Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 44

But there are a good many circ.u.mstances in the present state of affairs which weighed heavily in the scale, and so I made up my mind to try the experiment.

If I don't suit the office or the office doesn't suit me, there is a way out every 30th of November.

There was more work connected with the Secretarys.h.i.+p--but there is more trouble and responsibility and distraction in the Presidency.

I am amused with your account of your way of governing your headstrong boy. I find the way of governing headstrong men to be very similar, and I believe it is by practising the method that I get the measure of success with which people credit me.

But they are often very fractious, and it is a bother for a man who was meant for a student.

Poor Spottiswoode's death was a great blow to me. Never was a better man, and I hoped he would stop where he was for the next ten years...

Ever your loving father,

T.H. Huxley.

[He finally decided that the question of standing again in November must depend on whether this course was likely to cause division in the ranks of the Society. He earnestly desired to avoid anything like a contest for scientific honours (As he wrote a little later:--] "I have never competed in the way of honour in my life, and I cannot allow myself to be even thought of as in such a position now, where, with all respect to the honour and glory, they do not appear to me to be in any way equivalent to the burden. And I am not at all sure that I may not be able to serve the right cause outside the Chair rather than in it."); [he was almost morbidly anxious that the temporary choice of himself should not be interpreted as binding the electors in any way.

I give the following letters to show his sensitiveness on every question of honour and of public advantage:--]

Brechin Castle, Brechin, N.B., September 19, 1883.

My dear Foster,

We got here yesterday. The Commission does not meet till next week, so like the historical donkey of Jeshurun I have nothing to do but wax fat and kick in this excellent pasture.

At odd times lately my mind has been a good deal exercised about the Royal Society. I am quite willing to go on in the Chair if the Council and the Society wish it. But it is quite possible that the Council who chose me when the choice was limited to their own body, might be disposed to select some one else when the range of choice is extended to the whole body of the Society. And I am very anxious that the Council should be made to understand, when the question comes forward for discussion after the recess, that the fact of present tenancy const.i.tutes no claim in my eyes.

The difficulty is, how is this to be done? I cannot ask the Council to do as they please, without reference to me, because I am bound to a.s.sume that that is what they will do, and it would be an impertinence to a.s.sume the contrary.

On the other hand, I should at once decline to be put in nomination again, if it could be said that by doing so I had practically forced myself either upon the Council or upon the Society.

Heaven be praised I have not many enemies, but the two or three with whom I have to reckon don't stick at trifles, and I should not like by any inadvertance to give them a handle.

I have had some thought of writing a letter to Evans [Sir John Evans, K.C.B., then Treasurer of the Royal Society.], such as he could read to the Council at the first meeting in October, at which I need not be present.

The subject could then be freely discussed, without any voting or resolution on the minutes, and the officers could let me know whether in their judgment it is expedient I should be nominated or not.

In the last case I should withdraw on the ground of my other occupations--which, in fact, is a very real obstacle, and one which looms large in my fits of blue-devils, which have been more frequent of late than they should be in holiday time.

Now, will you turn all this over in your mind? Perhaps you might talk it over with Stokes.

Of course I am very sensible of the honour of being P.R.S., but I should be much more sensible of the dishonour of being in that place by a fluke, or in any other way, than by the free choice of the Council and Society.

In fact I am inclined to think that I am morbidly sensitive on the last point; and so, instead of acting on my own impulse, as I have been tempted to do, I submit myself to your wors.h.i.+p's wisdom.

I am not sure that I should not have been wiser if I had stuck to my original intention of holding office only till St. Andrew's Day.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Secretary of State, Home Department, October 3, 1883.

My dear Foster,

There was an Irish bricklayer who once bet a hodman he would not carry him up to the top of an exceeding high ladder in his hod. The hod man did it, but Paddy said, "I had great hopes, now, ye'd let me fall just about six rounds from the top."

I told the story before when I was up for the School Board, but it is so applicable to the present case that I can't help coming out with it again.

If you, dear good hodmen, would have but let me fall!

However, as the thing is to be, it is very pleasant to find Evans and Williamson and you so hearty in the process of elevation, and in spite of blue-devils I will do my best to "do my duty in the state of life I'm called to."

But I believe you never had the advantage of learning the Church Catechism.

If there is any good in what is done you certainly deserve the credit of it, for nothing but your letter stopped me from kicking over the traces at once. Do you see how Evolution is getting made into a bolus and oiled outside for the ecclesiastical swallow? [This refers to papers read before the Church Congress that year by Messrs. W.H.

Flower and F. Le Gros Clarke.]

Ever thine,

Thomas, P.R.S.

[The same feeling appears in his anxiety as President to avoid the slightest appearance of committing the Society to debatable opinions which he supported as a private individual. Thus, although he had "personally, politically, and philosophically" no liking for Charles Bradlaugh, he objected on general grounds to the exclusion of Mrs.

Besant and Miss Bradlaugh from the cla.s.ses at University College, and had signed a memorial in their favour. On the other hand, he did not wish it to be a.s.serted that the Royal Society, through its president, had thrown its influence into what was really a social and political, not a scientific question. He writes to Sir M. Foster on July 18:--]

It is very unlucky for me that I signed the memorial requesting the Council of University College to reconsider their decision about Mrs.

Besant and Miss Bradlaugh when I was quite innocent of any possibility of holding the P.R.S.

I must go to the meeting of members to-day and define my position in the matter with more care, under the circ.u.mstances.

Mrs. Besant was a student in my teacher's cla.s.s here last year, and a very well-conducted lady-like person; but I have never been able to get hold of the "Fruits of Philosophy," and do not know to what doctrine she has committed herself.

They seem to have excluded Miss Bradlaugh simply on the noscitur a sociis principle.

It will need all the dexterity I possess to stand up for the principle of religious and philosophical freedom, without giving other people a hold for saying I that have identified myself with Bradlaugh.

[It was the same a little later with the Sunday Society, which had offered him its presidency. He writes to the Honorary Secretary on February 11, 1884:--]

I regret that it is impossible for me to accept the office which the Sunday Society honours me by offering.

It is not merely a disinclination to add to the work which already falls to my share which leads me to say this. So long as I am President of the Royal Society, I shall feel bound to abstain from taking any prominent part in public movements as to the propriety of which the opinions of the Fellows of the Society differ widely.

My own opinions on the Sunday question are exactly what they were five-and-twenty years ago. They have not been hid under a bushel, and I should not have accepted my present office if I had felt that so doing debarred me from reiterating them whenever it may be necessary to do so.

But that is a different matter from taking a step which would, in the eyes of the public, commit the Royal Society, through its President, to one side of the controversy in which you are engaged, and in which I, personally, hope you may succeed as warmly as ever I did.

[One other piece of work during the first half of the year remains to be mentioned, namely, the Rede Lecture, delivered at Cambridge on June 12. This was a discourse on Evolution, based upon the consideration of the Pearly Nautilus.