Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 49

I think the remnant of influenza microbes must have held a meeting in my corpus after the lecture, and resolved to reconquer the territory.

But I mean to beat the brutes.

"I shall be interested," [he writes to Mr. Romanes,] "in the article on the lecture. The papers have been asinine." This was an article which Mr. Romanes had told him was about to appear in the "Oxford Magazine".

And on the 30th he writes again.]

Many thanks for the "Oxford Magazine". The writer of the article is about the only critic I have met with yet who understands my drift. My wife says it is a "sensible" article, but her cla.s.sification is a very simple one--sensible articles are those that contain praise, "stupid"

those that show insensibility to my merits!

Really I thought it very sensible, without regard to the plums in the pudding.

[But the criticism, "sensible" not merely in the humorous sense, which he most fully appreciated was that of Professor Seth, in a lecture ent.i.tled "Man and Nature." He wrote to him on October 27:--]

Dear Professor Seth,

A report of your lecture on "Man and Nature" has just reached me.

Accept my cordial thanks for defending me, and still more for understanding me.

I really have been unable to understand what my critics have been dreaming of when they raise the objection that the ethical process being part of the cosmic process cannot be opposed to it.

They might as well say that artifice does not oppose nature, because it is part of nature in the broadest sense.

However, it is one of the conditions of the "Romanes Lecture" that no allusion shall be made to religion or politics. I had to make my omelette without breaking any of those eggs, and the task was not easy.

The prince of scientific expositors, Faraday, was once asked, "How much may a popular lecturer suppose his audience knows?" He replied emphatically, "NOTHING." Mine was not exactly a popular audience, but I ought not to have forgotten Faraday's rule.

Yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[A letter of congratulation to Lord Farrer on his elevation to the peerage contains an ironical reference to the general tone of the criticisms on his lecture:--]

Hodeslea, June 5, 1893.

CI DEVANT CITOYEN PETION (autrefois le vertueux),

You have lost all chance of leading the forces of the County Council to the attack of the Horse-Guards.

You will become an emigre, and John Burns will have to content himself with the heads of the likes of me. As the Jacobins said of Lavoisier, the Republic has no need of men of science.

But this prospect need not interfere with sending our hearty congratulations to Lady Farrer and yourself.

As for your criticisms, don't you know that I am become a reactionary and secret friend of the clerics?

My lecture is really an effort to put the Christian doctrine that Satan is the Prince of this world upon a scientific foundation.

Just consider it in this light, and you will understand why I was so warmly welcomed in Oxford. (N.B.--The only time I spoke before was in 1860, when the great row with Samuel came off!!)

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, July 15, 1893.

My dear Skelton,

I fear I must admit that even a Gladstonian paper occasionally tells the truth. They never mean to, but we all have our lapses from the rule of life we have laid down for ourselves, and must be charitable.

The fact is, I got influenza in the spring, and have never managed to shake right again, any tendency that way being well counteracted by the Romanes lecture and its accompaniments.

So we are off to the Maloja to-morrow. It mended up the shaky old heart-pump five years ago, and I hope will again.

I have been in Orkney, and believe in the air, but I cannot say quite so much for the scenery. I thought it just a wee little bit, shall I say, bare? But then I have a pa.s.sion for mountains.

I shall be right glad to know what your H.O.M. [The "Old Man of Hoy," a pseudonym under which Sir J. Skelton wrote.] has to say about Ethics and Evolution. You must remember that my lecture was a kind of egg-dance. Good manners bound me over to say nothing offensive to the Christians in the amphitheatre (I was in the arena), and truthfulness, on the other hand, bound me to say nothing that I did not fully mean.

Under these circ.u.mstances one has to leave a great many i's undotted and t's uncrossed.

Pray remember me very kindly to Mrs. Skelton, and believe me,

Yours ever,

T.H. Huxley.

[And again on October 17:--]

Ask your Old Man of Hoy to be so good as to suspend judgment until the Lecture appears again with an appendix in that collection of volumes the bulk of which appals me.

Didn't I see somewhere that you had been made Poor Law pope, or something of the sort? I congratulate the poor more than I do you, for it must be a weary business trying to mend the irremediable. (No, I am NOT glancing at the whitewas.h.i.+ng of Mary.)

[Here may be added two later letters bearing in part upon the same subject:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, March 23, 1894.

Dear Sir,

I ought to have thanked you before now for your letter about Nietzsche's works, but I have not much working time, and I find letter-writing a burden, which I am always trying to s.h.i.+rk.

I will look up Nietzsche, though I must confess that the profit I obtain from German authors on speculative questions is not usually great.

As men of research in positive science they are magnificently laborious and accurate. But most of them have no notion of style, and seem to compose their books with a pitchfork.

There are two very different questions which people fail to discriminate. One is whether evolution accounts for morality, the other whether the principle of evolution in general can be adopted as an ethical principle.

The first, of course, I advocate, and have constantly insisted upon.

The second I deny, and reject all so-called evolutional ethics based upon it.

I am yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.