Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 58

T.H. Huxley.

[Five days later he replies to the congratulations of Mr. Eckersley (whose son had married Huxley's third daughter):--]

...Lord Iddesleigh's letter offering to submit my name for an honorary pension was a complete surprise.

My chiefs in the late Government wished to retire me on full pay, but the Treasury did not see their way to it, and cut off 300 pounds a year. Naturally I am not sorry to have the loss made good, but the way the thing was done is perhaps the pleasantest part of it.

[There was a certain grim appropriateness in his "official death"

following hard upon his sixtieth birthday, for sixty was the age at which he had long declared that men of science ought to be strangled, lest age should harden them against the reception of new truths, and make them into clogs upon progress, the worse, in proportion to the influence they had deservedly won. This is the allusion in a birthday letter from Sir M. Foster:--

Reverend Sir,

So the "day of strangulation" has arrived at last, and with it the humble pet.i.tion of your friends that you may be induced to defer the "happy despatch" for, say at least ten years, when the subject may again come up for consideration. For your pet.i.tioners are respectfully inclined to think that if your sixtyship may be induced so far to become an apostle as to give up the fishery business, and be led to leave the Black Board at South Kensington to others, the t'other side sixty years, may after all be the best years of your life. In any case they would desire to bring under your notice the fact that THEY FEEL THEY WANT YOU AS MUCH AS EVER THEY DID.

Ever thine,

M.F.

Reference has been made to the fact that the honorary degree of D.C.L.

was conferred this May upon Huxley by the University of Oxford. The Universities of the sister kingdoms had been the first thus to recognise his work; and after Aberdeen and Dublin, Cambridge, where natural science had earlier established a firm foothold, showed the way to Oxford. Indeed, it was not until his regular scientific career was at an end, that the University of Oxford opened its portals to him. So, as he wrote to Professor Bartholomew Price on May 20, in answer to the invitation,] "It will be a sort of apotheosis coincident with my official death, which is imminent. In fact, I am dead already, only the Treasury Charon has not yet settled the conditions upon which I am to be ferried over to the other side."

[Before leaving the subject of his connection with the Royal Society, it may be worth while to give a last example of the straightforward way in which he dealt with a delicate point whether to vote or not to vote for his friend Sir Andrew Clark, who had been proposed for election to the Society. It occurred just after his return from abroad; he explains his action to Sir Joseph Hooker, who had urged caution on hearing a partial account of the proceedings.]

South Kensington, April 25, 1885.

My dear Hooker,

I don't see very well how I could have been more cautious than I have been. I knew nothing of Clark's candidature until I saw his name in the list; and if he or his proposer had consulted me, I should have advised delay, because I knew very well there would be a great push made for -- this year.

Being there, however, it seemed to me only just to say that which is certainly true, namely, that Clark has just the same claim as half a dozen doctors who have been admitted without question, e.g. Gull, Jenner, Risdon Bennett, on the sole ground of standing in the profession. And I think that so long as that claim is admitted, it will be unjust not to admit Clark.

So I said what you heard; but I was so careful not to press unduly upon the Council, that I warned them of the possible prejudice arising from my own personal obligations to Clark's skill, and I went so far as not to put his name in the FIRST list myself, a step which I now regret.

If this is not caution enough, I should like to know what is? As Clive said when he came back from India, "By G.o.d, sir, I am astonished at my own moderation!"

If it is not right to make a man a fellow because he holds a first-cla.s.s place as a pract.i.tioner of medicine as the Royal Society has done since I have known it, let us abolish the practice. But then let us also in justice refuse to recognise the half-and-half claims, those of the people who are third-rate as pract.i.tioners, and hang on to the skirts of science without doing anything in it.

Several of your and my younger scientific friends are bent on bringing in their chum --, and Clark's candidature is very inconvenient to them. Hence I suspect some of the "outspoken aversion" and criticism of Clark's claims you have heard.

I am quite willing to sacrifice my friend for a principle, but not for somebody else's friend, and I mean to vote for Clark; though I am not going to try to force my notion down any one else's throat.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[On the same subject he writes to Sir M. Foster:--]

Obedience be hanged. It would not lie in my mouth, as the lawyers say, to object to anybody's getting his own way if he can.

If Clark had not been a personal friend of mine I should not have hesitated a moment about deciding in his favour. Under the circ.u.mstances it was quite clear what I should do if I were forced to decide, and I thought it would have been kindly and courteous to the President if he had been let off the necessity of making a decision which was obviously disagreeable to him.

If, on the other hand, it was wished to fix the responsibility of what happened on him, I am glad that he had the opportunity of accepting it. I never was more clear as to what was the right thing to do.

[So also at other times; he writes in September to Sir M. Foster, the Secretary, with reference to evening gatherings at which smoking should be permitted.]

Bournemouth, September 17, 1885.

I am not at all sure that I can give my blessing to the "Tabagie."

When I heard of it I had great doubts as to its being a wise move. It is not the question of "smoke" so much, as the principle of having meetings in the Society's rooms, which are not practically (whatever they may be theoretically), open to all the fellows, and which will certainly be regarded as the quasi-private parties of one of the officers. You will have all sorts of jealousies roused, and talk of a clique, etc.

When I was Secretary the one thing I was most careful to avoid was the appearance of desiring to exert any special influence. But there was a jealousy of the x Club, and only the other day, to my great amus.e.m.e.nt, I was talking to an influential member of the Royal Society Club about the possibility of fusing it with the Phil. Club, and he said, forgetting I was a member of the latter: "Oh! we don't want any of those wire-pullers!" Poor dear innocent dull-as-ditchwater Phil. Club!

[Mention has already been made of the unveiling of the Darwin statue at South Kensington on June 9, when, as President of the Royal Society, Huxley delivered an address in the name of the Memorial Committee, on handing over the statue of Darwin to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, as representative of the Trustees of the British Museum. The concluding words of the speech deserve quotation:--]

We do not make this request [i.e. to accept the statue] for the mere sake of perpetuating a memory; for so long as men occupy themselves with the pursuit of truth, the name of Darwin runs no more risk of oblivion than does that of Copernicus, or that of Harvey.

Nor, most a.s.suredly, do we ask you to preserve the statue in its cynosural position in this entrance hall of our National Museum of Natural History as evidence that Mr. Darwin's views have received your official sanction; for science does not recognise such sanctions, and commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

No, we beg you to cherish this memorial as a symbol by which, as generation after generation of students enter yonder door, they shall be reminded of the ideal according to which they must shape their lives, if they would turn to the best account of the opportunities offered by the great inst.i.tution under your charge.

[Nor was this his only word about Darwin. Somewhat later, Professor Mivart sent him the proofs of an article on Darwin, asking for his criticism, and received the following reply, which describes better than almost any other doc.u.ment, the nature of the tie which united Darwin and his friends, and incidentally touches the question of Galileo's recantation:--]

November 12, 1885.

My dear Mr. Mivart,

I return your proof with many thanks for your courtesy in sending it.

I fully appreciate the good feeling shown in what you have written, but as you ask my opinion, I had better say frankly that my experience of Darwin is widely different from yours as expressed in the pa.s.sages marked with pencil. I have often remarked that I never knew any one of his intellectual rank who showed himself so tolerant to opponents, great and small, as Darwin did. Sensitive he was in the sense of being too ready to be depressed by adverse comment, but I never knew any one less easily hurt by fair criticism, or who less needed to be soothed by those who opposed him with good reason.

I am sure I tried his patience often enough, without ever eliciting more than a "Well there's a good deal in what you say; but--" and then followed something which nine times out of ten showed he had gone deeper into the business than I had.

I cannot agree with you, again, that the acceptance of Darwin's views was in any way influenced by the strong affection entertained for him by many of his friends. What that affection really did was to lead those of his friends who had seen good reason for his views to take much more trouble in his defence and support, and to strike out much harder at his adversary than they would otherwise have done. This is pardonable if not justifiable--that which you suggest would to my mind be neither.

I am so ignorant of what has been going on during the last twelvemonth, that I know nothing of your controversy with Romanes. If he is going to show the evolution of intellect from sense, he is the man for whom I have been waiting, as Kant says.

In your paper about scientific freedom, which I read some time ago with much interest, you alluded to a book or article by Father Roberts on the Galileo business. Will you kindly send me a postcard to say where and when it was published?

I looked into the matter when I was in Italy, and I arrived at the conclusion that the Pope and the College of Cardinals had rather the best of it. It would complete the paradox if Father Roberts should help me to see the error of my ways.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[August and September, as said above, were spent in England, though with little good effect. Filey was not a success for either himself or his wife. Bournemouth, where they joined their eldest daughter and her family, offered a] "temperature much more to the taste of both of us,"

[and at least undid the mischief done by the wet and cold of the north.

The mean line of health was gradually rising; it was a great relief to be free at length from administrative distractions, while the retiring pensions removed the necessity of daily toil. By nature he was like the friend whom he described as] "the man to become hipped to death without incessant activity of some sort or other. I am sure that the habit of incessant work into which we all drift is as bad in its way as dram-drinking. In time you cannot be comfortable without the stimulus." [But the variety of interests which filled his mind prevented him from feeling the void of inaction after a busy life. And just as he was at the turning-point in health, he received a fillip which started him again into vigorous activity--the mental tonic bracing up his body and clearing away the depression and languor which had so long beset him.