Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 2

Dear Sir,

Accept my best thanks for your interesting "causeries," which seem to me to give a very clear view of the present state of the evolution doctrine as applied to biology.

There is a statement on page 87 "Apres sa mort Lamarck fut completement oublie," which may be true for France but certainly is not so for England. From 1830 onwards for more than forty years Lyell's "Principles of Geology" was one of the most widely read scientific books in this country, and it contains an elaborate criticism of Lamarck's views. Moreover, they were largely debated during the controversies which arose out of the publication of the "Vestiges of Creation" in 1844 or thereabouts. We are certainly not guilty of any neglect of Lamarck on this side of the Channel.

If I may make another criticism it is that, to my mind, atheism is, on purely philosophical grounds, untenable. That there is no evidence of the existence of such a being as the G.o.d of the theologians is true enough; but strictly scientific reasoning can take us no further. Where we know nothing we can neither affirm nor deny with propriety.

[The other is in answer to the Bishop of Ripon, enclosing a few lines on the princ.i.p.al representatives of modern science, which he had asked for.]

4 Marlborough Place, June 16, 1887.

My dear Bishop of Ripon,

I shall be very glad if I can be of any use to you now and always. But it is not an easy task to put into half-a-dozen sentences, up to the level of your vigorous English, a statement that shall be una.s.sailable from the point of view of a scientific fault-finder--which shall be intelligible to the general public and yet accurate.

I have made several attempts and enclose the final result. I think the substance is all right, and though the form might certainly be improved, I leave that to you. When I get to a certain point of tinkering my phrases I have to put them aside for a day or two.

Will you allow me to suggest that it might be better not to name any living man? The temple of modern science has been the work of many labourers not only in our own but in other countries. Some have been more busy in shaping and laying the stones, some in keeping off the Sanballats, some prophetwise in indicating the course of the science of the future. It would be hard to say who has done best service. As regards Dr. Joule, for example, no doubt he did more than any one to give the doctrine of the conservation of energy precise expression, but Mayer and others run him hard.

Of deceased Englishmen who belong to the first half of the Victorian epoch, I should say that Faraday, Lyell, and Darwin had exerted the greatest influence, and all three were models of the highest and best cla.s.s of physical philosophers.

As for me, in part from force of circ.u.mstance and in part from a conviction I could be of most use in that way, I have played the part of something between maid-of-all-work and gladiator-general for Science, and deserve no such prominence as your kindness has a.s.signed to me.

With our united kind regards to Mrs. Carpenter and yourself, ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[A brief note, also, to Lady Welby, dated July 25, is characteristic of his att.i.tude towards unverified speculation.]

I have looked through the paper you have sent me, but I cannot undertake to give any judgment upon it. Speculations such as you deal with are quite out of my way. I get lost the moment I lose touch of valid fact and incontrovertible demonstration and find myself wandering among large propositions, which may be quite true but which would involve me in months of work if I were to set myself seriously to find out whether, and in what sense, they are true. Moreover, at present, what little energy I possess is mortgaged to quite other occupations.

[The following letter was in answer to a request which I was commissioned to forward him, that he would consent to serve on an honorary committee of the Societe des Professeurs de Francais en Angleterre.]

January 17, 1887.

I quite forgot to say anything about the Comite d'honneur, and as you justly remark in the present strained state of foreign politics the consequences may be serious. Please tell your colleague that I shall be "proud an' 'appy." You need not tell him that my pride and happiness are contingent on having nothing to do for the honour.

[In the meantime, the ups and downs of his health are reflected in various letters of these six months. Much set up by his stay in the Isle of Wight, he writes from Shanklin on April 11 to Sir E. Frankland, describing the last meeting of the x Club, which the latter had not been able to attend, as he was staying in the Riviera:--]

Hooker, Tyndall, and I alone turned up last Thursday. Lubbock had gone to High Elms about used up by the House of Commons, and there was no sign of Hirst.

Tyndall seemed quite himself again. In fact, we three old fogies voted unanimously that we were ready to pit ourselves against any three youngsters of the present generation in walking, climbing, or head-work, and give them odds.

I hope you are in the same comfortable frame of mind.

I had no notion that Mentone had suffered so seriously in the earthquake of 1887. Moral for architects: read your Bible and build your house upon the rock.

The sky and sea here may be fairly matched against Mentone or any other of your Mediterranean places. Also the east wind, which has been blowing steadily for ten days, and is nearly as keen as the Tramontana.

Only in consequence of the long cold and drought not a leaf is out.

[Shanklin, indeed, suited him so well that he had half a mind to settle there.] "There are plenty of sites for building," [he writes home in February,] "but I have not thought of commencing a house yet."

[However, he gave up the idea; Shanklin was too far from town.

But though he was well enough as long as he kept out of London, a return to his life there was not possible for any considerable time. On May 19, just before a visit to Mr. F. Darwin at Cambridge, I find that he went down to St. Albans for a couple of days, to walk; and on the 27th he betook himself, terribly ill and broken down, to the Savernake Forest Hotel, in hopes of getting] "screwed up." [This] "turned out a capital speculation, a charming spick-and-span little country hostelry with great trees in front." [But the weather was persistently bad,]

"the screws got looser rather than tighter," [and again he was compelled to stay away from the x.

A week later, however, he writes:--]

The weather has been detestable, and I got no good till yesterday, which was happily fine. Ditto to-day, so I am picking up, and shall return to-morrow, as, like an idiot as I am, I promised to take the chair at a public meeting about a Free Library for Marylebone on Tuesday evening.

I wonder if you know this country. I find it charming.

[On the same day as that which was fixed for the meeting in favour of the Free Library, he had a very interesting interview with the Premier, of which he left the following notes, written at the Athenaeum immediately after:--]

June 7, 1887.

Called on Lord Salisbury by appointment at 3 p.m., and had twenty minutes' talk with him about the "matter of some public interest"

mentioned in his letter of the [29th].

This turned out to be a proposal for the formal recognition of distinguished services in Science, Letters, and Art by the inst.i.tution of some sort of order a.n.a.logous to the Pour le Merite. Lord Salisbury spoke of the anomalous present mode of distributing honours, intimated that the Queen desired to establish a better system, and asked my opinion.

I said that I should like to separate my personal opinion from that which I believed to obtain among the majority of scientific men; that I thought many of the latter were much discontented with the present state of affairs, and would highly approve of such a proposal as Lord Salisbury shadowed forth.

That, so far as my own personal feeling was concerned, it was opposed to anything of the kind for Science. I said that in Science we had two advantages--first, that a man's work is demonstrably either good or bad; and secondly, that the "contemporary posterity" of foreigners judges us, and rewards good work by members.h.i.+p of Academies and so forth.

In Art, if a man chooses to call Raphael a dauber, you can't prove he is wrong; and literary work is just as hard to judge.

I then spoke of the dangers to which science is exposed by the undue prominence and weight of men who successfully apply scientific knowledge to practical purposes--engineers, chemical inventors, etc., etc.; said it appeared to me that a Minister having such order at his disposal would find it very difficult to resist the pressure brought by such people as against the man of high science who had not happened to have done anything to strike the popular mind.

Discussed the possibility of submission of names by somebody for the approval and choice of the Crown. For Science, I thought the Royal Society Council might discharge that duty very fairly. I thought that the Academy of Berlin presented people for the Pour le Merite, but Lord Salisbury thought not.

In the course of conversation I spoke of Hooker's case as a glaring example of the wrong way of treating distinguished men. Observed that though I did not personally care for or desire the inst.i.tution of such honorary order, yet I thought it was a mistake in policy for the Crown as the fountain of honour to fail in recognition of that which deserves honour in the world of Science, Letters, and Art.

Lord Salisbury smilingly summed up. "Well, it seems that you don't desire the establishment of such an order, but that if you were in my place you would establish it," to which I a.s.sented.

Said he had spoken to Leighton, who thought well of the project.

[It was not long, however, before he received imperative notice to quit town with all celerity. He fell ill with what turned out to be pleurisy; and after recruiting at Ilkley, went again to Switzerland.]

4 Marlborough Place, June 27, 1887.

My dear Foster,

...I am very sorry that it will be impossible for me to attend [the meeting of committee down for the following Wednesday]. If I am well enough to leave the house I must go into the country that day to attend the funeral of my wife's brother-in-law and my very old friend Fanning, of whom I may have spoken to you. He has been slowly sinking for some time, and this morning we had news of his death.

Things have been very crooked for me lately. I had a conglomerate of engagements of various degrees of importance in the latter half of last week, and had to forgo them all, by reason of a devil in the shape of muscular rheumatism of one side, which entered me last Wednesday, and refuses to be wholly exorcised (I believe it is my Jubilee Honour).

[(On the same day he describes this to Sir J. Evans:--] "I have hardly been out of the house as far as my garden, and not much off my bed or sofa since I saw you last. I have had an affection of the muscles of one side of my body, the proper name of which I do not know, but the similitude thereof is a bird of prey periodically digging in his claws and stopping your breath in a playful way.") Along with it, and I suppose the cause of it, a regular liver upset. I am very seedy yet, and even if Fanning's death had not occurred I doubt if I should have been ready to face the Tyndall dinner.

[The reference to this "Tyndall dinner" is explained in the following letters, which also refer to a meeting of the London University, in which the projects of reform which he himself supported met with a smart rebuff.]