your husband has been knocking you about.' 'What!' she said, 'my
Jim bash me? no it worn't by him; he's always been more like a
friend to me than a husband.' That," went on Huxley, "is what I
wish to say about our guest of to-night. In all our intercourse
with him he has been more like a friend to us than an editor."
It is impossible to make a real distinction between the essays and the
addresses of Huxley. Many of the most important of his addresses, as
for instance his Romanes lecture on "Evolution and Ethics," were
written and printed before he delivered them; most of them were
carefully prepared, and revised and printed after delivery. It is
therefore not remarkable to find a close resemblance in matter and
manner between what was originally spoken and what was published
without a _vivâ voce_ delivery. Everything that may be said of the one
set applies with an equal fitness to the other set. There are many
who assert with confidence that Huxley is one of the great masters of
English, and although an examination of this opinion involves
discussion of the elusive quality termed "style," it is necessary to
attempt it.
In that totality which consists of an essay or of a printed address,
and of which we are, most of us, ready to discuss the style, there are
at least three separable elements, each contributing after its kind to
the effect on our minds. When the general effect is to throw us into a
state of pleasure, it is our habit to qualify the style with an
adjective of praise, selecting the adjective according to the degree
of restraint or of enthusiasm with which we are accustomed to express
our emotions; when the general effect is to throw us into a condition
of boredom or of distaste, we make a corresponding choice of
appropriate adjectives. When we wish to be specially critical we pass
a little way beyond an empirical judgment by pleasure or annoyance and
take into account the degree of harmony between matter and manner. In
such a frame of mind we discount the pleasure obtained from verbal
quips, if these occur in a grave exposition, or that received from
solemn and stately harmonies of language if these be employed on
insignificant trifles. In a condition of unusual critical exaltation
we may even admit an excellence of language and phrasing though these
have as their contents ideas which we dislike, or press towards
conclusions from which we dissent. But if we desire to make an exact
appreciation of literary style, it is requisite to examine separately
the three elements which contribute to the effect produced on us by
any written work. These three elements are the words or raw materials
employed, the building of words into sentences and of sentences into
paragraphs, which may be designated as the architectural work, and,
finally, the ideas conveyed, that is to say, the actual object of the
writing.
Huxley was a wide and omnivorous reader, and so had an unusually large
fund of words at his disposal. His writings abound with quotations and
allusions taken from the best English authors, and he had a profound
and practical belief in the advantage to be gained from the reading of
English. "If a man," he wrote, "cannot get literary culture out of his
Bible, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Hobbes, and
Bishop Berkeley, to mention only a few of our illustrious writers--I
say, if he cannot get it out of these writers, he cannot get it out of
anything." He had at least a fair knowledge of Greek in the original,
and a very wide acquaintance with Greek phrasing and Greek ideas
derived from a study of Greek authors in English versions. He had an
unusual knowledge of Latin, both of the classical writers and of the
early Church fathers and mediæval writers on science and metaphysics.
French and German, the two foreign languages which are a necessary
part of the mental equipment of an English-speaking man of science,
were familiar to him. Finally, he had of necessity the wide and varied
vocabulary of the natural and technical sciences at his disposal. From
these varied sources, Huxley had a fund of words, a store of the raw
material for expressing ideas, very much greater and more varied than
that in the possession of most writers. You will find in his writings
abundant and omnipresent evidence of the enormous wealth of verbal
material ready for the ideas he wished to set forth: a Greek phrase, a
German phrase, a Latin or French phrase, or a group of words borrowed
from one of our own great writers always seemed to await his wish.
General Booth's scheme for elevating the masses by cymbals and dogma
was "corybantic Christianity"; to explain what he thought was the
Catholic attitude to the doctrine of evolution, he said it would have
been called _damnabilis_ by Father Suarez, and that he would have
meant "not that it was to be damned, but that it was an active
principle capable of damning." Huxley was like a builder who did not
limit himself while he was constructing a house to the ordinary
materials from the most convenient local quarry, but who collected
endlessly from all the quarries and brickfields of the world, and
brought to his heaps curiously wrought stones taken from a thousand
old buildings. The swift choice from such a varied material gave an
ease and appearance of natural growth to his work; it produced many
surprising and delightful combinations, and it never sacrificed
convenience of expression to exigencies of the materials for
expression. On the other hand, Huxley lacked the sedulous concern for
words themselves as things valuable and delightful; the delight of the
craftsman in his tools; the dainty and respectful tribute paid to the
words themselves; in fine, he took little pleasure in words themselves
and used them as counters rather than as coins. Careful reflection and
examination will make it plain that the pleasure to be got from
Huxley's style is not due in any large measure to his choice and
handling of words. There is no evidence that he deliberately and
fastidiously preferred one word to another, that he took delight in
the savour of individual words, in the placing of plain words in a
context to make them sparkle, in the avoidance of some, in the
deliberate preference of other words,--in fact, in all the conscious
tricks and graces that distinguish the lover of words from their mere
user.
A close examination discovers a similar absence from Huxley's work of
the second contributory to the total effect produced by written words.
Anything that may be said about absence of artistry in the use of
words, may be said as to absence of artistry in building of the words
into sentences, of the sentences into paragraphs and pages. In the
first place, actual infelicities of sentence-building are frequent.
Clause is piled on clause, qualifying phrases are interpolated, the
easy devices of dashes and repetitions are employed wherever
convenience suggests them. It is striking to find how infrequent is
the occurrence of passages marked in any way by sonorous rhythm or by
the charm of a measured proportion. The purple passages themselves,
those which linger in the memory and to which the reader turns back,
linger by their sense and not by their sound. For indeed the truth of
the matter is that Huxley's style was a style of ideas and not of
words and sentences. The more closely you analyse his pages the more
certainly you find that the secret of the effect produced on you lies
in the gradual development of the precise and logical ideas he wished
to convey, in the brilliant accumulation of argument upon argument, in
the logical subordination of details to the whole, in fact, in the
arts of the convinced, positive, and logical thinker, who knew exactly
what he meant you to know and who set about telling you it with the
least possible concern for the words he used or for the sentences into
which he formed his words. The ideas and their ordering are the root
and the branches, the beginning and the end of his style. To put it
in another way: it would be extremely easy to translate any of
Huxley's writings into French or German, and they would lose extremely
little of the personal flavour of their author. The present writer has
just been reading French translations of Huxley's _Physiography_ and
_Crayfish_, made at different times by different translators. At first
reading it seems almost miraculous how identically the effect produced
by the original is reproduced by the French rendering, but the secret
is really no secret at all. Huxley produced his effects by the
ordering of his ideas and not by the ordering of his words. From the
technical point of view of literary craftsmanship, he cannot be
assigned a high place; he is one of our great English writers, but he
is not a great writer of English.