Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3

by Thomas Henry Huxley

Of course I have entire confidence in your judgment about the examination, but I have a mortal horror of putting my name to things I do not know of my own knowledge.

[In addition to these occupations, he wrote a short paper upon a fossil, Ceratochelys, which was read at the Royal Society on March 31; while on April 7 he read at the Linnean ("Botany" volume 24 pages 101-124), his paper, "The Gentians: Notes and Queries," which had sprung from his holiday amusement at Arolla.

Philosophy, however, claimed most of his energies. The campaign begun in answer to the incursion of Mr. Lilly was continued in the article "Science and Pseudo-Scientific Realism" ("Collected Essays" 5 59-89) which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" for February 1887. The text for this discourse was the report of a sermon by Canon Liddon, in which that eminent preacher spoke of catastrophes as the antithesis of physical law, yet possible inasmuch as a "lower law" may be "suspended" by the "intervention of a higher," a mode of reasoning which he applied to the possibility of miracles such as that of Cana.

The man of science was up in arms against this incarnation of abstract terms, and offered a solemn protest against that modern recrudescence of ancient realism which speaks of "laws of nature" as though they were independent entities, agents, and efficient causes of that which happens, instead of simply our name for observed successions of facts.

Carefully as all personalities had been avoided in this article, it called forth a lively reply from the Duke of Argyll, rebuking him for venturing to criticise the preacher, whose name was now brought forward for the first time, and raising a number of other questions, philosophical, geological, and biological, to which Huxley rejoined with some selections from the authentic history of these points in "Science and Pseudo-Science" ("Nineteenth Century" April 1887, "Collected Essays" 5 90-125).

Moreover, judging from the vivacity of the duke's reply that some of the shafts of the first article must have struck nearer home than the pulpit of St. Paul's, he was induced to read "The Reign of Law," the second chapter of which, dealing with the nature of "Law," he now criticised sharply as] "a sort of 'summa' of pseudo-scientific philosophy," [with its confusions of law and necessity, law and force,] "law in the sense, not merely of a rule, but of a cause." [(Cf. his treatment of the subject 24 years before, volume 1.)

He wound up with some banter upon the Duke's picture of a scientific Reign of Terror, whereby, it seemed, all men of science were compelled to accept the Darwinian faith, and against which Huxley himself was preparing to rebel, as if:—]

Forsooth, I am supposed to be waiting for the signal of "revolt," which some fiery spirits among these young men are to raise before I dare express my real opinions concerning questions about which we older men had to fight in the teeth of fierce public opposition and obloquy—of something which might almost justify even the grandiloquent epithet of a Reign of Terror—before our excellent successors had left school.

[Here for a while the debate ceased. But in the September number of the "Nineteenth Century" the Duke of Argyll returned to the fray with an article called "A Great Lesson," in which he attempted to offer evidence in support of his assertions concerning the scientific reign of terror. The two chief pieces of evidence adduced were Bathybius and Dr. (now Sir J.) Murray's theory of coral reefs. The former was instanced as a blunder due to the desire of finding support for the Darwinian theory in the existence of this widespread primordial life; the latter as a case in which a new theory had been systematically burked, for fear of damaging the infallibility of Darwin, who had propounded a different theory of coral reefs!

Huxley's reply to this was contained in the latter half of an article which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" for November 1887, under the title of "Science and the Bishops" (reprinted both in "Controverted Questions" and in the "Collected Essays" 5 126, as "An Episcopal Trilogy"). Preaching at Manchester this autumn, during the meeting of the British Association, the Bishops of Carlisle, Bedford, and Manchester had spoken of science not only with knowledge, but in the spirit of equity and generosity.] "These sermons," [he exclaims,] "are what the Germans call Epochemachend!"