Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1

by Thomas Henry Huxley

To J. Tyndall.

Thanks also for a copy of the "Dundee Advertiser" containing your lecture. It seemed to me that the report must be a very good one, and the lecture reads exceedingly well. You have inaugurated the working men's lectures of the Association in a way that cannot be improved. And it was worth the trouble, for I suspect they will become a great and noble feature in the meetings.

Everything seems to have gone well at the meeting, the educational business carried [i.e. a recommendation that natural science be made a part of the curriculum in the public schools], and the anthropologers making fools of themselves in a most effectual way. So that I do not feel that I have anything to reproach myself with for being absent.

I am very pleased to hear of the reconciliation with Thomson and Tait. The mode of it speaks well for them, and the fact will remove a certain source of friction from amongst the cogs of your mental machinery.

[The following gives the reason for his resigning the Fullerian lectureship:—]

Athenaeum Club, May, 1867.

My dear Tyndall,

A conversation I had with Bence Jones yesterday reminded me that I ought to have communicated with you. But we do not meet so often as we used to do, being, I suppose, both very busy, and I forget to write.

You recollect that the last time we talked together, you mentioned a notion of Bence Jones's to make the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology a practically permanent appointment, and that I was quite inclined to stick by that (if such arrangement could be carried out), and give up other things.

But since I have been engaged in the present course of lectures I have found reason to change my views. It is very hard work, and takes up every atom of my time to make the lectures what they should be; and I find that at this time of year, being more or less used up, I suppose, with the winter work, I stand the worry and excitement of the actual lectures very badly. Add to this that it is six weeks clean gone out of the only time I have disposable for real scientific progress, and you will understand how it is that I have made up my mind to resign.