Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 47

I should have written to you yesterday, but the book did not arrive till this morning. Very many thanks for it. It looks appetising, and I look forward to the next course.

As to the Oxford lecture, "Verily, thou almost persuadest me," though I thought I had finished lecturing. I really should like to do it; but I have a scruple about accepting an engagement of this important kind, which I might not be able to fulfil.

I am astonis.h.i.+ngly restored, and have not had a trace of heart trouble for months. But I am quite aware that I am, physically speaking, on good behaviour--and maintain my condition only by taking an amount of care which is very distasteful to me.

Furthermore, my wife's health is, I am sorry to say, extremely precarious. She was very ill a fortnight ago, and to my very great regret, as well as hers, we are obliged to give up our intended visit to Balliol to-morrow. She is quite unfit to travel, and I cannot leave her here alone for three days.

I think the state of affairs ought to be clear to the Vice-Chancellor.

If, in his judgment, it const.i.tutes no hindrance, and he does me the honour to send the invitation, I shall accept it.

To the same:--]

Hodeslea, June 7, 1892.

I am afraid that age hath not altogether cleared the spirit of mischief out of my blood; and there is something so piquant in the notion of my acting as subst.i.tute for Gladstone that I will be ready if necessity arises.

Of course I will keep absolutely clear of Theology. But I have long had fermenting in my head, some notions about the relations of Ethics and Evolution (or rather the absence of such as are commonly supposed), which I think will be interesting to such an audience as I may expect.

"Without prejudice," as the lawyers say, that is the sort of topic that occurs to me.

[To the same:--]

Hodeslea, October 30, 1892.

I had to go to London in the middle of last week about the Gresham University business, and I trust I have put a very long nail into the coffin of that scheme. For which good service you will forgive my delay in replying to your letter. I read all about your show--why not call it "George's Gorgeous," tout court?

I should think that there is no living man, who, on such an occasion, could intend and contrive to say so much and so well (in form) without ever rising above the level of antiquarian gossip.

My lecture would have been ready if the G.O.M. had failed you, but I am very glad to have six months' respite, as I now shall be able to write and rewrite it to my heart's content.

I will follow the Gladstonian precedent touching cap and gown--but I trust the Vice-Chancellor will not ask me to take part in a "Church Parade" and read the lessons. I couldn't--really.

As to the financial part of the business, to tell you the honest truth, I would much rather not be paid at all for a piece of work of this kind. I am no more averse to turning an honest penny by my brains than any one else in the ordinary course of things--quite the contrary; but this is not an ordinary occasion. However, this is a pure matter of taste, and I do not want to set a precedent which might be inconvenient to other people--so I agree to what you propose.

By the way, is there any type-writer who is to be trusted in Oxford?

Some time ago I sent a ma.n.u.script to a London type-writer, and to my great disgust I shortly afterwards saw an announcement that I was engaged on the topic.

[On the following day he writes to his wife, who was staying with her youngest daughter in town:--]

The Vice-Chancellor has written to me and I have fixed May--exact day by and by. Mrs. Romanes has written a crispy little letter to remind us of our promise to go there, and I have chirrupped back.

[The "chirrup" ran as follows:--]

Hodeslea, November 1, 1892.

My dear Mrs. Romanes,

I have just written to the Vice-Chancellor to say that I hope to be at his disposition any time next May.

My wife is "larking"--I am sorry to use such a word, but what she is pleased to tell me of her doings leaves me no alternative--in London, whither I go on Thursday to fetch her back--in chains, if necessary.

But I know, in the matter of being "taken in and done for" by your hospitable selves, I may, for once, speak for her as well as myself.

Don't ask anybody above the rank of a younger son of a Peer--because I shall not be able to go in to dinner before him or her--and that part of my dignity is naturally what I prize most. Would you not like me to come in my P.C. suit? All ablaze with gold, and costing a sum with which I could buy, oh! so many books!

Only if your late experiences should prompt you to instruct your other guests not to contradict me--don't. I rather like it.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Bon Voyage! You can tell Mr. Jones [The hotel-keeper in Madeira.] that I will have him brought before the Privy Council and fined, as in the good old days, if he does not treat you properly.

[This letter was afterwards published in Mrs. Romanes' Life of her husband, and three letters on that occasion, and particularly that in which Huxley tried to guard her from any malicious interpretation of his jests, are to be found on page 332.

On the afternoon of May 18, 1893, he delivered at Oxford his Romanes Lecture, on "Evolution and Ethics," a study of the relation of ethical and evolutionary theory in the history of philosophy, the text of which is that while morality is necessarily a part of the order of nature, still the ethical principle is opposed to the self-regarding principle on which cosmic evolution has taken place. Society is a part of nature, but would be dissolved by a return to the natural state of simple warfare among individuals. It follows that ethical systems based on the principles of cosmic evolution are not logically sound. A study of the essays of the foregoing ten years will show that he had more than once enunciated this thesis, and it had been one of the grounds of his long-standing criticism of Mr. Spencer's system.

The essence of this criticism is given in portions of two letters to Mr. F.J. Gould, who, when preparing a pamphlet on "Agnosticism writ Plain" in 1889, wrote to inquire what was the dividing line between the two Agnostic positions.]

As between Mr. Spencer and myself, the question is not one of "a dividing line," but of entire and complete divergence as soon as we leave the foundations laid by Hume, Kant, and Hamilton, who are MY philosophical forefathers. To my mind the "Absolute" philosophies were finally knocked on the head by Hamilton; and the "Unknowable" in Mr.

Spencer's sense is merely the Absolute redivivus, a sort of ghost of an extinct philosophy, the name of a negation hocus-pocussed into a sham thing. If I am to talk about that of which I have no knowledge at all, I prefer the good old word "G.o.d", about which there is no scientific pretence.

To my mind Agnosticism is simply the critical att.i.tude of the thinking faculty, and the definition of it should contain no dogmatic implications of any kind. I, for my part, do not know whether the problem of existence is insoluble or not; or whether the ultimate cause (if there be such a thing) is unknown or not. That of which I am certain is, that no satisfactory solution of this problem has been offered, and that, from the nature of the intellectual faculty, I am unable to conceive that such a solution will ever be found. But on that, as on all other questions, my mind is open to consider any new evidence that may be offered.

[And later:--]

I have long been aware of the manner in which my views have been confounded with those of Mr. Spencer, though no one was more fully aware of our divergence than the latter. Perhaps I have done wrongly in letting the thing slide so long, but I was anxious to avoid a breach with an old friend...

Whether the Unknowable or any other Noumenon exists or does not exist, I am quite clear I have no knowledge either way. So with respect to whether there is anything behind Force or not, I am ignorant; I neither affirm nor deny. The tendency to idolatry in the human mind is so strong that faute de mieux it falls down and wors.h.i.+ps negative abstractions, as much the creation of the mind as the stone idol of the hands. The one object of the Agnostic (in the true sense) is to knock this tendency on the head whenever or wherever it shows itself. Our physical science is full of it.

[Nevertheless, the doctrine seemed to take almost everybody by surprise. The drift of the lecture was equally misunderstood by critics of opposite camps. Huxley was popularly supposed to hold the same views as Mr. Spencer--for were they not both Evolutionists? On general attention being called to the existing difference between their views, some jumped to the conclusion that Huxley was offering a general recantation of evolution, others that he had discarded his former theories of ethics. On the one hand he was branded as a deserter from free thought; on the other, hailed almost as a convert to orthodoxy. It was irritating, but little more than he had expected. The conditions of the lecture forbade any reference to politics or religion; hence much had to be left unsaid, which was supplied next year in the Prolegomena prefacing the re-issue of the lecture.

After all possible tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and compression, he still feared the lecture would be too long, and would take more than an hour to deliver, especially if the audience was likely to be large, for the numbers must be considered in reference to the speed of speaking. But he had taken even more pains than usual with it.] "The Lecture," [he writes to Professor Romanes on April 19], "has been in type for weeks, if not months, as I have been taking an immensity of trouble over it. And I can judge of nothing till it is in type." [But this very precaution led to unexpected complications. When the proposition to lecture was first made to him, he was not sent a copy of the statute ordering that publication in the first instance should lie with the University Press; and in view of the proviso that "the Lecturer is free to publish on his own behalf in any other form he may like," he had taken Professor Romanes' original reference to publication by the Press to be a subsidiary request to which he gladly a.s.sented. However, a satisfactory arrangement was speedily arrived at with the publishers; Huxley remarking:--]

All I have to say is, do not let the University be in any way a loser by the change. If the V.-C. thinks there is any risk of this, I will gladly add to what Macmillan pays. That matter can be settled between us.

[However, he had not forgotten the limitation of his subject in respect of religion and politics, and he repeatedly refers to his careful avoidance of these topics as an "egg-dance." And wis.h.i.+ng to rea.s.sure Mr. Romanes on this head, he writes on April 22:--]

There is no allusion to politics in my lecture, nor to any religion except Buddhism, and only to the speculative and ethical side of that.

If people apply anything I say about these matters to modern philosophies, except evolutionary speculation, and religions, that is not my affair. To be honest, however, unless I thought they would, I should never have taken all the pains I have bestowed on these 36 pages.

[But these words conjured up terrible possibilities, and Mr. Romanes wrote back in great alarm to ask the exact state of the case. The two following letters show that the alarm was groundless:--]

Hodeslea, April 26, 1893.

My dear Romanes,

I fear, or rather hope, that I have given you a very unnecessary scare.

You may be quite sure, I think, that, while I should have refused to give the lecture if any pledge of a special character had been proposed to me, I have felt very strongly bound to you to take the utmost care that no shadow of a just cause for offence should be given, even to the most orthodox of Dons.