Critiques and Addresses by Thomas Henry Huxley

T >> Thomas Henry Huxley >> Critiques and Addresses

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

=CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES.=

BY

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, LL.D., F.R.S.

1873.

PREFACE.

The "Critiques and Addresses" gathered together in this volume, like
the "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews," published three years ago,
deal chiefly with educational, scientific, and philosophical subjects;
and, in fact, indicate the high-water mark of the various tides of
occupation by which I have been carried along since the beginning of
the year 1870.

In the end of that year, a confidence in my powers of work, which,
unfortunately, has not been justified by events, led me to allow
myself to be brought forward as a candidate for a seat on the London
School Board. Thanks to the energy of my supporters I was elected, and
took my share in the work of that body during the critical first year
of its existence. Then my health gave way, and I was obliged to resign
my place among colleagues whose large practical knowledge of the
business of primary education, and whose self-sacrificing zeal in the
discharge of the onerous and thankless duties thrown upon them by
the Legislature, made it a pleasure to work with them, even though my
position was usually that of a member of the minority.

I mention these circumstances in order to account for (I had almost
said to apologize for) the existence of the two papers which head
the present series, and which are more or less political, both in the
lower and in the higher senses of that word.

The question of the expediency of any form of State Education is, in
fact, a question of those higher politics which lie above the region
in which Tories, Whigs, and Radicals "delight to bark and bite." In
discussing it in my address on "Administrative Nihilism," I found
myself, to my profound regret, led to diverge very widely (though even
more perhaps in seeming than in reality) from the opinions of a man of
genius to whom I am bound by the twofold tie of the respect due to a
profound philosopher and the affection given to a very old friend. But
had I no other means of knowing the fact, the kindly geniality of Mr.
Herbert Spencer's reply[1] assures me that the tie to which I refer
will bear a much heavier strain than I have put, or ever intend to
put, upon it, and I rather rejoice that I have been the means of
calling forth so vigorous a piece of argumentative writing. Nor is
this disinterested joy at an attack upon myself diminished by the
circumstance, that, in all humility, but in all sincerity, I think it
may be repulsed.

[Footnote 1: "Specialized Administration;" _Fortnightly Review_,
December 1871.]

Mr. Spencer complains that I have first misinterpreted, and then
miscalled, the doctrine of which he is so able an expositor. It would
grieve me very much if I were really open to this charge. But what are
the facts? I define this doctrine as follows:--

"Those who hold these views support them by two lines of
argument. They enforce them deductively by arguing from an
assumed axiom, that the State has no right to do anything but
protect its subjects from aggression. The State is simply a
policeman, and its duty, neither more nor less than to prevent
robbery and murder and enforce contracts. It is not to promote
good, nor even to do anything to prevent evil, except by the
enforcement of penalties upon those who have been guilty
of obvious and tangible assaults upon purse or person. And,
according to this view, the proper form of government is
neither a monarchy, an aristocracy, nor a democracy, but an
_astynomocracy_, or police government. On the other hand,
these views are supported _a posteriori_ by an induction from
observation, which professes to show that whatever is done by
a Government beyond these negative limits, is not only sure
to be done badly, but to be done much worse than private
enterprise would have done the same thing."

I was filled with surprised regret when I learned from the conclusion
of the article on "Specialized Administration," that this statement is
held by Mr. Spencer to be a, misinterpretation of his views. Perhaps
I ought to be still more sorry to be obliged to declare myself, even
now, unable to discover where my misinterpretation lies, or in what
respect my presentation of Mr. Spencer's views differs from his own
most recent version of them. As the passage cited above shows. I have
carefully defined the sense in which I use the terms which I employ,
and, therefore, I am not greatly concerned to defend the abstract
appropriateness of the terms themselves. And when Mr. Spencer
maintains the only proper functions of Government to be those which
are comprehensible under the description of "Negatively regulative
control," I may suggest that the difference between such "Negative
Administration" and "Administrative Nihilism," in the sense defined by
me, is not easily discernible.

Having, as I hope, relieved myself from the suspicion of having
misunderstood or misrepresented Mr. Spencer's views, I might, if I
could forget that I am writing a preface, proceed to the discussion
of the parallel which he elaborates, with much knowledge and power,
between the physiological and the social organisms. But this is not
the place for a controversy involving so many technicalities, and
I content myself with one remark, namely, that the whole course of
modern physiological discovery tends to show, with more and more
clearness, that the vascular system, or apparatus for distributing
commodities in the animal organism, is eminently under the control of
the cerebro-spinal nervous centres--a fact which, unless I am again
mistaken, is contrary to one of Mr. Spencer's fundamental assumptions.
In the animal organism, Government does meddle with trade, and even
goes so far as to tamper a good deal with the currency.

In the same number of the _Fortnightly Review_ as that which contains
Mr. Spencer's essay, Miss Helen Taylor assails me--though, I am bound
to admit, more in sorrow than in anger--for what she terms, my
"New Attack on Toleration." It is I, this time, who may complain of
misinterpretation, if the greater part of Miss Taylor's article
(with which I entirely sympathise) is supposed to be applicable to
my "intolerance." Let us have full-toleration, by all means, upon
all questions in which there is room for doubt, or which cannot be
distinctly proved to affect the welfare of mankind. But when Miss
Taylor has shown what basis exists for criminal legislation, except
the clear right of mankind not to tolerate that which is demonstrably
contrary to the welfare of society, I will admit that such
demonstration ought only to be believed in by the "curates and
old women" to whom she refers. Recent events have not weakened the
conviction I expressed in a much-abused speech at the London School
Board, that Ultramontanism is demonstrably the enemy of society; and
must be met with resistance, merely passive if possible, but active if
necessary, by "the whole power of the State."

Next in order, it seems proper that I should briefly refer to my
friend Mr. Mivart's onslaught upon my criticism of Mr. Darwin's
critics, himself among the number, which will be found in this
volume. In "Evolution and its Consequences"[1] I am accused of
misrepresentation, misquotation, misunderstanding, and numerous other
negative and positive literary and scientific sins; and much subtle
ingenuity is expended by Mr. Mivart in attempting to extricate himself
from the position in which my exposition of the real opinions of
Father Suarez has placed him. So much more, in fact, has Mr. Mivart's
ingenuity impressed me than any other feature of his reply, that I
shall take the liberty of re-stating the main issue between us; and,
for the present, leaving that issue alone to the judgment of the
public.

[Footnote 1: _Contemporary Review_, January 1872.]

In his book on the "Genesis of Species" Mr. Mivart, after discussing
the opinions of sundry Catholic writers of authority, among whom he
especially includes St. Augustin, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Jesuit
Suarez, proceeds to say: "It is then evident that ancient and most
venerable theological authorities distinctly assert _derivative_
creation, and thus their teachings harmonize with all that modern
science can possibly require."[1] By the "derivative creation" of
organic forms, Mr. Mivart understands, "that God created them by
conferring on the material world the power to evolve them under
suitable conditions."

[Footnote 1: Bunsen's "Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal
History," vol. i.p. 349. 1854.]

On the contrary, I proved by evidence, which Mr. Mivart does not
venture to impugn, that Suarez, in his "Tractatus de Opere sex
Dierum," expressly rejects St. Augustin's and St. Thomas' views; that
he vehemently advocates the literal interpretation of the account of
the creation given in the Book of Genesis; and that he treats with
utter scorn the notion that the Almighty could have used the language
of that Book, unless He meant it to be taken literally.

Mr. Mivart, therefore, either has read Suarez and has totally
misrepresented him--a hypothesis which, I hope I need hardly say, I do
not for a moment entertain: or, he has got his information at second
hand, and has himself been deceived. But in that case, it is surely
an imprudence on his part, to reproach me with having "read Suarez _ad
hoc_, and evidently without the guidance of anyone familiar with
that author." No doubt, in the matter of guidance, Mr. Mivart has the
advantage of me. Nevertheless, the guides who supplied him with his
references to Suarez' "Metaphysica," while they left him in ignorance
of the existence of the "Tractatus," are guides with whose services
it might be better to dispense; leaders who wilfully shut their eyes,
being even more liable to lodge one in a ditch, than blind leaders.

At the time when the essay on "Methods and Results of Ethnology" was
written, I had not met with a passage in Professor Max Mueller's "Last
Results of Turanian Researches"[1] which shows so appositely, that
the profoundest study of philology leads to conclusions respecting the
relation of Ethnology with Philology, similar to those at which I had
arrived in approaching the question from the Anatomist's side, that I
cannot refrain from quoting it:

[Footnote 1: LONDON, _April_ 1873.]

"Nor should we, in our phonological studies, either expect or
desire more than general hints from physical ethnology. The
proper and rational connection between the two sciences is
that of mutual advice and suggestion, but nothing more. Much
of the confusion of terms and indistinctness of principles,
both in Ethnology and Phonology, are due to the combined
study of these heterogeneous sciences. Ethnological race
and phonological race are not commensurate, except in
ante-historical times, or perhaps at the very dawn of history.
With the migration of tribes, their wars, their colonies,
their conquests and alliances, which, if we may judge from
their effects, must have been much more violent in the
ethnic, than even in the political, period of history, it is
impossible to imagine that race and language should continue
to run parallel. The physiologist should pursue his own
science unconcerned about language."

It is further desirable to remark that the statements in this Essay
respecting the forms of Native American crania need rectification. On
this point, I refer the reader who is interested in the subject to
my paper "On the Form of the Cranium among the Patagonians and the
Fuegians" published in the _Journal of Anatomy and Physiology_ for
1868.

If the problem discussed in my address to the British Association
in 1870 has not yet received its solution, it is not because the
champions of Abiogenesis have been idle, or wanting in confidence. But
every new assertion on their side has been met by a counter assertion;
and though the public may have been led to believe that so much noise
must indicate rapid progress, one way or the other, an impartial
critic will admit, with sorrow, that the question has been "marking
time" rather than marching. In mere sound, these two processes are not
so very different.

CONTENTS.

I.

ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM. (An Address delivered to the Members of
the Midland Institute, on the 9th of October, 1871, and subsequently
published in the _Fortnightly Review_)

II.

THE SCHOOL BOARDS: WHAT THEY CAN DO, AND WHAT THEY MAY DO. (The
_Contemporary Review_, 1870)

III.

ON MEDICAL EDUCATION. (An Address to the Students of the Faculty of
Medicine in University College, London, 1870)

IV.

YEAST. (The _Contemporary Review_, 1871)

V.

ON THE FORMATION OF COAL. (A Lecture delivered before the Members of
the Bradford Philosophical Institution, and subsequently published in
the _Contemporary Review_)

VI.

ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS. (_Good Words_, 1870)

VII.

ON THE METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. (The _Fortnightly Review_,
1865)

VIII.

ON SOME FIXED POINTS IN BRITISH ETHNOLOGY. (The _Contemporary Review_,
1871)

IX.

PALAEONTOLOGY AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. (The Presidential Address
to the Geological Society, 1870)

X.

MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS. (The _Contemporary Review_, 1871)

XI.

THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS. (A Review of Haeckel's "Natuerliche
Schoepfungs-Geschichte." The _Academy_, 1869)

XII.

BISHOP BERKELEY ON THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION. _(Macmillan's
Magazine_, 1871)

CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES.

I.

ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM.

(AN ADDRESS TO THE MEMBERS OF THE MIDLAND INSTITUTE, OCTOBER 9TH,
1871.)

To me, and, as I trust, to the great majority of those whom I address,
the great attempt to educate the people of England which has just been
set afoot, is one of the most satisfactory and hopeful events in our
modern history. But it is impossible, even if it were desirable,
to shut our eyes to the fact, that there is a minority, not
inconsiderable in numbers, nor deficient in supporters of weight and
authority, in whose judgment all this legislation is a step in the
wrong direction, false in principle, and consequently sure to produce
evil in practice.

The arguments employed by these objectors are of two kinds. The first
is what I will venture to term the caste argument; for, if logically
carried out, it would end in the separation of the people of this
country into castes, as permanent and as sharply defined, if not as
numerous, as those of India. It is maintained that the whole fabric
of society will be destroyed if the poor, as well as the rich, are
educated; that anything like sound and good education will only make
them discontented with their station and raise hopes which, in the
great majority of cases, will be bitterly disappointed. It is said:
There must be hewers of wood and drawers of water, scavengers and
coalheavers, day labourers and domestic servants, or the work of
society will come to a standstill. But, if you educate and refine
everybody, nobody will be content to assume these functions, and all
the world will want to be gentlemen and ladies.

One hears this argument most frequently from the representatives of
the well-to-do middle class; and, coming from them, it strikes me as
peculiarly inconsistent, as the one thing they admire, strive after,
and advise their own children to do, is to get on in the world, and,
if possible, rise out of the class in which they were born into that
above them. Society needs grocers and merchants as much as it needs
coalheavers; but if a merchant accumulates wealth and works his way to
a baronetcy, or if the son of a greengrocer becomes a lord chancellor,
or an archbishop, or, as a successful soldier, wins a peerage, all the
world admires them; and looks with pride upon the social system which
renders such achievements possible. Nobody suggests that there is
anything wrong in _their_ being discontented with _their_ station; or
that, in _their_ cases society suffers by men of ability reaching the
positions for which nature has fitted them.

But there are better replies than those of the _tu quoque_ sort to the
caste argument. In the first place, it is not true that education,
as such, unfits men for rough and laborious, or even disgusting,
occupations. The life of a sailor is rougher and harder than that of
nine landsmen out of ten, and yet, as every ship's captain knows, no
sailor was ever the worse for possessing a trained intelligence. The
life of a medical practitioner, especially in the country, is harder
and more laborious than that of most artisans, and he is constantly
obliged to do things which, in point of pleasantness, cannot be ranked
above scavengering--yet he always ought to be, and he frequently is,
a highly educated man. In the second place, though it may be granted
that the words of the catechism, which require a man to do his duty in
the station to which it has pleased God to call him, give an admirable
definition of our obligation to ourselves and to society; yet the
question remains, how is any given person to find out what is the
particular station to which it has pleased God to call him? A new-born
infant does not come into the world labelled scavenger, shopkeeper,
bishop, or duke. One mass of red pulp is just like another to all
outward appearance. And it is only by finding out what his faculties
are good for, and seeking, not for the sake of gratifying a paltry
vanity, but as the highest duty to himself and to his fellow-men,
to put himself into the position in which they can attain their full
development, that the man discovers his true station. That which is to
be lamented, I fancy, is not that society should do its utmost to help
capacity to ascend from the lower strata to the higher, but that it
has no machinery by which to facilitate the descent of incapacity from
the higher strata to the lower. In that noble romance, the "Republic"
(which is now, thanks to the Master of Balliol, as intelligible to
us all, as if it had been written in our mother tongue), Plato makes
Socrates say that he should like to inculcate upon the citizens of his
ideal state just one "royal lie."

"'Citizens,' we shall say to them in our tale--'You are
brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you
have the power of command, and these he has composed of
gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honour; others
of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again, who are to be
husbandmen and craftsmen, he has made of brass and iron; and
the species will generally be preserved in the children. But
as you are of the same original family, a golden parent will
sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son.
And God proclaims to the rulers, as a first principle, that
before all they should watch over their offspring, and see
what elements mingle with their nature; for if the son of a
golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and iron,
then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of
the ruler must not be pitiful towards his child because he has
to descend in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan;
just as there may be others sprung from the artisan class, who
are raised to honour, and become guardians and auxiliaries.
For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the
State, it will then be destroyed.'"[1]

[Footnote 1: "The Dialogues of Plato." Translated into English, with
Analysis and Introduction, by B. Jowett, M.A. Vol. ii. p. 243.]

Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against
truth; and the lapse of more than two thousand years has not weakened
the force of these wise words. Nor is it necessary that, as Plato
suggests, society should provide functionaries expressly charged with
the performance of the difficult duty of picking out the men of brass
from those of silver and gold. Educate, and the latter will certainly
rise to the top; remove all those artificial props by which the brass
and iron folk are kept at the top, and, by a law as sure as that of
gravitation, they will gradually sink to the bottom. We have all
known noble lords who would have been coachmen, or gamekeepers, or
billiard-markers, if they had not been kept afloat by our social
corks; we have all known men among the lowest ranks, of whom everyone
has said, "What might not that man have become, if he had only had a
little education?"

And who that attends, even in the most superficial way, to the
conditions upon which the stability of modern society--and especially
of a society like ours, in which recent legislation has placed
sovereign authority in the hands of the masses, whenever they are
united enough to wield their power--can doubt that every man of high
natural ability, who is both ignorant and miserable, is as great a
danger to society as a rocket without a stick is to the people
who fire it? Misery is a match that never goes out; genius, as an
explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow; and if knowledge, which
should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small
that the rocket will simply run a-muck among friends and foes. What
gives force to the socialistic movement which is now stirring
European society to its depths, but a determination on the part of the
naturally able men among the proletariat, to put an end, somehow or
other, to the misery and degradation in which a large proportion of
their fellows are steeped? The question, whether the means by which
they purpose to achieve this end are adequate or not, is at this
moment the most important of all political questions--and it is beside
my present purpose to discuss it. All I desire to point out is, that
if the chance of the controversy being decided calmly and rationally,
and not by passion and force, looks miserably small to an impartial
bystander, the reason is that not one in ten thousand of those who
constitute the ultimate court of appeal, by which questions of the
utmost difficulty, as well as of the most momentous gravity, will have
to be decided, is prepared by education to comprehend the real nature
of the suit brought before their tribunal.

Finally, as to the ladies and gentlemen question, all I can say is,
would that every woman-child born into this world were trained to be
a lady, and every man-child a gentleman! But then I do not use those
much-abused words by way of distinguishing people who wear fine
clothes, and live in fine houses, and talk aristocratic slang, from
those who go about in fustian, and live in back slums, and talk gutter
slang. Some inborn plebeian blindness, in fact, prevents me from
understanding what advantage the former have over the latter. I have
never even been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham
should be refined and polite, while a rat-killing match in Whitechapel
is low; or why "What a lark" should be coarse, when one hears "How
awfully jolly" drop from the most refined lips twenty times in an
evening.

Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect, are
the qualities which make a real gentleman, or lady, as distinguished
from the veneered article which commonly goes by that name. I by no
means wish to express any sentimental preference for Lazarus against
Dives, but, on the face of the matter, one does not see why the
practice of these virtues should be more difficult in one state of
life than another; and any one who has had a wide experience among all
sorts and conditions of men, will, I think, agree with me that they
are as common in the lower ranks of life as in the higher.

Leaving the caste argument aside then, as inconsistent with the
practice of those who employ it, as devoid of any justification in
theory, and as utterly mischievous if its logical consequences were
carried out, let us turn to the other class of objectors. To these
opponents, the Education Act is only one of a number of pieces of
legislation to which they object on principle; and they include under
like condemnation the Vaccination Act, the Contagious Diseases Act,
and all other sanitary Acts; all attempts on the part of the State to
prevent adulteration, or to regulate injurious trades; all legislative
interference with anything that bears directly or indirectly on
commerce, such as shipping, harbours, railways, roads, cab-fares, and
the carriage of letters; and all attempts to promote the spread of
knowledge by the establishment of teaching bodies, examining
bodies, libraries, or museums, or by the sending out of scientific
expeditions; all endeavours to advance art by the establishment of
schools of design, or picture galleries; or by spending money upon
an architectural public building when a brick box would answer the
purpose. According to their views, not a shilling of public money must
be bestowed upon a public park or pleasure-ground; not sixpence upon
the relief of starvation, or the cure of disease. Those who hold
these views support them by two lines of argument. They enforce them
deductively by arguing from an assumed axiom, that the State has no
right to do anything but protect its subjects from aggression. The
State is simply a policeman, and its duty is neither more nor less
than to prevent robbery and murder and enforce contracts. It is not to
promote good, nor even to do anything to prevent evil, except by the
enforcement of penalties upon those who have been guilty of obvious
and tangible assaults upon purses or persons. And, according to
this view, the proper form of government is neither a monarchy,
an aristocracy, nor a democracy, but an _astynomocracy_, or
police government. On the other hand, these views are supported _a
posteriori_, by an induction from observation, which professes to show
that whatever is done by a Government beyond these negative limits, is
not only sure to be done badly, but to be done much worse than private
enterprise would have done the same thing.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24