Chapter 8

the flash of light which, to a man who has lost himself on a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes him straight home or not, certainly goes his way. That which we were looking for, and could not find, was an hypothesis respecting the origin of known organic forms which assumed the operation of no causes but such as could be proved to be actually at work. We wanted, not to pin our faith to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions which could be brought face to face with facts and have their validity tested. The _Origin_ provided us with the working hypothesis we sought. Moreover, it did the immense service of freeing us for ever from the dilemma--refuse to accept the creation hypothesis and what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner? In 1857 I had no answer ready, and I do not think that any one else had. A year later we reproached ourselves with dullness for being perplexed with such an inquiry. My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the _Origin_, was: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that." I suppose that Columbus's companions said much the same when he made the egg stand on end. The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the _Origin_ guided the benighted.

Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of Evolution, as applied to the organic world, took in Darwin's hands would prove to be final or not, was to me a matter of indifference. In my earliest criticisms of the _Origin_ I ventured to point out that its logical foundation was insecure so long as experiments in selective breeding had not produced varieties which were more or less infertile; and that insecurity remains up to the present time. But, with any and every critical doubt which my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if we had none of us been able to discern the paramount significance of some of the most patent and notorious of natural facts, until they were, so to speak, thrust under our noses, what force remained in the dilemma--creation or nothing? It was obvious that hereafter the probability would be immensely greater, that the links of natural causation were hidden from our purblind eyes, than that natural causation should be incompetent to produce all the phenomena of nature. The only rational course for those who had no other object than the attainment of truth was to accept "Darwinism" as a working hypothesis and see what could be made of it. Either it would prove its capacity to elucidate the facts of organic life or it would break down under the strain. This was surely the dictate of common sense, and for once common sense carried the day.

Mention has been made of the instant support he was able to lend the _Origin_ in the _Times_ review of the book, and the extension of its doctrines in regard to man. Even before the book appeared, however, he began to act as what Darwin laughingly called his "general agent." His address on "Persistent Types" (June, 1859) aimed at clearing up in advance one of the obvious objections raised against acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution--namely, how is it that, if evolution is ever progressive, progress is not universal? How is it that all forms do not necessarily advance, and that simple organisms still exist? As it happened, Darwin did not discuss this point when he first put the _Origin_ together, and speedily came to regard this as the most serious omission in the book.

Great, then, was the debt of all science to Darwin. And not of science only. The fight for freedom of thought and speech in science, into which Huxley especially threw himself, was the more successful because the immediate cause he upheld was so overwhelmingly strong in reason and demonstration; and, the supreme curb upon thought being once broken, a wider freedom was gained.

For Darwin, therefore, Huxley had the reverence due to one who had forged a new and mighty weapon in the war for plain truth. But, while he could not but uphold a theory so much in accord with his own knowledge and so fruitful in its promise of new knowledge, whether the author of it were his friend or not, admiration and affection for a man of such utter sincerity, such selfless respect for truth, and warm personality, led him, when those views were stupidly or maliciously attacked, to take more trouble in his defence and support, and to strike out much harder at his adversary than he would otherwise have done. Darwin's friends were well assured that the scanty time which his health allowed for work was far too precious to be wasted in controversy; for his own sake and for the sake of the calm atmosphere in which a great theory should be worked out, they thought that the battling on a lower plane should be left to them. "You ought to be like one of the blessed gods of Elysium, and let the inferior deities do battle with the infernal powers." "If I say a savage thing," Huxley told him, "it is only 'pretty Fanny's way'; but if you do, it is not likely to be forgotten." Hence a dash of personal pleasure was infused into the duty of upholding and defending the bringer of new light.

The acquaintance had begun about 1851; there was a common bond in their sea experiences and explorations, as well as in their search after a wider philosophy, to include the teachings of natural science; the older man found in the younger a source of much biological and other information, a suggestive critic and a stimulating companion. Their relations took a long step towards intimacy after 1861, when, after the loss of her eldest child, Mrs. Huxley and her other children made a long stay at Down, and entered upon a life-long friendship with Mrs. Darwin and the family. Thereafter followed many visits to Down, and, whenever Darwin was in London, the certainty of half-an-hour's keen talk--all that the doctor allowed--with his friend and fellow-worker on some critical question of the moment.

Darwin's admiration of his friend's powers was outspoken. To quote one or two expressions of it: Huxley had delivered, in 1862, six lectures to working men, which were printed off each week as delivered in "little green pamphlets," under the general title of "On Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature," winding up with an account of the bearing of the _Origin_ upon the complete theory of these causes. Acknowledging Nos. IV and V, Darwin writes:--

They are simply perfect. They ought to be largely advertised; but it is very good in me to say so, for I threw down No. IV with this reflection: "What is the good of me writing a thundering big book when everything is in this green little book, so despicable for its size?" In the name of all that is good and bad, I may as well shut up shop altogether.

After reading the article "Mr. Darwin's Critics" in 1871, he wrote yet more enthusiastically. Mr. Mivart, in an apologia for the attitude of Roman Catholicism towards Evolution, twitted the generality of men of science with their ignorance of the real doctrines of his Church, and cited the Jesuit theologian, Suarez, the latest great representative of scholasticism, as following St. Augustine in asserting derivative creation--that is, evolution from primordial matter endowed with certain powers. Huxley thereupon examined the works of the learned Jesuit, and found not only that the particular reference was not to the point, but that, in his tract on the "Six Days of Creation," Suarez expressly rejects the doctrine and reprehends Augustine for holding it. "So," write Huxley gleefully at the irony of the situation, "I have come out in the new character of a defender of Catholic orthodoxy, and upset Mivart out of the mouth of his own prophet."

In the course of a most appreciative letter Darwin exclaimed:--

What a wonderful man you are to grapple with those old metaphysico-divinity books.... The pendulum is now swinging against our side, but I feel positive it will soon swing the other way; and no mortal man will do half as much as you in giving it a start in the right direction, as you did at the commencement.

And then, after "mounting climax on climax," he adds:

"I must tell you what Hooker said to me a few years ago. 'When I read Huxley I feel quite infantile in intellect.'"

The most touching act of friendship, and one which assuredly gave personal point to Huxley's remark in another connection, "Darwin is in all things noble and generous--one of those people who think it a privilege to let him help," took place when Huxley's health had utterly broken down in 1873, and he was as depressed in mind as in body. Who could say No to these words from the oldest and most venerated among his devoted friends?--

Down, Beckenham, Kent. April 23, 1873.

My dear Huxley,

I have been asked by some of your friends (eighteen in number,) to inform you that they have placed through Robarts, Lubbock, and Company the sum of £2,100 to your account at your bankers. We have done this to enable you to get such complete rest as you may require for the re-establishment of your health; and in doing this we are convinced that we act for the public interest, as well as in accordance with our most earnest desires. Let me assure you that we are all your warm personal friends, and that there is not a stranger or mere acquaintance among us. If you could have heard what was said, or could have read what was, as I believe, our inmost thoughts, you would know that we all feel towards you as we should to an honoured and much-loved brother. I am sure that you will return this feeling, and will therefore be glad to give us the opportunity of aiding you in some degree, as this will be a happiness to us to the last day of our lives. Let me add that our plan occurred to several of your friends at nearly the same time, and quite independently of one another. My dear Huxley, your affectionate friend,

CHARLES DARWIN.

Huxley was deeply moved. "What have I done to deserve this?" he exclaimed. Before this generosity he at last allowed himself to confess that, in the long struggle against ill health, he had been beaten; but, as he said, only enough to teach him humility.

The relief from anxieties, the ultimate restoration to health through a clear holiday, were an unforgettable gift from this "band of brothers," and the sufferer who had been healed rejoiced when not long after an opportunity arose to share in a similar gift of help and healing to another of the same good fellowship.

XVI

HOOKER, FORBES, TYNDALL, AND SPENCER

Of his nearer contemporaries the two most intimate and faithful of his life-long friendships were with Tyndall and Hooker, concerning the utter frankness of which he writes to the latter:--

I wish you wouldn't be apologetic about criticism from people who have a right to criticize. I always look upon any criticism as a compliment, not but what the old Adam in T.H.H. _will_ arise and fight vigorously against all impugnment and irrespective of all odds in the way of authority, but that is the way of the beast. Why I value your and Tyndall's and Darwin's friendship so much is, among other things, that you all pitch into me when necessary. You may depend upon it, however blue I may look when in the wrong, it's wrath with myself and nobody else.

The common note in these friendships was not only community of aims, but an essential generosity and sincerity. This it was that had drawn him so strongly to Edward Forbes among the leaders of biology when he returned, an unknown but promising pioneer of science, from the voyage of the _Rattlesnake_. For Forbes inspired his admiration and affection as a man of letters and an artist who had not merged the _man_ in the man of science; free from pedantry or jealousy--the two besetting faults of literary and scientific men; earnest, disinterested, ready to give his time and influence to help any man who was working for the cause; one of the few to whom a proud man could feel obliged without losing a particle of independence or self-respect.

My notions [he writes] are diametrically opposed to his in some matters, and he helps me to oppose him.... I had a long paper read at the Royal Society which opposed some of his views, and he got up and spoke in the highest terms of it afterwards. This is all as it should be. I can reverence such a man and yet respect myself.

Without his aid and sympathy the young man would never have persevered in the course he ventured to choose, and in following which it was one of his greatest hopes that they should work in harmony for long years at the aims so dear to both.

"One could trust him so thoroughly!" There lay the root of friendship. And the trust was thoroughly reciprocated. The entire frankness between friends is brightly illustrated by the history of the award of the Royal Medal in 1854. As a member of the Royal Society Council, Huxley had to vote on the names proposed for the various medals. For the Royal Medal first Hooker was named, and received his hearty support; then Forbes was put up, in his eyes equally deserving, and almost more closely bound to him by ties of active friendship, so that, whichever way he ultimately voted, his action might possibly be ascribed to personal, not scientific, motives. Thereupon he explained to the Council that he considered their claims equal; that, whichever chanced to have been put forward first, he would never have proposed the other in opposition to him. As he had spoken of Hooker's merits, so also he spoke of Forbes's, positively, and not by way of comparison; and this done, voted for both!

Hooker was actually elected. Huxley then wrote to both his friends, explaining fully what he had done. Had he felt that one of the two had strongly superior claims, and thought it right to vote for him only, the other, he was sure, would have fully appreciated his motives, and it would have done no injury to their friendship.

He was not mistaken. Among his most precious possessions he kept Forbes's reply:--

I heartily concur in the course you have taken, and, had I been placed as you have been, would have done exactly the same.... Your way of proceeding was as true an act of friendship as any that could be performed. As to myself, I dream so little about medals that the notion of being on the list never entered my brain, even when asleep. If it ever comes, I shall be pleased and thankful; if it does not, it is not the sort of thing to break my equanimity. Indeed, I would always like to see it given not as a mere honour, but as a help to a good man, and this it is assuredly in Hooker's case. Government people are so ignorant that they require to have people's merits drummed into their heads by all possible means, and Hooker's getting the medal may be of real service to him before long. I am in a snug, though not an idle, nest; he has not got his resting-place yet. And so, my dear Huxley, I trust that you know me too well to think that I am either grieved or envious; and you, Hooker, and I are much of the same way of thinking.

Frankness was the only remedy for such an imbroglio, and, as Huxley wrote to Hooker about a similar case a couple of years later:--

It's deuced hard to keep straight in this wicked world, but, as you say, the only chance is to out with it, and I thank you much for writing so frankly about the matter.

With Hooker, the keen observer and critical reasoner, the man of warm impulses and sane judgments, he had a peculiarly intimate bond of friendship summed up in a letter of 1888, when they had received the Copley medal in successive years:--

It is very pleasant to have our niches in the Pantheon close together. It is getting on for forty years since we were first "acquent," and, considering with what a very considerable dose of tenacity, vivacity, and that glorious firmness (which the beasts who don't like us call obstinacy) we are both endowed, the fact that we have never had the shadow of a shade of a quarrel is more to our credit than being ex-Presidents and Copley medallists. But we have had a masonic bond in both being well salted in early life. I have always felt that I owed a great deal to my acquaintance with the realities of things gained in the old _Rattlesnake_.

From earliest days, soon after they had returned, the one from the South Seas, the other from the Himalayas, they had stood shoulder to shoulder confidently in the struggle to put science on a firm and independent footing. When the future of the Natural History Collections at the British Museum was in the balance, they energetically resolved to constitute themselves into a permanent "Committee of Safety," to watch over what was being done and take measures with the advice of others when necessary. Together as biologists they realized the greatness of Darwin's vision; together they bore the brunt of the battle of the _Origin_ at Oxford. In seeking a good mouthpiece for scientific opinion, in reorganizing and administering the great scientific societies, in their work for scientific education, they shared the same ideas, and their friendship and Tyndall's formed the starting-point of the _x_ Club, with its regular meetings of old friends. More than once they went off on a short holiday tour together, and when Huxley was invalided in 1873 it was Hooker who took charge and carried him off for a month's active trip in the geological paradise of the Auvergne. The care and company of so good a friend made the crowning ingredient in a most successful prescription. And when both had retired from official life a new interest in common sprang up through Huxley's incursion into botany. While recruiting his health in the high Alps, his interest was aroused by the Gentians, and he wrote a valuable paper on their morphology and distribution. This interest continued itself into the making of a rock-garden in his Eastbourne home, where, in his spare hours, he proceeded to put into happy practice Candide's famous maxim, "_Cultivons notre jardin_," and drew from this occupation the simile of the wild chalk down and the cultivated garden in his Romanes Lecture to illustrate the contrast between the cosmic process and the social organism.

Hooker often sent his friend plants from his own garden, sometimes banteringly including one which would "flourish in any neglected corner."

An unclouded intimacy of friendship lasted to the end, and it was Hooker who received the last letter written by his friend.

Close as a brother, too, and claiming the name of brother in affectionate adoption, was John Tyndall, radiant in genial warmth and high spirits. They, too, were at one in thoughts, sympathies, and aims; they travelled together, especially in the Alps, where Tyndall mainly carried out the investigation of certain problems in relation to the glaciers which Huxley had suggested to him, and, being "a masterful man and over-generous," insisted that the resulting paper on glaciers should bear both their names.

Tyndall came to the School of Mines as Professor of Physics in 1859 at his friend's instigation, and for nine years they were, as colleagues, in daily contact, and indeed were not far separated when Tyndall succeeded Faraday at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street.

Tyndall, who remained a bachelor till late in middle life, always found a warm corner beside his friend's hearth. From the earliest days of the household in the little house at Waverley Place he was admitted to the inner circle of a lively friendship by Mrs. Huxley also, that keen judge of character, and to the children ranked as a kind of unofficial uncle. On New Year's Day he was chief among the two or three intimates who were bidden here, having no domestic hearth of their own, Herbert Spencer and Hirst being the other "regulars," and later Michael Foster.

As the two men both had ready pens and stood side by side in many controversies, they came to be regarded by the public as a pair of Great Twin Brethren, the Castor and Pollux of many a scientific battle of Lake Regillus. Odd confusions sometimes followed. In 1876, not long after Tyndall's marriage to the daughter of Lord Claud Hamilton, Huxley was described in a newspaper paragraph as setting out for America "with his titled bride," and even, on Tyndall's death, received the doubtful honour of a funeral sermon.

True that they did not see eye to eye on some of the most fundamental matters of social and political principle, and where they did Tyndall's vehement enthusiasm would sometimes sweep him into activities where his friend could not follow. But these things were no bar to their mutual affection and esteem, and in token of this two letters of 1866 may be quoted, when England was sharply divided on the question of Governor Eyre's action in suppressing an incipient revolt in Jamaica.

In particular, a negro preacher named Gordon had been arrested, court-martialled, and summarily executed. A Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the case declared that the evidence given appeared to be wholly insufficient to establish the charge upon which the prisoner took his trial, and that in the evidence adduced they could not see any sufficient proof of Gordon's complicity in the outbreak, or of having been a party to any general conspiracy against the Government.

To many thoughtful and law-abiding persons such a proceeding appeared to be no better than judicial murder, constituting a hideous precedent; a committee was formed to present a formal indictment against Governor Eyre and obtain a judicial pronouncement on the question, quite apart from the two other questions persistently confused with it--namely, was Gordon a Jamaica Hampden or was he a psalm-singing firebrand, and was Governor Eyre actuated by the highest and noblest motives, or was he under the influence of panic-stricken rashness or worse impulses?

With this high constitutional end in view--the protection of individual liberty--Huxley joined the committee. To Charles Kingsley, who confessed to taking the hero-worshipper's view of Governor Eyre, Huxley replied:--

I dare say he did all this with the best of motives and in a heroic vein. But if English law will not declare that heroes have no more right to kill people in this fashion than other folk, I shall take an early opportunity of migrating to Texas or some other quiet place where there is less hero-worship and more respect for justice, which is to my mind of much more importance than hero-worship.

In point of fact, men take sides on this question, not so much by looking at the mere facts of the case, but rather as their deepest political convictions lead them. And the great use of the prosecution, and one of my reasons for joining it, is that it will help a great many people to find out what their profoundest political beliefs are.