- '*''* I
^
' i
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
METHOD AND RESULTS
ESSAYS
BY
THOMAS H. HUXLEY
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1898
Authorized Edition.
College
Library
Q
PBEFACE
THE fourth of the " Collected Essays " in the
volume now published gives an account of the
indispensable conditions of scientific assent, as
they are defined by the author of the famous
" Discours de la Methode."
The other eight set forth the results which, in
my judgment, are attained by the application of
the " Method " of Descartes to the investigation
of problems of widely various kinds ; in the
right solution of which we are all deeply in-
terested. Hence I have given the volume the
title of " Method and Kesults."
Written, for the most part, in the scant leisure
of pressing occupations, or in the intervals of
ill-health, these essays are free neither from
superfluities in the way of repetition, nor from
deficiencies which, I doubt not, will be even more
conspicuous to other eyes than they are to my
1158076
vi PREFACE
own. But so far as their substance goes, I find
nothing to alter in them, though the oldest
bears the date of 1866. Whether that is evidence
of the soundness of my opinions, or of my having
made no progress in wisdom for the last quarter
of a century, must be left to the courteous reader
to decide.
T. H. H.
HODESLEA, EASTBOURNE,
Jantiary IQth, 1893.
CONTENTS
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IA1PROVING NATURAL KNOW-
LEDGE [1866] 18
II
THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE [1887] 42
III
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE [1868] 130
IV
ON DESCARTKS* "DISCOURSE TOUCHING THE METHOD OF
USING ONE'S REASON RIGHTLY AND OF SEEKING
SCIENTIFIC TRUTH " [1870] 166
Viii CONTENTS
V
PAGE
ON THE HYPOTHESIS THAT ANIMALS AHE AUTOMATA,
AND ITS HISTORY [1874] 199
VI
ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM [1871] .251
VII
ON THE NATURAL INEQUALITY OF MEN [1890] .' . . . 290
VIII
NATURAL EIGHTS AND POLITICAL RIGHTS [1890] .... 336
IX
GOVERNMENT : ANARCHY OU REGIMENTATION [1890] . . 383
^- AUTOBIOGRAPHY
AND when I consider, in one view, the many things
which I have upon my hands, I feel the burlesque of being
employed in this manner at my time of life. But, in another
view, and taking in all circumstances, these things, as trifling as
they may appear, no less than things of greater importance, seem
to be put upon me to do Bishop Butler to the Duchess
of Somerset.
THE " many things " to which the Duchess's
correspondent here refers are the repaiis and
improvements of the episcopal seat at Auckland.
I doubt if the great apologist, greater in nothing
than in the simple dignity of his character, would
have considered the writing an account of himself
as a thing which could be put upon him to do
whatever circumstances might be taken in. But
the good bishop lived in an age when a man
might write books and yet be permitted to keep
his private existence to himself; in the pre-
Boswellian epoch, when the germ of the photo-
grapher lay in the womb of the distant future, and
2 AUTOBIOGRAPHY
the interviewer who pervades our age was an
unforeseen, indeed unimaginable, birth. of time.
At present, the most convinced believer in
the aphorism " Bene qui latuit, bene vixit, " is
not always able to act up to it. An importunate
person informs him that his portrait is about to be
published and will be accompanied by a biography
which the importunate person proposes to write.
The sufferer knows what that means; either he
undertakes to revise the " biography " or he does
not. In the former case, he makes himself re-
sponsible ; in the latter, he allows the publication
of a mass of more or less fulsome inaccuracies
for which he will be held responsible by those
who are familiar with the prevalent art of
self-advertisement. On the whole, it may be
better to get over the " burlesque of being
employed in this manner" and do the thing
himself.
It was by reflections of this kind that, some years
ago, I was led to write and permit the publication
of the subjoined sketch.
I was born about eight o'clock in the morning
on the 4th of May, 1825, at Ealing, which was, at
that time, as quiet a little country village as could
be found within half-a-dozen miles of Hyde Park
Corner. Now it is a suburb of London with, I be-
lieve, 30,000 inhabitants. My father was one of
the masters in a large semi-public school which at
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 3
one time had a high reputation. I am not aware
that anyportents preceded my arrival in this world,
but, in my childhood, I remember hearing a tra-
ditional account of the manner in which I lost the
chance of an endowment of great practical value.
The windows of my mother's room were open,
in consequence of the unusual warmth of the
weather. For the same reason, probably, a neigh-
boujing beehive had swarmed, and the new colony,
pitching on the window-sill, was making its way
into the room when the horrified nurse shut down
the sash. If that well-meaning woman had only
abstained from her ill-timed interference, the
swarm might have settled on my lips, and I
should have been endowed with that mellifluous
eloquence which, in this country, leads far more
surely than worth, capacity, or honest work, to the
highest places in Church and State. But the
opportunity was lost, and I have been obliged to
content myself through life with saying what I
mean in the plainest of plain language, than which,
I suppose, there is no habit more ruinous to a
man's prospects of advancement.
Why I was christened Thomas Henry I do not
know ; but it is a curious chance that my parents
should have fixed for my usual denomination upon
the name of that particular Apostle with whom I
have always felt most sympathy. Physically and
mentally I am the son of my mother so completely
even down to peculiar movements of the hands,
4 AUTOBIOGRAPHY
which made their appearance in me as I reached
the age she had when I noticed them that I can
hardly find any trace of my father in myself,
except .an inborn faculty for drawing, which un-
fortunately, in my case, has never been cultivated, a
hot temper, and that amount of tenacity of pur-
pose which unfriendly observers sometimes call
obstinacy.
My mother was a slender brunette, of an
emotional and energetic temperament, and pos-
sessed of the most piercing black eyes I ever
saw in a woman's head. With no more educa-
tion than other women of the middle classes
in her day, she had an excellent mental capacity.
Her most distinguishing characteristic, however,
was rapidity of thought. If one ventured to
suggest she had not taken much time to arrive
at any conclusion, she would say, " I cannot help
it, things flash across me." That peculiarity has
been passed on to me in full strength ; it has often
stood me in good stead ; it has sometimes played
me sad tricks, and it has always been a danger.
But, after all, if my time were to come over again,
there is nothing I would less willingly part with
than my inheritance of mother wit.
I have next to nothing to say about my
childhood. In later years my mother, looking
at me almost reproachfully, would sometimes say,
" Ah ! you were such a pretty boy ! " whence I
had no difficulty in concluding that I had not
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 5
fulfilled my early promise in the matter of looks.
In fact, I have a distinct recollection of certain
curls of which I was vain, and of a conviction that
I closely resembled that handsome, courtly gentle-
man, Sir Herbert Oakley, who was vicar of our
parish, and who was as a god to us country folk,
because he was occasionally visited by the then
Prince George of Cambridge. I remember turning
m^"">inafore wrong side forwards in order to repre-
sent a surplice, and preaching to my mother's maids
in the kitchen as nearly as possible in Sir Her-
bert's manner one Sunday morning when the rest
of the family were at church. That is the earliest
indication I can call to mind of the strong clerical
affinities which my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer
has always ascribed to me, though I fancy they
have for the most part remained in a latent
state.
My regular school training was of the briefest,
perhaps fortunately, for though my way of life 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, and
6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY
bullying was the least of the ill practices current
among us. Almost the only cheerful reminis-
cence in connection with the place which arises in
my mind is that of a battle I had with one of my
classmates, who had bullied me until I could stand
it no longer. I was a very slight lad, but there
was a wild-cat element in me which, when roused,
made up for lack of weight, and I licked my
adversary effectually. However, one of my first
experiences of the extremely rough-and-ready
nature of justice, as exhibited by the course of
things in general, arose out of the fact that I the
victor had a black eye, while he the vanquished
had none, so that I got into disgrace and he did
not. We made it up, and thereafter I was un-
molested. One of the greatest shocks I ever
received in my life was to be told a dozen years
afterwards by the groom who brought me my
horse in a stable-yard in Sydney that he was my
quondam antagonist. He had a long story of
family misfortune to account for his position, but
at that time it was necessary to deal very cau-
tiously with mysterious strangers in New South
Wales, and on inquiry I found that the unfortu-
nate young man had not only been " sent out," but
had undergone more than one colonial conviction.
As I grew older, my great desire was to be a
mechanical engineer, but the fates were against
this and, while very young, I commenced the study
of medicine under a medical brother-in-law. But,
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 7
though the Institute of Mechanical Engineers
would certainly not own me, I am not sure that I
have not all along been a sort of mechanical
engineer in partibus infidelium. I am now occa-
sionally horrified to think how very little I ever
knew or cared about medicine as the art of healing.
The only part of my professional course which
really and deeply interested me was physiology,
whicTi is the mechanical engineering of living
machines ; and, notwithstanding that natural
science has been my proper business, I am afraid
there is very little of the genuine naturalist in
me. I never collected anything, and species work
was always a burden to me ; what I cared for was
the architectural and engineering part of the
business, the working out the wonderful unity of
plan in the thousands and thousands of diverse
living constructions, and the modifications of similar
apparatuses to serve diverse ends. The extra-
ordinary attraction I felt towards the study of the
intricacies of living structure nearly proved fatal to
me at the outset. I was a mere boy I think
between thirteen and fourteen years of age
when I was taken by some older student friends
of mine to the first post-mortem examination I
ever attended. All my life I have been most
unfortunately sensitive to the disagreeables which
attend anatomical pursuits, but on this o'ccasion
my curiosity overpowered all other feelings, and I
spent two or three hours in gratifying it. I did
8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY
not cut myself, and none of the ordinary symptoms
of dissection-poison supervened, but poisoned I
was somehow, and I remember sinking into a
strange state of apathy. By way of a last chance,
I was sent to the care of some good, kind people,
friends of my father's, who lived in a farmhouse
in the heart of Warwickshire. I remember stag-
gering from my bed to the window on the bright
spring morning after my arrival, and throwing
open the casement. Life seemed to come back
on the wings of the breeze, and to this day the
faint odour of wood-smoke, like that which floated
across the farm-yard in the early morning, is as
good to me as the " sweet south upon a bed of
violets." I soon recovered, but for years I suffered
from occasional paroxysms of internal pain, and
from that time my constant friend, hypochondriacal
dyspepsia, commenced his half century of co-
tenancy of my fleshly tabernacle.
Looking back on my " Lchrjahre," I am sorry to
say that I do not think that any account of my
doings as a student would tend to edification. In
fact, I should distinctly warn ingenuous youth to
avoid imitating my example. I worked extremely
hard when it pleased me, and when it did not
which was a very frequent case I was extremely
idle (unless making caricatures of one's pastors
and masters is to be called a branch of industry),
or else wasted my energies in wrong directions. I
read everything I could lay hands upon, in-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 9
eluding novels, and took up all sorts of pursuits to
drop them again quite as speedily. No doubt it
was very largely my own fault, but the only
instruction from which I ever obtained the proper
effect of education was that which I received from
Mr. Wharton Jones, who was the lecturer on
physiology at the Charing Cross School of Medi-
cine. The extent and precision of his knowledge
imposed me greatly, and the severe exactness of
his method of lecturing was quite to my taste. I
do not know that I have ever felt so much respect
for anybody as a teacher before or since. I worked
hard to obtain his approbation, and he was ex-
tremely kind and helpful to the youngster who,
I am afraid, took up more of his time than he had
any right to do. It was he who suggested the pub-
lication of my first scientific paper a very little
one in the Medical Gazette of 1845, and most
kindly corrected the literary faults which abounded
in it, short as it was; for at that time, and .for
many years afterwards, I detested the trouble of
writing, and would take no pains over it.
It was in the early spring of 1846, that, having
finished my obligatory medical studies and passed
the first M.B. examination at the London University
though I was still too young to qualify at the
College of Surgeons I was talking to a fellow-
student (the present eminent physician, Sir Joseph
Fayrer), and wondering what I should do to meet
the imperative necessity for earning my own bread,
10 AUTOBIOGRAPHY
when my friend suggested that I should write to
Sir William Burnett, at that time Director-General
for the Medical Service of the Navy, for an appoint-
ment. I thought this rather a strong thing to do,
as Sir William was personally unknown to me,
but my cheery friend would not listen to my
scruples, so I went to my lodgings and wrote the
best letter I could devise. A few days afterwards
I received the usual official circular of acknowledg-
ment, but at the bottom there was written an in-
struction to call at Somerset House on such a day.
I thought that looked like business, so at the
appointed time I called and sent in my card, while
I waited in Sir William's ante-room. He was a
'tall, shrewd-looking old gentleman, with a broad
Scotch accent and I think I see him now as he
entered with my card in his hand. The first
thing he did was to return it, with the frugal
reminder that I should probably find it useful on
some other occasion. The second was to ask
whether I was an Irishman. I suppose the air of
modesty about my appeal must have struck him.
I satisfied the Director-General that I was English
to the backbone, and he made some inquiries as
to my student career, finally desiring me to hold
myself ready for examination. Having passed
this, I was in Her Majesty's Service, and entered
on the books of Nelson's old ship, the Victm^y, for
duty at Haslar Hospital, about a couple of months
after I made my application.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 11
My official chief at Haslar was a very remark-
able person, the late Sir John Richardson, an
excellent naturalist, and far-famed as an indomit-
able Arctic traveller. He was a silent, reserved
man, outside the circle of his family and intimates ;
and, having a full share of youthful vanity, I was
extremely disgusted to find that " Old John," as
we irreverent youngsters called him, took not the
slightest notice of my worshipful self either the
first time I attended him, as it was my duty to do,
or for some weeks afterwards. I am afraid to
think of the lengths to which my tongue may have
run on the subject of the churlishness of the chief,
who was, in truth, one of the kindest-hearted and
most considerate of men. But one day, as I was
crossing the hospital square, Sir John stopped me,
and heaped coals of fire on my head by telling me
that he had tried to get me one of the resident
appointments, much coveted by the assistant-
surgeons,but that the Admiralty had put in another
man. " However," said he, " I mean to keep you
here till I can get you something you will like,"
and turned upon his heel without waiting for the
thanks I stammered out. That explained how
it was I had not been packed off to the West
Coast of Africa like some of my juniors, and why,
eventually, I remained altogether seven months at
Haslar.
After a long interval, during which " Old
John " ignored my existence almost as completely
12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY
as before, he stopped me again as we met in a
casual way, and describing the service on which
the Rattlesnake was likely to be employed, said
that Captain Owen Stanley, who was to command
the ship, had asked him to recommend an assistant
surgeon who knew something of science ; would
I like that ? Of course I jumped at the offer.
" Very well, I give you leave ; go to London at
once and see Captain Stanley." I went, saw my
future commander, who was very civil to me, and
promised to ask that I should be appointed to
his ship, as in due time I was. It is a singular
thing that, during the few months of my stay at
Haslar, I had among my messmates two future
Directors-General of the Medical Service of the
Navy (Sir Alexander Armstrong and Sir John
Watt-Reid), with the present President of the
College of Physicians and my kindest of doctors,
Sir Andrew Clark.
Life on board Her Majesty's ships in those
days was a very different affair from what it
is now, and ours was exceptionally rough, as
we were often many months without receiving
letters or seeing any civilised people but ourselves.
In exchange, we had the interest of being about the
last voyagers, I suppose, to whom it could be pos-
sible to meet with people who knew nothing of
fire-arms as we did on the south Coast of New
Guinea and of making acquaintance with a
variety of interesting savage and semi-civilised
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 13
people. But, apart from experience of this kind
and the opportunities offered for scientific work,
to me. personally, the cruise was extremely valu-
able. It was good for me to live under sharp dis-
cipline ; to be down on the realities of existence
by living on bare necessaries ; to find out how ex-
tremely 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 weevilly
biscuit the sole prospect for breakfast ; and,
more especially, to learn to work for the sake of
what I got for myself out of it, even if it all went
to the bottom and I along with it. My brother
officers were as good fellows as sailors ought to be
and generally are, but, naturally, they neither
knew nor cared anything about my pursuits, nor
understood why I should be so zealous in pursuit
of the objects which my friends, the middies,
christened " Buffbns," after the title conspicuous
on a volume of the " Suites & Buffon," which stood
on my shelf in the chart room.
During the four years of our absence, I sent
home communication after communication to 'the
" Linnean Society," with the same result as that
obtained by Noah when he sent the raven out of
his ark. Tired at last of hearing nothing about
them, I determined to do or die, and in 1849 I
drew up a more elaborate paper and forwarded it
to the Royal Society. This was my dove, if I had
only known it. But owing to the movements of
14 AUTOBIOGRAPHY
tlie ship, I heard nothing of that either until my
return to England in the latter end of the year
1850, when I "found that it was printed and pub-
lished, and that a huge packet of separate copies
awaited me. When I hear some of my young
friends complain of want of sympathy and encour-
agement, I am inclined to think that my naval life
was not the least valuable part of my education.
Three years after my return were occupied by a
battle between my scientific friends on the one hand
and the Admiralty on the other, as to whether the
latter ought, or ought not, to act up to the spirit
of a pledge they had given to encourage officers
who had done scientific work by contributing to
the expense of publishing mine. At last the Ad-
miralty, getting tired, I suppose, cut short the dis-
cussion by ordering me to join a ship, which thing
I declined to do, and as Rastignac, in the Pere
Goriot, says to Paris, I said to London " d nous
deux." I desired to obtain a Professorship of
either Physiology or Comparative Anatomy, and
as vacancies occurred I applied, but in vain. My
friend, Professor Tyndall, and I were candidates
at the same time, he for the Chair of Physics and
I for that of Natural History in the University of
Toronto, which, fortunately, as it turned out.
would not look at either of us. I say fortunately,
not from any lack of respect for Toronto, but because
I soon made up my mind that London was 'the
place for me, and hence I have steadily declined
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 15
the inducements to leave it, which have at various
times been offered. At last, in 1854, on the
translation of my warm friend Edward Forbes, to
Edinburgh, Sir Henry De la Beche, the Director-
General of the Geological Survey, offered me the
post Forbes vacated of Paleontologist and Lecturer
on Natural History. I refused the former point
blank, and accepted the latter only provisionally,
tellmg Sir Henry that I did not care for fossils,
and that I should give up Natural History as soon
as I could get a physiological post. But I held
the office for thirty-one years, and a large part of
my work has been paleontological.
At that time I disliked public speaking, and had
a firm conviction that I should break down every
time I opened my mouth. I believe I had every
fault a speaker could have (except talking at ran-
dom or indulging in rhetoric), when I spoke to the
first important audience I ever addressed, on a
Friday evening at the Royal Institution, in 1852.
Yet, I must confess to having been guilty, malgrd
moi, of as much public speaking as most of my
contemporaries, and for the last ten years it ceased
to be so much of a bugbear to me. I used to pity
myself for having to go through this training, but
I am now more disposed to compassionate the un-
fortunate audiences, especially my ever-friendly
hearers at the Royal Institution, who were the
subjects of my oratorical experiments.
The last tiling that it would be proper for me
16 AUTOBIOGRAPHY
to do would be to speak of the work of my life, or
to say at the end of the day whether I think I
have earned my wages or not. Men are said to
be partial judges of themselves. Young men may
be, I doubt if old men are. Life seems terribly
foreshortened as they look back, and the mountain
they set themselves to climb in youth turns out to
be a mere spur of immeasurably higher ranges
when, with failing breath, they reach the top.
But if I may speak of the objects I have had more
or less definitely in view since I began the ascent
of my hillock, they are briefly these : To promote
the increase of natural knowledge and to forward
the application of scientific methods of investiga-
tion to all the problems of life to the best of my
ability, in the conviction which has grown with my
growth and strengthened with my strength, that
there is no alleviation for the sufferings of man-
kind except veracity of thought and of action, and
the resolute facing of the world as it is when the
garment of make-believe by which pious hands
have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.
It is with this intent that I have subordinated