You will have been as much grieved as I have been about dear old Hooker. According to the last accounts, however, he is mending, and I hope to see him in the pristine vigour again before long.
My wife is gone to bed or she would join me in the kindest regards and remembrances to Mrs. Darwin and your family.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The sound judgment and nice sense of honour for which Huxley was known among his friends often led those who were in difficulties to appeal to him for advice. About this time a dispute arose over an alleged case of unacknowledged "conveyance" of information. Writing to Hooker, he says the one party to the quarrel failed to "set the affair straight with half a dozen words of frank explanation as he might have done;" as to the other, "like all quiet and mild men who do get a grievance, he became about twice as 'wud' as Berserks like you and me." Both came to him, so that he says, "I have found it very difficult to deal honestly with both sides without betraying the confidence of either or making matters worse." Happily, with his help, matters reached a peaceful solution, and his final comment is:—]
I don't mind fighting to the death in a good big row, but when A and B are supplying themselves from C's orchard, I don't think it is very much worth while to dispute whether B filled his pockets directly from the trees or indirectly helped himself to the contents of A's basket. If B has so helped himself, he certainly ought to say so like a man, but if I were A, I would not much care whether he did or not.
— has been horribly disgusted about it, but I am not sure the discipline may not have opened his eyes to new and useful aspects of nature.
[The summer of 1865 saw the inception of an educational experiment—an International Education Society—to which Huxley gladly gave his support as a step in the right direction. He had long been convinced of the inadequacy of existing forms of education—survivals from the needs of a bygone age—to prepare for the new forms into which intellectual life was passing. That educators should be content to bring up the young generation in the modes of thought which satisfied their forefathers three centuries ago, as if no change had passed over the world since then, filled him with mingled amazement and horror.
The outcome of the scheme was the International College, at Spring Grove, Isleworth, under the headmastership of Dr. Leonhard Schmitz; one of the chief members of the committee being Dr. (afterwards Sir) William Smith, while at the head of the Society was Richard Cobden, under whose presidency it had been registered some time before. John Stuart Mill, however, refused to join, considering that this was not the most needed reform in education, and that he could not support a school in which the ordinary theology was taught.
An article in the "Reader" for June 17, 1865, sketches the plan. The design was to give a liberal education to boys whether intended for a profession or for commerce. The education for both was the same up to a certain point, corresponding to that given in our higher schools, together with foreign languages and the elements of physical and social science, after which the courses bifurcated. (For a fuller account of the scientific education see below.) Special stress was laid on modern languages, both for themselves and as a preparation and help for classical teaching. Accordingly, the International College was one of three parallel institutions in England, France, and Germany, where a boy could in turn acquire a sound knowledge of all three languages while continuing the same course of education. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870, however, proved fatal to the scheme.