Leonard Huxley

“ Such acquaintance with the history of thought as I possess has taught me to regard school, parties, and sects as arrangements, the usual effect of which is to perpetuate all that is worst and feeblest in the master's, leader's, or founder's work; or else, as in some cases, to upset it altogether; as a sort of hydrant for extinguishing the fire of genius, and for stifling the flame of high aspirations, the kindling of which has been the chief, perhaps the only, merit of the protagonist of the movement. I have always been, am, and propose to remain a mere scholar. ”

“ The Bible, as English literature, as old-world history, as moral teaching, as the Magna Charta of the poor and of the oppressed, the most democratic book in the world, could not be spared. The mass of the people should not be deprived of the one great literature which is open to them; not shut out from the perception of their relations with the whole past history of civilized mankind, nor from an unpriestly view of Judaism and Jesus of Nazareth, purged of the accretions of centuries. ”

“ But, while he often told us stories of the sea and of animals, he did not talk "shop" to us, as many people seemed to expect by their inquiries whether we did not receive quite a scientific education from his companionship.
At the same time, he was anything but a Bohemian. His inborn gaiety and high spirits, his humour and love of adventure, found from the first a balance in his love of science; and the rough experience of his early days intensified by contrast the spiritual serenity of united love. ”

“ My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact; not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations—
a notion expanded thus:—
Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every pre-conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Though my way of life [he writes] has made me acquainted with all sorts and conditions of men, from the highest to the lowest, I deliberately affirm that the society I fell into at school was the worst I have ever known. We boys were average lads, with much the same inherent capacity for good and evil as any others; but the people who were set over us cared about as much for our intellectual and moral welfare as if they were baby-farmers. We were left to the operation of the struggle for existence among ourselves; bullying was the least of the ill practices current among us. ”

“ Huxley easily took the lead if he cared to, or if challenged. Nobody was more ready in a greater variety of topics, and if they were scientific it was almost always another who introduced them. Unlike some of his comrades of the Royal Society, he was of opinion that man does not live by science alone, and nothing came amiss to him.... Even in private the alarm of war is sometimes heard, and Mr. Huxley is not a whit less formidable as a disputant across the table than with pen in hand. Yet an angry man must be very angry indeed before he could be angry with this adversary. ”

“ A vast multitude of pleasures, and these among the purest and the best, are superfluities, bits of good which are, to all appearance, unnecessary as inducements to live, and are, so to speak, thrown into the bargain of life. To those who experience them, few delights can be more entrancing than such as are afforded by natural beauty, or by the arts, and especially by music; but they are products of, rather than factors in, evolution, and it is probable that they are known, in any considerable degree, to but a very small proportion of mankind. ”

“ The opponents of popular education raised their still familiar outcry about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a scheme, if properly carried out, ought rather to expel nonsense. Above all, it set the interests of humanity above the mere development of skill, which would simply turn the child of man into the subtlest beast of the field. ”

“ Always the home was the inmost centre of his own life. Here he found personal solace in his long struggle; the sympathy that was the pillar and stay of his genius, the twin incentive to labour and achievement, the warmth that gave a fuller value to the light he ensued. None knew more perfectly than himself what he owed to his life-long companion, who, in turn, was as much uplifted by his eager spirit as she was proud to be the cherisher of big aspirations and the active minister to his attainment. To her critical ear he gave the first reading of his essays ”

“ 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. ”

“ If there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over Nature which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of want, with its concomitant physical and moral degradation among the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet which would sweep the whole affair away as a desirable consummation. ”

“ Not only do I disbelieve in the need for compensation, but I believe that the seeking for rewards and punishments out of this life leads men to a ruinous ignorance of the fact that their inevitable rewards and punishments are here.
If the expectation of hell hereafter can keep me from evil-doing, surely a fortiori the certainty of hell now will do so? If a man could be firmly impressed with the belief that stealing damaged him as much as swallowing arsenic would do (and it does) , would not the dissuasive force of that belief be greater than that of any based on mere future expectations? ”

“ Many a sleepless night in these years the candle was lighted beside his bed, and for a couple of hours after midnight he would devour works on philosophy—English, German, and French, and occasionally Latin. To a mind at once constructive and intensely critical of unsound construction he added a quality possessed by few professed philosophers—a large knowledge of the workings of life, of the human thinking machine, in addition to various other branches of physical science. As he put it, the laboratory is the forecourt to the temple of philosophy. ”

“ Sincerity is sometimes impracticable. But here sincerity was combined with common-sense practicality, and even an opponent like Lord Shaftesbury was impelled to write in his journal:—"Professor Huxley has this definition of morality and religion: 'Teach a child what is wise: that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful: that is religion!' Let no one henceforth despair of making things clear and of giving explanations!" ”

“ But if the question were to be treated, not as a matter for the calm investigation of science, but as a matter of sentiment, and if he were asked whether he would choose to be descended from the poor animal of low intelligence and stooping gait who grins and chatters as we pass, or from a man endowed with great ability and a splendid position, who should use these gifts to discredit and crush humble seekers after truth, he must hesitate what answer to make. ”

“ Yet if society, in making life easier, multiplies the species in excess of the means of subsistence, it raises up within itself, in the intensest form, the unlimited struggle for existence. "This is the true riddle of the Sphinx, and every nation which does not solve it will, sooner or later, be devoured by the monster itself has generated." ”

“ Unlike Darwin, who at last found nothing save science engrossing enough to make him oblivious of his constant ill-health, Huxley never lost his keen delight in literature and art. He was a rapid and omnivorous reader, devouring everything from a fairy tale to a blue book, and tearing the heart out of a book at express speed. ”

“ True education, he declared, was impossible without "religion," the unchanging essence of which lies in the love of some ethical ideal to govern and guide conduct, "together with the awe and reverence which have no kinship with base fear, but rise whenever one tries to pierce below the surface of things, whether they be material or spiritual."
It was in this sense that he advocated Bible-reading in schools—simple Bible-reading, without theological gloss. ”

“ As one listened to him one felt that comparative anatomy was worthy of the devotion of a life, and that to solve a morphological problem was as fine a thing as to win a battle. He was an admirable draughtsman, and his blackboard illustrations were always a great feature of his lectures, especially when, to show the relation of two animal types, he would, by a few rapid strokes and smudges, evolve the one into the other before our eyes. ”

“ For society not only has a moral end, but in its perfection social life is embodied morality. Moral purpose is "an article of exclusively human manufacture—and very much to our credit."
To society, then, its members owe a vital debt; for society, the work of the ethical man, has slowly and painfully built up around us a fabric of defence against barbarism, the work of the non-ethical man. This debt we are bound to repay by furthering in ourselves the good work of human fellowship, and by striving to improve the conditions of our social life ”

“ You cannot listen to him without thinking more of the speaker than of his science, more of the solid beautiful nature than of the intellectual gifts, more of his manly simplicity and sincerity than of all his knowledge and his long services. ”

“ And if a genuine, not merely subjective, immortality awaits us, I conceive that, without some such change as that depicted in the fifteenth chapter of Corinthians, immortality must be eternal misery. The fate of Swift's Struldbrugs seems to me not more horrible than that of a mind imprisoned for ever within the flammantia moenia of inextinguishable memories.
Such were the shapes into which the Christian theologians had fashioned a number of moral truths when they annexed the house of human morality. But what is the basis of certitude on which these interpretations rest? ”

“ Pray understand that I have no à priori objections to the doctrine. No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble himself about à priori difficulties. Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing anything else, and I will believe that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force, or the indestructibility of matter. Whoso clearly appreciates all that is implied in the falling of a stone can have no difficulty about any doctrine simply on account of its marvellousness. ”

“ A letter of 1874, touching the first efforts of women to qualify as doctors, prefigures what has been done since for the higher education of women:—
Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigour and capacity. ”

“ XIII MORALITY AND THE CHURCH It is alike interesting and satisfactory to reflect that practical morality in civilized life is much the same for all earnest men, however they differ in their theories as to the origin of moral ideas and the kind of motives and sanctions to be insisted on for right action. It is true that the theologians and supernaturalists have erected their scaffolding around the building of social and human morality, vowing that it will not stand without. Yet it remains steady when the scaffolding is warped by the winds of doctrine or uprooted by advancing knowledge. ”

“ It was good to live under sharp discipline; to be down on the realities of existence by living on bare necessaries; to find how extremely well worth living life seemed to be when one woke up from a night's rest on a soft plank, with the sky for canopy, and cocoa and weevily biscuit the sole prospect for breakfast ”