Part 13 (1/2)
”Into this Universe, and _Why_ not knowing Nor _Whence_, like water willy-nilly flowing; And out of it, like Wind along the Waste I know not _Whither_, willy-nilly blowing”
But, the more profoundly does the conception of evolution lay hold of hunise that man and all that is best in man--his aspirations, ideas, virtues, and practical and abstract justice and goodness--are just as much the product of the cosmic process and part of the Cosle for existence
CHAPTER XVII
CLOSING DAYS AND SUMMARY
Huxley's Life in London--Decennial Periods--Ill-health--Retirement to Eastbourne--Death--Personal Appearance--Methods of Work--Personal Characteristics--An Inspirer of Others--His Influence in Science--A Naturalist by Vocation--His Aspirations
Huxley's life followed the quiet and even tenor of that of a professional reat adventure in it was his youthful voyage on the _Rattlesnake_ That over, and his choice ainst medicine, he settled down in London He married happily and shared in the common joys and sorrows of doh he was never rich, after the first few years of life in London, his incoreater part of his working life, he lived actually in London, in the ordinary style and with the ordinary social enjoyments of a professional e of Science and with the Geological Survey were not arduous but constant; his time was fully occupied with these, with his scientific and literary work, with the business of scientific societies, with the occasional obligations of royal coements The quiet routine of his life was diversified by many visits to provincial towns to deliver lectures or addresses, by s of the British association, by holidays in Switzerland, during which, with Tyndall, he laciation, and in the usual Continental resorts, and by several trips to Ah-and-ready fashi+on, Huxley's active life may be broken into a set of decennial periods, each with tolerably distinctive characters The first period, roughly from 1850 to 1860, was ale, by his transition to science as a career, his researches into the invertebrate forations, and a co and literary work The second decennium still found him employed chiefly in research, vertebrate and extinct for , but the dominant feature of the decennium was his assumption of the Darwinian doctrines In connection with these latter, his literary and lecturing work increased greatly, and the side issues of as, in itself, purely a scientific controversy began to lead hiious studies The third period, from 1870 to 1880, was considerably different in character He had becoland, at a ti a quite unusual amount of scientific and public attention Public honours and public duties, soan to crowd upon him, and the tiation became rapidly more limited within this period He was secretary of the Royal Society, a member of the London School Board, president of the British association, Lord Rector at several universities, overnical Society In this multitude of duties it was natural that the bulk of strictly scientific output was limited, but, on the other hand, his literary output was er Between 1880 and 1890 he had reached the full maturity of a splendid reputation, and honours and duties pressed thick upon him For part of the tiuished position to which a scientific eneral public at least in as high esteeinal scientific work still appeared froeneral contributions to thought
[Illustration: CARICATURE OF HUXLEY DRAWN BY HIMSELF Reproduced by permission frohout his life, Huxley had never been robust From his youth upwards he had been troubled by dyspepsia with its usual accompaniment of occasional fits of severe mental and physical depression In 1872 he was coh he returned to resume full labour, it is doubtful if froth norrave; in the following years he had two attacks of pleurisy, and syradually withdrew from his official posts, and, in 1890, retired to Eastbourne, where he had built himself a house on the Downs The more healthy conditions and the coood effect, and he was able to write some of his most brilliant essays and to make a few public appearances: at Oxford in 1893, when he delivered the Ro of the British association in 1894, when he spoke on the vote of thanks to the President, the Marquis of Salisbury; at the Royal Society in the same year when he received the recently established ”Darwin Medal”
Early in the spring of 1895, he had a prostrating attack of influenza, and from that time until his death on June 29, 1895, he was an invalid He was buried in the Marylebone cemetery at Finchley, to the north of London
Huxley was of middle stature and rather slender build His face, as Professor Ray Lankester described it, was ”grave, black-browed, and fiercely earnest” His hair, plentiful and worn rather long, was black until in old age it became silvery white He wore short side whiskers, but shaved the rest of his face, leaving fully exposed an obstinate chin, and rim and resolute in repose, but capable of relaxation into a smile of almost feminine charm
He was a very hard worker and took little exercise Professor Howes describes a typical day as occupied by lecture and laboratory work at the College of Science until his hurried luncheon; then a cab-drive to the Home Office for his work as Inspector of Fisheries; then a cab ho after dinner spent in literary work or scientific reading While at work, his whole attention was engrossed, and he disliked being disturbed This abstraction of his attention is illustrated humorously by a story told by one of his deations required for his book on the Crayfish, and his demonstrator came in to ask a question about a codfish ”Codfish?” said Huxley; ”that's a vertebrate, isn't it? Ask ht and I'll consider it”
While at work he smoked almost continuously, and from time to time he took a little relaxation, for the strains of a fiddle were occasionally heard fro it as one of the highest of the aesthetic pleasures He tells us himself:
”When I was a boy, I was very fond of music, and I am so now; and it so happened that I had the opportunity of hearing s, I had abundant opportunities of hearing that great old h I knew nothing aboutwhatever about it now--the intense satisfaction and delight which I had in listening, by the hour together, to Bach's fugues It is a pleasure which relad to think; but, of late years, I have tried to find out the why and wherefore, and it has often occurred to me that the pleasure derived from musical compositions of this kind is essentially of the same nature as that which is derived froarded as purely intellectual I mean, that the source of pleasure is exactly the say--that you have the theme in one of the old masters' works followed out in all its endless variations, always appearing and always re you of unity in variety”
He had a hot temper, and did not readily brook opposition, especially when that seemed to him to be the result of stupidity or of prejudice rather than of reason, and his own reason was of a very clear, decided, and exact order He had little sympathy with vacillation of any kind, whether it arose from hts in balancing opposing considerations He said on one occasion:
”A great lawyer-statese--I mean Francis Bacon--said that truth came out of error much more rapidly than out of confusion There is a wonderful truth in that saying Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will coht and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you cohly and persistently wrong, you ood fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and that sets you all straight again So I will not troublein what I am about to say, but at any rate I hope to be clear and definite; and then you will be able to judge for yourselves whether, in following out the train of thought I have to introduce, you knock your heads against facts or not”
The particular suggestions to which these remarks were the characteristic introduction related to definite problems of education, that is to say, to questions upon which soent It was in all cases of life, in science or affairs, that Huxley was resolute for clear ideas and definite courses of conduct As a reater care to satisfy hi; but where action rather than reflection was needed, then his principle was to act, and to know definitely and clearly why you acted and for what you acted In matters of opinion, on the other hand, he was all for not co to a definite opinion when the facts obtainable did not justify such an opinion In thought, agnosticism, the refusal to accept any ideas or principles except on sufficient evidence; in action, positivism, to act promptly in definite and known directions for definite and known objects: these were his principles
Another aspect of the same trait of character, he shewed in an address to ratulating the victors he confessed to ”an undercurrent of sympathy for those who have not been successful, for those valiant knights who have been overthrown in their tourney, and have notan early failure of his own, he proceeded:
”I said toto be done?' And I found that policy of 'neverto be done, to be the most important of all policies in the conduct of practical life It does notas you do not get dirty when you tumble; it is only the people who have to stop to be washed and made clean, who must necessarily lose the race You learn that which is of inestireat many people in the world who are just as clever as you are
You learn to put your trust, by and by, in an econoality of the exercise of your powers both moral and intellectual; and you very soon find out, if you have not found it out before, that patience and tenacity of purpose are worth ht of cleverness”
All Huxley's as marked by a quality whichthrough his o, the subjects of which have since been handled and rehandled by other writers with neledge and with new methods at their disposal, one is struck that all the observations he eneralisations have often been reached, and some of the positions occupied by Huxley have been turned But what he saw and described had not to be redescribed; the citations he made from the older authorities were always so chosen as to contain the exact gist of the writers These qualities, admirable in scientific work, becas His own exactnessany inexactness in his adversaries, and there were few disputants who left an argued condition
The consciousness which he had of his own careful ave hih order As he knew himself to have made sure of his preht lead hiainst whatsoever established doctrine or accepted axio spice of natural combativeness in his nature, the direct result of his native and highly trained critical faculty He tells us that in the pre-Darwinian days he was accustomed to defend the fixity of species in the company of evolutionists and in the presence of the orthodox to attack the same doctrine Later in life, when evolution had beco elevated into a new dogmatism, he was as ready to criticise the loose adherents of his own views as he had been to expose the weakness of the conventional dog feature of Huxley's work as a whole was its infectious nature His vigorous and decided personality was reflected on all the subjects to which he gave attention, and in the same fashi+on as his presence infected persons with a personal enthusias the sareat influence is clear in the nuists who careat army of writers and thinkers who have been inspired by his views and eneral questions His position as an actual contributor to science has to a certain extent been lost sight of for two reasons In the first place, his effect on the world as an expositor of the scientific eneral application to life has overshadowed his exact work; in the second place, his exact work itself has been partly lost sight of in the new discoveries and advances to which it gave rise It is therefore necessary to reiterate that, apart from all his other successes, he had uished position in the annals of exact science Sir Michael Foster and Prof Ray Lankester, in their preface to the collected edition of his scientific memoirs, make a just claim for him These memoirs, they wrote, show that, ”apart froress of biology during the present century was largely due to labours of his of which the general public knew nothing, and that he was in soinal and most fertile in discovery of all his felloorkers in the same branch of science”
There can be little question that it was no accident that determined the direction of Huxley's career He was a naturalist by inborn vocation The contrast between a natural bent and an acquired habit of life ell seen in the case of Huxley and Macgillivray, his companion on the _Rattlesnake_ The foreon, and it was no part of his duties to busy himself with the creatures of the sea; and yet his observations on theical science and laid the sure foundation of a world-wide and enduring reputation The latter was the son of a naturalist, a naturalist by profession, and appointed to the expedition as its official naturalist; and yet he made only a few observations and a liuous place in the annals of zoology is the accidental result of his companionshi+p with Huxley The special natural endowy were, in the first place, a faculty for the patient and assiduous observation of facts; in the second, a swift power of discri facts; in the third, the constructive ability to arrange these essentials in wide generalisations which we call laws or principles and which, within the li-point for new deductions These were the faculties which he brought to his science, but there were added to them two personal characteristics without which they would not have taken hiuishes the successful man from the muddler and without which the finest mental powers are as useless as a co-wheel They were directed by a lofty and disinterested enthusiasm, without which the erous to society The faculties and qualities which ist were practically those which he applied to the general questions of biological theory, to the problems of education and of society, and to philosophy and metaphysics A co of questions that lay outside the special province to which the greater part of his life was devoted, with the dubious and involved treativen such questions by the professional politicians to wholish races tend to entrust their destinies, is a useful comment on that value of science as discipline to which Huxley so strenuously called attention
There can be no better way of ending this sketch of Huxley's life and work than by quoting his own account of the objects to which he had devoted himself consciously These were:
”To proe and to forward the application of scientific ation to all the problems of life to the best of rowth and strengthened with s of ht and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garlier features is stripped off
”It is with this intent that I have subordinated any reasonable or unreasonable ambition for scientific fame which I may have permitted myself to entertain to other ends; to the popularisation of science; to the developanisation of scientific education; to the endless series of battles and skir opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit, that clericalisland, as everywhere else, and to whatever deno, is the deadly ene for the attain many, and I shall be well content to be remembered, or even not re which I am proud to reckon the devoted kindness of many friends, have led towhich the presidency of the Royal Society is the highest It would be mock modesty on my part, with these and other scientific honours which have been bestowed upon me, to pretend that I have not succeeded in the career which I have followed, rather because I was driven into it than of my own free will; but I as as marks of success if I could not hope that I had not somewhat helped that movement of opinion which has been called the New Reformation”