Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 22

However, I do hope the Council will be very careful what they say or do about the immature fish question. The thing has been discussed over and over again ad nauseam, and I doubt if there is anything to be added to the evidence in the blue-books.

The idee fixe of the British public, fishermen, M.P.'s and ignorant persons generally is that all small fish, if you do not catch them, grow up into big fish. They cannot be got to understand that the wholesale destruction of the immature is the necessary part of the general order of things, from codfish to men.

You seem to have some very interesting things to talk about at the Royal Inst.i.tution.

Do you see any chance of educating the white corpuscles of the human race to destroy the theological bacteria which are bred in parsons?

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, May 19, 1889.

My dear Donnelly,

The Vice-President's letter has brought home to me one thing very clearly, and that is, that I had no business to sign the Report. Of course he has a right to hold me responsible for a doc.u.ment to which my name is attached, and I should look more like a fool than I ever wish to do, if I had to tell him that I had taken the thing entirely on trust. I have always objected to the sleeping partnership in the Examination; and unless it can be made quite clear that I am nothing but a "consulting doctor," I really must get out of it entirely.

Of course I cannot say whether the Report is justified by the facts or not, when I do not know anything about them. But from my experience of what the state of things used to be, I should say that it is, in all probability, fair.

The faults mentioned are exactly those which always have made their appearance, and I expect always will do so, and I do not see why the attention of the teachers should not as constantly be directed to them.

You talk of Eton. Well, the reports of the Examiners to the governing body, year after year, had the same unpleasing monotony, and I do not believe that there is any educational body, from the Universities downwards, which would come out much better, if the Examiners' reports were published and if they did their duty.

I am unable to see my way (and I suppose you are) to any better method of State encouragement of science teaching than payment by results. The great and manifest evil of that system, however, is the steady pressure which it exerts in the development of every description of sham teaching. And the only check upon this kind of swindling the public seems to me to lie in the hands of the Examiners. I told Mr. Forster so, ages ago, when he talked to me about the gradual increase of the expenditure, and I have been confirmed in my opinion by all subsequent experience. What the people who read the reports may say, I should not care one twopenny d-- if I had to administer the thing.

Nine out of ten of them are incompetent to form any opinion on an educational subject; and as a mere matter of policy, I should, in dealing with them, be only too glad to be able to make it clear that some of the defects and shortcomings inherent in this (as in all systems) had been disguised, and that even the most fractious of Examiners had said their say without let or hindrance.

It is the nature of the system which seems to me to demand as a corrective incessant and severe watchfulness on the part of the Examiners, and I see no harm if they a little overdo the thing in this direction, for every sham they let through is an encouragement to other shams and pot-teaching in general.

And if the "great heart" of the people and its thick head can't be got to appreciate honesty, why the sooner we shut up the better. Ireland may be for the Irish, but science teaching is not for the sake of science teachers.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

CHAPTER 3.6.

1889-90.

From the middle of June to the middle of September, Huxley was in Switzerland, first at Monte Generoso, then, when the weather became more settled, at the Maloja. Here, as his letters show, he "rejuvenated" to such an extent that Sir Henry Thompson, who was at the Maloja, scoffed at the idea of his ever having had dilated heart.]

Monte Generoso, Tessin, Suisse, June 25, 1889.

My dear Hooker,

I am quite agreed with the proposed arrangements for the x, and hope I shall show better in the register of attendance next session.

When I am striding about the hills here I really feel as if my invalidism were a mere piece of malingering. When I am well I can walk up hill and down dale as well as I did twenty years ago. But my margin is abominably narrow, and I am at the mercy of "liver and lights."

Sitting up for long and dining are questions of margin.

I do not know if you have been here. We are close on 4000 feet up and look straight over the great plain of North Italy on the one side and to a great hemicycle of mountains, Monte Rosa among them, on the other.

I do not know anything more beautiful in its way. But the whole time we have been here the weather has been extraordinary. On the average, about two thunderstorms per diem. I am sure that a good meteorologist might study the place with advantage. The barometer has not varied three-twentieths of an inch the whole time, notwithstanding the storms.

I hear the weather has been bad all over Switzerland, but it is not high and dry enough for me here, and we shall be off to the Maloja on Sat.u.r.day next, and shall stay there till we return somewhere in September. Collier and Ethel will join us there in August. He is none the worse for his scarlatina.

"Aged Botanist?" marry come up! [Sir J. Hooker jestingly congratulated him on taking up botany in his old age.] I should like to know of a younger spark. The first time I heard myself called "the old gentleman"

was years ago when we were in South Devon. A half-drunken Devonian had made himself very offensive, in the compartment in which my wife and I were travelling, and got some "simple Saxon" from me, accompanied, I doubt not, by an awful scowl "Ain't the old gentleman in a rage," says he.

I am very glad to hear of Reggie's success, and my wife joins with me in congratulations. It is a comfort to see one's shoots planted out and taking root, though the idea that one's cares and anxieties about them are diminished, we find to be an illusion.

I inclose cheque for my contributions due and to come. [For the x Club.] If I go to Davy's Locker before October, the latter may go for consolation champagne!

Ever yours affectionately,

T.H. Huxley.

[He writes from the Maloja on August 16 to Sir M. Foster, who had been sitting on the Vaccination Commission:--]

I wonder how you are prospering, whether you have vaccination or anti-vaccination on the brain; or whether the G.o.ds have prospered you so far as to send you on a holiday. We have been here since the beginning of July. Monte Generoso proved lovely--but electrical. We had on the average three thunderstorms every two days. Bellagio was as hot as the tropics, and we stayed only a day, and came on here--where, whatever else may happen, it is never too hot. The weather has been good and I have profited immensely, and at present I do not know whether I have a heart or not. But I have to look very sharp after my liver. H. Thompson, who has been here with his son Herbert (clever fellow, by the way), treats the notion that I ever had a dilated heart with scorn! Oh these doctors! they are worse than theologians.

[And again on August 31:--]

I walked eighteen miles three or four days ago, and I think nothing of one or two thousand feet up! I hope this state of things will last at the sea-level.

I am always glad to hear of and from you, but I have not been idle long enough to forget what being busy means, so don't let your conscience worry you about answering my letters.

...X. is, I am afraid, more or less of an a.s.s. The opposition he and his friends have been making to the Technical Bill is quite unintelligible to me. Y. may be, and I rather think is, a knave, but he is no fool; and if I mistake not he is minded to kick the ultra-radical stool down now that he has mounted by it. Make friends of that Mammon of unrighteousness and swamp the sentimentalists.

...I despise your insinuations. All my friends here have been theological--Bishop, Chief Rabbi, and Catholic Professor. None of your Maybrick discussors.

On June 25 he wrote to Professor Ray Lankester, enclosing a letter to be read at a meeting called by the Lord Mayor, on July 1, to hear statements from men of science with regard to the recent increase of rabies in this country, and the efficiency of the treatment discovered by M. Pasteur for the prevention of hydrophobia.

[I quote the latter from the report in "Nature" for July 4:--]

Monte Generoso, Tessin, Suisse, June 25, 1889.

My dear Lankester,

I enclose herewith a letter for the Lord Mayor and a cheque for 5 pounds as my subscription. I wish I could make the letter shorter, but it is pretty much "pemmican" already. However, it does not much matter being read if it only gets into print.

It is uncommonly good of the Lord Mayor to stand up for Science, in the teeth of the row the anti-vivisection pack--dogs and doggesses--are making.

May his shadow never be less.

We shall be off to the Maloja at the end of this week, if the weather mends. Thunderstorms here every day, and sometimes two or three a day for the last ten days.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.