Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume I Part 45

Your letter, though dated the 12th, has but just reached me. I mention this lest you should think me remiss, my sin in not writing to you already being sufficiently great. But your book did not reach me until November, and I have been hard at work lecturing, with scarcely an intermission ever since.

Now I need hardly say that the "Morphologie" is not exactly a novel to be taken up and read in the intervals of business. On the contrary, though profoundly interesting, it is an uncommonly hard book, and one wants to read every sentence of it over.

I went through it within a fortnight of its coming into my hands, so as to get at your general drift and purpose, but up to this time I have not been able to read it as I feel I ought to read it before venturing upon criticism. You cannot imagine how my time is frittered away in these accursed lectures and examinations.

There can be but one opinion, however, as to the knowledge and intellectual grasp displayed in the book; and, to me, the attempt to systematise biology as a whole is especially interesting and valuable.

I shall go over this part of your work with great care by and by, but I am afraid you must expect that the number of biologists who will do so, will remain exceedingly small. Our comrades are not strong in logic and philosophy.

With respect to the polemic excursus, of course, I chuckle over them most sympathetically, and then say how naughty they are! I have done too much of the same sort of thing not to sympathise entirely with you; and I am much inclined to think that it is a good thing for a man, once at any rate in his life, to perform a public war-dance against all sorts of humbug and imposture.

But having satisfied one's love of freedom in this way, perhaps the sooner the war-paint is off the better. It has no virtue except as a sign of one's own frame of mind and determination, and when that is once known, is little better than a distraction.

I think there are a few patches of this kind, my dear friend, which may as well come out in the next edition, e.g. that wonderful note about the relation of G.o.d to gas, the gravity of which greatly tickled my fancy.

I pictured to myself the effect which a translation of this would have upon the minds of my respectable countrymen!

Apropos of translation. Darwin wrote to me on that subject, and with his usual generosity, would have made a considerable contribution towards the expense if we could have seen our way to the publication of a translation. But I do not think it would be well to translate the book in fragments, and, as a whole, it would be a very costly undertaking, with very little chance of finding readers.

I do not believe that in the British Islands there are fifty people who are competent to read the book, and of the fifty, five and twenty have read it or will read it in German.

What I desire to do is to write a review of it, which will bring it into some notice on this side of the water, and this I hope to do before long. If I do not it will be, you well know, from no want of inclination, but simply from lack of time.

In any case, as soon as I have been able to study the book carefully, you shall have my honest opinion about all points.

I am glad your journey has yielded so good a scientific harvest, and especially that you found my "Oceanic Hydrozoa" of some use. But I am shocked to find that you had no copy of the book of your own, and I shall take care that one is sent to you. It is my first-born work, done when I was very raw and inexperienced, and had neither friends nor help.

Perhaps I am all the fonder of the child on that ground.

A lively memory of you remains in my house, and wife and children will be very glad to hear that I have news of you when I go home to dinner.

Keep us in kindly recollection, and believe me,

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

July 16, 1867.

My dear Haeckel,

My wife and I send you our most hearty congratulations and good wishes.

Give your betrothed a good account of us, and for we hope in the future to entertain as warm a friendship for her as for you. I was very glad to have the news, for it seemed to me very sad that a man of your warm affections should be surrounded only by hopeless regrets. Such surroundings inflict a sort of partial paralysis upon one's whole nature, a result which is, to me, far more serious and regrettable than the mere suffering one undergoes.

The one thing for men, who like you and I stand pretty much alone, and have a good deal of fighting to do in the external world, is to have light and warmth and confidence within the four walls of home. May all these good things await you!

Many thanks for your kind invitation to Jena. I am sure my wife would be as much pleased as I to accept it, but it is very difficult for her to leave her children.

We will keep it before us as a pleasant possibility, but I suspect you and Madame will be able to come to England before we shall reach Germany.

I wish I had rooms to offer you, but you have seen that troop of children and they leave no corner unoccupied.

Many thanks for the Bericht and the genealogical tables. You seem, as usual, to have got through an immense amount of work.

I have been exceedingly occupied with a paper on the "Cla.s.sification of Birds," a sort of expansion of one of my Hunterian Lectures this year.

It has now gone to press, and I hope soon to be able to send you a copy of it.

Occupation of this and other kinds must be my excuse for having allowed so much longer a time to slip by than I imagined had done before writing to you. It is not for want of sympathy, be sure, for my wife and I have often talked of the new life opening out to you.

This is written in my best hand. I am proud of it, as I can read every word quite easily myself, which is more than I can always say for my own MS.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The same experience is attested and enforced in the correspondence with Dr. Anton Dohrn, which begins this year. Genial, enthusiastic, as pungent as he was eager in conversation, the future founder of the Marine Biological Station at Naples, on his first visit to England, made my father's acquaintance by accepting his invitation to stay with him]

"for as long as you can make it convenient to stay" [at Swanage,] "a little country town with no sort of amus.e.m.e.nt except what is to be got by walking about a rather pretty country. But having warned you of this, I repeat that it will give me much pleasure to see you if you think it worthwhile to come so far."

[Dr. Dohrn came, and came into the midst of the family--seven children, ranging from ten years to babyhood, with whom he made himself as popular by his farmyard repertory, as he did with the elders by other qualities.

The impression left upon him appears from a letter written soon after:--

"Ich habe heute mehrere Capitel in Mill's 'Utilitarianism' gelesen and das Wort happiness mehr als einmal gefunden: hatte ich eine Definition dieses vielumworbenen Wortes irgend Jemand zu geben, ich wurde sagen (I have been reading several chapters of Mill's 'Utilitarianism' to-day, and met with the word 'happiness' more than once; if _I_ had to give anybody a definition of this much debated word, in other say): go and see the Huxley family at Swanage; and if you would enjoy the same I enjoyed, you would feel what is happiness, and never more ask for a definition of this sentiment."]

Swanage, September 22, 1867.

My dear Dohrn,

Thanks to my acquaintance with the "Microskopische Anatomie," and to the fact that you employ our ma.n.u.script characters, and not the hieroglyphics of what I venture to call the "cursed" and not "cursiv"

Schrift, your letter was as easy as it was pleasant to read. We are all glad to have news of you, though it was really very unnecessary to thank us for trying to make your brief visit a pleasant one. Your conscience must be more "pungent" than your talk, if it p.r.i.c.ks you with so little cause. My wife rejoices saucily to find that phrase of hers has stuck so strongly in your mind, but you must remember her fondness for "Tusch."

You must certainly marry. In my bachelor days, it was unsafe for anyone to approach me before mid-day, and for all intellectual purposes I was barren till the evening. Breakfast at six would have upset me for the day. You and the lobster noted the difference the other day.

Whether it is matrimony or whether it is middle age I don't know, but as time goes on you can combine both.

I cannot but accept your kind offer to send me f.a.n.n.y Lewald's works, though it is a shame to rob you of them. In return my wife insists on your studying a copy of Tennyson, which we shall send you as soon as we return to civilisation, which will be next Friday. If you are in London after that date we shall hope to see you once more before you return to the bosom of the "Fatherland."

I did my best to give the children your message, but I fear I failed ignominiously in giving the proper bovine vocalisation to "Mroo."

That small curly-headed boy Harry, struck, I suppose by the kindness you both show to children, has effected a synthesis between you and Tyndall, and gravely observed the other day, "Doctor Dohrn-Tyndall do say Mroo."

My wife...Sends her kind regards. The "seven" are not here or they would vote love by acclamation.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[He did not this year attend the British a.s.sociation, which was held in Dundee. This was the first occasion on which an evening was devoted to a working men's lecture, a step important as tending towards his own ideal of what science should be:--not the province of a few, but the possession of the many.

This first lecture was delivered by Professor Tyndall, who wrote him an account of the meeting, and in particular of his reconciliation with Professors Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Tait, with whom he had had a somewhat embittered controversy.