IOO 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



HUXLEY: A REMINISCENCE. 



TN the recently-issued "Reminiscences" of Mr. 

 *■ Justin McCarthy, M.P. (Chatto and Windus, 

 1S99), we find an entertaining appreciation of 

 Professor Huxley. This is the more valuable as it 

 emanates from one who says, "I am myself entirely 

 lacking in all culture of the field of science." We 

 quote a portion, feeling it cannot fail to interest our 

 readers. This sketch of the late Professor Huxley's 

 character being the independent opinion of a layman, 

 who is not affected by the influence of any particular 

 scientific party, has a freshness that will appeal to 

 those who have formed other views upon the character 

 of this eminent leader in science. [F. Winstone.] 



" More than a quarter of a century has passed away 

 since the election of Professor Huxley as President of 

 the British Association was declared by a large 

 proportion of his admirers to be a distinct triumph of 

 the scientific school over the orthodox school in 

 England. I do not suppose that Professor Huxley 

 himself regarded his election in any such light, and I 

 believe he was far too sincere and devoted a student 

 of science and too modest a worshipper of science to 

 believe that a personal honour paid to himself was a 

 rebuke to the followers of any other school of thought. 

 But it so happened that at the time it was the fashion 

 in England to regard the whole world of thought as 

 divided between science and orthodoxy, and to get 

 possessed with!, the idea that these were two rival 

 forces engaged in' a struggle which must end in a total 

 overthrow of the one or the other. ' It is the' struggle 

 between light and darkness,' said an eloquent writer 

 of the time — I 'shall 'not specify the school to- which he 

 belonged — ' and one or the other must hold the 

 world.' The writer did not seem to remember at 

 the moment that the world had been undergoing 

 successive and regular visitations of alternate light 

 and darkness for as long as time had been, and that 

 there seemed no immediate prospect of the extinction 

 of either. 



' ' Huxley was as delightful in society as he was 

 powerful on the lecture platform. He was a brilliant 

 talker, and he carried much of the spirit of the 

 controversialist wherever he went, but as he had a 

 keen sense of humour his controversial reply took the 

 form of a jest quite as often as that of a direct argu- 

 ment. To hear Herbert Spencer and him sometimes 

 engage in conversational controversy was something 

 tq.be remembered, even by one as little qualified as 

 myself to form any sound mental reasons for awarding 

 the palm of debate. 



"I remember one discussion, at which, however, 

 Herbert Spencer was not present, wherein I thought 

 Huxley showed a determined wrong-headedness such 

 as only a great scientific philosopher could display. 

 It was during a small dinner-party given at the house 

 of Mrs. Frank H. Hill, and I do not know how it 

 came about that the American Declaration of Inde- 



pendence rose up as a subject of conversation. 

 Huxley suddenly declared that the opening passage 

 of the Declaration contained a statement which was 

 'on the face of it obviously and ludicrously false. We 

 all showed natural anxiety to learn what was the 

 ignorant sin which this great historical document had 

 committed. Huxley explained to us that the error 

 lay in the opening statement that ' all men are created 

 equal.' This he declared to be a manifest absurdity ; 

 all men, he pointed out, were not created equal. 

 Some were born with good health, some with here- 

 ditary taint ; some came into the world distorted, 

 some of goodly shape ; some were born black ; some 

 were born white. Huxley, we all knew, loved a joke 

 and had a boyish zest for humour, not common among 

 philosophers, and we were inclined to think that this 

 method of criticising the Declaration of Independence 

 was but a passing freak of humour. Huxley, how- 

 ever, repudiated all idea of sportiveness or levity,, 

 assured us that he was perfectly serious, and declared 

 that to his mind it marred the whole effect of the 

 historical Declaration when he found it thus starting 

 off with a scientific falsehood. Some of us endeavoured 

 to point out that the framers of the Declaration of 

 Independence must have been at least as well aware 

 as most other people of the time that some men were- 

 born white while other men were born negroes ; that 

 the knowledge of this fact, at all events, must have 

 been brought clearly home to the minds of American 

 citizens, and that probably the framers of the 

 Declaration only meant to maintain that all men 

 were born with a right to the equal protection of the 

 laws. But Huxley would not admit this reading of 

 the Declaration, which he insisted was vitiated from 

 the very beginning by an inaccurate "statement, just as 

 the most ingenious arithmetical calculation would 

 have been if it had started on the assumption that 

 two and two make five. I only introduce this anec- 

 dote to show how the acutest mind may sometimes 

 puzzle itself in a difficulty which it has itself created, 

 and how the joy of argument may sometimes for a 

 moment narrow the broadest intellect. One may 

 also be allowed perhaps to feel the natural delight of 

 inferiority on finding a superior intellect entangled in 

 sophism. 



" Huxley had, even in ordinary conversation, an 

 intelligence so luminous that it shed light all around 

 him on any topic which came within his range. 

 Even where strictly political questions were con- 

 cerned his judgment seemed always to sever, at once 

 and at a stroke, the essentials from the non-essentials 

 of any proposition and to cleave away directly to the 

 heart of the argument. Of course there was nothing 

 of the mystic about him. The most superficial know- 

 ledge of his intellectual form would have forewarned 

 anyone of that, but there was also nothing of the 

 scientific recluse about him ; he had never shut him- 



