Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 15

In the absence of Mr. Parker there was no one competent to criticise the paper from personal knowledge; but a word dropped as to the many changes in the accepted h.o.m.ologies of the ossicula auditus, elicited a masterly and characteristic exposition of the series of new facts, and the modifications of the theory they have led to, from Reichert's first observations down to the present time. The embryonic structures grew and shaped themselves on the board, and s.h.i.+fted their relations in accordance with the views of successive observers, until a graphic epitome of the progress of knowledge on the subject was completed.

He and Parker indeed (to whom he signs himself, "Ever yours amphibially") had been busy, not only throughout 1874, but for several years earlier, examining the development of the Amphibia, with a particular view to the whole theory of the vertebrate skull, for which he had done similar work in 1857 and 1858. Thus on May 4, 1870, he writes to Parker:--]

I read all the most important part of your Frog-paper last night, and a grand piece of work it is--more important, I think, in all its bearings than anything you have done yet.

From which premisses I am going to draw a conclusion which you do not expect, namely, that the paper must by no manner of means go into the Royal Society in its present shape. And for the reasons following:--

In the first place, the style is ultra-Parkerian. From a literary point of view, my dear friend, you remind me of nothing so much as a dog going home. He has a goal before him which he will certainly reach sooner or later, but first he is on this side the road, and now on that; anon, he stops to scratch at an ancient rat-hole, or maybe he catches sight of another dog, a quarter of a mile behind, and bolts off to have a friendly, or inimical sniff. In fact, his course is...(here a tangled maze is drawn) not --. In the second place, you must begin with an earlier stage...That is the logical starting-point of the whole affair.

Will you come and dine at 6 on Sat.u.r.day, and talk over the whole business?

If you have drawings of earlier stages you might bring them. I suspect that what is wanted might be supplied in plenty of time to get the paper in.

[In 1874 he re-dissects the skull of Axolotl to clear up the question as to the existence of the] "ventral head or pedicle" [which Parker failed to observe:] "If you disbelieve in that pedicle again, I shall be guilty of an act of personal violence." [Later,] "I am benevolent to all the world, being possessed of a dozen live axolotls and four or five big dead mesobranchs. Moreover, I am going to get endless Frogs and Toads by judicious exchange with Gunther. [Dr. A.C.L.G. Gunther, of the British Museum, where he was appointed Keeper of the Department of Zoology in 1875.] We will work up the Amphibia as they have not been done since they were crea-- I mean evolved."

[The question of the pedicle comes up again when he simplifies some of Parker's results as to the development of the Columella auris in the Frog.] "Your suprahyomandibular is nothing but the pedicle of the suspensorium over again. It has nothing whatever to do with the Columella auris...The whole thing will come out as simply as possible without any of your coalescences and combotherations. How you will hate me and the pedicle."

[Tracing the development of the columella was a long business, but it grew clearer as young frogs of various ages were examined.] "Don't be aggravated with yourself," [he writes to Parker in July,] "it's tough work, this here Frog." [And on August 5:] "I have worked over Toad and I have worked over Frog, and I tell an obstinate man that s.h.m.

[suprahyomandibular] is a figment--or a vessel, whichever said obstinate man pleases." [The same letter contains what he calls his final views on the columella, but by the end of the year he has gone further, and writes:--]

Be prepared to bust-up with all the envy of which your malignant nature is capable. The problem of the vertebrate skull is solved.

Fourteen segments or thereabouts in Amphioxus; all but one (barring possibilities about the ear capsule) aborted in higher vertebrata.

Skull and brain of Amphioxus shut up like an opera-hat in higher vertebrata. So! (Sketch in ill.u.s.tration.)

P.S.--I am sure you will understand the whole affair from this.

Probably published it already in "Nature!"

[A letter to the "Times" of July 8, 1874, on women's education, was evoked by the following circ.u.mstances. Miss Jex Blake's difficulties in obtaining a medical education have already been referred to. A further discouragement was her rejection at the Edinburgh examination.

Her papers, however, were referred to Huxley, who decided that certain answers were not up to the standard.]

As Miss Jex Blake may possibly think that my decision was influenced by prejudice against her cause, allow me to add that such prejudice as I labour under lies in the opposite direction. Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male s.e.x should be forcibly closed to women of vigour and capacity.

We have heard a great deal lately about the physical disabilities of women. Some of these alleged impediments, no doubt, are really inherent in their organisation, but nine-tenths of them are artificial--the products of their modes of life. I believe that nothing would tend so effectually to get rid of these creations of idleness, weariness, and that "over-stimulation of the emotions"

which, in plainer-spoken days, used to be called wantonness, than a fair share of healthy work, directed towards a definite object, combined with an equally fair share of healthy play, during the years of adolescence; and those who are best acquainted with the acquirements of an average medical pract.i.tioner will find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach that standard is like to prove exhausting to an ordinarily intelligent and well-educated young woman.

[The Marine Biological Station at Naples was still struggling for existence, and to my father's interest in it is do you the following letter, one of several to Dr. Dohrn, whose marriage took place this summer:--]

4 Marlborough Place, June 24, 1874.

My dear Dohrn,

Are you married yet or are you not? It is very awkward to congratulate a man upon what may not have happened to him, but I shall a.s.sume that you are a benedict, and send my own and my wife's and all the happy family's good wishes accordingly. May you have as good a wife and as much a "happy family" as I have, though I would advise you--the hardness of the times being considered--to be satisfied with fewer than seven members thereof.

I hear excellent accounts of the progress of the Station from Lankester, and I hope that it is now set on its legs permanently. As for the English contribution, you must look upon it simply as the expression of the hearty goodwill of your many friends in the land of fogs, and of our strong feeling that where you had sacrificed so much for the cause of science, we were, as a matter of duty,--quite apart from goodwill to you personally--bound to do what we could, each according to his ability.

Darwin is, in all things, n.o.ble and generous--one of those people who think it a privilege to let him help. I know he was very pleased with what you said to him. He is working away at a new edition of the "Descent of Man," for which I have given him some notes on the brain question.

And apropos of that, how is your own particular brain? I back la belle M-- against all the physicians in the world--even against mine own particular Aesculapius, Dr. Clark--to find the sovereignest remedy against the blue devils.

Let me hear from you--most abominable of correspondents as I am. And why don't you send Madame's photograph that you have promised?

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Pray give my kind remembrances to your father.

4 Marlborough Place, March 31, 1874.

My dear Darwin,

The brain business is more than half done, and I will soon polish it off and send it to you. [A note on the brain in man and the apes for the second edition of the "Descent of Man."] We are going down to Folkestone for a week on Thursday, and I shall take it with me.

I do not know what is doing about Dohrn's business at present. Foster took it in hand, but the last time I heard he was waiting for reports from Dew and Balfour.

You have been very generous as always; and I hope that other folk may follow your example, but like yourself I am not sanguine.

I have had an AWFULLY tempting offer to go to Yankee-land on a lecturing expedition, and I am seriously thinking of making an experiment next spring.

The chance of clearing two or three thousand pounds in as many months is not to be sneezed at by a pere de famille. I am getting sick of the state of things here.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

I have heard no more about the spirit photographs!

4 Marlborough Place, April 16, 1874.

My dear Darwin,

Put my contribution into the smallest type possible, for it will be read by none but anatomists; and never mind where it goes.

I am glad you agree with me about the hand and foot and skull question. As Ward [W.G. Ward.] said of Mill's opinions, you can only account for the views of Messrs. -- and Co. on the supposition of "grave personal sin" on their part.

I had a letter from Dohrn a day or two ago in which he tells me he has written to you. I suspect he has been very ill.

Let us know when you are in town, and believe me,

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The allusion in the letter of March 31 to certain "spirit photographs" refers to a series of these wonderful productions sent to him by a connection of Mr. Darwin's, who was interested in these matters, and to whom he replied, showing how the effect might have been produced by simple mechanical means.

It was at this gentleman's house that in January a carefully organised seance was held, at which my father was present incognito, so far as the medium was concerned, and on which he wrote the following report to Mr. Darwin, referred to in his "Life," volume 3 page 187.

It must be noted that he had had fairly extensive experience of spiritualism; he had made regular experiments with Mrs. Haydon at his brother George's house (the paper on which these are recorded is undated, but it must have been before 1863); he was referred to as a disbeliever in an article in the "Pall Mall Gazette" during January 1869, as a sequel to which a correspondent sent him an account of the confessions of the Fox girls, who had started spiritualism forty years before. At the houses of other friends, he had attended seances and met mediums by whom he was most unfavourably impressed.