It was pleasant enough to have a glimpse of the world, the flesh (on the walls, nude!), and the devil (there were several Bishops), but oh, dear! how done I was yesterday.

However, we are off to Eastbourne to-day, and I hope to wash three weeks' London out of me before long. I think we shall go to Maloja again early in June.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

Capital portrait in the New Gallery, where I looked in for a quarter of an hour on Saturday—only you never were quite so fat in the cheeks, and I don't believe you have got such a splendid fur-coat!

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, May 22, 1889.

...As to the Assistant Secretaryship of the British Association, I have turned it over a great deal in my mind since your letter reached me, and I really cannot convince myself that you would suit it or it would suit you. I have not heard who are candidates or anything about it, and I am not going to take any part in the election. But looking at the thing solely from the point of view of your interests, I should strongly advise you against taking it, even if it were offered.

My pet aphorism "suffer fools gladly" should be the guide of the Assistant Secretary, who, during the fortnight of his activity, has more little vanities and rivalries to smooth over and conciliate than other people meet with in a lifetime. Now you do NOT "suffer fools gladly" on the contrary, you "gladly make fools suffer." I do not say you are wrong—No tu quoque [Cf. above. But for due cause he could suffer them "with a difference"; of a certain caller he writes: "What an effusive bore he is! But I believe he was very kind to poor Clifford, and restrained my unregenerate impatience of that kind of creature."]—but that is where the danger of the explosion lies—not in regard to the larger business of the Association.

The risk is great and the 300 pounds a year is not worth it. Foster knows all about the place; ask him if I am not right.

Many thanks for the suggestion about Spirula. But the matter is in a state in which no one can be of any use but myself. At present I am at the end of my tether and I mean to be off to the Engadine a fortnight hence—most likely not to return before October.

Not even the sweet voice of — will lure me from my retirement. The Academy dinner knocked me up for three days, though I drank no wine, ate very little, and vanished after the Prince of Wales' speech. The truth is I have very little margin of strength to go upon even now, though I am marvellously better than I was.

I am very glad that you see the importance of doing battle with the clericals. I am astounded at the narrowness of view of many of our colleagues on this point. They shut their eyes to the obstacles which clericalism raises in every direction against scientific ways of thinking, which are even more important than scientific discoveries.

I desire that the next generation may be less fettered by the gross and stupid superstitions of orthodoxy than mine has been. And I shall be well satisfied if I can succeed to however small an extent in bringing about that result.

I am, yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, May 25, 1889.

My dear Lankester,

I cannot attend the Council meeting on the 29th. I have a meeting of the Trustees of the British Museum to-day, and to be examined by a Committee on Monday, and as the sudden heat half kills me I shall be fit for nothing but to slink off to Eastbourne again.

However, I do hope the Council will be very careful what they say or do about the immature fish question. The thing has been discussed over and over again ad nauseam, and I doubt if there is anything to be added to the evidence in the blue-books.

The idee fixe of the British public, fishermen, M.P.'s and ignorant persons generally is that all small fish, if you do not catch them, grow up into big fish. They cannot be got to understand that the wholesale destruction of the immature is the necessary part of the general order of things, from codfish to men.

You seem to have some very interesting things to talk about at the Royal Institution.

Do you see any chance of educating the white corpuscles of the human race to destroy the theological bacteria which are bred in parsons?

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, May 19, 1889.

My dear Donnelly,

The Vice-President's letter has brought home to me one thing very clearly, and that is, that I had no business to sign the Report. Of course he has a right to hold me responsible for a document to which my name is attached, and I should look more like a fool than I ever wish to do, if I had to tell him that I had taken the thing entirely on trust. I have always objected to the sleeping partnership in the Examination; and unless it can be made quite clear that I am nothing but a "consulting doctor," I really must get out of it entirely.

Of course I cannot say whether the Report is justified by the facts or not, when I do not know anything about them. But from my experience of what the state of things used to be, I should say that it is, in all probability, fair.

The faults mentioned are exactly those which always have made their appearance, and I expect always will do so, and I do not see why the attention of the teachers should not as constantly be directed to them. You talk of Eton. Well, the reports of the Examiners to the governing body, year after year, had the same unpleasing monotony, and I do not believe that there is any educational body, from the Universities downwards, which would come out much better, if the Examiners' reports were published and if they did their duty.

I am unable to see my way (and I suppose you are) to any better method of State encouragement of science teaching than payment by results. The great and manifest evil of that system, however, is the steady pressure which it exerts in the development of every description of sham teaching. And the only check upon this kind of swindling the public seems to me to lie in the hands of the Examiners. I told Mr. Forster so, ages ago, when he talked to me about the gradual increase of the expenditure, and I have been confirmed in my opinion by all subsequent experience. What the people who read the reports may say, I should not care one twopenny d— if I had to administer the thing.

Nine out of ten of them are incompetent to form any opinion on an educational subject; and as a mere matter of policy, I should, in dealing with them, be only too glad to be able to make it clear that some of the defects and shortcomings inherent in this (as in all systems) had been disguised, and that even the most fractious of Examiners had said their say without let or hindrance.

It is the nature of the system which seems to me to demand as a corrective incessant and severe watchfulness on the part of the Examiners, and I see no harm if they a little overdo the thing in this direction, for every sham they let through is an encouragement to other shams and pot-teaching in general.

And if the "great heart" of the people and its thick head can't be got to appreciate honesty, why the sooner we shut up the better. Ireland may be for the Irish, but science teaching is not for the sake of science teachers.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

CHAPTER 3.6.

1889-90.

From the middle of June to the middle of September, Huxley was in Switzerland, first at Monte Generoso, then, when the weather became more settled, at the Maloja. Here, as his letters show, he "rejuvenated" to such an extent that Sir Henry Thompson, who was at the Maloja, scoffed at the idea of his ever having had dilated heart.]

Monte Generoso, Tessin, Suisse, June 25, 1889.

My dear Hooker,

I am quite agreed with the proposed arrangements for the x, and hope I shall show better in the register of attendance next session.

When I am striding about the hills here I really feel as if my invalidism were a mere piece of malingering. When I am well I can walk up hill and down dale as well as I did twenty years ago. But my margin is abominably narrow, and I am at the mercy of "liver and lights." Sitting up for long and dining are questions of margin.

I do not know if you have been here. We are close on 4000 feet up and look straight over the great plain of North Italy on the one side and to a great hemicycle of mountains, Monte Rosa among them, on the other. I do not know anything more beautiful in its way. But the whole time we have been here the weather has been extraordinary. On the average, about two thunderstorms per diem. I am sure that a good meteorologist might study the place with advantage. The barometer has not varied three-twentieths of an inch the whole time, notwithstanding the storms.

I hear the weather has been bad all over Switzerland, but it is not high and dry enough for me here, and we shall be off to the Maloja on Saturday next, and shall stay there till we return somewhere in September. Collier and Ethel will join us there in August. He is none the worse for his scarlatina.

"Aged Botanist?" marry come up! [Sir J. Hooker jestingly congratulated him on taking up botany in his old age.] I should like to know of a younger spark. The first time I heard myself called "the old gentleman" was years ago when we were in South Devon. A half-drunken Devonian had made himself very offensive, in the compartment in which my wife and I were travelling, and got some "simple Saxon" from me, accompanied, I doubt not, by an awful scowl "Ain't the old gentleman in a rage," says he.

I am very glad to hear of Reggie's success, and my wife joins with me in congratulations. It is a comfort to see one's shoots planted out and taking root, though the idea that one's cares and anxieties about them are diminished, we find to be an illusion.

I inclose cheque for my contributions due and to come. [For the x Club.] If I go to Davy's Locker before October, the latter may go for consolation champagne!

Ever yours affectionately,

T.H. Huxley.

[He writes from the Maloja on August 16 to Sir M. Foster, who had been sitting on the Vaccination Commission:—]

I wonder how you are prospering, whether you have vaccination or anti-vaccination on the brain; or whether the gods have prospered you so far as to send you on a holiday. We have been here since the beginning of July. Monte Generoso proved lovely—but electrical. We had on the average three thunderstorms every two days. Bellagio was as hot as the tropics, and we stayed only a day, and came on here—where, whatever else may happen, it is never too hot. The weather has been good and I have profited immensely, and at present I do not know whether I have a heart or not. But I have to look very sharp after my liver. H. Thompson, who has been here with his son Herbert (clever fellow, by the way), treats the notion that I ever had a dilated heart with scorn! Oh these doctors! they are worse than theologians.

[And again on August 31:—]

I walked eighteen miles three or four days ago, and I think nothing of one or two thousand feet up! I hope this state of things will last at the sea-level.

I am always glad to hear of and from you, but I have not been idle long enough to forget what being busy means, so don't let your conscience worry you about answering my letters.

...X. is, I am afraid, more or less of an ass. The opposition he and his friends have been making to the Technical Bill is quite unintelligible to me. Y. may be, and I rather think is, a knave, but he is no fool; and if I mistake not he is minded to kick the ultra-radical stool down now that he has mounted by it. Make friends of that Mammon of unrighteousness and swamp the sentimentalists.

...I despise your insinuations. All my friends here have been theological—Bishop, Chief Rabbi, and Catholic Professor. None of your Maybrick discussors.

On June 25 he wrote to Professor Ray Lankester, enclosing a letter to be read at a meeting called by the Lord Mayor, on July 1, to hear statements from men of science with regard to the recent increase of rabies in this country, and the efficiency of the treatment discovered by M. Pasteur for the prevention of hydrophobia.

[I quote the latter from the report in "Nature" for July 4:—]

Monte Generoso, Tessin, Suisse, June 25, 1889.

My dear Lankester,

I enclose herewith a letter for the Lord Mayor and a cheque for 5 pounds as my subscription. I wish I could make the letter shorter, but it is pretty much "pemmican" already. However, it does not much matter being read if it only gets into print.

It is uncommonly good of the Lord Mayor to stand up for Science, in the teeth of the row the anti-vivisection pack—dogs and doggesses—are making.

May his shadow never be less.

We shall be off to the Maloja at the end of this week, if the weather mends. Thunderstorms here every day, and sometimes two or three a day for the last ten days.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Monte Generoso, Switzerland, June 25, 1889.

My Lord Mayor,

I greatly regret my inability to be present at the meeting which is to be held, under your Lordship's auspices, in reference to M. Pasteur and his Institute. The unremitting labours of that eminent Frenchman during the last half-century have yielded rich harvests of new truths, and are models of exact and refined research. As such they deserve, and have received, all the honours which those who are the best judges of their purely scientific merits are able to bestow. But it so happens that these subtle and patient searchings out of the ways of the infinitely little—of the swarming life where the creature that measures one-thousandth part of an inch is a giant—have also yielded results of supreme practical importance. The path of M. Pasteur's investigations is strewed with gifts of vast monetary value to the silk trades, the brewer, and the wine merchant. And this being so, it might well be a proper and graceful act on the part of the representatives of trade and commerce in its greatest centre to make some public recognition of M. Pasteur's services, even if there were nothing further to be said about them. But there is much more to be said. M. Pasteur's direct and indirect contributions to our knowledge of the causes of diseased states, and of the means of preventing their recurrence, are not measurable by money values, but by those of healthy life and diminished suffering to men. Medicine, surgery, and hygiene have all been powerfully affected by M. Pasteur's work, which has culminated in his method of treating hydrophobia. I cannot conceive that any competently instructed person can consider M. Pasteur's labours in this direction without arriving at the conclusion that, if any man has earned the praise and honour of his fellows, he has. I find it no less difficult to imagine that our wealthy country should be other than ashamed to continue to allow its citizens to profit by the treatment freely given at the Institute without contributing to its support. Opposition to the proposals which your Lordship sanctions would be equally inconceivable if it arose out of nothing but the facts of the case thus presented. But the opposition which, as I see from the English papers, is threatened has really for the most part nothing to do either with M. Pasteur's merits or with the efficacy of his method of treating hydrophobia. It proceeds partly from the fanatics of laissez faire, who think it better to rot and die than to be kept whole and lively by State interference, partly from the blind opponents of properly conducted physiological experimentation, who prefer that men should suffer than rabbits or dogs, and partly from those who for other but not less powerful motives hate everything which contributes to prove the value of strictly scientific methods of enquiry in all those questions which affect the welfare of society. I sincerely trust that the good sense of the meeting over which your Lordship will preside will preserve it from being influenced by those unworthy antagonisms, and that the just and benevolent enterprise you have undertaken may have a happy issue.

I am, my Lord Mayor, your obedient servant,

T.H. Huxley.

Hotel Kursaal, Maloja, Haute Engadine, July 8, 1889.

My dear Lankester,

Many thanks for your letter. I was rather anxious as to the result of the meeting, knowing the malice and subtlety of the Philistines, but as it turned out they were effectually snubbed. I was glad to see your allusion to Coleridge's impertinences. It will teach him to think twice before he abuses his position again. I do not understand Stead's position in the Pall Mall. He snarls but does not bite.

I am glad that the audience (I judge from the "Times" report) seemed to take the points of my letter, and live in hope that when I see last week's "Spectator" I shall find Hutton frantic.

This morning a letter marked "Immediate" reached me from Bourne, date July 3. I am afraid he does not read the papers or he would have known it was of no use to appeal to me in an emergency. I am writing to him.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[On his return to England, however, a fortnight of London, interrupted though it was by a brief visit to Mr. and Mrs. Humphry Ward at the delightful old house of Great Hampden, was as much as he could stand. "I begin to discover," he writes to Sir M. Foster, "I have a heart again, a circumstance of which I had no reminder at the Maloja." So he retreated at once to Eastbourne, which had done him so much good before.]

4 Marlborough Place, September 24, 1889.

My dear Hooker,

How's a' wi' ye'? We came back from the Engadine early in the month, and are off to Eastbourne to-morrow. I rejuvenate in Switzerland and senescate (if there is no such verb, there ought to be) in London, and the sooner I am out of it the better.

When are you going to have an x? I cannot make out what has become of Spencer, except that he is somewhere in Scotland.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

We shall be at our old quarters—3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne—from to-morrow onwards.

[The next letter shows once more the value he set upon botanical evidence in the question of the influence of conditions in the process of evolution.]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, September 29, 1889.

My dear Hooker,

I hope to be with you at the Athenaeum on Thursday. It does one good to hear of your being in such good working order. My knowledge of orchids is infinitesimally small, but there were some eight or nine species plentiful in the Engadine, and I learned enough to appreciate the difficulties. Why do not some of these people who talk about the direct influence of conditions try to explain the structure of orchids on that tack? Orchids at any rate can't try to improve themselves in taking shots at insects' heads with pollen bags—as Lamarck's Giraffes tried to stretch their necks!

Balfour's ballon d'essai [I.e. touching a proposed Roman Catholic University for Ireland.] (I do not believe it could have been anything more) is the only big blunder he has made, and it passes my comprehension why he should have made it. But he seems to have dropped it again like the proverbial hot potato. If he had not, he would have hopelessly destroyed the Unionist party.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[At the end of the year he thanks Lord Tennyson for his gift of "Demeter":—]

December 26, 1889.

My dear Tennyson,

Accept my best thanks for your very kind present of "Demeter." I have not had a Christmas Box I valued so much for many a long year. I envy your vigour, and am ashamed of myself beside you for being turned out to grass. I kick up my heels now and then, and have a gallop round the paddock, but it does not come to much.

With best wishes to you, and, if Lady Tennyson has not forgotten me altogether, to her also.

Believe me, yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[A discussion in the "Times" this autumn, in which he joined, was of unexpected moment to him, inasmuch as it was the starting-point for no fewer than four essays in political philosophy, which appeared the following year in the "Nineteenth Century".

The correspondence referred to arose out of the heckling of Mr. John Morley by one of his constituents at Newcastle in November 1889. The heckler questioned him concerning private property in land, quoting some early dicta from the "Social Statics" of Mr. Herbert Spencer, which denied the justice of such ownership. Comments and explanations ensued in the "Times"; Mr. Spencer declared that he had since partly altered that view, showing that contract has in part superseded force as the ground of ownership; and that in any case it referred to the idea of absolute ethics, and not to relative or practical politics.

Huxley entered first into the correspondence to point out present and perilous applications of the absolute in contemporary politics. Touching on a State guarantee of the title to land, he asks if there is any moral right for confiscation:—In Ireland, he says, confiscation is justified by the appeal to wrongs inflicted a century ago; in England the theorems of "absolute political ethics" are in danger of being employed to make this generation of land-owners responsible for the misdeeds of William the Conqueror and his followers. ("Times" November 12.)

His remaining share in the discussion consisted of a brief passage of arms with Mr. Spencer on the main question [November 18.], and a reply to another correspondent [November 21.], which brings forward an argument enlarged upon in one of the essays, namely that if the land belongs to all men equally, why should one nation claim one portion rather than another? For several ownership is just as much an infringement of the world's ownership as is personal ownership. Moreover, history shows that land was originally held in several ownership, and that not of the nation, but of the village community.

These signs of renewed vigour induced Mr. Knowles to write him a "begging letter," proposing an article for the "Nineteenth Century" either in commendation of Bishop Magee's recent utterances—it would be fine for eulogy to come from such a quarter after the recent encounter—or on the general subject of which his "Times" letters dealt with a part.

Huxley's choice was for the latter. Writing on November 21, he says:—]

Now as to the article. I have only hesitated because I want to get out a new volume of essays, and I am writing an introduction which gives me an immensity of trouble. I had made up my mind to get it done by Christmas, and if I write for you it won't be. However, if you don't mind leaving it open till the end of this month, I will see what can he done in the way of a screed about, say, "The Absolute in Practical Life." The Bishop would come in excellently; he deserves all praises, and my only hesitation about singing them is that the conjunction between the "Infidel" and the Churchman is just what the blatant platform Dissenters who had been at him would like. I don't want to serve the Bishop, for whom I have a great liking and respect, as the bear served his sleeping master, when he smashed his nose in driving an unfortunate fly away!

By the way, has the Bishop published his speech or sermon? I have only seen a newspaper report.

[Soon after this, he proposed to come to town and talk over the article with Mr. Knowles. The latter sent him a telegram—reply paid—asking him to fix a day. The answer named a day of the week and a day of the month which did not agree; whereupon Mr. Knowles wrote by the safer medium of the post for an explanation, thinking that the post-office clerks must have bungled the message, and received the following reply:—]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, November 26, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

May jackasses sit upon the graves of all telegraph clerks! But the boys are worse, and I shall have to write to the Postmaster-General about the little wretch who brought your telegram the other day, when my mind was deeply absorbed in the concoction of an article for THE Review of our age.

The creature read my answer, for he made me pay three halfpence extra (I believe he spent it on toffy), and yet was so stupid as not to see that meaning to fix next Monday or Tuesday, I opened my diary to give the dates in order that there should be no mistake, and found Monday 28 and Tuesday 29.

And I suppose the little beast would say he did not know I opened it in October instead of November!

I hate such mean ways. Hang all telegraph boys!

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Monday December 2, if you have nothing against it, and lunch if Mrs. Knowles will give me some.

[The article was finished by the middle of December and duly sent to the editor, under the title of "Rousseau and Rousseauism." But fearing that this title would surely attract attention among the working-men for whom it was specially designed, Mr. Knowles suggested instead the "Natural Inequality of Men," under which name it actually appeared in January. So, too, in the case of a companion article in March, the editorial pen was responsible for the change from the arid possibilities of "Capital and Labour" to the more attractive title of "Capital the Mother of Labour."

With regard to this article and a further project of extending his discussion of the subject, he writes:—]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, December 14, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

I am very glad you think the article will go. It is longer than I intended, but I cannot accuse myself of having wasted words, and I have left out several things that might have been said, but which can come in by and by.

As to title, do as you like, but that you propose does not seem to me quite to hit the mark. "Political Humbug: Liberty and Equality," struck me as adequate, but my wife declares it is improper. "Political Fictions" might be supposed to refer to Dizzie's novels! How about "The Politics of the Imagination: Liberty and Inequality"?

I should like to have some general title that would do for the "letters" which I see I shall have to write. I think I will make six of them after the fashion of my "Working Men's Lectures," as thus: (1) Liberty and Equality; (2) Rights of Man; (3) Property; (4) Malthus; (5) Government, the province of the State; (6) Law-making and Law-breaking.

I understand you will let me republish them, as soon as the last is out, in a cheap form. I am not sure I will not put them in the form of "Lectures" rather than "Letters."

Did you ever read Henry George's book "Progress and Poverty"? It is more damneder nonsense than poor Rousseau's blether. And to think of the popularity of the book! But I ought to be grateful, as I can cut and come again at this wonderful dish.

The mischief of it is I do not see how I am to finish the introduction to my Essays, unless I put off sending you a second dose until March.

I will send back the revise as quickly as possible.

Ever yours very truly,

T.H. Huxley.

You do not tell me that there is anything to which Spencer can object, so I suppose there is nothing.

[And in an undated letter to Sir J. Hooker, he says:—]

I am glad you think well of the "Human Inequality" paper. My wife has persuaded me to follow it up with a view to making a sort of "Primer of Politics" for the masses—by and by. "There's no telling what you may come to, my boy," said the Bishop who reproved his son for staring at John Kemble, and I may be a pamphleteer yet! But really it is time that somebody should treat the people to common sense.

[However, immediately after the appearance of this first article on Human Inequality, he changed his mind about the Letters to Working Men, and resolved to continue what he had to say in the form of essays in the "Nineteenth Century".

He then judged it not unprofitable to call public attention to the fallacies which first found their way into practical politics through the disciples of Rousseau; one of those speculators of whom he remarks ("Collected Essays" 1 312) that] "busied with deduction from their ideal 'ought to be,' they overlooked the 'what has been,' the 'what is,' and the 'what can be.'" "Many a long year ago," [he says in Natural Rights and Political Rights (1 336)], "I fondly imagined that Hume and Kant and Hamilton having slain the 'Absolute,' the thing must, in decency, decease. Yet, at the present time, the same hypostatised negation, sometimes thinly disguised under a new name, goes about in broad daylight, in company with the dogmas of absolute ethics, political and other, and seems to be as lively as ever." This was to his mind one of those instances of wrong thinking which lead to wrong acting—the postulating a general principle based upon insufficient data, and the deduction from it of many and far-reaching practical consequences. This he had always strongly opposed. His essay of 1871, "Administrative Nihilism," was directed against a priori individualism; and now he proceeded to restate the arguments against a priori political reasoning in general, which seemed to have been forgotten or overlooked, especially by the advocates of compulsory socialism. And here it is possible to show in some detail the care he took, as was his way, to refresh his knowledge and bring it up to date, before writing on any special point. It is interesting to see how thoroughly he went to work, even in a subject with which he was already fairly acquainted. As in the controversy of 1889 I find a list of near a score of books consulted, so here one note-book contains an analysis of the origin and early course of the French Revolution, especially in relation to the speculations of the theorists; the declaration of the rights of man in 1789 is followed by parallels from Mably's "Droits et Devoirs du Citoyen" and "De la Legislation", and by a full transcript of the 1793 Declaration, with notes on Robespierre's speech at the Convention a fortnight later. There are copious notes from Dunoyer, who is quoted in the article, while the references to Rocquain's "Esprit Revolutionnaire" led to an English translation of the work being undertaken, to which he contributed a short preface in 1891.

It was the same with other studies. He loved to visualise his object clearly. The framework of what he wished to say would always be drawn out first. In any historical matter he always worked with a map. In natural history he well knew the importance of studying distribution and its bearing upon other problems; in civil history he would draw maps to illustrate either the conditions of a period or the spread of a civilising nation. For instance, among sketches of the sort which remain, I have one of the Hellenic world, marked off in 25-mile circles from Delos as centre; and a similar one for the Phoenician world, starting from Tyre. Sketch maps of Palestine and Mesopotamia, with notes from the best authorities on the geography of the two countries, belong in all probability to the articles on "The Flood" and "Hasisadra's Adventure." To realise clearly the size, position, and relation of the parts to the whole, was the mechanical instinct of the engineer which was so strong in him.

The four articles which followed in quick succession on "The Natural Inequality of Man," "Natural and Political Rights," "Capital the Mother of Labour," and "Government," appeared in the January, February, March, and May numbers of the "Nineteenth Century", and, as was said above, are directed against a priori reasoning in social philosophy. The first, which appeared simultaneously with Mr. Herbert Spencer's article on "Justice," in the "Nineteenth Century", assails, on the ground of fact and history, the dictum that men are born free and equal, and have a natural right to freedom and equality, so that property and political rights are a matter of contract. History denies that they thus originated; and, in fact, "proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother." Yet, in justice to Rousseau and the influence he wielded, he adds:—]

It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.

Thus if, in their plain and obvious sense, the doctrines which Rousseau advanced are so easily upset, it is probable that he had in his mind something which is different from that sense.

[When they sought speculative grounds to justify the empirical truth:—]

that it is desirable in the interests of society, that all men should be as free as possible, consistently with those interests, and that they should all be equally bound by the ethical and legal obligations which are essential to social existence, "the philosophers," as is the fashion of speculators, scorned to remain on the safe if humble ground of experience, and preferred to prophesy from the sublime cloudland of the a priori.

[The second of these articles is an examination of Henry George's doctrines as set forth in "Progress and Poverty". His relation to the physiocrats is shown in a preliminary analysis of the term "natural rights which have no wrongs," and are antecedent to morality, from which analysis are drawn the results of confounding natural with moral rights.

Here again is the note of justice to an argument in an unsound shape (page 369): "There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued." And a trifling abatement of the universal and exclusive form of Henry George's principle may make it true, while even unamended it may lead to opposite conclusions—to the justification of several ownership in land as well as in any other form of property.

The third essay of the series, "Capital the Mother of Labour" ("Collected Essays" 9 147), was an application of biological methods to social problems, designed to show that the extreme claims of labour as against capital are ill-founded.

In the last article, "Government," he traces the two extreme developments of absolute ethics, as shown in anarchy and regimentation, or unrestrained individualism and compulsory socialism. The key to the position, of course, lies in the examination of the premisses upon which these superstructures are raised, and history shows that:—]

So far from the preservation of liberty and property and the securing of equal rights being the chief and most conspicuous object aimed at by the archaic politics of which we know anything, it would be a good deal nearer the truth to say that they were federated absolute monarchies, the chief purpose of which was the maintenance of an established church for the worship of the family ancestors.

[These articles stirred up critics of every sort and kind; socialists who denounced him as an individualist, land nationalisers who had not realised the difference between communal and national ownership, or men who denounced him as an arm-chair cynic, careless of the poor and ignorant of the meaning of labour. Mr. Spencer considered the chief attack to be directed against his position; the regimental socialists as against theirs, and:—]

as an attempt to justify those who, content with the present, are opposed to all endeavours to bring about any fundamental change in our social arrangements (ib. page 423).

So far from this, he continues:—]

Those who have had the patience to follow me to the end will, I trust, have become aware that my aim has been altogether different. Even the best of modern civilisations appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express my opinion that, if there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over Nature which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of Want, with its concomitant physical and moral degradation, among the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable consummation. What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction?

Assuredly, if I believed that any of the schemes hitherto proposed for bringing about social amelioration were likely to attain their end, I should think what remains to me of life well spent in furthering it. But my interest in these questions did not begin the day before yesterday; and, whether right or wrong, it is no hasty conclusion of mine that we have small chance of doing rightly in this matter (or indeed in any other) unless we think rightly. Further, that we shall never think rightly in politics until we have cleared our minds of delusions, and more especially of the philosophical delusions which, as I have endeavoured to show, have infested political thought for centuries. My main purpose has been to contribute my mite towards this essential preliminary operation. Ground must be cleared and levelled before a building can be properly commenced; the labour of the navvy is as necessary as that of the architect, however much less honoured; and it has been my humble endeavour to grub up those old stumps of the a priori which stand in the way of the very foundations of a sane political philosophy.

To those who think that questions of the kind I have been discussing have merely an academic interest, let me suggest once more that a century ago Robespierre and St. Just proved that the way of answering them may have extremely practical consequences.

[Without pretending to offer any offhand solution for so vast a problem, he suggests two points in conclusion. One, that in considering the matter we should proceed from the known to the unknown, and take warning from the results of either extreme in self-government or the government of a family; the other, that the central point is] "the fact that the natural order of things—the order, that is to say, as unmodified by human effort—does not tend to bring about what we understand as welfare." [The population question has first to be faced.

The following letters cover the period up to the trip to the Canaries, already alluded to:—]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, January 6, 1890.

My dear Foster,

That capital photograph reached me just as we were going up to town (invited for the holidays by our parents), and I put it in my bag to remind me to write to you. Need I say that I brought it back again without having had the grace to send a line of thanks? By way of making my peace, I have told the Fine Art Society to send you a copy of the engraving of my sweet self. I have not had it framed—firstly, because it is a hideous nuisance to be obliged to hang a frame one may not like; and secondly, because by possibility you might like some other portrait better, in which case, if you will tell me, I will send that other. I should like you to have something by way of reminder of T.H.H.

When Harry [His younger son.] has done his work at Bart's at the end of March I am going to give him a run before he settles down to practice. Probably we shall go to the Canaries. I hear that the man who knows most about them is Dr. Guillemard, a Cambridge man. "Kennst ihn du wohl?" Perhaps he might give me a wrinkle.

With our united best wishes to you all.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Eastbourne, January 13, 1890.

My dear Hooker,

We missed you on the 2nd, though you were quite right not to come in that beastly weather.

My boy Harry has had a very sharp attack of influenza at Bartholomew's, and came down to us to convalesce a week ago, very much pulled down. I hope you will keep clear of it.

Harry's work at the hospital is over at the end of March, and before the influenza business I was going to give him a run for a month or six weeks before he settled down to practice. We shall go to the Canaries as soon in April as possible. Are you minded to take a look at Teneriffe? Only 4 1/2 days' sea—good ships.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.H. Huxley.

[However, Sir J. Hooker was unable to join "the excursion to the Isles of the Blest."]

Eastbourne, January 27, 1890.

My dear Foster,

People have been at me to publish my notice of Darwin in the "Proceedings of the Royal Society" in a separate form.

If you have no objection, will you apply to the Council for me for the requisite permission?

But if you DO see any objection, I would rather not make the request.

I think if I republish it I will add the "Times" article of 1859 to it. Omega and Alpha!

Hope you are flourishing. We shall be up for a few days next week.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Eastbourne, January 31, 1890.

My dear Foster,

Mind you let me know what points you think want expanding in the Darwin obituary when we meet.

We go to town on Tuesday for a few days, and I will meet you anywhere or anywhen you like. Could you come and dine with us at 4 P.M. on Thursday? If so, please let me know at once, that E. may kill the fatted calf.

Harry has been and gone and done it. We heard he had gone to Yorkshire, and were anxious, thinking that at the very least a relapse after his influenza (which he had sharply) had occurred.

But the complaint was one with more serious sequelae still. Don't know the young lady, but the youth has a wise head on his shoulders, and though that did not prevent Solomon from overdoing the business, I have every faith in his choice.

Dr. Guillemard has kindly sent me a lot of valuable information; but as I suggested to my boy yesterday, he may find Yorkshire air more wholesome than that of the Canaries, and it is ten to one we don't go after all.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[To his younger son:—]

Eastbourne, January 30, 1890.

You dear old humbug of a Boy,

Here we have been mourning over the relapse of influenza, which alone, as we said, could have torn you from your duties, and all the while it was nothing but an attack of palpitation such as young people are liable to and seem none the worse for after all. We are as happy that you are happy as you can be yourself, though from your letter that seems saying a great deal. I am prepared to be the young lady's slave; pray tell her that I am a model father-in-law, with my love. (By the way, you might mention her name; it is a miserable detail, I know, but would be interesting.) Please add that she is humbly solicited to grant leave of absence for the Teneriffe trip, unless she thinks Northampton air more invigorating.

Ever your loving dad,

T.H. Huxley.

On April 3, accompanied by his son, he left London on board the "Aorangi". At Plymouth he had time to meet his friend W.F. Collier, and to visit the Zoological Station, while], "to my great satisfaction," [he writes], "I received a revise (i.e. of 'Capital the Mother of Labour') for the May 'Nineteenth Century'—from Knowles. They must have looked sharp at the printing-office."

[It did not take him long to recover his sea-legs, and he thoroughly enjoyed even the rougher days when the rolling of the ship was too much for other people. The day before reaching Teneriffe he writes:—]

I have not felt so well for a long time. I do nothing, have a prodigious appetite, and Harry declares I am getting fat in the face.

[Santa Cruz was reached early on April 10, and in the afternoon he proceeded to Laguna, which he made his headquarters for a week. That day he walked 10 miles, the next 15, and the third 20 in the course of the day. He notes finding the characteristic Euphorbia and Heaths of the Canaries; notes, too, one or two visitations of dyspepsia from indigestible food. He writes from Laguna:—]

From all that people with whom we meet tell me, I gather that the usual massive lies about health resorts pervade the accounts of Teneriffe. Santa Cruz would reduce me to jelly in a week, and I hear that Orotava is worse—stifling. Guimar, whither we go to-morrow, is warranted to be dry and everlasting sunshine. We shall see. One of the people staying in the house said they had rain there for a fortnight together...I am all right now, and walked some 15 miles up hill and down dale to-day, and I am not more than comfortably tired. However, I am not going to try the peak. I find it cannot be done without a night out at a considerable height when the thermometer commonly goes down below freezing, and I am not going to run that risk for the chance of seeing even the famous shadows.

[By some mischance, no letters from home reached him till the 26th, and he writes from Guimar on the 23rd:—]

A lady who lives here told me yesterday that a postmistress at one place was in the habit of taking off the stamps and turning the letters on one side! But that luckily is not a particular dodge with ours.

We drove over here on the 17th. It is a very picturesque place 1000 feet up in the midst of a great amphitheatre of high hills, facing north, orange-trees laden with fruit, date palms and bananas are in the garden, and there is lovely sunshine all day long. Altogether the climate is far the best I have found anywhere here, and the house, which is that of a Spanish Marquesa, only opened as a hotel this winter, is very comfortable. I am sitting with the window wide open at nine o'clock at night, and the stars flash as if the sky were Australian.

On Saturday we had a splendid excursion up to the top of the pass that leads from here up to the other side of the island. Road in the proper sense there was none, and the track incredibly bad, worse than any Alpine path owing to the loose irregular stones. The mules, however, pick their way like cats, and you have only to hold on. The pass is 6000 feet high, and we ascended still higher. Fortune favoured us. It was a lovely day and the clouds lay in a great sheet a thousand feet below. The peak, clear in the blue sky, rose up bare and majestic 5000 feet out of as desolate a desert clothed with the stiff retama shrubs (a sort of broom) as you can well imagine. [(The Canadas, which he calls] "the one thing worth seeing there.") It took us three hours and a half to get up, passing for a good deal of the time through a kind of low brush of white and red cistuses in full bloom. We saw Palma on one side, and Grand Canary on the other, beyond the layer of clouds which enveloped all the lower part of the island. Coming down was worse than going up, and we walked a good part of the way, getting back about six. About seven hours in the saddle and walking.

You never saw anything like the improvement in Harry. He is burnt deep red; he says my nose is of the same hue, and at the end of the journey he raced Gurilio, our guide, who understands no word of English any more than we do Spanish, but we are quite intimate nevertheless. [My brother indeed averred that his language of signs was far more effectual than the Spanish which my father persisted in trying upon the inhabitants. This guide, by the way, was very sceptical as to any Englishman being equal to walking the seventeen miles, much less beating him in a race over the stony track. His experience was entirely limited to invalids.]

He reiterates his distress at not getting letters from his wife: "Certainly I will never run the risk of being so long without—never again." When, after all, the delayed letters reached him on his way back from the expedition to the Canadas, thanks to a traveller who brought them up from Laguna, he writes (April 24):—]

Catch me going out of reach of letters again. I have been horridly anxious. Nobody—children or any one else—can be to me what you are. Ulysses preferred his old woman to immortality, and this absence has led me to see that he was as wise in that as in other things.

[Here is a novel description of an hotel at Puerto Orotava:—]

It is very pretty to look at, but all draughts. I compare it to the air of a big wash-house with all the doors open, and it was agreed that the likeness was exact.

[On May 2 he sailed for Madeira by the "German", feeling already "ten years younger" for his holiday. On the 3rd he writes:—]

The last time I was in this place was in 1846. All my life lies between the two visits. I was then twenty-one and a half and I shall be sixty-five to-morrow. The place looks to me to have grown a good deal, but I believe it is chiefly English residents whose villas dot the hill. There were no roads forty-four years ago. Now there is one, I am told, to Camera do Lobos nearly five miles long. That is the measure of Portuguese progress in half a century. Moreover, the men have left off wearing their pigtail caps and the women their hoods.

[To his youngest daughter:—]

Bella Vista Hotel, Funchal, May 6, 1890.

Dearest Babs,

This comes wishing you many happy returns of the day, though a little late in the arrival. Harry sends his love, and desires me to say that he took care to write a letter which should arrive in time, but unfortunately forgot to mention the birthday in it! So I think, on the whole, I have the pull of him. We ought to be back about the 18th or 19th, as I have put my name down for places in the "Conway Castle", which is to call here on the 12th, and I do not suppose she will be full. In the meanwhile, we shall fill up the time by a trip to the other side of the island, on which we start to-morrow morning at 7.30. You have to take your own provisions and rugs to sleep upon and under, as the fleas la bas are said to be unusually fine and active. We start quite a procession with a couple of horses, a guide, and two men (owners of the nags) to carry the baggage; and I suspect that before to-morrow night we shall have made acquaintance with some remarkably bad apologies for roads. But the horses here seem to prefer going up bad staircases at speed (with a man hanging on by the tail to steer), and if you only stick to them they land you all right. I have developed so much prowess in this line that I think of coming out in the character of Buffalo Bill on my return. Hands and face of both of us are done to a good burnt sienna, and a few hours more or less in the saddle don't count. I do not think either of us have been so well for years.

You will have heard of our doings in Teneriffe from M—. The Canadas there is the one thing worth seeing, altogether unique. As a health resort I should say the place is a fraud—always excepting Guimar—and that, excellent for people in good health, is wholly unfit for a real invalid, who must either go uphill or downhill over the worst of roads if he leaves the hotel.

The air here is like that of South Devon at its best—very soft, but not stifling as at Orotava. We had a capital expedition yesterday to the Grand Corral—the ancient volcanic crater in the middle of the island with walls some 3000 feet high, all scarred and furrowed by ravines, and overgrown with rich vegetation. There is a little village at the bottom of it which I should esteem as a retreat if I wished to be out of sight and hearing of the pomps and vanities of this world. By the way, I have been pretty well out of hearing of everything as it is, for I only had three letters from M— while we were in Teneriffe, and not one here up to this date. After I had made all my arrangements to start to-morrow I heard that a mail would be in at noon. So the letters will have to follow us in the afternoon by one of the men, who will wait for them.

We went to-day to lunch with Mr. Blandy, the head of the principal shipping agency here, whose wife is the daughter of my successor at the Fishery Office.

Well, our trip has done us both a world of good; but I am getting homesick, and shall rejoice to be back again. I hope that Joyce is flourishing, and Jack satisfied with the hanging of his pictures, and that a millionaire has insisted on buying the picture and adding a bonus. Our best love to you all.

Ever your loving Pater.

Don't know M—'s whereabouts. But if she is with you, say I wrote her a long screed (Number 8) and posted it to-day—with my love as a model husband and complete letter-writer.

[On returning home he found that the Linnean medal had been awarded him.]

4 Marlborough Place, May 18, 1890.

My dear Hooker,

How's a' wi' you? My boy and I came back from Madeira yesterday in great feather. As for myself, riding about on mules, or horses, for six to ten hours at a stretch—burning in sun or soaking in rain—over the most entirely breakneck roads and tracks I have ever made acquaintance with, except perhaps in Morocco—has proved a most excellent tonic, cathartic, and alterative all in one. Existence of heart and stomach are matters of faith, not of knowledge, with me at present. I hope it may last, and I have had such a sickener of invalidism that my intention is to keep severely out of all imprudences.

But what is a man to do if his friends take advantage of his absence, and go giving him gold medals behind his back? That you have been an accomplice in this nefarious plot—mine own familiar friend whom I trusted and trust—is not to be denied. Well, it is very pleasant to have toil that is now all ancient history remembered, and I shall go to the meeting and the dinner and make my speech in spite of as many possible devils of dyspepsia as there are plates and dishes on the table.

We were lucky in getting in for nothing worse than heavy rolling, either out or in. Teneriffe is well worth seeing. The Canadas is something quite by itself, a bit of Egypt 6000 feet up with a bare volcanic cone, or rather long barrow sticking up 6000 feet in the middle of it.

Otherwise, Madeira is vastly superior. I rode across from Funchal to Sao Vicente, up to Paul da Serra, then along the coast to Santa Anna, and back from Santa Anna to Funchal. I have seen nothing comparable except in Mauritius, nor anything anywhere like the road by the cliffs from Sao Vicente to Santa Anna. Lucky for me that my ancient nautical habit of sticking on to a horse came back. A good deal of the road is like a bad staircase, with no particular banisters, and a well of 1000 feet with the sea at the bottom. Your heart would rejoice over the great heaths. I saw one, the bole of which split into nearly equal trunks; and one of these was just a metre in circumference, and had a head as big as a moderate-sized ash. Gorse in full flower, up to 12 or 15 feet high. On the whole a singular absence of flowering herbs except Cinerarias and, especially in Teneriffe, Echium. I did not chance to see a Euphorbia in Madeira, though I believe there are some. In Teneriffe they are everywhere in queer shapes, and there was a thing that mimicked the commonest Euphorbia but had no milk, which I will ask you about when I see you. The Euphorbias were all in flower, but this thing had none. But you will have had enough of my scrawl.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.H. Huxley.

CHAPTER 3.7.

1890-1891.

[Three letters of the first half of the year may conveniently be placed here. The first is to Tyndall, who had just been delivering an anti-Gladstonian speech at Belfast. The opening reference must be to some newspaper paragraph which I have not been able to trace, just as the second is to a paragraph in 1876, not long after Tyndall's marriage, which described Huxley as starting for America with his titled bride.]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, February 24, 1890.

My dear Tyndall,

Put down the three half-pints and the two dozen to the partnership account. Ever since the "titled bride" business I have given up the struggle against the popular belief that you and I constitute a firm.

It's very hard on me in the decline of life to have a lively young partner who thinks nothing of rushing six or seven hundred miles to perform a war-dance on the sainted G.O.M., and takes the scalp of Historicus as an hors d'oeuvre.

All of which doubtless goes down to my account just as my poor innocent articles confer a reputation for long-suffering mildness on you.

Well! well! there is no justice in this world! With our best love to you both.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[(The confusion in the popular mind continued steadily, so that at last, when Tyndall died, Huxley received the doubtful honour of a funeral sermon.)

Dr. Pelseneer, to whom the next letter is addressed, is a Belgian morphologist, and an authority upon the Mollusca. He it was who afterwards completed Huxley's unfinished memoir on Spirula for the "Challenger" report.]

4 Marlborough Place, June 10, 1890.

Dear Dr. Pelseneer,

I gave directions yesterday for the packing up and sending to your address of the specimens of Trigonia, and I trust that they will reach you safely.

I am rejoiced that you are about to take up the subject. I was but a beginner when I worked at Trigonia, and I had always promised myself that I would try to make good the many deficiencies of my little sketch. But three or four years ago my health gave way completely, and though I have recovered (no less to my own astonishment than to that of the doctors) I am compelled to live out of London and to abstain from all work which involves much labour.

Thus science has got so far ahead of me that I hesitate to say much about a difficult morphological question—all the more, as old men like myself should be on their guard against over-much tenderness for their own speculations. And I am conscious of a great tenderness for those contained in my ancient memoir on the "Morphology of the Cephalous Mollusca." Certainly I am entirely disposed to agree with you that the Gasteropods and the Lamellibranchs spring from a common root—nearly represented by the Chiton—especially by a hypothetical Chiton with one shell plate.

I always thought Nucula the key to the Lamellibranchs, and I am very glad you have come to that conclusion on such much better evidence.

I am, dear Dr. Pelseneer, yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Towards the end of June he went for a week to Salisbury, taking long walks in the neighbourhood, and exploring the town and cathedral, which he confessed himself ashamed never to have seen before.

He characteristically fixes its date in his memory by noting that the main part of it was completed when Dante was a year old.]

The White Hart, Salisbury, June 22, 1890.

My dear Donnelly,

Couldn't stand any more London, so bolted here yesterday morning, and here I shall probably stop for the next few days.

I have been trying any time the last thirty years to see Stonehenge, and this time I mean to do it. I should have gone to-day, but the weather was not promising, so I spent my Sunday morning in Old Sarum—that blessed old tumulus with nine (or was it eleven?) burgesses that used to send two members to Parliament when I was a child. Really you Radicals are of some use after all!

Poor old Smyth's death is just what I expected, though I did not think the catastrophe was so imminent. [Warrington Wilkinson Smyth (1817-1890), the geologist and mineralogist. In 1851 he was appointed Lecturer on Mining and Mineralogy at the Royal School of Mines. After the lectureships were separated in 1881, he retained the former until his death. He was knighted in 1887.]

Peace be with him; he never did justice to his very considerable abilities, but he was a good fellow and a fine old crusted Conservative.

I suppose it will be necessary to declare the vacancy and put somebody in his place before long.

I learned before I started that Smyth was to be buried in Cornwall, so there is no question of attending at his funeral.

I am the last of the original Jermyn Street gang left in the school now—Ultimus Romanorum!

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[This trip was taken by way of a holiday after the writing of an article, which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" for July 1890. It was called "The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science," and may be considered as written in fulfilment of the plan spoken of in the letter to Mr. Clodd (above). Its subject was the necessary dependence of Christian theology upon the historical accuracy of the Old Testament; its occasion, the publication of a sermon in which, as a counterblast to "Lux Mundi", Canon Liddon declared that accuracy to be sanctioned by the use made of the Old Testament by Jesus Christ, and bade his hearers close their ears against any suggestions impairing the credit of those Jewish Scriptures which have received the stamp of His Divine authority.

Pointing out that, as in other branches of history, so here the historical accuracy of early tradition was abandoned even by conservative critics, who at all understood the nature of the problems involved, Huxley proceeded to examine the story of the Flood, and to show that the difficulties were little less in treating it—like the reconcilers—as a partial than as a universal deluge. Then he discussed the origin of the story, and criticised the attempt of the essayist in "Lux Mundi" to treat this and similar stories as "types," which must be valueless if typical of no underlying reality. These things are of moment in speculative thought, for if Adam be not an historical character, if the story of the Fall be but a type, the basis of Pauline theology is shaken; they are of moment practically, for it is the story of the Creation which is referred to in the] "speech (Matt. 19 5) unhappily famous for the legal oppression to which it has been wrongfully forced to lend itself" [in the marriage laws.

In July 1890, Sir J.G.T. Sinclair wrote to him, calling his attention to a statement of Babbage's that after a certain point his famous calculating machine, contrary to all expectation, suddenly introduced a new principle of numeration into a series of numbers (Extract from Babbage's Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. Babbage shows that a calculating machine can be constructed which, after working in a correct and orderly manner up to 100,000,000, then leaps, and instead of continuing the chain of numbers unbroken, goes at once to 100,010,002. "The law which seemed at first to govern the series failed at the hundred million and second term. This term is larger than we expected by 10,000. The law thus changes:—

100,000,001 100,010,002 100,030,003 100,060,004 100,100,005 100,150,006 100,210,007 100,280,008.

For a hundred or even a thousand terms they continued to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers, but after watching them for 2761 terms we find that this law fails at the 2762nd term.

If we continue to observe we shall discover another law then coming into action which also is different, dependent, but in a different manner, on triangular numbers because a number of points agreeing with their term may be placed in the form of a triangle, thus:—

(1 dot.) (3 dots in the form of a triangle.) (6 dots in the form of a triangle.) (10 dots in the form of a triangle.) (one, three, six, ten).

This will continue through about 1430 terms, when a new law is again introduced over about 950 terms, and this too, like its predecessors, fails and gives place to other laws which appear at different intervals."), and asking what effect this phenomenon had upon the theory of Induction. Huxley replied as follows:—]

Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, July 21, 1890.

Dear Sir,

I knew Mr. Babbage, and am quite sure that he was not the man to say anything on the topic of calculating machines which he could not justify.

I do not see that what he says affects the philosophy of induction as rightly understood. No induction, however broad its basis, can confer certainty—in the strict sense of the word. The experience of the whole human race through innumerable years has shown that stones unsupported fall to the ground, but that does not make it certain that any day next week unsupported stones will not move the other way. All that it does justify is the very strong expectation, which hitherto has been invariably verified, that they will do just the contrary.

Only one absolute certainty is possible to man—namely, that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.

All other so-called certainties are beliefs of greater or less intensity.

Do not suppose that I am following Abernethy's famous prescription, "take my pills," if I refer you to an essay of mine on "Descartes," and a little book on Hume, for the fuller discussion of these points. Hume's argument against miracles turns altogether on the fallacy that induction can give certainty in the strict sense.

We poor mortals have to be content with hope and belief in all matters past and present—our sole certainty is momentary.

I am yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Sir J.G.T. Sinclair, Bart.

[Except for a last visit to London to pack his books, which proved a heavier undertaking than he had reckoned upon, Huxley did not leave Eastbourne this autumn, refusing Sir J. Donnelly's hospitable invitation to stay with him in Surrey during the move, of which he exclaims:—]

Thank Heaven that is my last move—except to a still smaller residence of a subterranean character!

Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, September 19, 1890.

My dear Donnelly,

And my books—and watch-dog business generally?

How is that to be transacted whether as in-patient or out-patient at Firdale? Much hospitality hath made thee mad.

Seriously, it's not to be done nohow. What between papers that don't come, and profligate bracket manufacturers who keep you waiting for months and then send the wrong things—and a general tendency of everybody to do nothing right or something wrong—it is as much as the two of us will do—to get in, and all in the course of the next three weeks.

Of course my wife has no business to go to London to superintend the packing—but I should like to see anybody stop her. However, she has got the faithful Minnie to do the actual work; and swears by all her Gods and Goddesses she will only direct.

It would only make her unhappy if I did not make pretend to believe, and hope no harm may come of it.

Tout a vous,

T.H. Huxley.

[Another discussion which sprang up in the "Times", upon Medical Education, evoked a letter from him ("Times" August 7), urging that the preliminary training ought to be much more thorough and exact. The student at his first coming is so completely 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. Thus a large proportion of medical students spend much of their first year in learning how to learn, and when they have done that, in acquiring the preliminary scientific knowledge, with which, under any rational system of education, they would have come provided.

He urged, too, that they should have received a proper literary education instead of a sham acquaintance with Latin, and insisted, as he had so often done, on the literary wealth of their own language.

Every one has his own ideas of what a liberal education ought to include, and a correspondent wrote to ask him, among other things, whether he did not think the higher mathematics ought to be included. He replied:—]

Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, August 16, 1890.

I think mathematical training highly desirable, but advanced mathematics, I am afraid, would be too great a burden in proportion to its utility, to the ordinary student.

I fully agree with you that the incapacity of teachers is the weak point in the London schools. But what is to be expected when a man accepts a lectureship in a medical school simply as a grappling-iron by which he may hold on until he gets a hospital appointment?

Medical education in London will never be what it ought to be, until the "Institutes of Medicine," as the Scotch call them, are taught in only two or three well-found institutions—while the hospital schools are confined to the teaching of practical medicine, surgery, obstetrics, and so on.

[The following letters illustrate Huxley's keenness to correct any misrepresentation of his opinions from a weighty source, amid the way in which, without abating his just claims, he could make the peace gracefully.

In October Dr. Abbott delivered an address on "Illusions," in which, without, of course, mentioning names, he drew an unmistakable picture of Huxley as a thorough pessimist. A very brief report appeared in the "Times" of October 9, together with a leading article upon the subject. Huxley thereupon wrote to the "Times" a letter which throws light both upon his early days and his later opinions:—]

The article on "Illusions" in the "Times" of to-day induces me to notice the remarkable exemplification of them to which you have drawn public attention. The Reverend Dr. Abbott has pointed the moral of his discourse by a reference to a living man, the delicacy of which will be widely and justly appreciated. I have reason to believe that I am acquainted with this person, somewhat intimately, though I can by no means call myself his best friend—far from it.

If I am right, I can affirm that this poor fellow did not escape from the "narrow school in which he was brought up" at nineteen, but more than two years later; and, as he pursued his studies in London, perhaps he had as many opportunities for "fruitful converse with friends and equals," to say nothing of superiors, as he would have enjoyed elsewhere.

Moreover, whether the naval officers with whom he consorted were book-learned or not, they were emphatically men, trained to face realities and to have a wholesome contempt for mere talkers. Any one of them was worth a wilderness of phrase-crammed undergraduates. Indeed, I have heard my misguided acquaintance declare that he regards his four years' training under the hard conditions and the sharp discipline of his cruise as an education of inestimable value.

As to being a "keen-witted pessimist out and out," the Reverend Dr. Abbott's "horrid example" has shown me the following sentence:—"Pessimism is as little consonant with the facts of sentient existence as optimism." He says he published it in 1888, in an article on "Industrial Development," to be seen in the "Nineteenth Century". But no doubt this is another illusion. No superior person, brought up "in the Universities," to boot, could possibly have invented a myth so circumstantial.

[The end of the correspondence was quite amicable. Dr. Abbott explained that he had taken his facts from the recently published "Autobiography," and that the reporters had wonderfully altered what he really said by large omissions. In a second letter ("Times" October 11) Huxley says:—]

I am much obliged to Dr. Abbott for his courteous explanation. I myself have suffered so many things at the hands of so many reporters—of whom it may too often be said that their "faith, unfaithful, makes them falsely true"—that I can fully enter into what his feelings must have been when he contemplated the picture of his discourse, in which the lights on "raw midshipmen," "pessimist out and out," "devil take the hindmost," and "Heine's dragoon," were so high, while the "good things" he was kind enough to say about me lay in the deep shadow of the invisible. And I can assure Dr. Abbott that I should not have dreamed of noticing the report of his interesting lecture, which I read when it appeared, had it not been made the subject of the leading article which drew the attention of all the world to it on the following day.

I was well aware that Dr. Abbott must have founded his remarks on the brief notice of my life which (without my knowledge) has been thrust into its present ridiculous position among biographies of eminent musicians; and most undoubtedly anything I have said there is public property. But erroneous suppositions imaginatively connected with what I have said appear to me to stand upon a different footing, especially when they are interspersed with remarks injurious to my early friends. Some of the "raw midshipmen and unlearned naval officers" of whom Dr. Abbott speaks, in terms which he certainly did not find in my "autobiography," are, I am glad to say, still alive, and are performing, or have performed, valuable services to their country. I wonder what Dr. Abbott would think, and perhaps say, if his youthful University friends were spoken of as "raw curates and unlearned country squires."

When David Hume's housemaid was wroth because somebody chalked up "St David's" on his house, the philosopher is said to have remarked,—" Never mind, lassie, better men than I have been made saints of before now." And, perhaps, if I had recollected that "better men than I have been made texts of before now," a slight flavour of wrath which may be perceptible would have vanished from my first letter. If Dr. Abbott has found any phrase of mine too strong, I beg him to set it against "out and out pessimist" and "Heine's dragoon," and let us cry quits. He is the last person with whom I should wish to quarrel.

[Two interesting criticisms of books follow; one "The First Three Gospels", by the Reverend Estlin Carpenter; the other on "Use and Disuse", directed against the doctrine of use-inheritance, by Mr. Platt Ball, who not only sent the book but appealed to him for advice as to his future course in undertaking a larger work on the evolution of man.]

Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, October 11, 1890.

My dear Mr. Carpenter,

Accept my best thanks for "The First Three Gospels", which strikes me as an admirable exposition of the case, full, clear, and calm. Indeed the latter quality gives it here and there a touch of humour. You say the most damaging things in a way so gentle that the orthodox reader must feel like the eels who were skinned by the fair Molly—lost between pain and admiration.

I am certainly glad to see that the book has reached a second edition; it will do yeoman's service to the cause of right reason.

A friend of mine was in the habit of sending me his proofs, and I sometimes wrote on them "no objection except to the whole"; and I am afraid that you will think what I am about to say comes to pretty much the same thing—at least if I am right in the supposition that a passage in your first preface (page 7) states your fundamental position, and that you conceive that when criticism has done its uttermost there still remains evidence that the personality of Jesus was the leading cause—the conditio sine qua non—of the evolution of Christianity from Judaism.

I long thought so, and having a strong dislike to belittle the heroic figures of history, I held by the notion as long as I could, but I find it melting away.

I cannot see that the moral and religious ideal of early Christianity is new—on the other hand, it seems to me to be implicitly and explicitly contained in the early prophetic Judaism and the later Hellenised Judaism; and though it is quite true that the new vitality of the old ideal manifested in early Christianity demands "an adequate historic cause," I would suggest that the word "cause" may mislead if it is not carefully defined.

Medical philosophy draws a most useful and necessary distinction between "exciting" and "predisposing" causes—and nowhere is it more needful to keep this distinction in mind than in history—and especially in estimating the action of individuals on the course of human affairs. Platonic and Stoical philosophy—prophetic liberalism—the strong democratic socialism of the Jewish political system—the existence of innumerable sodalities for religious and social purposes—had thrown the ancient world into a state of unstable equilibrium. With such predisposing causes at work, the exciting cause of enormous changes might be relatively insignificant. The powder was there—a child might throw the match which should blow up the whole concern.

I do not want to seem irreverent, still less depreciatory, of noble men, but it strikes me that in the present case the Nazarenes were the match and Paul the child.

An ingrained habit of trying to explain the unknown by the known leads me to find the key to Nazarenism in Quakerism. It is impossible to read the early history of the Friends without seeing that George Fox was a person who exerted extraordinary influence over the men with whom he came in contact; and it is equally impossible (at least for me) to discover in his copious remains an original thought.

Yet what with the corruption of the Stuarts, the Phariseeism of the Puritans, and the Sadduceeism of the Church, England was in such a state, that before his death he had gathered about him a vast body of devoted followers, whose patient endurance of persecution is a marvel. Moreover, the Quakers have exercised a prodigious influence on later English life.

But I have scribbled a great deal too much already. You will see what I mean.

To Mr. W. Platt Ball.

Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, October 27, 1890.

Dear Sir,

I have been through your book, which has greatly interested me, at a hand-gallop; and I have by no means given it the attention it deserves. But the day after to-morrow I shall be going into a new house here, and it may be some time before I settle down to work in it—so that I prefer to seem hasty, rather than indifferent to your book and still more to your letter.

As to the book, in the first place. The only criticism I have to offer—in the ordinary depreciatory sense of the word—is that pages 128 to 137 seem to me to require reconsideration, partly from a substantial and partly from a tactical point of view. There is much that is disputable on the one hand, and not necessary to your argument on the other.

Otherwise it seems to me that the case could hardly be better stated. Here are a few notes and queries that have occurred to me.

Page 41. Extinction of Tasmanians—rather due to the British colonist, who was the main agent of their extirpation, I fancy.

Page 67. Birds' sternums are a great deal more than surfaces of origin for the pectoral muscles—e.g. movable lid of respiratory bellows. This not taken into account by Darwin.

Page 85. "Inferiority of senses of Europeans" is, I believe, a pure delusion. Professor Marsh told me of feats of American trappers equal to any savage doings. It is a question of attention. Consider wool-sorters, tea-tasters, shepherds who know every sheep personally, etc. etc.

Page 85. I do not understand about the infant's sole; since all men become bipeds, all must exert pressure on sole. There is no disuse.

Page 88. Has not "muscardine" been substituted for "pebrine"? I have always considered this a very striking case. Here is apparent inheritance of a diseased state through the mother only, quite inexplicable till Pasteur discovered the rationale.

Page 155. Have you considered that State Socialism (for which I have little enough love) may be a product of Natural Selection? The societies of Bees and Ants exhibit socialism in excelsis.

The unlucky substitution of "survival of fittest" for "natural selection" has done much harm in consequence of the ambiguity of "fittest"—which many take to mean "best" or "highest"—whereas natural selection may work towards degradation: vide epizoa.

You do not refer to the male mamma—which becomes functional once in many million cases, see the curious records of Gynaecomasty. Here practical disuse in the male ever since the origin of the mammalia has not abolished the mamma or destroyed its functional potentiality in extremely rare cases.

I absolutely disbelieve in use-inheritance as the evidence stands. Spencer is bound to it a priori—his psychology goes to pieces without it.

Now as to the letter. I am no pessimist—but also no optimist. The world might be much worse, and it might be much better. Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture—and very much to our credit.

If you will accept the results of the experience of an old man who has had a very chequered existence—and has nothing to hope for except a few years of quiet downhill—there is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections), nothing that satisfies quiet reflection—except the sense of having worked according to one's capacity and light, to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts. That was the lesson I learned from Carlyle's books when I was a boy, and it has stuck by me all my life.

Therefore, my advice to you is go ahead. You may make more of failing to get money, and of succeeding in getting abuse—until such time in your life as (if you are teachable) you have ceased to care much about either. The job you propose to undertake is a big one, and will tax all your energies and all your patience.

But, if it were my case, I should take my chance of failing in a worthy task rather than of succeeding in lower things.

And if at any time I can be of use to you (even to the answering of letters) let me know. But in truth I am getting rusty in science—from disuse.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

P.S.—Yes—Mr. Gladstone has dug up the hatchet. We shall see who gets the scalps.

By the way, you have not referred to plants, which are a stronghold for you. What is the good of use-inheritance, say, in orchids?

[The interests which had formerly been divided between biology and other branches of science and philosophy, were diverted from the one channel only to run stronger in the rest. Stagnation was the one thing impossible to him; his rest was mental activity without excessive physical fatigue; and he felt he still had a useful purpose to serve, as a friend put it, in patrolling his beat with a vigilant eye to the loose characters of thought. Thus he writes on September 29 to Sir J. Hooker:—]

I wish quietude of mind were possible to me. But without something to do that amuses me and does not involve too much labour, I become quite unendurable—to myself and everybody else.

Providence has, I believe, specially devolved on Gladstone, Gore, and Co. the function of keeping "'ome 'appy" for me.

I really can't give up tormenting ces droles.

However, I have been toiling at a tremendously scientific article about the "Aryan question" absolutely devoid of blasphemy.

[This article appeared in the November number of the "Nineteenth Century" ("Collected Essays" 7 271) and treats the question from a biological point of view, with the warning to readers that it is essentially a speculation based upon facts, but not assuredly proved. It starts from the racial characteristics of skull and stature, not from simply philological considerations, and arrives at a form of the "Sarmatian" theory of Aryan origins. And for fear lest he should be supposed to take sides in the question of race and language, or race and civilisation, he remarks:—]

The combination of swarthiness with stature above the average and a long skull, confer upon me the serene impartiality of a mongrel.

The Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, August 12, 1890.

My dear Evans,

I have read your address returned herewith with a great deal of interest, as I happen to have been amusing myself lately with reviewing the "Aryan" question according to the new lights (or darknesses).

I have only two or three remarks to offer on the places I have marked A and B.

As to A, I would not state the case so strongly against the probabilities of finding pliocene man. A pliocene Homo skeleton might analogically be expected to differ no more from that of modern men than the Oeningen Canis from modern Canes, or pliocene horses from modern horses. If so, he would most undoubtedly be a man—genus Homo—even if you made him a distinct species. For my part I should by no means be astonished to find the genus Homo represented in the Miocene, say the Neanderthal man with rather smaller brain capacity, longer arms and more movable great toe, but at most specifically different.

As to B, I rather think there were people who fought the fallacy of language being a test of race before Broca—among them thy servant—who got into considerable hot water on that subject for a lecture on the forefathers and forerunners of the English people, delivered in 1870. Taylor says that Cuno was the first to insist upon the proposition that race is not co-extensive with language in 1871. That is all stuff. The same thesis had been maintained before I took it up, but I cannot remember by whom. [Cp. letter to Max Muller of June 15, 1865 volume 1.]

Won't you refer to the Blackmore Museum? I was very much struck with it when at Salisbury the other day.

Hope they gave you a better lunch at Gloucester than we did here. We'll treat you better next time in our own den. With the wife's kindest regards.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The remark in a preceding letter about "Gladstone, Gore, and Co." turned out to be prophetic as well as retrospective. Mr. Gladstone published this autumn in "Good Words" his "Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture," containing an attack upon Huxley's position as taken up in their previous controversy of 1889.

The debate now turned upon the story of the Gadarene swine. The question at issue was not, at first sight, one of vital importance, and one critic at least remarked that at their age Mr. Gladstone and Professor Huxley might be better occupied than in fighting over the Gadarene pigs:—]

If these too famous swine were the only parties to the suit, I for my part (writes Huxley, "Collected Essays" 5 414) should fully admit the justice of the rebuke. But the real issue (he contends) is whether the men of the nineteenth century are to adopt the demonology of the men of the first century, as divinely revealed truth, or to reject it as degrading falsity.

[A lively encounter followed:—]

The G.O.M. is not murdered [he writes on November 20], only "fillipped with a three-man beetle," as the fat knight has it.

[This refers to the forthcoming article in the December "Nineteenth Century", "The Keepers of the Herd of Swine," which was followed in March 1891 by "Mr. Gladstone's Controversial Methods" (see "Collected Essays" 5 366 sqq.), the rejoinder to Mr. Gladstone's reply in February.