P. Chalmers Mitchell - Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work

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[Illustration: THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY]

Leaders in Science

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORK

BY

P. CHALMERS MITCHELL, M.A. (_Oxon._)

G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK

27 WEST TWENTY THIRD STREET

LONDON

24 BEDFORD STREET STRAND

The Knickerbocker Press

1900

COPYRIGHT 1900

BY

G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

PREFACE

This volume is in no sense an intimate or authorised biography of
Huxley. It is simply an outline of the external features of his life
and an account of his contributions to biology, to educational and
social problems, and to philosophy and metaphysics. In preparing it, I
have been indebted to his own Autobiography, to the obituary notice
written by Sir Michael Foster for the Royal Society of London, to a
sketch of him by Professor Howes, his successor at the Royal College
of Science, and to his published works. The latter consist of many
well-known separate volumes which are familiar to all zooelogists, and
of a vast number of memoirs and essays scattered in various scientific
and general publications. The general Essays were collected into nine
volumes, revised by himself in the later years of his life, and
published by Messrs. Macmillan. The Scientific Memoirs, thanks to the
generous enterprise of the same publishing firm, with which he was so
long associated, and to the pious labours of Sir Michael Foster and
Professor Ray Lankester, are in process of reissue in the form of four
volumes, two of which have now appeared. These will contain all his
important contributions to science, with the exception of a large
separate treatise on the _Oceanic Hydrozoa_ published by the Ray
Society in 1859. There is also announced a formal Biography, prepared
by his son, so that future admirers or students of Huxley's work will
be in an exceptionally favourable position.

LONDON, 1900.

P. CHALMERS MITCHELL.

Leaders in Science

CONTENTS

PAGE
PREFACE iii

CHAPTER I

FROM SCHOOL TO LIFE-WORK 1

Birth--Parentage--School-days--Choice of Medical
Profession--Charing Cross Hospital--End of Medical
Studies--Admission to Naval Medical Service.

CHAPTER II

THE VOYAGE OF THE RATTLESNAKE 13

The Objects of the Voyage--The Route--The Naturalist and the
Surgeon--Collecting and Dredging--Stay in Sydney--Adventures with
the Natives--Comparison with Darwin's Voyage on the _Beagle_.

CHAPTER III

FLOATING CREATURES OF THE SEA 30

The Nature of Floating Life--Memoir on Medusae Accepted by the
Royal Society--Old and New Ideas of the Animal Kingdom--What
Huxley Discovered in Medusae--His Comparison of them with
Vertebrate Embryos

CHAPTER IV

EARLY DAYS IN LONDON 46

Scientific Work as Unattached Ship-Surgeon--Introduction to
London Scientific Society--Translating, Receiving, and
Lecturing--Ascidians--Molluscs and the Archetype--Criticism of
Pre-Darwinian Evolution--Appointment to Geological Survey.

CHAPTER V

CREATURES OF THE PAST 67

Beginning Palaeontological Work--Fossil Amphibia and
Reptilia--Ancestry of Birds--Ancestry of the Horse--Imperfect
European Series Completed by Marsh's American Fossils--Meaning of
Geological Contemporaneity--Uniformitarianism and Catastrophism
Compared with Evolution in Geology--Age of the Earth--Intermediate
and Linear Types.

CHAPTER VI

HUXLEY AND DARWIN 89

Early Ideas on Evolution--Erasmus Darwin--Lamarck--Herbert
Spencer--Difference between Evolution and Natural
Selection--Huxley's Preparation for Evolution--The Novelty of
Natural Selection--The Advantage of Natural Selection as a Working
Hypothesis--Huxley's Unchanged Position with regard to Evolution
and Natural Selection from 1860 to 1894.

CHAPTER VII

THE BATTLE FOR EVOLUTION 110

Huxley's Prevision of the Battle--The Causes of the Battle--The
_Times_ Review--Sir Richard Owen attacks Darwinism in the
_Edinburgh Review_--Bishop Wilberforce attacks in the _Quarterly
Review_--Huxley's Scathing Replies--The British Association
Debates at Oxford--Huxley and Wilberforce--Resume of Huxley's
Exact Position with Regard to Evolution and to Natural Selection.

CHAPTER VIII

VERTEBRATE ANATOMY 128

The Theory of the Vertebrate Skull--Goethe, Oken, Cuvier, and
Owen--Huxley Defends Goethe--His own Contributions to the
Theory--The Classification of Birds--Huxley Treats them as
"Extinct Animals"--Geographical Distribution--Sclater's
Regions--Huxley's Suggestions.

CHAPTER IX

MAN AND THE APES 144

Objections to Zooelogical Discussion of Man's Place--Owen's
Prudence--Huxley's Determination to Speak out--Account of his
Treatment of _Man's Place in Nature_--Additions Made by More
Recent Work.

CHAPTER X

SCIENCE AS A BRANCH OF EDUCATION 167

Science-Teaching Fifty Years Ago--Huxley's Insistence on
Reform--Science Primers--Physiography--Elementary Physiology--_The
Crayfish_--Manuals of Anatomy--Modern Microscopical
Methods--Practical Work in Biological Teaching--Invention of the
Type System--Science in Medical Education--Science and Culture.

CHAPTER XI

GENERAL PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 188

Establishment of Compulsory Education in England--The Religious
Controversy--Huxley Advocates the Bible without Theology--His
Compromise on the "Cowper-Temple" Clause--Influence of the New
Criticism--Science and Art Instruction--Training of
Teachers--University Education--The Baltimore Address--Technical
Education--So-called "Applied Science"--National Systems of
Education as "Capacity-Catchers."

CHAPTER XII

CITIZEN, ORATOR, AND ESSAYIST 204

Huxley's Activity in Public Affairs--Official in Scientific
Societies--Royal Commissions--Vivisection--Characteristics of his
Public Speaking--His Method of Exposition--His
Essays--Vocabulary--Phrase-Making--His Style Essentially One of
Ideas.

CHAPTER XIII

THE OPPONENT OF MATERIALISM 218

Science and Metaphysics--Berkeley, Hume, and Hobbes--Existence of
Matter and Mind--Descartes's Contribution--Materialism and
Idealism--Criticism of Materialism--Berkeley's Idealism--Criticism
of Idealism--Empirical Idealism--Materialism as opposed to
Supernaturalism--Mind and Brain--Origin of Life--Teleology,
Chance, and the Argument from Design.

CHAPTER XIV

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 232

Authority and Knowledge in Science--The Duty of Doubt--Authority
and Individual Judgment in Religion--The Protestant Position--Sir
Charles Lyell and the Deluge--Infallibility--The Church and
Science--Morality and Dogma--Civil and Religious
Liberty--Agnosticism and Clericalism--Meaning of
Agnosticism--Knowledge and Evidence--The Method of Agnosticism.

CHAPTER XV

THE BIBLE AND MIRACLES 245

Why Huxley Came to Write about the Bible--A _Magna Charta_ of the
Poor--The Theological Use of the Bible--The Doctrine of Biblical
Infallibility--The Bible and Science--The Three Hypotheses of the
Earth's History--Changes in the Past Proved--The Creation
Hypothesis--Gladstone on Genesis--Genesis not a Record of
Fact--The Hypothesis of Evolution--The New Testament--Theory of
Inspiration--Reliance on the Miraculous--The Continuity of Nature
no _a priori_ Argument against Miracles---Possibilities and
Impossibilities--Miracles a Question of Evidence--Praise of the
Bible.

CHAPTER XVI

ETHICS OF THE COSMOS 261

Conduct and Metaphysics--Conventional and Critical Minds--Good
and Evil--Huxley's Last Appearance at Oxford--The Ethical Process
and the Cosmic Process--Man's Intervention--The Cosmic Process
Evil--Ancient Reconciliations--Modern Acceptance of the
Difficulties--Criticism of Huxley's Pessimism--Man and his Ethical
Aspirations Part of the Cosmos.

CHAPTER XVII

CLOSING DAYS AND SUMMARY 275

Huxley's Life in London--Decennial
Periods--Ill-health--Retirement to Eastbourne--Death--Personal
Appearance--Methods of Work--Personal Characteristics--An Inspirer
of Others--His Influence in Science--A Naturalist by Vocation--His
Aspirations.

INDEX 287

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY--_From a photograph by
London Stereoscopic Company Frontispiece_

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, 1857--_Reproduced by
permission from "Natural Science," vol. vii.,
No. 42_ 64

SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER--_From a photograph
by Elliott and Fry, London_ 98

CHARLES DARWIN--_From the painting by Hon.
John Collier in the National Portrait Gallery_ 146

SIR CHARLES LYELL--_From a photograph by London
Stereoscopic Company_ 236

CARICATURE OF HUXLEY DRAWN BY HIMSELF--_Reproduced
by permission from "Natural
Science," vol. vii., No. 46._ 276

LIST OF HUXLEY'S WRITINGS

This list is offered, not as a bibliography in the technical sense,
but as an indication of the sources in which the vast majority of
Huxley's scientific and general work may be consulted most
conveniently.

_The Scientific Memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley_. Edited by Professor
Sir Michael Foster and Professor E. Ray Lankester; in four volumes.
London, Macmillan & Co.; New York, D. Appleton.

This magnificent collection is intended to contain all Huxley's
original scientific papers, brought together from the multitude
of scientific periodicals in which they appeared, with
reproductions of the original illustrations. The only exception
is the monograph on _Oceanic Hydrozoa_. The first volume appeared
in 1898; the second in 1899, and the others are to follow
quickly.

_Collected Essays by T.H. Huxley_; nine volumes of the Eversley
Series. Macmillan & Co. London, 1893-95.

This set, edited by Huxley himself, contains the more important
of his more general contributions to science and his literary,
philosophical, and political and critical essays. Each volume has
a preface specially written, and the first volume contains his
autobiography.

_The Oceanic Hydrozoa_; a description of the Calycophoridae and
Physophoridae observed during the Voyage of H.M.S. _Rattlesnake_ in the
years 1846-50, with a general introduction. Ray Society. London, 1859.

_Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature_. Williams & Norgate. London,
1863.

_On our Knowledge of the Causes of Organic Phenomena_; being Six
Lectures to Working Men. Hardwicke. London, 1863.

_Lectures on the Elements of Comparative Anatomy_. On the
Classification of Animals and the Vertebrate Skull. Churchill & Sons.
London, 1864.

_An Elementary Atlas of Comparative Osteology_. In twelve plates.
Williams & Norgate. London, 1864.

_Lessons in Elementary Physiology_. Macmillan & Co. London, 1866.

_An Introduction to the Classification of Animals_. Churchill. London,
1869.

_A Manual of the Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals_. Churchill. London,
1871.

_A Course of Practical Instruction in Elementary Biology_, assisted by
H.N. Martin. Macmillan. London, 1875.

_A Manual of the Anatomy of Invertebrated Animals_. Churchill. London,
1877.

_Lay Sermons, Essays, and Reviews_. Macmillan. London, 1877.

_American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology_.
Macmillan. London, 1877.

_Physiography, an Introduction to the Study of Zooelogy_. International
Scientific Series. Kegan Paul. London, 1880.

_Introductory Primer_. Science Primers. Macmillan. London, 1880.

_The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_. Edited by his son, Francis
Darwin. Volume II., with Chapter V. by Professor Huxley on the
Reception of the _Origin of Species_. John Murray. London, 1887.

_Life of Richard Owen_. By his grandson. With an Essay on Owen's
Position in Anatomical Science, by T.H. Huxley. John Murray. London,
1894.

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

CHAPTER I

FROM SCHOOL TO LIFE-WORK

Birth--Parentage--School-days--Choice of Medical
Profession--Charing Cross Hospital--End of Medical
Studies--Admission to Naval Medical Service.

Some men are born to greatness: even before their arrival in the world
their future is marked out for them. All the advantages that wealth
and the experience of friends can bring attend their growth to
manhood, and their success almost loses its interest because of the
ease with which it is attained. Few of the leaders of science were in
such a position: many of them, such as Priestley, Davy, Faraday, John
Hunter, and Linnaeus were of humble parentage, and received the poorest
education: most of them, like Huxley himself, have come from parents
who were able to do little more for their children than set them out
into life along the ordinary educational avenues. In Huxley's boyhood
at least a comfortable income was necessary for this: in every
civilised country nowadays, state endowments, or private endowments,
are ready to help every capable boy, as far as Huxley was helped, and
in his progress from boyhood to supreme distinction, there is nothing
that cannot be emulated by every boy at school to-day. The minds of
human beings when they are born into the world are as naked as their
bodies; it matters not if parents, grandparents, and remoter ancestors
were unlettered or had the wisdom of all the ages, the new mind has to
build up its own wisdom from the beginning. We cannot even say with
certainty that children inherit mental aptitudes and capacities from
their parents; for as tall sons may come from short parents or
beautiful daughters from ugly parents, so we may find in the
capacities of the parents no traces of the future greatness of their
children. None the less it is interesting to learn what we can about
the parents of great men; and Huxley tells us that he thinks himself
to have inherited many characters of his body and mind from his
mother.

Thomas Henry Huxley was born on the 4th of May, 1825, at Ealing, then
a little country village, now united to London as a great suburb. He
was the seventh child of George Huxley, who was second master at the
school of Dr. Nicholson at Ealing. In these days private schools of
varying character were very numerous in England, and this
establishment seems to have been of high-class character, for Cardinal
Newman and many other distinguished men received part of their
education there. His mother, whose maiden name was Rachel Withers,
was, he tells us himself:[A]

"A slender brunette of an emotional and energetic temperament,
and possessed of the most piercing black eyes I ever saw in a
woman's head. With no more education than other women of the
middle classes in her day, she had an excellent mental capacity.
Her most distinguishing characteristic, however, was rapidity of
thought. If one ventured to suggest she had not taken much time
to arrive at any conclusion, she would say, 'I cannot help it.
Things flash across me.' That peculiarity has been passed on to
me in full strength: it has often stood me in good stead: it has
sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has always been a danger.
But, after all, if my time were to come over again there is
nothing I would less willingly part with than my inheritance of
'mother wit.'"

From his father he thinks that he inherited little except an inborn
capacity for drawing, "a hot temper, and that amount of tenacity of
purpose which unfriendly observers sometimes call obstinacy." As it
happened, this natural gift for drawing proved of the greatest service
to him throughout his career. It is imperative that every investigator
of the anatomy of plants and animals should be able to sketch his
observations, and there is no greater aid to seeing things as they are
than the continuous attempt to reproduce them by pencil or brush.

Huxley was christened Thomas Henry, and he was unaware why these names
were chosen, but he humorously records the curious chance that his
parents should have chosen for him the "name of that particular
apostle with whom he had always felt most sympathy."

Of his childhood little is recorded. He remembers being vain of his
curls, and his mother's expressed regret that he soon lost the beauty
of early childhood. He attended for some time the school at Ealing
with which his father was associated, but he has little to say for the
training he received there. He writes:

"My regular school training was of the briefest, perhaps
fortunately: for, though my way of life has made me acquainted
with all sorts and conditions of men, from the highest to the
lowest, I deliberately affirm that the society I fell into at
school was the worst I have ever known. We boys were average lads
with much the same inherent capacity for good and evil as any
others; but the people who were set over us cared about as much
for our intellectual and moral welfare as if they were
baby-farmers. We were left to the operation of the struggle for
existence among ourselves, and bullying was the least of the ill
practices current among us. Almost the only cheerful reminiscence
in connection with the place which arises in my mind is that of a
battle which I had with one of my class-mates, who had bullied me
until I could stand it no longer. I was a very slight lad, but
there was a wild-cat element in me which, when roused, made up
for my lack of weight, and I licked my adversary effectually.
However, one of my first experiences of the extremely rough and
ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the course of things in
general, arose out of the fact that _I_--the victor--had a black
eye, while he--the vanquished--had none, so that I got into
disgrace and he did not. One of the greatest shocks I ever
received in my life was to be told, a dozen years afterwards by
the groom who brought me my horse in a stable-yard in Sydney,
that he was my quondam antagonist. He had a long story of family
misfortune to account for his position--but at that time it was
necessary to deal very cautiously with mysterious strangers in
New South Wales, and on enquiry I found that the unfortunate
young man had not only been 'sent out,' but had undergone more
than one colonial conviction."

Huxley was soon removed from school and continued his own education
for several years, by reading of the most desultory sort. His special
inclinations were towards mechanical problems, and had he been able to
follow his own wishes there is little doubt but that he would have
entered on the profession of an engineer. It is probable that there
was a great deal more in his wishes than the familiar inclination of a
clever boy to engineering. All through the pursuit of anatomy, which
was the chief business of his life, it was the structure of animals,
the different modifications of great ground-plans which they
presented, that interested him. But the opportunity for engineering
did not present itself, and at an exceedingly early age he began to
study medicine. Two brothers-in-law were doctors, and this accidental
fact probably determined his choice. In these days the study of
medicine did not begin as now with a general and scientific education,
but the young medical student was apprenticed to a doctor engaged in
practice. He was supposed to learn the compounding of drugs in the
dispensary attached to the doctor's consulting-room; to be taught the
dressing of wounds and the superficial details of the medical craft
while he pursued his studies in anatomy under the direction of the
doctor. Huxley's master was his brother-in-law, Dr. Salt, a London
practitioner, and he began his work when only twelve or thirteen years
of age. In this system everything depended upon the superior; under
the careful guidance of a conscientious and able man it was possible
for an apt pupil to learn a great deal of science and to become an
expert in the treatment of disease. Huxley, however, had only a short
experience of this kind of training. He was taken by some senior
student friends to a post-mortem examination, and although then, as
all through his life, he was most sensitive to the disagreeable side
of anatomical pursuits, on this occasion he gratified his curiosity
too ardently. He did not cut himself, but in some way poisonous matter
from the body affected him, and he fell into so bad a state of health
that he had to be sent into the country to recruit. He lived for some
time at a farmhouse in Warwickshire with friends of his father and
slowly recovered health. From that time, however, all through his
life, he suffered periodically from prostrating dyspepsia. After some
months devoted to promiscuous reading he resumed his work under his
brother-in-law in London. He confesses that he was far from a model
student.

"I worked extremely hard when it pleased me, and when it did
not,--which was a frequent case,--I was extremely idle (unless
making caricatures of one's pastors and masters is to be called a
branch of industry), or else wasted my energies in wrong
directions. I read everything I could lay hands upon, including
novels, and took up all sorts of pursuits to drop them again
quite speedily."

It is almost certain, however, that Huxley underestimated the value of
this time. He stored his mind with both literature and science, and
laid the foundation of the extremely varied intellectual interests
which afterwards proved to him of so much value. It is certain, also,
that during this time he acquired a fair knowledge of French and
German. It would be difficult to exaggerate the value to him of this
addition to his weapons for attacking knowledge. To do the best work
in any scientific pursuit it is necessary to freshen one's own mind by
contact with the ideas and results of other workers. As these workers
are scattered over different countries it is necessary to transcend
the confusion of Babel and read what they write in their own tongues.
When Huxley was young, the great reputation of Cuvier overshadowed
English anatomy, and English anatomists did little more than seek in
nature what Cuvier had taught them to find. In Germany other men and
other ideas were to be found. Johannes Mueller and Von Baer were
attacking the problems of nature in a spirit that was entirely
different, and Huxley, by combining what he was taught in England with
what he learned from German methods, came to his own investigations
with a wider mind. But his conquest of French and German brought with
it advantages in addition to these technical gains. There is no reason
to believe that he troubled himself with grammatical details and with
the study of these languages as subjects in themselves. He acquired
them simply to discover the new ideas concealed in them, and he by no
means confined himself to the reading of foreign books on the subjects
of his own studies. He read French and German poetry, literature, and
philosophy, and so came to have a knowledge of the ideas of those
outside his own race on all the great problems that interest mankind.
A good deal has been written as to the narrowing tendency of
scientific pursuits, but with Huxley, as with all the scientific men
the present writer has known, the mechanical necessity of learning to
read other languages has brought with it that wide intellectual
sympathy which is the beginning of all culture and which is not
infrequently missed by those who have devoted themselves to many
grammars and a single literature. The old proverb, "Whatever is worth
doing is worth doing well," has only value when "well" is properly
interpreted. Although the science of language is as great as any
science, it is not the science of language, but the practical
interpretation of it, that is of value to most people, and there is
much to be said for the method of anatomists like Huxley, who passed
lightly over grammatical _minutiae_ and went straight with a dictionary
to the reading of each new tongue.

After a short period of apprenticeship, or sometimes during the
course of it, the young medical students "walked" a hospital. This
consisted in attending the demonstrations of the physicians and
surgeons in the wards of the hospital and in pursuing anatomical,
chemical, and physiological study in the medical school attached to
the hospital. A large fee was charged for the complete course, but at
many of the hospitals there were entrance scholarships which relieved
those who gained them of all cost. In 1842 Huxley and his elder
brother, James, applied for such free scholarships at Charing Cross
Hospital. There is no record in the books of the hospital as to what
persons supported the application. The entry in the minutes for
September 6, 1842, states that

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