prophesying unless you know. In 1894 an able summary of the question was
published in a German journal, in which the impossibility of solving the
problem of the gravitational sensitiveness of the root-tip was dwelt on,
and immediately afterwards Section K of the British Association had the
satisfaction of hearing Pfeffer read a brilliant paper giving the
long-hoped-for proof that the tip of the root is a sense-organ for
gravitation. {47}
Like many other experiments, it depends on a deception or trick played on
the plant. The root is forced to grow into a minute glass tube closed at
one end and sharply bent in the middle, resembling a little glass boot;
the extreme tip being thus kept at right angles to the main body of the
root. If the theory we are testing is the right one, a root with its
motor region horizontal and its tip vertical ought to continue to grow
horizontally, because the tip being vertical is not stimulated by
gravity; it is in a quiescent, or, as it were, a satisfied condition, and
no bending influence is being sent to the motor region. And this is what
Pfeffer and Czapek found. On the other hand, if the main body of the
root points vertically down while the sensitive tip is horizontal, a
curvature results, because as long as the tip is horizontal it is
stimulated, and the stimulus is transmitted to the motor region.
This experiment proves not only that the tip of the root is the
sense-organ for gravity, but also that the motile part is not directly
sensitive; in other words, that gravitation is perceived exclusively in
the tip of the root. Since the publication of Pfeffer's and Czapek's
papers I have been lucky enough to hit on another way of investigating
percipient organs for gravitation, {48} and I am not without hopes that
botanists may become in this question as fertile as Cyrano with his seven
ways of flying to the moon.
There is a certain kind of inverted action familiarly known as the tail
wagging the dog, and it is on this principle of inversion that my
experiment is designed. Inversion may in some cases be practised without
altering the final result. For instance, it does not much matter whether
the thread goes to the eye (the rational masculine plan) or _vice versa_,
as in the feminine way of threading a needle. In other cases you create
what is practically a new machine by inversion, as in a certain apparatus
in which the hand of a clock stops still while the clock itself rotates.
The effect is still more striking with my plants, for the inversion
practised on them entirely changes the character of their movement.
The result may be shown with the seedling _Setarias_ of which I have
spoken, or with _Sorghum_, as in Fig. 4. If one of these is supported by
its seed with its stem projecting freely in the horizontal plane, the
gravitation stimulus makes it bend upwards until the tip is vertical,
when the stimulus ceases to act and the curvature comes to an end. If
the conditions are reversed, if the seedling is supported in a horizontal
position _by its tip_, while the seed projects freely, the result is at
first the same, though finally it comes to be strikingly different. The
basal end of the seedling is carried upwards by the curvature of the
stem; but according to the theory we are testing, the tip of the seedling
is the only part of the plant which feels the gravitational stimulus, and
the tip of the seedling remains horizontal in spite of the curvature of
the stem. Therefore the tip of the seedling is not freed from
stimulation as it was in the first case, where the curvature brought the
tip into the vertical position. The horizontal tip therefore continues
to send commands to the stem to go on curving, in a way I can best
explain if I am allowed to make the plant express its sensations in
words. The tip says to the stem, "I am horizontal, therefore you must
bend upwards"; and when this order has been obeyed the tip says, "It is
of no use, I am still horizontal--go on bending." The result is that the
stem curls up into a spiral like a corkscrew or a French horn, as shown
in Fig. 4.
[Picture: Fig. 4.--Seedling Sorghums supported by their tips in
horizontal glass tubes]
These unfortunate plants are in the position of a convict on the
treadmill; their movements are, from their own point of view, absolutely
ineffectual and meaningless. The results are, however, of some
importance from our point of view, since they give clear support to the
theory which I have now attempted to place before you, namely, that the
percipient region is at the tip of the _Setaria_ seedling, and that by
what corresponds to a reflex action, the stimulus perceived by the tip is
transmitted to the motor region.
I should like to add a few words on the question how far the movement of
plants can be placed under the general laws deducible from the movements
of animals. Unfortunately, as soon as we attack this question we are
liable to enter regions where for the ignorant there are many pitfalls.
We are, in fact, face to face with the question whether in plants there
is anything in which we may recognise the faint beginnings of
consciousness, whether plants have the rudiments of desire or of memory,
or other qualities generally described as mental.
If we take the wide view of memory which has been set forth by S. Butler
{51a} and by Hering, we shall be forced to believe that plants, like all
other living things, have a kind of memory. For these writers make
memory cover the whole phenomena of life. Inheritance with them is a
form of memory, or memory a kind of inheritance. A plant or an animal
grows into the form inherited from its ancestors by passing through a
series of changes, each change being linked to the preceding stage as the
notes of a tune are linked together in the nervous system of one who
plays the piano. Or we may compare the development of an animal or plant
to the firing of a train of gunpowder, which completes itself by a series
of explosions, each leading to a new one. To use the language I have
been employing, each stage in development acts as a signal to the next.
In the same way the characteristic element in what is done by memory, or
by that "unconscious memory" {51b} known as habit, is the association of
a chain of thoughts or actions each calling forth the next.
What I wish to insist on is, that the process I have called
action-by-signal is of the same type as action-by-association, and
therefore allied to habit and memory. The plants alive to-day are the
successful ones who have inherited from successful ancestors the power of
curving in certain ways, when, by accidental deviations from their normal
attitude, some change of pressure is produced in their protoplasm. With
the pianist the playing of A has become tied to, entangled or associated
with, the playing of B, so that the striking of note A has grown to be a
signal to the muscles to strike B. Similarly in the plant, the act of
bending has become tied to, entangled or associated with, that change in
the protoplasm due to the altered position. There is no mechanical
necessity that B should follow A in the tune; the sequence is owing to
the path built by habit in the man's brain. And this is equally true of
the plant, in which an hereditary habit has been built up in a brain-like
root-tip.
The capacities of plants of which I have spoken have been compared to
instincts, and if I prefer to call them reflexes it is because instinct
is generally applied to actions with something of an undoubted mental
basis. I do not necessarily wish it to be inferred that there can be
nothing in plants which may possibly be construed as the germ of
consciousness--nothing psychic, to use a convenient term; but it is
clearly our duty to explain the facts, if possible, without assuming a
psychological resemblance between plants and human beings, lest we go
astray into anthropomorphism or sentimentality, and sin against the law
of parsimony, which forbids us to assume the action of higher causes when
lower will suffice.
The problem is clearly one for treatment by evolutionary method--for
instance, by applying the principle of continuity. {53a} Man is
developed from an ovum, and since man has consciousness it is allowable
to suppose that the speck of protoplasm from which he develops has a
quality which can grow into consciousness, and, by analogy, that other
protoplasmic bodies, for instance those found in plants, have at least
the ghosts of similar qualities. But the principle of continuity may be
used the other way up; it may be argued that if a lump of protoplasm can
perform the essential functions of a living thing, to all appearances
without consciousness, the supposed value of consciousness in Man is an
illusion. This is the doctrine of animal automatism so brilliantly
treated by Huxley. {53b} He is chiefly concerned with the value of
consciousness to an organism--a question into which I cannot enter. What
concerns us now is, that however we use the doctrine of continuity, it
gives support to belief in a psychic element in plants. All I contend
for at the moment is, that there is nothing unscientific in classing
animals and plants together from a psychological standpoint. For this
contention I may quote a well-known psychologist, Dr. James Ward, {53c}
who concludes that mind "is always implicated in life." He remarks, too
(_ibid._ p. 287): "It would be hardly going too far to say that
Aristotle's conception of a plant-soul . . . is tenable even to-day, at
least as tenable as any such notion can be at a time when souls are out
of fashion."
This is a path of inquiry I am quite incapable of pursuing. It would be
safer for me to rest contented with asserting that plants are vegetable
automata, as some philosophers are content to make an automaton of Man.
But I am not satisfied with this resting-place. And I hope that other
biologists will not be satisfied with a point of view in which
consciousness is no more than a bye-product of automatic action, and that
they will in time gain a definite conception of the value of
consciousness in the economy of living organisms. Nor can I doubt that
the facts discussed in these pages must contribute to the foundation of
this wider psychological outlook.
IV
A LANE IN THE COTSWOLDS
Early in May I walked up from the valley to the extreme rim of the
Cotswolds, just above our house. The lower country is all pasture, where
we can wander at will, and delight in the many beautiful trees: the fresh
green elms, the vernal yellow of the oak (which lingers in varying
degrees behind some of its companions, but does not deserve Tolstoy's
epithet 'maussade'), and the grey anatomy of the timid ash, whose black
buds are still getting up their courage. We do not owe the trees in the
meadows to landowners with a taste for natural beauty, but to the cattle
that must have shade.
The buttercups are beginning their golden show, and there is not much
else to decorate the fields, except daisies and the cheerful dandelions.
These last are still growing obliquely, and not yet staring boldly up at
the sky, as in later life. There is also an occasional patch of
bugle--sturdy little blue sentinels, and a few purple orchids. In the
upper meadows where the wind is cold the daisies bend their stalk and lay
their heads on the ground (as they do at night), and their little noses
look red like poor Marian's in Shakespeare's winter song. In the daisy
it is the pink-tipped petals {56} huddling together that make this chilly
symbol a contrast to the happy star that sunshine shows.
Near the top of the hill is a bare pasture covered with cowslips, all
pointing their pretty heads one way. At first it seemed that they were
simply yielding to the fresh wind, but on picking them it was made clear
that they bent their stalks wilfully, not on compulsion. On the whole it
seemed that they were nodding towards the brighter light, but I could not
perceive that the quarter to which they turned had any advantage in
luminosity.
Close to the top of the hill is a little wood of nut-trees, and I looked
down into it over the hedge with a shock of pleasure at the chequer-work
of white and blue, a conspiracy of wild garlick and blue-bells. In this
land I have not seen the blue haze covering acres of cleared woodland
such as we have in Kent. But this colour-dance of the two plants is
beautiful in its own way. Now we have reached the rim of the valley, and
look over into a new country, with many red patches of ploughed land, and
sheep in the treeless fields instead of cattle. Here the skylark sings,
who is something of a stranger to us dwellers in the valley. The same is
true of the yellow-hammer, whose hot and dusty voice is less familiar
there. To one inland bred the seagulls feeding in the ploughed lands are
a delight. They seem an echo from the salt sea, or a variation (in a
musical sense) on the far away silver strip which is the Severn shining
down to the Bristol Channel.
We now come to a little wandering road, called for reasons unknown to me
Seven Leases Lane, and after a time end our wanderings at a point whence
we can look down on misty Gloucester and its cathedral; and this is a
historic spot if the rumour is to be trusted, that from here King Charles
watched the siege. The lane is pleasant with its plashed hedges beset
with traveller's joy (clematis) and bryony. Clematis likes to climb up
trees, but it seems quite happy ramping over the hedges. It is now in
its freshest youth, and the careless way in which the young stems toss
themselves hither and thither gives an impression of endless living
things dancing with complete abandon on the hedge as on an airy floor.
The traveller's joy climbs by seizing hold of the branches of plants more
solid than itself. It grips them with its leaf-stalks, which serve as
tendrils and support the weakling stem aloft in the clear air. But as
yet they have hardly begun to fix themselves; though some I saw which had
caught each other, giving themselves a gay aspect by seeming to dance
hand in hand.
The white bryony is there also, and its tendrils have fastened on to the
hazel, beech and dog-wood, which make up the mass of the hedge. Their
tendrils are but delicate ropes, and when they have seized a twig they
would break away in the first fresh breeze. But this is prevented by the
fact that the tendrils contract into spiral springs, and by the
give-and-take of its elastic coils the cable becomes almost unbreakable
and the ship rides out the stiffest gale. {58a}
Two other types of climbing plants are common in our lane, which have
neither the grasping leafstalks of clematis nor the delicate tendrils of
white bryony. Black bryony is a twining plant, and can travel spirally
up the hazel stems, just as a hop ascends its pole. But here in our lane
there is but little to climb up, and its livid pink stems, often twisted
with one or more brother-strands, lie along the hedge or sway in the air
like discontented snakes. Just now they hardly show any leaves, but
later in the spring they will have finely polished ones, and later still
bunches of red berries, which do not seem to be popular with birds, and
hang on their branches till winter comes. Another type of climber which
shows itself early is the goose-grass. {58b} This is a humble personage,
probably looked down on by the superior climbers above described, as able
neither to swarm spirally nor to ascend by the aid of tendrils or other
gripping apparatus. The goose-grass depends on the possession of
delicate little hooks covering stem and leaves. These can be perceived
by stroking the plant from the base upwards, but not in the other
direction. The hooks being directed downwards do not hinder the upward
push of the growing plant, but they prevent it from slipping downwards.
If one disentangles a goose-grass from its position it will fall weakly
over and lie along the ground. In its simple way it gains the object
aspired to by all climbers, namely the possession of a satisfactory
position in the world without going to the expense of building a stem
stiff enough to stand alone. To children goose-grass is valuable as the
ideal material for the making of sham birds' nests, since the hooked
prickles hold the stems in position and make the art of nest-building a
singularly easy one.
The great revolution that breaks out in the spring, when the store-houses
of the plant pour nutriment into the numberless awakening buds is a
miracle annually repeated in the endless procession of life. We know
something of the mechanism by which mobilisation is effected. We know
for instance that the starch-grains guarded by the dormant plant during
the idle days of winter are liquified, or rather, that the starch is
converted into sugar, and being soluble in water can flow from the
magazines of the plant to where growth, implying the creation of millions
of newly born cells, demands material. We are gradually learning to
understand something of that seething cauldron of life which we can dimly
watch in living things. The ferment diastase is one of the tools with
which plants perform their miracles of chemical activity. This diastase
and its brother-ferments have qualities resembling those of living
creatures. They may, like seeds, be dried and kept in a bottle until
they are awakened by giving them water. Perhaps this is talking in a
circle, and that ferments only resemble living things because organisms
contain so many of these mysterious bodies. I like to fancy that there
is something more than this, and that a ferment is an automaton which the
plant compels to labour for it--a Frankenstein monster having semi-living
qualities, being no more than a parody of life. But I am getting beyond
the questions that are in tune with a spring day.
V
JANE AUSTEN
The most obvious characteristic of English country life as described by
Jane Austen, is a quietness such as even the elder generation now living
have not experienced. A quietness which many would call dull and some
few peaceful. It is, indeed, hard to believe that life was once so
placid, so stay-at-home, so domestic, so devoid, not merely of
excitement, but of any change whatever.
The life of Emma Woodhouse (to take a single instance) has all the
characteristics of this deep repose. At Hartfield there was certainly no
changing "from the blue chamber to the green," a revolution which would
have made Mr. Woodhouse seriously unwell.
Emma never seems to leave home, she had not seen the sea, nor indeed had
she (before a memorable occasion) explored Box Hill, a few miles away,
although her father kept a carriage and a pair of horses. Nor is there
any evidence of her going to London, a distance of sixteen miles. She
did not engage in good works; there were no committees or meetings except
those held at the 'Crown' at which Mr. Knightly and Mrs. Elton's _cara
sposo_ were the leaders, and where no ladies were admitted.
In comparison with the hurried unsheltered life of the modern girl, Emma
seems a princess shut in a tower of brass or an enchanted garden. And
although in the course of the story she escapes this particular tower, it
is only to fall into the castle of Mr. Knightly, who (with his squire
William Larkins) plays the part of knight errant.
And Emma was not dull, but full of happy animation, and her quiet life
encouraged the growth of an educated, or at least a cultivated, condition
which re-appears in the other novels. This placid life is all the more
striking in contrast to the great contemporary struggle of the Napoleonic
wars, hardly a sound of which reaches Miss Austen's readers, although in
_Persuasion_ we do hear something of Captain Wentworth's prize money.
George Eliot knew the flavour of this quietude, and reproduces it in the
introduction to _Felix Holt_. But even in these pre-reform days the
quiet is beginning to be broken; the stage-coachman is beginning to dread
the railway train, and looks on Mr. Huskisson's death as a proof of God's
anger against Stephenson. Again, in _Middlemarch_ we see the country
stirring in its sleep, and poor Dorothea suffering in the process of
awakening. There is nothing of this in Miss Austen; it is true that the
Miss Bennets sometimes experienced the blankness of female existence, but
they could imagine nothing blanker than the departure of the militia from
Meryton.
Jane Austen's books have something of the quiet atmosphere of Cowper's
_Letters_. Mr. Austen Leigh in his _Memoir_ speaks of her love for the
writings of Cowper and of Crabbe (the latter indeed she proposed to
herself to marry). We know that Marianne Dashwood (that type of
sensibility) was very far from finding Cowper too quiet. For when Edward
Ferrars failed to read him aloud with spirit, Marianne remarks, "Nay,
mamma, if he is not to be animated by Cowper!"
Bagehot {63a} in his article on the _Letters of Cowper_ unconsciously
describes the life at Hartfield or Mansfield Park. Of Cowper he writes:
"Detail was his forte and quietness his element. Accordingly his
delicate humour plays over perhaps a million letters mostly descriptive
of events which no one else would have thought worth narrating, and yet
which, when narrated, show to us, and will show to persons to whom it
will be yet more strange, the familiar, placid, easy, ruminating,
provincial existence of our great grandfathers."
The domestic and intimate parts of life are the most lastingly happy, and
thus it is that an imaginary existence, which in some moods seems to be
unbearably humdrum, harmonises with the best parts of our own life. The
quiet winds that blow through Miss Austen's imagined land cannot turn
windmills or overset tall trees, but they can set going those tunelike
chains of simple experiences written on our memories by the quiet and
happy parts of life.
Imaginative writing is often compared to painting, and Miss Austen has
spoken {63b} of "the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I
work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour."
But this gives a false impression, suggesting a niggling character from
which her work is free. What strikes one is rather how much she conveys
by touches which seem trifling until we realise the triumph of the
result. The effect is not a miniature, as the author suspects, but
something essentially broad in spite of its detail, like a picture by Jan
Steen.
To discuss why Jane Austen's humour is admirable, or how she reaches such
perfection in the drawing of character, seems to me as hopeless as to ask
by what means Bach or Beethoven wrote such divinely beautiful tunes. Her
powers are rendered even more admirable by the fact {64a} that she did
not draw portraits, so that no one could say _A_ is Mr. Collins and _B_
is Mrs. Palmer.
I think it is true, but not easily explained, that the simplest people in
her books give us most pleasure. Why is Admiral Croft so delightful, and
why do we read again and again the speech about his wife, who suffered
from sharing the exercise prescribed for her husband's gout? "She, poor
soul, is tied by the leg with a blister on one of her heels as big as a
three-shilling piece." Why do we delight in Mr. Woodhouse's
perambulation among his guests, and his words to Jane Fairfax, "My dear,
did you change your stockings?" In this respect we have advanced beyond
the _Quarterly_ reviewer of 1815, {64b} who says: "The faults of these
works arise from the minute detail which the author's plan comprehends.
Characters of folly or simplicity, such as those of old Woodhouse and
Miss Bates, are ridiculous when first presented, but if too often brought
forward, or too long dwelt on, their prosing is apt to become as tiresome
in fiction as in real society." If ever a reviewer "damned himself to
everlasting fame," surely this writer did so; but, indeed, we need not
have quoted so much, since (in the words of Corporal Trim) "he is damned
already" for leaving out the 'Mr.' before the name Woodhouse.
But six years later (1821) another _Quarterly_ reviewer (said to be
Archbishop Whately) reversed the above unfortunate judgment by singling
out the drawing of Miss Austen's fools as shining examples of her skill.
Jane Austen must surely be the most re-read author of the last hundred
years. Lord Holland is said to have read her books when he had the gout,
and in that case he must have experienced what smaller people have
suffered during less picturesque complaints, viz., from not being able to
determine which of her books they have most nearly forgotten. In this
frame of mind one longs for a new Miss Austen more than for a new
symphony of Beethoven, or a play of Shakespeare, and much more than for
the lost books of Livy, which, indeed, I, for one, do not desire at all.
The power of endlessly re-reading the novels of Miss Austen is the only
advantage conferred by a bad memory. I do not imagine that Macaulay,
greatly as he admired her, could have endured to read her as often as I
have. Nor am I willing to allow that this is intellectual idleness, for
her works like those of Nature, always yield something new to the
faithful student.
And she, like Nature, has the power of creating in her devotees a minute
interest which I rarely experience in other writers. It does not seem to
Austenites a foolish thing to inquire what was Mr. Woodhouse's Christian
name, a problem only soluble by remembering that he thought it "very
pretty" of poor Isabella to call her eldest little boy Henry, and by
implication proving that the child, who should have been christened John
after his father, was named after his grandfather. And I am proud to
remember that when the problem of Mr. Woodhouse's name was propounded to
my mother, she solved it at once, and as though it were a question too
simple to be asked. Nor does it seem to us trivial that the word given
by Frank Churchill to Jane during the "word-game" at Hartfield was
'Pardon.' This was traditionally known in the author's family, indeed
Mr. Austen Leigh {66} says that she was always ready to reveal such
valuable facts as that Mrs. Norris' "considerable sum" given as a present
to William in _Mansfield Park_ was one pound; that Miss Steele never
caught the Doctor, and that Mary Bennet married an unfortunate clerk of
her uncle Philip's. These revelations lend an air of history to her
romance, they give the exciting quality of treasure-trove to the secrets
she shares with us. "And here," as children's books say, "a very pretty
game may be played by each child saying" what question he would put to
the ghost of Jane Austen. For myself I believe I should ask, "Would
Fanny Price really have married Crawford if he had not eloped with Miss
Bertram?" If in the words of Captain Price there had not been "the devil
to pay" in Wimpole Street. Then, too, I should have liked some eugenic
information about Elizabeth's (Mrs. Darcy's) children. Because if there
was reversion to the type of Lydia it would have been serious. One can
fancy Elizabeth retorting that if he said another word about the Lydia
type she would pray for an infant possessing all the qualities of Lady
Catherine de Burgh, a gift well within the powers of the gods who rule
heredity.
I doubt whether Jane Austen consciously painted the results of heredity;
rather, I suppose that her memory working instinctively, made, for
instance, the Bennet family consist of types recalling the father or
mother. She could hardly have known of the questionable theory that the
eldest child is commonly inferior to the second, and nevertheless she
makes Jane Bennet inferior in capacity to Elizabeth, although so greatly
superior to the younger children of Mrs. Bennet's type.
There are other cases of heredity among her characters; for instance, in
_Persuasion_, the snobbery and selfishness of Miss Elliott clearly
reproduces her father, while Anne, as we know from Lady Russell, was a
true child of her mother. I like to fancy that the querulousness and
weakness of Mary (Mrs. Charles) was a perverted gentleness coming from
her mother, while her vulgarity came from Sir Walter. Then again, Emma
had none of Mr. Woodhouse's qualities, and we must suppose her to be a
repetition of her mother. Unless, indeed, her general kindliness came
from her father, and possibly also the stupidity which wrecked her
matrimonial agency. We must, I think, believe that Mrs. Woodhouse had
been a managing woman, who probably insisted on Mr. Woodhouse marrying
her; thus her instinct for matrimonial scheming was confined (we may
fancy) to her own interests. It is too fanciful to suggest that Mrs.
Woodhouse had a tinge of hardness in her which came out in Emma's
celebrated rudeness to Miss Bates. At any rate, it is certain that it
was not a heritage from her father. I knew a lady who could never
forgive this slip of poor Emma. And the vividness of this feeling was
not a symptom of that want of literary sense which makes the gallery hiss
the villain on the stage, but must be taken as a proof of the vitality of
the character. Isabella Woodhouse is obviously of her father's type,
with hardly a mental feature to remind us of Emma.
In the Bertram family the inheritance is not very clear; the Miss
Bertrams seem to show the hard narrowness of Mrs. Norris, and none of the
sheep-like good nature and futility of Lady Bertram. I suspect that in
Mrs. Norris, hardness and business tendency were an inheritance from her
uncle, the Huntingdon solicitor, for we know that he made the harsh and
commercial statement that his niece was at least 3000 pounds short of any
equitable claim to the hand of Sir Thomas. We do not know anything of
the parents of Lady Bertram, but we may suspect that her Ladyship
inherited from her mother the soft and cushiony character of which she is
a great example. Mrs. Price, with her small income and large family, was
unfortunately of the same easy and futile temper. Edward Bertram is
obviously his father the Baronet over again, with all his kindness and
extreme respectability, while what will ultimately grow into Sir Thomas'
pomposity is like the delicate tissues of the sucking pig in Charles
Lamb's essay, not to be described by the gross terms applicable to the
adult, "Oh, call it not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to
it," etc. The elder brother, Tom, who began life as a cheerful,
irresponsible person, falls under the family curse in consequence of a
mysterious fever, so that he doubtless inherited the fatal tendency from
Sir Thomas, together with a certain insouciance and want of heart, which
one can imagine to be forms of Lady Bertram's emptiness and Mrs. Norris's
hardness.
This is a subject on which a Mendelian inquirer might endlessly
speculate, but the characters in fiction being even less susceptible to
experiment than our living friends and acquaintance, the interest of the
matter is soon exhausted.
It is to be regretted that Miss Austen did not allow the characters of
one novel to appear in the next. It is true that this would have upset
plots in an absurd way, but I should like to know what would have
happened if, when Henry Tilney had made up his mind that he was in love
with Catherine, Elizabeth Bennet had appeared? He would surely have
repented of his entanglement with Catherine. There is, however, this to
be said, that I strongly suspect Elizabeth of being his first cousin.
She is so like him that she might have failed to please him, or he may
have known her from a little girl and looked on her as a sister. Or the
marriages of cousins may have been as impossible among the Tilneys as in
the Royal Family of Crim Tartary, where Bulbo's beautiful Circassian
cousin simply had to be allowed to die of love for him.
There are many possibilities in the combination of characters now
separated by inexorable paper and ink. One can imagine a meeting at Bath
between General Tilney and Sir Walter Elliott; they would clearly
sympathise, and unless the General has injured his complexion by
incautious zeal on active service, which seems unlikely, Sir Walter would
have had "no objection to being seen with him anywhere"; he might even
have walked arm-in-arm with him as he did with Colonel Wallis, who "was a
fine military figure, though sandy haired." Again, Mr. Collins would
have been charmed with Mr. Dashwood in _Sense and Sensibility_, for
although the two characters are not quite similarly compounded of
snobbery and folly, yet there is a common substratum of meanness that
must have served as a bond.
It would be interesting to treat the whole of Miss Austen's characters as
the flora of a given land is dealt with, to divide them into genera and
species, and to provide an analytical key. Take, for instance, the young
men: these would correspond to a Natural Order, say the Ranunculaceae,
and may be divided, as the following table shows, into two groups,
Attractive and Unattractive, and these are subdivided again into four
groups which correspond to genera. No. 1, which we should call
Brandonia, possesses the three species _Brandonia brandoni_, _ferrarsi_,
and _bertrami_, and so on with the rest.
[Picture: Table of characters]
Brandon, Dashwood, Ferrars, R. Ferrars, Willoughby are in _Sense and
Sensibility_; E. Bertram, Crawford, Rushworth in _Mansfield Park_; Mr.
Collins, Darcy, Wickham in _Pride and Prejudice_; Tilney and Thorpe in
_Northanger Abbey_; Mr. Elton, F. Churchill and Knightley in _Emma_;
Wentworth and Mr. Elliot in _Persuasion_.
Then of course we should need descriptions to distinguish the species,
thus in genus (ii) Darcy would be known by pride, Knightley by calm
sense, Tilney by light-hearted cheerfulness, while Wentworth would be
easily recognised by his sub-dull character. Naturalists would dispute
whether Mr. Elton should be in the same genus as Wickham, or in the quite
distinct genus (iv); or again, whether F. Churchill should not be placed
with Darcy and Knightley. In the same way Captain Wentworth might
perhaps be placed in the dull group with Brandon, Edward Ferrars and
Edward Bertram.
I have not attempted to include in the system all the young men who occur
in the novels. I leave the completion to those who can devote a
life-time to the subject, and who are possessed of the necessary
discrimination and patience to marshall and arrange the whole flora of
Miss Austen's world.
In connexion with this subject I have found it interesting to read for
the first time quite recently Miss Austen's unfinished novels, _Lady
Susan_ and _The Watsons_. It is easy to classify some of the
characters--thus Mrs. Robert Watson is obviously Mrs. Elton, as, indeed,
Mr. Austen Leigh points out in his _Memoir_.
In the following scene the character addressed as Jane is Mrs. Robert
Watson, who has come to stay at the house of Mr. Watson, her
father-in-law. Elizabeth is the eldest of the Watson girls, and keeps
house for her father. "I hope you will find things tolerably
comfortable, Jane," said Elizabeth, as she opened the door of the spare
bed-chamber. {73}
"My good creature," replied Jane, "use no ceremony with me, I entreat
you. I am one of those who always take things as they find them. I hope
I can put up with a small apartment for two or three nights without
making a piece of work. I always wish to be treated quite _en famille_
when I come to see you. And now I do hope you have not been getting a
great dinner for us. Remember we never eat suppers." And then: "Mrs.
Robert, exactly as smart as she had been at her own party, came in with
apologies for her dress. 'I would not make you wait,' said she, 'so I
put on the first thing I met with. I am afraid I am a sad figure. My
dear Mr. W. (addressing her husband) you have not put any fresh powder in
your hair.'"
This is certainly Mrs. Elton's double, and the resemblance extends to
calling her husband Mr. W. It gives one a certain shock of surprise to
find an old friend masquerading as a new acquaintance, nor is she the
only example in the book. I think the following speech of Mr. Tom
Musgrave will recall a well-known character.
"Oh, me," said Tom, "whatever you decide on will be a favourite with me.
I have had some pleasant hours at 'speculation' in my time, but I have
not been in the way of it for a long while. 'Vingt-un' is the game at
Osborne Castle. {74a} I have played nothing but 'Vingt-un' of late. You
would be astonished to hear the noise we make there--the fine old lofty
drawing-room rings again. Lady Osborne sometimes declares she cannot
hear herself speak. Lord Osborne enjoys it famously, and he makes the
best dealer without exception that I ever beheld--such quickness and
spirit, he lets nobody dream over their cards. I wish you could see him
over-draw himself on both his own cards. It is worth anything in the
world!"
We may surely recognise the folly and underbred parade of Mr. John Thorpe
in Mr. Tom Musgrave's speech. Again, Tom Musgrave plagues Emma just as
Thorpe persecuted Catherine by an ill-timed invitation to a _tete-a-tete_
curricle drive.
The heroine, Emma Watson, has no resemblance to Emma Woodhouse. In
situation she may be compared to Fanny Price, for she has been brought up
by a refined aunt, and is suddenly plunged into the very different
manners and surroundings of her pushing jealous sisters; but in character
she seems to me to have none of the charm which has given Fanny Price
such various admirers as the Rev. Sydney Smith and Mr. F. W. H. Myers.
{74b} It is perhaps characteristic of her creator's truth, that her
heroine who is made known to us just as she arrives at her new home in
uncomfortable surroundings and among unknown sisters, should be reserved
and a little prim, and that we should be made to feel that this was not
her complete character. Possibly she would have developed into a Fanny
Price with a strong touch of Eleanor Dashwood, but this is a barren
speculation.
Another unfinished novel was begun in January, 1817, and twelve chapters
were written by the middle of March. Miss Austen died on July 18 of that
same year. This unnamed novel, to judge by extracts published in the
_Memoir_ (p. 181), promised to contain at least one admirable character
in the person of Lady Denham, who seems an ill-natured and grasping Mrs.
Jennings (if that is not a contradiction in terms), with a strong flavour
of Lady Catherine de Burgh.
Miss Austen's works are not only to be studied from the point of view of
genetics, nor merely by a naturalist whose desire is to classify without
inquiry as to the origin of his species; they also supply material for
the geographer. I do not know who first identified the Highbury of
_Emma_ with Cobham, as being seven miles from Boxhill and 18 from London
("sixteen miles, nay 18, it must be full 18 to Manchester Street"). The
identification is confirmed by a slip on the part of the authoress, who,
in a single passage, printed Cobham in place of Highbury. By this method
of mensuration my friend the Master of Downing has shown Kellynch Hall in
_Persuasion_ to be near Buckland St. Mary, and Mansfield Park to coincide
roughly with Easton, near Huntingdon.
The geography of Lyme Regis is of interest.
The party from Upper Cross drove in a leisurely way to Lyme, and the
afternoon was well advanced as they descended the steep hill into the
village. The hill is doubtless much as it was, and nearly at the bottom
are the two hotels mentioned; it is, honestly speaking, impossible to say
at which of the two the Musgroves put up. I am inclined to believe it
was that on the west side, but my reasons, if indeed they exist, are not
worth giving.
The house in which Miss Austen is known to have stayed is probably
Captain Harville's. It is near the Cobb, and presents that air of not
having much room inside, which we gather from the description in
_Mansfield Park_.
But these points are of trifling interest in comparison with the really
important question--where did Louisa's accident occur? There are three
separate flights of steps on the Cobb, and the local photographer, in the
interests of trade, had to fix on one of them as the scene of the jump.
I cannot believe that he is right. These steps are too high and too
threatening for a girl of that period to choose with such a purpose, even
for Louisa, whose determination of character we know to have been one of
her charms. Then, again, this particular flight is not (so far as I
could make out) in the New Cobb, which is where the accident is described
as occurring. It is true that at first sight it hardly looks dangerous
enough to bring about the sight which delighted the fishermen of Lyme,
namely, a "dead young lady," or rather two, for the sensitive Mary
contributed to the situation by fainting. I am, however, confirmed in my
belief by what happened to myself, when I went to view the classic spot.
I quite suddenly and inexplicably fell down. The same thing happened to
a friend on the same spot, and we concluded that in the surprisingly
slippery character of the surface lies the explanation of the accident.
It had never seemed comprehensible that an active and capable man should
miss so easy a catch as that provided by Louisa. But if Captain
Wentworth slipped and fell as she jumped, she would come down with him.
I am told that when Tennyson visited Lyme he repelled the proposals of
his friends, who wished him to see something of the beauties of the
place, and insisted on going straight to the flight of steps. This is an
attractive trait in Tennyson's character, but it may not have been
pleasing to his hosts.
VI.
THE EDUCATION OF A MAN OF SCIENCE
An Address to the Association of University
Women Teachers, January 13, 1911
In the following pages I propose to give my own experience of education,
that is to say, not of educating others, but of being educated. It seems
to me that the education of one's youth becomes clear to one in middle
life and old age; and that what one sees in this retrospect may be worth
some rough record and some sort of criticism. One may, of course, be
mistaken about what was bad and what was good in one's training. But the
experience of the pupil is, at the least, one aspect of the question.
And I think that the memories of how we were taught is something much
more definite and vivid, something that can be more easily made
interesting to one's readers, than the generalised experience gained as a
teacher.
Any record of education which extends fifty years back has a certain
value, and my experience may serve as a stepping-stone to that of my
father, of which we fortunately have an account in his own words, and
these take us back to a period more than one hundred years ago.
Those of us who are inclined to despair over education as an inherent
misfortune of youth, may be encouraged by this putting down of
milestones, and may almost believe that we have moved in the right
direction. Whereas, to those optimists who are cheerfully and
unhesitatingly educating their allotted prey of children, it may be as
salutary, as a cautionary story, to realise that the same optimism ruled
one hundred years ago, when the Eton latin grammar was a symbol to
innumerable complacent schoolmasters of what was best in the best of all
possible worlds. But the chief part of what I have to say is
autobiographical, and I have only an occasional remark to make on the
progress and improvement that have occurred in education.
My ignorance of educational methods may probably lead me to repeat what
is well known; because what seems to me bad in my training has doubtless
been recognised as such by modern teachers, nor can I hope to have
anything very new to say about what seems to me to have been good.
As children, we, my brothers and sisters, were treated by our parents in
a way the very reverse of the pitiless 18th and early 19th century
manner--the spirit of those surprising stories such as the _Purple Jar_,
where the child is deceived by her abominable parent. In fact, a chief
characteristic of our parents' treatment of us was their respect for our
liberty and our personality. We were made to feel that we were
"creatures whose opinions and thoughts were valuable to them."
The happy relations with our elders which we enjoyed in the holidays to
some extent counteracted the evil effects of going to school. The worst
of a boarding-school is that it is a republic of children, where the
citizens are saturated in the traditions and conventions peculiar to
themselves, and are, for more than half their lives, deprived of the
saner ideals of grown-up people. Before we went to school we were taught
by governesses. I cannot help wishing that we had had foreign teachers
who would have taught us to speak their language--a thing that can be
done so easily in childhood. I have never got over the want of fluent
French and German, and I resent the fact that I should be condemned to
feel like a child or a boor in the presence of foreigners. We are taught
Latin and Greek because, as we are assured, they introduce us to the
finest literature in the world. To most boys they do nothing of the
kind, and are an intolerable burden. French and German taught by the
oral methods really do introduce us to whole nations of minds that are
otherwise cut off from us; and not merely minds mirrored in books, but
more especially those of human beings as given in speech.
This is all very familiar, I only mention it because it is a special case
of a wider question, namely: How much can be safely poured into a
receptive child which he will be thankful for as he gets older? I mean,
rather: What is the proportion that ought to be maintained between
learning to reason, _e.g._, Euclid; exercising the attentive faculties,
_e.g._, in plodding through a Latin book with a dictionary; and the more
or less mechanical acquirement, as in learning by heart? Why was I not
taught addition by memorising tables as in the case of multiplication?
It could have been built into the structure of my mind equally well, and
would have saved much misery. It is, of course, essential that what is
learned should be true. I have heard a credibly attested story of a
dame-school at the beginning of last century, where class and teacher
were heard chanting together: Twice 1 is 2, twice 2 is 3, twice 3 is 4,
etc.
I certainly believe in learning by heart, and I am grateful for having
learned many dates at school; most of them are forgotten, but enough to
be of some use are retained. The worst of it is that I am as likely to
know the date of the Flood as that of the Fire of London, and of the
battle of Arbela as that of Worcester.
I am also grateful for having been made to learn Shakespeare by heart,
although we had to do it before breakfast. I do not imagine that I now
remember any of it, but it gave me some idea of the beauty of literature,
which I hardly gained at all from the classics. It also started me
reading Shakespeare out of school. I believe this is the easiest way of
supplying some modicum of literature to a boy who cannot get it out of
Latin and Greek. And a kind of Cowper-Temple Shakespeare, without note
or comment, is more effective than regular so-called literary lessons,
and the worrying of boys about the metre or the difference between a hawk
and a handsaw. A boy does not want to understand everything, and he
likes to get his poetry in a book which looks as if it were meant for
reading, not for cramming or for holiday tasks.
Personally, I also resent that I was not taught at school to read music
by the sol-fa system, which is another of the things that can be poured
into most children not only easily but with pleasure to themselves. I
have been assured by a learned musician, that in the 17th century reading
music was as much a sign of culture as reading a book. There was
recently an excellent letter in the _Times_ {82} on public school music,
pleading that boys should be allowed to drop, let us say greek iambics,
and devote the time to serious musical study. The writer describes how
at a certain school a good professional orchestra gives a concert once in
each term, for which the boys are prepared by having the themes of the
movements, _e.g._ of a Beethoven symphony, played over to them on the
piano and expounded. He describes how an athletic boy, a member of the
football team, declared, when the concert was over, that there was
nothing to live for during the rest of the half, apparently not even
football. No wonder that the writer of this letter should respectfully
deride a former Head Master of Eton for his approval of choral singing,
on account of its "moral and political value."
I have always felt that the best teaching I received was in two practical
matters, viz., how to play the flute, and how to use a microscope. It
may be said that these were subjects in which I took a natural and
spontaneous interest, and were therefore easily taught. This is no doubt
partly true, but I do not think it depended on any special attraction for
music or microscopy, but on something wider--on the novelty of being
taught to do something physical, something with one's hands and ears and
eyes. I am sure boys ought to have more practical teaching--not
necessarily in science, but such things as mild carpentering, the tying
of knots, and such exercise in rough weighing and measuring as would form
a basis for a little elementary physics. The same is true of girls, and
in one way they need handiwork more than boys. I found, in my Cambridge
class of practical plant-physiology, that the girls had not such 'deft
fingers' as their brothers; I believe the difference is largely due to
the boys having played with string and knives, etc., for many idle hours.
Both boys and girls must be taught to use, not only their hands, but
their eyes. It seems to me piteous that when I was at school there was
absolutely nothing done to keep alive the natural sharp-eyedness of
children. I remember vividly the intense pleasure which my father gave
me (a very small boy) by showing surprise at my knowledge of common trees
and shrubs in a winter coppice. I am sure that school did much to kill
the power of observation in me.
It may be that observation is an essentially transitory quality, a
fleeting ancestral reminiscence, a trail of glory, like other savage
traits in children. But more than now survives might be preserved to us
by training at school. It ought not to be possible for a boy to come up
to a University so blind and helpless as to describe a wall-flower (which
has six obvious stamens arranged in a striking pattern) as having "about
five stamens." Yet this I experienced in an examination of medical
students. Describing an object placed before him is excellent training
in observation for a boy. And the capacity of describing an object by
memory should also be cultivated. Remember what Dr. Noel says in
Stevenson's story of the Saratoga Trunk, and how we may fail in a
question of life and death because we cannot describe the mysterious
stranger who dogs our footsteps.
To return for a moment to the description of an object. It not only
practises the power of observation, but is also excellent exercise in
writing English, far better as it seems to me than the usual essay on the
usual subjects. In describing a given object the pupil has not to seek
for material--it is there before him. He need not recall his feelings
during a country walk, or the way he spent his time in the Christmas
holidays, or vainly search for facts on the character of Oliver Cromwell.
He can concentrate on arrangement, on directness and clearness. My
experience of the essays set to candidates in the Natural Science Tripos
was most depressing. A man who could write a good plain answer to an
ordinary examination question becomes ornate and tiresome when he is told
to write an essay. Such candidates have clearly never heard the
admirable statement by Canon Ainger of the style expected in writers in
the Dictionary of Natural Biography, "No flowers by request." Nor can
they have known that other bit of advice, "You have no idea what strength
it gives to your style to leave out every other word." I have heard
suggested another method of checking the natural diffuseness of the
youthful essayist, namely, to make him confine himself to a definite
number of words, I have even heard an essay on a post card recommended.
For myself, I believe the best exercise in English I ever had was the
correction of my father's proof-sheets. What I found so educational was
the necessity of having to explain clearly and exactly why I objected to
a given sentence, since I naturally could not baldly express my
disapproval. It was not only good training, but as has been well said by
my sister (who also helped in this way), "It was inexpressibly
exhilarating to work for him"--and she continues--referring to the
generous way in which he took our suggestions, "I think I felt the
singular modesty and graciousness of his nature through thus working for
him in a way I should never otherwise have done."
How far every boy ought to be made to do mathematics (beyond simple
arithmetic) I cannot say. I know that I am extremely grateful for the
small amount of mathematics forced into me. I am even thankful for a
very mechanical side of the subject, namely, the use of mathematical
tables in general, and for being compelled to work out innumerable sums
by logarithms, which we had to do in a "neat tabular form" to quote our
precise master's words.
Certainly my opportunities were strikingly better than my father's, who
records that at Shrewsbury School nothing {85} was taught but classics,
ancient history and ancient geography. Euclid, which he liked and felt
to be educational, was taught by a private tutor who had the attractive
characteristic of wearing top boots.
I now pass from general education to the teaching of science. When I
went to Cambridge in 1866, the teaching, as far as the biological
sciences went, was in a somewhat dead condition. Indeed, I hardly think
it had advanced much from the state of things which existed in 1828, when
my father entered Christ's College. Cambridge was a turning point in his
scientific life, chiefly through Professor Henslow's discovery that the
youth, whom his father Dr. R. W. Darwin thought likely to be a mere
sporting man and a disgrace to his family, was really a remarkable
person, possessed by a burning zeal for science. Henslow made a friend
of my father (he was known as the "man who walks with Henslow"), and
recommended him as naturalist to the "Beagle," where he was made into a
man of science.
In my time there were two ways of acquiring knowledge: attending the
lectures of University professors, and going to a _coach_. Lectures, as
my father has said, have "no advantages and many disadvantages . . .
compared with reading." And the same view (or heresy as he confesses it
to be) has been well given by the late Henry Sidgwick in his
_Miscellaneous Essays_ (1904). He holds that a purely expository
lecture, without experiments or specimens, is something very like a
barbarism, an echo of the days before printing was invented. He points
out too how there is every temptation to the teacher not to publish his
lectures. Thus the students who live elsewhere, and therefore cannot
attend his course, "are deprived of useful instruction," and the students
who do attend them have to receive it in an inconvenient form, in order
that the Professor may be enabled to fulfil with _eclat_ the traditional
conception of his function (_op. cit._, p. 347). One set of lectures,
which as a medical student I was compelled to attend, were so dull that I
literally could not listen to them, but I got into a quiet corner and
read Swift's _Journal to Stella_, and for that opportunity I am certainly
grateful.
A course I thoroughly liked was that given by the late Sir George
Humphry, the Professor of Anatomy. He used to sit balancing himself on a
stool, with his great hungry eyes fixed on us, talking in plain direct
terms of anatomy enlivened by physiology. The one point that remains
with me is the way in which he would stop and wonder over the facts he
brought before us: "This is a wonderful thing, one of the most wonderful
things in the world, I know nothing about it--no one knows--you had
better try and find out, some of you"; simple words enough, but they
struck a chord of romance in some of his hearers. I remember another
teacher of anatomy in London who stirred our wonder in quite another way,
for he made us marvel how any man could repeat by heart Gray's book on
Anatomy for an hour, and wonder too, why we should be compelled to
listen.
The private tutors or coaches to whom most Cambridge students of natural
history went were, as far as my experience went, hopelessly bad. My
coach tried to ensure that I knew certain inferior books well enough to
be examined in them, but he never showed me a specimen, and never
attempted to ensure that I should have any sort of first-hand knowledge.
We were also taught by the Curator of the Botanic Garden, a completely
uneducated man, and in all ways as different from the present learned and
cultivated Curator as it is possible to imagine. He, like my other
coach, simply insisted that we should know by heart a very bad text-book,
on which he cross-examined us as we walked round the Botanic Garden. As
far as my recollection goes he never stopped to show us a flower or a
leaf, and we had nobody to help us to a sight of the minute structure of
plants as seen with a microscope, about which, however, we could talk
eloquently from the book.
I sometimes wonder that fire did not descend from heaven and destroy a
University which so sinned against the first elements of knowing, in
neglecting the distinction between what we learn by our own personal
experience and what we acquire from books.
Of course there are some sciences which have their origin in practical
matters, _e.g._, chemistry, which originated partly in alchemy and partly
in what is now the work of the druggist; such a science was fortunate, in
that no one objected to its claim for practical teaching. Nevertheless,
the student of chemistry in my day easily fell into a lamentable dulness
of different coloured precipitates. I should have liked to do something
quantitative, however rough, to get away from the everlasting test-tube,
and to make, for instance, some of the historic experiments with gases.
Human anatomy again was always taught practically, _i.e._, by work in the
dissecting-room. But owing to the manner in which medical students were
examined, the subject failed to have the value it might have had; minute
questions were asked which no amount of dissecting would enable us to
answer. The book had to be learned by heart, and I shudder as I remember
the futile labour entailed. And the examination was so arranged, that
whilst we were "cramming" anatomy we had also to suffer over another
subject, materia medica, which was almost entirely useless, and wearisome
beyond belief. Much of it was about as rational a subject to a physician
as to a surgeon would be a minute knowledge of how his knives were made
and how steel is manufactured. I remember how, after getting through
this double ordeal of cram on drugs and on the structure of the body, I
heard a surgeon say in lecture: "This is one of the very few occasions on
which you must know your anatomy." I recall the anger and contempt I
then felt for the educational authorities, as I remembered the drudgery I
had gone through.
The want of organised practical work in zoology was perhaps a blessing in
disguise. For it led me to struggle with the subject by myself. I used
to get snails and slugs and dissect their dead bodies, comparing my
results with books hunted up in the University Library, and this was a
real bit of education. I remember too that a thoughtful brother sent me
a dead porpoise, which (to the best of my belief) I dissected, to the
horror of the bedmaker, in my College rooms.
Then the late Mr. Clark, superintendent of the Museum of Zoology, and one
of the kindest of men, occasionally gave us beasts to cut up. I shall
never forget my pride of heart when a preparation which I made of a
hedgehog's inside was placed in the Museum.
Just as I was leaving Cambridge in 1869 or '70 there arrived that great
man, Sir Michael Foster, who organised the revolution in which the
futilities of the early 19th century were blown to fragments, and in
their place a sound system of practical instruction was created. Foster
was discovered by Huxley, and it was through him, and thanks to the
patriotism of Trinity College in creating for him the post of Praelector,
that Foster got this great opportunity. The effect of what he did for
English education has been incalculably great. His pupils have gone
forth into all lands, and have spread the art of learning and teaching
wherever they have come to rest.
In thinking over the reformation wrought by Michael Foster I am
somehow--quite inconsistently--reminded of the great scene in _Guy
Mannering_. I see in imagination the cold dark cave at Warroch Head,
where Dirk Hatteraick lurks; he plays the part of False Science in the
Mystery Play, and the cave is the Cave of Inanity. Then comes the great
flare of light, as Meg Merrilees throws the torch on to the heap of flax,
and her cry, "The hour is come and the man!" while Harry Bertram with his
supporters rush in and bind False Science fast. Harry Bertram is, of
course, Michael Foster, and I should say that Dandie Dinmont is Coutts
Trotter. Meg Merrilees is naturally Huxley, who was the magician of the
affair (she is always said to have looked like a man). Here all analogy
breaks down. Meg was killed by False Science, Huxley was not; indeed it
was the other way. Harry Bertram lived happily ever afterwards. Michael
Foster was not so fortunate, and I am ashamed to think that before he
died he was misunderstood and half forgotten in his own University.
I must apologise for this outburst of incoherence; I am afraid it was not
this sort of thing that Tyndall had in mind when he pleaded for the
scientific imagination--that is something much more serious.
Not only does the student of to-day get good practical teaching, but he
has the great advantage of being under professors who are generally
engaged in original work. And if a man can afford the time to stay up
after his degree, he is encouraged and helped to undertake research. If
practical teaching is the foundation, the protoplasm as it were, of
scientific education, I am sure that original work is its soul or spirit.
Whether, like my father in South America, we have the genius to solve big
problems in geology and "can hardly sleep at night for thinking of them,"
or whether, as with us smaller people, the task is some elusive little
point which we triumphantly track to its cause, there is an extraordinary
delight in such work. Professor Seward arranged an admirable imitation
of original research in his advanced class on the anatomy of plants at
Cambridge. He gave out specimens which the students had never seen;
these had to be investigated, and they had to give _viva voce_ accounts
of their discoveries to the rest of the class. I believe this to be a
method worth imitating, and I may say as an encouragement to women
teachers that it was a Newnham student who was especially distinguished
in this mutual instruction class.
When I left Cambridge and became a medical student in London, I had the
luck to work in the laboratory of Dr. Klein, who was then head of the
Brown Institute at Nine Elms. He was fresh from Vienna, with all the
continental traditions in favour of original research. Even in the
ordinary laboratory work I remember how he tried to throw the romance of
practicality over my task. He rushed in one day with a large bread-knife
stained with blood in the most sinister manner, saying that a murder had
occurred in South Lambeth, and it was for me to determine whether or no
the red fluid on the blade was blood!
Later on he set me to work investigating inflammation, and I can still
remember his praise of the harmless little paper I wrote. To my secret
satisfaction he blamed me for the severity of my remarks on a German
Professor who had written on the subject. He told me to strike out my
criticism, though he allowed it to be just. I sighed as an author, but
obeyed as a pupil,--to misquote the words of Gibbon.
Education is often spoken of, and is praised or blamed, as a method of
imparting information to the young. It is obvious that it is far more
than this. It includes the stimulation of tastes, tendencies, or
instincts which are inherent but dormant in the pupil. In my case the
opportunity, so wisely and kindly given by Dr. Klein, of seeing science
in the making--of seeing research from the inside--his giving me the
delight of knowing that I had added a minute fragment to the great raging
flood of publications which marks the progress of knowledge--all this was
a potent factor in my education in the wider sense. That is, it did not
merely teach me certain facts, but woke in me the desire to work at
science for its own sake. My father finally gave me the necessary
opportunity by taking me as his assistant.
No one should ever be able to finish the history of his own education,
because it is co-extensive with his life. In my father's autobiography
written shortly before his death, he attempts to sum up the effect of
this self-education on himself, both as concerns his experimental
research and also in regard to the literary part of his work. An
instance of his modest estimate of his own mental progress, is so
characteristic that I shall venture to quote it. "I think that I have
become a little more skilful in guessing right explanations and in
devising experimental tests; but this may probably be the result of mere
practice, and of a larger store of knowledge. I have as much difficulty
as ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely; and this difficulty
has caused me a very great loss of time; but it has had the compensating
advantage of forcing me to think long and intently about every sentence,
and thus I have been led to see errors in reasoning and in my own
observations or those of others." I repeat that self-education is an
endless task. To some men this is a comforting, to others a depressing,
fact. Samuel Johnson was, I think, saddened by the making of fresh plans
of conduct for each new year. A very different man, though also a
Samuel,--Butler, the author of _Erewhon_, was cheered by the thought that
it was always possible to improve. When I knew him he was working as a
painter in an untidy room in Clifford's Inn, without much furniture
except a piano. He was poor, and therefore, to save models, painted
himself over and over again, the result being a cupboard full of grim
heads, which he called the chamber of horrors. He always believed he
should succeed at last, and the point I am slowly reaching is that he
comforted himself with the belief that John Bellini entirely altered his
style when he was between 60 and 70 years of age. One of the French
aphorism writers, Vauvenargues, has said (as translated by Lord Morley),
"To do great things a man must live as though he had never to die." {94}
I too would recommend the wholesome theory that it is never too late to
learn; it helps to keep one from falling too soon into incurable
fogeydom.
In the lives of big men it is sometimes possible to see how work done for
its own sake may turn out to have had its real value as a piece of
training for something of far greater worth. Thus my father began in
1846 working at a curious Cirripede, _i.e._, a barnacle, which he had
found on his voyage; this led him to examine others, and in the end he
worked seven or eight years at this group of animals.
To his children the habit of working at barnacles seemed a commonplace
human function, like eating or breathing, and it is reported that one of
us being taken into the study of a neighbour, and seeing no dissecting
table or microscope, asked with justifiable suspicion, "Then where does
he do his barnacles?" When I was writing my father's _Life_, I asked Mr.
Huxley his opinion whether this seven or eight years' work had been, in
his judgment, worth the great labour involved. His answer was that no
man is a good judge of the speculative strain which may be put on the raw
materials of science, unless he knows at first hand how this raw material
is acquired, and this knowledge my father gained by his barnacles. The
_Origin of Species_ is the evidence that he did not miscalculate the
strain his facts would bear, for his theory is as strong as ever.
There is one influence, of the greatest importance in regard to
education, with which I have not attempted to deal. I mean the personal
influence of the teacher. This is a part of the pupil's environment
which not even a millionaire can undertake to supply to his pet
University. It is rather a thing to pray for, and to treasure when the
gods send it to us.
There is a magic in the personal effect of a great teacher, which makes
it comparatively unimportant what sort of science he teaches. In him the
How entirely dwarfs the What.
To take an instance. My father's master, Professor Henslow, was of this
type. But some of his advice was extremely bad. Thus he told my father
to read Lyell's _Principles_, but on no account to believe the
theoretical parts of the book. In spite of the warning, my father was at
once converted to the doctrines set forth in the _Principles_, and Lyell
was from that time forward the chief influence of his scientific life.
But his gratitude to Henslow remained fresh and strong to the day of his
death.
The same thing is true of Lyell and his instructors. When he left Oxford
and went down to Scotland geologising, he must have been full of
Buckland's teaching, and ought to have believed that the surface of the
county of Forfar was just as the Flood left it, some few thousand years
ago. But he at once proceeded to discover in Noachian Forfarshire the
most striking evidence of geological change actually in progress. So
that, under the influence of a great catastrophist, Lyell became the
greatest of the uniformitarians, and more than any one man was the
destroyer of the older point of view.
The personal effect of teacher on pupil cannot be bought at a price, nor
can it be paid for in any coin but gratitude. It is the possibility of
earning this payment that makes the best part of a teacher's life.
VII.
THE PIPE AND TABOR