Critiques and Addresses by Thomas Henry Huxley

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So far as the laws of conduct are determined by the intellect, I
apprehend that they belong to science, and to that part of science
which is called morality. But the engagement of the affections in
favour of that particular kind of conduct which we call good, seems to
me to be something quite beyond mere science. And I cannot but think
that it, together with the awe and reverence, which have no kinship
with base fear, but arise whenever one tries to pierce below the
surface of things, whether they be material or spiritual, constitutes
all that has any unchangeable reality in religion.

And just as I think it would, be a mistake to confound the science,
morality, with the affection, religion; so do I conceive it to be a
most lamentable and mischievous error, that the science, theology,
is so confounded in the minds of many--indeed, I might say, of the
majority of men.

I do not express any opinion as to whether theology is a true science,
or whether it does not come under the apostolic definition of "science
falsely so called;" though I may be permitted to express the belief
that if the Apostle to whom that much misapplied phrase is due
could make the acquaintance of much of modern theology, he would not
hesitate a moment in declaring that it is exactly what he meant the
words to denote.

But it is at any rate conceivable, that the nature of the Deity, and
His relations to the universe, and more especially to mankind, are
capable of being ascertained, either inductively or deductively, or
by both processes. And, if they have been ascertained, then a body of
science has been formed which is very properly called theology.

Further, there can be no doubt that affection for the Being thus
defined and described by theologic science would be properly termed
religion; but it would not be the whole of religion. The affection for
the ethical ideal defined by moral science would claim equal if not
superior rights. For suppose theology established the existence of an
evil deity--and some theologies, even Christian ones, have come very
near this,--is the religious affection to be transferred from the
ethical ideal to any such omnipotent demon? I trow not. Better
a thousand times that the human race should perish under his
thunderbolts than it should say, "Evil, be thou my good."

There is nothing new, that I know of, in this statement of the
relations of religion with the science of morality on the one hand and
that of theology on the other. But I believe it to be altogether
true, and very needful, at this time, to be clearly and emphatically
recognized as such, by those who have to deal with the education
question.

We are divided into two parties--the advocates of so-called
"religious" teaching on the one hand, and those of so-called "secular"
teaching on the other. And both parties seem to me to be not only
hopelessly wrong, but in such a position that if either succeeded
completely, it would discover, before many years were over, that
it had made a great mistake and done serious evil to the cause of
education.

For, leaving aside the more far-seeing minority on each side, what the
"religious" party is crying for is mere theology, under the name
of religion; while the "secularists" have unwisely and wrongfully
admitted the assumption of their opponents, and demand the abolition
of all "religious" teaching, when they only want to be free of
theology--Burning your ship to get rid of the cockroaches!

But my belief is, that no human being, and no society composed of
human beings, ever did, or ever will, come to much, unless their
conduct was governed and guided by the love of some ethical ideal.
Undoubtedly, your gutter child may be converted by mere intellectual
drill into "the subtlest of all the beasts of the field;" but we know
what has become of the original of that description, and there is
no need to increase the number of those who imitate him successfully
without being aided by the rates. And if I were compelled to choose
for one of my own children, between a school in which real religious
instruction is given, and one without it, I should prefer the former,
even though the child might have to take a good deal of theology with
it. Nine-tenths of a dose of bark is mere half-rotten wood; but one
swallows it for the sake of the particles of quinine, the beneficial
effect of which may be weakened, but is not destroyed, by the wooden
dilution, unless in a few cases of exceptionally tender stomachs.

Hence, when the great mass of the English people declare that they
want to have the children in the elementary schools taught the Bible,
and when it is plain from the terms of the Act, the debates in and
out of Parliament, and especially the emphatic declarations of
the Vice-President of the Council, that it was intended that such
Bible-reading should be permitted, unless good cause for prohibiting
it could be shown, I do not see what reason there is for opposing that
wish. Certainly, I, individually, could with no shadow of consistency
oppose the teaching of the children of other people to do that which
my own children are taught to do. And, even if the reading the Bible
were not, as I think it is, consonant with political reason and
justice, and with a desire to act in the spirit of the education
measure, I am disposed to think it might still be well to read that
book in the elementary schools.

I have always been strongly in favour of secular education, in the
sense of education without theology; but I must confess I have been
no less seriously perplexed to know by what practical measures the
religious feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct, was to
be kept up, in the present utterly chaotic state of opinion on these
matters, without the use of the Bible. The Pagan moralists lack life
and colour, and even the noble Stoic, Marcus Antoninus, is too high
and refined for an ordinary child. Take the Bible as a whole; make the
severest deductions which fair criticism can dictate for shortcomings
and positive errors; eliminate, as a sensible lay-teacher would do, if
left to himself, all that it is not desirable for children to occupy
themselves with; and there still remains in this old literature a vast
residuum of moral beauty and grandeur. And then consider the great
historical fact that, for three centuries, this book has been woven
into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history;
that it has become the national epic of Britain, and is as familiar to
noble and simple, from John-o'-Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante
and Tasso once were to the Italians; that it is written in the noblest
and purest English, and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary
form; and, finally, that it forbids the veriest hind who never left
his village to be ignorant of the existence of other countries and
other civilizations, and of a great past, stretching back to the
furthest limits of the oldest nations in the world. By the study of
what other book could children be so much humanized and made to
feel that each figure in that vast historical procession fills,
like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval between
two eternities; and earns the blessings or the curses of all time,
according to its effort to do good and hate evil, even as they also
are earning their payment for their work?

On the whole, then, I am in favour of reading the Bible, with
such grammatical, geographical, and historical explanations by a
lay-teacher as may be needful, with rigid exclusion of any further
theological teaching than that contained in the Bible itself. And in
stating what this is, the teacher would do well not to go beyond the
precise words of the Bible; for if he does, he will, in the first
place, undertake a task beyond his strength, seeing that all the
Jewish and Christian sects have been at work upon that subject for
more than two thousand years, and have not yet arrived, and are not in
the least likely to arrive, at an agreement; and, in the second
place, he will certainly begin to teach something distinctively
denominational, and thereby come into violent collision with the Act
of Parliament.

4. The intellectual training to be given in the elementary schools
must of course, in the first place, consist in learning to use the
means of acquiring knowledge, or reading, writing, and arithmetic; and
it will be a great matter to teach reading so completely that the act
shall have become easy and pleasant. If reading remains "hard," that
accomplishment will not be much resorted to for instruction, and still
less for amusement--which last is one of its most valuable uses to
hard-worked people.

But along with a due proficiency in the use of the means of learning,
a certain amount of knowledge, of intellectual discipline, and of
artistic training should be conveyed in the elementary schools; and in
this direction--for reasons which I am afraid to repeat, having
urged them so often--I can conceive no subject-matter of education
so appropriate and so important as the rudiments of physical science,
with drawing, modelling, and singing. Not only would such teaching
afford the best possible preparation for the technical schools about
which so much is now said, but the organization for carrying it into
effect already exists. The Science and Art Department, the operations
of which have already attained considerable magnitude, not only offers
to examine and pay the results of such examination in elementary
science and art, but it provides what is still more important, viz.
a means of giving children of high natural ability, who are just as
abundant among the poor as among the rich, a helping hand. A good old
proverb tells us that "One should not take a razor to cut a block:"
the razor is soon spoiled, and the block is not so well cut as it
would be with a hatchet. But it is worse economy to prevent a possible
Watt from being anything but a stoker, or to give a possible Faraday
no chance of doing anything but to bind books. Indeed, the loss in
such cases of mistaken vocation has no measure; it is absolutely
infinite and irreparable. And among the arguments in favour of the
interference of the State in education, none seems to be stronger
than this--that it is the interest of every one that ability should be
neither wasted, nor misapplied, by any one; and, therefore, that every
one's representative, the State, is necessarily fulfilling the wishes
of its constituents when it is helping the capacities to reach their
proper places.

It may be said that the scheme of education here sketched is too large
to be effected in the time during which the children will remain at
school; and, secondly, that even if this objection did not exist, it
would cost too much.

I attach no importance whatever to the first objection until the
experiment has been fairly tried. Considering how much catechism,
lists of the kings of Israel, geography of Palestine, and the like,
children are made to swallow now, I cannot believe there will be any
difficulty in inducing them to go through the physical training, which
is more than half play; or the instruction in household work, or in
those duties to one another and to themselves, which have a daily and
hourly practical interest. That children take kindly to elementary
science and art no one can doubt who has tried the experiment
properly. And if Bible-reading is not accompanied by constraint and
solemnity, as if it were a sacramental operation, I do not believe
there is anything in which children take more pleasure. At least I
know that some of the pleasantest recollections of my childhood are
connected with the voluntary study of an ancient Bible which belonged
to my grandmother. There were splendid pictures in it, to be sure; but
I recollect little or nothing about them save a portrait of the
high priest in his vestments. What come vividly back on my mind are
remembrances of my delight in the histories of Joseph and of David;
and of my keen appreciation of the chivalrous kindness of Abraham in
his dealings with Lot. Like a sudden flash there returns back upon
me, my utter scorn of the pettifogging meanness of Jacob, and my
sympathetic grief over the heartbreaking lamentation of the cheated
Esau, "Hast thou not a blessing for me also, O my father?" And I see,
as in a cloud, pictures of the grand phantasmagoria of the Book of
Revelation.

I enumerate, as they issue, the childish impressions which come
crowding out of the pigeon-holes in my brain, in which they have lain
almost undisturbed for forty years. I prize them as an evidence that a
child of five or six years old, left to his own devices, may be deeply
interested in the Bible, and draw sound moral sustenance from it. And
I rejoice that I was left to deal with the Bible alone; for if I had
had some theological "explainer" at my side, he might have tried,
as such do, to lessen my indignation against Jacob, and thereby have
warped my moral sense for ever; while the great apocalyptic spectacle
of the ultimate triumph of right and justice might have been turned to
the base purposes of a pious lampooner of the Papacy.

And as to the second objection--costliness--the reply is, first, that
the rate and the Parliamentary grant together ought to be enough,
considering that science and art teaching is already provided
for; and, secondly, that if they are not, it may be well for the
educational parliament to consider what has become of those endowments
which were originally intended to be devoted, more or less largely, to
the education of the poor.

When the monasteries were spoiled, some of their endowments were
applied to the foundation of cathedrals; and in all such cases it was
ordered that a certain portion of the endowment should be applied to
the purposes of education. How much is so applied? Is that which may
be so applied given to help the poor, who cannot pay for education, or
does it virtually subsidize the comparatively rich, who can? How
are Christ's Hospital and Alleyn's foundation securing their right
purposes, or how far are they perverted into contrivances for
affording relief to the classes who can afford to pay for education?
How--But this paper is already too long, and, if I begin, I may find
it hard to stop asking questions of this kind, which after all are
worthy only of the lowest of Radicals.

III.

ON MEDICAL EDUCATION.

(AN ADDRESS TO THE STUDENTS OF THE FACULTY OF MEDICINE IN UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE, LONDON, MAY 18, 1870, ON THE OCCASION OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF
PRIZES FOR THE SESSION.)

It has given me sincere pleasure to be here to-day, at the desire of
your highly respected President and the Council of the College. In
looking back upon my own past, I am sorry to say that I have found
that it is a quarter of a century since I took part in those hopes and
in those fears by which you have all recently been agitated, and which
now are at an end. But, although so long a time has elapsed since
I was moved by the same feelings, I beg leave to assure you that my
sympathy with both victors and vanquished remains fresh--so fresh,
indeed, that I could almost try to persuade myself that, after all, it
cannot be so very long ago. My business during the last hour, however,
has been to show that sympathy with one side only, and I assure you
I have done my best to play my part heartily, and to rejoice in the
success of those who have succeeded. Still, I should like to remind
you at the end of it all, that success on an occasion of this kind,
valuable and important as it is, is in reality only putting the foot
upon one rung of the ladder which leads upwards; and that the rung of
a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot
long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher. I trust
that you will all regard these successes as simply reminders that your
next business is, having enjoyed the success of the day, no longer to
look at that success, but to look forward to the next difficulty
that is to be conquered. And now, having had so much to say to the
successful candidates, you must forgive me if I add that a sort of
undercurrent of sympathy has been going on in my mind all the time for
those who have not been successful, for those valiant knights who have
been overthrown in your tourney, and have not made their appearance in
public. I trust that, in accordance with old custom, they, wounded and
bleeding, have been carried off to their tents, to be carefully tended
by the fairest of maidens; and in these days, when the chances are
that every one of such maidens will be a qualified practitioner,
I have no doubt that all the splinters will have been carefully
extracted, and that they are now physically healed. But there may
remain some little fragment of moral or intellectual discouragement,
and therefore I will take the liberty to remark that your chairman
to-day, if he occupied his proper place, would be among them. Your
chairman, in virtue of his position, and for the brief hour that he
occupies that position, is a person of importance; and it may be some
consolation to those who have failed if I say, that the quarter of a
century which I have been speaking of, takes me back to the time
when I was up at the University of London, a candidate for honours in
anatomy and physiology, and when I was exceedingly well beaten by my
excellent friend Dr. Ransom, of Nottingham. There is a person here
who recollects that circumstance very well. I refer to your venerated
teacher and mine, Dr. Sharpey. He was at that time one of the
examiners in anatomy and physiology, and you may be quite sure that,
as he was one of the examiners, there remained not the smallest doubt
in my mind of the propriety of his judgment, and I accepted my defeat
with the most comfortable assurance that I had thoroughly well earned
it. But, gentlemen, the competitor having been a worthy one, and
the examination, a fair one, I cannot say that I found in that
circumstance anything very discouraging. I said to myself, "Never
mind; what's the next thing to be done?" And I found that policy of
"never minding" and going on to the next thing to be done, to be the
most important of all policies in the conduct of practical life. It
does not matter how many tumbles you have in this life, so long as you
do not get dirty when you tumble; it is only the people who have to
stop to be washed and made clean, who must necessarily lose the race.
And I can assure you that there is the greatest practical benefit
in making a few failures early in life. You learn that which is of
inestimable importance--that there are a great many people in the
world who are just as clever as you are. You learn to put your trust,
by and by, in an economy and frugality of the exercise of your powers,
both moral and intellectual; and you very soon find out, if you have
not found it out before, that patience and tenacity of purpose are
worth more than twice their weight of cleverness. In fact, if I were
to go on discoursing on this subject, I should become almost eloquent
in praise of non-success; but, lest so doing should seem, in any way,
to wither well-earned laurels, I will turn from that topic, and ask
you to accompany me in some considerations touching another subject
which has a very profound interest for me, and which I think ought to
have an equally profound interest for you.

I presume that the great majority of those whom I address propose to
devote themselves to the profession of medicine; and I do not doubt,
from the evidences of ability which have been given to-day, that
I have before me a number of men who will rise to eminence in that
profession, and who will exert a great and deserved influence upon
its future. That in which I am interested, and about which I wish to
speak, is the subject of medical education, and I venture to speak
about it for the purpose, if I can, of influencing you, who may have
the power of influencing the medical education of the future. You may
ask, by what authority do I venture, being a person not concerned in
the practice of medicine, to meddle with that subject? I can only tell
you it is a fact, of which a number of you I dare say are aware by
experience (and I trust the experience has no painful associations),
that I have been for a considerable number of years (twelve or
thirteen years to the best of my recollection) one of the examiners in
the University of London. You are further aware that the men who
come up to the University of London are the picked men of the medical
schools of London, and therefore such observations as I may have
to make upon the state of knowledge of these gentlemen, if they be
justified, in regard to any faults I may have to find, cannot be held
to indicate defects in the capacity, or in the power of application of
those gentlemen, but must be laid, more or less, to the account of the
prevalent system of medical education. I will tell you what has struck
me--but in speaking in this frank way, as one always does about the
defects of one's friends, I must beg you to disabuse your minds of
the notion that I am alluding to any particular school, or to any
particular college, or to any particular person; and to believe that
if I am silent when I should be glad to speak with high praise, it is
because that praise would come too close to this locality. What has
struck me, then, in this long experience of the men best instructed in
physiology from the medical schools of London, is (with the many and
brilliant exceptions to which I have referred), taking it as a whole,
and broadly, the singular unreality of their knowledge of physiology.
Now, I use that word "unreality" advisedly: I do not say "scanty;" on
the contrary, there is plenty of it--a great deal too much of it--but
it is the quality, the nature of the knowledge, which I quarrel with.
I know I used to have--I don't know whether I have now, but I had once
upon a time--a bad reputation among students for setting up a very
high standard of acquirement, and I dare say you may think that the
standard of this old examiner, who happily is now very nearly an
extinct examiner, has been pitched too high. Nothing of the kind, I
assure you. The defects I have noticed, and the faults I have to find,
arise entirely from the circumstance that my standard is pitched too
low. This is no paradox, gentlemen, but quite simply the fact.
The knowledge I have looked for was a real, precise, thorough, and
practical knowledge of fundamentals; whereas that which the best of
the candidates, in a large proportion of cases, have had to give me
was a large, extensive, and inaccurate knowledge of superstructure;
and that is what I mean by saying that my demands went too low,
and not too high. What I have had to complain of is, that a large
proportion of the gentlemen who come up for physiology to the
University of London do not know it as they know their anatomy, and
have not been taught it as they have been taught their anatomy. Now, I
should not wonder at all if I heard a great many "No, noes" here; but
I am not talking about University College; as I have told you before,
I am talking about the average education of medical schools. What I
have found, and found so much reason to lament, is, that while anatomy
has been taught as a science ought to be taught, as a matter of
autopsy, and observation, and strict discipline; in a very large
number of cases, physiology has been taught as if it were a mere
matter of books and of hearsay. I declare to you, gentlemen, that
I have often expected to be told, when I have been asked a question
about the circulation of the blood, that Professor Breitkopf is
of opinion that it circulates, but that the whole thing is an open
question. I assure you that I am hardly exaggerating the state of mind
on matters of fundamental importance which I have found over and over
again to obtain, among gentlemen coming up to that picked examination
of the University of London. Now, I do not think that is a desirable
state of things. I cannot understand why physiology should not be
taught--in fact, you have here abundant evidence that it can be
taught--with the same definiteness and the same precision as anatomy
is taught. And you may depend upon this, that the only physiology
which is to be of any good whatever in medical practice, or in its
application to the study of medicine, is that physiology which a man
knows of his own knowledge; just as the only anatomy which would be
of any good to the surgeon is the anatomy which he knows of his own
knowledge. Another peculiarity I have found in the physiology which
has been current, and that is, that in the minds of a great many
gentlemen it has been supplanted by histology. They have learnt a
great deal of histology, and they have fancied that histology and
physiology are the same things. I have asked for some knowledge of the
physics and the mechanics and the chemistry of the human body, and I
have been met by talk about cells. I declare to you I believe it will
take me two years, at least, of absolute rest from the business of
an examiner to hear the word "cell," "germinal matter," or "carmine,"
without a sort of inward shudder.

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