Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 2

by Thomas Henry Huxley

CHAPTER 2.8.

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 Institution (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 illustrating 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 coarser 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 Institution, 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 passed 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 nobody has called but Sir Alexander Grant the Principal, 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 quantity 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 assailed him from time to time.

On May 25 he writes:—]

The General Assembly 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 Assembly, 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! Saturday 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 Saturday or Sunday, but my Saturdays 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 passenger 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 illustrate 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 assistant 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.

[As to his work at Yale Museum, he writes in the same letter:—]

We are hard at work still. Breakfast at 8.30—go over to the Museum with Marsh at 9 or 10—work till 1.30—dine—go back to Museum to work till 6. Then Marsh takes me for a drive to see the views about the town, and back to tea about half-past eight. He is a wonderfully good fellow, full of fun and stories about his Western adventures, and the collection of fossils is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. I wish I could spare three weeks instead of one to study it.

To-morrow evening were are to have a dinner by way of winding up, and he has asked a lot of notables to meet me. I assure you I am being "made of," as I thought nobody but the little wife was foolish enough to do.

[On the 16th he left to join Professor Alexander Agassiz at Newport, whence he wrote the following letters:—]

Newport, August 17, 1876.

My dear Marsh,

I really cannot say how much I enjoyed my visit to New Haven. My recollections are sorting themselves out by degrees and I find how rich my store is. The more I think of it the more clear it is that your great work is the settlement of the pedigree of the horse.

My wife joins with me in kind regards. I am yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[To Mr. Clarence King.]

Newport, August 19, 1876.

My dear Sir,

In accordance with your wish, I very willingly put into writing the substance of the opinion as to the importance of Professor Marsh's collection of fossils which I expressed to you yesterday. As you are aware, I devoted four or five days to the examination of this collection, and was enabled by Professor Marsh's kindness to obtain a fair conception of the whole.

I am disposed to think that whether we regard the abundance of material, the number of complete skeletons of the various species, or the extent of geological time covered by the collection, which I had the good fortune to see at New Haven, there is no collection of fossil vertebrates in existence, which can be compared with it. I say this without forgetting Montmartre, Siwalik, or Pikermi—and I think that I am quite safe in adding that no collection which has been hitherto formed approaches that made by Professor Marsh, in the completeness of the chain of evidence by which certain existing mammals are connected with their older tertiary ancestry.

It is of the highest importance to the progress of Biological Science that the publication of this evidence, accompanied by illustrations of such fulness as to enable paleontologists to form their own judgment as to its value, should take place without delay.

I am yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Breaking their journey at Boston, they went from Newport to Petersham, in the highlands of Worcester County, where they were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. John Fiske, at their summer home. Among the other visitors were the eminent musical composer Mr. Paine, the poet Cranch, and daughters of Hawthorne and Longfellow, so that they found themselves in the midst of a particularly cheerful and delightful party. From Petersham they proceeded to Buffalo, the meeting-place that year of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which my father had promised to attend. Here they stayed with Mr. Marshall, a leading lawyer, who afterwards visited them in England.

Awake was spent at Niagara, partly in making holiday, partly in shaping the lectures which had to be delivered at the end of the trip. As to the impression made upon him by the Falls—an experience which, it is generally presumed, every traveller is bound to record—I may note that after the first disappointment at their appearance, inevitable wherever the height of a waterfall is less than the breadth, he found in them an inexhaustible charm and fascination. As in duty bound, he, with my mother, completed his experiences by going under the wall of waters to the "Cave of the Winds." But of all things nothing pleased him more than to sit of an evening by the edge of the river, and through the roar of the cataract to listen for the under-sound of the beaten stones grinding together at its foot.

Leaving Niagara on September 2, they travelled to Cincinnati, a 20-hours' journey, where they rested a day; on the 4th another 10 hours took them to Nashville, where they were to meet his sister, Mrs. Scott. Though 11 years his senior, she maintained her vigour and brightness undimmed, as indeed she did to the end of her life, surviving him by a few weeks. As she now stood on the platform at Nashville, Mrs. Huxley, who had never seen her, picked her out from among all the people by her piercing black eyes, so like those of her mother as described in the Autobiographical sketch ("Collected Essays" 1).

Nashville, her son's home, had been chosen as the meeting-place by Mrs. Scott, because it was not so far south nor so hot as Montgomery, where she was then living. Nevertheless in Tennessee the heat of the American summer was very trying, and the good people of the town further drew upon the too limited opportunities of their guest's brief visit by sending a formal deputation to beg that he would either deliver an address, or be entertained at a public dinner, or "state his views"—to an interviewer I suppose. He could not well refuse one of the alternatives; and the greater part of one day was spent in preparing a short address on the geology of Tennessee, which was delivered on the evening of September 7. He spoke for twenty minutes, but had scarcely any voice, which was not to be wondered at, as he was so tired that he had kept his room the whole day, while his wife received the endless string of callers.

The next day they returned to Cincinnati; and on the 9th went on to
Baltimore, where they stayed with Mr. Garrett, then President of the
Baltimore and Ohio railway.

The Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, for which he was to deliver the opening address, had been instituted by its founder on a novel basis. It was devoted to post-graduate study; the professors and lecturers received incomes entirely independent of the pupils they taught. Men came to study for the sake of learning, not for the sake of passing some future examination. The endowment was devoted in the first place to the furtherance of research; the erection of buildings was put into the background.] "It has been my fate," [commented Huxley,] "to see great educational funds fossilise into mere bricks and mortar in the petrifying springs of architecture, with nothing left to work them. A great warrior is said to have made a desert and called it peace. Trustees have sometimes made a palace and called it a university."

[Half the fortune of the founder had gone to this university; the other half to the foundation of a great and splendidly equipped hospital for Baltimore. This was the reason why the discussion of medical training occupies fully half of the address upon the general principles of education, in which, indeed, lies the heart of his message to America, a message already delivered to the old country, but specially appropriate for the new nation developing so rapidly in size and physical resources.]

I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs a true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is, what are you going to do with all these things?…

The one condition of success, your sole safeguard, is the moral worth and intellectual clearness of the individual citizen. Education cannot give these, but it can cherish them and bring them to the front in whatever station of society they are to be found, and the universities ought to be and may be, the fortresses of the higher life of the nation.

[This address was delivered under circumstances of peculiar difficulty. The day before, an expedition had been made to Washington, from which Huxley returned very tired, only to be told that he was to attend a formal dinner and reception the same evening.] "I don't know how I shall stand it," [he remarked. Going to his room, he snatched an hour or two of rest, but was then called upon to finish his address before going out. It seems that it had to be ready for simultaneous publication in the New York papers. Now the lecture was not written out; it was to be given from notes only. So he had to deliver it in extenso to the reporter, who took it down in shorthand, promising to let him have a longhand copy in good time the next morning. It did not come till the last moment. Glancing at it on his way to the lecture theatre, he discovered to his horror that it was written upon "flimsy," from which he would not be able to read it with any success. He wisely gave up the attempt, and made up his mind to deliver the lecture as best he could from memory. The lecture as delivered was very nearly the same as that which he had dictated the night before, but with some curious discrepancies between the two accounts, which, he used to say, occurring as they did in versions both purporting to have been taken down from his lips, might well lead the ingenious critic of the future to pronounce them both spurious, and to declare that the pretended original was never delivered under the circumstances alleged. (Cp. the incident at Belfast.)

There was an audience of some 2000, and I am told that when he began to speak of the time that would come when they too would experience the dangers of over-population and poverty in their midst, and would then understand what Europe had to contend with more fully than they did, a pin could have been heard to drop. At the end of the lecture, amid the enthusiastic applause of the crowd, he made his way to the front of the box where his hosts and their party were, and received their warm congratulations. But he missed one voice amongst them, and turning to where his wife sat in silent triumph almost beyond speech, he said,] "And have you no word for me?" [then, himself also deeply moved, stooped down and kissed her.

This address was delivered on Tuesday, September 12. On the 14th he went to Philadelphia, and on the 15th to New York, where he delivered his three lectures on Evolution on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, September 18, 20, and 22.

These lectures are very good examples of the skill with which he could present a complicated subject in a simple form, the subject seeming to unroll itself by the force of its own naked logic, and carrying conviction the further through the simplicity of its presentation. Indeed, an unfriendly critic once paid him an unintended compliment, when trying to make out that he was no great speaker; that all he did was to set some interesting theory unadorned before his audience, when such success as he attained was due to the compelling nature of the subject itself.

Since his earlier lectures to the public on evolution, the paleontological evidences had been accumulating; the case could be stated without some of the reservations of former days; and he brings forward two telling instances in considerable detail, the one showing how the gulf between two such apparently distinct groups as Birds and Reptiles is bridged over by ancient fossils intermediate in form; the other illustrating from Professor Marsh's new collections the lineal descent of the specialised Horse from the more general type of quadruped.

The farthest back of these was a creature with four toes on the front limb and three on the hind limb. Judging from the completeness of the series or forms so far, he ventured to indulge in a prophecy.]

Thus, thanks to these important researches, it has become evident that, so far as our present knowledge extends, the history of the horse-type is exactly and precisely that which could have been predicted from a knowledge of the principles of evolution. And the knowledge we now possess justifies us completely in the anticipation that when the still lower Eocene deposits, and those which belong to the Cretaceous epoch, have yielded up their remains of ancestral equine animals, we shall find, first, a form with four complete toes and a rudiment of the innermost or first digit in front, with, probably, a rudiment of the fifth digit in the hind foot; while, in still older forms, the series of the digits will be more and more complete, until we come to the five-toed animals, in which, if the doctrine of evolution is well founded, the whole series must have taken its origin.

[Seldom has prophecy been sooner fulfilled. Within two months,
Professor Marsh had discovered a new genus of equine mammals,
Eohippus, from the lowest Eocene deposits of the West, which
corresponds very nearly to the description given above.

He continues:—]

That is what I mean by demonstrative evidence of evolution. An inductive hypothesis is said to be demonstrated when the facts are shown to be in entire accordance with it. If that is not scientific proof, there are no merely inductive conclusions which can be said to be proved. And the doctrine of evolution, at the present time, rests upon exactly as secure a foundation as the Copernican theory of the motions of the heavenly bodies did at the time of its promulgation. Its logical basis is of precisely the same character—the coincidence of the observed facts with theoretical requirements.

[He left New York on September 23.] "I had a very pleasant trip in Yankee-land," [he writes to Professor Baynes,] "and did NOT give utterance to a good deal that I am reported to have said there." [He reached England in good time for the beginning of his autumn lectures, and his ordinary busy life absorbed him again. He did not fail to give his London audiences the results of the recent discoveries in American paleontology, and on December 4, delivered a lecture at the London Institution, "On Recent Additions to the Knowledge of the Pedigree of the Horse." In connection with this he writes to Professor Marsh:—]

4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., December 27, 1876.

My dear Marsh,

I hope you do not think it remiss of me that I have not written to you since my return, but you will understand that I plunged into a coil of work, and will forgive me. But I do not mean to let you slip away without sending you all our good wishes for its successor—which I hope will not vanish without seeing you among us.

I blew your trumpet the other day at the London Institution in a lecture about the Horse question. I did not know then that you had got another step back as I see you have by the note to my last lecture, which Youmans has just sent me.

I must thank you very heartily for the pains you have taken over the woodcuts of the lectures. It is a great improvement to have the patterns of the grinders.

I promised to give a lecture at the Royal Institution on the 21st January next, and I am thinking of discoursing on the Birds with teeth. Have you anything new to tell on that subject? I have implicit faith in the inexhaustibility of the contents of those boxes.

Our voyage home was not so successful as that out. The weather was cold and I got a chill which laid me up for several days, in fact I was not well for some weeks after my return. But I am vigorous again now.

Pray remember me kindly to all New Haven friends. My wife joins with me in kindest regards and good wishes for the new year. "Tell him we expect to see him next year."

I am, yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[On December 16 he delivered a lecture "On the Study of Biology," in connection with the Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus at South Kensington ("Collected Essays" 3 262), dealing with the origin of the name Biology, its relation to Sociology—] "we have allowed that province of Biology to become autonomous; but I should like you to recollect that this is a sacrifice, and that you should not be surprised if it occasionally happens that you see a biologist apparently trespassing in the region of philosophy or politics; or meddling with human education; because, after all, that is a part of his kingdom which he has only voluntarily forsaken">[—how to learn biology, the use of Museums, and above all, the utility of biology, as helping to give right ideas in this world, which] "is after all, absolutely governed by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas."

[This lecture on Biology was first published among the "American
Addresses" in 1877.

It was about this time that an extremely Broad Church divine was endeavouring to obtain the signatures of men of science to a document he had drawn up protesting against certain orthodox doctrines. Huxley, however, refused to sign the protest, and wrote the following letter of explanation, a copy of which he sent to Mr. Darwin.]

November 18, 1876.

Dear Sir,

I have read the "Protest," with a copy of which you have favoured me, and as you wish that I should do so, I will trouble you with a brief statement of my reasons for my inability to sign it.

I object to clause 2 on the ground long since taken by Hume that the order of the universe such as we observe it to be, furnishes us with the only data upon which we can base any conclusion as to the character of the originator thereof.

As a matter of fact, men sin, and the consequences of their sins affect endless generations of their progeny. Men are tempted, men are punished for the sins of others without merit or demerit of their own; and they are tormented for their evil deeds as long as their consciousness lasts.

The theological doctrines to which you refer, therefore, are simply extensions of generalisations as well based as any in physical science. Very likely they are illegitimate extensions of these generalisations, but that does not make them wrong in principle.

And I should consider it waste of time to "protest" against that which is.

As regards clause 3 I find that as a matter of experience, erroneous beliefs are punished, and right beliefs are rewarded—though very often the erroneous belief is based upon a more conscientious study of the facts than the right belief. I do not see why this should not be as true of theological beliefs as any others. And as I said before, I do not care to protest against that which is.

Many thanks for your congratulations. My tour was very pleasant and taught me a good deal.

I am yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

P.S.—You are at liberty to make what use you please of this letter.

4 Marlborough Place, November 19, 1876.

My dear Darwin,

I confess I have less sympathy with the half-and-half sentimental school which he represents than I have with thoroughgoing orthodoxy.

If we are to assume that anybody has designedly set this wonderful universe going, it is perfectly clear to me that he is no more entirely benevolent and just in any intelligible sense of the words, than that he is malevolent and unjust. Infinite benevolence need not have invented pain and sorrow at all—infinite malevolence would very easily have deprived us of the large measure of content and happiness that falls to our lot. After all, Butler's "Analogy" is unassailable, and there is nothing in theological dogmas more contradictory to our moral sense, than is to be found in the facts of nature. From which, however, the Bishop's conclusion that the dogmas are true doesn't follow.

With best remembrances to Mrs. Darwin, ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[This incident suggests the story of a retort he once made upon what he considered an unseasonable protest in church, a story which exemplifies, by the way, his strong sense of the decencies of life, appearing elsewhere in his constant respect for the ordinary conventions of his dislike for mere Bohemianism as such.

Once in a country house he was sitting at dinner next to his hostess, a lady who, as will sometimes happen, liked to play the part of Lady Arbitress of the whole neighbourhood. She told him how much she disapproved of the Athanasian Creed, and described how she had risen and left the village church when the parson began to read it; and thinking to gain my father's assent, she turned to him and said graciously, "Now Mr. Huxley, don't you think I was quite right to mark my disapproval?">[

"My dear Lady —" [he replied,] "I should as soon think of rising and leaving your table because I disapproved of one of the entrees."