CHAPTER 1.20.
1866.
[Besides his Fullerian lectures on Ethnology at the Royal Institution this year, Huxley published in February 1866 a paper in the "Natural History Review," on the "Prehistoric Remains of Caithness," based upon a quantity of remains found the previous autumn at Keiss. This, and the article on the "Neanderthal Skull" in the "Natural History Review" for 1864, attracted some notice among foreign anthropologists. Dr. H. Welcker writes about them; Dr. A. Ecker wants the "Prehistoric Remains" for his new "Archiv fur Anthropologie"; the Societe d'Anthropologie de Paris elects him a Foreign Associate.
He was asked by Dr. Fayrer to assist in a great scheme he had proposed to the Asiatic Society (Comp. Chapter 22 ad init. and Appendix 1.), to gather men of every tribe from India, the Malayan Peninsula, Persia, Arabia, the Indian Archipelago, etc., for anthropological purposes. It was well received by the Council of the Society and by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal; anything Huxley could say in its favour would be of great weight. Would he come out as Dr. Fayrer's guest?
Unable to go to Calcutta, he sent the following letter:—]
Jermyn Street, London, June 14, 1866.
My dear Fayrer,
I lose no time in replying to your second letter, and my first business is to apologise for not having answered the first, but it reached me in the thick of my lectures, and like a great many other things which ought to have been done I put off replying to a more convenient season. I have been terribly hard worked this year, and thought I was going to break down a few weeks ago but luckily I have pulled through.
I heartily wish that there were the smallest chance of my being able to accept your kind invitation and take part in your great scheme at Calcutta. But it is impossible for me to leave England for more than six weeks or two months, and that only in the autumn, a time of year when I imagine Calcutta is not likely to be the scene of anything but cholera patients.
As to your plan itself, I think it a most grand and useful one if it can be properly carried out. But you do things on so grand a scale in India that I suppose all the practical difficulties which suggest themselves to me may be overcome.
It strikes me that it will not do to be content with a single representative of each tribe. At least four or five will be needed to eliminate the chances of accident, and even then much will depend upon the discretion and judgment of the local agent who makes the suggestion. This difficulty, however, applies chiefly if not solely to physical ethnology. To the philologer the opportunities for comparing dialects and checking pronunciation will be splendid, however [few] the individual speakers of each dialect may be. The most difficult task of all will be to prevent the assembled Savans from massacring the "specimens" at the end of the exhibition for the sake of their skulls and pelves!
I am really afraid that my own virtue might yield if so tempted!
Jesting apart, I heartily wish your plans success, and if there are any more definite ways in which I can help, let me know, and I will do my best. You will want, I should think, a physical and a philological committee to organise schemes: (1) for systematic measuring, weighing, and portraiture, with observation and recording of all physical characters; and (2) for uniform registering of sounds by Roman letters and collection of vocabularies and grammatical forms upon an uniform system.
I should advise you to look into the Museum of the Societe d'Anthropologie of Paris, and to put yourself in communication with M. Paul Broca, one of its most active members, who has lately been organising a scheme of general anthropological instructions. But don't have anything to do with the quacks who are at the head of the "Anthropological Society" over here. If they catch scent of what you are about they will certainly want to hook on to you.
Once more I wish I had the chance of being able to visit your congress. I have been lecturing on Ethnology this year [As Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution.], and shall be again this year, and I would give a good deal to be able to look at the complex facts of Indian Ethnology with my own eyes.
But as the sage observed, "what's impossible can't be," and what with short holidays—a wife and seven children—and miles of work in arrear, India is an impossibility for me.
You say nothing about yourself, so I trust you are well and hearty, and all your belongings flourishing.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[In paleontology he published this year papers on the "Vertebrate Remains from the Jarrow Colliery, Kilkenny;" on a new "Telerpeton from Elgin," and on some "Dinosaurs from South Africa." The latter, and many more afterwards, were sent over by a young man named Alfred Brown, who had a curious history. A Quaker gentleman came across him when employed in cleaning tools in Cirencester College, found that he was a good Greek and Latin scholar, and got him a tutorship in a clergyman's family at the Cape. He afterwards entered the postal service, and being inspired with a vivid interest in geology, spent all the leave he could obtain from his office on the Orange River in getting fossils from the Stormberg Rocks. These, as often as he could afford to send such weighty packages, he sent to Sir R. Murchison, to whom he had received a letter of introduction from his official superior. Sir Roderick, writing to Huxley, says "that he was proud of his new recruit," to whom he sent not only welcome words of encouragement, but the no less welcome news that the brother of his "discoverer," hearing of the facts from Professor Woodward, offered to defray his expenses so that he could collect regularly.
On April 2 Huxley was in Edinburgh to receive the first academic distinction conferred upon him in Britain. He received the honorary degree of the University in company with Tyndall and Carlyle. It was part of the fitness of things that he should be associated in this honour with his close friend Tyndall; but though he frequently acknowledged his debt to Carlyle as the teacher who in his youth had inspired him with his undying hatred of shams and humbugs of every kind, and whom he had gratefully come to know in after days, Carlyle did not forgive the publication of "Man's Place in Nature." Years after, near the end of his life, my father saw him walking slowly and alone down the opposite side of the street, and touched by his solitary appearance, crossed over and spoke to him. The old man looked at him, and merely remarking, "You're Huxley, aren't you? the man that says we are all descended from monkeys," went on his way.
On July 6 he writes to tell Darwin that he has lodged a memorial of his about the fossils at the Gallegos river, which was to be visited by the "Nassau" [Chapter 22] exploring ship, with the hydrographer direct, instead of sending it in to the Lords of the Admiralty, who would only have sent it on to the hydrographer. This letter he heads "Country orders executed with accuracy and despatch."
The following letter to Charles Kingsley explains itself:—]
Jermyn Street, April 12, 1866.
My dear Kingsley,
I shall certainly do myself the pleasure of listening to you when you preach at the Royal Institution. I wonder if you are going to take the line of showing up the superstitions of men of science. Their name is legion, and the exploit would be a telling one. I would do it myself only I think I am already sufficiently isolated and unpopular.
However, whatever you are going to do I am sure you will speak honestly and well, and I shall come and be assistant bottleholder.
I am glad you like the working men's lectures. I suspect they are about the best things of that line that I have done, and I only wish I had had the sense to anticipate the run they have had here and abroad, and I would have revised them properly.
As they stand they are terribly in the rough, from a literary point of view.
No doubt crib-biting, nurse-biting and original sin in general are all strictly reducible from Darwinian principles; but don't by misadventure run against any academical facts.
Some whales have all the cerebral vertebrae free NOW, and every one of them has the full number, seven, whether they are free or fixed. No doubt whales had hind legs once upon a time. If when you come up to town you go to the College of Surgeons, my friend Flower the Conservator (a good man whom you should know), will show you the whalebone whale's thigh bones in the grand skeleton they have recently set up. The legs, to be sure, and the feet are gone, the battle of life having left private Cetacea in the condition of a Chelsea pensioner.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[This year the British Association met at Nottingham, and Huxley was president of Section D. In this capacity he invited Professor Haeckel to attend the meeting, but the impending war with Austria prevented any Prussian from leaving his country at the time, though Haeckel managed to come over later.
Huxley did not deliver a regular opening address to the section on the Thursday, but on the Friday made a speech, which was followed by a discussion upon biology and its several branches, especially morphology and its relation to physiology ("the facts concerning form are questions of force, every form is force visible.") He lamented that the subdivisions of the section had to meet separately as a result of specialisation, the reason for which he found in the want of proper scientific education in schools. And this was the fault of the universities, for just as in the story, "Stick won't beat dog, dog won't bite pig, and so the old woman can't get home," science would not be taught in the schools until it is recognised by the universities.
This prepared the way for Dean Farrar's paper on science teaching in the public schools. His experience as a master at Harrow made him strongly oppose the existing plan of teaching all boys classical composition whether they were suited for it or no. He wished to exchange a great deal of Latin verse-making for elementary science.
This paper was doubly interesting to Huxley, as coming from a classical master in a public school, and he remarked, "He felt sure that at the present time, the important question for England was not the duration of her coal, but the due comprehension of the truths of science, and the labours of her scientific men."
On the practical side, however, Mr. J. Payne said the great difficulty was the want of teachers; and suggested that if men of science were really in earnest they would condescend to teach in the schools.
It was to a certain extent in answer to this appeal that Huxley gave his lectures on Physiography in 1869, and instituted the course of training for science teachers in 1871.
He concluded his work at Nottingham by a lecture to working men.
The following is in reply to Mr. Spencer who had accused himself of losing his temper in an argument:—]
26 Abbey Place, Sunday, November 8, 1868.
My dear Spencer,
Your conscience has been treating you with the most extreme and unjust severity.
I recollect you LOOKED rather savage at one point in our discussion, but I do assure you that you committed no overt act of ferocity; and if you had, I think I should have fully deserved it for joining in the ferocious onslaught we all made upon you.
What your sins may be in this line to other folk I don't know, but so far as I am concerned I assure you I have often said that I know no one who takes aggravated opposition better than yourself, and that I have not a few times been ashamed of the extent to which I have tried your patience.
So you see that you have, what the Buddhists call a stock of accumulated merit, envers moi—and if you should ever feel inclined to "d—n my eyes" you can do so and have a balance left.
Seriously, my old friend, you must not think it necessary to apologise to me about any such matters, but believe me (d—nd or und—d)
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
26 Abbey Place, November 11, 1866.
My dear Darwin,
I thank you for the new edition of the "Origin," and congratulate you on having done with it for a while, so as to be able to go on to that book of a portion of which I had a glimpse years ago. I hear good accounts of your health, indeed the last was that you were so rampageous you meant to come to London and have a spree among its dissipations. May that be true.
I am in the thick of my work, and have only had time to glance at your
"Historical Sketch."
What an unmerciful basting you give "our mutual friend." I did not know he had put forward any claim! and even now that I read it black and white, I can hardly believe it.
I am glad to hear from Spencer that you are on the right (that is MY) side in the Jamaica business. But it is wonderful how people who commonly act together are divided about it.
My wife joins with me in kindest wishes to Mrs. Darwin and yourself.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
You will receive an elementary physiology book, not for your reading but for Miss Darwin's. Were you not charmed with Haeckel?
[The "Jamaica business" here alluded to was Governor Eyre's suppression of the negro rising, in the course of which he had executed, under martial law, a coloured leader and member of the Assembly, named Gordon. The question of his justification in so doing stirred England profoundly. It became the touchstone of ultimate political convictions. Men who had little concern for ordinary politics, came forward to defend a great constitutional principle which they conceived to be endangered. A committee was formed to prosecute Governor Eyre on a charge of murder, in order to vindicate the right of a prisoner to trial by due process of law. Thereupon a counter-committee was organised for the defence of the man who, like Cromwell, judged that the people preferred their real security to forms, and had presumably saved the white population of Jamaica by striking promptly at the focus of rebellion.
The "Pall Mall Gazette" of October 29, 1866, made a would-be smart allusion to the part taken in the affair by Huxley, which evoked, in reply, a calm statement of his reasons for joining the prosecuting committee:—
It is amusing (says the "Pall Mall") to see how the rival committees, the one for the prosecution and the other for the defence of Mr. Eyre, parade the names of distinguished persons who are enrolled as subscribers on either side. Mill is set against Carlyle, and to counterbalance the adhesion of the Laureate to the Defence Fund, the "Star" hastens to announce that Sir Charles Lyell and Professor Huxley have given their support to the Jamaica Committee. Everything, of course, depends on the ground on which the subscriptions are given. One can readily conceive that Mr. Tennyson has been chiefly moved by a generous indignation at the vindictive behaviour of the Jamaica Committee. It would be curious also to know how far Sir Charles Lyell's and Mr. Huxley's peculiar views on the development of species have influenced them in bestowing on the negro that sympathetic recognition which they are willing to extend even to the ape as "a man and a brother."
The reply appeared in the "Pall Mall" of October 31:—]
Sir,
I learn from yesterday evening's "Pall Mall Gazette" that you are curious to know whether certain "peculiar views on the development of species," which I am said to hold in the excellent company of Sir Charles Lyell, have led me to become a member of the Jamaica Committee.
Permit me without delay to satisfy a curiosity which does me honour. I have been induced to join that committee neither by my "peculiar views on the development of species," nor by any particular love for, or admiration of the negro—still less by any miserable desire to wreak vengeance for recent error upon a man whose early career I have often admired; but because the course which the committee proposes to take appears to me to be the only one by which a question of the profoundest practical importance can be answered. That question is, Does the killing a man in the way Mr. Gordon was killed constitute murder in the eye of the law, or does it not?
You perceive that this question is wholly independent of two others which are persistently confused with it, namely—was Mr. Gordon a Jamaica Hampden or was he a psalm-singing fire-brand? and was Mr. Eyre actuated by the highest and noblest motives, or was he under the influence of panic-stricken rashness or worse impulses?
I do not presume to speak with authority on a legal question; but, unless I am misinformed, English law does not permit good persons, as such, to strangle bad persons, as such. On the contrary, I understand that, if the most virtuous of Britons, let his place and authority be what they may, seize and hang up the greatest scoundrel in Her Majesty's dominions simply because he is an evil and troublesome person, an English court of justice will certainly find that virtuous person guilty of murder. Nor will the verdict be affected by any evidence that the defendant acted from the best of motives, and, on the whole, did the State a service.
Now, it MAY be that Mr. Eyre was actuated by the best of motives; it MAY be that Jamaica is all the better for being rid of Mr. Gordon; but nevertheless the Royal Commissioners, who were appointed to inquire into Mr. Gordon's case, among other matters, have declared that:—
The evidence, oral and documentary, appears to us to be wholly insufficient to establish the charge upon which the prisoner took his trial. ("Report" page 37.)
And again that they
Cannot see in the evidence which has been adduced, any sufficient proof, either of his (Mr. Gordon's) complicity in the outbreak at Morant Bay, or of his having been a party to any general conspiracy against the Government. ("Report" page 38.)
Unless the Royal Commissioners have greatly erred, therefore, the killing of Mr. Gordon can only be defended on the ground that he was a bad and troublesome man; in short, that although he might not be guilty, it served him right.
I entertain so deeply-rooted an objection to this method of killing people—the act itself appears to me to be so frightful a precedent, that I desire to see it stigmatised by the highest authority as a crime. And I have joined the committee which proposes to indict Mr. Eyre, in the hope that I may hear a court of justice declare that the only defence which can be set up (if the Royal Commissioners are right) is no defence, and that the killing of Mr. Gordon was the greatest offence known to the law—murder.
I remain, Sir, your obedient servant.
T.H. Huxley.
The Atehnaeum Club, October 30, 1866.
[Two letters to friends who had taken the opposite side in this burning question show how resolutely he set himself against permitting a difference on matters of principle to affect personal relations with his warmest opponents.]
Jermyn Street, November 8, 1866.
My dear Kingsley,
The letter of which you have heard, containing my reasons for becoming a member of the Jamaica Committee was addressed to the "Pall Mall Gazette" in reply to some editorial speculations as to my reasons for so doing.
I forget the date of the number in which my letter appeared, but I will find it out and send you a copy of the paper.
Mr. Eyre's personality in this matter is nothing to me; I know nothing about him, and, if he is a friend of yours, I am very sorry to be obliged to join in a movement which must be excessively unpleasant to him.
Furthermore, when the verdict of the jury which will try him is once given, all hostility towards him on my part will cease. So far from wishing to see him vindictively punished, I would much rather, if it were practicable, indict his official hat and his coat than himself.
I desire to see Mr. Eyre indicted and a verdict of guilty in a criminal court obtained, because I have, from its commencement, carefully watched the Gordon case; and because a new study of all the evidence which has now been collected has confirmed my first conviction that Gordon's execution was as bad a specimen as we have had since Jeffries' time of political murder.
Don't suppose that I have any particular admiration for Gordon. He belongs to a sufficiently poor type of small political agitator—and very likely was a great nuisance to the Governor and other respectable persons.
But that is no reason why he should be condemned, by an absurd tribunal and with a brutal mockery of the forms of justice, for offences with which impartial judges, after a full investigation, declare there is no evidence to show that he was connected.
Ex-Governor Eyre seized the man, put him in the hands of the preposterous subalterns, who pretended to try him—saw the evidence and approved of the sentence. He is as much responsible for Gordon's death as if he had shot him through the head with his own hand. I daresay he did all this with the best of motives, and in a heroic vein. But if English law will not declare that heroes have no more right to kill people in this fashion than other folk, I shall take an early opportunity of migrating to Texas or some other quiet place where there is less hero-worship and more respect for justice, which is to my mind of much more importance than hero-worship.
In point of fact, men take sides on this question, not so much by looking at the mere facts of the case, but rather as their deepest political convictions lead them. And the great use of the prosecution, and one of my reasons for joining it, is that it will help a great many people to find out what their profoundest political beliefs are.
The hero-worshippers who believe that the world is to be governed by its great men, who are to lead the little ones, justly if they can; but if not, unjustly drive or kick them the right way, will sympathise with Mr. Eyre.
The other sect (to which I belong) who look upon hero-worship as no better than any other idolatry, and upon the attitude of mind of the hero-worshipper as essentially immoral; who think it is better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains; who look upon the observance of inflexible justice as between man and man as of far greater importance than even the preservation of social order, will believe that Mr. Eyre has committed one of the greatest crimes of which a person in authority can be guilty, and will strain every nerve to obtain a declaration that their belief is in accordance with the law of England.
People who differ on fundamentals are not likely to convert one another. To you, as to my dear friend Tyndall, with whom I almost always act, but who in this matter is as much opposed to me as you are, I can only say, let us be strong enough and wise enough to fight the question out as a matter of principle and without bitterness.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
November 9, 1866.
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 Gassiot 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 passed 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 constitutional 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 passed 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 mass 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 entitled 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 passed through four editions, and been reprinted thirty-one times.]