Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 19

On my return I found that Pfluger had sent me his memoir with a note such as he had sent to you.

I read it last night, and I am inclined to think that it is a very important piece of work.

He shows that frogs absolutely deprived of oxygen give off carbonic acid for twenty-five hours, and gives very strong reasons for believing that the evolution of carbonic acid by living matter in general is the result of a process of internal rearrangement of the molecules of the living matter, and not of direct oxidation.

His speculations about the origin of living matter are the best I have seen yet, so far as I understand them. But he plunges into the depths of the higher chemistry in which I am by no means at home. Only this I can see, that the paper is worth careful study.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

31 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, May 19, 1875.

My dear Darwin,

Playfair has sent a copy of his bill to me, and I am sorry to find that its present wording is such as to render it very unacceptable to all teachers of physiology. In discussing the draught with Litchfield I recollect that I insisted strongly on the necessity of allowing demonstrations to students, but I agreed that it would be sufficient to permit such demonstrations only as could be performed under anaesthetics.

The second clause of the bill, however, by the words "for the purpose of new scientific discovery and for no other purpose," absolutely prohibits any kind of demonstration. It would debar me from showing the circulation in the web of a frog's foot or from exhibiting the pulsations of the heart in a decapitated frog.

And by its secondary effect it would prohibit discovery. Who is to be able to make discoveries unless he knows of his own knowledge what has been already made out? It might as well be ruled that a chemical student should begin with organic a.n.a.lysis.

Surely Burdon Sanderson did not see the draft of the bill as it now stands. The Professors here are up in arms about it, and as the papers have a.s.sociated my name with the bill I shall have to repudiate it publicly unless something can be done. But what in the world is to be done? I have not written to Playfair yet, and shall wait to hear from you before I do. I have an excellent cla.s.s here, 340 odd, and like the work. Best regards to Mrs. Darwin.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

31 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, June 5, 1875.

My dear Darwin,

I see I have forgotten to return Playfair's letter, which I enclose.

He sent me a copy of his last letter to you, but it did not reach me till some days after my return from London. In the meanwhile I saw him and Lord Cardwell at the House of Commons on Friday (last week).

Playfair seems rather disgusted at our p.r.o.nunciamento against the bill, and he declares that both Sanderson and Sharpey a.s.sented to it.

What they were dreaming about I cannot imagine. To say that no man shall experiment except for purpose of original discovery is about as reasonable as to ordain that no man shall swim unless he means to go from Dover to Calais.

However the Commission is to be issued, and it is everything to gain time and let the present madness subside a little. I vowed I would never be a member of another Commission if I could help it, but I suppose I shall have to serve on this.

I am very busy with my lectures, and am nearly half through. I shall not be sorry when they are over, as I have been grinding away now since last October.

With kindest regards to Mrs. Darwin, ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[He was duly asked to serve on the Commission. Though his lectures in Edinburgh prevented him from attending till the end of July no difficulty was made over this, as the first meetings of the Commission, which began on June 30, were to be devoted to taking the less controversial evidence. In accepting his nomination he wrote to Mr. Cross (afterwards Lord Cross), at that time Home Secretary:--]

If I can be of any service I shall be very glad to act on the Commission, sympathising as I do on the one hand with those who abhor cruelty to animals, and, on the other, with those who abhor the still greater cruelty to man which is involved in any attempt to arrest the progress of physiology and of rational medicine.

[The other members of the Commission were Lords Cardwell and Winmarleigh, Mr. W.E. Forster, Sir J.B. Karslake, Professor Erichssen, and Mr. R.H. Hutton.

The evidence given before the Commission bore out the view that English physiologists inflicted no more pain upon animals than could be avoided; but one witness, not an Englishman, and not having at that time a perfect command of the English language, made statements which appeared to the Commission at least to indicate that the witness was indifferent to animal suffering. Of this incident Huxley writes to Mr.

Darwin at the same time as he forwarded a formal invitation for him to appear as a witness before the Commission:--]

4 Marlborough Place, October 30, 1875.

My dear Darwin,

The inclosed tells its own story. I have done my best to prevent your being bothered, but for various reasons which will occur to you I did not like to appear too obstructive, and I was asked to write to you.

The strong feeling of my colleagues (and my own I must say also) is that we ought to have your opinions in our minutes. At the same time there is a no less strong desire to trouble you as little as possible, and under no circ.u.mstances to cause you any risk of injury to health.

What with occupation of time, worry and vexation, this horrid Commission is playing the deuce with me. I have felt it my duty to act as counsel for Science, and was well satisfied with the way things were going. But on Thursday when I was absent at the Council of the Royal Society -- was examined, and if what I hear is a correct account of the evidence he gave I may as well throw up my brief.

I am told that he openly professed the most entire indifference to animal suffering, and said he only gave anaesthetics to keep animals quiet!

I declare to you I did not believe the man lived who was such an unmitigated cynical brute as to profess and act upon such principles, and I would willingly agree to any law which would send him to the treadmill.

The impression his evidence made on Cardwell and Forster is profound, and I am powerless (even if I had the desire which I have not) to combat it. He has done more mischief than all the fanatics put together.

I am utterly disgusted with the whole business.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

Of course keep the little article on Species. It is in some American Encyclopaedia published by Appleton. And best thanks for your book. I shall study it some day, and value it as I do every line you have written. Don't mention what I have told you outside the circle of discreet Darwindom.

4 Marlborough Place, November 2, 1875.

My dear Darwin,

Our secretary has telegraphed to you to Down, and written to Queen Anne Street.

But to make sure, I send this note to say that we expect you at 13 Delahay Street [Where the Commission was sitting.] at 2 o'clock to-morrow. And that I have looked out the highest chair that was to be got for you. [Mr. Darwin was long in the leg. When he came to our house the biggest ha.s.sock was always placed in an arm-chair to give it the requisite height for him.]

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The Commission reported early in 1876, and a few months after Lord Carnarvon introduced a bill int.i.tuled "An Act to amend the law relating to Cruelty to Animals." It was a more drastic measure than was demanded. As a writer in "Nature" (1876 page 248) puts it: "The evidence on the strength of which legislation was recommended went beyond the facts, the report went beyond the evidence, the recommendations beyond the report, and the bill can hardly be said to have gone beyond the recommendations, but rather to have contradicted them."

As to the working of the law, Huxley referred to it the following year in the address, already cited, on "Elementary Instruction in Physiology" ("Collected Essays" 3 310).]

But while I should object to any experimentation which can justly be called painful, and while as a member of a late Royal Commission I did my best to prevent the infliction of needless pain for any purpose, I think it is my duty to take this opportunity of expressing my regret at a condition of the law which permits a boy to troll for pike or set lines with live frog bait for idle amus.e.m.e.nt, and at the same time lays the teacher of that boy open to the penalty of fine and imprisonment if he uses the same animal for the purpose of exhibiting one of the most beautiful and instructive of physiological spectacles--the circulation in the web of the foot. No one could undertake to affirm that a frog is not inconvenienced by being wrapped up in a wet rag and having his toes tied out, and it cannot be denied that inconvenience is a sort of pain. But you must not inflict the least pain on a vertebrated animal for scientific purposes (though you may do a good deal in that way for gain or for sport) without due licence of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, granted under the authority of the Vivisection Act.

So it comes about that, in this year of grace 1877, two persons may be charged with cruelty to animals. One has impaled a frog, and suffered the creature to writhe about in that condition for hours; the other has pained the animal no more than one of us would be pained by tying strings round his fingers and keeping him in the position of a hydropathic patient. The first offender says, "I did it because I find fis.h.i.+ng very amusing," and the magistrate bids him depart in peace--nay, probably wishes him good sport. The second pleads, "I wanted to impress a scientific truth with a distinctness attainable in no other way on the minds of my scholars," and the magistrate fines him five pounds.

I cannot but think that this is an anomalous and not wholly creditable state of things.