Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume I Part 42

[Besides his Fullerian lectures on Ethnology at the Royal Inst.i.tution this year, Huxley published in February 1866 a paper in the "Natural History Review," on the "Prehistoric Remains of Caithness," based upon a quant.i.ty of remains found the previous autumn at Keiss. This, and the article on the "Neanderthal Skull" in the "Natural History Review" for 1864, attracted some notice among foreign anthropologists. Dr. H.

Welcker writes about them; Dr. A. Ecker wants the "Prehistoric Remains"

for his new "Archiv fur Anthropologie"; the Societe d'Anthropologie de Paris elects him a Foreign a.s.sociate.

He was asked by Dr. Fayrer to a.s.sist in a great scheme he had proposed to the Asiatic Society (Comp. Chapter 22 ad init. and Appendix 1.), to gather men of every tribe from India, the Malayan Peninsula, Persia, Arabia, the Indian Archipelago, etc., for anthropological purposes. It was well received by the Council of the Society and by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal; anything Huxley could say in its favour would be of great weight. Would he come out as Dr. Fayrer's guest?

Unable to go to Calcutta, he sent the following letter:--]

Jermyn Street, London, June 14, 1866.

My dear Fayrer,

I lose no time in replying to your second letter, and my first business is to apologise for not having answered the first, but it reached me in the thick of my lectures, and like a great many other things which ought to have been done I put off replying to a more convenient season. I have been terribly hard worked this year, and thought I was going to break down a few weeks ago but luckily I have pulled through.

I heartily wish that there were the smallest chance of my being able to accept your kind invitation and take part in your great scheme at Calcutta. But it is impossible for me to leave England for more than six weeks or two months, and that only in the autumn, a time of year when I imagine Calcutta is not likely to be the scene of anything but cholera patients.

As to your plan itself, I think it a most grand and useful one if it can be properly carried out. But you do things on so grand a scale in India that I suppose all the practical difficulties which suggest themselves to me may be overcome.

It strikes me that it will not do to be content with a single representative of each tribe. At least four or five will be needed to eliminate the chances of accident, and even then much will depend upon the discretion and judgment of the local agent who makes the suggestion.

This difficulty, however, applies chiefly if not solely to physical ethnology. To the philologer the opportunities for comparing dialects and checking p.r.o.nunciation will be splendid, however [few] the individual speakers of each dialect may be. The most difficult task of all will be to prevent the a.s.sembled Savans from ma.s.sacring the "specimens" at the end of the exhibition for the sake of their skulls and pelves!

I am really afraid that my own virtue might yield if so tempted!

Jesting apart, I heartily wish your plans success, and if there are any more definite ways in which I can help, let me know, and I will do my best. You will want, I should think, a physical and a philological committee to organise schemes: (1) for systematic measuring, weighing, and portraiture, with observation and recording of all physical characters; and (2) for uniform registering of sounds by Roman letters and collection of vocabularies and grammatical forms upon an uniform system.

I should advise you to look into the Museum of the Societe d'Anthropologie of Paris, and to put yourself in communication with M.

Paul Broca, one of its most active members, who has lately been organising a scheme of general anthropological instructions. But don't have anything to do with the quacks who are at the head of the "Anthropological Society" over here. If they catch scent of what you are about they will certainly want to hook on to you.

Once more I wish I had the chance of being able to visit your congress.

I have been lecturing on Ethnology this year [As Fullerian Professor at the Royal Inst.i.tution.], and shall be again this year, and I would give a good deal to be able to look at the complex facts of Indian Ethnology with my own eyes.

But as the sage observed, "what's impossible can't be," and what with short holidays--a wife and seven children--and miles of work in arrear, India is an impossibility for me.

You say nothing about yourself, so I trust you are well and hearty, and all your belongings flourishing.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[In paleontology he published this year papers on the "Vertebrate Remains from the Jarrow Colliery, Kilkenny;" on a new "Telerpeton from Elgin," and on some "Dinosaurs from South Africa." The latter, and many more afterwards, were sent over by a young man named Alfred Brown, who had a curious history. A Quaker gentleman came across him when employed in cleaning tools in Cirencester College, found that he was a good Greek and Latin scholar, and got him a tutorship in a clergyman's family at the Cape. He afterwards entered the postal service, and being inspired with a vivid interest in geology, spent all the leave he could obtain from his office on the Orange River in getting fossils from the Stormberg Rocks. These, as often as he could afford to send such weighty packages, he sent to Sir R. Murchison, to whom he had received a letter of introduction from his official superior. Sir Roderick, writing to Huxley, says "that he was proud of his new recruit," to whom he sent not only welcome words of encouragement, but the no less welcome news that the brother of his "discoverer," hearing of the facts from Professor Woodward, offered to defray his expenses so that he could collect regularly.

On April 2 Huxley was in Edinburgh to receive the first academic distinction conferred upon him in Britain. He received the honorary degree of the University in company with Tyndall and Carlyle. It was part of the fitness of things that he should be a.s.sociated in this honour with his close friend Tyndall; but though he frequently acknowledged his debt to Carlyle as the teacher who in his youth had inspired him with his undying hatred of shams and humbugs of every kind, and whom he had gratefully come to know in after days, Carlyle did not forgive the publication of "Man's Place in Nature." Years after, near the end of his life, my father saw him walking slowly and alone down the opposite side of the street, and touched by his solitary appearance, crossed over and spoke to him. The old man looked at him, and merely remarking, "You're Huxley, aren't you? the man that says we are all descended from monkeys," went on his way.

On July 6 he writes to tell Darwin that he has lodged a memorial of his about the fossils at the Gallegos river, which was to be visited by the "Na.s.sau" [Chapter 22] exploring ship, with the hydrographer direct, instead of sending it in to the Lords of the Admiralty, who would only have sent it on to the hydrographer. This letter he heads "Country orders executed with accuracy and despatch."

The following letter to Charles Kingsley explains itself:--]

Jermyn Street, April 12, 1866.

My dear Kingsley,

I shall certainly do myself the pleasure of listening to you when you preach at the Royal Inst.i.tution. I wonder if you are going to take the line of showing up the superst.i.tions of men of science. Their name is legion, and the exploit would be a telling one. I would do it myself only I think I am already sufficiently isolated and unpopular.

However, whatever you are going to do I am sure you will speak honestly and well, and I shall come and be a.s.sistant bottleholder.

I am glad you like the working men's lectures. I suspect they are about the best things of that line that I have done, and I only wish I had had the sense to antic.i.p.ate the run they have had here and abroad, and I would have revised them properly.

As they stand they are terribly in the rough, from a literary point of view.

No doubt crib-biting, nurse-biting and original sin in general are all strictly reducible from Darwinian principles; but don't by misadventure run against any academical facts.

Some whales have all the cerebral vertebrae free NOW, and every one of them has the full number, seven, whether they are free or fixed. No doubt whales had hind legs once upon a time. If when you come up to town you go to the College of Surgeons, my friend Flower the Conservator (a good man whom you should know), will show you the whalebone whale's thigh bones in the grand skeleton they have recently set up. The legs, to be sure, and the feet are gone, the battle of life having left private Cetacea in the condition of a Chelsea pensioner.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[This year the British a.s.sociation met at Nottingham, and Huxley was president of Section D. In this capacity he invited Professor Haeckel to attend the meeting, but the impending war with Austria prevented any Prussian from leaving his country at the time, though Haeckel managed to come over later.

Huxley did not deliver a regular opening address to the section on the Thursday, but on the Friday made a speech, which was followed by a discussion upon biology and its several branches, especially morphology and its relation to physiology ("the facts concerning form are questions of force, every form is force visible.") He lamented that the subdivisions of the section had to meet separately as a result of specialisation, the reason for which he found in the want of proper scientific education in schools. And this was the fault of the universities, for just as in the story, "Stick won't beat dog, dog won't bite pig, and so the old woman can't get home," science would not be taught in the schools until it is recognised by the universities.

This prepared the way for Dean Farrar's paper on science teaching in the public schools. His experience as a master at Harrow made him strongly oppose the existing plan of teaching all boys cla.s.sical composition whether they were suited for it or no. He wished to exchange a great deal of Latin verse-making for elementary science.

This paper was doubly interesting to Huxley, as coming from a cla.s.sical master in a public school, and he remarked, "He felt sure that at the present time, the important question for England was not the duration of her coal, but the due comprehension of the truths of science, and the labours of her scientific men."

On the practical side, however, Mr. J. Payne said the great difficulty was the want of teachers; and suggested that if men of science were really in earnest they would condescend to teach in the schools.

It was to a certain extent in answer to this appeal that Huxley gave his lectures on Physiography in 1869, and inst.i.tuted the course of training for science teachers in 1871.

He concluded his work at Nottingham by a lecture to working men.

The following is in reply to Mr. Spencer who had accused himself of losing his temper in an argument:--]

26 Abbey Place, Sunday, November 8, 1868.

My dear Spencer,

Your conscience has been treating you with the most extreme and unjust severity.

I recollect you LOOKED rather savage at one point in our discussion, but I do a.s.sure you that you committed no overt act of ferocity; and if you had, I think I should have fully deserved it for joining in the ferocious onslaught we all made upon you.

What your sins may be in this line to other folk I don't know, but so far as I am concerned I a.s.sure you I have often said that I know no one who takes aggravated opposition better than yourself, and that I have not a few times been ashamed of the extent to which I have tried your patience.

So you see that you have, what the Buddhists call a stock of acc.u.mulated merit, envers moi--and if you should ever feel inclined to "d--n my eyes" you can do so and have a balance left.

Seriously, my old friend, you must not think it necessary to apologise to me about any such matters, but believe me (d--nd or und--d)

Ever yours faithfully,