NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 45. Vol. VII. NOVEMBER. 1895. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Reminiscences of Huxley. 



TN Scyibner's Magazine for October, Mr. George W. Smalley writes 

 ■^ a pleasant and intimate paper on Huxley. During the many 

 years Mr. Smalley represented a great American newspaper in 

 London, he became acquainted with nearly all our latter-day cele- 

 brities, and he was a private friend of Huxley's for years. Since some 

 may be ignorant of the marvellous extent to which Huxley was 

 well-informed upon every subject he discussed, we quote a striking 

 instance — one of many — from Mr. Smalley. " When he set forth in 

 his trenchant way some of the absurdities of Auguste Comte, Mr. 

 Frederic Harrison, one of the high priests of positivism in England, 

 replied that Mr. Huxley had evidently never read Comte. Huxley 

 took the trouble to explain that he had early mastered the six 

 volumes of the ' Philosophic Positive,' and had re-read them for the 

 purposes of that discussion." 



The combative side of Huxley's character is at least sufficiently 

 well-known to everyone. A great part of his life was spent in 

 fighting; but it was in fighting for science and for freedom of thought. 

 The gentler side of his nature impressed itself on Mr. Smalley. " At 

 his own table he avoided arguments when he could. Others, or all 

 others, did not. Mr. Huxley sat there with a serenity and patience 

 which were admirable, joining in discussions in a way to mitigate 

 their severity ; he himself, too, of a nature to avoid all compromise, 

 but keeping under the purely intellectual view, and reviving the 

 social view, when too eager disputants seemed in danger of taking 

 some other." 



Huxley was devoted to cats. " Like all men of gentle mind, 

 Mr. Huxley liked this gentle race ; liked their coaxing ways, their 

 intelligence, their unlikeness to that human kind with which they 

 have, nevertheless, a sympathy so strong, when the human sympathy 

 and intelligence are equal to theirs. One or other of his cats was 



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