Art. XI.-PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

1. Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley. By his son, Leonard Huxley. Two Vols. London: Macmillan, 1900. 2. Leaders in Science: Thomas Henry Huxley-A Sketch of his Life and Work. By P. Chalmers Mitchell, M.A. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1900.

3. The Scientific Memoirs of T. H. Huxley. Edited by Prof. Sir Michael Foster and Prof. E. Ray Lankester. Vols. I, II. London: Macmillan, 1898-1899.

THE appearance of the long-expected Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley provides a wealth of material bearing upon the history of English science during the past three quarters of a century, and the part taken by one of the chief workers and probably the most striking and picturesque personality. The thought will doubtless occur to many readers that the thousand closely-printed pages might have been reduced by omitting and condensing many of the letters. On the other hand, the serious student of these stirring times will value the opportunity of studying and comparing all the available thoughts and opinions of one who played so important a part; and the very repetition of certain ideas, which proves their persistence and dominance in Huxley's mind, is a matter of considerable importance. However it may be to the general reader, the student would deprecate the omission or condensation of any of the writings of Darwin or Huxley. The special interest and value in the letters of such men lie in the fact that their inmost opinions on matters of the deepest scientific importance are to be found, perhaps, in the compass of a brief sentence. There we find, as we cannot find in any other way, the real core of the matter, with all accessory and surrounding considerations stripped away from it. In some cases we look in vain for their opinion in any other part of their writings.

These volumes have been prepared with patient and loving care by one who is not a scientific student. Allowing for the inevitable loss which the record of a scientific man must suffer from this limitation, the work has been well and faithfully done. Those readers who desire to obtain a general and yet accurate survey of Huxley's life

and work, will find an excellent account of it, in a brief compass, in Mr Chalmers Mitchell's pages.

Huxley's own estimate of his position in the scientific world is given in a letter to the Bishop of Ripon (1887):

'As for me, in part from force of circumstance and in part from a conviction I could be of most use in that way, I have played the part of something between maid-of-all-work and gladiator-general for Science' (ii, 162).

He thus placed his public duties and, above all, his struggle to uphold the dignity and the freedom of science,' before his scientific discoveries; and, significant as these were, it is impossible to feel that he was mistaken.

Almost at the outset of his career, Huxley was deeply impressed by the utter carelessness of scientific requirements, and the frequent contempt for scientific work, which prevailed in the British Government Services. The Rattlesnake, the surveying ship on which he was surgeon, sailed without a volume on science,' in spite of the captain's application. On the voyage itself, Huxley says:

"The singular disrespect, with which the majority of naval officers regard everything that lies beyond the sphere of routine, tends to produce a tone of feeling very unfavourable to scientific exertions. How can it be otherwise, in fact, with men who, from the age of thirteen, meet with no influence but that which teaches them that the "Queen's regulations and instructions" are the law and the prophets, and something more?' (i, 49).

When Huxley returned home and was working out his material, he found it impossible to get a small grant for publication. In returning thanks as a medallist at the Royal Society dinner, on November 30th, 1852, he said:

The Government of this country, of this great country, has been two years debating whether it should grant the three hundred pounds necessary for the publication of these researches' (i, 104).

Twenty-one years later he wrote to Professor Anton Dohrn, who was then founding the Zoological Station at Naples :

'I only wish I could see England represented among the applicants for tables. But you see England is so poor' (i, 399).

Again, nearly ten years later, Dohrn wrote to ask 'whether England would follow the example of Germany and Italy in sending naval officers to the Zoological Station at Naples to be instructed in catching and preserving marine animals for the purposes of scientific research.' To this he replied:

So far as the British Admiralty is represented by the ordinary British admiral, the only reply to such a proposition as you make that I should expect would be that he (the British admiral, to wit) would see you d -d first' (ii, 42).

Huxley's early experience of this general depreciation of science was doubtless the chief cause of the splendid and, so far as it went, successful stand which he made for the principle expressed in the words he uttered in 1866:

'The important question for England was not the duration of her coal, but the due comprehension of the truths of science, and the labours of her scientific men' (i, 277).

Those who consider that it would be an extravagance for a Government to spend money in objects such as those indicated in the previous paragraphs, and in costly experiments under the direction of the most eminent scientific men, may be reminded that the extravagance of the antagonistic attitude is revealed at a later stage, when we are compelled to make war in a British colony of which no trustworthy maps exist, when our wounded are jolted in ambulances devised by men clearly ignorant of the principles of their trade, and when our neglect of scientific training, of chemical and other laboratories, and of technical and commercial schools, is threatening to deprive us of our industrial and commercial supremacy.

It is only possible to speak of Huxley's success in this matter in qualified terms, because so much remains to be done. Writing in 1892, he speaks of the Trustees of the British Museum, of whom he was one, as

'hampered by the Treasury and the Civil Service regulations. If a Bates turned up now, I doubt if one could appoint him, however much one wished it, unless he would submit to some idiotic examination' (ii, 342, 343).

This is still the recognised method of appointment; and the recognised method of advancement is that of

which he wrote to the then Director, Sir W. H. Flower, in 1891:

"My "next worst thing" was promoting a weak man to a place of responsibility in lieu of a strong one, on the mere ground of seniority. Cæteris paribus, or even with approximate equality of qualifications, no doubt seniority ought to count; but it is mere ruin to any service to let it interfere with the promotion of men of marked superiority, especially in the case of offices which involve much responsibility' (ii, 295). So far as the Trustees are able to make occasional exceptions in appointment or advancement they of course create a grievance in the minds of the most deserving among those who have been subject to the mechanical system. Here is a cause in which we may well invoke a double portion of Huxley's spirit to aid us in sweeping away the sterile influences which unfortunately hold sway in a noble institution. On June 7th, 1887, Huxley had an interview by appointment with Lord Salisbury, then Prime Minister. He took some very interesting notes immediately after the interview (ii, 164, 165), which was significant of a desire on the part of the Government formally to recognise achievement in science, letters, and art. The difficulties of official recognition were well put by Huxley; and from the point of view of the scientific man such a movement, as well as the conferment of rank or nobility, to which Huxley also objected, would be of doubtful advantage. But from the point of view of public advantage it would seem to be the duty of a man of science always to help, in however small a degree, the Government and Services to maintain and increase their contact with scientific workers and thinkers.

The requirements of space prevent any further consideration on the present occasion of Huxley's public duties of his services to education, of his work on Royal Commissions, of his tenure of important offices in the scientific world, including the most important of all, the Presidency of the Royal Society. In these positions 'the freedom and the dignity of science' was the cause which he ever served with unfailing energy and conscientiousness. Although Huxley was immersed in these public duties, and was much hampered by ill-health, he had the keenest enthusiasm for research. His enquiries were not

those of the naturalist. 'I am afraid there is very little of the genuine naturalist in me,' he says of himself; and walking once with Hooker in the Rhone valley, where the grass was alive with red and green grasshoppers, he said, 'I would give anything to be as interested in them as you are' (ii, 443). In later days he experienced the pleasures of the naturalist in his study of gentians in Switzerland, and in the care of his garden; but through all the strenuous years of his life it was the architectural and engineering' side of nature which appealed to him; he was a comparative anatomist with a strong but unsatisfied craving for physiological enquiry.

Although zoological science was profoundly influenced by his researches, Huxley was too independent to attach himself to any school, and did not even covet one of his own.

""Authorities," "disciples," and "schools"' he wrote (ii, 316), 'are the curse of science; and do more to interfere with the work of the scientific spirit than all its enemies."

There are, however, interesting exceptions to the scientific isolation which was on the whole a marked characteristic of the man. The most remarkable of these was his warm sympathy with the work of the late W. Kitchin Parker, to whom he wrote, as a mock spiritual adviser :

'Nothing short of the direct temptation of the evil one could lead you to entertain so monstrous a doctrine as that you propound about Cariamida. I recommend fasting for three days and the application of a scourge thrice in the twenty-four hours! Do this, and about the fourth day you will perceive that the cranial differences alone are as great as those between Cathartes and Serpentarius' (i, 286).

The generous interest he took in a dock labourer who had observed for himself with a magnifying glass (ii, 365 &c.) is to be looked upon as the expression of his strong human sympathies. The writings of those who assisted him in teaching testify to the warm affection, as well as a feeling akin to reverence, which he inspired. In one important respect he profoundly modified his system of instruction as the result of the influence of an assistant teacher, the late Professor Jeffery Parker, who induced him to reverse the order of studies in the biological course which he in