Characterisation, especially by Letters 627 



with the subject, but for all that he stuck obstinately to his conclusions and afterwards 

 published the contents of his letter (at this moment I forget where) without any recognition 

 of the facts that told against him. Another meteorological view to which he clung with some 

 persistency, which in a narrow sense is right but in a broader sense is wrong, was that the fact 

 of the weather having been, say, dry beyond the average for some months in some particular 

 place, was no justification for the popular belief that the deficiency in rain would be made up 

 later. He insisted on treating the past and future weather as independent variables, which 

 they are not. Local deficiencies in one place testify to local excesses in others, and as the whole 

 atmosphere travels on there is a tendency for the one to replace the other and for averages to 

 be maintained. 



He was a most impracticable administrator when put to the test. Thus, there were great 

 complaints at the Athenaeum Club of the way in which the dining-room was managed. He, 

 I and one of the chief of the malcontents happened to be members of its Committee at the 

 time. Spencer argued that experience in dealing with such matters was of comparatively little 

 importance, adducing examples in confirmation, and he finally carried his proposition that 

 a sub-Committee of three should be appointed with large powers, and that it should consist of 

 himself and the malcontent and myself as the third, being professionally unfettered and 

 presumably having leisure. I did not much like the task, but accepted. We met, and a most 

 comically inefficient group we proved to be. There was a continual perversity in Spencer's 

 views, and yet it was always a defensible perversity. He gave what seemed to me a dispro- 

 portionate weight to small questions, treating them as matters of deep principle to be set forth 

 in ponderous words, with the result that we hardly got on at all. I recollect one amusing 

 scene ; our butcher was summoned to be admonished as to the quality of his beef. I forget 

 the precise words used by Spencer, which the butcher rebutted in terms satisfactory to 

 himself, to which Spencer replied with severity: "You seem not to appreciate the nature of 

 our complaint; your beef has too large a proportion of cellular tissue." The butcher fairly 

 collapsed under the weight of this accusation. He could not comprehend it but evidently 

 believed that it might in some obscure way be justified. 



As regards heredity — one day he spoke with surprised concern to me upon his learning 

 that the weight of scientific belief was opposed to the inheritance of acquired faculties ; for, if 

 they were not inherited, much of his scheme of evolution would be invalidated. I spoke of 

 many observations and arguments by which it seemed to be disproved, but he never I believe 

 consented to go thoroughly and with open mind into this question. I am inclined to think 

 that he unconsciously gave almost as much logical weight to one of his own deductions as he 

 would to a well-observed fact. His over-tendency to a priori reasoning has been fully recognised. 

 He came to me one day to have impressions taken of his fingers, I being at that time much 

 occupied with finger-prints. I spoke of our ignorance of the object of the papillary ridges 

 which form the peculiar patterns on the bulbs of the fingers and which are closely connected 

 with the ducts of the sudorific glands, and said that more careful dissection was still wanted 

 of the human embryo. He said: "You are studying the question in the wrong way, you ought 

 to begin by considering the conditions that have to be fulfilled ; the mouths of the ducts being 

 delicate require the protection of the ridges " ; and he then enlarged with ingenuity and elaboration 

 on the consequences of this necessity. I wickedly allowed him to finish and then replied: "Your 

 argument ought to be most convincing, but it unfortunately happens that the mouths do not 

 open out in the valleys where the}' might be protected, but along the crests of the ridges in 

 the most exposed position possible." He burst into a good-humoured fit of laughter and then 

 repeated to me the now well-known story about himself, which curiously enough I have also 

 heard from the other two persons present at the time. My version of it is more dramatic than 

 that in the Autobiography. They formed a party of three, Huxley, Spencer and another, dining 

 together at the Club. In course of conversational banter Spencer said : " You would little think 

 when I was young I wrote a tragedy." Huxley instantly flashed out with "I know its plot." 

 Spencer indignantly denied the possibility of his knowing it, he having never shown the tragedy 

 nor even spoken of its existence to any one, before then. Huxley persisted, and being challenged 

 to tell, said that the plot lay in a beautiful deduction being killed by an ugly little fact. 



Spencer had never seen a race, so I succeeded in persuading him to go with me to see the 

 Derby, and I got a clerical but large-hearted Don of a College to join us. Spencer proved 

 rather a kill-joy. He summed up his impressions at the end, after careful thought, under three 



79—2 



