NATURE 



613 



THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1898. 



THE FIRST VOLUME OF HUXLEY'S 

 MEMOIRS. 

 The Scientific Memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley. 

 Edited by Profs. M. Foster, Sec.R.S., and E. Ray 

 Lankester, F.R.S. Vol. i. Pp. xv + 606. (London : 

 Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1898.) 



THE editor, whose commands it has long ceased to 

 be possible for an old contributor to gainsay, has 

 desired me to write some notice of the first of these 

 volumes. That his choice should have fallen upon a 

 botanist is perhaps singular : for though there was no 

 branch of biological science to which Huxley was not 

 sympathetic, the bulk of his work is entirely beyond my 

 powers of criticism. Other hands, I understand, will do 

 justice to it as the successive volumes appear. 



My task, at any rate, is merely introductory. And in 

 that sense I gladly undertake it. For the appearance of 

 this stately volume is to me a matter of peculiar satis- 

 faction. I think it cannot be doubted that Huxley stood 

 in the public eye as something other than a great man of 

 science. The outside world saw that he had the scientific 

 world at his back when it made him first Secretary and 

 then President of the Royal Society. But why it was so, 

 it may be confidently stated that the vast majority of 

 persons had not the vaguest idea. They knew that he 

 had a great literary gift : "at least," said Mr. Balfour at 

 the Memorial meeting, "he will go down to posterity as 

 a great master of English prose " ; they knew that he had 

 a singularly lucid and impressive power of oral exposition ; 

 they saw that he spent no small part of his life and of 

 his strength in public work and the service of the State : 

 most marvelled at the dexterity with which he wielded 

 the perilous weapon of controversy ; a necessarily smaller 

 number delighted in the charm with which he played the 

 part of the brilliant man of society ; and perhaps some, 

 fewer still, recognised his place amongst the great 

 thinkers of his time. 



The splendid gifts which led to success in so many and 

 such varied fields threw the real Huxley which science 

 will hand down to posterity somewhat in the background. 

 I was one of those who were extremely anxious that this 

 side of him should be brought into due prominence by 

 the collection of his scientific work. The project was 

 beset with many difficulties, and it would never probably 

 have been achieved but for the chivalrous loyalty with 

 which the publishers of this journal came to the rescue. 



I have stated one reason why, personally, I desired it 

 done. From the point of view of establishing Huxley's 

 place in scientific history, it will be no unworthy apologia 

 pro vitd sud. But there are others about which a few 

 words may be said. 



Not long ago Mr. Lionel Tollemache quoted Mr. Glad- 

 stone as saying that while he allowed genius to Romaites 

 he could not concede it to Huxley. The dictum is of no 

 critical or, indeed, of any other value, except as giving 

 an insight into Mr. Gladstone's own ways of thought. 

 For what do we mean by genius ? I take it that it is the 

 power of seeing further into the nature of things than is 

 possible with the ordinary insight possessed at the time by 

 NO. I 5 13, VOL. 58] 



a man's contemporaries. Genius, then, is essentially 

 prophetic. And being so, the validity of its utterances 

 can only be judged by posterity. When one walks in a 

 wood, how can one judge the relative height of the trees ; 

 viewed from a distance it jumps to the eyes. For my 

 part, then, I regard it as at once pohte and politic to 

 allow genius to all my friends. 



But the juxtaposition of Romanes with Huxley sug- 

 gests some interesting considerations of quite another 

 kind. I knew both pretty intimately ; both are dead, 

 and I would not utter a word of criticism which would 

 be unkind to the memory of either. Romanes was 

 peculiarly interesting to talk to ; his writing gave me less 

 satisfaction. The bent of his mind was essentially de- 

 ductive ; his mental processes pursued an abstract course 

 aloof from facts, and if he ever descended to them, it 

 was from a sort of condescension to the weaker brethren 

 amongst us. When he arrived at a conclusion, he 

 looked about for facts to verify it. The method was 

 quite logical and correct. Only unfortunately, in common 

 with others who have followed the same line, he never 

 really grasped the fact that biological science is very far 

 indeed from admitting at present of deductive treatment 

 at all. 



Huxley, on the other hand, was supremely objective. 

 Animated throughout his life by the most intense 

 "curiosity" in the higher sense, the establishment of 

 accurate observations was a positive passion with him. 

 If facts came into collision with theory, with Romanes 

 it was so much the worse for the facts ; with Huxley, so 

 much the worse for the theory. Even I, in turning over 

 the pages of this handsome volume, can trace the dis- 

 sipation of the mists of hazy transcendentalism in the 

 middle third of the century as Huxley's ardent sun rose 

 stronger and stronger above the horizon. I suppose, but 

 I speak with all diffidence in such a matter, that it was 

 in its full fervour when he wrote the classical paper with 

 which this volume concludes, "On the theory of the 

 vertebrate skull." I myself was too early to come under 

 Huxley's influence in this direction, but I can yet re- 

 member the dreary Okenism with which the Comparative 

 Anatomy Lecture-room was pervaded before Huxley's 

 teaching had sunk to the level of the schools. 



But the insatiate pursuit of fact, by which I mean the 

 achievement of accurate objective knowledge without 

 prepossession of any kind, was not Huxley's only 

 scientific characteristic. It was accompanied by extra- 

 ordinary powers of generalisation. He was not a mere 

 compiler of observations. Sparing no pains to see the 

 phenomena accurately, he was equally keen to make 

 them tell their hidden story. Perhaps sometimes he 

 was too keen ; but if the story, as Huxley read it, would 

 not always bear subsequent examination, at any rate the 

 original documents on which it was based were always 

 available to test it by. 



But there is a curious fascination in turning over the 

 collected work of a man such as Huxley, and tracing 

 the mental paths by which his own ideas shaped them- 

 selves. It is not the habit now to study anything but 

 the last and most fashionable text-book. Yet I am 

 persuaded that any biologist who wishes to cultivate 

 accurate habits of thought might profit e.\ceedingly by 

 a careful study of these pages. The method of research 



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