Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 13

[The sympathy of the convalescent appears in various letters to friends who were ill. Thus, in reply to Mr. Hyde Clarke, the philologist and, like himself, a member of the Ethnological Society, he writes:--]

November 18, 1873.

I am glad to learn two things from your note--first, that you are getting better; second, that there is hope of some good coming out of that Ashantee row, if only in the shape of rare vocables.

My attention is quite turned away from Anthropological matters at present, but I will bear your question in mind if opportunity offers.

[A letter to Professor Rolleston at Oxford gives a lively account of his own ailments, which could only have been written by one now recovering from them, while the illness of another friend raised a delicate point of honour, which he laid before the judgment of Mr.

Darwin, more especially as the latter had been primarily concerned in the case.]

4 Marlborough Place, October 16, 1873.

My dear Rolleston,

A note which came from Mrs. Rolleston to my wife the other day, kindly answering some inquiries of ours about the Oxford Middle Cla.s.s Examination, gave us but a poor account of your health.

This kind of thing won't do, you know. Here is -- ill, and I doing all I can to persuade him to go away and take care of himself, and now comes ill news of you.

Is it dyspeps again? If so follow in my steps. I mean to go about the country, with somebody who can lecture, as the "horrid example"--cured. Nothing but gross and disgusting intemperance, Sir, was the cause of all my evil. And now that I have been a teetotaller for nine months, and have cut down my food supply to about half of what I used to eat, the enemy is beaten.

I have carried my own permissive bill, and no canteen (except for my friends who still sit in darkness) is allowed on the premises. And as this is the third letter I have written before breakfast (a thing I never could achieve in the days when I wallowed in the stye of Epicurus), you perceive that I am as vigorous as ever I was in my life.

Let me have news of you, and believe me,

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Athenaeum Club, November 3, 1873.

My dear Darwin,

You will have heard (in fact I think I mentioned the matter when I paid you my pleasant visit the other day) that -- is ill and obliged to go away for six months to a warm climate. It is a great grief to me, as he is a man for whom I have great esteem and affection, apart from his high scientific merits, and his symptoms are such as cause very grave anxiety. I shall be happily disappointed if that accursed consumption has not got hold of him.

The college authorities have behaved as well as they possibly could to him, and I do not suppose that his enforced retirement for a while gives him the least pecuniary anxiety, as his people are all well off, and he himself has an income apart from his college pay. Nevertheless, under such circ.u.mstances, a man with half a dozen children always wants all the money he can lay hands on; and whether he does or no, he ought not to be allowed to deprive himself of any, which leads me to the gist of my letter. His name was on your list as one of those hearty friends who came to my rescue last year, and it was the only name which made me a little uneasy, for I doubted whether it was right for a man with his responsibilities to make sacrifices of this sort.

However, I stifled that feeling, not seeing what else I could do without wounding him. But now my conscience won't let me be, and I do not think that any consideration ought to deter me from getting his contribution back to him somehow or other. There is no one to whose judgment on a point of honour I would defer more readily than yours, and I am quite sure you will agree with me. I really am quite unhappy and ashamed to think of myself as vigorous and well at the expense of his denying himself any rich man's caprice he might take a fancy to.

So, my dear, good friend, let me know what his contribution was, that I may get it back to him somehow or other, even if I go like Nicodemus privily and by night to his bankers.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

CHAPTER 2.5.

1874.

[My father's health continued fairly good in 1874, and while careful to avoid excessive strain he was able to undertake nearly as much as before his illness outside his regular work at South Kensington, the Royal Society, and on the Royal Commission. To this year belong three important essays, educational and philosophical. From February 25 to March 3 he was at Aberdeen, staying first with Professor Bain, afterwards with Mr. Webster, in fulfilment of his first duty as Lord Rector to deliver an address to the students. (It may be noted that between 1860 and 1890 he and Professor Bain were the only Lord Rectors of Aberdeen University elected on non-political grounds.) Taking as his subject "Universities, Actual and Ideal," he then proceeded to vindicate, historically and philosophically, the claims of natural science to take the place from which it had so long been ousted in the universal culture which a University professes to give. More especially he demanded an improved system of education in the medical school, a point to which he gave practical effect in the Council of the University.]

In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a University the force of living example should fire the student with a n.o.ble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning; a n.o.bler gift than the power of increasing knowledge; by so much greater and n.o.bler than these, as the moral nature of man is greater than the intellectual; for veracity is the heart of morality.

[("Collected Essays" 3 189 sqq.)

As for the "so-called 'conflict of studies,'" he exclaims:--]

One might as well inquire which of the terms of a Rule of Three sum one ought to know in order to get a trustworthy result. Practical life is such a sum, in which your duty multiplied into your capacity and divided by your circ.u.mstances gives you the fourth term in the proportion, which is your deserts, with great accuracy.

[The knowledge on which medical practice should be based is] "the sort of practical, familiar, finger-end knowledge which a watchmaker has of a watch," [the knowledge gained in the dissecting-room and laboratory.]

Until each of the greater truths of anatomy and physiology has become an organic part of your minds--until you would know them if you were roused and questioned in the middle of the night, as a man knows the geography of his native place and the daily life of his home. That is the sort of knowledge which, once obtained, is a lifelong possession.

Other occupations may fill your minds--it may grow dim and seem to be forgotten--but there it is, like the inscription on a battered and defaced coin, which comes out when you warm it.

[Hence the necessity to concentrate the attention on these cardinal truths, and to discard a number of extraneous subjects commonly supposed to be requisite whether for general culture of the medical student or to enable him to correct the possible mistakes of druggists. Against this "Latin fetish" in medical education, as he used to call it, he carried on a lifelong campaign, as may be gathered from his published essays on medical education, and from letters given in later chapters of this book. But there is another side to such limitation in professional training. Though literature is an essential in the preliminary, general education, culture is not solely dependent upon cla.s.sics.]

Moreover, I would urge that a thorough study of Human Physiology is in itself an education broader and more comprehensive than much that pa.s.ses under that name. There is no side of the intellect which it does not call into play, no region of human knowledge into which either its roots or its branches do not extend; like the Atlantic between the Old and New Worlds, its waves wash the sh.o.r.es of the two worlds of matter and of mind; its tributary streams flow from both; through its waters, as yet unfurrowed by the keel of any Columbus, lies the road, if such there be, from the one to the other; far away from that North-west Pa.s.sage of mere speculation, in which so many brave souls have been hopelessly frozen up.

[Of the address he writes to his wife, February 27:--]

I have just come back from the hall in which the address was delivered, somewhat tired. The hall was very large, and contained, I suppose, a couple of thousand people, and the students made a terrific row at intervals, though they were quiet enough at times. As the address took me an hour and a half to deliver, and my voice has been very shaky ever since I have been here, I did not dare to put too much strain upon it, and I suspect that the people at the end of the hall could have heard very little. However, on the whole, it went off better than I expected.

[And to Professor Baynes:--]

I am very glad you liked my address. The students were abnormally quiet for the first half-hour, and then made up for their reticence by a regular charivari for the rest of the time. However, I was consoled by hearing that they were much quieter than usual.

Dr. John Muir's appreciation is worth having. It did not occur to me that what I had to say would interest people out of Britain, but to my surprise I had an application from a German for permission to translate the address the other day.

[Again to his wife, March 1:--]

...I was considerably tired after my screed on Friday, but Bain and I took a long walk, and I was fresh again by dinner-time. I dined with the Senators at a hotel in the town, and of course had to make a speech or two. However I cut all that as fast as I could. They were all very apologetic for the row the students made. After the dinner one of the Professors came to ask me if I would have any objection to attend service in the College Chapel on Sunday, as the students would like it. I said I was quite ready to do anything it was customary for the Rector to do, and so this morning in half an hour's time I shall be enduring the pains and penalties of a Presbyterian service.

There was to have been another meeting of the University Court yesterday, but the Princ.i.p.al was suffering so much from an affection of the lungs that I adjourned the meeting till to-morrow. Did I tell you that I carried all my resolutions about improving the medical curriculum? Fact, though greatly to my astonishment. To-morrow we go in for some reforms in the arts curriculum, and I expect that the job will be tougher.

I send you a couple of papers--"Scotsman," with a very good leading article, and the "Aberdeen Herald" also with a leading article, which is as much favourable as was to be expected...The Websters are making me promise to bring you and one of the children here next autumn. They are wonderfully kind people.

March 2.

My work here finishes to-day. There is a meeting of the Council at one o'clock, and before that I am to go and look over laboratories and collections with sundry Professors. Then there is the supper at half-past eight and the inevitable speeches, for which I am not in the least inclined at present. I went officially to the College Chapel yesterday, and went through a Presbyterian service for the first time in my life. May it be the last!

Then to lunch at Professor Struthers' and back here for a small dinner-party. I am standing it all well, for the weather is villainous and there is no getting any exercise. I shall leave here by the twelve o'clock train to-morrow.

[On August 2 he delivered an address on "Joseph Priestley" ("Collected Essays" 3 1) at Birmingham, on the occasion of the presentation of a statue of Priestley to that town. The biography of this pioneer of science and of political reform, who was persecuted for opinions that have in less than a century become commonplaces of orthodox thought, suggested a comparison between those times and this, and evoked a sincere if not very enthusiastic tribute to one who had laboured to better the world, not for the sake of worldly honour, but for the sake of truth and right.

As the way to Birmingham lay through Oxford, he was asked by Professor Ray Lankester, then a Fellow of Exeter College, if he could not break his journey there, and inspect the results of his investigations on Lymnaeus. The answer was as follows:--]

We go to Birmingham on Friday by the three o'clock train, but there is no chance of stopping at Oxford either going or coming, so that unless you bring a Lymnaeus or two (under guise of periwinkles for refreshment) to the carriage door I shall not be able to see them.

[The following letters refer both to this address on Priestley, and to the third of the important addresses of this year, that "On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History" ("Collected Essays" 1 199, see also below). The latter was delivered at Belfast before the British a.s.sociation under Tyndall's presidency. It appears that only a month before, he had not so much as decided upon his subject--indeed, was thinking of something quite different.

The first allusion in these letters is to a concluding phase of Tyndall's controversy upon the claims of the late Princ.i.p.al Forbes in the matter of Glacier theory:--]