November 22, 1900] 



NATURE 



95 



his life — to publish such a book at that time was a bold step. 

 But the prophecy with which he concluded the work is coming 

 true. 



"After passion and prejudice have died away," he said, " the 

 same result will attend the teachings of the naturalist respecting 

 that great Alps and Andes of the living world — Man. Our 

 reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by 

 the knowledge that man is, in substance and in structure, one 

 with the brutes ; for he alone possesses the marvellous endow- 

 ments of intelligible and rational speech, whereby, in the secular 

 period of his existence, he has slowly accumulated and organised 

 the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of 

 every individual life in other animals ; so that now he stands 

 raised upon it as on a mountain top — far above the level of his 

 humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by 

 reflecting here and there a ray from the infinite source of 

 truth" ("Collected Essays," vii. p. 155), 



Another important research connected with the work of our 

 Society was his investigation of the structure of the vertebrate 

 skull. Owen had propounded a theory and worked it out most 

 ingeniously that the skull was a complicated elaboration of the 

 anterior part of the backbone ; that it was gradually developed 

 from a preconceived idea or archetype ; that it was possible to 

 make out a certain number of vertebrae, and even the separate 

 parts of which they were composed. 



Huxley maintained that the archetypal theory was erroneous ; 

 and that instead of being a modification of the anterior part of 

 the primitive representative of the backbone, the skull is rather 

 an independent growth around and in front of it. Subsequent 

 investigations have strengthened this view, which was now 

 generally accepted. This lecture marked an epoch in vertebrate 

 morphology, and the views he enunciated still hold the field. 



One of the most interesting parts of Huxley's work, and one 

 specially connected with our Society, was his study of the ethno- 

 logy of the British Isles. It has also an important practical and 

 political application, because the absurd idea that ethnologically 

 the inhabitants of our islands form three nations — the English, 

 Scotch and Irish — has exercised a malignant eff"ect on some of 

 our statesmen, and is still not without influence on our politics. 

 One of the strongest arguments put forward in favour of Home 

 Rule used to be that the Irish were a "nation." In 1887 I 

 attacked this view in some letters to the Times, subsequently pub- 

 lished by Quaritch. Nothing is more certain than that 

 there was not a Scot in Scotland till the seventh century ; 

 that the east of our island from John o' Groat's House to Kent 

 is Teutonic ; that the most important ethnological line, so far as 

 there is one at all, is not the boundary between England and 

 Scotland, but the north and south watershed which separates the 

 East and West. In Ireland, again, the population is far from 

 homogeneous. Huxley strongly supported the position I had 

 taken up. " We have," he said, " as good evidence as can 

 possibly be obtained on such subjects that the same elements 

 have entered into the composition of the population in England, 

 Scotland and Ireland ; and that the ethnic differences between 

 the three lie simply in the general and local proportions of these 

 elements in each region. . . . The population of Cornwall and 

 Devon has as much claim to the title of Celtic as that of Tip- 

 perary. . . . Undoubtedly there are four geographical regions, 

 England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and the people who live 

 in them call themselves and are called by others the English, 

 Scotch, Welsh and Irish nations. It is also true that the inha- 

 bitants of the Isle of Man call themselves Manxmen, and are just 

 as proud of their nationality as any other 'nationalities.' 



" But if we mean no more than this by ' nationality,' the term 

 has no practical significance" ("The Races of the Brit. Isles," 

 pp. 44, 45). 



Surely it would be very desirable, especially when political 

 arguments are based on the term, that we should come to some 

 understanding as to what is meant by the word 'nation.' The 

 English, Scotch and Irish live under one Flag, one Queen, and 

 one Parliament. If they are not one nation, what are they? 

 What term are we to use, and some term is obviously required, 

 to express and combine all three. For my part I submit that 

 the correct terminology is to speak of Celtic race or Teutonic 

 race, of the Irish people or the Scotch people ; but that the 

 people of England, Scotland and Ireland, aye, and of the 

 Colonies also, constitute one great nation. 



As regards the races which have combined to form the nation, 

 Huxley's view was that in Roman times the population of 



NO. 1 62 I, VOL. 63] 



Britain comprised people of two types, the one fair, the other dark. 

 The dark people resembled the Aquitani and the Iberians ; the 

 fair people were like the Belgic Gauls (" Essays," V. vii. p. 254). 

 And he adds that "the only constituent stocks of that popula- 

 tion, now, or at any other period about which we have evidence, 

 are the dark whites, whom I have proposed to call "Melan- 

 ochroi" and the fair whites or " Xanthochroi." 



He concludes (i) " That the Melanochroi and the Xanthochroi 

 are two separate races in the biological sense of the word race ; 

 (2) that they have had the same general distribution as at present 

 from the earliest times of which any record exists on the con- 

 tinent of Europe ; (3) that the population of the British Islands 

 is derived from them, and from them only. 



It will, however, be observed that we have (i) a dark race 

 and a fair race; (2) a large race and a small race; and (3) a 

 round-headed race and a broad-headed race. But some of the 

 fair race were large, some small ; some have round heads^ some 

 long heads ; some of the dark race again had long heads, some 

 round ones. In fact, the question seems to me more compli- 

 cated than Huxley supposed. The Mongoloid race extend now 

 from China to Lapland ; but in Huxley's opinion they 

 never penetrated much further West, and never reached our 

 islands. "I am unable," he says, "to discover any 

 ground for believing that a Lapp element has ever entered 

 into the population of these islands." It is true that we 

 have not, so far as I know, anything which amounts to 

 proof. We know, however, that all the other animals which are 

 associated with the Lapps once inhabited Great Britain. Was 

 man the only exception ? I think not, more especially when 

 we find, not only the animals of Lapland, but tools and 

 weapons identical with those of the Lapps. I must not enlarge 

 on this, and perhaps I may have an opportunity of laying my 

 views on the subject more fully before the Society ; but I may 

 be allowed to indicate my own conclusion, namely, t^at the 

 races to which Huxley refers are amongst the latest arrivals in 

 our islands ; that England was peopled long before its separa- 

 tion from the mainland, and that after the English Channel was 

 formed, successive hordes of invaders made their way across the 

 sea, but as they brought no women, or but few, with them, 

 they exterminated the men, or reduced them to slavery, and 

 married the women. Thus through their mothers our country- 

 men retain the strain of previous races, and hence perhaps we 

 differ so much from the populations across the silver streak. 



Summing up this side of Huxley's work, Sir M. Foster 

 has truly said that, " whatever bit of life he touched in his 

 search, protozoan, polyp, mollusc, crustacean, fish, reptile, 

 beast and man — and there were few living things he did 

 not touch — he shed light on it, and left his mark. There 

 is not one, or hardly one, of the many things which he has 

 written which may not be read again to-day with pleasure and 

 with profit, and, not once or twice only in such a reading, it 

 will be felt that the progress of science has given to words writ- 

 ten long ago a strength and meaning even greater than that 

 which they seemed to have when first they were read." 



In 1870, Huxley became a member of the first London School 

 Board, and though his health compelled him to resign early in 

 1872, it would be difficult to exaggerate the value of the service 

 he rendered to London and, indeed, to the country generally. 



The education and discipline which he recommended were : — 



(i) Physical training and drill. 



(2) Household work or domestic economy, especially for girls. 



(3) The elementary laws of conduct. 



(4) Intellectual training, reading, writing and arithmetic, 

 elementary science, music and drawing. 



He maintained that " no boy or girl should leave school with- 

 out possessing a grasp of the general character of science, and 

 without having been disciplined more or less in the methods of 

 all sciences." 



As regards the higher education, he was a strong advocate for 

 science and modern languages, though without wishing to drop 

 the classics. 



Some years ago, for an article on higher education, I consulted 

 a good many of the highest authorities on the number of hours 

 per week which in their judgment should be given to the prin- 

 cipal subjects. Huxley, amongst others, kindly gave me his 

 views. He suggested 10 hours for ancient languages and 

 literature, 10 for modern languages and literature, 8 for arith- 

 m^ic and mathematics, 8 for science, 2 for geography, and 2 

 for religious instruction. 



For my own part I am firmly convinced that the amount of 



