Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 24

1876.

[The year 1876 was again a busy one, almost as busy as any that went before. As in 1875, his London work was cut in two by a course of lectures in Edinburgh, and sittings of the Royal Commission on Scottish Universities, and furthermore, by a trip to America in his summer vacation.

In the winter and early spring he gave his usual lectures at South Kensington; a course to working men "On the Evidence as to the Origin of Existing Vertebrated Animals," from February to April ("Nature"

volumes 13 and 14); a lecture at the Royal Inst.i.tution (January 28) "On the Border Territory between the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms"

("Collected Essays" 8 170); and another at Glasgow (February 15) "On the Teleology and Morphology of the Hand."

In this lecture, which he never found time to get into final shape for publication, but which was substantially repeated at the Working Men's College in 1878, he touched upon one of the philosophic aspects of the theory of evolution, namely, how far is it consistent with the argument from design?

Granting provisionally the force of Paley's argument in individual cases of adaptation, and ill.u.s.trating it by the hand and its representative in various of the Mammalia, he proceeds to show by the facts of morphology that the argument, as commonly stated, fails; that each mechanism, each animal, was not specially made to suit the particular purpose we find it serving, but was developed from a single common type. Yet in a limited and special sense he finds teleology to be not inconsistent with morphology. The two sets of facts flow from a common cause, evolution. Descent by modification accounts for similarity of structure; the process of gradual adaptation to conditions accounts for the existing adaptation to purpose. To be a teleologist and yet accept evolution it is only necessary] "to suppose that the original plan was sketched out--that the purpose was foreshadowed in the molecular arrangements out of which the animals have come."

[This was no new view of his. While, ever since his first review of the "Origin" in 1859 ("Collected Essays" 2 6), he had declared the commoner and coa.r.s.er forms of teleology to find their most formidable opponent in the theory of evolution, and in 1869, addressing the Geological Society, had spoken of] "those final causes, which have been named barren virgins, but which might be more fitly termed the hetairae of philosophy, so constantly have they led men astray" [(ib.

8 80; cp. 2 21, 36), he had, in his "Criticism of the Origin" (1864 2 86), and the "Genealogy of Animals" (1869 2 109 sqq.), shown how]

"perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of teleology and morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both which his views offer...the wider teleology, which is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of evolution."

[His notebook shows that he was busy with Reptilia from Elgin and from India; and with his "Manual of Invertebrate Anatomy," which was published the next year; while he refused to undertake a course of ten lectures at the Royal Inst.i.tution, saying that he had already too much other work to do, and would have no time for original work.

About this time, also, in answer to a request from a believer in miracles,] "that those who fail to perceive the cogency of the evidence by which the occurrence of miracles is supported, should not confine themselves to the discussion of general principles, but should grapple with some particular case of an alleged miracle," [he read before the Metaphysical Society a paper dealing with the evidence for the miracle of the resurrection. (See volume 1.)

Some friends wished him to publish the paper as a contribution to criticism; but his own doubts as to the opportuneness of so doing were confirmed by a letter from Mr. John Morley, then editor of the "Fortnightly Review," to which he replied (January 18):--]

To say truth, most of the considerations you put so forcibly had pa.s.sed through my mind--but one always suspects oneself of cowardice when one's own interests may be affected.

[At the beginning of May he went to Edinburgh. He writes home on May 8:--]

I am in hopes of being left to myself this time, as n.o.body has called but Sir Alexander Grant the Princ.i.p.al, Crum Brown, whom I met in the street just now, and Lister, who has a patient in the house. I have been getting through an enormous quant.i.ty of reading, some tough monographs that I brought with me, the first volume of Forster's "Life of Swift," "Goodsir's Life," and a couple of novels of George Sand, with a trifle of Paul Heyse. You should read George Sand's "Cesarine Dietrich" and "La Mare au Diable" that I have just finished. She is bigger than George Eliot, more flexible, a more thorough artist. It is a queer thing, by the way, that I have never read "Consuelo." I shall get it here. When I come back from my lecture I like to rest for an hour or two over a good story. It freshens me wonderfully.

[However, social Edinburgh did not leave him long to himself, but though he might thus lose something of working time, this loss was counterbalanced by the dispelling of some of the fits of depression which still a.s.sailed him from time to time.

On May 25 he writes:--]

The General a.s.sembly is sitting now, and I thought I would look in. It was very crowded and I had to stand, so I was soon spied out and invited to sit beside the Lord High Commissioner, who represents the Crown in the a.s.sembly, and there I heard an ecclesiastical row about whether a certain church should be allowed to have a cover with IHS on the Communion Table or not. After three hours' discussion the IHSers were beaten. I was introduced to the Commissioner Lord Galloway, and asked to dine to-night. So I felt bound to go to the special levee at Holyrood with my colleagues this morning, and I shall have to go to my Lady Galloway's reception in honour of the Queen's birthday to-morrow.

Luckily there will be no more of it. Vanity of Vanities! Sat.u.r.day afternoon I go out to Lord Young's place to spend Sunday. I have been in rather a hypochondriacal state of mind, and I will see if this course of medicine will drive the seven devils out.

[One of the chief friendships which sprang from this residence in Edinburgh was that with Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Skelton, widely known under his literary pseudonym of "Shirley." A Civil servant as well as a man of letters, he united practical life with literature, a combination that appealed particularly to Huxley, so that he was a constant visitor at Dr. Skelton's picturesque house, the Hermitage of Braid, near Edinburgh. A number of letters addressed to Skelton from 1875 to 1891 show that with him Huxley felt the stimulus of an appreciative correspondent.]

4 Melville Street, Edinburgh, June 23, 1876.

My dear Skelton,

I do not understand how it is that your note has been so long in reaching me; but I hasten to repel the libellous insinuation that I have vowed a vow against dining at the Hermitage.

I wish I could support that repudiation by at once accepting your invitation for Sat.u.r.day or Sunday, but my Sat.u.r.days and Sundays are mortgaged to one or other of your judges (good judges, obviously).

Shall you be at home on Monday or Tuesday? If so, I would put on a kilt (to be as little dressed as possible), and find my way out and back; happily improving my mind on the journey with the tracts you mention.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Melville Street, Edinburgh, July 1, 1876.

My dear Skelton,

Very many thanks for the copy of the "Comedy of the Noctes," which reached me two or three days ago. Turning over the pages I came upon the Shepherd's "Terrible Journey of Timbuctoo," which I enjoyed as much as when I first read it thirty odd years ago.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[On June 23 he writes home:--]

Did you read Gilman's note asking me to give the inaugural discourse at the Johns Hopkins University, and offering 100 pounds sterling on the part of the trustees? I am minded to do it on our way back from the south, but don't much like taking money for the performance. Tell me what you think about this at once, as I must reply.

[This visit to America had been under discussion for some time. It is mentioned as a possibility in a letter to Darwin two years before.

Early in 1876 Mr. Frederic Harrison was commissioned by an American correspondent--who, by the way, had named his son Thomas Huxley--to give my father the following message:--"The whole nation is electrified by the announcement that Professor Huxley is to visit us next fall. We will make infinitely more of him than we did of the Prince of Wales and his retinue of lords and dukes." Certainly the people of the States gave him an enthusiastic welcome; his writings had made him known far and wide; as the manager of the Californian department at the Philadelphia Exhibition told him, the very miners of California read his books over their camp fires; and his visit was so far like a royal progress, that unless he entered a city disguised under the name of Jones or Smith, he was liable not merely to be interviewed, but to be called upon to "address a few words" to the citizens.

Leaving their family under the hospitable care of Sir W. and Lady Armstrong at Cragside, my father and mother started on July 27 on board the "Germanic," reaching New York on August 5. My father sometimes would refer, half-jestingly, to the trip as his second honeymoon, when, for the first time in twenty years, he and my mother set forth by themselves, free from all family cares. And indeed, there was the underlying resemblance that this too came at the end of a period of struggle to attain, and marked the beginning of a more settled period. His reception in America may be said to emphasise his definite establishment in the first rank of English thinkers. It was a signal testimony to the wide extent of his influence, hardly suspected, indeed, by himself; an influence due above all to the fact that he did not allow his studies to stand apart from the moving problems of existence, but brought the new and regenerating ideas into contact with life at every point, and that his championship of the new doctrines had at the same time been a championship of freedom and sincerity in thought and word against shams and self-deceptions of every kind. It was not so much the preacher of new doctrines who was welcomed, as the apostle of veracity--not so much the student of science as the teacher of men.

Moreover, another sentiment coloured this holiday visit. He was to see again the beloved sister of his boyhood. She had always prophesied his success, and now after thirty years her prophesy was fulfilled by his coming, and, indeed, exceeded by the manner of it.

Mr. Smalley, then London correspondent of the "New York Tribune," was a fellow pa.s.senger of his on board the "Germanic," and tells an interesting anecdote of him:--

Mr. Huxley stood on the deck of the "Germanic" as she steamed up the harbour of New York, and he enjoyed to the full that marvellous panorama. At all times he was on intimate terms with Nature and also with the joint work of Nature and Man; Man's place in Nature being to him interesting from more points of view than one. As we drew near the city--this was in 1876, you will remember--he asked what were the tall tower and tall building with a cupola, then the two most conspicuous objects. I told him the Tribune and the Western Union Telegraph buildings. "Ah," he said, "that is interesting; that is American. In the old World the first things you see as you approach a great city are steeples; here you see, first, centres of intelligence." Next to those the tug-boats seemed to attract him as they tore fiercely up and down and across the bay. He looked long at them and finally said,] "If I were not a man I think I should like to be a tug." [They seemed to him the condensation and complete expression of the energy and force in which he delighted.

The personal welcome he received from the friends he visited was of the warmest. On the arrival of the "Germanic" the travellers were met by Mr. Appleton the publisher, and carried off to his country house at Riverdale. While his wife was taken to Saratoga to see what an American summer resort was like, he himself went on the 9th to New Haven, to inspect the fossils at Yale College, collected from the Tertiary deposits of the Far West by Professor Marsh, with great labour and sometimes at the risk of his scalp. Professor Marsh told me how he took him to the University, and proposed to begin by showing him over the buildings. He refused.] "Show me what you have got inside them; I can see plenty of bricks and mortar in my own country." [So they went straight to the fossils, and as Professor Marsh writes ("American Journal of Science" volume 1 August 1895.):--

One of Huxley's lectures in New York was to be on the genealogy of the horse, a subject which he had already written about, based entirely upon European specimens. My own explorations had led me to conclusions quite different from his, and my specimens seemed to me to prove conclusively that the horse originated in the New World and not in the Old, and that its genealogy must be worked out here. With some hesitation, I laid the whole matter frankly before Huxley, and he spent nearly two days going over my specimens with me, and testing each point I made.

At each inquiry, whether he had a specimen to ill.u.s.trate such and such a point or exemplify a transition from earlier and less specialised forms to later and more specialised ones, Professor Marsh would simply turn to his a.s.sistant and bid him fetch box number so and so, until Huxley turned upon him and said,] "I believe you are a magician; whatever I want, you just conjure it up."

[The upshot of this examination was that he recast a great part of what he meant to say at New York. When he had seen the specimens, and thoroughly weighed their import, continues Professor Marsh:--

He then informed me that all this was new to him, and that my facts demonstrated the evolution of the horse beyond question, and for the first time indicated the direct line of descent of an existing animal.

With the generosity of true greatness, he gave up his own opinions in the face of new truth, and took my conclusions as the basis of his famous New York lecture on the horse. He urged me to prepare without delay a volume on the genealogy of the horse, based upon the specimens I had shown him. This I promised, but other work and new duties have thus far prevented.

A letter to his wife describes his visit to Yale:--]

My excellent host met me at the station, and seems as if he could not make enough of me. I am installed in apartments which were occupied by his uncle, the millionaire Peabody, and am as quiet as if I were in my own house. We have had a preliminary canter over the fossils, and I have seen some things which were worth all the journey across.

This is the most charmingly picturesque town, with the streets lined by avenues of elm trees which meet overhead. I have never seen anything like it, and you must come and look at it. There is fossil work enough to occupy me till the end of the week, and I have arranged to go to Springfield on Monday to examine the famous footprints of the Connecticut Valley.

The Governor has called upon me, and I shall have to go and do pretty-behaved chez lui to-morrow. An application has come for an autograph, but I have not been interviewed!

[This immunity, however, did not last long. He appears to have been caught by the interviewer the next day, for he writes on the 11th:--]

I have not seen the notice in the "World" you speak of. You will be amused at the article written by the interviewer. He was evidently surprised to meet with so little of the "high falutin" philosopher in me, and says I am "affable" and of "the commercial or mercantile"

type. That is something I did not know, and I am rather proud of it.

We may be rich yet.