Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume I Part 28

I suspect that the pa.s.sage to which you refer must have been taken from my unrevised proofs, for it corresponds very nearly with what is written at page 97 of my book.

Flower has recently discovered that the Siamang's brain affords an even more curious exception to the general rule than that of Mycetes, as the cerebral hemispheres leave part not only of the sides but of the hinder end of the cerebellum uncovered.

As it is one of the Anthropoid apes and yet differs in this respect far more widely from the gorilla than the gorilla differs from man, it offers a charming example of the value of cerebral characters.

Flower publishes a paper on the subject in the forthcoming number of the "N. H. Review."

Might it not be well to allude to the fact that the existence of the posterior lobe, posterior cornu, and hippocampus in the Orang has been publicly demonstrated to an audience of experts at the College of Surgeons?

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The success of "Man's Place" was immediate, despite such criticisms as that of the "Athenaeum" that "Lyell's object is to make man old, Huxley's to degrade him." By the middle of February it reached its second thousand; in July it is heard of as republished in America; at the same time L. Buchner writes that he wished to translate it into German, but finds himself forestalled by Victor Carus. From another aspect, Lord Enniskillen, thanking him for the book, says (March 3), "I believe you are already excommunicated by book, bell, and candle," while in an undated note, Bollaert writes, "The Bishop of Oxford the other day spoke about 'the church having been in danger of late, by such books as Colenso's, but that it (the church) was now restored.' And this at a time, he might have added, when the works of Darwin, Lyell, and Huxley are torn from the hands of Mudie's shopmen, as if they were novels--(see "Daily Telegraph," April 10)."

At the same time, the impression left by his work upon the minds of the leading men of science may be judged from a few words of Sir Charles Lyell, who writes to a friend on March 15, 1863 ("Life and Letters" 2 366):--

Huxley's second thousand is going off well. If he had leisure like you and me, and the vigour and logic of the lectures, and his address to the Geological Society, and half a dozen other recent works (letters to the "Times" on Darwin, etc.), had been all in one book, what a position he would occupy! I entreated him not to undertake the "Natural History Review" before it began. The responsibility all falls on the man of chief energy and talent; it is a quarterly mischief, and will end in knocking him up.

A similar estimate appears from an earlier letter of March 11, 1859 ("Life and Letters" 2 321), when he quotes Huxley's opinion of Mansel's Bampton Lectures on the "Limits of Religious Thought":--

A friend of mine, Huxley, who will soon take rank as one of the first naturalists we have ever produced, begged me to read these sermons as first rate,] "although, regarding the author as a churchman, you will probably compare him, as I did, to the drunken fellow in Hogarth's contested election, who is sawing through the signpost at the other party's public-house, forgetting he is sitting at the other end of it.

But read them as a piece of clear and unanswerable reasoning."

[In the 1894 preface to the re-issue of "Man's Place" in the Collected Essays, Huxley speaks as follows of the warnings he received against publishing on so dangerous a topic, of the storm which broke upon his head, and the small result which, in the long run, it produced (In September 1887 he wrote to Mr. Edward Clodd--]"All the propositions laid down in the wicked book, which was so well anathematised a quarter of a century ago, are now taught in the text-books. What a droll world it is!"):--

Magna est veritas et praevalebit! Truth is great, certainly, but considering her greatness, it is curious what a long time she is apt to take about prevailing. When, towards the end of 1862, I had finished writing "Man's Place in Nature," I could say with a good conscience that my conclusions "had not been formed hastily or enunciated crudely." I thought I had earned the right to publish them, and even fancied I might be thanked rather than reproved for doing so. However, in my anxiety to publish nothing erroneous, I asked a highly competent anatomist and very good friend of mine to look through my proofs, and, if he could, point out any errors of fact. I was well pleased when he returned them without criticism on that score; but my satisfaction was speedily dashed by the very earnest warning as to the consequences of publication, which my friend's interest in my welfare led him to give. But, as I have confessed elsewhere, when I was a young man, there was just a little--a mere soupcon--in my composition of that tenacity of purpose which has another name; and I felt sure that all the evil things prophesied would not be so painful to me as the giving up that which I had resolved to do, upon grounds which I conceived to be right. [(As to this advice not to publish "Man's Place" for fear of misrepresentation on the score of morals, he said, in criticising an attack of this sort made upon Darwin in the "Quarterly" for July 1876:--] "It seemed to me, however, that a man of science has no raison d'etre at all, unless he is willing to face much greater risks than these for the sake of that which he believes to be true; and further, that to a man of science such risks do not count for much--that they are by no means so serious as they are to a man of letters, for example.") So the book came out; and I must do my friend the justice to say that his forecast was completely justified. The Boreas of criticism blew his hardest blasts of misrepresentation and ridicule for some years, and I was even as one of the wicked. Indeed, it surprises me at times to think how anyone who had sunk so low could since have emerged into, at any rate, relative respectability.

Personally, like the non-corvine personages in the Ingoldsby legend, I did not feel "one penny the worse." Translated into several languages, the book reached a wider public than I had ever hoped for; being largely helped, I imagine, by the Ernulphine advertis.e.m.e.nts to which I referred.

It has had the honour of being freely utilised without acknowledgment by writers of repute; and finally it achieved the fate, which is the euthanasia of a scientific work, of being inclosed among the rubble of the foundations of later knowledge, and forgotten.

To my observation, human nature has not sensibly changed during the last thirty years. I doubt not that there are truths as plainly obvious and as generally denied as those contained in "Man's Place in Nature," now awaiting enunciation. If there is a young man of the present generation who has taken as much trouble as I did to a.s.sure himself that they are truths, let him come out with them, without troubling his head about the barking of the dogs of St. Ernulphus. Veritas praevalebit--some day; and even if she does not prevail in his time, he himself will be all the better and wiser for having tried to help her. And let him recollect that such great reward is full payment for all his labour and pains.

[The following letter refers to the newly published "Man's Place in Nature." Miss H. Darwin had suggested a couple of corrections:--]

Jermyn Street, February 25, 1863.

My dear Darwin,

Please to say to Miss Henrietta Minos Rhadamanthus Darwin that I plead guilty to the justice of both criticisms, and throw myself on the mercy of the court.

As extenuating circ.u.mstances with respect to indictment Number 1, see prefatory notice. Extenuating circ.u.mstance Number 2--that I picked up "Atavism" in Pritchard years ago, and as it is a much more convenient word than "Hereditary transmission of variations," it slipped into equivalence in my mind, and I forgot all about the original limitation.

But if these excuses should in your judgment tend to aggravate my offences, suppress 'em like a friend. One may always hope more from a lady's tender-heartedness than from her sense of justice.

Publisher has just sent to say that I must give him any corrections for second thousand of my booklet immediately.

Why did not Miss Etty send any critical remarks on that subject by the same post? I should be most immensely obliged for them.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[During this period of special work at the anthropological side of the Evolution theory, Huxley made two important contributions to the general question.

As secretary of the Geological Society, the duty of delivering the anniversary address in 1862 fell to him in the absence of the president, Leonard Horner, who had been driven by ill-health to winter in Italy.

The object at which he aimed appears from the postscript of a brief note of February 19, 1862, to Hooker:--]

I am writing the body of the address, and I am going to criticise Paleontological doctrines in general in a way that will flutter their nerves considerable.

Darwin is met everywhere with--Oh this is opposed to paleontology, or that is opposed to paleontology--and I mean to turn round and ask, "Now, messieurs les Paleontologues, what the devil DO you really know?"

I have not changed s.e.x, although the postscript is longer than the letter.

[The delivery of the address itself on February 21 (On "Geological Contemporaneity" ("Collected Essays" 8 292).) is thus described by Sir Charles Lyell (To a note of whose, proposing a talk over the subject, Huxley replies on May 5], "I am very glad you find something to think about in my address. That is the best of all praise.") [("Life and Letters" 2 356):--

Huxley delivered a brilliant critical discourse on what paleontology has and has not done, and proved the value of negative evidence, how much the progressive development system has been pushed too far, how little can be said in favour of Owen's more generalised types when we go back to the vertebrata and in vertebrata of remote ages, the persistency of many forms high and low throughout time, how little we know of the beginning of life upon the earth, how often events called contemporaneous in Geology are applied to things which, instead of coinciding in time, may have happened ten millions of years apart, etc.; and a masterly sketch comparing the past and present in almost every cla.s.s in zoology, and sometimes of botany cited from Hooker, which he said he had done because it was useful to look into the cellars and see how much gold there was there, and whether the quant.i.ty of bullion justified such an enormous circulation of paper. I never remember an address listened to with such applause, though there were many private protests against some of his bold opinions.

The dinner at Willis's was well attended; I should think eighty or more present...and late in the evening Huxley made them merry by a sort of mock-modest speech.]

Jermyn Street, May 6, 1862.

My dear Darwin,

I was very glad to get your note about my address. I profess to be a great stoic, you know, but there are some people from whom I am glad to get a pat on the back. Still I am not quite content with that, and I want to know what you think of the argument--whether you agree with what I say about contemporaneity or not, and whether you are prepared to admit--as I think your views compel you to do--that the whole Geological Record is only the skimmings of the pot of life.

Furthermore, I want you to chuckle with me over the notion I find a great many people entertain--that the address is dead against your views. The fact being, as they will by and by wake up [to] see that yours is the only hypothesis which is not negatived by the facts,--one of its great merits being that it allows not only of indefinite standing still, but of indefinite retrogression.

I am going to try to work the whole argument into an intelligible form for the general public as a chapter in my forthcoming "Evidence" (one half of which I am happy to say is now written) ["Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature."], so I shall be very glad of any criticisms or hints.

Since I saw you--indeed, from the following Tuesday onwards--I have amused myself by spending ten days or so in bed. I had an unaccountable prostration of strength which they called influenza, but which, I believe, was nothing but some obstruction in the liver.

Of course I can't persuade people of this, and they will have it that it is overwork. I have come to the conviction, however, that steady work hurts n.o.body, the real destroyer of hardworking men being not their work, but dinners, late hours, and the universal humbug and excitement of society.

I mean to get out of all that and keep out of it.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The other contribution to the general question was his Working Men's Lectures for 1862. As he writes to Darwin on October 10--] "I can't find anything to talk to the working men about this year but your book. I mean to give them a commentary a la c.o.ke upon Lyttleton."

[The lectures to working men here referred to, six in number, were duly delivered once a week from November 10 onwards, and published in the form of as many little pamphlets. Appearing under the general t.i.tle, "On our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature," they wound up with a critical examination of the portion of Mr. Darwin's work "On the Origin of Species," in relation to the complete theory of the causes of organic nature.

Jermyn Street, December 2, 1862.

My dear Darwin,