NATURE 
THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 1902. 
THE POPULAR HUXLEY. 
Thomas Henry Huxley. By Edward Clodd. Pp. xiii + 
226, (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood 
and Sons, 1902.) Price 2s. 6d. 
(Bes RICHARD GARNETT has described Huxley’s 
work as “that of the populariser ; the man who 
makes few original contributions to science or thought, 
but states the discoveries of others better than they 
could have stated them themselves.” I am disposed to 
think that the picture my friend Mr. Clodd has drawn 
with practised dexterity will rather confirm than dissipate 
this inadequate judgment. On the last page of this 
volume he writes, with perhaps a touch of remorse :— 
“To regard Huxley as a compound of Boanerges and 
Iconoclast is to show entire misapprehension of the aims 
which inspired his labours.” I entirely agree ; but the 
words might have been added to the title-page without 
doing serious injustice to what follows. 
With such a Huxley I must frankly confess I have very 
little sympathy. I prefer the one which, with much 
critical insight, Mr. Chalmers Mitchell has presented to 
us “in his admirable monograph.” 
Huxley was so big a man in my judgment that his real 
merits can well afford to bear the brunt of dispassionate 
criticism. Disagreeing as I do with Dr. Garnett, I go 
farther, and think that as a “ populariser” Huxley was 
by no means always successful. And Mr. Clodd supplies 
the reason in “that passion for logical symmetry ” which 
appears to me often Huxley’s besetting sin. 
I only echo the opinion of competent judges in saying 
that he will be always clearly recognised as occupying a 
foremost place amongst English scientific men of the 
nineteenth century. He rescued animal morphology 
from the deductive method, and firmly established it on 
an inductive basis. In doing this there is scarcely any 
part of the animal kingdom which he did not illuminate 
by original and brilliant work. And he applied the 
theory of evolution with masterly insight to the ex- | 
planation of the facts. All this was, however, only 
accomplished in the most cautious way, and was the 
result of patient observation and study. An examination 
of his published researches will show that he never 
advanced a step without making the ground firm beneath | 
his feet. 
In his more popular writings I am bound to say that I | 
often fail to find the same qualities. Facts and knowledge 
were taken frequently at second hand, and were not the 
acquisition of his own personal labour. 
deny the literary skill with which they were used. But 
the habit which grew upon him of pushing home remorse- 
lessly the conclusions he drew from them often landed 
him in very dubious positions. This is the more singular 
as he saw the danger in the case of mathematical reason- 
ing, and rightly insisted that “what you get out depends 
on what you put in.” 
Huxley was firmly imbued with what is ordinarily 
called a “materialistic” conception of the universe. | 
think myself that this is probably a true view, though I 
confess I am getting rather at sea about “electrons” 
NO. 1701, VOL. 66] 
No one can | 
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and “ions.” Nor am I at all disposed to agree with 
Principal Rticker that atoms are more than a physical 
hypothesis. I do not admit that Prof. ‘“Britschli” has 
produced “a substance which simulates protoplasm” or 
has done more than give us some pretty examples of 
surface tension. I do not see even the beginning of a 
materialistic theory of protoplasm. This, however, was 
what Huxley attempted in the lecture on the “ Physical 
Basis of Life,” of which I see a cheap reprint is about 
to be issued. Mr. Clodd summarises it as if its con- 
tents were accepted scientific truths. But this is far from 
being the case, and I should myself be in great difficulty 
if they were presented to me in the examination room. 
Huxley—to take only one out of many disputable asser- 
tions—after speaking of “the dull vital actions of a 
fungus,’ states that its “ protoplasm is essentially identical 
with and most readily converted into that of any animal.” 
Further on he puts the idea into a more picturesque 
form and speaks of “transubstantiating mutton into 
man.” Except the definition of a crab attributed to the 
French Academy, | call to mind no statement so compact 
of error. Every physiologist knows that between the 
protoplasm of a sheep and that of the human being who 
consumes it there is a whole series of compounds which 
bear no resemblance to protoplasm at all. The animal 
has to build itself up from lifeless matter just as the 
plant has, only it mostly uses more complex molecules. 
It is no doubt true that a particle of fungoid differs in no 
appreciable physical respect from one of ,human proto- 
plasm, yet the former will never emerge from the fate 
of the humble mushroom, while the other may be instinct 
with the thoughts of a Prime Minister. It may be that 
the difference is a function of molecular arrangement, 
If so it is of an order entirely different from anything 
chemistry presents us with. The fact is that protoplasm 
is not in any intelligible sense of the word a substance at 
all, but rather a structure or mechanism. Huxley puts 
this clearly enough later on in a letter to Herbert 
Spencer @lites71a027)). 
Huxley’s theological writings seem to me to exhibit 
defects of the same kind. He did not invent biblical 
criticism, though one might almost imagine from Mr. 
Clodd that he did. The argument seems to be this: 
read the Bible as if it were the 7Zzyzes newspaper; then 
ask yourself the question—Can I accept the statements 
of the one as literally as of the other? The answer of 
most persons will be, No. Very well then, Huxley 
replies :—You are in this position: Christianity is based 
on the Bible, and my sense of veracity compels me to 
say that it “vanishes” (“ Life,” ii. 212), or at any rate 
| “is doomed to fall” (“ Essays,” v. 142), and some other 
“ hypostasis of men’s hopes” will take its place (/. c. 254). 
But I fail to see the validity of the conclusion. 
Huxley’s analysis of orthodox Christianity is that it is 
a “varying compound of some of the best and some of 
the worst elements of Paganismand Judaism, moulded in 
practice by the innate character of certain people of the 
western world” (“ Essays,” v. 142). Without discussing 
this, it clearly represents Christianity as a’ product of 
evolution. There will be, therefore, no new hypostasis 
necessarily ; the moulding will go on and there will be 
fresh adjustments, as there have been in the past, to 
higher ethical demands. 
G 
