REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY.' 



B}^ John Fiske. 



The recent publication of an admira])le ineuioir of Huxley, }>v his 

 son Leonard,^ has awakened in me old memories of some of the pleas- 

 antest scenes I have ever known. The book is written in a spirit of 

 charming- frankness, and is thickly crowded with details not one of 

 which could well be spared. A notable feature is the copiousness of 

 the extracts from familiar letters, in which everything- is faithfully 

 reproduced, even to the genial nonsense that abounds, or the big, I)ig- 

 1) that sometimes, though rarel}^ adds its pungent flavor. Huxley 

 was above all things a man absoluteh^ simple and natural; he never 

 posed, was never starched, or prim, or on his good behavior; and he 

 was nothing if not playful. A biography that brings him before us, 

 robust and lifelike on every page, as this book does, is surely a model 

 biography. A brief article, like the present, can not even attempt to 

 do justice to it, l)ut I am moved to jot down some of the reminiscences 

 and reflections which it has awakened. 



My tirst introduction to the fact of Huxley's existence was in Feb- 

 ruary, 1861, when I was a sophomore at Harvard. The second serial 

 number of Herbert Spcncer\s First Principles, which had just arrived 

 from London, and on Avhich I was feasting my soul, contained an 

 interesting reference to Huxley's views concerning a ^'pre-geologic 

 past of unknown duration." In the next serial number a footnote 

 informed the reader that the phrase "persistence of force," since 

 become so famous, was suggested by Huxley, as avoiding an objection 

 which Spencer had raised to the current expression 'V-onservation of 

 force." Further references to Huxley, as also to Tyndall, in the course 

 of the l)ook, left me with a vague conception of the three frien.ls as, 

 after a certain fashion, partners in the business of scieutitic research 

 and generalization. 



'Copyright, 1901, bv Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Reprinted from the Atlantic 

 Monthly for February,' 1901 , by special permission of the author an.l h.s publisher.. 



Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , ,1 , i.. .«•„ 



^ Life and letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, by his son, Leonard Huxlc> . In t«o 

 volumes. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1900. ^^^ 



SM 1900 tt9 



