Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 62

"'The surest-footed guide' is exactly true, to my feeling. Everybody else, among the great, used to disappoint one somewhere. He--never!"

"He was so splendidly brave that one can never repay one's debt to him for his example. He made all pretence about religious belief, and the kind of half-thinking things out, and putting up in a slovenly way with half-formed conclusions, seem the base thing which it really is."

CHAPTER 3.16.

1895.

[I have often regretted that I did not regularly take notes of my father's conversation, which was striking, not so much for the manner of it--though that was at once copious and crisp,--as for the strength and substance of what he said. Yet the striking fact, the bit of philosophy, the closely knitted argument, were perfectly unstudied, and as in other most interesting talkers, dropped into the flow of conversation as naturally as would the more ordinary experiences of less richly stored minds.

However, in January 1895 I was staying at Eastbourne, and jotted down several fragments of talk as nearly as I could recollect them.

Conversation not immediately noted down I hardly dare venture upon, save perhaps such an unforgettable phrase as this, which I remember his using one day as we walked on the hills near Great Hampden]:--"It is one of the most saddening things in life that, try as we may, we can never be certain of making people happy, whereas we can almost always be certain of making them unhappy."

[JANUARY 16.

At lunch he spoke of Dr. Louis Robinson's experiments upon simian characteristics in new-born children. He himself had called attention before to the incurved feet of infants, but the power of hanging by the hands was a new and important discovery. (Professor H.F. Osborn tells this story of his:--"When a fond mother calls upon me to admire her baby, I never fail to respond; and while cooing appropriately, I take advantage of an opportunity to gently ascertain whether the soles of its feet turn in, and tend to support my theory of arboreal descent.")

He expressed his disgust with a certain member of the Psychical Research Society for his att.i.tude towards spiritualism]: "He doesn't believe in it, yet lends it the cover of his name. He is one of the people who talk of the 'possibility' of the thing, who think the difficulties of disproving a thing as good as direct evidence in its favour."

[He thought it hard to be attacked for] "the contempt of the man of science" [when he was dragged into debate by Mr. Andrew Lang's "c.o.c.k Lane and Common Sense", he saying in a very polite letter}: "I am content to leave Mr. Lang the c.o.c.k Lane Ghost if I may keep common sense." "After all," [he added], "when a man has been through life and made his judgments, he must have come to a decision that there are some subjects it is not worth while going into."

JANUARY 18.

I referred to an article in the last "Nineteenth Century", and he said]:--"As soon as I saw it, I wrote, 'Knowles, my friend, you don't draw me this time. If a man goes on attributing statements to me which I have shown over and over again--giving chapter and verse--to be the contrary of what I did say, it is no good saying any more.'"

[But would not this course of silence leave the ma.s.s of the British public believing the statements of the writer?]

"The ma.s.s of the public will believe in ten years precisely the opposite of what they believe now. If a man is not a fool, it does him no harm to be believed one. If he really is a fool, it does matter.

There never was book so derided and scoffed at as my first book, "Man's Place in Nature", but it was true, and I don't know I was any the worse for the ridicule.

"People call me fond of controversy, but, as a fact, for the last twenty years at all events, I have never entered upon a controversy without some further purpose in view. As to Gladstone and his "Impregnable Rock", it wasn't worth attacking them for themselves; but it was most important at that moment to shake him in the minds of sensible men.

"The movement of modern philosophy is back towards the position of the old Ionian philosophers, but strengthened and clarified by sound scientific ideas. If I publish my criticism on Comte, I should have to re-write it as a summary of philosophical ideas from the earliest times. The thread of philosophical development is not on the lines usually laid down for it. It goes from Democritus and the rest to the Epicureans, and then the Stoics, who tried to reconcile it with popular theological ideas, just as was done by the Christian Fathers. In the Middle Ages it was entirely lost under the theological theories of the time; but reappeared with Spinoza, who, however, muddled it up with a lot of metaphysics which made him almost unintelligible.

"Plato was the founder of all the vague and unsound thinking that has burdened philosophy, deserting facts for possibilities, and then, after long and beautiful stories of what might be, telling you he doesn't quite believe them himself.

"A certain time since it was heresy to breathe a word against Plato; but I have a nice story of Sir Henry Holland. He used to have all the rising young men to breakfast, and turn out their latest ideas. One morning I went to breakfast with him, and we got into very intimate conversation, when he wound up by saying, 'In my opinion, Plato was an a.s.s! But don't tell any one I said so.'"

We talked on geographical teaching; he began by insisting on the need of a map of the earth (on the true scale) showing the insignificance of all elevations and depressions on the surface. Secondly, one should take any place as centre, and draw about it circles of 50 or 100 miles radius, and see what lies within them; and note the extent of the influence exerted by the central point. At the same time, one should always compare the British Isles to scale. For instance, the Aegean is about as big as Britain; while the smallness of Judaea is remarkable.

After the Exile, the Jewish part was about as big as the county of Gloucester. How few boys realise this, though they are taught cla.s.sical geography.

"The real chosen people were the Greeks. One of the most remarkable things about them is not only the smallness, but the late rise of Attica, whereas Magna Graecia flourished in the eighth century. The Greeks were doing everything--piracy, trade, fighting, expelling the Persians. Never was there so large a number of self-governing communities.

"They fell short of the Jews in morality. How curious is the tolerant att.i.tude of Socrates, like a modern man of the world talking to a young fellow who runs after the girls. The Jew, however he fell short in other respects, set himself a certain standard in cleanliness of life, and would not fall below it. The more creditable to him, because these vices were the offspring of the Semitic races among whom the Jew lived.

"There is a curious similarity between the position of the Jew in ancient times and what it is now. They were procurers and usurers among the Gentiles, yet many of them were singularly high-minded and pure.

All too with an intense clannishness, the secret of their success, and a sense of superiority to the Gentile which would prevent the meanest Jew from sitting at table with a proconsul.

"The most remarkable achievement of the Jew was to impose on Europe for eighteen centuries his own superst.i.tions--his ideas of the supernatural. Jahveh was no more than Zeus or Milcom; yet the Jew got established the belief in the inspiration of his Bible and his Law. If I were a Jew, I should have the same contempt as he has for the Christian who acted in this way towards me, who took my ideas and scorned me for clinging to them."

[January 21.

Yesterday evening he again declared that it was very hard for a man of peace like himself to have been dragged into so many controversies.] "I declare that for the last twenty years I have never attacked, but always fought in self-defence, counting Darwin, of course, as part of myself, for dear Darwin never could nor would defend himself. Before that, I admit I attacked --, but I could not trust the man." [A pause.]

"No, there was one other case, when I attacked without being directly a.s.sailed, and that was Gladstone. But it was good for other reasons. It has always astonished me how a man after fifty or sixty years of life among men could be so ignorant of the best way to handle his materials.

If he had only read Dana, he would have found his case much better stated than ever he stated it. He seemed never to have read the leading authorities on his own side."

[Speaking of the hesitation shown by the Senate of London University in grappling with a threatened obstacle to reform, he remarked]: "It is very strange how most men will do anything to evade responsibility."

[January 23.

At dinner the talk turned on plays. Mr. H.A. Jones had sent him "Judah", which he thought good, though] "there must be some hostility--except in the very greatest writers--between the dramatic and the literary faculties. I noticed many points I objected to, but felt sure they met with applause. Indeed in the theatre I have noticed that what I thought the worst blots on a piece invariably brought down the house."

[He remarked how the French, in dramatic just as in artistic matters, are so much better than the English in composition, in avoiding anything slipshod in the details, though the English artists draw just as well and colour perhaps better.

The following sketch of human character is not actually a fragment of conversation, though it might almost pa.s.s for such; it comes from a letter to Mrs. W.K. Clifford, of February 10, 1895:--]

Men, my dear, are very queer animals, a mixture of horse-nervousness, a.s.s-stubbornness and camel-malice--with an angel bobbing about unexpectedly like the apple in the posset, and when they can do exactly as they please, they are very hard to drive.

[Whatever he talked of, his talk never failed to impress those who conversed with him. One or two such impressions have been recorded. Mr.

Wilfrid Ward, whose interests lie chiefly in philosophy and theology, was his neighbour at Eastbourne, and in the "Nineteenth Century" for August 1896 has given various reminiscences of their friendly intercourse.

His conversation (he writes) was singularly finished, and (if I may so express it) clean cut; never long-winded or prosy; enlivened by vivid ill.u.s.trations. He was an excellent raconteur, and his stories had a stamp of their own which would have made them always and everywhere acceptable. His sense of humour and economy of words would have made it impossible, had he lived to ninety, that they should ever have been disparaged as symptoms of what has been called "anecdotage."

One drawback to conversation, however, he began to complain of during the later seventies.]

It is a great misfortune [he remarked to Professor Osborn] to be deaf in only one ear. Every time I dine out the lady sitting by my good ear thinks I am charming, but I make a mortal enemy of the lady on my deaf side.

[In ordinary conversation he never plunged at once into deep subjects.

His welcome to the newcomer was always of the simplest and most unstudied. He had no mannerisms nor affectation of phrase. He would begin at once to talk on everyday topics; an intimate friend he would perhaps rally upon some standing subject of persiflage. But the subsequent course of conversation adapted itself to his company. Deeper subjects were reached soon enough by those who cared for them; with others he was quite happy to talk of politics or people or his garden, yet, whatever he touched, never failing to infuse into it an unexpected interest.

In this connection, a typical story was told me by a great friend of mine, whom we had come to know through his marriage with an early friend of the family. "Going to call at Hodeslea," he said, "I was in some trepidation, because I didn't know anything about science or philosophy; but when your mother began to talk over old times with my wife, your father came across the room and sat down by me, and began to talk about the dog which we had brought with us. From that he got on to the different races of dogs and their origin and connections, all quite simply, and not as though to give information, but just to talk about something which obviously interested me. I shall never forget how extraordinarily kind it was of your father to take all this trouble in entertaining a complete stranger, and choosing a subject which put me at my ease at once, while he told me all manner of new and interesting things."

A few more fragments of his conversation have been preserved--the following by Mr. Wilfrid Ward. Speaking of Tennyson's conversation, he said:--

Doric beauty is its characteristic--perfect simplicity, without any ornament or anything artificial.

Telling how he had been to a meeting of the British Museum Trustees, he said:--]

After the meeting, Archbishop Benson helped me on with my great-coat. I was QUITE OVERCOME by this species of spiritual invest.i.ture. "Thank you, Archbishop," I said, "I feel as if I were receiving the pallium."

[Speaking of two men of letters, with neither of whom he sympathised, he once said:--]

Don't mistake me. One is a thinker and man of letters, the other is only a literary man. Erasmus was a man of letters, Gigadibs a literary man. A.B. is the incarnation of Gigadibs. I should call him Gigadibsius Optimus Maximus.

[Another time, referring to Dean Stanley's historical impressionability, as militating against his sympathies with Colenso, he said:--]

Stanley could believe in anything of which he had seen the supposed site, but was sceptical where he had not seen. At a breakfast at Monckton Milnes's, just at the time of the Colenso row, Milnes asked me my views on the Pentateuch, and I gave them. Stanley differed from me.

The account of Creation in Genesis he dismissed at once as unhistorical; but the call of Abraham, and the historical narrative of the Pentateuch, he accepted. This was because he had seen Palestine--but he wasn't present at the Creation.