letter to the "Times" for October 12, 1887, apropos of a leading
article upon "British Race-types of To-day."
Letter-writing was difficult under such pressure of work, but the
claims of absent friends were not wholly forgotten, though left on one
side for a time, and the warm-hearted Dohrn, could not bear to think
himself forgotten, managed to get a letter out of him--not on
scientific business.]
26 Abbey Place, January 30, 1870.
My dear Dohrn,
In one sense I deserve all the hard things you may have said and
thought about me, for it is really scandalous and indefensible that I
have not written to you. But in another sense, I do not, for I have
very often thought about you and your doings, and as I have told you
once before, your memory always remains green in the "happy family."
But what between the incessant pressure of work and an inborn aversion
to letter-writing, I become a worse and worse correspondent the longer
I live, and unless I can find one or two friends who will [be] content
to bear with my infirmities and believe that however long before we
meet, I shall be ready to take them up again exactly where I left off,
I shall be a friendless old man.
As for your old Goethe, you are mistaken. The Scripture says that "a
living dog is better than a dead lion," and I am a living dog. By the
way, I bought Cotta's edition of him the other day, and there he
stands on my bookcase in all the glory of gilt, black, and marble
edges. Do you know I did a version of his "Aphorisms on Nature" into
English the other day. [For the first number of "Nature," November
1869.] It astonishes the British Philistines not a little. When they
began to read it they thought it was mine, and that I had suddenly
gone mad!
But to return to your affairs instead of my own. I received your
volume on the "Arthropods" the other day, but I shall not be able to
look at it for the next three weeks, as I am in the midst of my
lectures, and have an annual address to deliver to the Geological
Society on the 18th February, when, I am happy to say, my tenure of
office as President expires.
After that I shall be only too glad to plunge into your doings and, as
always, I shall follow your work with the heartiest interest. But I
wish you would not take it into your head that Darwin or I, or any one
else thinks otherwise than highly of you, or that you need
"re-establishing" in any one's eyes. But I hope you will not have
finished your work before the autumn, as they have made me President
of the British Association this year, and I shall be very busy with my
address in the summer. The meeting is to take place in Liverpool on
the 14th September, and I live in hope that you will be able to come
over. Let me know if you can, that I may secure you good quarters.
I shall ask the wife to fill up the next half-sheet. But for Heaven's
sake don't be angry with me in English again. It's far worse than a
scolding in Deutsch, and I have as little forgotten my German as I
have my German friends.
[On February 18 he delivered his farewell address to the Geological
Society, on laying down the office of President. ("Palaeontology and
the Doctrine of Evolution" "Collected Essays" 8.) He took the
opportunity to revise his address to the Society in 1862, and pointed
out the growth of evidence in favour of evolution theory, and in
particular traced the paleontological history of the horse, through a
series of fossil types approaching more and more to a generalised
ungulate type and reaching back to a three-toed ancestor, or
collateral of such an ancestor, itself possessing rudiments of the two
other toes which appertain to the average quadruped.]
If [he said] the expectation raised by the splints of horses that, in
some ancestor of the horses, these splints would be found to be
complete digits, has been verified, we are furnished with very strong
reasons for looking for a no less complete verification of the
expectation that the three-toed Plagiolophus-like "avus" of the horse
must have been a five-toed "atavus" at some early period.
[Six years afterwards, this forecast of paleontological research was
to be fulfilled, but at the expense of the European ancestry of the
horse. A series of ancestors, similar to these European fossils, but
still more equine, and extending in unbroken order much farther back
in geological time, was discovered in America. His use of this in his
New York lectures as demonstrative evidence of evolution, and the
immediate fulfilment of a further prophecy of his will be told in due
course.
His address to the Cambridge Y.M.C.A, "A Commentary on Descartes'
'Discourse touching the method of using reason rightly, and of seeking
scientific truth,'" was delivered on March 24. This was an attempt to
give this distinctively Christian audience some vision of the world of
science and philosophy, which is neither Christian nor Unchristian,
but Extra-christian, and to show] "by what methods the dwellers
therein try to distinguish truth from falsehood, in regard to some of
the deepest and most difficult problems that beset humanity, "in order
to be clear about their actions, and to walk sure-footedly in this
life," as Descartes says. For Descartes had laid the foundation of his
own guiding principle of "active scepticism, which strives to conquer
itself."
[Here again, as in the "Physical Basis of Life," but with more detail,
he explains how far materialism is legitimate, is, in fact, a sort of
shorthand idealism. This essay, too, contains the often-quoted
passage, apropos of the] "introduction of Calvinism into science."
I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think
what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a
sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I
should instantly close with the offer. The only freedom I care about
is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part
with on the cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me.
[This was the latest of the essays included in "Lay Sermons, Addresses
and Reviews," which came out, with a dedicatory letter to Tyndall, in
the summer of 1870, and, whether on account of its subject matter or
its title, always remained his most popular volume of essays.
To the same period belongs a letter to Matthew Arnold about his book
"St. Paul and Protestantism."]
My dear Arnold,
Many thanks for your book which I have been diving into at odd times
as leisure served, and picking up many good things.
One of the best is what you say near the end about science gradually
conquering the materialism of popular religion.
It will startle the Puritans who always coolly put the matter the
other way; but it is profoundly true.
These people are for the most part mere idolaters with a Bible-fetish,
who urgently stand in need of conversion by Extra-christian
Missionaries.
It takes all one's practical experience of the importance of Puritan
ways of thinking to overcome one's feeling of the unreality of their
beliefs. I had pretty well forgotten how real to them "the man in the
next street" is, till your citation of their horribly absurd dogmas
reminded me of it. If you can persuade them that Paul is fairly
interpretable in your sense, it may be the beginning of better things,
but I have my doubts if Paul would own you, if he could return to
expound his own epistles.
I am glad you like my Descartes article. My business with my
scientific friends is something like yours with the Puritans, nature
being OUR Paul.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
26 Abbey Place, May 10, 1870.
[From the 14th to the 24th of April Huxley, accompanied by his friend
Hooker, made a trip to the Eifel country. His sketch-book is full of
rapid sketches of the country, many of them geological; one day indeed
there are eight, another nine such.
Tyndall was invited to join the party, and at first accepted, but then
recollected the preliminaries which had to be carried out before his
lectures on electricity at the end of the month. So he writes on April
6:--
Royal Institution, 6 April.
My dear Huxley,
I was rendered drunk by the excess of prospective pleasure when you
mentioned the Eifel yesterday, and took no account of my lectures.
They begin on the 28th, and I have studiously to this hour excluded
them from my thought. I have made arrangements to see various
experiments involving the practical application of electricity before
the lectures begin; I find myself, in short, cut off from the
expedition. My regret on this score is commensurable with the
pleasures I promised myself. Confound the lectures!
And yours on Friday is creating a pretty hubbub already. (On the
Pedigree of the Horse" April 8, 1870, which was never brought out in
book form.) I am torn to pieces by women in search of tickets.
Anything that touches progenitorship interests them. You will have a
crammed house, I doubt not.
Yours ever,
John Tyndall.
Huxley replied:--]
Geological Survey of England and Wales, April 6, 1870.
My dear Tyndall,
DAMN
the
L
e
c
t
u
r
e
s.
T.H.H.
That's a practical application of electricity for you.
[In June he writes to his wife, who has taken a sick child to the
seaside:--]
I hear a curious rumour (which is not for circulation), that Froude
and I have been proposed for D.C.L.'s at Commemoration, and that the
proposition has been bitterly and strongly opposed by Pusey. [Huxley
ultimately received his D.C.L. in 1885.] They say there has been a
regular row in Oxford about it. I suppose this is at the bottom of
Jowett's not writing to me. But I hope that he won't fancy that I
should be disgusted at the opposition and object to come [i.e. to pay
his regular visit to Balliol]. On the contrary, the more complete
Pusey's success, the more desirable it is that I should show my face
there. Altogether it is an awkward position, as I am supposed to know
nothing of what is going on.
[The situation is further developed in a letter to Darwin:--]
Jermyn Street, June 22, 1870.
My dear Darwin,
I sent the books to Queen Anne St. this morning. Pray keep them as
long as you like, as I am not using them.
I am greatly disgusted that you are coming up to London this week, as
we shall be out of town next Sunday. It is the rarest thing in the
world for us to be away, and you have pitched upon the one day. Cannot
we arrange some other day?
I wish you could have gone to Oxford, not for your sake, but for
theirs. There seems to have been a tremendous shindy in the Hebdomadal
board about certain persons who were proposed; and I am told that
Pusey came to London to ascertain from a trustworthy friend who were
the blackest heretics out of the list proposed, and that he was glad
to assent to your being doctored, when he got back, in order to keep
out seven devils worse than that first!
Ever, oh Coryphaeus diabolicus, your faithful follower,
T.H. Huxley.
[The choice of a subject for his Presidential Address at the British
Association for 1870, a subject which, as he put it,] "has lain
chiefly in a land flowing with the abominable, and peopled with mere
grubs and mouldiness," [was suggested by a recent controversy upon the
origin of life, in which the experiments of Dr. Bastian, then
Professor of Pathological Anatomy at University College, London, which
seemed to prove spontaneous generation, were shown by Professor
Tyndall to contain a flaw. Huxley had naturally been deeply interested
from the first; he had been consulted by Dr. Bastian, and, I believe,
had advised him not to publish until he had made quite sure of his
ground. This question and the preparation of the course of Elementary
Biology [See below.] led him to carry on a series of investigations
lasting over two years, which took shape in a paper upon "Penicillium,
Torula, and Bacterium", first read in Section D at the British
Association, 1870 ("Quarterly Journal of Micr. Science" 1870 10 pages
355-362.); and in his article on "Yeast" in the "Contemporary Review"
for December 1871. He laboriously repeated Pasteur's experiments, and
for years a quantity of flasks and cultures used in this work remained
at South Kensington, until they were destroyed in the eighties. Of
this work Sir J. Hooker writes to him:--
You have made an immense leap in the association of forms, and I
cannot but suppose you approach the final solution...
I have always fancied that it was rather brains and boldness, than
eyes or microscopes that the mycologists wanted, and that there was
more brains in Berkeley's [Reverend M.J. Berkeley.] crude discoveries
than in the very best of the French and German microscopic
verifications of them, who filch away the credit of them from under
Berkeley's nose, and pooh-pooh his reasoning, but for which we should
be, as we were.
In his Presidential Address, "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis" ("Collected
Essays" 8 page 229), he discussed the rival theories of spontaneous
generation and the universal derivation of life from precedent life,
and professed his belief, as an act of philosophic faith, that at some
remote period, life had arisen out of inanimate matter, though there
was no evidence that anything of the sort had occurred recently, the
germ theory explaining many supposed cases of spontaneous generation.
The history of the subject, indeed, showed] "the great tragedy of
Science--the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact--which
is so constantly being enacted under the eyes of philosophers," and
recalled the warning "that it is one thing to refute a proposition,
and another to prove the truth of a doctrine which, implicitly or
explicitly, contradicts that proposition."
[Two letters to Dr. Dohrn refer to this address and to the meeting of
the Association.]
Jermyn Street, April 30, 1870.
My dear Whirlwind,
I have received your two letters; and I was just revolving in my mind
how best to meet your wishes in regard to the very important project
mentioned in the first, when the second arrived and put me at rest.
I hope I need not say how heartily I enter into all your views, and
how glad I shall be to see your plan for "Stations" carried into
effect. [Dr. Dohrn succeeded in establishing such a zoological
"station" at Naples.] Nothing could have a greater influence upon the
progress of zoology.
A plan was set afoot here some time ago to establish a great marine
Aquarium at Brighton by means of a company. They asked me to be their
President, but I declined, on the ground that I did not desire to
become connected with any commercial undertaking. What has become of
the scheme I do not know, but I doubt whether it would be of any use
to you, even if any connection could be established.
As soon as you have any statement of your project ready, send it to me
and I will take care that it is brought prominently before the British
public so as to stir up their minds. And then we will have a regular
field-day about it in Section D at Liverpool.
Let me know your new ideas about insects and vertebrata as soon as
possible, and I promise to do my best to pull them to pieces. What
between Kowalesky and his Ascidians, Miklucho-Maclay [A Russian
naturalist, and close friend of Haeckel's, who later adventured
himself alone among the cannibals of New Guinea.] and his Fish-brains,
and you and your Arthropods, I am becoming schwindelsuchtig, and spend
my time mainly in that pious ejaculation "Donner and Blitz," in which,
as you know, I seek relief. Then there is our Bastian who is making
living things by the following combination:--
Prescription: Ammoniae Carbonatis
Sodae Phosphatis
Aquae destillatae
quantum sufficit
Caloris 150 degrees Centigrade
Vacui perfectissimi
Patientiae.
Transubstantiation will be nothing to this if it turns out to be true,
and you may go and tell your neighbour Januarius to shut up his shop
as the heretics mean to outbid him.
Now I think that the best service I can render to all you enterprising
young men is to turn devil's advocate, and do my best to pick holes in
your work.
By the way, Miklucho-Maclay has been here; I have seen a good deal of
him, and he strikes me as a man of very considerable capacity and
energy. He was to return to Jena to-day.
My friend Herbert Spencer will be glad to learn that you appreciate
his book. I have been HIS devil's advocate for a number of years, and
there is no telling how many brilliant speculations I have been the
means of choking in an embryonic state.
My wife does not know that I am writing to you, or she would say
apropos of your last paragraph that you are an entirely unreasonable
creature in your notions of how friendship should be manifested, and
that you make no allowances for the oppression and exhaustion of the
work entailed by what Jean Paul calls a "Tochtervolles Haus." I hope I
may live to see you with at least ten children, and then my wife and I
will be avenged. Our children will be married and settled by that
time, and we shall have time to write every day and get very wroth
when you do not reply immediately.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
All are well, the children so grown you will not know them.
July 18, 1870.
My dear Dohrn,
Notwithstanding the severe symptoms of "Tochterkrankheit" under which
I labour, I find myself equal to reply to your letter.
The British Association meets in September on the 14th day of that
month, which falls on a Wednesday. Of course, if you come you shall be
provided for by the best specimen of Liverpool hospitality. We have
ample provision for the entertainment of the "distinguished
foreigner."
Will you be so good as to be my special ambassador with Haeckel and
Gegenbauer, and tell them the same thing? It would give me and all of
us particular pleasure to see them and to take care of them.
But I am afraid that this wretched war will play the very deuce with
our foreign friends. If you Germans do not give that crowned swindler,
whose fall I have been looking for ever since the coup d'etat, such a
blow as he will never recover from, I will never forgive you. Public
opinion in England is not worth much, but at present, it is entirely
against France. Even the "Times," which generally contrives to be on
the baser side of a controversy, is at present on the German side. And
my daughters announced to me yesterday that they had converted a young
friend of theirs from the French to the German side, which is one
gained for you. All look forward with great pleasure to seeing you in
the autumn.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[In addition to this address on September 14, he read his paper on
"Penicillium," etc., in Section D on the 20th. Speaking on the 17th,
after a lecture of Sir J. Lubbock's on the "Social and Religious
Condition of the Lower Races of Mankind," he brought forward his own
experiences as to the practical results of the beliefs held by the
Australian savages, and from this passed to the increasing savagery of
the lower classes in great towns such as Liverpool, which was the
great political question of the future, and for which the only cure
lay in a proper system of education.
The savagery underlying modern civilisation was all the more vividly
before him, because one evening he, together with Sir J. Lubbock, Dr.
Bastian, and Mr. Samuelson, were taken by the chief of the detective
department round some of the worst slums in Liverpool. In thieves'
dens, doss houses, dancing saloons, enough of suffering and
criminality was seen to leave a very deep and painful impression. In
one of these places, a thieves' lodging-house, a drunken man with a
cut face accosted him and asked him whether he was a doctor. He said
"yes," whereupon the man asked him to doctor his face. He had been
fighting, and was terribly excited. Huxley tried to pacify him, but if
it had not been for the intervention of the detective, the man would
have assaulted him. Afterwards he asked the detective if he were not
afraid to go alone in these places, and got the significant answer,
"Lord bless you, sir, drink and disease take all the strength out of
them."
On the 21st, after the general meeting of the Association, which wound
up the proceedings, the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire
presented a diploma of honorary membership and a gift of books to
Huxley, Sir G. Stokes, and Sir J. Hooker, the last three Presidents of
the British Association, and to Professors Tyndall and Rankine and Sir
J. Lubbock, the lecturers at Liverpool. Then Huxley was presented with
a mazer bowl lined with silver, made from part of one of the roof
timbers of the cottage occupied as his headquarters by Prince Rupert
during the siege of Liverpool. He was rather taken aback when he found
the bowl was filled with champagne, after a moment, however, he drank]
"success to the good old town of Liverpool," [and with a wave of his
hand, threw the rest on the floor, saying,] "I pour this as a libation
to the tutelary deities of the town."
[The same evening he was the guest of the Sphinx Club at dinner at the
Royal Hotel, his friend Mr. P.H. Rathbone being in the chair, and in
proposing the toast of the town and trade of Liverpool, declared that
commerce was a greater civiliser than all the religion and all the
science ever put together in the world, for it taught men to be
truthful and punctual and precise in the execution of their
engagements, and men who were truthful and punctual and precise in the
execution of their engagements had put their feet upon the first rung
of the ladder which led to moral and intellectual elevation.
There were the usual clerical attacks on the address, among the rest a
particularly violent one from a Unitarian pulpit. Writing to Mr.
Samuelson on October 5 he says:--]
Be not vexed on account of the godly. They will have their way. I
found Mr. --'s sermon awaiting me on my return home. It is an able
paper, but like the rest of his cloth he will not take the trouble to
make himself acquainted with the ideas of the man whom he opposes. At
least that is the case if he imagines he brings me under the range of
his guns.
[On October 2 he writes to Tyndall:--]
I have not yet thanked you properly for your great contribution to the
success of our meeting [i.e. his lecture "On the Scientific Uses of
the Imagination"]. I was nervous over the passage about the clergy,
but those confounded parsons seem to me to let you say anything, while
they bully me for a word or a phrase. It's the old story, "one man may
steal a horse while the other may not look over the wall."
[Tyndall was not to be outdone, and replied:--
The parsons know very well that I mean kindness; if I correct them I
do it in love and not in wrath.
One more extract from a letter to Dr. Dohrn, under date of November
17. The first part is taken up with a long and detailed description of
the best English microscopes and their price, for Dr. Dohrn wished to
get one; and my father volunteered to procure it for him. The rest of
the letter has a more general interest as giving his views on the
great struggle between France and Germany then in progress, his
distrust of militarism, and above all, his hatred of lying, political
as much as any other:--]
This wretched war is doing infinite mischief; but I do not see what
Germany can do now but carry it out to the end.
I began to have some sympathy with the French after Sedan, but the
Republic lies harder than the Empire did, and the whole country seems
to me to be rotten to the core. The only figure which stands out with
anything like nobility or dignity, on the French side, is that of the
Empress, and she is only a second-rate Marie-Antoinette. There is no
Roland, no Corday, and apparently no MAN of any description.
The Russian row is beginning, and the rottenness of English
administration will soon, I suppose, have an opportunity of displaying
itself. Bad days are, I am afraid, in store for all of us, and the
worst for Germany if it once becomes thoroughly bitten by the military
mad dog.
The "happy family" is flourishing and was afflicted, even over its
breakfast, when I gave out the news that you had been ill.
The wife desires her best remembrances, and we all hope you are
better.
[The high pressure under which Huxley worked, and his abundant output,
continued undiminished through the autumn and winter. Indeed, he was
so busy that he postponed his Lectures to Working Men in London from
October to February 1871. On October 3 he lectured in Leicester on
"What is to be Learned from a Piece of Coal," a parallel lecture to
that of 1868 on "A Piece of Chalk." On the 17th and 24th he lectured
at Birmingham on "Extinct Animals intermediate between Reptiles and
Birds"--a subject which he had made peculiarly his own by long study;
and on December 29 he was at Bradford, and lectured at the
Philosophical Institute upon "The Formation of Coal" ("Collected
Essays" 8.).
He was also busy with two Royal Commissions; still, at whatever cost
of the energy and time due to his own investigations and those
additional labours by which he increased his none too abundant income,
he felt it his duty, in the interests of his ideal of education, to
come forward as a candidate for the newly-instituted School Board for
London. This was the practical outcome of the rising interest in
education all over the country; on its working, he felt, depended
momentous issues--the fostering of the moral and physical well-being
of the nation; the quickening of its intelligence and the maintenance
of its commercial supremacy. Withal, he desired to temper
"book-learning" with something of the direct knowledge of nature: on
the one hand, as an admirable instrument of education, if properly
applied; on the other, as preparing the way for an attitude of mind
which could appreciate the reasons for the immense changes already
beginning to operate in human thought.
Moreover, he possessed a considerable knowledge of the working of
elementary education throughout the country, owing to his experience
as examiner under the Science and Art Department, the establishment of
which he describes as "a measure which came into existence unnoticed,
but which will, I believe, turn out to be of more importance to the
welfare of the people than many political changes over which the noise
of battle has rent the air" ("Scientific Education" 1869; "Collected
Essays" 3 page 131.)
Accordingly, though with health uncertain, and in the midst of
exacting occupations, he felt that he ought not to stand aside at so
critical a moment, and offered himself for election in the Marylebone
division with a secret sense that rejection would in many ways be a
great relief.
The election took place on November 29, and Huxley came out second on
the poll. He had had neither the means nor the time for a regular
canvass of the electors. He was content to address several public
meetings, and leave the result to the interest he could awaken amongst
his hearers. His views were further brought before the public by the
action of the editor of the "Contemporary Review," who, before the
election, "took upon himself, in what seemed to him to be the public
interest," to send to the newspapers an extract from Huxley's article,
"The School Boards: what they can do, and what they may do," which was
to appear in the December number.
In this article will be found ("Collected Essays" 3 page 374) a full
account of the programme which he laid down for himself, and which to
a great extent he saw carried into effect, in its fourfold
division--of physical drill and discipline, not only to improve the
physique of the children, but as an introduction to all other sorts of
training--of domestic training, especially for girls--of education in
the knowledge of moral and social laws and the engagement of the
affections for what is good and against what is evil--and finally, of
intellectual training. And it should be noted that he did not only
regard intellectual training from the utilitarian point of view; he
insisted, e.g. on the value of reading for amusement as] "one of its
most valuable uses to hard-worked people."
[Much as he desired that this intellectual training should be
efficient, the most cursory perusal of this article will show how far
he placed the moral training above the intellectual, which, by itself,
would only turn the gutter-child into] "the subtlest of all the beasts
of the field," [and how wide of the mark is the cartoon at this period
representing him as the Professor whose panacea for the ragged
children was to] "cram them full of nonsense."
[In the third section are also to be found his arguments for the
retention of Bible-reading in the elementary schools. He reproached
extremists of either party for confounding the science, theology, with
the affection, religion, and either crying for more theology under the
name of religion, or demanding the abolition of] "religious" [teaching
in order to get rid of theology, a step which he likens to] "burning
your ship to get rid of the cockroaches."
[As regards his actual work on the Board, I must express my thanks to
Dr. J.H. Gladstone for his kindness in supplementing my information
with an account based partly on his own long experience of the Board,
partly on the reminiscences of members contemporary with my father.
The Board met first on December 15, for the purpose of electing a
Chairman. As a preliminary, Huxley proposed and carried a motion that
no salary be attached to the post. He was himself one of the four
members proposed for the Chairmanship; but the choice of the Board
fell upon Lord Lawrence. In the words of Dr. Gladstone:--
Huxley at once took a prominent part in the proceedings, and continued
to do so till the beginning of the year 1872, when ill-health
compelled him to retire.
At first there was much curiosity both inside and outside the Board as
to how Huxley would work with the old educationists, the clergy,
dissenting ministers, and the miscellaneous body of eminent men that
comprised the first Board. His antagonism to many of the methods
employed in elementary schools was well known from his various
discourses, which had been recently published together under the title
of "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews." I watched his course with
interest at the time; but for the purpose of this sketch I have lately
sought information from such of the old members of the Board as are
still living, especially the earl of Harrowby, Bishop Barry, the
Reverend Dr. Angus, and Mr. Edward North Buxton, together with Mr.
Croad, the Clerk of the Board. They soon found proof of his great
energy, and his power of expressing his views in clear and forcible
language; but they also found that with all his strong convictions and
lofty ideals he was able and willing to enter into the views of
others, and to look at a practical question from its several sides. He
could construct as well as criticise. Having entered a public arena
somewhat late in life, and being of a sensitive nature, he had
scarcely acquired that calmness and pachydermatous quality which is
needful for one's personal comfort; but his colleagues soon came to
respect him as a perfectly honest antagonist or supporter, and one who
did not allow differences of conviction to interfere with friendly
intercourse.
The various sections of the clerical party indeed looked forward with
great apprehension to his presence on the Board, but the more liberal
amongst them ventured to find ground for hoping that they and he would
not be utterly opposed so far as the work of practical organisation
was concerned, in the declaration of his belief that true education
was impossible without "religion," of which he declared that all that
has an unchangeable reality in it is constituted by the love of some
ethical ideal to govern and guide conduct,] "together with the awe and
reverence, which have no kinship with base fear, but rise whenever one
tries to pierce below the surface of things, whether they be material
or spiritual." [And in fact a cleavage took place between him and the
seven extreme "secularists" on the Board (the seven champions of
unchristendom, as their opponents dubbed them) on the question of the
reading of the Bible in schools (see below (Bishop Barry calls
particular attention to his attitude on this point, "because," he
says, "it is (I think) often misunderstood. In the "Life of the Right
Honourable W.H. Smith" (for instance), published not long ago, Huxley
is supposed, as a matter of course to have been the leader of the
Secularist party.")
One of the earliest proposals laid before the Board was a resolution
to open the meetings with prayer. To this considerable opposition was
offered; but a bitter debate was averted by Huxley pointing out that
the proposal was ultra vires, inasmuch as under the Act constituting
the Board the business for which they were empowered to meet did not
include prayer. Hereupon a requisition--in which he himself
joined--was made to allow the use of a committee-room to those who
wished to unite in a short service before the weekly meetings, an
arrangement which has continued to the present time.
At the second meeting, on December 21, he gave notice of a motion to
appoint a committee to consider and report upon the scheme of
education to be adopted in the Board Schools.
This motion came up for consideration on February 15, 1871. In
introducing it, he said that such a committee ought to consider:--]
First, the general nature and relations of the schools which may come
under the Board. Secondly, the amount of time to be devoted to
educational purposes in such schools; and Thirdly, the subject-matter
of the instruction or education, or teaching, or training, which is to
be given in these schools.
[But this, by itself, he continued, would be incomplete. At one end of
the scale he advocated Infant schools, and urged a connection with the
excellent work of the Ragged schools. At the other end he desired to
see continuation schools, and ultimately some scheme of technical
education. A comprehensive scheme, indeed, would involve an
educational ladder from the gutter to the university, whereby children
of exceptional ability might reach the place for which nature had
fitted them.
The subject matter of elementary instruction must be limited by what
was practicable and desirable. The revised code had done too little;
it had taught the use of the tools of learning, while denying all
sorts of knowledge on which to exercise them afterwards. And here
incidentally he repudiated the notion that the English child was
stupid; on the contrary, he thought the two finest intellects in
Europe at this time were the English and the Italian.
In particular he advocated the teaching of] "the first elements of
physical science"; "by which I do not mean teaching astronomy and the
use of the globes, and the rest of the abominable trash--but a little
instruction of the child in what is the nature of common things about
him; what their properties are, and in what relation this actual body
of man stands to the universe outside of it." "There is no form of
knowledge or instruction in which children take greater interest."
[Drawing and music, too, he considered, should be taught in every
elementary school, not to produce painters or musicians, but as
civilising arts. History, except the most elementary notions, he put
out of court, as too advanced for children.
Finally, he proposed a list of members to serve on the Education
Committee in a couple of sentences with a humorous twist in them which
disarmed criticism.] "On a former occasion I was accused of having a
proclivity in favour of the clergy, and recollecting this, I have only
given them in this instance a fair proportion of the representation.
If, however, I have omitted any gentleman who thinks he ought to be on
the committee, I can only assure him that above all others I should
have been glad to put him on."
[That day week the committee was elected, about a third of the members
of the Board being chosen to serve on it. At the same meeting, Dr.
Gladstone continues:--
Mr. W.H. Smith, the well-known member of Parliament, proposed, and Mr.
Samuel Morley, M.P., seconded, a resolution in favour of religious
teaching--"That, in the schools provided by the Board, the Bible shall
be read, and there shall be given therefrom such explanations and such
instruction in the principles of religion and morality as are suited
to the capacities of children," with certain provisos. Several
antagonistic amendments were proposed; but Professor Huxley gave his
support to Mr. Smith's resolutions, which, however, he thought might
be trimmed and amended in a way that the Reverend Dr. Angus had
suggested. His speech, defining his own position, was a very
remarkable one. He said] "it was assumed in the public mind that this
question of religious instruction was a little family quarrel between
the different sects of Protestantism on the one hand, and the old
Catholic Church on the other. Side by side with this much shivered and
splintered Protestantism of theirs, and with the united fabric of the
Catholic Church (not so strong temporally as she used to be, otherwise
he might not have been addressing them at that moment), there was a
third party growing up into very considerable and daily increasing
significance, which had nothing to do with either of those great
parties, and which was pushing its own way independent of them, having
its own religion and its own morality, which rested in no way whatever
on the foundations of the other two." [He thought that] "the action of
the Board should be guided and influenced very much by the
consideration of this third great aspect of things," [which he called
the scientific aspect, for want of a better name.]
"It had been very justly said that they had a great mass of low
half-instructed population which owed what little redemption from
ignorance and barbarism it possessed mainly to the efforts of the
clergy of the different denominations. Any system of gaining the
attention of these people to these matters must be a system connected
with, or not too rudely divorced from their own system of belief. He
wanted regulations, not in accordance with what he himself thought was
right, but in the direction in which thought was moving." [He wanted
an elastic system, that did not oppose any obstacle to the free play
of the public mind.
Huxley voted against all the proposed amendments, and in favour of Mr.
Smith's motion. There were only three who voted against it; while the
three Roman Catholic members refrained from voting. This basis of
religious instruction, practically unaltered, has remained the law of
the Board ever since.
There was a controversy in the papers, between Professor Huxley and
the Reverend W.H. Fremantle, as to the nature of the explanations of
the Bible lessons. Huxley maintained that it should be purely
grammatical, geographical, and historical in its nature; Fremantle
that it should include some species of distinct religious teaching,
but not of a denominational character. (Cp. extract from Lord
Shaftesbury's journal about this correspondence ("Life and Work of
Lord Shaftesbury" 3 282). "Professor Huxley has this definition of
morality and religion:] 'Teach a child what is wise, that is morality.
Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is RELIGION!' Let no one
henceforth despair of making things clear and of giving
explanations!")
[In taking up this position, Huxley expressly disclaimed any desire
for a mere compromise to smooth over a difficulty. He supported what
appeared to be the only workable plan under the circumstances, though
it was not his ideal; for he would not have used the Bible as the
agency for introducing the religious and ethical idea into education
if he had been dealing with a fresh and untouched population.
His appreciation of the literary and historical value of the Bible,
and the effect it was likely to produce upon the school children,
circumstanced as they were, is sometimes misunderstood to be an
endorsement of the vulgar idea of it. But it always remained his
belief] "that the principle of strict secularity in State education is
sound, and must eventually prevail." [(As a result of some remarks of
Mr. Clodd's on the matter in "Pioneers of Evolution," a correspondent,
some time after, wrote to him as follows:--
"In the report upon State Education in New Zealand, 1895, drawn up by
R. Laishly, the following occurs, page 13:--'Professor Huxley gives me
leave to state his opinion to be that the principle of strict
secularity in State education is sound, and must eventually prevail.'"
His views on dogmatic teaching in State schools, may be gathered
further from two letters at the period when an attempt was being made
to upset the so-called compromise.
The first appeared in the "Times" of April 29, 1893:--]
Sir,
In a leading article of your issue of to-day you state, with perfect
accuracy, that I supported the arrangement respecting religious
instruction agreed to by the London School Board in 1871, and hitherto
undisturbed. But you go on to say that "the persons who framed the
rule" intended it to include definite teaching of such theological
dogmas as the Incarnation.
I cannot say what may have been in the minds of the framers of the
rule; but, assuredly, if I had dreamed that any such interpretation
could fairly be put upon it, I should have opposed the arrangement to
the best of my ability.
In fact, a year before the rule was framed I wrote an article in the
"Contemporary Review," entitled "The School Boards--what they can do
and what they may do," in which I argued that the terms of the
Education Act excluded such teaching as it is now proposed to include.
And I support my contention by the following citation from the speech
delivered by Mr. Forster at the Birkbeck Institution in 1870:--
["I have the fullest confidence that in the reading and explaining of
the Bible what the children will be taught will be the great truths of
Christian life and conduct, which all of us desire they should know,
and that no efforts will be made to cram into their poor little minds
theological dogmas which their tender age prevents them from
understanding."
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
T.H. Huxley.
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, April 28.
[The second is to a correspondent who wrote to ask him whether
adhesion to the compromise had not rendered nonsensical the teaching
given in a certain lesson upon the finding of the youthful Jesus in
the temple, when, after they had read the verse, "How is it that ye
sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" the
teacher asked the children the name of Jesus' father and mother, and
accepted the simple answer, Joseph and Mary. Thus the point of the
story, whether regarded as reality or myth, is slurred over, the
result is perplexity, the teaching, in short, is bad, apart from all
theory as to the value of the Bible.
In a letter to the "Chronicle," which he forwarded, this correspondent
suggested a continuation of the "incriminated lesson":--
Suppose, then, that an intelligent child of seven, who has just heard
it read out that Jesus excused Himself to his parents for disappearing
for three days, on the ground that He was about His father's business,
and has then learned that His father's name was Joseph, had said,
"Please, teacher, was this the Jesus that gave us the Lord's Prayer?"
The teacher answers, "Yes." and suppose the child rejoins, "And is it
to His father Joseph that he bids us pray when we say Our Father?" But
there are boys of nine, ten, eleven years in Board Schools, and many
such boys are intelligent enough to take up the subject of the lesson
where the instructor left it. "Please, teacher," asks one of these,
"what business was it that Jesus had to do for His father Joseph? Had
He stopped behind to get a few orders? Was it true that He had been
about Joseph's business? And, if it was not, did He not deserve to be
punished?"
Huxley replied on October 16, 1894:--]
Dear Sir,
I am one with you in hating "hush up" as I do all other forms of
lying; but I venture to submit that the compromise of 1871 was not a
"hush-up." If I had taken it to be such I should have refused to have
anything to do with it. And more specifically, I said in a letter to
the "Times" (see "Times," 29th April 1893) at the beginning of the
present controversy, that if I had thought the compromise involved the
obligatory teaching of such dogmas as the Incarnation I should have
opposed it.
There has never been the slightest ambiguity about my position in this
matter; in fact, if you will turn to one paper on the School Board
written by me before my election in 1870, I think you will find that I
anticipated the pith of the present discussion.
The persons who agreed to the compromise, did exactly what all sincere
men who agree to compromise, do. For the sake of the enormous
advantage of giving the rudiments of a decent education to several
generations of the people, they accepted what was practically an
armistice in respect of certain matters about which the contending
parties were absolutely irreconcilable.
The clericals have now "denounced" the treaty, doubtless thinking they
can get a new one more favourable to themselves.
From my point of view, I am not sure that it might not be well for
them to succeed, so that the sweep into space which would befall them
in the course of the next twenty-three years might be complete and
final.
As to the case you put to me--permit me to continue the dialogue in
another shape.
Boy.--Please, teacher, if Joseph was not Jesus' father and God was,
why did Mary say, "Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing"? How
could God not know where Jesus was? How could He be sorry?
Teacher.--When Jesus says Father, he means God; but when Mary says
father, she means Joseph.
Boy.--Then Mary didn't know God was Jesus' father?
Teacher.--Oh, yes, she did (reads the story of the Annunciation).
Boy.--It seems to me very odd that Mary used language which she knew
was not true, and taught her son to call Joseph father. But there's
another odd thing about her. If she knew her child was God's son, why
was she alarmed about his safety? Surely she might have trusted God to
look after his own son in a crowd.
I know of children of six and seven who are quite capable of following
out such a line of inquiry with all the severe logic of a moral sense
which has not been sophisticated by pious scrubbing.
I could tell you of stranger inquiries than these which have been made
by children in endeavouring to understand the account of the
miraculous conception.
Whence I conclude that even in the interests of what people are
pleased to call Christianity (though it is my firm conviction that
Jesus would have repudiated the doctrine of the Incarnation as warmly
as that of the Trinity), it may be well to leave things as they are.
All this is for your own eye. There is nothing in substance that I
have not said publicly, but I do not feel called upon to say it over
again, or get mixed up in an utterly wearisome controversy.
I am, yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[However, he was unsuccessful in his proposal that a selection be made
of passages for reading from the Bible; the Board refused to become
censors. On May 10 he raised the question of the diversion from the
education of poor children of charitable bequests, which ought to be
applied to the augmentation of the school fund. In speaking to this
motion he said that the long account of errors and crimes of the
Catholic Church was greatly redeemed by the fact that that Church had
always borne in mind the education of the poor, and had carried out
the great democratic idea that the soul of every man was of the same
value in the eyes of his Maker.
The next matter of importance in which he took part was on June 14,
when the Committee on the Scheme of Education presented its first
report. Dr. Gladstone writes:--
It was a very voluminous document. The Committee had met every week,
and, in the words of Huxley,] "what it had endeavoured to do, was to
obtain some order and system and uniformity in important matters,
whilst in comparatively unimportant matters they thought some play
should be given for the activity of the bodies of men into whose hands
the management of the various schools should be placed." [The
recommendations were considered on June 21 and July 12, and passed
without any material alterations or additions. They were very much the
same as existed in the best elementary schools of the period. Huxley's
chief interest, it may be surmised, was in the subjects of
instruction. It was passed that, in infants' schools there should be
the Bible, reading, writing, arithmetic, object lessons of a simple
character, with some such exercise of the hands and eyes as is given
in the Kindergarten system, music, and drill. In junior and senior
schools the subjects of instruction were divided into two classes,
essential and discretionary, the essentials being the Bible, and the
principles of religion and morality, reading, writing, and arithmetic,
English grammar and composition, elementary geography, and elementary
social economy, history of England, the principles of book-keeping in
senior schools, with mensuration in senior boys' schools. All through
the six years there were to be systematised object lessons, embracing
a course of elementary instruction in physical science, and serving as
an introduction to the science examinations conducted by the Science
and Art department. An analogous course of instruction was adopted for
elementary evening schools. In moving] "that the formation of science
and art classes in connection with public elementary schools be
encouraged and facilitated," [Huxley contended strongly for it,
saying,] "The country could not possibly commit a greater error than
in establishing schools in which the direct applications of science
and art were taught before those who entered the classes were grounded
in the principles of physical science." [In advocating object lessons
he said,] "The position that science was now assuming, not only in
relation to practical life, but to thought, was such that those who
remained entirely ignorant of even its elementary facts were in a
wholly unfair position as regarded the world of thought and the world
of practical life." [It was, moreover,] "the only real foundation for
technical education."
[Other points in which he was specially concerned were, that the
universal teaching of drawing was accepted, against an amendment
excluding girls; that domestic economy was made a discretionary
substitute for needlework and cutting-out; while he spoke in defence
of Latin as a discretionary subject, alternatively with a modern
language. It was true that he would not have proposed it in the first
instance, not because a little Latin is a bad thing, but for fear of]
"overloading the boat." [But, on the other hand, there was great
danger if education were not thrown open to all without restriction.
If it be urged that a man should be content with the state of life to
which he is called, the obvious retort is, How do you know what is
your state of life, unless you try what you are called to? There is no
more frightful] "sitting on the safety valve" [than in preventing men
of ability from having the means of rising to the positions for which
they, by their talents and industry, could qualify themselves.
Further, although the committee as a whole recommended that
discretionary subjects should be extras, he wished them to be covered
by the general payment, in which sense the report was amended.
This Education Committee (proceeds Dr. Gladstone) continued to sit,
and on November 30 brought up a report in favour of the Prussian
system of separate classrooms, to be tried in one school as an
experiment. This reads curiously now that it has become the system
almost universally adopted in the London Board Schools.
In regard to examinations Huxley strongly supported the view that the
teaching in all subjects, secular or sacred, should be periodically
tested.
On December 13, Huxley raised the question whether the selection of
books and apparatus should be referred to his Committee or to the
School Management Committee, and on January 10 following, a small
sub-committee for that object was formed. Almost immediately after
this he retired from the Board.
One more speech of his, which created a great stir at the time, must
be referred to, namely his expression of undisguised hostility to the
system of education maintained by the Ultramontane section of the
Roman Catholics. (Cp. "Scientific Education" "Collected Essays" 3 page
111.) In October the bye-laws came up for consideration. One of them
provided that the Board should pay over direct to denominational
schools the fees for poor children. This he opposed on the ground that
it would lead to repeated contests on the Board, and further, might be
used as a tool by the Ultramontanes for their own purposes. Believing
that their system as set forth in the syllabus, of securing complete
possession of the minds of those whom they taught or controlled, was
destructive to all that was highest in the nature of mankind, and
inconsistent with intellectual and political liberty, he considered it
his earnest duty to oppose all measures which would lead to assisting
the Ultramontanes in their purpose.
Hereupon he was vehemently attacked, for example, in the "Times" for
his "injudicious and even reprehensible tone" which "aggravated the
difficulties his opponents might have in giving way to him." Was this,
it was asked, the way to get Roman Catholic children to the Board
schools? Was it not an abandonment of the ideal of compulsory
education?
It is hardly necessary to point out that the question was not between
the compulsory inclusion or exclusion of poor children, but between
their admission at the cost of the Board to schools under the Board's
own control or outside it. In any case the children of Roman Catholics
were not likely to get their own doctrines taught in Board Schools,
and without this they declared they would rather go without education
at all.
Early in 1872 Huxley retired. For a year he had continued at this
task; then his health broke down, and feeling that he had done his
part, from no personal motives of ambition, but rather at some cost to
himself, for what he held to be national ends, he determined not to
resume the work after the rest which was to restore him to health, and
made his resignation definite.
Dr. Gladstone writes:--
On February 7 a letter of resignation was received from him, stating
that he was] "reluctantly compelled, both on account of his health and
his private affairs, to insist on giving up his seat at the Board."
[The Reverend Dr. Rigg, Canon Miller, Mr. Charles Reed, and Lord
Lawrence expressed their deep regret. In the words of Dr. Rigg, "they
were losing one of the most valuable members of the Board, not only
because of his intellect and trained acuteness, but because of his
knowledge of every subject connected with culture and education, and
because of his great fairness and impartiality with regard to all
subjects that came under his observation."
Though Huxley quitted the Board after only fourteen months' service,
the memory of his words and acts combined to influence it long
afterwards. In various ways he expressed his opinion on educational
matters, publicly and privately. He frequently talked with me on the
subject at the Athenaeum Club, and shortly after my election to the
Board in 1873, I find it recorded in my diary that he insisted
strongly on the necessity of our building infants' schools,--] "People
may talk about intellectual teaching, but what we principally want is
the moral teaching."
As to the sub-committee on books and apparatus, it did little at
first, but at the beginning of the second Board, 1873, it became
better organised under the presidency of the Reverend Benjamin Waugh.
At the commencement of the next triennial term I became the chairman,
and continued to be such for eighteen years. It was our duty to put
into practice the scheme of instruction which Huxley was mainly
instrumental in settling. We were thus able indirectly to improve both
the means and methods of teaching. The subjects of instruction have
all been retained in the Curriculum of the London School Board,
except, perhaps, "mensuration" and "social economy." The most
important developments and additions have been in the direction of
educating the hand and eye. Kindergarten methods have been promoted.
Drawing, on which Huxley laid more stress than his colleagues
generally did, has been enormously extended and greatly revolutionised
in its methods. Object lessons and elementary science have been
introduced everywhere, while shorthand, the use of tools for boys,
cookery and domestic economy for girls are becoming essentials in our
schools. Evening continuation schools have lately been widely
extended. Thus the impulse given by Huxley in the first months of the
Board's existence has been carried forward by others, and is now
affecting the minds of the half million of boys and girls in the Board
Schools of London, and indirectly the still greater number in other
schools throughout the land.
I must further express my thanks to Bishop Barry for permission to
make use of the following passages from the notes contributed by him
to Dr. Gladstone:--
I had the privilege of being a member of his committee for defining
the curriculum of study, and here also--the religious question being
disposed of--I was able to follow much the same line as his, and I
remember being struck not only with his clear-headed ability, but with
his strong commonsense, as to what was useful and practicable, and the
utter absence in him of doctrinaire aspiration after ideal
impossibilities. There was (I think) very little under his
chairmanship of strongly-accentuated difference of opinion.
In his action on the Board generally I was struck with these three
characteristics:--First, his remarkable power of speaking--I may say,
of oratory--not only on his own scientific subjects, but on all the
matters, many of which were of great practical interest and touched
the deepest feelings, which came before the Board at that critical
time. Had he chosen--and we heard at that time that he was considering
whether he should choose--to enter political life, it would certainly
have made him a great power, possibly a leader, in that sphere. Next,
what constantly appears in his writings, even those of the most
polemical kind--a singular candour in recognising truths which might
seen to militate against his own position, and a power of
understanding and respecting his adversaries' opinions, if only they
were strongly and conscientiously held. I remember his saying on one
occasion that in his earlier experience of sickness and suffering, he
had found that the most effective helpers of the higher humanity were
not the scientist or the philosopher, but] "the parson, and the
sister, and the Bible woman." [Lastly, the strong commonsense, which
enabled him to see what was] "within the range of practical politics,"
[and to choose for the cause which he had at heart the line of least
resistance, and to check, sometimes to rebuke, intolerant obstinacy
even on the side which he was himself inclined to favour. These
qualities over and above his high intellectual ability made him, for
the comparatively short time that he remained on the Board, one of its
leading members.
No less vivid is the impression left, after many years, upon another
member of the first School Board, the Reverend Benjamin Waugh, whose
life-long work for the children is so well known. From his
recollections, written for the use of Professor Gladstone, it is my
privilege to quote the following paragraphs:--
I was drawn to him most, and was influenced by him most, because of
his attitude to a child. He was on the Board to establish schools for
children. His motive in every argument, in all the fun and ridicule he
indulged in, and in his occasional anger, was the child. He resented
the idea that schools were to train either congregations for churches
or hands for factories. He was on the Board as a friend of children.
What he sought to do for the child was for the child's sake, that it
might live a fuller, truer, worthier life. If ever his great tolerance
with men with whom he differed on general principles seemed to fail
him for a moment, it was because they seemed to him to seek other ends
than the child for its own sake...
His contempt for the idea of the world into which we were born being
either a sort of clergyhouse or a market-place, was too complete to be
marked by any eagerness. But in view of the market-place idea he was
the less calm.
Like many others who had not yet come to know in what high esteem he
held the moral and spiritual nature of children, I had thought he was
the advocate of mere secular studies, alike in the nation's schools,
and in its families. But by contact with him, this soon became an
impossible idea. In very early days on the Board a remark I had made
to a mutual friend which implied this unjust idea was repeated to
him.] "Tell Waugh that he talks too fast," [was his message to me. I
was not long in finding out that this was a very just reproof...
The two things in his character of which I became most conscious by
contact with him, were his childlikeness and his consideration for
intellectual inferiors. His arguments were as transparently honest as
the arguments of a child. They might or might not seem wrong to
others, but they were never untrue to himself. Whether you agreed with
them or not, they always added greatly to the charm of his
personality. Whether his face was lighted by his careless and playful
humour or his great brows were shadowed by anger, he was alike
expressing himself with the honesty of a child. What he counted
iniquity he hated, and what he counted righteous he loved with the
candour of a child...
Of his consideration for intellectual inferiors I, of course, needed a
large share, and it was never wanting. Towering as was his
intellectual strength and keenness above me, indeed above the whole of
the rest of the members of the Board, he did not condescend to me. The
result was never humiliating. It had no pain of any sort in it. He was
too spontaneous and liberal with his consideration to seem conscious
that he was showing any. There were many men of religious note upon
the Board, of some of whom I could not say the same.
In his most trenchant attacks on what he deemed wrong in principles,
he never descended to attack either the sects which held them or the
individuals who supported them, even though occasionally much
provocation was given him. He might not care for peace with some of
the theories represented on the Board, but he had certainly and at all
times great good-will to men.
As a speaker he was delightful. Few, clear, definite, and calm as
stars were the words he spoke. Nobody talked whilst he was speaking.
There were no tricks in his talk. He did not seem to be trying to
persuade you of something. What convinced him, that he transferred to
others. He made no attempt to misrepresent those opposed to him. He
sought only to let them know himself...Even the sparkle of his humour,
like the sparkle of a diamond, was of the inevitable in him, and was
as fair as it was enjoyable.
As one who has tried to serve children, I look back upon having fallen
in with Mr. Huxley as one of the many fortunate circumstances of my
life. It taught me the importance of making acquaintance with facts,
and of studying the laws of them. Under his influence it was that I
most of all came to see the practical value of a single eye to those
in any pursuit of life. I saw what effect they had on emotions of
charity and sentiments of justice, and what simplicity and grandeur
they gave to appeals.
My last conversation with him was at Eastbourne some time in 1887 or
1888. I was there on my society's business.] "Well, Waugh, you're
still busy about your babies," [was his greeting. "Yes," I responded
"and you are still busy about your pigs." One of the last discussions
at which he was present at the School Board for London had been on the
proximity of a piggery to a site for a school, and his attack on Mr.
Gladstone on the Gadarene swine had just been made in the "Nineteenth
Century."] "Do you still believe in Gladstone?" [he continued.] "That
man has the greatest intellect in Europe. He was born to be a leader
of men, and he has debased himself to be a follower of the masses. If
working men were to-day to vote by a majority that two and two made
five, to-morrow Gladstone would believe it, and find them reasons for
it which they had never dreamed of." [He said it slowly and with
sorrow.
Two more incidents are connected with his service on the School Board.
A wealthy friend wrote to him in the most honourable and delicate
terms, begging him, on public grounds, to accept 400 pounds sterling a
year to enable him to continue his work on the Board. He refused the
offer as simply and straightforwardly as it was made; his means,
though not large, were sufficient for his present needs.
Further, a good many people seemed to think that he meant to use the
School Board as a stalking horse for a political career. To one of
those who urged him to stand for Parliament, he replied thus:--]
November 18, 1871.
Dear Sir,
It has often been suggested to me that I should seek for a seat in the
House of Commons; indeed I have reason to think that many persons
suppose that I entered the London School Board simply as a road to
Parliament.
But I assure you that this supposition is entirely without foundation,
and that I have never seriously entertained any notion of the kind.
The work of the School Board involves me in no small sacrifices of
various kinds, but I went into it with my eyes open, and with the
clear conviction that it was worth while to make those sacrifices for
the sake of helping the Education Act into practical operation. A
year's experience has not altered that conviction; but now that the
most difficult, if not the most important, part of our work is done, I
begin to look forward with some anxiety to the time when I shall be
relieved of duties which so seriously interfere with what I regard as
my proper occupation.
No one can say what the future has in store for him, but at present I
know of no inducement, not even the offer of a seat in the House of
Commons, which would lead me, even temporarily and partially, to
forsake that work again.
I am, dear sir, yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[I give here a letter to me from Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, who also
at one period was anxious to induce him to enter Parliament:--
Lexden Park, Colchester, 4th November, 1898.
Dear Mr. Huxley,
I have met men who seemed to me to possess powers of mind even greater
than those of your father--his friend Henry Smith for example; but I
never met any one who gave me the impression so much as he did, that
he would have gone to the front in any pursuit in which he had seen
fit to engage. Henry Smith had, in addition to his astonishing
mathematical genius, and his great talents as a scholar, a rare
faculty of persuasiveness. Your father used to speak with much
admiration and some amusement of the way in which he managed to get
people to take his view by appearing to take theirs; but he never
could have been a power in a popular assembly, nor have carried with
him by the force of his eloquence, great masses of men. I do not think
that your father, if he had entered the House of Commons and thrown
himself entirely into political life, would have been much behind
Gladstone as a debater, or Bright as an orator. Whether he had the
stamina which are required not only to reach but to retain a foremost
place in politics, is another question. The admirers of Prince
Bismarck would say that the daily prayer of the statesman should be
there "une bonne digestion et un mauvais coeur." "Le mauvais coeur"
does not appear to be "de toute necessite," but, assuredly, the "bonne
digestion" is. Given an adequate and equal amount of ability in two
men who enter the House of Commons together, it is the man of strong
digestion, drawing with it, as it usually does, good temper and power
of continuous application, who will go furthest. Gladstone, who was
inferior to your father in intellect, might have "given points" to the
Dragon of Wantley who devoured church steeples. Your father could
certainly not have done so, and in that respect was less well equipped
for a lifelong parliamentary struggle.
I should like to have seen these two pitted against each other with
that "substantial piece of furniture" between them behind which Mr.
Disraeli was glad to shelter himself. I should like to have heard them
discussing some subject which they both thoroughly understood. When
they did cross swords the contest was like nothing that has happened
in our times save the struggle at Omdurman. It was not so much a
battle as a massacre, for Gladstone had nothing but a bundle of
antiquated prejudices wherewith to encounter your father's luminous
thought and exact knowledge.
You know, I daresay, that Mr. William Rathbone, then M.P. for
Liverpool, once proposed to your father to be the companion of my
first Indian journey in 1874-5, he, William Rathbone, paying all your
father's expenses. (Of this, Dr. Tyndall wrote to Mrs. Huxley:--"I
want to tell you a pleasant conversation I had last night with
Jodrell. He and a couple more want to send Hal with Grant Duff to
India, taking charge of his duties here and of all necessities ghostly
and bodily there!") Mr. Rathbone made this proposal when he found that
Lubbock, with whom I travelled a great deal at that period of my life,
was unable to go with me to India. How I wish your father had said
"Yes." My journey, as it was, turned out most instructive and
delightful; but to have lived five months with a man of his
extraordinary gifts would have been indeed a rare piece of good
fortune, and I should have been able also to have contributed to the
work upon which you are engaged a great many facts which would have
been of interest to your readers. You will, however, I am sure, take
the will for the deed, and believe me, very sincerely yours,
M.E. Grant Duff.]