Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 2

Now I think that the best service I can render to all you enterprising young men is to turn devil's advocate, and do my best to pick holes in your work.

By the way, Miklucho-Maclay has been here; I have seen a good deal of him, and he strikes me as a man of very considerable capacity and energy. He was to return to Jena to-day.

My friend Herbert Spencer will be glad to learn that you appreciate his book. I have been HIS devil's advocate for a number of years, and there is no telling how many brilliant speculations I have been the means of choking in an embryonic state.

My wife does not know that I am writing to you, or she would say apropos of your last paragraph that you are an entirely unreasonable creature in your notions of how friendship should be manifested, and that you make no allowances for the oppression and exhaustion of the work entailed by what Jean Paul calls a "Tochtervolles Haus." I hope I may live to see you with at least ten children, and then my wife and I will be avenged. Our children will be married and settled by that time, and we shall have time to write every day and get very wroth when you do not reply immediately.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

All are well, the children so grown you will not know them.

July 18, 1870.

My dear Dohrn,

Notwithstanding the severe symptoms of "Tochterkrankheit" under which I labour, I find myself equal to reply to your letter.

The British a.s.sociation meets in September on the 14th day of that month, which falls on a Wednesday. Of course, if you come you shall be provided for by the best specimen of Liverpool hospitality. We have ample provision for the entertainment of the "distinguished foreigner."

Will you be so good as to be my special amba.s.sador with Haeckel and Gegenbauer, and tell them the same thing? It would give me and all of us particular pleasure to see them and to take care of them.

But I am afraid that this wretched war will play the very deuce with our foreign friends. If you Germans do not give that crowned swindler, whose fall I have been looking for ever since the coup d'etat, such a blow as he will never recover from, I will never forgive you. Public opinion in England is not worth much, but at present, it is entirely against France. Even the "Times," which generally contrives to be on the baser side of a controversy, is at present on the German side. And my daughters announced to me yesterday that they had converted a young friend of theirs from the French to the German side, which is one gained for you. All look forward with great pleasure to seeing you in the autumn.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[In addition to this address on September 14, he read his paper on "Penicillium," etc., in Section D on the 20th. Speaking on the 17th, after a lecture of Sir J. Lubbock's on the "Social and Religious Condition of the Lower Races of Mankind," he brought forward his own experiences as to the practical results of the beliefs held by the Australian savages, and from this pa.s.sed to the increasing savagery of the lower cla.s.ses in great towns such as Liverpool, which was the great political question of the future, and for which the only cure lay in a proper system of education.

The savagery underlying modern civilisation was all the more vividly before him, because one evening he, together with Sir J. Lubbock, Dr.

Bastian, and Mr. Samuelson, were taken by the chief of the detective department round some of the worst slums in Liverpool. In thieves'

dens, doss houses, dancing saloons, enough of suffering and criminality was seen to leave a very deep and painful impression. In one of these places, a thieves' lodging-house, a drunken man with a cut face accosted him and asked him whether he was a doctor. He said "yes," whereupon the man asked him to doctor his face. He had been fighting, and was terribly excited. Huxley tried to pacify him, but if it had not been for the intervention of the detective, the man would have a.s.saulted him. Afterwards he asked the detective if he were not afraid to go alone in these places, and got the significant answer, "Lord bless you, sir, drink and disease take all the strength out of them."

On the 21st, after the general meeting of the a.s.sociation, which wound up the proceedings, the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire presented a diploma of honorary membership and a gift of books to Huxley, Sir G. Stokes, and Sir J. Hooker, the last three Presidents of the British a.s.sociation, and to Professors Tyndall and Rankine and Sir J. Lubbock, the lecturers at Liverpool. Then Huxley was presented with a mazer bowl lined with silver, made from part of one of the roof timbers of the cottage occupied as his headquarters by Prince Rupert during the siege of Liverpool. He was rather taken aback when he found the bowl was filled with champagne, after a moment, however, he drank]

"success to the good old town of Liverpool," [and with a wave of his hand, threw the rest on the floor, saying,] "I pour this as a libation to the tutelary deities of the town."

[The same evening he was the guest of the Sphinx Club at dinner at the Royal Hotel, his friend Mr. P.H. Rathbone being in the chair, and in proposing the toast of the town and trade of Liverpool, declared that commerce was a greater civiliser than all the religion and all the science ever put together in the world, for it taught men to be truthful and punctual and precise in the execution of their engagements, and men who were truthful and punctual and precise in the execution of their engagements had put their feet upon the first rung of the ladder which led to moral and intellectual elevation.

There were the usual clerical attacks on the address, among the rest a particularly violent one from a Unitarian pulpit. Writing to Mr.

Samuelson on October 5 he says:--]

Be not vexed on account of the G.o.dly. They will have their way. I found Mr. --'s sermon awaiting me on my return home. It is an able paper, but like the rest of his cloth he will not take the trouble to make himself acquainted with the ideas of the man whom he opposes. At least that is the case if he imagines he brings me under the range of his guns.

[On October 2 he writes to Tyndall:--]

I have not yet thanked you properly for your great contribution to the success of our meeting [i.e. his lecture "On the Scientific Uses of the Imagination"]. I was nervous over the pa.s.sage about the clergy, but those confounded parsons seem to me to let you say anything, while they bully me for a word or a phrase. It's the old story, "one man may steal a horse while the other may not look over the wall."

[Tyndall was not to be outdone, and replied:--

The parsons know very well that I mean kindness; if I correct them I do it in love and not in wrath.

One more extract from a letter to Dr. Dohrn, under date of November 17. The first part is taken up with a long and detailed description of the best English microscopes and their price, for Dr. Dohrn wished to get one; and my father volunteered to procure it for him. The rest of the letter has a more general interest as giving his views on the great struggle between France and Germany then in progress, his distrust of militarism, and above all, his hatred of lying, political as much as any other:--]

This wretched war is doing infinite mischief; but I do not see what Germany can do now but carry it out to the end.

I began to have some sympathy with the French after Sedan, but the Republic lies harder than the Empire did, and the whole country seems to me to be rotten to the core. The only figure which stands out with anything like n.o.bility or dignity, on the French side, is that of the Empress, and she is only a second-rate Marie-Antoinette. There is no Roland, no Corday, and apparently no MAN of any description.

The Russian row is beginning, and the rottenness of English administration will soon, I suppose, have an opportunity of displaying itself. Bad days are, I am afraid, in store for all of us, and the worst for Germany if it once becomes thoroughly bitten by the military mad dog.

The "happy family" is flourishing and was afflicted, even over its breakfast, when I gave out the news that you had been ill.

The wife desires her best remembrances, and we all hope you are better.

[The high pressure under which Huxley worked, and his abundant output, continued undiminished through the autumn and winter. Indeed, he was so busy that he postponed his Lectures to Working Men in London from October to February 1871. On October 3 he lectured in Leicester on "What is to be Learned from a Piece of Coal," a parallel lecture to that of 1868 on "A Piece of Chalk." On the 17th and 24th he lectured at Birmingham on "Extinct Animals intermediate between Reptiles and Birds"--a subject which he had made peculiarly his own by long study; and on December 29 he was at Bradford, and lectured at the Philosophical Inst.i.tute upon "The Formation of Coal" ("Collected Essays" 8.).

He was also busy with two Royal Commissions; still, at whatever cost of the energy and time due to his own investigations and those additional labours by which he increased his none too abundant income, he felt it his duty, in the interests of his ideal of education, to come forward as a candidate for the newly-inst.i.tuted School Board for London. This was the practical outcome of the rising interest in education all over the country; on its working, he felt, depended momentous issues--the fostering of the moral and physical well-being of the nation; the quickening of its intelligence and the maintenance of its commercial supremacy. Withal, he desired to temper "book-learning" with something of the direct knowledge of nature: on the one hand, as an admirable instrument of education, if properly applied; on the other, as preparing the way for an att.i.tude of mind which could appreciate the reasons for the immense changes already beginning to operate in human thought.

Moreover, he possessed a considerable knowledge of the working of elementary education throughout the country, owing to his experience as examiner under the Science and Art Department, the establishment of which he describes as "a measure which came into existence unnoticed, but which will, I believe, turn out to be of more importance to the welfare of the people than many political changes over which the noise of battle has rent the air" ("Scientific Education" 1869; "Collected Essays" 3 page 131.)

Accordingly, though with health uncertain, and in the midst of exacting occupations, he felt that he ought not to stand aside at so critical a moment, and offered himself for election in the Marylebone division with a secret sense that rejection would in many ways be a great relief.

The election took place on November 29, and Huxley came out second on the poll. He had had neither the means nor the time for a regular canva.s.s of the electors. He was content to address several public meetings, and leave the result to the interest he could awaken amongst his hearers. His views were further brought before the public by the action of the editor of the "Contemporary Review," who, before the election, "took upon himself, in what seemed to him to be the public interest," to send to the newspapers an extract from Huxley's article, "The School Boards: what they can do, and what they may do," which was to appear in the December number.

In this article will be found ("Collected Essays" 3 page 374) a full account of the programme which he laid down for himself, and which to a great extent he saw carried into effect, in its fourfold division--of physical drill and discipline, not only to improve the physique of the children, but as an introduction to all other sorts of training--of domestic training, especially for girls--of education in the knowledge of moral and social laws and the engagement of the affections for what is good and against what is evil--and finally, of intellectual training. And it should be noted that he did not only regard intellectual training from the utilitarian point of view; he insisted, e.g. on the value of reading for amus.e.m.e.nt as] "one of its most valuable uses to hard-worked people."

[Much as he desired that this intellectual training should be efficient, the most cursory perusal of this article will show how far he placed the moral training above the intellectual, which, by itself, would only turn the gutter-child into] "the subtlest of all the beasts of the field," [and how wide of the mark is the cartoon at this period representing him as the Professor whose panacea for the ragged children was to] "cram them full of nonsense."

[In the third section are also to be found his arguments for the retention of Bible-reading in the elementary schools. He reproached extremists of either party for confounding the science, theology, with the affection, religion, and either crying for more theology under the name of religion, or demanding the abolition of] "religious" [teaching in order to get rid of theology, a step which he likens to] "burning your ship to get rid of the c.o.c.kroaches."

[As regards his actual work on the Board, I must express my thanks to Dr. J.H. Gladstone for his kindness in supplementing my information with an account based partly on his own long experience of the Board, partly on the reminiscences of members contemporary with my father.

The Board met first on December 15, for the purpose of electing a Chairman. As a preliminary, Huxley proposed and carried a motion that no salary be attached to the post. He was himself one of the four members proposed for the Chairmanship; but the choice of the Board fell upon Lord Lawrence. In the words of Dr. Gladstone:--

Huxley at once took a prominent part in the proceedings, and continued to do so till the beginning of the year 1872, when ill-health compelled him to retire.

At first there was much curiosity both inside and outside the Board as to how Huxley would work with the old educationists, the clergy, dissenting ministers, and the miscellaneous body of eminent men that comprised the first Board. His antagonism to many of the methods employed in elementary schools was well known from his various discourses, which had been recently published together under the t.i.tle of "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews." I watched his course with interest at the time; but for the purpose of this sketch I have lately sought information from such of the old members of the Board as are still living, especially the earl of Harrowby, Bishop Barry, the Reverend Dr. Angus, and Mr. Edward North Buxton, together with Mr.

Croad, the Clerk of the Board. They soon found proof of his great energy, and his power of expressing his views in clear and forcible language; but they also found that with all his strong convictions and lofty ideals he was able and willing to enter into the views of others, and to look at a practical question from its several sides. He could construct as well as criticise. Having entered a public arena somewhat late in life, and being of a sensitive nature, he had scarcely acquired that calmness and pachydermatous quality which is needful for one's personal comfort; but his colleagues soon came to respect him as a perfectly honest antagonist or supporter, and one who did not allow differences of conviction to interfere with friendly intercourse.

The various sections of the clerical party indeed looked forward with great apprehension to his presence on the Board, but the more liberal amongst them ventured to find ground for hoping that they and he would not be utterly opposed so far as the work of practical organisation was concerned, in the declaration of his belief that true education was impossible without "religion," of which he declared that all that has an unchangeable reality in it is const.i.tuted by the love of some ethical ideal to govern and guide conduct,] "together with the awe and reverence, which have no kinship with base fear, but rise whenever one tries to pierce below the surface of things, whether they be material or spiritual." [And in fact a cleavage took place between him and the seven extreme "secularists" on the Board (the seven champions of unchristendom, as their opponents dubbed them) on the question of the reading of the Bible in schools (see below (Bishop Barry calls particular attention to his att.i.tude on this point, "because," he says, "it is (I think) often misunderstood. In the "Life of the Right Honourable W.H. Smith" (for instance), published not long ago, Huxley is supposed, as a matter of course to have been the leader of the Secularist party.")

One of the earliest proposals laid before the Board was a resolution to open the meetings with prayer. To this considerable opposition was offered; but a bitter debate was averted by Huxley pointing out that the proposal was ultra vires, inasmuch as under the Act const.i.tuting the Board the business for which they were empowered to meet did not include prayer. Hereupon a requisition--in which he himself joined--was made to allow the use of a committee-room to those who wished to unite in a short service before the weekly meetings, an arrangement which has continued to the present time.

At the second meeting, on December 21, he gave notice of a motion to appoint a committee to consider and report upon the scheme of education to be adopted in the Board Schools.

This motion came up for consideration on February 15, 1871. In introducing it, he said that such a committee ought to consider:--]