Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 24

The creature read my answer, for he made me pay three halfpence extra (I believe he spent it on toffy), and yet was so stupid as not to see that meaning to fix next Monday or Tuesday, I opened my diary to give the dates in order that there should be no mistake, and found Monday 28 and Tuesday 29.

And I suppose the little beast would say he did not know I opened it in October instead of November!

I hate such mean ways. Hang all telegraph boys!

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Monday December 2, if you have nothing against it, and lunch if Mrs.

Knowles will give me some.

[The article was finished by the middle of December and duly sent to the editor, under the t.i.tle of "Rousseau and Rousseauism." But fearing that this t.i.tle would surely attract attention among the working-men for whom it was specially designed, Mr. Knowles suggested instead the "Natural Inequality of Men," under which name it actually appeared in January. So, too, in the case of a companion article in March, the editorial pen was responsible for the change from the arid possibilities of "Capital and Labour" to the more attractive t.i.tle of "Capital the Mother of Labour."

With regard to this article and a further project of extending his discussion of the subject, he writes:--]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, December 14, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

I am very glad you think the article will go. It is longer than I intended, but I cannot accuse myself of having wasted words, and I have left out several things that might have been said, but which can come in by and by.

As to t.i.tle, do as you like, but that you propose does not seem to me quite to hit the mark. "Political Humbug: Liberty and Equality," struck me as adequate, but my wife declares it is improper. "Political Fictions" might be supposed to refer to Dizzie's novels! How about "The Politics of the Imagination: Liberty and Inequality"?

I should like to have some general t.i.tle that would do for the "letters" which I see I shall have to write. I think I will make six of them after the fas.h.i.+on of my "Working Men's Lectures," as thus: (1) Liberty and Equality; (2) Rights of Man; (3) Property; (4) Malthus; (5) Government, the province of the State; (6) Law-making and Law-breaking.

I understand you will let me republish them, as soon as the last is out, in a cheap form. I am not sure I will not put them in the form of "Lectures" rather than "Letters."

Did you ever read Henry George's book "Progress and Poverty"? It is more d.a.m.neder nonsense than poor Rousseau's blether. And to think of the popularity of the book! But I ought to be grateful, as I can cut and come again at this wonderful dish.

The mischief of it is I do not see how I am to finish the introduction to my Essays, unless I put off sending you a second dose until March.

I will send back the revise as quickly as possible.

Ever yours very truly,

T.H. Huxley.

You do not tell me that there is anything to which Spencer can object, so I suppose there is nothing.

[And in an undated letter to Sir J. Hooker, he says:--]

I am glad you think well of the "Human Inequality" paper. My wife has persuaded me to follow it up with a view to making a sort of "Primer of Politics" for the ma.s.ses--by and by. "There's no telling what you may come to, my boy," said the Bishop who reproved his son for staring at John Kemble, and I may be a pamphleteer yet! But really it is time that somebody should treat the people to common sense.

[However, immediately after the appearance of this first article on Human Inequality, he changed his mind about the Letters to Working Men, and resolved to continue what he had to say in the form of essays in the "Nineteenth Century".

He then judged it not unprofitable to call public attention to the fallacies which first found their way into practical politics through the disciples of Rousseau; one of those speculators of whom he remarks ("Collected Essays" 1 312) that] "busied with deduction from their ideal 'ought to be,' they overlooked the 'what has been,' the 'what is,' and the 'what can be.'" "Many a long year ago," [he says in Natural Rights and Political Rights (1 336)], "I fondly imagined that Hume and Kant and Hamilton having slain the 'Absolute,' the thing must, in decency, decease. Yet, at the present time, the same hypostatised negation, sometimes thinly disguised under a new name, goes about in broad daylight, in company with the dogmas of absolute ethics, political and other, and seems to be as lively as ever." This was to his mind one of those instances of wrong thinking which lead to wrong acting--the postulating a general principle based upon insufficient data, and the deduction from it of many and far-reaching practical consequences. This he had always strongly opposed. His essay of 1871, "Administrative Nihilism," was directed against a priori individualism; and now he proceeded to restate the arguments against a priori political reasoning in general, which seemed to have been forgotten or overlooked, especially by the advocates of compulsory socialism. And here it is possible to show in some detail the care he took, as was his way, to refresh his knowledge and bring it up to date, before writing on any special point. It is interesting to see how thoroughly he went to work, even in a subject with which he was already fairly acquainted.

As in the controversy of 1889 I find a list of near a score of books consulted, so here one note-book contains an a.n.a.lysis of the origin and early course of the French Revolution, especially in relation to the speculations of the theorists; the declaration of the rights of man in 1789 is followed by parallels from Mably's "Droits et Devoirs du Citoyen" and "De la Legislation", and by a full transcript of the 1793 Declaration, with notes on Robespierre's speech at the Convention a fortnight later. There are copious notes from Dunoyer, who is quoted in the article, while the references to Rocquain's "Esprit Revolutionnaire" led to an English translation of the work being undertaken, to which he contributed a short preface in 1891.

It was the same with other studies. He loved to visualise his object clearly. The framework of what he wished to say would always be drawn out first. In any historical matter he always worked with a map. In natural history he well knew the importance of studying distribution and its bearing upon other problems; in civil history he would draw maps to ill.u.s.trate either the conditions of a period or the spread of a civilising nation. For instance, among sketches of the sort which remain, I have one of the h.e.l.lenic world, marked off in 25-mile circles from Delos as centre; and a similar one for the Phoenician world, starting from Tyre. Sketch maps of Palestine and Mesopotamia, with notes from the best authorities on the geography of the two countries, belong in all probability to the articles on "The Flood" and "Hasisadra's Adventure." To realise clearly the size, position, and relation of the parts to the whole, was the mechanical instinct of the engineer which was so strong in him.

The four articles which followed in quick succession on "The Natural Inequality of Man," "Natural and Political Rights," "Capital the Mother of Labour," and "Government," appeared in the January, February, March, and May numbers of the "Nineteenth Century", and, as was said above, are directed against a priori reasoning in social philosophy. The first, which appeared simultaneously with Mr. Herbert Spencer's article on "Justice," in the "Nineteenth Century", a.s.sails, on the ground of fact and history, the dictum that men are born free and equal, and have a natural right to freedom and equality, so that property and political rights are a matter of contract. History denies that they thus originated; and, in fact, "proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother." Yet, in justice to Rousseau and the influence he wielded, he adds:--]

It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.

Thus if, in their plain and obvious sense, the doctrines which Rousseau advanced are so easily upset, it is probable that he had in his mind something which is different from that sense.

[When they sought speculative grounds to justify the empirical truth:--]

that it is desirable in the interests of society, that all men should be as free as possible, consistently with those interests, and that they should all be equally bound by the ethical and legal obligations which are essential to social existence, "the philosophers," as is the fas.h.i.+on of speculators, scorned to remain on the safe if humble ground of experience, and preferred to prophesy from the sublime cloudland of the a priori.

[The second of these articles is an examination of Henry George's doctrines as set forth in "Progress and Poverty". His relation to the physiocrats is shown in a preliminary a.n.a.lysis of the term "natural rights which have no wrongs," and are antecedent to morality, from which a.n.a.lysis are drawn the results of confounding natural with moral rights.

Here again is the note of justice to an argument in an unsound shape (page 369): "There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued." And a trifling abatement of the universal and exclusive form of Henry George's principle may make it true, while even unamended it may lead to opposite conclusions--to the justification of several owners.h.i.+p in land as well as in any other form of property.

The third essay of the series, "Capital the Mother of Labour"

("Collected Essays" 9 147), was an application of biological methods to social problems, designed to show that the extreme claims of labour as against capital are ill-founded.

In the last article, "Government," he traces the two extreme developments of absolute ethics, as shown in anarchy and regimentation, or unrestrained individualism and compulsory socialism. The key to the position, of course, lies in the examination of the premisses upon which these superstructures are raised, and history shows that:--]

So far from the preservation of liberty and property and the securing of equal rights being the chief and most conspicuous object aimed at by the archaic politics of which we know anything, it would be a good deal nearer the truth to say that they were federated absolute monarchies, the chief purpose of which was the maintenance of an established church for the wors.h.i.+p of the family ancestors.

[These articles stirred up critics of every sort and kind; socialists who denounced him as an individualist, land nationalisers who had not realised the difference between communal and national owners.h.i.+p, or men who denounced him as an arm-chair cynic, careless of the poor and ignorant of the meaning of labour. Mr. Spencer considered the chief attack to be directed against his position; the regimental socialists as against theirs, and:--]

as an attempt to justify those who, content with the present, are opposed to all endeavours to bring about any fundamental change in our social arrangements (ib. page 423).

So far from this, he continues:--]

Those who have had the patience to follow me to the end will, I trust, have become aware that my aim has been altogether different. Even the best of modern civilisations appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express my opinion that, if there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over Nature which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of Want, with its concomitant physical and moral degradation, among the ma.s.ses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable consummation. What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction?

a.s.suredly, if I believed that any of the schemes. .h.i.therto proposed for bringing about social amelioration were likely to attain their end, I should think what remains to me of life well spent in furthering it.

But my interest in these questions did not begin the day before yesterday; and, whether right or wrong, it is no hasty conclusion of mine that we have small chance of doing rightly in this matter (or indeed in any other) unless we think rightly. Further, that we shall never think rightly in politics until we have cleared our minds of delusions, and more especially of the philosophical delusions which, as I have endeavoured to show, have infested political thought for centuries. My main purpose has been to contribute my mite towards this essential preliminary operation. Ground must be cleared and levelled before a building can be properly commenced; the labour of the navvy is as necessary as that of the architect, however much less honoured; and it has been my humble endeavour to grub up those old stumps of the a priori which stand in the way of the very foundations of a sane political philosophy.

To those who think that questions of the kind I have been discussing have merely an academic interest, let me suggest once more that a century ago Robespierre and St. Just proved that the way of answering them may have extremely practical consequences.

[Without pretending to offer any offhand solution for so vast a problem, he suggests two points in conclusion. One, that in considering the matter we should proceed from the known to the unknown, and take warning from the results of either extreme in self-government or the government of a family; the other, that the central point is] "the fact that the natural order of things--the order, that is to say, as unmodified by human effort--does not tend to bring about what we understand as welfare." [The population question has first to be faced.

The following letters cover the period up to the trip to the Canaries, already alluded to:--]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, January 6, 1890.

My dear Foster,

That capital photograph reached me just as we were going up to town (invited for the holidays by our parents), and I put it in my bag to remind me to write to you. Need I say that I brought it back again without having had the grace to send a line of thanks? By way of making my peace, I have told the Fine Art Society to send you a copy of the engraving of my sweet self. I have not had it framed--firstly, because it is a hideous nuisance to be obliged to hang a frame one may not like; and secondly, because by possibility you might like some other portrait better, in which case, if you will tell me, I will send that other. I should like you to have something by way of reminder of T.H.H.

When Harry [His younger son.] has done his work at Bart's at the end of March I am going to give him a run before he settles down to practice.

Probably we shall go to the Canaries. I hear that the man who knows most about them is Dr. Guillemard, a Cambridge man. "Kennst ihn du wohl?" Perhaps he might give me a wrinkle.

With our united best wishes to you all.