AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS(自传和散文选)

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

AND SELECTED

ESSAYS

By THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS

PREFACE

The purpose of the following selections is to present to students of

English a few of Huxley's representative essays. Some of these

selections are complete; others are extracts. In the latter case, however,

they are not extracts in the sense of being incomplete wholes, for each

selection given will be found to have, in Aristotle's phrase, "a beginning, a

middle, and an end." That they are complete in themselves, although

only parts of whole essays, is due to the fact that Huxley, in order to make

succeeding material clear, often prepares the way with a long and careful

definition. Such is the nature of the extract A Liberal Education, in reality

a definition to make distinct and forcible his ideas on the shortcomings of

English schools. Such a definition, also, is The Method of Scientific

Investigation.

The footnotes are those of the author. Other notes on the text have

been included for the benefit of schools inadequately equipped with

reference books. It is hoped, however, that the notes may be found not to

be so numerous as to prevent the training of the student in a self-reliant

and scholarly use of dictionaries and reference books; it is hoped, also,

that they may serve to stimulate him to trace out for himself more

completely any subject connected with the text in which he may feel a

peculiar interest. It should be recognized that notes are of value only as

they develop power to read intelligently. If unintelligently relied upon,

they may even foster indifference and lazy mental habits.

I wish to express my obligation to Miss Flora Bridges, whose careful

reading of the manuscript has been most helpful, and to Professor Clara F.

Stevens, the head of the English Department at Mount Holyoke College,

whose very practical aid made this volume possible.

A. L. F. S.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS

INTRODUCTION

THE LIFE OF HUXLEY

Of Huxley's life and of the forces which moulded his thought, the

Autobiography gives some account; but many facts which are significant

are slighted, and necessarily the later events of his life are omitted. To

supplement the story as given by him is the purpose of this sketch. The

facts for this account are gathered entirely from the Life and Letters of

Thomas Henry Huxley, by his son. For a real acquaintance with Huxley,

the student should consult this source for himself; he will count the

reading of the Life and Letters among the rare pleasures which have come

to him through books.

Thomas Henry Huxley was born on May 4, 1825. His autobiography

gives a full account of his parents, his early boyhood, and his education.

Of formal education, Huxley had little; but he had the richer schooling

which nature and life give an eager mind. He read widely; he talked

often with older people; he was always investigating the why of things.

He kept a journal in which he noted thoughts gathered from books, and

ideas on the causes of certain phenomena. In this journal he frequently

wrote what he had done and had set himself to do in the way of increasing

his knowledge. Self-conducted, also, was his later education at the

Charing Cross Hospital. Here, like Stevenson in his university days,

Huxley seemed to be idle, but in reality, he was always busy on his own

private end. So constantly did he work over the microscope that the

window at which he sat came to be dubbed by his fellow students "The

Sign of the Head and Microscope." Moreover, in his regular courses at

Charing Cross, he seems to have done work sufficiently notable to be

recognized by several prizes and a gold medal.

Of his life after the completion of his medical course, of his search for

work, of his appointment as assistant surgeon on board the Rattlesnake,

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS

and of his scientific work during the four years' cruise, Huxley gives a

vivid description in the autobiography. As a result of his investigations

on this voyage, he published various essays which quickly secured for him

a position in the scientific world as a naturalist of the first rank. A

testimony of the value of this work was his election to membership in the

Royal Society.

Although Huxley had now, at the age of twenty-six, won distinction in

science, he soon discovered that it was not so easy to earn bread thereby.

Nevertheless, to earn a living was most important if he were to accomplish

the two objects which he had in view. He wished, in the first place, to

marry Miss Henrietta Heathorn of Sydney, to whom he had become

engaged when on the cruise with the Rattlesnake; his second object was to

follow science as a profession. The struggle to find something connected

with science which would pay was long and bitter; and only a resolute

determination to win kept Huxley from abandoning it altogether. Uniform

ill-luck met him everywhere. He has told in his autobiography of his

troubles with the Admiralty in the endeavor to get his papers published,

and of his failure there. He applied for a position to teach science in

Toronto; being unsuccessful in this attempt, he applied successively for

various professorships in the United Kingdom, and in this he was likewise

unsuccessful. Some of his friends urged him to hold out, but others

thought the fight an unequal one, and advised him to emigrate to Australia.

He himself was tempted to practice medicine in Sydney; but to give up his

purpose seemed to him like cowardice. On the other hand, to prolong the

struggle indefinitely when he might quickly earn a living in other ways

seemed like selfishness and an injustice to the woman to whom he had

been for a long time engaged. Miss Heathorn, however, upheld him in

his determination to pursue science; and his sister also, he writes, cheered

him by her advice and encouragement to persist in the struggle.

Something of the man's heroic temper may be gathered from a letter which

he wrote to Miss Heathorn when his affairs were darkest. "However

painful our separation may be," he says, "the spectacle of a man who had

given up the cherished purpose of his life . . . would, before long years

were over our heads, be infinitely more painful." He declares that he is

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS

hemmed in by all sorts of difficulties. "Nevertheless the path has shown

itself a fair one, neither more difficult nor less so than most paths in life in

which a man of energy may hope to do much if he believes in himself, and

is at peace within." Thus relieved in mind, he makes his decision in spite

of adverse fate. "My course of life is taken, I will not leave London--I

WILL make myself a name and a position as well as an income by some

kind of pursuit connected with science which is the thing for which Nature

has fitted me if she has ever fitted any one for anything."

But suddenly the long wait, the faith in self, were justified, and the

turning point came. "There is always a Cape Horn in one's life that one

either weathers or wrecks one's self on," he writes to his sister. "Thank

God, I think I may say I have weathered mine--not without a good deal of

damage to spars and rigging though, for it blew deuced hard on the other

side." In 1854 a permanent lectureship was offered him at the

Government School of Mines; also, a lectureship at St. Thomas' Hospital;

and he was asked to give various other lecture courses. He thus found

himself able to establish the home for which he had waited eight years.

In July, 1855, he was married to Miss Heathorn.

The succeeding years from 1855 to 1860 were filled with various

kinds of work connected with science: original investigation, printing of

monographs, and establishing of natural history museums. His advice

concerning local museums is interesting and characteristically expressed.

"It [the local museum if properly arranged] will tell both natives and

strangers exactly what they want to know, and possess great scientific

interest and importance. Whereas the ordinary lumber-room of clubs from

New Zealand, Hindu idols, sharks' teeth, mangy monkeys, scorpions, and

conch shells-- who shall describe the weary inutility of it? It is really

worse than nothing, because it leads the unwary to look for objects of

science elsewhere than under their noses. What they want to know is that

their 'America is here,' as Wilhelm Meister has it." During this period, also,

he began his lectures to workingmen, calling them Peoples' Lectures.

"POPULAR lectures," he said, "I hold to be an abomination unto the

Lord." Working-men attended these lectures in great numbers, and to

them Huxley seemed to be always able to speak at his best. His purpose

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS

in giving these lectures should be expressed in his own words: "I want the

working class to understand that Science and her ways are great facts for

them--that physical virtue is the base of all other, and that they are to be

clean and temperate and all the rest--not because fellows in black and

white ties tell them so, but because there are plain and patent laws which

they must obey 'under penalties.'"

Toward the close of 1859, Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published.

It raised a great outcry in England; and Huxley immediately came forward

as chief defender of the faith therein set forth. He took part in debates on

this subject, the most famous of which was the one between himself and

Bishop Wilberforce at Oxford. The Bishop concluded his speech by

turning to Huxley and asking, "Was it through his grandfather or

grandmother that he claimed descent from a monkey?" Huxley, as is

reported by an eye-witness, "slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall

figure, stern and pale, very quiet and grave, he stood before us and spoke

those tremendous words. . . . He was not ashamed to have a monkey for

an ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who

used great gifts to obscure the truth." Another story indicates the temper

of that time. Carlyle, whose writing had strongly influenced Huxley, and

whom Huxley had come to know, could not forgive him for his attitude

toward evolution. One day, years after the publication of Man's Place in

Nature, Huxley, seeing Carlyle on the other side of the street, a broken,

pathetic figure, walked over and spoke to him. The old man merely

remarked, "You're Huxley, aren't you? the man that says we are all

descended from monkeys," and passed on. Huxley, however, saw

nothing degrading to man's dignity in the theory of evolution. In a

wonderfully fine sentence he gives his own estimate of the theory as it

affects man's future on earth. "Thoughtful men once escaped from the

blinding influences of traditional prejudices, will find in the lowly stock

whence man has sprung the best evidence of the splendour of his

capacities; and will discover, in his long progress through the past, a

reasonable ground of faith in his attainment of a nobler future." As a

result of all these controversies on The Origin of Species and of

investigations to uphold Darwin's theory, Huxley wrote his first book,

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS

already mentioned, Man's Place in Nature.

To read a list of the various kinds of work which Huxley was doing

from 1870 to 1875 is to be convinced of his abundant energy and many

interests. At about this time Huxley executed the plan which he had had

in mind for a long time, the establishment of laboratories for the use of

students. His object was to furnish a more exact preliminary training.

He complains that the student who enters the medical school is "so

habituated to learn only from books, or oral teaching, that the attempt to

learn from things and to get his knowledge at first hand is something new

and strange." To make this method of teaching successful in the schools,

Huxley gave practical instruction in laboratory work to school-masters.

"If I am to be remembered at all," Huxley once wrote, "I would rather

it should be as a man who did his best to help the people than by any other

title." Certainly as much of his time as could be spared from his regular

work was given to help others. His lectures to workingmen and school-

masters have already been mentioned. In addition, he lectured to women

on physiology and to children on elementary science. In order to be of

greater service to the children, Huxley, in spite of delicate health, became

a member of the London School Board. His immediate object was "to

temper book-learning with something of the direct knowledge of Nature."

His other purposes were to secure a better physical training for children

and to give them a clearer understanding of social and moral law. He did

not believe, on the one hand, in overcrowding the curriculum, but, on the

other hand, he "felt that all education should be thrown open to all that

each man might know to what state in life he was called." Another

statement of his purpose and beliefs is given by Professor Gladstone, who

says of his work on the board: "He resented the idea that schools were to

train either congregations for churches or hands for factories. He was on

the Board as a friend of children. What he sought to do for the child was

for the child's sake, that it might live a fuller, truer, worthier life."

The immense amount of work which Huxley did in these years told

very seriously on his naturally weak constitution. It became necessary

for him finally for two successive years to stop work altogether. In 1872

he went to the Mediterranean and to Egypt. This was a holiday full of

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS

interest for a man like Huxley who looked upon the history of the world

and man's place in the world with a keen scientific mind. Added to this

scientific bent of mind, moreover, Huxley had a deep appreciation for the

picturesque in nature and life. Bits of description indicate his enjoyment

in this vacation. He writes of his entrance to the Mediterranean, "It was a

lovely morning, and nothing could be grander than Ape Hill on one side

and the Rock on the other, looking like great lions or sphinxes on each

side of a gateway." In Cairo, Huxley found much to interest him in

archaeology, geology, and the every-day life of the streets. At the end of

a month, he writes that he is very well and very grateful to Old Nile for all

that he has done for him, not the least "for a whole universe of new

thoughts and pictures of life." The trip, however, did no lasting good.

In 1873 Huxley was again very ill, but was under such heavy costs at this

time that another vacation was impossible. At this moment, a critical one

in his life, some of his close scientific friends placed to his credit twenty-

one hundred pounds to enable him to take the much needed rest. Darwin

wrote to Huxley concerning the gift: "In doing this we are convinced that

we act for the public interest." He assured Huxley that the friends who

gave this felt toward him as a brother. "I am sure that you will return this

feeling and will therefore be glad to give us the opportunity of aiding you

in some degree, as this will be a happiness to us to the last day of our

lives." The gift made it possible for Huxley to take another long vacation,

part of which was spent with Sir Joseph Hooker, a noted English botanist,

visiting the volcanoes of Auvergne. After this trip he steadily improved

in health, with no other serious illness for ten years.

In 1876 Huxley was invited to visit America and to deliver the

inaugural address at Johns Hopkins University. In July of this year

accordingly, in company with his wife, he crossed to New York.

Everywhere Huxley was received with enthusiasm, for his name was a

very familiar one. Two quotations from his address at Johns Hopkins are

especially worthy of attention as a part of his message to Americans. "It

has been my fate to see great educational funds fossilise into mere bricks

and mortar in the petrifying springs of architecture, with nothing left to

work them. A great warrior is said to have made a desert and called it

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS

peace. Trustees have sometimes made a palace and called it a

university."

The second quotation is as follows:--

I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your

bigness or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur,

territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs true

sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is, what are you going to do

with all these things? . . .

The one condition of success, your sole safeguard, is the moral worth

and intellectual clearness of the individual citizen. Education cannot give

these, but it can cherish them and bring them to the front in whatever

station of society they are to be found, and the universities ought to be,

and may be, the fortresses of the higher life of the nation.

After the return from America, the same innumerable occupations

were continued. It would be impossible in short space even to enumerate

all Huxley's various publications of the next ten years. His work, however,

changed gradually from scientific investigation to administrative work, not

the least important of which was the office of Inspector of Fisheries. A

second important office was the Presidency of the Royal Society. Of the

work of this society Sir Joseph Hooker writes: "The duties of the office are

manifold and heavy; they include attendance at all the meetings of the

Fellows, and of the councils, committees, and sub-committees of the

Society, and especially the supervision of the printing and illustrating all

papers on biological subjects that are published in the Society's

Transactions and Proceedings; the latter often involving a protracted

correspondence with the authors. To this must be added a share in the

supervision of the staff officers, of the library and correspondence, and the

details of house-keeping." All the work connected with this and many

other offices bespeaks a life too hard-driven and accounts fully for the

continued ill- health which finally resulted in a complete break-down.

Huxley had always advocated that the age of sixty was the time for

"official death," and had looked forward to a peaceful "Indian summer."

With this object in mind and troubled by increasing ill- health, he began in

1885 to give up his work. But to live even in comparative idleness, after

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS

so many years of activity, was difficult. "I am sure," he says, "that the

habit of incessant work into which we all drift is as bad in its way as dram-

drinking. In time you cannot be comfortable without stimulus." But

continued bodily weakness told upon him to the extent that all work

became distasteful. An utter weariness with frequent spells of the blues

took possession of him; and the story of his life for some years is the story

of the long pursuit of health in England, Switzerland, and especially in

Italy.

Although Huxley was wretchedly ill during this period, he wrote

letters which are good to read for their humor and for their pictures of

foreign cities. Rome he writes of as an idle, afternoony sort of place

from which it is difficult to depart. He worked as eagerly over the

historic remains in Rome as he would over a collection of geological

specimens. "I begin to understand Old Rome pretty well and I am quite

learned in the Catacombs, which suit me, as a kind of Christian fossils out

of which one can reconstruct the body of the primitive Church."

Florence, for a man with a conscience and ill-health, had too many picture

galleries. "They are a sore burden to the conscience if you don't go to see

them, and an awful trial to the back and legs if you do," he complained.

He found Florence, nevertheless, a lovely place and full of most

interesting things to see and do. His letters with reference to himself also

are vigorously and entertainingly expressed. He writes in a characteristic

way of his growing difficulty with his hearing. "It irritates me not to hear;

it irritates me still more to be spoken to as if I were deaf, and the absurdity

of being irritated on the last ground irritates me still more." And again he

writes in a more hopeful strain, "With fresh air and exercise and careful

avoidance of cold and night air I am to be all right again." He then adds:

"I am not fond of coddling; but as Paddy gave his pig the best corner in his

cabin--because 'shure, he paid the rint'--I feel bound to take care of myself

as a household animal of value, to say nothing of other points."

Although he was never strong after this long illness, Huxley began in

1889 to be much better. The first sign of returning vigor was the

eagerness with which he entered into a controversy with Gladstone.

Huxley had always enjoyed a mental battle; and some of his fiercest tilts

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AUTOBIOGRAPHYANDSELECTEDESSAYS1AUTOBIOGRAPHYANDSELECTEDESSAYSByTHOMASHENRYHUXLEYAUTOBIOGRAPHYANDSELECTEDESSAYS2PREFACEThepurposeofthefollowingselectionsistopresenttostudentsofEnglishafewofHuxley'srepresentativeessays.Someoftheseselectionsarecomplete;othersareextracts.Inthelattercase,however,theyaren...

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