Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 27

Poor old Smyth's death is just what I expected, though I did not think the catastrophe was so imminent. [Warrington Wilkinson Smyth (1817-1890), the geologist and mineralogist. In 1851 he was appointed Lecturer on Mining and Mineralogy at the Royal School of Mines. After the lectureships were separated in 1881, he retained the former until his death. He was knighted in 1887.]

Peace be with him; he never did justice to his very considerable abilities, but he was a good fellow and a fine old crusted Conservative.

I suppose it will be necessary to declare the vacancy and put somebody in his place before long.

I learned before I started that Smyth was to be buried in Cornwall, so there is no question of attending at his funeral.

I am the last of the original Jermyn Street gang left in the school now--Ultimus Romanorum!

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[This trip was taken by way of a holiday after the writing of an article, which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" for July 1890. It was called "The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science," and may be considered as written in fulfilment of the plan spoken of in the letter to Mr. Clodd (above). Its subject was the necessary dependence of Christian theology upon the historical accuracy of the Old Testament; its occasion, the publication of a sermon in which, as a counterblast to "Lux Mundi", Canon Liddon declared that accuracy to be sanctioned by the use made of the Old Testament by Jesus Christ, and bade his hearers close their ears against any suggestions impairing the credit of those Jewish Scriptures which have received the stamp of His Divine authority.

Pointing out that, as in other branches of history, so here the historical accuracy of early tradition was abandoned even by conservative critics, who at all understood the nature of the problems involved, Huxley proceeded to examine the story of the Flood, and to show that the difficulties were little less in treating it--like the reconcilers--as a partial than as a universal deluge. Then he discussed the origin of the story, and criticised the attempt of the essayist in "Lux Mundi" to treat this and similar stories as "types," which must be valueless if typical of no underlying reality. These things are of moment in speculative thought, for if Adam be not an historical character, if the story of the Fall be but a type, the basis of Pauline theology is shaken; they are of moment practically, for it is the story of the Creation which is referred to in the] "speech (Matt. 19 5) unhappily famous for the legal oppression to which it has been wrongfully forced to lend itself" [in the marriage laws.

In July 1890, Sir J.G.T. Sinclair wrote to him, calling his attention to a statement of Babbage's that after a certain point his famous calculating machine, contrary to all expectation, suddenly introduced a new principle of numeration into a series of numbers (Extract from Babbage's Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. Babbage shows that a calculating machine can be constructed which, after working in a correct and orderly manner up to 100,000,000, then leaps, and instead of continuing the chain of numbers unbroken, goes at once to 100,010,002. "The law which seemed at first to govern the series failed at the hundred million and second term. This term is larger than we expected by 10,000. The law thus changes:--

100,000,001 100,010,002 100,030,003 100,060,004 100,100,005 100,150,006 100,210,007 100,280,008.

For a hundred or even a thousand terms they continued to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers, but after watching them for 2761 terms we find that this law fails at the 2762nd term.

If we continue to observe we shall discover another law then coming into action which also is different, dependent, but in a different manner, on triangular numbers because a number of points agreeing with their term may be placed in the form of a triangle, thus:--

(1 dot.) (3 dots in the form of a triangle.) (6 dots in the form of a triangle.) (10 dots in the form of a triangle.) (one, three, six, ten).

This will continue through about 1430 terms, when a new law is again introduced over about 950 terms, and this too, like its predecessors, fails and gives place to other laws which appear at different intervals."), and asking what effect this phenomenon had upon the theory of Induction. Huxley replied as follows:--]

Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, July 21, 1890.

Dear Sir,

I knew Mr. Babbage, and am quite sure that he was not the man to say anything on the topic of calculating machines which he could not justify.

I do not see that what he says affects the philosophy of induction as rightly understood. No induction, however broad its basis, can confer certainty--in the strict sense of the word. The experience of the whole human race through innumerable years has shown that stones unsupported fall to the ground, but that does not make it certain that any day next week unsupported stones will not move the other way. All that it does justify is the very strong expectation, which hitherto has been invariably verified, that they will do just the contrary.

Only one absolute certainty is possible to man--namely, that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.

All other so-called certainties are beliefs of greater or less intensity.

Do not suppose that I am following Abernethy's famous prescription, "take my pills," if I refer you to an essay of mine on "Descartes," and a little book on Hume, for the fuller discussion of these points.

Hume's argument against miracles turns altogether on the fallacy that induction can give certainty in the strict sense.

We poor mortals have to be content with hope and belief in all matters past and present--our sole certainty is momentary.

I am yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Sir J.G.T. Sinclair, Bart.

[Except for a last visit to London to pack his books, which proved a heavier undertaking than he had reckoned upon, Huxley did not leave Eastbourne this autumn, refusing Sir J. Donnelly's hospitable invitation to stay with him in Surrey during the move, of which he exclaims:--]

Thank Heaven that is my last move--except to a still smaller residence of a subterranean character!

Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, September 19, 1890.

My dear Donnelly,

And my books--and watch-dog business generally?

How is that to be transacted whether as in-patient or out-patient at Firdale? Much hospitality hath made thee mad.

Seriously, it's not to be done nohow. What between papers that don't come, and profligate bracket manufacturers who keep you waiting for months and then send the wrong things--and a general tendency of everybody to do nothing right or something wrong--it is as much as the two of us will do--to get in, and all in the course of the next three weeks.

Of course my wife has no business to go to London to superintend the packing--but I should like to see anybody stop her. However, she has got the faithful Minnie to do the actual work; and swears by all her G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses she will only direct.

It would only make her unhappy if I did not make pretend to believe, and hope no harm may come of it.

Tout a vous,

T.H. Huxley.

[Another discussion which sprang up in the "Times", upon Medical Education, evoked a letter from him ("Times" August 7), urging that the preliminary training ought to be much more thorough and exact. The student at his first coming is so completely habituated to learn only from books or oral teaching, that the attempt to learn from things and to get his knowledge at first hand is something new and strange. Thus a large proportion of medical students spend much of their first year in learning how to learn, and when they have done that, in acquiring the preliminary scientific knowledge, with which, under any rational system of education, they would have come provided.

He urged, too, that they should have received a proper literary education instead of a sham acquaintance with Latin, and insisted, as he had so often done, on the literary wealth of their own language.

Every one has his own ideas of what a liberal education ought to include, and a correspondent wrote to ask him, among other things, whether he did not think the higher mathematics ought to be included.

He replied:--]

Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, August 16, 1890.

I think mathematical training highly desirable, but advanced mathematics, I am afraid, would be too great a burden in proportion to its utility, to the ordinary student.

I fully agree with you that the incapacity of teachers is the weak point in the London schools. But what is to be expected when a man accepts a lectureship in a medical school simply as a grappling-iron by which he may hold on until he gets a hospital appointment?

Medical education in London will never be what it ought to be, until the "Inst.i.tutes of Medicine," as the Scotch call them, are taught in only two or three well-found inst.i.tutions--while the hospital schools are confined to the teaching of practical medicine, surgery, obstetrics, and so on.

[The following letters ill.u.s.trate Huxley's keenness to correct any misrepresentation of his opinions from a weighty source, amid the way in which, without abating his just claims, he could make the peace gracefully.

In October Dr. Abbott delivered an address on "Illusions," in which, without, of course, mentioning names, he drew an unmistakable picture of Huxley as a thorough pessimist. A very brief report appeared in the "Times" of October 9, together with a leading article upon the subject.

Huxley thereupon wrote to the "Times" a letter which throws light both upon his early days and his later opinions:--]

The article on "Illusions" in the "Times" of to-day induces me to notice the remarkable exemplification of them to which you have drawn public attention. The Reverend Dr. Abbott has pointed the moral of his discourse by a reference to a living man, the delicacy of which will be widely and justly appreciated. I have reason to believe that I am acquainted with this person, somewhat intimately, though I can by no means call myself his best friend--far from it.

If I am right, I can affirm that this poor fellow did not escape from the "narrow school in which he was brought up" at nineteen, but more than two years later; and, as he pursued his studies in London, perhaps he had as many opportunities for "fruitful converse with friends and equals," to say nothing of superiors, as he would have enjoyed elsewhere.

Moreover, whether the naval officers with whom he consorted were book-learned or not, they were emphatically men, trained to face realities and to have a wholesome contempt for mere talkers. Any one of them was worth a wilderness of phrase-crammed undergraduates. Indeed, I have heard my misguided acquaintance declare that he regards his four years' training under the hard conditions and the sharp discipline of his cruise as an education of inestimable value.