Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume I Part 44

My dear Tyndall,

Many thanks for the kind note which accompanied your letter to the Jamaica Committee.

When I presented myself at Rogers' dinner last night I had not heard of the letter, and Ga.s.siot began poking fun at me, and declaring that your absence was due to a quarrel between us on the unhappy subject.

I replied to the jest earnestly enough, that I hoped and believed our old friendship was strong enough to stand any strain that might be put on it, much as I grieved that we should be ranged in opposite camps in this or any other cause.

That you and I have fundamentally different political principles must, I think, have become obvious to both of us during the progress of the American War. The fact is made still more plain by your printed letter, the tone and spirit of which I greatly admired without being able to recognise in it any important fact or argument which had not pa.s.sed through my mind before I joined the Jamaica Committee.

Thus there is nothing for it but for us to agree to differ, each supporting his own side to the best of his ability, and respecting his friend's freedom as he would his own, and doing his best to remove all petty bitterness from that which is at bottom one of the most important const.i.tutional battles in which Englishmen have for many years been engaged.

If you and I are strong enough and wise enough, we shall be able to do this, and yet preserve that love for one another which I value as one of the good things of my life.

If not, we shall come to grief. I mean to do my best.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Huxley was always of opinion that to write a good elementary text-book required a most extensive and intimate knowledge of the subject under discussion. Certainly the "Lessons on Elementary Physiology" which appeared at the end of 1866 were the outcome of such knowledge, and met with a wonderful and lasting success as a text-book. A graceful compliment was pa.s.sed upon it by Sir William Lawrence, when, in thanking the author for the gift of the book, he wrote (January 24, 1867), "in your modest book 'indocti discant, ament meminisse periti!'"

This was before the days of American copyright, and English books were usually regarded as fair prey by the ma.s.s of American publishers. Among the exceptions to this practical rule were the firm of D. Appleton & Co., who made it a point of honour to treat foreign authors as though they were legally ent.i.tled to some equitable rights. On their behalf an arrangement was made for an authorised American edition of the "Physiology" by Dr. Youmans, whose acquaintance thus made my father did not allow to drop.

It is worth noting that by the year 1898 this little book had pa.s.sed through four editions, and been reprinted thirty-one times.]

CHAPTER 1.21.

1867.

[It has already been noted that Huxley's ethnological work continued this year with a second series of lectures at the Royal Inst.i.tution, while he enlarged his paper on "Two widely contrasted forms of Human Crania," and published it in the "Journal of Anatomy." One paleontological memoir of his appeared this year on Acanthopholis, a fossil from the chalk marl, an additional piece of work for which he excuses himself to Sir Charles Lyell (January 4, 1867):--]

The new reptile advertised in "Geol. Mag." has turned up in the way of business, and I could not help giving a notice of it, or I should not have undertaken anything fresh just now.

The Spitzbergen things are very different, and I have taken sundry looks at them and put them by again to let my thoughts ripen.

They are Ichthyosaurian, and I am not sure they do not belong to two species. But it is an awful business to compare all the Ichthyosaurians.

I THINK that one form is new. Please to tell Nordenskiold this much.

[However, his chief interest was in the anatomy of birds, at which he had been working for some time, and especially the development of certain of the cranial bones as a basis of cla.s.sification. On April 11, expanding one of his Hunterian Lectures, he read a paper on this subject at the Zoological Society, afterwards published in their "Proceedings"

for 1867.

As he had found the works of Professor Cornay of help in the preparation of this paper, he was careful to send him a copy with an acknowledgment of his indebtedness, eliciting the reply, "c'est si beau de trouver chez l'homme la science unie a la justice."

He followed this up with another paper on "The Cla.s.sification and Distribution of the Alectoromorphae and Heteromorphae" in 1868, and to the work upon this the following letter to his ally, W.K. Parker, refers:--]

Royal Geological Survey of Great Britain, Jermyn Street, July 17, 1867.

My dear Parker,

Nothing short of the direct temptation of the evil one could lead you to entertain so monstrous a doctrine, as that you propound about Cariamidae.

I recommend fasting for three days and the application of a scourge thrice in the twenty-four hours! Do this, and about the fourth day you will perceive that the cranial differences alone are as great as those between Cathartes and Serpentarius.

If you want to hear something new and true it is this:--

1. That Memora is more unlike all the other Pa.s.serines (i.e.

Coracomorphae) than they are unlike one another, and that it will have to stand in a group by itself.

It is as much like a wren as you are--less so, in fact, if you go on maintaining that preposterous fiction about Serpentarius.

2. Wood-p.e.c.k.e.rs are more like crows than they are like cuckoos.

Aegithognathae.

Coracomorphae.

Desmognathae.

*Cypselomorphae.--Coccygomorphae.--*Gecinomorphae.

[*Shown on a horizontal line between Coracomorphae and Desmognathae.]

3. Sundevell is the sharpest fellow who has written on the cla.s.sification of birds.

4. Nitzsch and W.K. Parker [Except in the case of Serpentarius.] are the sharpest fellows who have written on their osteology.

5. Though I do not see how it follows naturally on the above, still, where can I see a good skeleton of Glareola?

None in college, B.M.S. badly prepared.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[An incident which diversified one of the Gilchrist lectures to working men is thus recorded by the "Times" of January 23, 1867:--]

A GOOD EXAMPLE.

Last night, at the termination of a lecture on ethnology, delivered by Professor Huxley to an audience which filled the theatre of the London Mechanics' Inst.i.tute in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, the lecturer said that he had received a letter as he entered the building which he would not take the responsibility of declining to read, although it had no reference to the subject under consideration. He then read the letter, which was simply signed "A Regular Attendant at Your Lectures," and which in a few words drew attention to the appalling distress existing among the population out of work at the East End, and suggested that all those present at the lecture that night should be allowed the opportunity of contributing one or two pennies each towards a fund for their relief, and that the professor should become the treasurer for the evening. This suggestion was received by the audience with marks of approval. The professor said he would not put pressure on anyone; he would simply place his own subscription in one of the skulls on the table. This he did, and all the audience coming on the platform, threw in money in copper and silver until the novel cash box was filled with coin which amounted to a large sum. A gentleman present expressed a hope that the example set by that audience might be followed with good results wherever large bodies a.s.sembled either for educational or recreative purposes.

[At the end of April this year my father spent a week in Brittany with Dr. Hooker and Sir J. Lubbock, rambling about the neighbourhood of Rennes and Vannes, and combining the examination of prehistoric remains with the refreshment of holiday making.

Few letters of this period exist. The x Club was doing its work. Most of those to whom he would naturally have written he met constantly. Two letters to Professor Haeckel give pieces of his experience. One suggests the limits of aggressive polemics, as to which I remember his once saying that he himself had only twice been the aggressor in controversy, without waiting to be personally attacked; once where he found his opponent was engaged in a flanking movement; the other when a man of great public reputation had come forward to champion an untenable position of the older orthodoxy, and a blow dealt to his pretensions to historical and scientific accuracy would not only bring the question home to many who neglected it in an impersonal form, but would also react upon the value of the historical arguments with which he sought to stir public opinion in other spheres. The other letter touches on the influence, at once calming and invigorating, as he had known it to the full for the last twelve years, which a wife can bring in the midst of outward struggles to the inner life of the home.]

Jermyn Street, London, May 20, 1867.

My dear Haeckel,