August i, 1895J 



NATURE 



319 



firmed the natural aptitude of his mind in making him a 

 Ijiologist who, rejecting all shadowy intangible views, was 

 to direct his energies to problems which seemed capable 

 of clear demonstrable proof In many respects the 

 biologic problems which lend themselves most readily 

 to demonstrable solutions capable of verification are those 

 which constitute what we call physiology; and if at the 

 time of his youth the way had been open to him, Huxley 

 would probably have become known as a physiologist. 

 But at that time careers for physiologists were of the 

 fewest. His master, Wharton Jones, a physiologist of the 

 first rank, whose work in the first half of this century still 

 remains of classic value, had been driven to earn his bread 

 as an ophthalmic surgeon, and an even greater physio- 

 logist, William Bowman, was following the same course. 

 There was no opening in physiology for the young student 

 at Charing Cross, and he was driven by stress of circum- 

 stances to morphological rather than to strictly physio- 

 logical problems ; but it was not until long after, when 

 he had achieved eminence as a morphologist, that he 

 finally abandoned his old wish to hold a physiological 

 <;hair. 



Looking back on the past, we nia\- now be glad that 

 circumstances were against his wishes ; fo- (though 

 in every branch of science there is need at all times 

 of a great man i there was at the middle of the century, 

 in the early fifties, a special need in morphology for 

 ii. man of Huxley's mould. Richard Owen was then 

 dominant, and it is an acknowledged feature of Owen's 

 work that in it there was a sudden leap from most 

 admirable detailed descriptive labour to dubious specula- 

 lations, based for the most part on, or at least akin to, the 

 philosophy of Oken. Of the " new morphology " in which 

 Johannes .Miiller was leading the way, and the criteria 

 •of which had been furnished by the labours of von Baer, 

 there was then but little in England sa\e, perhaps, what 

 was to be found in the expositions of Carpenter. Of this 

 new morphology, by which this branch of biology was 

 brought into a line with other exact sciences, and the 

 note of which was not to speculate on guiding forces and 

 ■on the realisation of ideals, but to determine the laws of 

 growth by the careful investigation, as of so many special 

 problems, of what parts of different animals, as shown 

 among other ways by the mode of their development, 

 were really the same or alike, Huxley became at once an 

 apostle. His \ery first work, that on the Medusae, wrought 

 out amid the distractions of ship life, written on a lonely 

 vessel ploughing its solitary way amidst almost unknown 

 seas, away from books and the communion of his fellow 

 workers, bears the same marks which characterise his sub- 

 sequent memoirs ; it is the effort of a clear mind striving 

 to see its way through difficult problems, bent on holding 

 fast only to that which could be proved. This is not the 

 occasion to insist in detail on the value of the like mor- 

 phological work which he produced in the fifties and the 

 sixties, or to show how he applied to other forms of animal 

 life, to echinoderms, to tunicates, to arthropods, to mol- 

 luscs, and last though not least to vertebrates, the same 

 method of inquiry which guided the work on the Medusa;. 

 Nor need 1 dwell on the many \ aluable results which he 

 gained for science by attacking in the same spirit the 

 problems offered by the remains of extinct forms. More- 

 over, he strengthened the effect of his own labours by ad- 

 mirable expositions of the results of others. Further, 

 unlike his great predecessor who formed no school and 

 had few if any disciples, it was Huxley's delight to hold 

 ■out his hand to e\ery young man whom he thought could 

 profit by his help, and before many years were over his 

 spirit was moving in the minds of many others. Thus it 

 came about that during the latter half of this century, owing 

 largely to Huxley's own labours and to the influence which 

 he exerted not only in England but abroad, there has 

 been added to science a large body of morphological 

 truths, truths which have been demonstrated and must 



NO. 1344, VOL. 52] 



remain, not mere views and theories which maybe washed 

 away. 



The excitement of the Darwinian controversy, with its 

 far-reaching issues, has been apt to make us forget how 

 great has been the progress of animal morphology during 

 the past half century. Undoubtedly the solution of special 

 problems touching animal forms, and the great theor)' of 

 Natural Selection through the Struggle for Existence have 

 been closely bound together ; the special learning has 

 furnished support for the general theory, and the general 

 theory, besides strongly stimulating inquir)-, has illumined 

 the special problems. But the two stand apart, each on 

 its own basis ; and were it possible to wipe out. as with a 

 sponge, everything which Darwin wrote, and which his 

 views have caused to be written, there would still remain a 

 body of science touching animal forms, both recent and 

 extinct, acquired since 1850, of which we may well be 

 proud. In the gaining that knowledge Huxley, as well 

 Ijy his own labours as by his influence over others, stands 

 foremost, Gegenbaur being almost his only peer ; and 

 had Huxley done nothing more, his name would live as 

 that of one of the most remarkable biologists of the 

 present century. 



As we all know, he did much more ; his influence on 

 England and on the world went far beyond that of his 

 purely scientific writings. But when we reflect that a 

 hundred years hence the image of the man as he went 

 to and fro among men, so bright and vi\id to-da\-, will have 

 become dim and colourless, a shadow as it were, and that 

 then the man will be judged mainly by the writings which 

 remain, we must count these writings as the chief basis 

 of his fame. And, though we may think it possible that 

 the world of that day, much that is unwritten having 

 been forgotten, may find it in part difficult to understand 

 how great a power Huxley was in his time, the lapse of 

 years will, we may be sure, in no way lessen, it may be 

 will heighten, the estimate of his contributions to exact 

 science. 



As we all know, he did much more. To the public 

 outside science he first became known as the bold, out- 

 spoken exponent and advocate of Darwin's views, and 

 indeed to some this is still his chief fame. There is no 

 need hereto dwell on this part of his work, and I speak 

 of it now chiefly to remark that the zeal with which he 

 threw himself into this advocacy was merely a part of the 

 larger purpose of his life. Science, or, to use the old 

 phrase of the Royal Society, Natural Knowledge, had a 

 two-fold hold on Huxley. On the one hand he felt deeply 

 all the purely intellectual, and if we may use the word, 

 selfish joys of fruitful progressive inquiry after truth. 

 This was dominant in his early days, and to it we owe 

 the long list of valuable researches, of which I just now 

 spoke, and which followed each other rapidly in the 

 fifties and the sixties. On the other hand, feeling deeply, 

 as he did, his duties as a citizen of the world, science 

 laid hold of him as being the true and sure 

 guide to conduct man in all his ways ; and this 

 latter working of science in him, evident even in 

 early days (witness his Address to Working Men at St. 

 Martin's Hall in 1854). grew stronger and stronger as the 

 years went on, until at last it took almost entire possession 

 of him. To him, indeed, it may be said, science was 

 all in all. He saw, as others see, in science a something 

 which is broadening and strengthening human life by un- 

 ceasingly bending nature to the use of man, and making her 

 resources subservient to his desires ; he saw the material 

 usefulness of science, but he saw something more. He 

 saw also, as others see, in science a something in which 

 the human mind, exercising and training itself, makes 

 itself at once nimble and strong, and dwelling on which 

 is raised to broad and high views of the nature of things ; 

 he saw in science a means of culture, but he saw some- 

 thing more. He saw in science even as it is, and still 

 more in science as it will be, the sure and trustworthy 



