Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley is a Webnovel created by Thomas Henry Huxley.
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4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., June 24, 1874.
My dear Tyndall,
I quite agree with your Scotch friend in his estimate of Forbes, and if he were alive and the controversy beginning, I should say draw your picture in your best sepia or lampblack. But I have been thinking over this matter a good deal since I received your letter, and my verdict is, leave that tempting piece of portraiture alone.
The world is neither was nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being d.a.m.nably sentimental, and the more severely true your portrait might be the more loud would be the outcry against it. I should say publish a new edition of your “Glaciers of the Alps,”
make a clear historical statement of all the facts showing Forbes’
relations to Rendu and Aga.s.siz, and leave the matter to the judgment of your contemporaries. That will sink in and remain when all the hurly-burly is over.
I wonder if that address is begun, and if you are going to be as wise and prudent as I was at Liverpool. When I think of the temptation I resisted on that occasion, like Clive when he was charged with peculation, “I marvel at my own forbearance!” Let my example be a burning and a shining light to you. I declare I have horrid misgivings of your kicking over the traces.
The “x” comes off on Sat.u.r.day next, so let your ears burn, for we shall be talking about you. I have just begun my lectures to Schoolmasters, and I wish they were over, though I am very well on the whole.
Griffith [for many years secretary to the British a.s.sociation.] wrote to ask for the t.i.tle of my lecture at Belfast, and I had to tell him I did not know yet. I shall not begin to think of it till the middle of July when these lectures are over.
The wife would send her love, but she has gone to Kew to one of Hooker’s receptions, taking Miss Jewsbury, who is staying with us.
[Miss Geraldine Jewsbury (1812-1880) the novelist, and friend of the Carlyles. After 1866 she lived at Sevenoaks.] I was to have gone to the College of Physicians’ dinner to-night, but I was so weary when I got home that I made up my mind to send an excuse. And then came the thought that I had not written to you.
Ever yours sincerely,
T.H. Huxley.
[The next letter is in reply to Tyndall, who had written as follows from Switzerland on July 15:–
I confess to you that I am far more anxious about your condition than about my own; for I fear that after your London labour the labour of this lecture will press heavily upon you. I wish to Heaven it could be transferred to other shoulders.
I wish I could get rid of the uncomfortable idea that I have drawn upon you at a time when your friend and brother ought to be anxious to spare you every labour…
PS.–Have just seen the Swiss “Times”; am intensely disgusted to find that while I was brooding over the calamities possibly consequent on your lending me a hand, that you have been at the Derby Statue, and are to make an oration apropos of the Priestley Statue in Birmingham on the 1st August!!!]
4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., July 22, 1874.
My dear Tyndall,
I hope you have been taking more care of your instep than you did of your leg in old times. Don’t try mortifying the flesh again.
I was uncommonly amused at your disgustful wind-up after writing me such a compa.s.sionate letter. I am as jolly as a sandboy so long as I live on a minimum and drink no alcohol, and as vigorous as ever I was in my life. But a late dinner wakes up my demoniac colon and gives me a fit of blue devils with physical precision.
Don’t believe that I am at all the places in which the newspapers put me. For example, I was not at the Lord Mayor’s dinner last night. As for Lord Derby’s statue, I wanted to get a lesson in the art of statue unveiling. I help to pay Dizzie’s salary, so I don’t see why I should not get a wrinkle from that artful dodger.
I plead guilty to having accepted the Birmingham invitation [to unveil the statue of Joseph Priestley]. I thought they deserved to be encouraged for having asked a man of science to do the job instead of some n.o.ble swell, and, moreover, Satan whispered that it would be a good opportunity for a little ventilation of wickedness. I cannot say, however, that I can work myself up into much enthusiasm for the dry old Unitarian who did not go very deep into anything. But I think I may make him a good peg whereon to hang a discourse on the tendencies of modern thought.
I was not at the Cambridge pow-wow–not out of prudence, but because I was not asked. I suppose that decent respect towards a Secretary of the Royal Society was not strong enough to outweigh University objections to the inc.u.mbent of that office. It is well for me that I expect nothing from Oxford or Cambridge, having burned my ships so far as they were concerned long ago.
I sent your note on to Knowles as soon as it arrived, but I have heard nothing from him. I wrote to him again to-night to say he had better let me see it in proof if he is going to print it. I am right glad you find anything worth reading again in my old papers. I stand by the view I took of the origin of species now as much as ever.
Shall I not see the address? It is tantalising to hear of your progress, and not to know what is in it.
I am thinking of taking Development for the subject of my evening lecture, the concrete facts made out in the last thirty years without reference to Evolution. [I.e. at the British a.s.sociation; he actually took “Animals as Automata.”] If people see that it is Evolution, that is Nature’s fault, and not mine.
We are all flourishing, and send our love.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The paper on Animal Automatism is in effect an enlargement of a short paper read before the Metaphysical Society in 1871, under the t.i.tle of “Has a Frog a Soul?” It begins with a vindication of Descartes as a great physiologist, doing for the physiology of motion and sensation that which Harvey had done for the circulation of the blood. A series of propositions which const.i.tute the foundation and essence of the modern physiology of the nervous system are fully expressed and ill.u.s.trated in the writings of Descartes. Modern physiological research, which has shown that many apparently purposive acts are performed by animals, and even by men, deprived of consciousness, and therefore of volition, is at least compatible with the theory of automatism in animals, although the doctrine of continuity forbids the belief that] “such complex phenomena as those of consciousness first make their appearance in man.” [And if the volitions of animals do not enter into the chain of causation of their actions at all, the fact lays at rest the question] “How is it possible to imagine that volition, which is a state of consciousness, and, as such, has not the slightest community of nature with matter in motion, can act upon the moving matter of which the body is composed, as it is a.s.sumed to do in voluntary acts?”
[As for man, the argumentation, if sound, holds equally good. States of consciousness are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance, and our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which take place automatically in the organism.
As for the bugbear of the] “logical consequences” [of this conviction,] “I may be permitted to remark [he says] that logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.”
[And if St. Augustine, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards have held in substance the view that men are conscious automata, to hold this view does not const.i.tute a man a fatalist, a materialist, nor an atheist.
And he takes occasion once more to declare that he ranks among none of these philosophers.]
Not among fatalists, for I take the conception of necessity to have a logical, and not a physical foundation; not among materialists, for I am utterly incapable of conceiving the existence of matter if there is no mind in which to picture that existence; not among atheists, for the problem of the ultimate cause of existence is one which seems to me to be hopelessly out of reach of my poor powers. Of all the senseless babble I have ever had occasion to read, the demonstrations of these philosophers who undertake to tell us all about the nature of G.o.d would be the worst, if they were not surpa.s.sed by the still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove that there is no G.o.d.
[This essay was delivered as an evening address on August 24, the Monday of the a.s.sociation week. A vast stir had been created by the treatment of deep-reaching problems in Professor Tyndall’s presidential address; interest was still further excited by this unexpected excursion into metaphysics. “I remember,” writes Sir M.
Foster, “having a talk with him about the lecture before he gave it. I think I went to his lodgings–and he sketched out what he was going to say. The question was whether, in view of the Tyndall row, it was wise in him to take the line he had marked out. In the end I remember his saying,] ‘Grasp your nettle, that is what I have got to do.'” [But apart from the subject, the manner of the address struck the audience as a wonderful tour de force. The man who at first disliked public speaking, and always expected to break down on the platform, now, without note or reference of any kind, discoursed for an hour and a half upon a complex and difficult subject, in the very words which he had thought out and afterwards published.
This would have been a remarkable achievement if he had planned to do so and had learned up his speech; but the fact was that he was compelled to speak offhand on the spur of the moment. He describes the situation in a letter of February 6, 1894, to Professor Ray Lankester:–]
I knew that I was treading on very dangerous ground, so I wrote out uncommonly full and careful notes, and had them in my hand when I stepped on to the platform.
Then I suddenly became aware of the bigness of the audience, and the conviction came upon me that, if I looked at my notes, not one half would hear me. It was a bad ten seconds, but I made my election and turned the notes face downwards on the desk.
To this day, I do not exactly know how the thing managed to roll itself out; but it did, as you say, for the best part of an hour and a half.
There’s a story pour vous encourager if you are ever in a like fix.
[He writes home on August 20:–]
Johnny’s address went off exceedingly well last night. There was a mighty gathering in the Ulster Hall, and he delivered his speech very well. The meeting promises to be a good one, as there are over 1800 members already, and I daresay they will mount up to 2000 before the end. The Hookers’ arrangements [i.e. for the members of the x club and their wives to club together at Belfast] all went to smash as I rather expected they would, but I have a very good clean lodging well outside the town where I can be quiet if I like, and on the whole I think that is better, as I shall be able to work up my lectures in peace…
August 21.
Everything is going on very well here. The weather is delightful, and under these circ.u.mstances my lodgings here with John Ball for a companion turns out to be a most excellent arrangement. Ca va sans dire, though, by the way, that is a bull induced by the locality. I am not going on any of the excursions on Sunday. I am going to have a quiet day here when everybody will suppose that I have accepted everybody else’s invitation to be somewhere else. The Ulster Hall, in which the addresses are delivered, seems to me to be a terrible room to speak in, and I mean to nurse my energies all Monday. I sent you a cutting from one of the papers containing an account of me that will amuse you. The writer is evidently disappointed that I am not a turbulent savage.
August 25.
…My work is over and I start for Kingstown, where I mean to sleep to-night, in an hour. I have just sent you a full and excellent report of my lecture. [“On Animals as Automata”: see above.] I am glad to say it was a complete success. I never was in better voice in my life, and I spoke for an hour and a half without notes, the people listening as still as mice. There has been a great row about Tyndall’s address, and I had some reason to expect that I should have to meet a frantically warlike audience. But it was quite otherwise, and though I spoke my mind with very great plainness, I never had a warmer reception. And I am not without hope that I have done something to allay the storm, though, as you may be sure, I did not sacrifice plain speaking to that end…I have been most creditably quiet here, and have gone to no dinners or breakfasts or other such fandangoes except those I accepted before leaving home. Sunday I spent quietly here, thinking over my lecture and putting my peroration, which required a good deal of care, into shape. I wandered out into the fields in the afternoon, and sat a long time thinking of all that had happened since I was here a young beginner, two and twenty, and…you were largely in my thoughts, which were full of blessings and tender memories.
I had a good night’s work last night. I dined with the President of the College, and then gave my lecture. After that I smoked a bit with Foster till eleven o’clock, and then I went to the “Northern Whig”
office to see that the report of my lecture was all right. It is the best paper here, and the Editor had begged me to see to the report, and I was anxious myself that I should be rightly represented. So I sat there till a quarter past one having the report read and correcting it when necessary. Then I came home and got to bed about two. I have just been to the section and read my paper there to a large audience who cannot have understood ten words of it, but who looked highly edified, and now I have done. Our lodging has turned out admirably, and Ball’s company has been very pleasant. So that the fiasco of our arrangements was all for the best.
[I take the account of this last-mentioned paper in Section D from the report in “Nature”:–
Professor Huxley opened the last day of the session with an account of his recent observations on the development of the Columella auris in Amphibia. (He described it as an outgrowth of the periotic capsule, and therefore unconnected with any visceral arch.)…