Book Review: Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley

• Title: Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley
• Author: Leonard Huxley
• Published:
  • Volume I: D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1909, 542-pages.
  • Volume II: Macmillan and Co., London, 1913, 476-pages.
  • Volume III: Macmillan and Co., London, 1913, 501-pages.

Like many of the old books I own, I bought this at my local Friends of the Library Bookstore.  Actually, I bought volume one.  I did not realize, at first, that this was only one of a two-volume set.  I ended up having a great difficulty finding the second half.  Thankfully, with the help of my local librarian, I was able to acquire volumes two and three of a three-volume set.  There was some overlap from my two-volume set to the three-volume set, but, it was all there.  We have a wonderful program where I was able to get the copies from a library in Toledo delivered to my local branch library in Cincinnati.  It was well worth the wait of a week or two to get the rest of the story.

With the completion of this work I have now read three generations of Huxley writers: By Thomas Henry Huxley I have read Man’s Place in Nature and Other Anthropological Essays, by his son, Leonard, this biography, and by Leonard’s son Aldous, Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited.

Thomas Henry Huxley was born on May 4, 1825 in Ealing, Middlesex, England.  He was the seventh of eight children, and the youngest that survived into adulthood.  His father was George Huxley, a schoolmaster, and his mother was Rachel Huxley née Withers.  He appears to have been very self-motivated in his studies.  Leonard states, “He read everything he could lay his hands on in his father’s library.”[1] Thomas Carlyle had an early and profound affect upon him and it is mentioned several times in his letters throughout his life.  He kept an early journal and once remarked when he was sixteen, “I must get on faster than this. I must adopt a fixed plan of studies, for unless this is done I find time slips away without knowing it – and let me remember this – that it is better to read a little and thoroughly, than cram a crude undigested mass into my head, though it be great in quantity.”[2] He taught himself German at an early age.  At fifteen he became apprenticed to a medical practitioner in London’s poverty stricken East End.  He was awarded a free scholarship to attend Charing Cross Hospital Medical School in central London.  At age twenty-one he boarded the HMS Rattlesnake as the Assistant Surgeon.  He took numerous books and his microscope.  During the trip he taught himself Italian with the help of an Italian dictionary while reading Dante’s Divina Commedia.  The voyage of the HMS Rattlesnake took four years, and Huxley put it to good use.  Battling never-ending waves of cockroaches that infected the boat, he patiently took his time to meticulously record his observations of marine specimens.  He worked amiably with the crew, even when, several times, they would toss his dissections overboard thinking it was refuse.  Not only would this voyage be instrumental in launching his career in science, it was also how he met his future wife in Sydney, Australia, Henrietta Anne Heathorn.  In 1850 the HMS Rattlesnake returned to England and Huxley was able to apply for leave from the Navy to work on publishing his findings.  There was some precedence for this.  In a series of increments he extended his leave to three years.  He published several noteworthy observations and made quite a name for himself in the scientific community.  The navy eventually insisted he report for active duty.  Upon his refusal to report, he was summarily struck off the Navy list.  Some important items published at this time were his works on cephalous mollusks and his methods of paleontology.  He was very concerned about making enough money to support a family and continue his scientific pursuits.  This finally became realized through recognition of his work and he was married very shortly thereafter when Henrietta arrived in London.  They had eight children, seven of which survived to adulthood.

The publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 by Charles Darwin was a significant event in Huxley’s life.  Huxley was one of three, the other two being Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell, whom Darwin sought support before publishing.  Huxley so vigorously took up Darwin’s cause that he was nicknamed “Darwin’s Bulldog.”  In 1860 there was a debate at Oxford University which contained a famous confrontation between Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.  I am quoting the Encyclopaedia Britannica version below because it is much more concise.  However, it is obvious from the many letters, and T. H. Huxley’s own admission, that this was not exactly what he said.  Perhaps treat it more like a Thucydidic speech.

“The most famous occasion of the Darwinian debate came in 1860 at the meeting at the Oxford University of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.  Bishop Samuel Wilberforce had decided that this gathering presented an opportunity to squash the “dangerous” new evolutionary theory, and the assembly room was crowded.  Huxley sat quietly while the bishop spoke “with inimitable spirit, emptiness, and unfairness.” Wilberforce made the fatal error of voicing an offensive personal inquiry about Huxley’s simian ancestry, whereupon Huxley murmured to his neighbor, “The Lord hath delivered him into my hands.”  Soon the meeting was calling out for him to reply, which he did with devastating effect: “If… the question is put to me, would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence, and yet who employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion – I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.””[3]

Huxley became a fellow of the Royal society at age 26 and was later secretary and eventually president.  The 1860’s saw Huxley continue his work on paleontology, taxonomy, and ethnology.  The 1870’s saw Huxley as a member of the London School Board.  This presented a wonderful opportunity to work on something he was very passionate about, and that was education reform.  This was a common theme throughout his public life.  This position on the Board was a major part in the reorganization of British and other higher education reform initiatives.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn his stance on the Bible being taught in schools.

“I have never had the slightest sympathy with those who, as the Germans say, would “throw the child away along with the bath” – and when I was a member of the London School Board I fought for the retention of the Bible, to the great scandal of some of my Liberal friends – who can’t make out to this day whether I was a hypocrite, or simply a fool on that occasion.  But my meaning was that the mass of the people should not be deprived of the one great literature which is open to them – not shut out from the perception of their relations with the whole past history of civilized mankind…”[4]

In 1878 he taught himself Greek, so he could read Homer and the New Testament in its original so as he could develop his own opinion.  The following passage shows his mindset of curiosity mixed with action.

“Great interest attaches to this paper.  He had always wondered how Aristotle, in dissecting a heart, had come to assert that it contained only three chambers; and the desire to see for himself what stood in the original, uncommented on by translators who were not themselves anatomists, was one of the chief reasons (I think the wish to read the Greek Testament in the original was the other) which operated in making him take up the study of Greek late in middle life.  His practice was to read in his book until he had come to ten new words; these he looked out, parsed, and wrote down together with their chief derivatives. This was his daily portion.”[5]

He was very interested in philosophy and wrote papers on David Hume, George Berkley, and René Descartes.  He had a very active correspondence with Herbert Spencer, though he made it a point to state that there were significant differences in their opinions on evolution and philosophy.

Huxley is known as the coiner of the word agnostic and defines his belief in these words: “If I am to make another criticism it is that, to my mind, atheism is, on purely philosophical grounds, untenable.  That there is no evidence of the existence of such a being as the God of the theologians is true enough; but strictly scientific reasoning can take us no further. Where we know nothing we can neither affirm nor deny with propriety.”[6]

“There are two things I really care about – one is the progress of scientific thought, and the other is the bettering of the condition of the masses of the people by bettering them in the way of lifting themselves out of the misery which has hitherto been the lot of the majority of them.”[7]  It is interesting that he states “lifting themselves,” this is not pity, but a helping hand to his fellow man, to help them do it with dignity.  Today we give handouts, but in such a way that belittles them and does not offer them a chance to really improve themselves.

The following quote is rather long, but very interesting.  This was written in 1894, before the two world wars.  I find it very relevant to today.  He is being asked to sign basically a call for governments to stand down and stop having an arms race.  But he thinks that it is not a good idea to support this.  For he feels the situation is more a social issue and cannot be fixed by just appealing to the governments.  He is actually concerned that supporting this request for arms limitation will mislead the public and eventually cause more problems than it will cure.  Read for yourself and make your own opinion.

“The unexampled increase in the expenditures of the European states upon their armaments led the Arbitration Alliance this year to issue memorial urging the Government to cooperate with other Governments in reducing naval and military burdens.  Huxley was asked to sign this memorial and replied to the secretary as follows:

June 21, 1894  Dear Sir–I have taken some time to consider the memorial to which you have called my attention, and I regret that I do not find myself able to sign it.

Not that I have the slightest doubt about the magnitude of the evils which accrue from the steady increase of European armaments; but because I think that this regrettable fact is merely the superficial expression of social forces, the operation of which cannot be sensibly affected by agreements between Governments.

In my opinion it is a delusion to attribute the growth of armaments to the “exactions of militarism.” The “exactions of industrialism,” generated by international commercial competition, may, I believe, claim a much larger share in prompting that growth. Add to this the French thirst for revenge, the most just determination of the German and Italian peoples to assert their national unity; the Russian Panslavonic fanaticism and desire for free access to the western seas; the Papacy steadily fishing in the troubled waters for the means of recovering its lost (I hope for ever lost) temporal possessions and spiritual supremacy; the “sick man,” kept alive only because each of his doctors is afraid of the other becoming his heir.

When I think of the intensity of the perturbing agencies which arise out of these and other conditions of modern European society, I confess that the attempt to counteract them by asking Governments to agree to a maximum military expenditure, does not appear to me to be worth making; indeed I think it might do harm by leading people to suppose that the desires of Governments are the chief agents in determining whether peace or war shall obtain in Europe.–I am, yours faithfully, T. H. Huxley.”[8]

Huxley, like many other great people, uses many literary references and was very well read.  In all his education reform he stresses the need for men of science to have a good background in literature.  He states, “Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.”[9]  I think this is very relevant today as we have slacked off on the reading of classical literature.  In 1885 he resigned his professorship at the Normal School of Science and instead became an honorary Dean.  He was having major health problems.  When these occurred he always travelled.  If you are not aware, London was not a very healthy place to live in.  Actually, as I think about it, many times we see that people would leave the big city and go to the country to get fresh air, sunshine, and to be away from the hustle and bustle to recuperate.  He suffered throughout his life from melancholy (which he called “blue devils”), dyspepsia and in later years, pleurisy.  In 1889 he moved to Eastbourne where he eventually died on June 29, 1895 of influenza and bronchitis.

This book really gave me a closer look at the man, Thomas Henry Huxley.  Overall, he was a man that I admire.  I think we would have got along.  Even though we would not have agreed on some points.  It is interesting seeing his growth from the young man learning his studies to the older man with a failing body, no longer able to hear, and realizing his days are numbered and the battles he can assist in have become fewer and fewer.  He battled depression and a system that was against him, but he pushed on. I would recommend this work to those interested in late nineteenth century England science, men of letters, theology, or the history of evolution.

Bibliography

Huxley, Leonard. Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley. Vol. I. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1909.

Huxley, Leonard. Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley. Vol. II. London: Macmillan and Company, Ltd, 1913.

Huxley, Leonard. Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley. Vol. III. London: Macmillan and Company, Ltd, 1913.

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. 13th ed. 30 vols. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1983.

[1] Leonard Huxley, The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Vol. I, 6

[2] Ibid., 12

[3] Cyril Bibby, “Huxley Family”, in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica 15th Ed. Macropaedia Bk. 9, (1983) 71-4

[4] Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Vol. II, 273-4

[5] Ibid., 263

[6] Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Vol. III, 18-19

[7] Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Vol. I, 510

[8] Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Vol. III, 323-4

[9] Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Vol. I, 231