Will you allow me to suggest that it might be better not to name any living man? The temple of modern science has been the work of many labourers not only in our own but in other countries. Some have been more busy in shaping and laying the stones, some in keeping off the Sanballats, some prophetwise in indicating the course of the science of the future. It would be hard to say who has done best service. As regards Dr. Joule, for example, no doubt he did more than any one to give the doctrine of the conservation of energy precise expression, but Mayer and others run him hard.
Of deceased Englishmen who belong to the first half of the Victorian epoch, I should say that Faraday, Lyell, and Darwin had exerted the greatest influence, and all three were models of the highest and best class of physical philosophers.
As for me, in part from force of circumstance and in part from a conviction I could be of most use in that way, I have played the part of something between maid-of-all-work and gladiator-general for Science, and deserve no such prominence as your kindness has assigned to me.
With our united kind regards to Mrs. Carpenter and yourself, ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[A brief note, also, to Lady Welby, dated July 25, is characteristic of his attitude towards unverified speculation.]
I have looked through the paper you have sent me, but I cannot undertake to give any judgment upon it. Speculations such as you deal with are quite out of my way. I get lost the moment I lose touch of valid fact and incontrovertible demonstration and find myself wandering among large propositions, which may be quite true but which would involve me in months of work if I were to set myself seriously to find out whether, and in what sense, they are true. Moreover, at present, what little energy I possess is mortgaged to quite other occupations.
[The following letter was in answer to a request which I was commissioned to forward him, that he would consent to serve on an honorary committee of the Societe des Professeurs de Francais en Angleterre.]
January 17, 1887.
I quite forgot to say anything about the Comite d'honneur, and as you justly remark in the present strained state of foreign politics the consequences may be serious. Please tell your colleague that I shall be "proud an' 'appy." You need not tell him that my pride and happiness are contingent on having nothing to do for the honour.