1892.
The revival of part of the former controversy which he had had with Mr.
Gladstone upon the story of creation, made a warlike beginning of an
otherwise very peaceful year. Since the middle of December a great
correspondence had been going on in the "Times", consequent upon the
famous manifesto of the thirty-eight Anglican clergy touching the
question of inspiration and the infallibility of the Bible. Criticism,
whether "higher" or otherwise, defended on the one side, was
unsparingly denounced on the other. After about a month of this
correspondence, Huxley's name was mentioned as one of these critics;
whereupon he was attacked by one of the disputants for "misleading the
public" by his assertion in the original controversy that while
reptiles appear in the geological record before birds, Genesis affirms
the contrary; the critic declaring that the word for "creeping things"
(rehmes) created on the sixth day, does not refer to reptiles, which
are covered by the "moving creatures" (shehretz) used of the first
appearance of animal life.
It is interesting to see how, in his reply, Huxley took care to keep
the main points at issue separate from the subordinate and unimportant
ones. His answer is broken up into four letters. The first ("Times"
January 26) rehearses the original issue between himself and Mr.
Gladstone; wherein both sides agreed that the creation of the sixth day
included reptiles, so that, formally at least, his position was secure,
though there was also a broader ground of difference to be considered.
Before proceeding further, he asks his critic whether he admits the
existence of the contradiction involved, and if not, to state his
reasons therefor. These reasons were again given on February 1 as the
new interpretation of the two Hebrew words already referred to, an
interpretation, by the way, which makes the same word stand both for
"the vast and various population of the waters" and "for such land
animals as mice, weasels, and lizards, great and small."
On February 3 appeared the second letter, in which, setting aside the
particular form which his argument against Mr. Gladstone had taken, he
described the broad differences between the teachings of Genesis and
the teachings of evolution. He left the minor details as to the
interpretation of the words in dispute, which did not really affect the
main argument, to be dealt with in the next letter of February 4. It
was a question with which he had long been familiar, as twenty years
before he had, at Dr. Kalisch's request, gone over the proofs of his
"Commentary on Leviticus".
The letter of February 3 is as follows:--]
While desirous to waste neither your space nor my own time upon mere
misrepresentations of what I have said elsewhere about the relations
between modern science and the so-called "Mosaic" cosmogony, it seems
needful that I should ask for the opportunity of stating the case once
more, as briefly and fairly as I can.
I conceive the first chapter of Genesis to teach--(1) that the species
of plants and animals owe their origin to supernatural acts of
creation; (2) that these acts took place at such times and in such a
manner that all the plants were created first, all the aquatic and
aerial animals (notably birds) next, and all terrestrial animals last.
I am not aware that any Hebrew scholar denies that these propositions
agree with the natural sense of the text. Sixty years ago I was taught,
as most people were then taught, that they are guaranteed by Divine
authority.
On the other hand, in my judgment, natural science teaches no less
distinctly--(1) that the species of animals and plants have originated
by a process of natural evolution; (2) that this process has taken
place in such a manner that the species of animals and plants,
respectively, have come into existence one after another throughout the
whole period since they began to exist on the earth; that the species
of plants and animals known to us are as a whole, neither older nor
younger the one than the other.
The same holds good of aquatic and aerial species, as a whole, compared
with terrestrial species; but birds appear in the geological record
later than terrestrial reptiles, and there is every reason to believe
that they were evolved from the latter.
Until it is shown that the first two propositions are not contained in
the first chapter of Genesis, and that the second pair are not
justified by the present condition of our knowledge, I must continue to
maintain that natural science and the "Mosaic" account of the origin of
animals and plants are in irreconcilable antagonism.
As I greatly desire that this broad issue should not be obscured by the
discussion of minor points, I propose to defer what I may have to say
about the great "shehretz" and "rehmes" question till to-morrow.
[On February 11 he wrote once more, again taking certain broader
aspects of the problem presented by the first chapter of Genesis. He
expressed his belief, as he had expressed it in 1869, that theism is
not logically antagonistic to evolution. If, he continues, the account
in Genesis, as Philo of Alexandria held, is only a poem or allegory,
where is the proof that any one non-natural interpretation is the right
one? and he concludes by pointing out the difficulties in the way of
those who, like the famous thirty-eight, assert the infallibility of
the Bible as guaranteed by the infallibility of the Church.
Apart from letters and occasional controversy, he published this year
only one magazine article and a single volume of collected essays,
though he was busy preparing the Romanes Lecture for 1893, the more so
because there was some chance that Mr. Gladstone would be unable to
deliver the first of the lectures in 1892, and Huxley had promised to
be ready to take his place if necessary.
The volume (called "Controverted Questions") which appeared in 1892,
was a collection of the essays of the last few years, mainly
controversial, or as he playfully called them, "endeavours to defend a
cherished cause," dealing with agnosticism and the demonological and
miraculous element in Christianity. That they were controversial in
tone no one lamented more than himself; and as in the letter to M. de
Varigny, of November 25, 1891, so here in the prologue he apologises
for the fact.]
This prologue,--of which he writes to a friend], "It cost me more time
and pains than any equal number of pages I have ever written,"--[was
designed to indicate the main question, various aspects of which are
dealt with by these seemingly disconnected essays.]
The historical evolution of humanity [he writes], which is generally,
and I venture to think not unreasonably, regarded as progress, has
been, and is being, accompanied by a co-ordinate elimination of the
supernatural from its originally large occupation of men's thought. The
question--How far is this process to go? is, in my apprehension, the
controverted question of our time.
This movement, marked by the claim for the freedom of private judgment,
which first came to its fulness in the Renascence, is here sketched
out, rising or sinking by turns under the pressure of social and
political vicissitudes, from Wiclif's earliest proposal to reduce the
Supernaturalism of Christianity within the limits sanctioned by the
Scriptures, down to the manifesto in the previous year of the
thirty-eight Anglican divines in defence of biblical infallibility,
which practically ends in an appeal to the very principle they reject.
But he does not content himself with pointing out the destructive
effects of criticism upon the evidence in favour of a
"supernature"--"The present incarnation of the spirit of the
Renascence," he writes, "differs from its predecessor in the eighteenth
century, in that it builds up, as well as pulls down. That of which it
has laid the foundation, of which it is already raising the
superstructure, is the doctrine of evolution," a doctrine that "is no
speculation, but a generalisation of certain facts, which may be
observed by any one who will take the necessary trouble." And in a
short dozen pages he sketches out that "common body of established
truths" to which it is his confident belief that "all future
philosophical and theological speculations will have to accommodate
themselves."
There is no need to recapitulate these; they may be read in "Science
and Christian Tradition", the fifth volume of the "Collected Essays";
but it is worth noticing that in conclusion, after rejecting "a great
many supernaturalistic theories and legends which have no better
foundations than those of heathenism," he declares himself as far from
wishing to "throw the Bible aside as so much waste paper" as he was at
the establishment of the School Board in 1870. As English literature,
as world-old history, as moral teaching, as the Magna Charta of the
poor and of the oppressed, the most democratic book in the world, he
could not spare it.] "I do not say," [he adds], "that even the highest
biblical ideal is exclusive of others or needs no supplement. But I do
believe that the human race is not yet, possibly may never be, in a
position to dispense with it."
[It was this volume that led to the writing of the magazine article
referred to above. The republication in it of the "Agnosticism,"
originally written in reply to an article of Mr. Frederic Harrison's,
induced the latter to disclaim in the "Fortnightly Review" the intimate
connection assumed to exist between his views and the system of
Positivism detailed by Comte, and at the same time to offer the olive
branch to his former opponent. But while gratefully accepting the
goodwill implied in the offer, Huxley still declared himself unable to]
"give his assent to a single doctrine which is the peculiar property of
Positivism, old or new," [nor to agree with Mr. Harrison when he
wanted:--]
to persuade us that agnosticism is only the Court of the Gentiles of
the Positivist temple; and that those who profess ignorance about the
proper solution of certain speculative problems ought to call
themselves Positivists of the Gate, if it happens that they also take a
lively interest in social and political questions.
[This essay, "An Apologetic Irenicon," contains more than one passage
of personal interest, which are the more worth quoting here, as the
essay has not been republished. It was to have been included in a tenth
volume of collected Essays, along with a number of others which he
projected, but never wrote.
Thus, begging the Positivists not to regard him as a rival or
competitor in the business of instructing the human race, he says:--]
I aspire to no such elevated and difficult situation. I declare myself
not only undesirous of it, but deeply conscious of a constitutional
unfitness for it. Age and hygienic necessities bind me to a somewhat
anchoritic life in pure air, with abundant leisure to meditate upon the
wisdom of Candide's sage aphorism, "Cultivons notre jardin"--especially
if the term garden may be taken broadly and applied to the stony and
weed-grown ground within my skull, as well as to a few perches of more
promising chalk down outside it. In addition to these effectual bars to
any of the ambitious pretensions ascribed to me, there is another: of
all possible positions that of master of a school, or leader of a sect,
or chief of a party, appears to me to be the most undesirable; in fact,
the average British matron cannot look upon followers with a more evil
eye than I do. Such acquaintance with the history of thought as I
possess, has taught me to regard schools, parties, and sects, as
arrangements, the usual effect of which is to perpetuate all that is
worst and feeblest in the master's, leader's, or founder's work; or
else, as in some cases, to upset it altogether; as a sort of hydrants
for extinguishing the fire of genius, and for stifling the flame of
high aspirations, the kindling of which has been the chief, perhaps the
only, merit of the protagonist of the movement. I have always been, am,
and propose to remain a mere scholar. All that I have ever proposed to
myself is to say, this and this have I learned; thus and thus have I
learned it: go thou and learn better; but do not thrust on my shoulders
the responsibility for your own laziness if you elect to take, on my
authority, conclusions, the value of which you ought to have tested for
yourself.
[Again, replying to the reproach that all his public utterances had
been of a negative character, that the great problems of human life had
been entirely left out of his purview, he defends once more the work of
the man who clears the ground for the builders to come after him:--]
There is endless backwoodsman's work yet to be done, If "those also
serve who only stand and wait," still more do those who sweep and
cleanse; and if any man elect to give his strength to the weeder's and
scavenger's occupation, I remain of the opinion that his service should
be counted acceptable, and that no one has a right to ask more of him
than faithful performance of the duties he has undertaken. I venture to
count it an improbable suggestion that any such person--a man, let us
say, who has well-nigh reached his threescore years and ten, and has
graduated in all the faculties of human relationships; who has taken
his share in all the deep joys and deeper anxieties which cling about
them; who has felt the burden of young lives entrusted to his care, and
has stood alone with his dead before the abyss of the eternal--has
never had a thought beyond negative criticism. It seems to me
incredible that such an one can have done his day's work, always with a
light heart, with no sense of responsibility, no terror of that which
may appear when the factitious veil of Isis--the thick web of fiction
man has woven round nature--is stripped off.
[Challenged to state his "mental bias, pro or con," with regard to such
matters as Creation, Providence, etc., he reiterates his words written
thirty-two years before:--]
So far back as 1860 I wrote:--
"The doctrine of special creation owes its existence very largely to
the supposed necessity of making science accord with the Hebrew
cosmogony"; and that the hypothesis of special creation is, in my
judgment, a "mere specious mask for our ignorance." Not content with
negation, I said:--
"Harmonious order governing eternally continuous progress; the web and
woof of matter and force interweaving by slow degrees, without a broken
thread, that veil which lies between us and the infinite; that universe
which alone we know, or can know; such is the picture which science
draws of the world."
Every reader of Goethe will know that the second is little more than a
paraphrase of the well-known utterance of the "Zeitgeist" in "Faust",
which surely is something more than a mere negation of the clumsy
anthropomorphism of special creation.
Follows a query about "Providence," my answer to which must depend upon
what my questioner means by that substantive, whether alone, or
qualified by the adjective "moral."
If the doctrine of a Providence is to be taken as the expression, in a
way "to be understanded of the people," of the total exclusion of
chance from a place even in the most insignificant corner of Nature, if
it means the strong conviction that the cosmic process is rational, and
the faith that, throughout all duration, unbroken order has reigned in
the universe, I not only accept it, but I am disposed to think it the
most important of all truths. As it is of more consequence for a
citizen to know the law than to be personally acquainted with the
features of those who will surely carry it into effect, so this very
positive doctrine of Providence, in the sense defined, seems to me far
more important than all the theorems of speculative theology. If,
further, the doctrine is held to imply that, in some indefinitely
remote past aeon, the cosmic process was set going by some entity
possessed of intelligence and foresight, similar to our own in kind,
however superior in degree, if, consequently, it is held that every
event, not merely in our planetary speck, but in untold millions of
other worlds, was foreknown before these worlds were, scientific
thought, so far as I know anything about it, has nothing to say against
that hypothesis. It is, in fact, an anthropomorphic rendering of the
doctrine of evolution.
It may be so, but the evidence accessible to us is, to my mind, wholly
insufficient to warrant either a positive or a negative conclusion.
[He remarks in passing upon the entire exclusion of "special"
providences by this conception of a universal "Providence." As for
"moral" providence:--]
So far as mankind has acquired the conviction that the observance of
certain rules of conduct is essential to the maintenance of social
existence, it may be proper to say that "Providence," operating through
men, has generated morality. Within the limits of a fraction of a
fraction of the living world, therefore, there is a "moral" providence.
Through this small plot of an infinitesimal fragment of the universe
there runs a "stream of tendency towards righteousness." But outside
the very rudimentary germ of a garden of Eden, thus watered, I am
unable to discover any "moral" purpose, or anything but a stream of
purpose towards the consummation of the cosmic process, chiefly by
means of the struggle for existence, which is no more righteous or
unrighteous than the operation of any other mechanism.
[This, of course, is the underlying principle of the Romanes Lecture,
upon which he was still at work. It is more specifically expressed in
the succeeding paragraph:--]
I hear much of the "ethics of evolution." I apprehend that, in the
broadest sense of the term "evolution," there neither is, nor can be,
any such thing. The notion that the doctrine of evolution can furnish a
foundation for morals seems to me to be an illusion which has arisen
from the unfortunate ambiguity of the term "fittest" in the formula,
"survival of the fittest." We commonly use "fittest" in a good sense,
with an understood connotation of "best"; and "best" we are apt to take
in its ethical sense. But the "fittest" which survives in the struggle
for existence may be, and often is, the ethically worst.
[Another paragraph explains the sense in which he used to say that the
Romanes Lecture was a very orthodox discourse on the text, "Satan, the
Prince of this world":--]
It is the secret of the superiority of the best theological teachers to
the majority of their opponents that they substantially recognise these
realities of things, however strange the forms in which they clothe
their conceptions. The doctrines of predestination, of original sin, of
the innate depravity of man and the evil fate of the greater part of
the race, of the primacy of Satan in this world, of the essential
vileness of matter, of a malevolent Demiurgus subordinate to a
benevolent Almighty, who has only lately revealed himself, faulty as
they are, appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the "liberal"
popular illusions that babies are all born good, and that the example
of a corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so;
that it is given to everybody to reach the ethical ideal if he will
only try; that all partial evil is universal good, and other optimistic
figments, such as that which represents "Providence" under the guise of
a paternal philanthropist, and bids us believe that everything will
come right (according to our notions) at last.
As to "Immortality" again [he refers his critic to his book on "Hume"].
I do not think I need return to "subjective" immortality, but it may be
well to add that I am a very strong believer in the punishment of
certain kinds of actions, not only in the present, but in all the
future a man can have, be it long or short. Therefore in hell, for I
suppose that all men with a clear sense of right and wrong (and I am
not sure that any others deserve such punishment) have now and then
"descended into hell" and stopped there quite long enough to know what
infinite punishment means. And if a genuine, not merely subjective,
immortality awaits us, I conceive that, without some such change as
that depicted in the fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the
Corinthians, immortality must be eternal misery. The fate of Swift's
Struldbrugs seems to me not more horrible than that of a mind
imprisoned for ever within the flammantia moenia of inextinguishable
memories.
Further, it may be well to remember that the highest level of moral
aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient
Jews--Micah, Isaiah, and the rest--who took no count whatever of what
might or might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me
why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.
[He admits that the generality of mankind will not be satisfied to be
told that there are some topics about which we know nothing now, and do
not seem likely ever to be able to know more; and, consequently, that
in the long-run the world will turn to those who profess to have
conclusions:--]
And that is the pity of it. As in the past, so, I fear, through a very
long future, the multitude will continue to turn to those who are ready
to feed it with the viands its soul lusteth after; who will offer
mental peace where there is no peace, and lap it in the luxury of
pleasant delusions.
To missionaries of the Neo-Positivist, as to those of other professed
solutions of insoluble mysteries, whose souls are bound up in the
success of their sectarian propaganda, no doubt, it must be very
disheartening if the "world," for whose assent and approbation they
sue, stops its ears and turns its back upon them. But what does it
signify to any one who does not happen to be a missionary of any sect,
philosophical or religious, and who, if he were, would have no sermon
to preach except from the text with which Descartes, to go no further
back, furnished us two centuries since? I am very sorry if people will
not listen to those who rehearse before them the best lessons they have
been able to learn, but that is their business, not mine. Belief in
majorities is not rooted in my breast, and if all the world were
against me the fact might warn me to revise and criticise my opinions,
but would not in itself supply a ghost of a reason for forsaking them.
For myself I say deliberately, it is better to have a millstone tied
round the neck and be thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises
of those to whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they
minister to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it
shudders to look at.
[A letter to Mr. N.P. Clayton also discusses the basis of morality.]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, November 5, 1892.
Dear Sir,
I well remember the interview to which you refer, and I should have
replied to your letter sooner, but during the last few weeks I have
been very busy.
Moral duty consists in the observance of those rules of conduct which
contribute to the welfare of society, and by implication, of the
individuals who compose it.
The end of society is peace and mutual protection, so that the
individual may reach the fullest and highest life attainable by man.
The rules of conduct by which this end is to be attained are
discoverable--like the other so-called laws of Nature--by observation
and experiment, and only in that way.
Some thousands of years of such experience have led to the
generalisations, that stealing and murder, for example, are
inconsistent with the ends of society. There is no more doubt that they
are so than that unsupported stones tend to fall. The man who steals or
murders, breaks his implied contract with society, and forfeits all
protection. He becomes an outlaw, to be dealt with as any other feral
creature. Criminal law indicates the ways which have proved most
convenient for dealing with him.
All this would be true if men had no "moral sense" at all, just as
there are rules of perspective which must be strictly observed by a
draughtsman, and are quite independent of his having any artistic sense.
The moral sense is a very complex affair--dependent in part upon
associations of pleasure and pain, approbation and disapprobation
formed by education in early youth, but in part also on an innate sense
of moral beauty and ugliness (how originated need not be discussed),
which is possessed by some people in great strength, while some are
totally devoid of it--just as some children draw, or are enchanted by
music while mere infants, while others do not know "Cherry Ripe" from
"Rule Britannia," nor can represent the form of the simplest thing to
the end of their lives.
Now for this last sort of people there is no reason why they should
discharge any moral duty, except from fear of punishment in all its
grades, from mere disapprobation to hanging, and the duty of society is
to see that they live under wholesome fear of such punishment short,
sharp, and decisive.
For the people with a keen innate sense of moral beauty there is no
need of any other motive. What they want is knowledge of the things
they may do and must leave undone, if the welfare of society is to be
attained. Good people so often forget this that some of them
occasionally require hanging almost as much as the bad.
If you ask why the moral inner sense is to be (under due limitations)
obeyed; why the few who are steered by it move the mass in whom it is
weak? I can only reply by putting another question--Why do the few in
whom the sense of beauty is strong--Shakespere, Raffaele, Beethoven,
carry the less endowed multitude away? But they do, and always will.
People who overlook that fact attend neither to history nor to what
goes on about them.
Benjamin Franklin was a shrewd, excellent, kindly man. I have a great
respect for him. The force of genial common-sense respectability could
no further go. George Fox was the very antipodes of all this, and yet
one understands how he came to move the world of his day, and Franklin
did not.
As to whether we can all fulfil the moral law, I should say hardly any
of us. Some of us are utterly incapable of fulfilling its plainest
dictates. As there are men born physically cripples, and intellectually
idiots, so there are some who are moral cripples and idiots, and can be
kept straight not even by punishment. For these people there is nothing
but shutting up, or extirpation.
I am, yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The peaceful aspect of the "Irenicon" seems to have veiled to most
readers the unbroken nature of his defence, and he writes to his
son-in-law, the Hon. John Collier, suggesting an alteration in the
title of the essay:--]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, November 8, 1892.
My dear Jack,
It is delightful to find a reader who "twigs" every point as acutely as
your brother has done. I told somebody--was it you?--I rather wished
the printer would substitute o for e in Irenicon. So far as I have seen
any notices, the British critic (what a dull ass he is) appears to have
been seriously struck by my sweetness of temper.
I sent you the article yesterday, so you will judge for yourself.
With love, ever yours affectionately,
T.H. Huxley.
You should see the place I am claiming for Art in the University. I do
believe something will grow out of my plan, which has made all the dry
bones rattle. It is coming on for discussion in the Senate, and I shall
be coming to you to have my wounds dressed after the fight. Don't know
the day yet.
[This allusion to the place of Art in the University refers to the
proposed reorganisation of the London University.
Since the year 1887 the question of establishing a Teaching University
for London had become more and more pressing. London contained many
isolated teaching bodies of various kinds--University College, King's
College, the Royal College of Science, the Medical Schools, Bedford
College, and so forth, while the London University was only an
examining body. Clearly these scattered bodies needed organising; the
educational forces of the metropolis were disintegrated; much
teaching--and this was especially true of the medical schools--that
could have been better done and better paid in a single institution,
was split up among several, none of which, perhaps, could offer
sufficient inducement to keep the best men permanently.
The most burning question was, whether these bodies should be united
into a new university, with power to grant degrees of its own, or
should combine with the existing University of London, so that the
latter would become a teaching as well as an examining body. And if so,
there was the additional question as to the form which this combination
should take--whether federation, for example, or absorption.
The whole question had been referred to a Royal Commission by the
Government of Lord Salisbury. The results were seen in the charter for
a Gresham University, embodying the former alternative, and in the
introduction into Parliament of a Bill to carry this scheme into
effect. But this action had only been promoted by some of the bodies
interested, and was strongly opposed by other bodies, as well as by
many teachers who were interested in university reform.
Thus at the end of February, Huxley was invited, as a Governor of
University College, to sign a protest against the provisions of the
Charter for a Teaching University then before Parliament, especially in
so far as it was proposed to establish a second examining body in
London. The signatories also begged the Government to grant further
inquiry before legislating on the subject
The protest, which received over 100 signatures of weight, contributed
something towards the rejection of the Bill in the House of Commons. It
became possible to hope that there might be established in London a
University which should be something more than a mere collection of
teachers, having as their only bond of union the preparation of
students for a common examination. It was proposed to form an
association to assist in the promotion of a teaching university for the
metropolis; but the first draft of a scheme to reconcile the
complication of interests and ideals involved led Huxley to express
himself as follows:--]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, March 27, 1892.
Dear Professor Weldon [Then at University College, London; now Linacre
Professor of Physiology at Oxford.],
I am sorry to have kept you waiting so long for an answer to your
letter of the 17th: but your proposal required a good deal of
consideration, and I have had a variety of distractions.
So long as I am a member of the Senate of the University of London, I
do not think I can with propriety join any Association which proposes
to meddle with it. Moreover, though I have a good deal of sympathy with
the ends of the Association, I have my doubts about many propositions
set forth in your draft.
I took part in the discussions preliminary to Lord Justice Fry's
scheme, and I was so convinced that that scheme would be wrecked amidst
the complication of interests and ideals that claimed consideration,
that I gave up attending to it. In fact, living so much out of the
world now, and being sadly deaf, I am really unfit to intervene in
business of this kind.
Worse still, I am conscious that my own ideal is, for the present at
any rate, hopelessly impracticable. I should cut away medicine, law,
and theology as technical specialities in charge of corporations which
might be left to settle (in the case of medicine, in accordance with
the State) the terms on which they grant degrees.
The university or universities should be learning and teaching bodies
devoted to art (literary and other), history, philosophy, and science,
where any one who wanted to learn all that is known about these matters
should find people who could teach him and put him in the way of
learning for himself.
That is what the world will want one day or other, as a supplement to
all manner of high schools and technical institution in which young
people get decently educated and learn to earn their bread--such as our
present universities.
It will be a place for men to get knowledge; and not for boys and
adolescents to get degrees.
I wish I could get the younger men like yourself to see that this is
the goal which they may reach, and in the meanwhile to take care that
no such Philistine compromise as is possible at present, becomes too
strong to survive a sharp shake.
I am, yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[He sketches his ideal of a modern university, and especially of its
relation to the Medical Schools, in a letter to Professor Ray Lankester
of April 11:--]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, April 11, 1892.
My dear Lankester,
We have been having ten days of sunshine, and I have been
correspondingly lazy, especially about letter-writing. This, however,
is my notion; that unless people clearly understand that the university
of the future is to be a very different thing from the university of
the past, they had better put off meddling for another generation.
The mediaeval university looked backwards: it professed to be a
storehouse of old knowledge, and except in the way of dialectic
cobweb-spinning, its professors had nothing to do with novelties. Of
the historical and physical (natural) sciences, of criticism and
laboratory practice, it knew nothing. Oral teaching was of supreme
importance on account of the cost and rarity of manuscripts.
The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge:
its professors have to be at the top of the wave of progress. Research
and criticism must be the breath of their nostrils; laboratory work the
main business of the scientific student; books his main helpers.
The lecture, however, in the hands of an able man will still have the
utmost importance in stimulating and giving facts and principles their
proper relative prominence.
I think we should get pretty nearly what is wanted by grafting a
College de France on to the University of London, subsidising
University College and King's College (if it will get rid of its tests,
not otherwise), and setting up two or three more such bodies in other
parts of London. (Scotland, with a smaller population than London, has
four complete universities!)
I should hand over the whole business of medical education and
graduation to a medical universitas to be constituted by the royal
colleges and medical schools, whose doings, of course, would be checked
by the Medical Council.
Our side has been too apt to look upon medical schools as feeders for
Science. They have been so, but to their detriment as medical schools.
And now that so many opportunities for purely scientific training are
afforded, there is no reason they should remain so.
The problem of the Medical University is to make an average man into a
good practical doctor before he is twenty-two, and with not more
expense than can be afforded by the class from which doctors are
recruited, or than will be rewarded by the prospect of an income of 400
to 500 pounds a year.
It is not right to sacrifice such men, and the public on whom they
practise, for the prospect of making 1 per cent of medical students
into men of science.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[An undated draft in his own handwriting (probably the draft of a
speech delivered the first time he came to the committee as President,
October 26) expands the same idea as to the modern requirements of the
University:--]
The cardinal fact in the University question, appears to me to be this:
that the student to whose wants the mediaeval University was adjusted,
looked to the past and sought book-learning, while the modern looks to
the future and seeks the knowledge of things.
The mediaeval view was that all knowledge worth having was explicitly
or implicitly contained in various ancient writings; in the Scriptures,
in the writings of the greater Greeks, and those of the Christian
Fathers. Whatever apparent novelty they put forward, was professedly
obtained by deduction from ancient data.
The modern knows that the only source of real knowledge lies in the
application of scientific methods of inquiry to the ascertainment of
the facts of existence; that the ascertainable is infinitely greater
than the ascertained, and that the chief business of the teacher is not
so much to make scholars as to train pioneers.
From this point of view, the University occupies a position altogether
independent of that of the coping-stone of schools for general
education, combined with technical schools of Theology, Law, and
Medicine. It is not primarily an institution for testing the work of
schoolmasters, or for ascertaining the fitness of young men to be
curates, lawyers, or doctors.
It is an institution in which a man who claims to devote himself to
Science or Art, should be able to find some one who can teach him what
is already known, and train him in the methods of knowing more.
I include under Art,--Literature, the pictorial and plastic art with
Architecture, and Music; and under Science,--Logic, Philosophy,
Philology, Mathematics, and the Physical Sciences.
The question of the connection of the High Schools for general
education, and of the technical schools of Theology, Law, Medicine,
Engineering, Art, Music, and so on, with the University is a matter of
practical detail. Probably the teaching of the subjects which stand in
the relation of preliminaries to technical teaching and final studies
in higher general education in the University would be utilised by the
colleges and technical schools.
All that I have to say on this subject is, that I see no reason why the
existing University of London should not be completed in the sense I
have defined by grafting upon it a professoriate with the appropriate
means and appliances, which would supply London with the analogue of
the Ecole des hautes Etudes and the College de France in Paris, and of
the Laboratories with the Professor Extraordinarius and Privat Docenten
in the German Universities.
[A new Commission was promised to look into the whole question of the
London University. This is referred to in a letter to Sir J. Donnelly
of March 30, 1892.]
Unless you want to kill Foster, don't suggest him for the Commission.
He is on one already.
The whole affair is a perfect muddle of competing crude projects and
vested interests, and is likely to end in a worse muddle, as anything
but a patch up is, I believe, outside practical politics at present.
If I had carte blanche, I should cut away the technical "Faculties" of
Medicine, Law, and Theology, and set up first-class chairs in
Literature, Art, Philosophy, and pure Science--a sort of combination of
Sorbonne (without Theology) and College de France.
Thank Heaven I have never been asked to say anything, and my chimaeras
remain in petto. They would be scouted.
[On the other hand, he was most anxious to keep the School of Science
at South Kensington entirely independent. He writes again on May 26:--]
I trust Rucker and Thorpe are convinced by this time that I knew what I
was talking about when I told them, months ago, that there would be an
effort to hook us into the new University hotch-potch.
I am ready to oppose any such project tooth and nail. I have not been
striving these thirty years to get Science clear of their
schoolmastering sham-literary peddling to give up the game without a
fight. I hope my Lords will be staunch.
I am glad my opinion is already on record.
[And similarly to Sir M. Foster on October 30:--]
You will have to come to London and set up physiology at the Royal
College of Science. It is the only place in Great Britain in which
scientific teaching is trammelled neither by parsons nor by
litterateurs. I have always implored Donnelly to keep us clear of any
connection with a University of any kind, sort, or description, and I
tried to instil the same lesson into the doctors the other day. But the
"liberal education" cant is an obsession of too many of them.
[A further step was taken in June, when he was sent a new draft of
proposals, afterwards adopted by the above-mentioned general meeting of
the Association in March 1893, sketching a constitution for a new
university, and asking for the appointment of a Statutory Commission to
carry it out. The University thus constituted was to be governed by a
Court, half of which should consist of university professors] ("As for
a government by professors only" [he writes in the "Times" of December
6, 1892], "the fact of their being specialists is against them. Most of
them are broad-minded; practical men; some are good administrators.
But, unfortunately, there is among them, as in other professions, a
fair sprinkling of one-idea'd fanatics, ignorant of the commonest
conventions of official relation, and content with nothing if they
cannot get everything their own way. It is these persons who, with the
very highest and purest intentions, would ruin any administrative body
unless they were counterpoised by non-professional, common-sense
members of recognised weight and authority in the conduct of affairs."
[Furthermore, against the adoption of a German university system, he
continues], "In holding up the University of Berlin as our model, I
think you fail to attach sufficient weight to the considerations that
there is no Minister of Public Instruction in these realms; that a
great many of us would rather have no university at all than one under
the control of such a minister, and whose highest representatives might
come to be, not the fittest men, but those who stood foremost in the
good graces of the powers that be, whether Demos, Ministry, or
Sovereign."); [it was to include such faculties as Law, Engineering,
Medicine, while it was to bring into connection the various teaching
bodies scattered over London. The proposers themselves recognised that
the scheme was not ideal, but a compromise which at least would not
hamper further progress, and would supersede the Gresham scheme, which
they regarded as a barrier to all future academic reform.
The Association as thus constituted Huxley now joined, and was
immediately asked to accept the Presidency, not that he should do any
more militant work than he was disposed to attempt, but simply that he
should sit like Moltke in his tent and keep an eye on the campaign.
He felt it almost a point of honour not to refuse his best services to
a cause he had always had at heart, though he wrote:--]
There are some points in which I go further than your proposals, but
they are so much, to my mind, in the right direction that I gladly
support them.
[And again:--]
The Association scheme is undoubtedly a compromise--but it is a
compromise which takes us the right way, while the former schemes led
nowhere except to chaos.
[He writes to Sir W.H. Flower:--]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, June 27, 1892.
My dear Flower,
I had quite given up the hope that anything but some wretched
compromise would come of the University Commission, when I found, to my
surprise, no less than gratification, that a strong party among the
younger men were vigorously taking the matter up in the right (that is,
MY) sense.
In spite of all my good resolves to be a "hermit old in mossy cell," I
have enlisted--for ambulance service if nothing better.
The move is too important to spare oneself if one can be of any good.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Of his work in this position Professor Karl Pearson says, in a letter
to me:--
Professor Huxley gallantly came to lead a somewhat forlorn hope,--that
of establishing a really great university in London. He worked, as may
naturally be supposed, with energy and persistence, and one, who like
myself was not in full sympathy with the lines he took, can but admire
the vigour he threw into the movement. Nothing came of it
practically;...but Professor Huxley's leadership did, at any rate, a
great deal to unite the London teachers, and raise their ideal of a
true university, while at the same time helping to repress the
self-interests of many persons and institutions which had been before
very much to the front.
Clearly this is the sort of thing referred to in a letter of December
20:--]
Got through the Association business very well, but had to show that I
am the kind of head that does not lend itself to wagging by the tail.
[The Senate of the University of London showed practical unanimity in
accepting the idea of taking on teaching functions if the Commission
should think it desirable, though the Medical Schools were still
desirous of getting their degree granted on the mere license
examination of the Royal Colleges, without any evidence of general
culture or academical training, and on July 28 Huxley writes:--]
The decision of the representatives of the Medical Schools is just such
as I should have expected. I always told my colleagues in the Senate of
the University of London that such was their view, and that, in the
words of Pears' advertisement, they "would not be happy till they got
it."
And they won't get it unless the medical examining bodies are connected
into a distinct degree-giving body.
[In the course of the autumn matters seemed to be progressing. He
writes to Sir M. Foster, November 9:--]
I am delighted to say that Paget [Sir James Paget, Vice-Chancellor of
the University.] has taken up the game, and I am going to a committee
of the University this day week to try my powers of persuasion. If the
Senate can only be got to see where salvation lies and strike hard
without any fooling over details, we shall do a great stroke of
business for the future generations of Londoners.
[And by the end of the year he writes:--]
I think we are going to get something done, as the Senate of the
University of London has come into line with us, and I hope University
College will do the same.
[Meanwhile he was asked if he would appear before the Commission and
give evidence--to "talk without interrogation" so as to convince the
Commission of the inadequacy of the teaching of science in general and
of the absence of means and appliances for the higher teaching. This he
did early in January 1893, representing partly his own views, partly
those of the Association, to whom he read what he proposed to say,
before being authorised to speak on their behalf.
His position is finally defined by the following letter:--]
February 9, 1893.
Dear Professor Weldon,
I wish anything I have said or shall say about the organisation of the
New University to be taken in connection with the following postulates
which I conceive to be of primary importance:
1. The New University is not to be a separate body from the present
University of London.
2. All persons giving academic instruction of a certain rank are to be
"University Professors."
3. The Senate is to contain a large proportion of representatives of
the "University Professors" with a limited term of office (say five
years).
4. The University chest is to receive all fees and other funds for
University purposes; and the Professors are to be paid out of it,
according to work done for the University--thus putting an end to the
present commercial competition of teaching institutions.
5. In all questions of Teaching, Examination, and Discipline the
authority of the Senate is to be supreme--(saving appeal to the Privy
Council).
Your questions will be readily answered if these postulates are kept in
view.
In the case you put, the temptation to rivalry would not exist; and I
should imagine that the Senate would refuse funds for the purpose of
duplicating an existing Institution, unless very strong grounds for so
doing could be shown. In short, they would adopt the plan which
commends itself to you.
That to which I am utterly opposed is the creation of an Established
Church Scientific, with a hierarchical organisation and a professorial
Episcopate. I am fully agreed with you that all trading competition
between different teaching institutions is a thing to be abolished (see
Number 4 above).
On the other hand, intellectual competition is a very good thing, and
perfect freedom of learning and teaching the best of all things.
If you put a physical, chemical, or biological bishop at the head of
the teachers of those sciences in London, you will do your best to
destroy that freedom. My bar to any catastrophe of that sort lies in
Number 3. Let us take the case of Biology. I suppose there will be, at
least, half a dozen Professoriates in different branches of this
subject each Professor will be giving the same amount of time and
energy to University work, and will deserve the same pay. Each, if he
is worth his salt, will be a man holding his own views on general
questions, and having as good a right as any other to be heard. Why is
one to be given a higher rank and vastly greater practical influence
than all the rest? Why should not each be a "University Professor" and
have his turn on the Senate in influencing the general policy of the
University? The nature of things drives men more and more into the
position of specialists. Why should one specialist represent a whole
branch of science better than another, in Council or in Administration?
I am afraid we cannot build upon the analogy of Cambridge. In the first
place, London is not Cambridge; and, in the second, Michael Fosters do
not grow on every bush.
The besetting sin of able men is impatience of contradiction and of
criticism. Even those who do their best to resist the temptation, yield
to it almost unconsciously and become the tools of toadies and
flatterers. "Authorities," "disciples," and "schools" are the curse of
science; and do more to interfere with the work of the scientific
spirit than all its enemies.
Thus you will understand why I have so strongly opposed "absorption."
No one can feel more strongly than I the need of getting the present
chaos into order and putting an end to the absurd waste of money and
energy. But I believe that end may be attained by the method of
unification which I have suggested; without bringing in its train the
evils which will inevitably flow from "absorptive" regimentation.
What I want to see is such an organisation of the means and appliances
of University instruction in all its branches, as will conduce to the
largest possible freedom of research, learning, and teaching. And if
anybody will show me a better way to that end than through the measures
I have suggested, I will gladly leave all and follow him.
I am yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
P.S.--Will you be so kind as to let Professor Lankester see this
letter, as I am writing to him and shirk the labour of going over the
whole ground again.
[His last public activity, indeed, was on behalf of University reform,
when in January 1895 he represented not only the Association, but, in
the enforced absence of Sir James Paget, the Senate of the University
also, on a deputation to Lord Rosebery, then Prime Minister, to whom he
wrote asking if he were willing to receive such a deputation.]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, December 4, 1894.
Dear Lord Rosebery,
A number of scientific people, in fact I think I may say all the
leading men of science, and especially teachers in the country, are
very anxious to see the University of London reorganised upon the
general principles set forth in the Report of the last Royal Commission.
To this end nothing is wanted but the institution of a strong Statutory
Commission; and we have all been hoping that a Bill would be introduced
for that purpose.
It is rumoured that there are lions in the path. But even lions are
occasionally induced to retreat by the sight of a large body of
beaters. And some of us think that such a deputation as would willingly
wait on you, might hasten the desired movement.
We proposed something of the kind to Mr. Acland months ago, but nothing
has come of the suggestion--not, I am sure, from any want of good will
to our cause on his part.
Within the last few days I have been so strongly urged to bring the
matter before you, that in spite of some doubts as to the propriety of
going beyond my immediate chief the V.P. [The Vice-President of the
Committee of Council, Mr. Acland.] even in my private capacity I
venture to make this appeal.
I am, dear Lord Rosebery, faithfully yours,
T.H. Huxley.