Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 17

I think we must have an English translation of the "Anthropogenie."

There is great interest in these questions now, and your book is very readable, to say nothing of its higher qualities.

My wife (who sends her kindest greetings) and I were charmed with the photograph. [As for our] publication in that direction, the seven volumes are growing into stately folios. You would not know them.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

How will you read this scrawl now that Gegenbaur is gone?

[In the article here referred to, a review of a book by Professor G.H.

Darwin, a personal attack of an unjustifiable character was made upon him, and through him, upon Charles Darwin. The authorship of the review in question had come to be known, and Huxley writes to his friend:--]

I entirely sympathise with your feeling about the attack on George. If anybody tries that on with my boy L., the old wolf will show all the fangs he has left by that time, depend upon it...

You ought to be like one of the blessed G.o.ds of Elysium, and let the inferior deities do battle with the infernal powers. Moreover, the severest and most effectual punishment for this sort of moral a.s.sa.s.sination is quietly to ignore the offender and give him the cold shoulder. He knows why he gets it, and society comes to know why, and though society is more or less of a dunderhead, it has honourable instincts, and the man in the cold finds no cloak that will cover him.

CHAPTER 2.6.

1875-1876.

[In the year 1875 the bitter agitation directed against experimental physiology came to a head. It had existed in England for several years. In 1870, when President of the British a.s.sociation, Huxley had been violently attacked for speaking in defence of Brown Sequard, the French physiologist. The name of vivisection, indifferently applied to all experiments on animals, whether carried out by the use of the knife or not, had, as Dr. (afterwards Sir) William Smith put it, the opposite effect on many minds to that of the "blessed word Mesopotamia." Misrepresentation was rife even among the most estimable and well-meaning of the opponents of vivisection, because they fancied they saw traces of the practice everywhere, all the more, perhaps, for not having sufficient technical knowledge for proper discrimination.

One of the most flagrant instances of this kind of thing was a letter in the "Record" charging Huxley with advocating vivisections before children, if not by them. Pa.s.sages from the Introduction to his "Elementary Physiology," urging that beginners should be shown the structures under discussion, examples for which could easily be provided from the domestic animals, were put side by side with later pa.s.sages in the book, such, for instance, as statements of fact as to the behaviour of severed nerves under irritation. A sinister inference was drawn from this combination, and published as fact without further verification. Of this he remarks emphatically in his address on "Elementary Instruction in Physiology," 1877 ("Collected Essays" 3 300):]

It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to give a formal contradiction to the silly fiction, which is a.s.siduously circulated by the fanatics who not only ought to know, but do know, that their a.s.sertions are untrue, that I have advocated the introduction of that experimental discipline which is absolutely indispensable to the professed physiologist, into elementary teaching.

[Moreover, during the debates on the Vivisection Bill in 1876, the late Lord Shaftesbury made use of this story. Huxley was extremely indignant, and wrote home:--]

Did you see Lord Shaftesbury's speech in Tuesday's "Times?" I saw it by chance, and have written a sharp letter to the "Times." [(Being in Edinburgh, he had been reading the Scotch papers, and] "the reports of the Scotch papers as to what takes place in Parliament are meagre.")

[This letter appeared on May 26, when he wrote again:--]

You will have had my note, and know all about Lord Shaftesbury and his lies by this time. Surely you could not imagine on any authority that I was such an idiot as to recommend boys and girls to perform experiments which are difficult to skilled anatomists, to say nothing of other reasons.

LETTER TO THE "TIMES."

In your account of the late debate in the House of Lords on the Vivisection Bill, Lord Shaftesbury is reported to have said that in my "Lessons in Elementary Physiology," it is strongly insisted that such experiments as those subjoined shall not merely be studied in the manual, but actually repeated, either by the boys and girls themselves or else by the teachers in their presence, as plainly appears from the preface to the second edition.

I beg leave to give the most emphatic and unqualified contradiction to this a.s.sertion, for which there is not a shadow of justification either in the preface to the second edition of my "Lessons" or in anything I have ever said or written elsewhere. The most important paragraph of the preface which is the subject of Lord Shaftesbury's misquotation and misrepresentation stands as follows:--

"For the purpose of acquiring a practical, though elementary, acquaintance with physiological anatomy and histology, the organs and tissues of the commonest domestic animals afford ample materials. The princ.i.p.al points in the structure and mechanism of the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, or the eye of man may be perfectly ill.u.s.trated by the corresponding parts of a sheep; while the phenomena of the circulation, and many of the most important properties of living tissues are better shown by the common frog than by any of the higher animals."

If Lord Shaftesbury had the slightest theoretical or practical acquaintance with the subject about which he is so anxious to legislate, he would know that physiological anatomy is not exactly the same thing as experimental physiology; and he would be aware that the recommendations of the paragraph I have quoted might be fully carried into effect without the performance of even a solitary "vivisection."

The a.s.sertion that I have ever suggested or desired the introduction of vivisection into the teaching of elementary physiology in schools is, I repeat, contrary to fact.

[On the next day (May 27) appeared a reply from Lord Shaftesbury, in which his entire good faith is equally conspicuous with his misapprehension of the subject.

LORD SHAFTESBURY'S REPLY.

The letter from Professor Huxley in the "Times" of this morning demands an immediate reply.

The object that I supposed the learned professor had in view was gathered from the prefaces to the several editions of his work on "Elementary Physiology."

The preface to the first edition states that "the following lessons in elementary physiology are, primarily, intended to serve the purpose of a text-book for teachers and learners in boys' and girls' schools."

It was published, therefore, as a manual for the young, as well as the old.

Now, any reader of the preface to the first edition would have come to the conclusion that teachers and learners could acquire something solid, and worth having, from the text-book before them. But the preface to the second edition nearly destroys that expectation. Here is the pa.s.sage:--"It will be well for those who attempt to study elementary physiology to bear in mind the important truth that the knowledge of science which is attainable by mere reading, though infinitely better than ignorance, is knowledge of a very different kind from that which arises from direct contact with fact."

"Direct contact with fact!" What can that mean (so, at least, very many ask) but a declaration, on high authority, to teachers and learners that vivisection alone can give them any real and effective instruction?

But the subsequent pa.s.sage is still stronger, for it states "that the worth of the pursuit of science, as an intellectual discipline, is almost lost by those who only seek it in books."

Is not language like this calculated to touch the zeal and vanity of teachers and learners at the very quick, and urge them to improve their minds and stand well in the eyes of the profession and the public by positive progress in experimental physiology? Ordinary readers, most people would think, could come to no other conclusion.

But a disclaimer from Professor Huxley is enough; I am sorry to have misunderstood him; and I must ask his pardon. I sincerely rejoice to have received such an a.s.surance that his great name shall never be used for such a project as that which excited our fears.

On this he wrote:--]

You will have seen Lord Shaftesbury's reply to my letter. I thought it frank and straightforward, and I have written a private letter to the old boy of a placable and proper character. ["Huxley, the Professor, has written me a very civil, nay kind, letter. I replied in the same spirit." (Lord Shaftesbury, "Life and Work" 3 373 June 3, 1876.)

In 1874 he had also had a small pa.s.sage of arms with the late Mr. W.E.

Forster, then Vice-President of the Council, upon the same subject.

Mr. Forster was about to leave office, and when he gave his official authorisation for summer courses of lectures at South Kensington on Biology, Chemistry, Geology, etc., he did so with the special proviso that there be no vivisection experiments in any of the courses, and further, appended a Memorandum, explaining the reasons on which he acted.

Now, although Huxley was mentioned by name as having taken care to avoid inflicting pain in certain previous experiments which had come to Mr. Forster's knowledge, the memorandum evoked from him a strong protest to the Lord President, to whom, as Mr. Forster expressly intimated, an appeal might properly be made.

To begin with, the memorandum contained a mistake in fact, referring to his regular course at South Kensington experiments which had taken place two years before at one of the Courses to Teachers. This course was non-official; Huxley's position in it was simply that of a private person to whom the Department offered a contract, subject to official control and criticism, so far as touched that course, and entirely apart from his regular position at the School of Mines. The experiments of 1872 were performed, as he had reason to believe, with the full sanction of the Department. If the Board chose to go back upon what had happened two years before, he was of course subject to their criticism, but then he ought in justice to be allowed to explain in what these experiments really consisted. What they were appears from a note to Sir J. Donnelly:--]

My dear Donnelly,

It will be the best course, perhaps, if I set down in writing what I have to say respecting the vivisections for physiological purposes which have been performed here, and concerning which you made me a communication from the Vice-President of the Council this morning.

I have always felt it my duty to defend those physiologists who, like Brown Sequard, by making experiments on living animals, have added immensely not only to scientific physiology, but to the means of alleviating human suffering, against the often ignorant and sometimes malicious clamour which has been raised against them.

But personally, indeed I may say const.i.tutionally, the performance of experiments upon living and conscious animals is extremely disagreeable to me, and I have never followed any line of investigation in which such experiments are required.

When the course of instruction in Physiology here was commenced, the question of giving experimental demonstrations became a matter of anxious consideration with me. It was clear that, without such demonstrations, the subject could not be properly taught. It was no less clear from what had happened to me when, as President of the British a.s.sociation, I had defended Brown Sequard, that I might expect to meet with every description of abuse and misrepresentation if such demonstrations were given.

It did not appear to me, however, that the latter consideration ought to weigh with me, and I took such a course as I believe is defensible against everything but misrepresentation.

I gave strict instructions to the Demonstrators who a.s.sisted me that no such experiments were to be performed, unless the animal were previously rendered insensible to pain either by destruction of the brain or by the administration of anaesthetics, and I have every reason to believe that my instructions were carried out. I do not see what I can do beyond this, or how I can give Mr. Forster any better guarantee than is given in my a.s.surance that my dislike to the infliction of pain both as a matter of principle and of feeling is quite as strong as his own can be.

If Mr. Forster is not satisfied with this a.s.surance, and with its practical result that our experiments are made only on non-sentient animals, then I am afraid that my position as teacher of Physiology must come to an end.

If I am to act in that capacity I cannot consent to be prohibited from showing the circulation in a frog's foot because the frog is made slightly uncomfortable by being tied up for that purpose; nor from showing the fundamental properties of nerves, because extirpating the brain of the same animal inflicts one-thousandth part of the prolonged suffering which it undergoes when it makes its natural exit from the world by being slowly forced down the throat of a duck, and crushed and asphyxiated in that creature's stomach.

I shall be very glad to wait upon Mr. Forster if he desires to see me.