[Now in this lecture he showed that Harvey employed vivisection to establish the doctrine of the circulation of the blood, and furthermore, that he taught this doctrine before the "Novum Organum" was published, and that his subsequent "Exercitatio" displays no trace of being influenced by Bacon's work. After glancing at the superstitious reverence for the "Baconian Induction," he pointed out Bacon's ignorance of the progress of science up to his time, and his inability to divine the importance of what he knew by hearsay of the work of Copernicus, or Kepler, or Galileo; of Gilbert, his contemporary, or of Galen; and wound up by quoting Ellis's severe judgment of Bacon in the General Preface to the Philosophic Works, in Spedding's classical edition (page 38):—] "That his method is impracticable cannot, I think, be denied, if we reflect, not only that it never has produced any result, but also that the process by which scientific truths have been established cannot be so presented as even to appear to be in accordance with it."

[How early this conviction had forced itself upon him, I cannot say; but it was certainly not later than 1859, when the "Origin of Species" was constantly met with "Oh, but this is contrary to the Baconian method." He had long felt what he expresses most clearly in the "Progress of Science" ("Collected Essays" 1 46-57), that Bacon's] "majestic eloquence and fervid vaticinations," [which] "drew the attention of all the world to the 'new birth of Time,'" [were yet, for all practical results on discovery,] "a magnificent failure." [The desire for "fruits" has not been the great motive of the discoverer; nor has discovery waited upon collective research.] "Those who refuse to go beyond fact," [he writes,] "rarely get as far as fact; and any one who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the 'anticipation of nature,' that is, by the invention of hypotheses, which, though verifiable, often had very little foundation to start with; and, not unfrequently, in spite of a long career of usefulness, turned out to be wholly erroneous in the long-run."

[Thus he had been led to a settled disbelief in Bacon's scientific greatness, that reasoned "prejudice" against which Spedding himself was moved to write twice in defence of Bacon. In his first letter he criticised a passage in the lecture touching this question. On the one hand, he remarks, "Bacon would probably have agreed with you as to his pretensions as a scientific discoverer (he calls himself a bellman to call other wits together, or a trumpeter, or a maker of bricks for others to build with)." On the other hand, he asks, ought a passage from a fragment—the "Temporis partus masculus"—unpublished in Bacon's lifetime, to be treated as one of his representative opinions?

In his second letter he adduces, on other grounds, his own more favourable impression of Bacon's philosophical influence. A peculiar interest of this letter lies in its testimony to the influence of Huxley's writings even on his elder contemporaries.

From James Spedding.

February 1, 1878.

...When you admit that you study Bacon with a PREJUDICE, you mean of course an unfavourable opinion previously formed on sufficient grounds. Now I am myself supposed to have studied him with a prejudice the other way: but this I cannot admit, in any sense of the word; for when I first made his acquaintance I had no opinion or feeling about him at all—more than the ordinary expectation of a young man to find what he is told to look for. My earliest impression of his character came probably from Thomson—whose portrait of him, except as touched and softened by the tenderer hand of "the sweet-souled poet of the Seasons," did not differ from the ordinary one. It was not long indeed before I did begin to form an opinion of my own; one of those AFTER-judgments which are liable to be mistaken for prejudices by those who judge differently, and which, being formed, do, no doubt, tell upon the balance. For it was not long before I found myself indebted to him for the greatest benefit probably that any man, living or dead, can confer on another. In my school and college days I had been betrayed by an ambition to excel in themes and declamations into the study, admiration, and imitation of the rhetoricians. In the course of my last long vacation—the autumn of 1830—I was inspired with a new ambition, namely, to think justly about everything which I thought about at all, and to act accordingly; a conviction for which I cannot cease to feel grateful, and which I distinctly trace to the accident of having in the beginning of that same vacation given two shillings at a second-hand bookstall for a little volume of Dove's classics, containing the Advancement of Learning. And if I could tell you how many superlatives I have since that time degraded into the positive; how many innumerables and infinities I have replaced by counted numbers and estimated quantities; how many assumptions, important to the argument in hand, I have withdrawn because I found on more consideration that the fact might be explained otherwise; and how many effective epithets I have discarded when I found that I could not fully verify them; you would think it no less than just that I should claim for myself and concede to others the right of being judged by the last edition rather than the first. That a persistent endeavour to free myself from what you regard as Bacon's characteristic vice should have been the fruit of a desire to follow his example, will seem strange to you, but it is fact. Perhaps you will think it not less strange, but it is my real belief, that if your own writings had been in existence and come in my way at the same critical stage of my moral and mental development, they would have taught me the same lesson and inspired me with the same ambition; for in that particular (if I may say it without offence) I look upon you BOTH as eminent examples of the SAME virtue.

To the lecture he refers once more in a letter to Mr. John Morley. The political situation touched on in this and the next letter is that of the end of the Russo-Turkish war and the beginning of the Afghan war.]

Science Schools, South Kensington, February 7, 1878.

My dear Morley,

Many thanks for the cheque, and still more for your good word for the article. [On Harvey.] I knew it would "draw" Hutton, and his ingenuity has as usual made the best of the possibilities of attack. I am glad to find, however, that he does not think it expedient to reiterate his old story about the valuelessness of vivisection in the establishment of the doctrine of the circulation.

I hear that that absurd creature R— goes about declaring that I have made all sorts of blunders. Could not somebody be got to persuade him to put what he has to say in black and white?

Controversy is as abhorrent to me as gin to a reclaimed drunkard; but oh dear! it would be so nice to squelch that pompous imposter.

I hope you admire the late aspects of the British Lion. His tail goes up and down from the intercrural to the stiffly erect attitude per telegram, while his head is sunk in the windbag of the House of Commons.

I am beginning to think that a war would be a good thing if only for the inevitable clean sweep of all the present governing people which it would bring about.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[To his eldest daughter.]

Science Schools, South Kensington, December 7, 1878.

Dearest Jess,

You are a badly used young person—you are; and nothing short of that conviction would get a letter out of your still worse used Pater, the bete noire of whose existence is letter-writing.

Catch me discussing the Afghan question with you, you little pepper pot. No, not if I know it. Read Fitzjames Stephen's letter in the "Times," also Bartle Frere's memorandum, also Napier of Magdala's memo. Them's my sentiments.

Also read the speech of Lord Hartington on the address. He is a man of sense like his father, and you will observe that he declares that the Government were perfectly within their right in declaring war without calling Parliament together...

If you had lived as long as I have and seen as much of men, you would cease to be surprised at the reputations men of essentially commonplace powers—aided by circumstances and some amount of cleverness—obtain.

I am as strong for justice as any one can be, but it is real justice, not sham conventional justice which the sentimentalists howl for.

At this present time real justice requires that the power of England should be used to maintain order and introduce civilisation wherever that power extends.

The Afghans are a pack of disorderly treacherous blood-thirsty thieves and caterans who should never have been allowed to escape from the heavy hand we laid upon them, after the massacre of twenty thousand of our men, women, and children in the Khoord Cabul Pass thirty years ago.

We have let them be, and the consequence is they now lend themselves to the Russians, and are ready to stir up disorder and undo all the good we have been doing in India for the last generation.

They are to India exactly what the Highlanders of Scotland were to the Lowlanders before 1745; and we have just as much right to deal with them in the same way.

I am of opinion that our Indian Empire is a curse to us. But so long as we make up our minds to hold it, we must also make up our minds to do those things which are needful to hold it effectually, and in the long run it will be found that so doing is real justice both for ourselves, our subject population, and the Afghans themselves.

There, you plague.

Ever your affectionate Daddy,

T.H. Huxley.

[A few days later he writes to his son:—]

The Liberals are making fools of themselves, and "the family" declare I am becoming a Jingo! another speech from Gladstone is expected to complete my conversion.

[Among other occupations he still had to attend the Scottish Universities Commission, for which he wrote the paragraph on examinations in its report; he lectured on the Hand at the Working Men's College; prepared new editions of the "Physiography," "Elementary Physiology," and "Vertebrate Anatomy," and at length brought out the "Introductory Primer" in the Science Primer Series, in quite a different form from what he had originally sketched out. But his chief interest lay in the Invertebrata. From April 29 to June 3 he lectured to working men at Jermyn Street upon the Crayfish; read a paper on the Classification and Distribution of Crayfishes at the Zoological Society on June 4, and lectured at the Zoological Gardens weekly from May 17 to June 21 on Crustaceous Animals. In all this work lay the foundations of his subsequent book on the Crayfish, which I find jotted down in the notes of this year to be written as an introduction to "Zoology," together with the "Dog" as an introduction to the "Mammalia", and "Man"—already dealt with in "Man's Place in Nature"—as an introduction to "Anthropology." This projected series is completed with a half-erased note of an introduction to "Psychology," which perhaps found some expression in parts of the "Hume," also written this year.

He notes down also, work on the Ascidians, and on the morphology of the Mollusca and Cephalopods brought back by the "Challenger," in connection with which he now began the monograph on the rare creature Spirula, a remarkable piece of work, being based upon the dissections of a single specimen, but destined never to be completed by his hand, though his drawings were actually engraved, and nothing remained but to put a few finishing touches and to write detailed descriptions of the plates.

Letters to W.K. Parker and Professor Haeckel touch on this part of his work; the former, indeed, offering a close parallel to a story, obviously of the same period, which the younger Parker tells in his reminiscences, to illustrate the way in which he would be utterly engrossed in a subject for the time being. Jeffery Parker, while demonstrator of biology, came to him with a question about the brain of the codfish at a time when he was deep in the investigation of some invertebrate group.] "Codfish?" [he replied,] "that's a vertebrate, isn't it? Ask me a fortnight hence, and I'll consider it."

4 Marlborough Place, September 25, 1878.

My dear Parker,

As far as I recollect Ammocoetes is a vertebrated animal—and I ignore it.

The paper you refer to was written by my best friend—a carefulish kind of man—and I am as sure that he saw what he says he saw, as if I had seen it myself.

But what the fact may mean and whether it is temporary or permanent—is thy servant a dog that he should worry himself about other things with backbones? Not if I know it.

Churchill has got over a whole batch of the American edition of the Vertebrata, so I have a respite. Mollusks are far more interesting—bugs sweeter—while the dinner crayfish hath no parallel for intense and absorbing interest in the three kingdoms of Nature.

What saith the Scripture? "Go to the ANT thou sluggard." In other words, study the Invertebrata.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Sketch of a vast winged ant advancing on a midget, and saying, as it looks through a pair of eyeglasses, "Well, really, what an absurd creature!!"]

4 Marlborough Place, London, April 28, 1878.

My dear Haeckel,

Since the receipt of your letter three months ago, I have been making many inquiries about Medusae for you, but I could hear of none—and so I have delayed my reply, until I doubt not you have been blaspheming my apparent neglect.

My "Sammlung"!! [Collection.] My dear friend, my cabin on board H.M.S. "Rattlesnake" was 7 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 5 feet 6 inches high. When my bed and my clothes were in it, there was not much room for any collection, except the voluntary one made by some thousands of specimens of Blatta orientalis [The cockroach.], with whose presence I should have been very glad to dispense.

My Medusae were never published. I have heaps of notes and drawings and half-a-dozen engraved plates. But after the publication of the "Oceanic Hydrozoa" I was obliged to take to quite other occupations, and all that material is like the "full many a flower, born to blush unseen," of our poet.

If you would pay us a visit you should look through the whole mass, if you liked, and you might find something interesting.

At present, I am very busy about Crayfishes (Flusskrebse), working out the relations between their structure and their Geographical Distribution, which are very curious and interesting.

I have also nearly finished the anatomy of Spirula for the "Challenger." It is essentially a cuttlefish, and the shell is really internal. With only one specimen, it has been a long and troublesome job—but I shall establish all the essential points and give half-a-dozen plates of anatomy.

You will recollect my eldest little daughter? She is going to be married next Saturday. It is the first break in our family, and we are very sad to lose her—though well satisfied with her prospects. She is but just twenty and a charming girl, though you may put that down to fatherly partiality if you like.

The second daughter has taken to art, and will make a painter if she be wise enough not to marry for some years.

My eldest son who comes next is taller than I am. He has been at one of the Scotch Universities for the last six months; and one of these fine days, next month, you will see a fair-haired stripling asking for Herr Professor Haeckel.

I am going to send him to Jena for three months to pick up your noble vernacular; and in the meanwhile to continue his Greek and Mathematics, in which the young gentleman is fairly proficient. If you can recommend any Professor under whom he can carry on his studies, it will be a great kindness.

I will give him a letter to you, and while I beg you not to give yourself any trouble about him, I need not say I shall be very grateful for any notice you may take of him.

I am giving him as much independence of action as possible, in order that he may learn to take care of himself.

Now that is enough about my children. Yours must yet be young—and you have not yet got to the marriage and university stage—which I assure you is much more troublesome than the measles and chicken-pox period.

My wife unites with me in kindest remembrances and good wishes.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[An outbreak of diphtheria among his children made the spring of 1878 a time of overwhelming anxiety. How it told upon his strong and self-contained chief is related by T.J. Parker—"I never saw a man more crushed than he was during the dangerous illness of one of his daughters, and he told me that, having then to make an after-dinner speech, he broke down for the first time in his life, and for one painful moment forgot where he was and what he had to say." This was one of the few occasions of his absence from College during the seventies. "When, after two days, he looked in at the laboratory," writes Professor Howes, "his dejected countenance and tired expression betokened only too plainly the intense anxiety he had undergone."

The history of the outbreak was very instructive. Huxley took a leading part in organising an inquiry and in looking into the matter with the health officer.] "As soon as I can get all the facts together," [he writes on December 10,] "I am going to make a great turmoil about our outbreak of diphtheria—and see whether I cannot get our happy-go-lucky local government mended." [As usual, the epidemic was due to culpable negligence. In the construction of some drains, too small a pipe was laid down. The sewage could not escape, and flooded back in a low-lying part of Kilburn. Diphtheria soon broke out close by. While it was raging there, a St. John's Wood dairyman running short of milk, sent for more to an infected dairy in Kilburn. Every house which he supplied that day with Kilburn milk was attacked with diphtheria.

But with relief from this heavy strain, his spirits instantly revived, and he writes to Tyndall.]

4 Marlborough Place, May 20, 1878.

My dear Tyndall,

I wrote you a most downhearted letter this morning about Madge, and not without reason. But having been away four hours, I come home to find a wonderful and blessed change. The fever has abated and she is looking like herself. If she could only make herself heard, I should have some sauciness. I see it in her eyes.

If you will be so kind as to kiss everybody you meet on my account it will be a satisfaction to me. You may begin with Mrs. Tyndall!

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[Professor Marsh, with whom Huxley had stayed at Yale College in 1876, paid his promised visit to England immediately after this.]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., June 24, 1878 (Evening).

My dear Marsh,

Welcome to England! I am delighted to hear of your arrival—but the news has only just reached me, as I have been away since Saturday with my wife and sick daughter who are at the seaside. A great deal has happened to us in the last six or seven weeks. My eldest daughter married, and then a week after an invasion of diphtheria, which struck down my eldest son, my youngest daughter, and my eldest remaining daughter altogether. Two of the cases were light, but my poor Madge suffered terribly, and for some ten days we were in sickening anxiety about her. She is slowly gaining strength now, and I hope there is no more cause for alarm—but my household is all to pieces—the Lares and Penates gone, and painters and disinfectors in their places.

You will certainly have to run down to Margate and see my wife—or never expect forgiveness in this world.

I shall be at the Science Schools, South Kensington, to-morrow till four—and if I do not see you before that time I shall come and look you up at the Palace Hotel.

I am, yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

"Is it not provoking," [he writes to his wife,] "that we should all be dislocated when I should have been so glad to show him a little attention?" [Still, apart from this weekend at the seaside, Professor Marsh was not entirely neglected. He writes in his "Recollections" (page 6):—

How kind Huxley was to everyone who could claim his friendship, I have good cause to know. Of the many instances which occur to me, one will suffice. One evening in London at a grand annual reception of the Royal Academy, where celebrities of every rank were present, Huxley said to me,] "When I was in America, you showed me every extinct animal that I had read about, or even dreamt of. Now, if there is a single living lion in all Great Britain that you wish to see, I will show him to you in five minutes." [He kept his promise, and before the reception was over, I had met many of the most noted men in England, and from that evening, I can date a large number of acquaintances, who have made my subsequent visits to that country an ever-increasing pleasure.

As for his summer occupations, he writes to his eldest daughter on July 2:—]

No, young woman, you don't catch me attending any congresses I can avoid, not even if F. is an artful committee-man. I must go to the British Association at Dublin—for my sins—and after that we have promised to pay a visit in Ireland to Sir Victor Brooke. After that I must settle myself down in Penmaenmawr and write a little book about David Hume—before the grindery of the winter begins.

[The meeting of the British Association took place this year in the third week of August at Dublin. Huxley gave an address in the Anthropological subsection ("Informal Remarks on the Conclusions of Anthropology" "British Association Report" 1878 pages 573-578.), and on the 20th received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Dublin University, the Public Orator presenting him in the following words:—

Praesento vobis Thomam Henricum Huxley—hominem vere physicum—hominem facundum, lepidum, venustum—eundem autem nihil (philosophia modo sua lucem praeferat) reformidantem—ne illud quidem Ennianum,

Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis.

The extract above given contains the first reference to the book on Hume (In the "English Men of Letters" series, edited by Mr. John Morley.), written this summer as a holiday occupation at Penmaenmawr. The speed at which it was composed is remarkable, even allowing for his close knowledge of the subject, acquired many years before. Though he had been "picking at it" earlier in the summer, the whole of the philosophical part was written during September, leaving the biographical part to be done later.

The following letters from Marlborough Place show him at work upon the book:—]

March 31, 1878.

My dear Morley,

I like the notion of undertaking your Hume book, and I don't see why I should not get it done this autumn. But you must not consider me pledged on that point, as I cannot quite command my time.

Tulloch sent me his book on Pascal. It was interesting as everything about Pascal must be, but Tulloch is not a model of style.

I have looked into Bruton's book, but I shall now get it and study it. Hume's correspondence with Rousseau seems to me typical of the man's sweet, easy-going nature. Do you mean to have a portrait of each of your men? I think it is a great comfort in a biography to get a notion of the subject in the flesh.

I have rather made it a rule not to part with my property in my books—but I daresay that can be arranged with Macmillan. Anyhow I shall be content to abide by the general arrangement if you have made one.

We have had a bad evening. Clifford has been here, and he is extremely ill—in fact I fear the worst for him. [See below.]

It is a thousand pities, for he has a fine nature all round, and time would have ripened him into something very considerable. We are all very fond of him.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

July 6, 1878.

My dear Morley,

Very many thanks for Diderot. I have made a plunge into the first volume and found it very interesting. I wish you had put a portrait of him as a frontispiece. I have seen one—a wonderful face, something like Goethe's.

I am picking at Hume at odd times. It seems to me that I had better make an analysis and criticism of the "Inquiry," the backbone of the essay—as it touches all the problems which interest us most just now. I have already sketched out a chapter on Miracles, which will, I hope, be very edifying in consequence of its entire agreement with the orthodox arguments against Hume's a priori reasonings against miracles.

Hume wasn't half a sceptic after all. And so long as he got deep enough to worry Orthodoxy, he did not care to go to the bottom of things.

He failed to see the importance of suggestions already made both by Locke and Berkeley.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

September 30, 1878.

My dear Morley,

Praise me! I have been hard at work at Hume at Penmaenmawr, and I have got the hard part of the business—the account of his philosophy—blocked out in the bodily shape of about 180 pages foolscap manuscript.

But I find the job as tough as it is interesting. Hume's diamonds, before the public can see them properly, want a proper setting in a methodical and consistent shape—and that implies writing a small psychological treatise of one's own, and then cutting it down into as unobtrusive a form as possible.

So I am working away at my draft—from the point of view of an aesthetic jeweller.

As soon as I get it into such a condition as will need only verbal trimming, I should like to have it set up in type. For it is a defect of mine that I can never judge properly of any composition of my own in manuscript.

Moreover (don't swear at this wish) I should very much like to send it to you in that shape for criticism.

The Life will be an easy business. I should like to get the book out of hand before Christmas, and will do so if possible. But my lectures begin on Tuesday, and I cannot promise.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

October 21, 1878.

My dear Morley,

I have received slips up to chapter 9 of Hume, and so far I do not think (saving your critical presence) that there will be much need of much modification or interpolation.

I have made all my citations from a 4-volume edition of Hume, published by Black and Tait in 1826, which has long been in my possession.

Do you think I ought to quote Green and Grose's edition? It will be a great bother, and I really don't think that the understanding of Hume is improved by going back to eighteenth-century spelling.

I am at work upon the Life, which should not take long. But I wish that I had polished that off at Penmaenmawr as well. What with lecturing five days a week, and toiling at two anatomical monographs, it is hard to find time.

As soon as I have gone through all the eleven chapters about the Philosophy—I will send them to you and get you to come and dine some day—after you have looked at them—and go into it.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Science Schools, South Kensington, October 29, 1878.

My dear Morley,

Your letter has given me great pleasure. For though I have thoroughly enjoyed the work, and seemed to myself to have got at the heart of Hume's way of thinking, I could not tell how it would appear to others, still less could I pretend to judge of the literary form of what I had written. And as I was quite prepared to accept your judgment if it had been unfavourable, so being what it is, I hug myself proportionately and begin to give myself airs as a man of letters.

I am through all the interesting part of Hume's life—that is, the struggling part of it—and David the successful and the feted begins rather to bore me, as I am sorry to say most successful people do. I hope to send the first chapter to press in another week.

Might it not be better, by the way, to divide the little book into two parts?

Part 1.—Life, Literary and Political work, Part 2.—Philosophy,

subdividing the latter into chapters or sections? please tell me what you think.

I have not received the last chapter from the printer yet. When I do I will finish revising, and then ask you to come and have a symposium over it.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

P.S.—Macmillan has a lien on "The Hand." I gave part of the lecture in another shape at Glasgow two years ago and M. had it reported for his magazine. If he is good and patient he will get it in some shape some day!

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., November 5, 1878.

My dear Morley,

"Davie's" philosophy is now all in print, and all but a few final pages of his biography.

So I think the time has come when that little critical symposium may take place.

Can you come and dine on Tuesday next (12) at 7? Or if any day except Wednesday 15th, next week, will suit you better, it will do just as well for me. There will be nobody but my wife and daughters, so don't dress.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

P.S.—Will you be disgusted if in imitation of the "English Men of Letters" I set agoing an "English Men of Science." Few people have any conception of the part Englishmen have played in science, and I think it would be both useful and interesting to bring the truth home to the English mind.

I had about three thousand people to hear me on Saturday at Manchester, and it would have done you good to hear how they cheered at my allusion to personal rule. I had to stop and let them ease their souls.

Behold my P.S. is longer than my letter. It's the strong feminine element in my character oozing out. "Desinit in piscem" though, and a mighty queer fish too.

4 Marlborough Place, January 12, 1879.

Dear Lecky,

I am very much obliged for your suggestion about the note at page 9. I am ashamed to say that though the eleven day correction was familiar enough to me, I had never thought about the shifting of the beginning of the year till you mentioned it. It is a law of nature, I believe, that when a man says what he need not say he is sure to blunder. The note shall go out.

All I know about Sprat is as the author of a dull history of the Royal Society, so I was surprised to meet with Hume's estimate of him.

No doubt about the general hatred of the Scotch, but you will observe that I make Millar responsible for the peace-making assurance.

What you said to me in conversation some time ago led me to look at Hume's position as a moralist with some care, and I quoted the passage at page 206 that no doubt might be left on the matter.

The little book threatened to grow to an undue length, and therefore the question of morals is treated more briefly than was perhaps desirable.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Early in November I find the first reference to a proposed, but never completed, "English Men of Science" series in the letter to Mr. Morley above. The following letters, especially those to Sir H. Roscoe, with whom he was concerting the series, give some idea of its scope:—]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., December 10, 1878.

My dear Roscoe,

You will think that I have broken out into letter-writing in a very unwonted fashion, but I forgot half of what I had to say this morning.

After a good deal of consultation with Macmillans, who were anxious that the "English Men of Science" series should not be too extensive, I have arranged the books as follows:—

1. Roger Bacon.

2. Harvey and the Physiologists of the 17th century.

3. Robert Boyle and the Royal Society.

4. Isaac Newton.

5. Charles Darwin.

6. English Physicists, Gilbert, Young, Faraday, Joule.

7. English Chemists, Black, Priestley, Cavendish, Davy, Dalton.

8. English Physiologists and Zoologists of the 18th century, Hunter, etc.

9. English Botanists, Ray, Crew, Hales, Brown.

10. English Geologists, Hutton, Smith, Lyell.

We may throw in the astronomers if the thing goes.

Green of Leeds will undertake 10; Dyer, with Hooker's aid, 9; M. Foster eight and I look to you for 7.

Tyndall has half promised to do Boyle, and I hope he will. Clerk-Maxwell can't undertake Newton, and hints X. But I won't have X.—he is too much of a bolter to go into the tandem. I am thinking of asking Moulton, who is strongly recommended by Spottiswoode, and is a very able fellow, likely to put his strength into it.

Do you know anything about Chrystal of St. Andrews? [Now Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh.] I forget whether I asked you before. From all I hear of him I expect he would do Number 6 very well. I have written to Adamson by this post.

I shall get off with Harvey and Darwin to my share.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., December 26, 1878.

My dear Roscoe,

I was very loth to lump the chemists together, but Max was very strong about not having too many books in the series; and on the other hand, I had my doubts how far the chemists were capable of "dissociation" without making the book too technical.

But I do not regard the present arrangement as unalterable, and if you think the early chemists and the later chemists would do better in two separate groups, the matter is quite open to consideration.

Maxwell says he is overdone with work already, and altogether declines to take anything new. I shall have to look about me for a man to do the Physikers.

Of course Adamson will have to take in a view of the science of the Middle Ages. That will be one of the most interesting parts of the book, and I hope he will do it well. I suppose he knows his Dante.

The final cause of boys is to catch something or other. I trust that yours is demeasling himself properly.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, December 1878.

My dear Tyndall,

I consider your saying the other evening that you would see "any one else d—d first," before you would assent to the little proposal I made to you, as the most distinct and binding acceptance you are capable of. You have nothing else to swear by, and so you swear at everybody but me when you want to pledge yourself.

It will release me of an immense difficulty if you will undertake R. Boyle and the Royal Society (which of course includes Hooke); and the subject is a capital one.

The book should not exceed about 200 pages, and you need not be ready before this time next year. There could not be a more refreshing piece of work just to enliven the dolce far niente of the Bel Alp. (That is quite a la Knowles, and I begin to think I have some faculty as an editor.)

Settle your own terms with Macmillan. They will be as joyful as I shall be to know you are going to take part in the enterprise.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, December 31, 1878.

My dear Tyndall,

I would sooner have your Boyle, however long we may have to wait for it, than anybody else's d—d simmer. (Now that's a "goak," and you must ask Mrs. Tyndall to explain it to you.)

Two years will I give you from this blessed New Year's eve, 1878, and if it isn't done on New Year's Day 1881 you shall not be admitted to the company of the blessed, but your dinner shall be sent to you between two plates to the most pestiferous corner of the laboratory of the Royal Institution. I am very glad you will undertake the job, and feel that I have a proper New Year's gift.

By the way, you ought to have had Hume ere this. Macmillan sent me two or three copies, just to keep his word, on Christmas Day, and I thought I should have a lot more at once.

But there is no sign—not even an advertisement—and I don't know what has become of the edition. Perhaps the bishops have bought it up.

With all good wishes,

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[Two letters—both to Tyndall—show his solicitude for his friends. The one speaks of a last and unavailing attempt made by W.K. Clifford's friends to save his life by sending him on a voyage (he died not long after at Madeira); the other urges Tyndall himself to be careful of his health.]

4 Marlborough Place, April 2, 1878.

My dear Tyndall,

We had a sort of council about Clifford at Clark's house yesterday morning—H. Thompson, Corfield, Payne, Pollock, and myself, and I am sure you will be glad to hear the result.

From the full statement of the nature of his case made by Clark and Corfield, it appears that though grave enough in all conscience, it is not so bad as it might be, and that there is a chance, I might almost say a fair chance, for him yet. It appears that the lung mischief has never gone so far as the formation of a cavity, and that it is at present quiescent, and no other organic disease discoverable. The alarming symptom is a general prostration—very sadly obvious when he was with us on Sunday—which, as I understand, rather renders him specially obnoxious to a sudden and rapid development of the lung disease than is itself to be feared.

It was agreed that they should go at once to Gibraltar by the P. and O., and report progress when he gets there. If strong enough he is to go on a cruise round the Mediterranean, and if he improves by this he is to go away for a year to Bogota (in South America), which appears to be a favourable climate for such cases as his.

If he gets worse he can but return. I have done my best to impress upon him and his wife the necessity of extreme care, and I hope they will be wise.

It is very pleasant to find how good and cordial everybody is, helpful in word and deed to the poor young people. I know it will rejoice the cockles of your generous old heart to hear it.

As for yourself, I trust you are mending and allowing yourself to be taken care of by your household goddess.

With our united love to her and yourself,

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

I sent your cheque to Yeo.

May, 1878.

My dear Tyndall,

You were very much wanted on Saturday, as your wife will have told you, but for all that I would not have had you come on any account. You want a thorough long rest and freedom from excitement of all sorts, and I am rejoiced to hear that you are going out of the hurly-burly of London as soon as possible; and, not to be uncivil, I do hope you will stay away as long as possible, and not be deluded into taking up anything exciting as soon as you feel lively again among your mountains.

Pray give up Dublin. If you don't, I declare I will try if I have enough influence with the council to get you turned out of your office of Lecturer, and superseded.

Do seriously consider this, as you will be undoing the good results of your summer's rest. I believe your heart is as sound as your watch was when you went on your memorable slide [On the Piz Morteratsch; "Hours of Exercise in the Alps" by J. Tyndall chapter 19.], but if you go slithering down avalanches of work and worry you can't always expect to pick up "the little creature" none the worse. The apparatus is by one of the best makers, but it has been some years in use, and can't be expected to stand rough work.

You will be glad to hear that we had cheerier news of Clifford on Saturday. He was distinctly better, and setting out on his Mediterranean voyage.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[A birthday letter to his son concludes the year:—]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., December 10, 1878.

Your mother reminds me that to-morrow is your eighteenth birthday, and though I know that my "happy returns" will reach you a few hours too late, I cannot but send them.

You are touching manhood now, my dear laddie, and I trust that as a man your mother and I may always find reason to regard you as we have done throughout your boyhood.

The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect. I have not troubled you much with paternal didactics—but that bit is "ower true" and worth thinking over.

CHAPTER 2.11.

1879.

[Much of the work noted down for 1878 reappears in my father's list for 1879. He was still at work upon, or meditating his Crayfish, his Introduction to Psychology, the Spirula Memoir, and a new edition of the Elementary Physiology. Professor H.N. Martin writes about the changes necessary for adapting the "Practical Biology" to American needs; the article on Harvey was waiting to be put into permanent form. Besides giving an address at the Working Men's College, he lectured on Sensation and the Uniformity of the Sensiferous Organs ("Collected Essays" 6.), at the Royal Institution, Friday evening, March 7; and on Snakes, both at the Zoological Gardens, June 5, and at the London Institution, December 1. On February 3 he read a paper at the Royal Society on "The Characters of the Pelvis in the Mammalia, and the Conclusions respecting the Origin of Mammals which may be based on them"; and published in "Nature" for November 6 a paper on "Certain Errors Respecting the Structure of the Heart, attributed to Aristotle."

Great interest attaches to this paper. He had always wondered how Aristotle, in dissecting a heart, had come to assert that it contained only three chambers; and the desire to see for himself what stood in the original, uncommented on by translators who were not themselves anatomists, was one of the chief reasons (I think the wish to read the Greek Testament in the original was another) which operated in making him take up the study of Greek late in middle life. His practice was to read in his book until he had come to ten new words; these he looked out, parsed, and wrote down together with their chief derivatives. This was his daily portion.

When at last he grappled with the passage in question, he found that Aristotle had correctly described what he saw under the special conditions of his dissection, when the right auricle actually appears as he described it, an enlargement of the "great vein." So that this, at least, ought to be removed from the list of Aristotle's errors. The same is shown to be the case with his statements about respiration. His own estimate of Aristotle as a physiologist is between the panegyric of Cuvier and the depreciation of Lewes: "he carried science a step beyond the point at which he found it; a meritorious, but not a miraculous, achievement." And it will interest scholars to know that from his own experience as a lecturer, Huxley was inclined to favour the theory that the original manuscripts of the "Historia Animalium," with their mingled accuracy and absurdity, were notes taken by some of his students. This essay was reprinted in "Science and Culture" page 180.

This year he brought out his second volume of essays on various subjects, written from 1870 to 1878, under the title of "Critiques and Addresses," and later in the year, his long-delayed and now entirely recast "Introductory Primer" in the Science Primer Series.]

6 Barnepark Terrace, Teignmouth, September 12, 1879.

My dear Roscoe,

I send you by this post my long-promised Primer, and a like set of sheets goes to Stewart. [Balfour Stewart, Professor of Natural Philosophy in Owens College, Manchester.]

You will see that it is quite different from my first sketch, Geikie's primer having cut me out of that line—but I think it much better.

You will see that the idea is to develop Science out of common observation, and to lead up to Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Psychology.

I want the thing to be good as far as it goes, so don't spare criticism.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Best remembrances from us all, which we are jolly.

[To his other duties he now added that of a Governor of Eton College, a post which he held till 1888, when, after doing what he could to advance progressive ideas of education, and in particular, getting a scheme adopted for making drawing part of the regular curriculum, ill-health compelled him to resign.]

As for other pressure of work [he writes to Dr. Dohrn, February 16], with the exception of the Zoological Society, I never have anything to do with the affairs of any society but the Royal now—I find the latter takes up all my disposable time...Take comfort from me. I find 53 to be a very youthful period of existence. I have been better physically, and worked harder mentally, this last twelve month than in any year of my life. So a mere boy, not yet 40 like you, may look to the future hopefully.

[From about this time dates the inception of a short-lived society, to be called the Association of Liberal Thinkers. It had first taken shape in the course of a conversation at Professor W.K. Clifford's house; the chief promoter and organiser being a well-known Theistic preacher, while on the council were men of science, critics, and scholars in various branches of learning. Huxley was chosen President, and the first meeting of officers and council took place at his house on January 25.

Professor G.J. Romanes was asked to join, but refused on the ground that even if the negations which he supposed the society would promulgate, were true, it was not expedient to offer them to the multitude. To this Huxley wrote the following reply (January 2, 1879):—]

Many thanks for your letter. I think it is desirable to explain that our Society is by no means intended to constitute a propaganda of negations, but rather to serve as a centre of free thought.

Of course I have not a word to say in respect of your decision. I quite appreciate your view of the matter, though it is diametrically opposed to my own conviction that the more rapidly truth is spread among mankind the better it will be for them.

Only let us be sure that it is truth.

[However, a course of action was proposed which by no means commended itself to several members of the council. Tyndall begs Huxley "not to commit us to a venture of the kind unless you see clearly that it meets a public need, and that it will be worked by able men," and on February 6 the latter writes:—]

After careful consideration of the whole circumstances of the case, I have definitely arrived at the conclusion that it is not expedient to go on with the undertaking.

I therefore resign my Presidency, and I will ask you to be so good as to intimate my withdrawal from the association to my colleagues.

[In spite of having long ago "burned his ships" with regard to both the great Universities, Huxley was agreeably surprised by a new sign of the times from Cambridge. The University now followed up its recognition of Darwin two years before, by offering Huxley an honorary degree, an event of which he wrote to Professor Baynes on June 9:—]

I shall be glorious in a red gown at Cambridge to-morrow, and hereafter look to be treated as a PERSON OF RESPECTABILITY.

I have done my best to avoid that misfortune, but it's of no use.

[A curious coincidence occurred here. Mr. Sandys, the public orator, in his speech presenting him for the degree, picked out one of his characteristics for description in the Horatian phrase, "Propositi tenax." Now this was the family motto; and Huxley wrote to point out the coincidence. (The speech delivered by the public orator on this occasion (June 10, 1879) ran as follows:—Academi inter silvas qui verum quaerunt, non modo ipsi veritatis lumine vitam hanc umbratilem illustrare conantur, sed illustrissimum quemque veritatis investigatorem aliunde delatum ea qua par est comitate excipiunt. Adest vir cui in veritate exploranda ampla sane provincia contigit, qui sive in animantium sive in arborum et herbarum genere quicquid vivit investigat, ipsum illud vivere quid sit, quali ex origine natum sit; qui exquirit quae cognationis necessitudo inter priores illas viventium species et has quae etiam nunc supersunt, intercedat. Olim in Oceano Australi, ubi rectis "oculis monstra natantia" vidit, victoriam prope primam, velut alter Perseus, a Medusa reportavit; varias deinceps animantium formas quasi ab ipsa Gorgone in saxum versas sagacitate singulari explicavit; vitae denique universae explorandae vitam suam totam dedicavit. Physicorum inter principes diu honoratus, idem (ut verbum mutuemur a Cartesio illo cujus laudes ipse in hac urbe quondam praedicavit) etiam "metaphysica" honore debito prosecutus est. Illum demum liberaliter educatum esse existimat qui cum ceteris animi et corporis dotibus instructus sit, tum praesertim quicquid turpe sit oderit, quicquid sive in arte sive in rerum natura pulchrum sit diligat; neque tamen ipse (ut ait Aristotles) "animalium parum pulchorum contemplationem fastidio puerili reformidat"; sed in perpetua animantium serie hominis vestigia perscrutari conatus, satis ampla liberalitate in universa rerum natura "humani nihil a se alienum putat." Duco ad vos virum intrepidum, facundum, propositi tenacem, Thomam Henricum Huxley.)]

Science and Art Department, South Kensington, June 11, 1879.

My dear Mr. Sandys,

I beg your acceptance of the inclosed photograph, which is certainly the best ever executed of me.

And by way of a memento of the claim which you established not only to the eloquence but also the insight of a prophet, I have added an impression of the seal with "Tenax propositi" writ plain, if not large. As I mentioned to you, it belonged to my eldest brother, who has been dead for many years. I trust that the Heralds' College may be as well satisfied as he was about his right to the coat of arms and crest.

My own genealogical inquiries have taken me so far back that I confess the later stages do not interest me.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The British Association met at Sheffield in 1879, and Huxley took this occasion to "eat the leek" in the matter of Bathybius (see volume 1). It must be remembered that his original interpretation of the phenomenon did not involve any new theory of the origin of life, and was not put forward because of its supposed harmony with Darwin's speculations.] ("That which interested me in the matter was the apparent analogy of Bathybius with other well-known forms of lower life, such as the plasmodia of the Myxomycetes and the Rhizopods. Speculative hopes or fears had nothing to do with the matter; and if Bathybius were brought up alive from the bottom of the Atlantic to-morrow, the fact would not have the slightest bearing, that I can discern, upon Mr. Darwin's speculations, or upon any of the disputed problems of biology. It would merely be one elementary organism the more added to the thousands already known.") [("Collected Essays 5 154.)

In supporting a vote of thanks to Dr. Allman, the President, for his address, he said (see "Nature" August 28, 1879):—]

I will ask you to allow me to say one word rather upon my own account, in order to prevent a misconception which, I think, might arise, and which I should regret if it did arise. I daresay that no one in this room, who has attained middle life, has been so fortunate as to reach that age without being obliged, now and then, to look back upon some acquaintance, or, it may be, intimate ally of his youth, who has not quite verified the promises of that youth. Nay, let us suppose he has done quite the reverse, and has become a very questionable sort of character, and a person whose acquaintance does not seem quite so desirable as it was in those young days; his way and yours have separated; you have not heard much about him; but eminently trustworthy persons have assured you he has done this, that, or the other; and is more or less of a black sheep, in fact. The President, in an early part of his address, alluded to a certain thing—I hardly know whether I ought to call it a thing or not—of which he gave you the name Bathybius, and he stated, with perfect justice, that I had brought that thing into notice; at any rate, indeed, I christened it, and I am, in a certain sense, its earliest friend. For some time after that interesting Bathybius was launched into the world, a number of admirable persons took the little thing by the hand, and made very much of it, and as the President was good enough to tell you, I am glad to be able to repeat and verify all the statements, as a matter of fact, which I had ventured to make about it. And so things went on, and I thought my young friend Bathybius would turn out a credit to me. But I am sorry to say, as time has gone on, he has not altogether verified the promise of his youth.

In the first place, as the President told you, he could not be found when he was wanted; and in the second place, when he was found, all sorts of things were said about him. Indeed, I regret to be obliged to tell you that some persons of severe minds went so far as to say that he was nothing but simply a gelatinous precipitate of slime, which had carried down organic matter. If that is so, I am very sorry for it, for whoever may have joined in this error, I am undoubtedly primarily responsible for it. But I do not know at the present time of my own knowledge how the matter stands. Nothing would please me more than to investigate the matter afresh in the way it ought to be investigated, but that would require a voyage of some time, and the investigation of this thing in its native haunts is a kind of work for which, for many years past, I have had no opportunity, and which I do not think I am very likely to enjoy again. Therefore my own judgment is in an absolute state of suspension about it. I can only assure you what has been said about this friend of mine, but I cannot say whether what is said is justified or not. But I feel very happy about the matter. There is one thing about us men of science, and that is, no one who has the greatest prejudice against science can venture to say that we ever endeavour to conceal each other's mistakes. And, therefore, I rest in the most entire and complete confidence that if this should happen to be a blunder of mine, some day or other it will be carefully exposed by somebody. But pray let me remind you whether all this story about Bathybius be right or wrong, makes not the slightest difference to the general argument of the remarkable address put before you to-night. All the statements your President has made are just as true, as profoundly true, as if this little eccentric Bathybius did not exist at all.

[Several letters of miscellaneous interest may be quoted.

The following acknowledges the receipt of "Essays in Romance":—]

4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., January 1879.

My dear Skelton,

Being the most procrastinating letter-writer in existence, I thought, or pretended to think, when I received your "Essays in Romance" that it would not be decent to thank you until I had read the book. And when I had done myself that pleasure, I further pretended to think that it would be much better to wait till I could send you my Hume book, which as it contains a biography, is the nearest approach to a work of fiction of which I have yet been guilty.

The "Hume" was sent, and I hope reached you a week ago; and as my conscience just now inquired in a very sneering and unpleasant tone whether I had any further pretence for not writing on hand, I thought I might as well stop her mouth at once.

You will see oddly enough that I have answered your question about dreams in a sort of way on page 96. [Cp. "Essays in Romance" page 329; Huxley's "Hume" page 96.]

You will get nothing but praise for your book, and I shall be vilipended for mine. Is that fact, or is it not, an evidence of a special Providence and Divine Government?

Pray remember me very kindly to Mrs. Skelton. I hope your interrupted visit will yet become a fact. We have a clean bill of health now.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Scottish University Commission, 31 Queen Street, Edinburgh, April 2, 1879.

My dear Skelton,

I shall be delighted to dine with you on Wednesday, and take part in any discussion either moral or immoral that may be started.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

March 15, 1879.

My dear Mrs. Tyndall,

Your hearty letter is as good as a bottle of the best sunshine. Yes, I will lunch with you on Friday with pleasure, and Jess proposes to attend on the occasion...Her husband is in Gloucester, and so doesn't count. The absurd creature declares she must go back to him on Saturday—stuff and sentiment. She has only been here six or seven weeks. There is nothing said in scripture about a wife cleaving to her husband!

With all our loves, ever yours very sincerely,

T.H. Huxley.

[The next is to his son, then at St. Andrews University, on winning a scholarship tenable at Oxford.]

South Kensington, April 21, 1879.

My dear Boy,

I was very glad to get your good news this morning, and I need not tell you whether M— was pleased or not.

But the light of nature doth not inform us of the value and duration of the "Guthrie"—and from a low and material point of view I should like to be informed on that subject. However, this is "mere matter of detail" as the Irishman said when he was asked HOW he had killed his landlord. The pleasure to us is that you have made good use of your opportunities, and finished this first stage of your journey so creditably.

I am about to write to the Master of Balliol for advice as to your future proceedings. In the meanwhile, go in for the enjoyment of your holiday with a light heart. You have earned it.

Ever your loving father,

T.H. Huxley.

[The following, to Mrs. Clifford, was called forth by a hitch in respect to the grant to her of a Civil List pension after the death of her husband:—]

4 Marlborough Place, July 19, 1879.

My dear Lucy,

I am just off to Gloucester to fetch M— back, and I shall have a long talk with that sage little woman over your letter.

In the meanwhile keep quiet and do nothing. I feel the force of what you say very strongly—so strongly, in fact, that I must morally ice myself and get my judgment clear and cool before I advise you what is to be done.

I am very sorry to hear you have been so ill. For the present dismiss the matter from your thoughts and give your mind to getting better. Leave it all to be turned over in the mind of that cold-blooded, worldly, cynical old fellow, who signs himself,

Your affectionate Pater.

[The last is to Mr. Edward Clodd, on receiving his book "Jesus of Nazareth."]

4 Marlborough Place, Abbey Road, N.W., December 21, 1879.

My dear Mr. Clodd,

I have been spending all this Sunday afternoon over the book you have been kind enough to send me, and being a swift reader, I have travelled honestly from cover to cover.

It is the book I have been longing to see; in spirit, matter and form it appears to me to be exactly what people like myself have been wanting. For though for the last quarter of a century I have done all that lay in my power to oppose and destroy the idolatrous accretions of Judaism and Christianity, I have never had the slightest sympathy with those who, as the Germans say, would "throw the child away along with the bath"—and when I was a member of the London School Board I fought for the retention of the Bible, to the great scandal of some of my Liberal friends—who can't make out to this day whether I was a hypocrite, or simply a fool on that occasion.

But my meaning was that the mass of the people should not be deprived of the one great literature which is open to them—not shut out from the perception of their relations with the whole past history of civilised mankind—not excluded from such a view of Judaism and Jesus of Nazareth as that which at last you have given us.

I cannot doubt that your work will have a great success not only in the grosser, but the better sense of the word.

I am yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The winter of 1879-80 was memorable for its prolonged spell of cold weather. One result of this may be traced in a New Year's letter from Huxley to his eldest daughter.] "I have had a capital holiday—mostly in bed—but I don't feel so grateful for it as I might do." [To be forced to avoid the many interruptions and distractions of his life in London, which claimed the greatest part of his time, he would regard as an unmixed blessing; as he once said feelingly to Professor Marsh,] "If I could only break my leg, what a lot of scientific work I could do!" [But he was less grateful for having entire inaction forced upon him.

However, he was soon about again, and wrote as follows in answer to a letter from Sir Thomas (afterwards Lord) Farrer, which called his attention, as an old Fishery Commissioner, to a recent report on the sea-fisheries.]

4 Marlborough Place, January 9, 1880.

My dear Farrer,

I shall be delighted to take a dive into the unfathomable depths of official folly; but your promised document has not reached me.

Your astonishment at the tenacity of life of fallacies, permit me to say, is shockingly unphysiological. They, like other low organisms, are independent of brains, and only wriggle the more, the more they are smitten on the place where the brains ought to be—I don't know B., but I am convinced that A. has nothing but a spinal cord, devoid of any cerebral development. Would Mr. Cross give him up for purposes of experiment? Lingen and you might perhaps be got to join in a memorial to that effect.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[A fresh chapter of research, the results of which he now began to give to the public, was the history of the Dog. On April 6 and 13 he lectured at the Royal Institution "On Dogs and the Problems connected with them"—their relation to other animals, and the problem of the origin of the domestic dog, and the dog-like animals in general. As so often before, these lectures were the outcome of the careful preparation of a course of instruction for his students. The dog had been selected as one of the types of mammalian structure upon which laboratory work was to be done. Huxley's own dissections had led him on to a complete survey of the genus, both wild and domestic. As he writes to Darwin on May 10:—]

I wish it were not such a long story that I could tell you all about the dogs. They will make out such a case for "Darwinismus" as never was. From the South American dogs at the bottom (C. vetulus, cancrivorus, etc.) to the wolves at the top, there is a regular gradual progression the range of variation of each "species" overlapping the ranges of those below and above. Moreover, as to the domestic dogs, I think I can prove that the small dogs are modified jackals, and the big dogs ditto wolves. I have been getting capital material from India, and working the whole affair out on the basis of measurements of skulls and teeth.

However, my paper for the Zoological Society is finished, and I hope soon to send you a copy of it...

[Unfortunately he never found time to complete his work for final publication in book form, and the rough, unfinished notes are all that remain of his work, beyond two monographs "On the Epipubis in the Dog and Fox" ("Proceedings of the Royal Society" 30 162-63), and "On the Cranial and Dental Characters of the Canidae" ("Proceedings of the Zoological Society" 1880 pages 238-288).

The following letters deal with the collection of specimens for examination:—]

4 Marlborough Place, January 17, 1880.

My dear Flower,

I happened to get hold of two foxes this week—a fine dog fox and his vixen wife; and among other things, I have been looking up Cowper's glands, the supposed absence of which in the dogs has always "gone agin' me." Moreover, I have found them (or their representatives) in the shape of two small sacs, which open by conspicuous apertures into the urethra immediately behind the bulb. If your Icticyon was a male, I commend this point to your notice.

ITEM.

If you have not already begun to macerate him, do look for the "marsupial" fibro-cartilages, which I have mentioned in my "Manual," but the existence of which blasphemers have denied. I found them again at once in both Mr. and Mrs. Vulpes. You spot them immediately by the pectineus which is attached to them.

The dog-fox's caecum is so different from the vixen's that Gray would have made distinct genera of them.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., May 2, 1880.

My dear Fayrer,

I am greatly obliged for the skulls, and I hope you will offer my best thanks to your son for the trouble he has taken in getting them.

The "fox" is especially interesting because it is not a fox, by any manner of means, but a big jackal with some interesting points of approximation towards the cuons.

I do not see any locality given along with the specimens. Can you supply it?

I have got together some very curious evidence of the wider range of variability of the Indian jackal, and the "fox" which your son has sent is the most extreme form in one direction I have met with.

I wish I could get some examples from the Bombay and Madras Presidencies and from Ceylon, as well as from Central India. Almost all I have seen yet are from Bengal.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Between the two lectures on the Dog, mentioned above, on April 9, Huxley delivered a Friday evening discourse, at the same place, "On the Coming of Age of the Origin of Species" ("Collected Essays" 2 227). Reviewing the history of the theory of evolution in the twenty-one years that had elapsed since the "Origin of Species" first saw the light in 1859, he did not merely dwell on the immense influence the "Origin" had exercised upon every field of biological inquiry.] "Mere insanities and inanities have before now swollen to portentous size in the course of twenty years." "History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies, and to end as superstitions." [There was actual danger lest a new generation should] "accept the main doctrines of the "Origin of Species" with as little reflection, and it may be with as little justification, as so many of our contemporaries, years ago, rejected them."

[So dire a consummation, he declared, must be prevented by unflinching criticism, the essence of the scientific spirit,] "for the scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors."

[What, then, were the facts which justified so great a change as had taken place, which had removed some of the most important qualifications under which he himself had accepted the theory? He proceeded to enumerate the] "crushing accumulation of evidence" [during this period, which had proved the imperfection of the geological record; had filled up enormous gaps, such as those between birds and reptiles, vertebrates and invertebrates, flowering and flowerless plants, or the lowest forms of animal and plant life. More: paleontology alone has effected so much—the fact that evolution has taken place is so irresistibly forced upon the mind by the study of the Tertiary mammalia brought to light since 1859, that] "if the doctrine of evolution had not existed, paleontologists must have invented it." [He further developed the subject by reading before the Zoological Society a paper "On the Application of the Laws of Evolution to the Arrangement of the Vertebrata, and more particularly of the Mammalia" ("Proceedings of the Zoological Society" 1880 pages 649-662). In reply to Darwin's letter thanking him for the "Coming of Age" ("Life and Letters" 3 24), he wrote on May 10:—]

My dear Darwin,

You are the cheeriest letter-writer I know, and always help a man to think the best of his doings.

I hope you do not imagine because I had nothing to say about "Natural Selection," that I am at all weak of faith on that article. On the contrary, I live in hope that as paleontologists work more and more in the manner of that "second Daniel come to judgment," that wise young man M. Filhal, we shall arrive at a crushing accumulation of evidence in that direction also. But the first thing seems to me to be to drive the fact of evolution into people's heads; when that is once safe, the rest will come easy.

I hear that ce cher X. is yelping about again; but in spite of your provocative messages (which Rachel retailed with great glee), I am not going to attack him nor anybody else.

[Another popular lecture on a zoological subject was that of July 1 on "Cuttlefish and Squids," the last of the "Davis" lectures given by him at the Zoological Gardens.

More important were two other essays delivered this year. The "Method of Zadig" ("Collected Essays" 4 1), an address at the Working Men's College, takes for its text Voltaire's story of the philosopher at the Oriental court, who, by taking note of trivial indications, obtains a perilous knowledge of things which his neighbours ascribe either to thievery or magic. This introduces a discourse on the identity of the methods of science and of the judgments of common life, a fact which, twenty-six years before, he had briefly stated in the words,] "Science is nothing but trained and organised common sense" [("Collected Essays" 3 45).

The other is "Science and Culture" ("Collected Essays" 3 134), which was delivered on October 1, as the opening address of the Josiah Mason College at Birmingham, and gave its name to a volume of essays published in the following year. Here was a great school founded by a successful manufacturer, which was designed to give an education at once practical and liberal, such as the experience of its founder approved, to young men who meant to embark upon practical life. A "mere" literary training—i.e. in the classical languages—was excluded, but not so the study of English literature and modern languages. The greatest stress was laid on training in the scientific theory and practice on which depend the future of the great manufactures of the north.

The question dealt with in this address is whether such an education can give the culture demanded of an educated man to-day. The answer is emphatically Yes. English literature is a field of culture second to none, and for solely literary purposes, a thorough knowledge of it, backed by some other modern language, will amply suffice. Combined with this, a knowledge of modern science, its principles and results, which have so profoundly modified society and have created modern civilisation, will give a "criticism of life," as Matthew Arnold defined "the end and aim of all literature," that is to say culture, unattainable by any form of education which neglects it. In short, although the "culture" of former periods might be purely literary, that of to-day must be based, to a great extent, upon natural science.

This autumn several letters passed between him and Darwin. The latter, contrary to his usual custom, wrote a letter to "Nature," in reply to an unfair attack which had been made upon evolution by Sir Wyville Thomson in his Introduction to "The Voyage of the Challenger" (see Darwin "Life and Letters" 3 242), and asked Huxley to look over the concluding sentences of the letter, and to decide whether they should go with the rest to the printer or not. "My request," he writes (November 5), "will not cost you much trouble—i.e. to read two pages—for I know that you can decide at once." Huxley struck them out, replying on the 14th,] "Your pinned-on paragraph was so good that, if I had written it myself, I should have been unable to refrain from sending it on to the printer. But it is much easier to be virtuous on other people's account; and though Thomson deserved it and more, I thought it would be better to refrain. If I say a savage thing, it is only 'Pretty Fanny's way'; but if you do, it is not likely to be forgotten."

[The rest of this correspondence has to do with a plan of Darwin's, generous as ever, to obtain a Civil List pension for the veteran naturalist, Wallace, whose magnificent work for science had brought him but little material return. He wrote to consult Huxley as to what steps had best be taken; the latter replied in the letter of November 14:—]

The papers in re Wallace have arrived, and I lose no time in assuring you that all my "might, amity, and authority," as Essex said when that sneak Bacon asked him for a favour, shall be exercised as you wish.

On December 11 he sends Darwin the draft of a memorial on the subject, and on the 28th suggests that the best way of moving the official world would be for Darwin himself to send the memorial, with a note of his own, to Mr. Gladstone, who was then Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury:—]

Mr. G. can do a thing gracefully when he is so minded, and unless I greatly mistake, he will be so minded if you write to him.

[The result was all that could be hoped. On January 7 Darwin writes:—"Hurrah! hurrah! read the enclosed. Was it not extraordinarily kind of Mr. Gladstone to write himself at the present time?...I have written to Wallace. He owes much to you. Had it not been for your advice and assistance, I should never have had courage to go on."

The rest of the letter to Darwin of December 28 is characteristic of his own view of life. As he wrote four years before (see above), he was no pessimist any more than he was a professed optimist. If the vast amount of inevitable suffering precluded the one view, the gratuitous pleasures, so to speak, of life preclude the other. Life properly lived is worth living, and would be even if a malevolent fate had decreed that one should suffer, say, the pangs of toothache two hours out of every twenty-four. So he writes:—]

We have had all the chicks (and the husbands of such as are therewith provided) round the Christmas table once more, and a pleasant sight they were, though I say it that shouldn't. Only the grand-daughter left out, the young woman not having reached the age when change and society are valuable.

I don't know what you think about anniversaries. I like them, being always minded to drink my cup of life to the bottom, and take my chance of the sweets and bitters.

[The following is to his Edinburgh friend Dr. Skelton, whose appreciation of his frequent companionship had found outspoken expression in the pages of "The Crookit Meg."]

4 Marlborough Place, November 14, 1880.

My dear Skelton,

When the "Crooked Meg" reached me I made up my mind that it would be a shame to send the empty acknowledgment which I give (or don't give) for most books that reach me.

But I am over head and ears in work—time utterly wasted in mere knowledge getting and giving—and for six weeks not an hour for real edification with a wholesome story.

But this Sunday afternoon being, by the blessing of God, as beastly a November day as you shall see, I have attended to my spiritual side and been visited by a blessing in the shape of some very pretty and unexpected words anent mysel'. [The passage referred to stands on page 72 of "The Crookit Meg," and describes the village naturalist and philosopher, Adam Meldrum, "who in his working hours cobbled old boats, and knew by heart the plays of Shakespeare and the 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica' of Sir Thomas Browne."

"For the rest it will be enough to add that this long, gaunt, bony cobbler of old boats was—was—(May I take the liberty, Mr. Professor?) a village Huxley of the year One. The colourless brilliancy of the great teacher's style, the easy facility with which the drop of light forms itself into a perfect sphere as it falls from his pen, belong indeed to a consummate master of the art of expression, which Adam of course was not; but the mental lucidity, justice, and balance, as well as the reserve of power, and the Shakespearean gaiety of touch, which made the old man one of the most delightful companions in the world, were essentially Huxleian."]

In truth, it is a right excellent story, though, distinctly in love with Eppie, I can only wonder how you had the heart to treat her so ill. A girl like that should have had two husbands—one "wisely ranged for show" and t'other de par amours.

Don't ruin me with Mrs. Skelton by repeating this, but please remember me very kindly to her.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The following letter to Tyndall was called forth by an incident in connection with the starting of the "Nineteenth Century." Huxley had promised to help the editor by looking over the proofs of a monthly article on contemporary science. But his advertised position as merely adviser in this to the editor was overlooked by some who resented what they supposed to be his assumption of the role of critic in general to his fellow-workers in science. At a meeting of the x Club, Tyndall made a jesting allusion to this; Huxley, however, thought the mere suggestion too grave for a joke, and replied with all seriousness to clear himself from the possibility of such misconception. And the same evening he wrote to Tyndall:—]

Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall, S.W., December 2, 1880.

My dear Tyndall,

I must tell you the ins and outs of this "Nineteenth Century" business. I was anxious to help Knowles when he started the journal, and at his earnest and pressing request I agreed to do what I have done. But being quite aware of the misinterpretation to which I should be liable if my name "sans phrase" were attached to the article, I insisted upon the exact words which you will find at the head of it; and which seemed, and still seem to me, to define my position as a mere adviser of the editor.

Moreover, by diligently excluding any expression of opinion on the part of the writers of the compilation, I thought that nobody could possibly suspect me of assuming the position of an authority even on the subjects with which I may be supposed to be acquainted, let alone those such as physics and chemistry, of which I know no more than any one of the public may know.

Therefore your remarks came upon me to-night with the sort of painful surprise which a man feels who is accused of the particular sin of which he flatters himself he is especially NOT GUILTY, and "roused my corruption" as the Scotch have it. But there is no need to say anything about that, for you were generous and good as I have always found you. Only I pray you, if hereafter it strikes you that any doing of mine should be altered or amended, tell me yourself and privately, and I promise you a very patient listener, and what is more a very thankful one.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[Tyndall replied with no less frankness, thanking him for the friendly promptitude of his letter, and explaining that he had meant to speak privately on the matter, but had been forestalled by the subject coming up when it did. And he wound up by declaring that it would be too absurd to admit the power of such an occasion "to put even a momentary strain upon the cable which has held us together for nine and twenty years."

At the very end of the year, George Eliot died. A proposal was immediately set on foot to inter her remains in Westminster Abbey, and various men of letters pressed the matter on the Dean, who was unwilling to stir without a very strong and general expression of opinion. To Mr. Herbert Spencer, who had urged him to join in memorialising the Dean, Huxley replied as follows:—]

4 Marlborough Place, December 27, 1880.

My dear Spencer,

Your telegram which reached me on Friday evening caused me great perplexity, inasmuch as I had just been talking with Morley, and agreeing with him that the proposal for a funeral in Westminster Abbey had a very questionable look to us, who desired nothing so much as that peace and honour should attend George Eliot to her grave.

It can hardly be doubted that the proposal will be bitterly opposed, possibly (as happened in Mill's case with less provocation), with the raking up of past histories, about which the opinion even of those who have least the desire or the right to be pharisaical is strongly divided, and which had better be forgotten.

With respect to putting pressure on the Dean of Westminster, I have to consider that he has some confidence in me, and before asking him to do something for which he is pretty sure to be violently assailed, I have to ask myself whether I really think it a right thing for a man in his position to do.

Now I cannot say I do. However much I may lament the circumstance, Westminster Abbey is a Christian Church and not a Pantheon, and the Dean thereof is officially a Christian priest, and we ask him to bestow exceptional Christian honours by this burial in the Abbey. George Eliot is known not only as a great writer, but as a person whose life and opinions were in notorious antagonism to Christian practice in regard to marriage, and Christian theory in regard to dogma. How am I to tell the Dean that I think he ought to read over the body of a person who did not repent of what the Church considers mortal sin, a service not one solitary proposition in which she would have accepted for truth while she was alive? How am I to urge him to do that which, if I were in his place, I should most emphatically refuse to do?

You tell me that Mrs. Cross wished for the funeral in the Abbey. While I desire to entertain the greatest respect for her wishes, I am very sorry to hear it. I do not understand the feeling which could create such a desire on any personal grounds, save those of affection, and the natural yearning to be near even in death to those whom we have loved. And on public grounds the wish is still less intelligible to me. One cannot eat one's cake and have it too. Those who elect to be free in thought and deed must not hanker after the rewards, if they are to be so called, which the world offers to those who put up with its fetters.

Thus, however I look at the proposal it seems to me to be a profound mistake, and I can have nothing to do with it.

I shall be deeply grieved if this resolution is ascribed to any other motives than those which I have set forth at more length than I intended.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

CHAPTER 2.12.

1881.

[The last ten years had found Huxley gradually involved more and more in official duties. Now, with the beginning of 1881, he became yet more deeply engrossed in practical and administrative work, more completely cut off from his favourite investigations, by his appointment to an Inspectorship of Fisheries, in succession to the late Frank Buckland. It is almost pathetic to note how he snatched at any spare moments for biological research. No sooner was a long afternoon's work at the Home Office done, than, as Professor Howes relates, he would often take a hansom to the laboratory at South Kensington, and spend a last half-hour at his dissections before going home.

The Inspectorship, which was worth 700 pounds a year, he held in addition to his post at South Kensington, the official description of which now underwent another change. In the first place, his official connection with the Survey appears to have ceased this year, the last report made by him being in 1881. His name, however, still appeared in connection with the post of Naturalist until his retirement in 1885, and it was understood that his services continued to be available if required. Next, in October of this year, the Royal School of Mines was incorporated with the newly established Normal School—or as it was called in 1890, Royal College of Science, and the title of Lecturer on General Natural History was suppressed, and Huxley became Professor of Biology and Dean of the College at a salary of 800 pounds, for it was arranged on his appointment to the Inspectorship, that he should not receive the salary attached to the post of Dean. Thus the Treasury saved 200 pounds a year.

As Professor of Biology, he was under the Lord President of the Council; as Inspector of Fisheries, under the Board of Trade; hence some time passed in arranging the claims of the two departments before the appointment was officially made known, as may be gathered from the following letters:—]

To Sir John Donnelly.

4 Marlborough Place, December 27, 1880.

My dear Donnelly,

I tried hard to have a bad cold last night, and though I blocked him with quinine, I think I may as well give myself the benefit of the Bank Holiday and keep the house to-day.

There is a chance of your getting early salmon yet. I wrote to decline the post on Friday, but on Saturday evening the Home Secretary sent a note asking to see me yesterday. As he had re-opened the question, of course I felt justified in stating all the pros and cons of the case as personal to myself and my rather complicated official position...He entered into the affair with a warmth and readiness which very agreeably surprised me, and he proposes making such arrangements as will not oblige me to have anything to do with the weirs or the actual inspection. Under these circumstances the post would be lovely—if I can hold it along with the other things. And of his own motion the Home Secretary is going to write to Lord Spencer about it to see if he cannot carry the whole thing through.

If this could be managed, I could get great things done in the matter of fish culture and fish diseases at South Kensington, if poor dear X.'s rattle trappery could be turned to proper account, without in any way interfering with the work of the School.

At any rate, my book stands not to lose, and may win—the innocence of the dove is not always divorced from the wisdom of the sarpent. [Sketch of the "Sarpent."]

To Lord Farrer.

4 Marlborough Place, January 18, 1881.

My dear Farrer,

I have waited a day or two before thanking you for your very kind letter, in the hope that I might be able to speak as one knowing where he is.

But as I am still, in an official sense, nowhere, I will not delay any longer.

I had never thought of the post, but the Home Secretary offered it to me in a very kind and considerate manner, and after some hesitation I accepted it. But some adjustment had to be made between my master, the Lord President, and the Treasury; and although everybody seems disposed to be very good to me, the business is not yet finally settled. Whence the newspapers get their information I don't know—but it is always wrong in these matters.

As you know, I have had a good apprenticeship to the work [He had already served on two Fishery Committees, 1862 and 1864-5.]—and I hope to be of some use; of the few innocent pleasures left to men past middle life—the jamming common-sense down the throats of fools is perhaps the keenest.

May we do some joint business in that way!

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

To his eldest son.

February 14, 1881.

I have entered upon my new duties as Fishery Inspector, but you are not to expect salmon to be much cheaper just yet.

My colleague and I have rooms at the Home Office, and I find there is more occupation than I expected, but no serious labour.

Every now and then I shall have to spend a few days in the country, holding inquiries, and as salmon rivers are all in picturesque parts of the country, I shall not object to that part of the business.

[The duties of the new office were partly scientific, partly administrative. On the one hand, the natural history and diseases of fish had to be investigated; on the other, regulations had to be carried out, weirs and salmon passes approved, disputes settled, reports written. I find, for instance, that apart from the work in London, visits of inspection in all parts of the country took up twenty-eight days between March and September this year.

Sir Spencer Walpole, who was his colleague for some years, has kindly given me an account of their work together.

Early in 1881, Sir William Harcourt appointed Professor Huxley one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Fisheries. The office had become vacant through the untimely death, in the preceding December, of the late Mr. Frank Buckland. Under an Act, passed twenty years before, the charge of the English Salmon Fisheries had been placed under the Home Office, and the Secretary of State had been authorised to appoint two Inspectors to aid him in administering the law. The functions of the Home Office and of the Inspectors were originally simple, but they had been enlarged by an Act passed in 1873, which conferred on local conservators elaborate powers of making bye-laws for the development and preservation of the Fisheries. These bye-laws required the approval of the Secretary of State, who was necessarily dependent on the advice of his Inspectors in either allowing or disallowing them.

In addition to the nominal duties of the Inspectors, they became—by virtue of their position—the advisers of the Government on all questions connected with the Sea Fisheries of Great Britain. These fisheries are nominally under the Board of Trade, but, as this Board at that time had no machinery at its disposal for the purpose, it naturally relied on the advice of the Home Office Inspectors in all questions of difficulty, on which their experience enabled them to speak with authority.

For duties such as these, which have been thus briefly described, Professor Huxley had obvious qualifications. On all subjects relating to the Natural History of Fish he spoke with decisive authority. But, in addition to his scientific attainments, from 1863 to 1865 he had been a member of the Commission which had conducted an elaborate investigation into the condition of the Fisheries of the United Kingdom, and had taken a large share in the preparation of a Report, which—notwithstanding recent changes in law and policy—remains the ablest and most exhaustive doctrine which has ever been laid before Parliament on the subject.

This protracted investigation had convinced Professor Huxley that the supply of fish in the deep sea was practically inexhaustible; and that, however much it might be necessary to enforce the police of the seas by protecting particular classes of sea fishermen from injury done to their instruments by the operations of other classes, the primary duty of the legislature was to develop sea fishing, and not to place restrictions on sea fishermen for any fears of an exhaustion of fish.

His scientific training, moreover, made him ridicule the modern notion that it was possible to stock the sea by artificial methods. He wrote to me, when the Fisheries Exhibition of 1883 was in contemplation,] "You may have seen that we have a new Fish Culture Society. C— talked gravely about our stocking the North Sea with cod! After that I suppose we shall take up herrings: and I mean to propose whales, which, as all the world knows, are terribly over fished!" [And after the exhibition was over he wrote to me again, with reference to a report which the Commission had asked me to draw up: ["I have just finished reading your report, which has given me a world of satisfaction...I am particularly glad that you have put in a word of warning to the fish culturists." [When I was asked to write the report on this Commission, I said that I would do so if Sir E. Birkbeck, its chairman, and Professor Huxley, both met me to discuss the points to be noticed. The meeting duly took place: and I opened it by asking what was the chief lesson to be drawn from the exhibition?] "Well," [said Professor Huxley,] "the chief lesson to be drawn from the exhibition is that London is in want of some open air amusement on summer evenings."