Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 66

The distributional facts, when you work them in connection with morphology, are lovely. We put up with Donnelly on our way here. He has taken a cottage at Felday, eleven miles from hence, in lovely country--on lease. I shall have to set up a country residence some day, but as all my friends declare their own locality best, I find a decision hard. And it is a bore to be tied to one place.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, October 20, 1886.

My dear Hooker,

I wish you would not mind the trouble of looking through the enclosed chapter which I have written at F. Darwin's request, and tell me what you think of it. F.D. thinks I am hard upon the "Quarterly Article,"

but I read it a fresh and it is absolutely scandalous. The anonymous vilifiers of the present day will be none the worse for being reminded that they may yet hang in chains...

It occurs to me that it might be well to add a paragraph or two about the two chief objections made formerly and now to Darwin, the one, that it is introducing "chance" as a factor in nature, and the other that it is atheistic.

Both a.s.sertions are utter bosh. None but parsons believe in "chance"; and the philosophical difficulties of Theism now are neither greater nor less than they have been ever since theism was invented.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[The following letter to Mr. Edmund Gosse, who, just before, had been roughly handled in the "Quarterly Review," doubtless owed some of its vigour to these newly revived memories of the "Quarterly" attack on Darwin. But while the interest of the letter lies in a general question of literary ethics, the proper methods and limits of anonymous criticism, it must be noted that in this particular case its edge was turned by the fact that immediately afterwards, the critic proceeded to support his criticisms elsewhere uder his own name:--]

October 22, 1886.

Dear Sir,

I beg leave to offer you my best thanks for your letter to the "Athenaeum," which I have just read, and to congratulate you on the force and completeness of your answer to your a.s.sailant.

It is rarely worth while to notice criticism, but when a good chance of exposing one of these anonymous libellers who disgrace literature occurs, it is a public duty to avail oneself of it.

Oddly enough, I have recently been performing a similar "haute oeuvre." The most violent, base, and ignorant of all the attacks on Darwin at the time of the publication of the "Origin of Species"

appeared in the "Quarterly Review" of that time; and I have built the reviewer a gibbet as high as Haman's.

All good men and true should combine to stop this system of literary moonlighting.

I am yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[On the same date appeared his letter to the "Pall Mall Gazette,"

which was occasioned by the perversion of the new Chair of English Literature at Oxford to "Middle English" philology:--]

I fully agree with you that the relation of our Universities to the study of English literature is a matter of great public importance; and I have more than once taken occasion to express my conviction--Firstly, that the works of our great English writers are pre-eminently worthy of being systematically studied in our schools and universities as literature; and secondly, that the establishment of professional chairs of philology, under the name of literature, may be a profit to science, but is really a fraud practised upon letters.

That a young Englishman may be turned out of one of our universities, "epopt and perfect," so far as their system takes him, and yet ignorant of the n.o.ble literature which has grown up in those islands during the last three centuries, no less than of the development of the philosophical and political ideas which have most profoundly influenced modern civilisation, is a fact in the history of the nineteenth century which the twentieth will find hard to believe; though, perhaps, it is not more incredible than our current superst.i.tion that whoso wishes to write and speak English well should mould his style after the models furnished by cla.s.sical antiquity. For my part, I venture to doubt the wisdom of attempting to mould one's style by any other process for that of striving after the clear and forcible expression of definite conceptions; in which process the Gla.s.sian precept, "first catch your definite conceptions," is probably the most difficult to obey. But still I mark among distinguished contemporary speakers and writers of English, saturated with antiquity, not a few to whom, it seems to me, the study of Hobbes might have taught dignity; of Swift, concision and clearness; of Goldsmith and Defoe, simplicity.

Well, among a hundred young men whose university career is finished, is there one whose attention has ever been directed by his literary instructors to a page of Hobbes, or Swift, or Goldsmith, or Defoe? In my boyhood we were familiar with "Robinson Crusoe," "The Vicar of Wakefield," and "Gulliver's Travels"; and though the mysteries of "Middle English" were hidden from us, my impression is we ran less chance of learning to write and speak the "middling English" of popular orators and headmasters than if we had been perfect in such mysteries and ignorant of those three masterpieces. It has been the fas.h.i.+on to decry the eighteenth century, as young fops laugh at their fathers. But we were there in germ; and a "Professor of Eighteenth Century History and Literature" we knew his business might tell young Englishmen more of that which it is profoundly important they should know, but which at present remains hidden from them, than any other instructor; and, incidentally, they would learn to know good English when they see or hear it--perhaps even to discriminate between slipshod copiousness and true eloquence, and that alone would be a great gain.

[As for the incitement to answer Mr. Lilly, Mr. Spencer writes from Brighton on November 3:--

I have no doubt your combative instincts have been stirred within you as you read Mr. Lilly's article, "Materialism and Morality," in which you and I are dealt with after the ordinary fas.h.i.+on popular with the theologians, who practically say, "You SHALL be materialists whether you like it or not." I should not be sorry if you yielded to those promptings of your combative instinct. Now that you are a man of leisure there is no reason why you should not undertake any amount of fighting, providing always that you can find foemen worthy of your steel.

I remember that last year you found intellectual warfare good for your health, so I have no qualms of conscience in making the suggestion.

To this he replies on the 7th:--]

Your stimulation of my combative instincts is downright wicked. I will not look at the "Fortnightly" article lest I succ.u.mb to temptation. At least not yet. The truth is that these cursed irons of mine, that have always given me so much trouble, will put themselves in the fire, when I am not thinking about them. There are three or four already.

[On November 21 Mr. Spencer sends him more proofs of his autobiography, dealing with his early life:--

See what it is to be known as an omnivorous reader--you get no mercy shown you. A man who is ready for anything, from the fairy tale to a volume of metaphysics, is naturally one who will make nothing of a fragment of a friend's autobiography!

To this he replies on the 25th:--]

4 Marlborough Place, November 25, 1886.

My dear Spencer,

In spite of all prohibition I must write to you about two things.

First, as to the proof returned herewith--I really have no criticisms to make (miracles, after all may not be incredible). I have read your account of your boyhood with great interest, and I find nothing there which does not contribute to the understanding of the man. No doubt about the truth of evolution in your own case.

Another point which has interested me immensely is the curious similarity to many recollections of my own boyish nature which I find, especially in the matter of demanding a reason for things and having no respect for authority.

But I was more docile, and could remember anything I had a mind to learn, whether it was rational or irrational, only in the latter case I hadn't the mind.

But you were infinitely better off than I in the matter of education.

I had two years of a Pandemonium of a school (between 8 and 10) and after that neither help nor sympathy in any intellectual direction till I reached manhood. Good heavens! if I had had a father and uncle who troubled themselves about my education as yours did about your training, I might say as Beth.e.l.l said of his possibilities had he come under Jowett, "There is no knowing to what eminence I might not have attained." Your account of them gives me the impression that they were remarkable persons. Men of that force of character, if they had been less wise and self-restrained, would have played the deuce with the abnormal chicken hatched among them.

The second matter is that your diabolical plot against Lilly has succeeded--vide the next number of the Fortnightly. ["Science and Morals" "Collected Essays" 9 117.] I was fool enough to read his article, and the rest followed. But I do not think I should have troubled myself if the opportunity had not been good for clearing off a lot of old scores.

The bad weather for the last ten days has shown me that I want s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up, and I am off to Ilkley on Sat.u.r.day for a week or two.

Ilkley Wells House will be my address. I should like to know that you are picking up again.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[And again on December 13:--]

My dear Spencer,

I am very glad to have news of you which on the whole is not unsatisfactory. Your conclusion as to the doctors is one I don't mind telling you in confidence I arrived at some time ago...

I am glad you liked my treatment of Mr. Lilly...I quite agree with you that the thing was worth doing for the sake of the public.

I have in hand another bottle of the same vintage about Modern Realism and the abuse of the word Law, suggested by a report I read the other day of one of Liddon's sermons. ["Pseudo-Scientific Realism"

"Collected Essays" 4 59.]

The nonsense these great divines talk when they venture to meddle with science is really appalling.