The Autobiography of Thomas Henry Huxley
by Thomas H. Huxley
"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.
he "many things" to which the Duchess's correspondent here
refers are the repairs 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 photographer lay in the womb of
the distant future, and 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
responsible; 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 believe, 30,000 inhabitants.
My father was one of the masters in a large semi-public school which at
one time had a high reputation. I am not aware that any portents preceded
my arrival in this world; but, in my childhood, I remember hearing a
traditional 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 neighbouring bee-hive 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,
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 unfortunately, in
my case, has never been cultivated; a hot temper; and that amount of
tenacity of purpose, which unfriendly observers sometimes call
obstinacy.
My mother was a slender brunette, of an emotional and
energetic temperament, and possessed of the most piercing black eyes I
ever saw in a woman's head. With no more education 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 that 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 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 gentleman, 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 my pinafore wrong side forwards, in order to represent
a surplice, and preaching to my mother's maids in the kitchen, as
nearly as possible in Sir Herbert'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 bullying was the
least of the ill practices current among us. Almost the only cheerful
reminiscence 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 unmolested. 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 cautiously with mysterious strangers in New South Wales, and on
inquiry I found that the unfortunate 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, 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
occasionally 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, which 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
extraordinary 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 occasion, my curiosity
overpowered all other feelings, and I spent two or three hours in
gratifying it. I did 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 staggering 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 farmyard 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 'Lehrjahre,' 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, including
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 Medicine. The extent and
precision of his knowledge impressed 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 before or
since. I worked hard to obtain his approbation, and he was extremely
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
publication 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, 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 appointment. 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 acknowledgment,
but at the bottom there was written an instruction 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
Victory, for duty at Haslar Hospital, about a couple of months after I
made my application.
My official chief at Haslar was a remarkable
person—the late Sir John Richardson, an excellent naturalist, and
far-famed as an indomitable 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 might 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 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 possible 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 people. But, apart from experience of this kind, and
the opportunities offered for scientific work, to me, personally, the
cruise was extremely valuable. It was good for me to live under sharp
discipline; to be down on the realities of existence by living on bare
necessaries; to find out 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 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 'Buffons,' after the title conspicuous on a volume of the
'Suites à 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 the 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 published, and that a huge packet of
separate copies awaited me. When I hear some of my young friends
complain of want of sympathy and encouragement, 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 Admiralty, getting tired, I suppose,
cut short the discussion by ordering me to join a ship. Which thing I
declined to do, and as Rastignac, in the Père Goriot, says to Paris, I
said to London, 'à 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 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 provisionally, telling
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
random 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,
malgré 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 unfortunate audiences,
especially my ever friendly hearers at the Royal Institution, who were
the subjects of my oratorical experiments.
The last thing that it would be proper for me 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 investigation 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
mankind 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 any
reasonable or unreasonable ambition for scientific fame, which I may
have permitted myself to entertain, to other ends; to the
popularisation of science; to the development and organisation of
scientific education; to the endless series of battles and skirmishes
over evolution; and to untiring opposition to that ecclesiastical
spirit, that clericalism, which in England, as everywhere else, and to
whatever denomination it may belong, is the deadly enemy of science.
In striving for the attainment of these objects, I
have been but one among many, and I shall be well content to be
remembered, or even not remembered, as such. Circumstances, among
which I am proud to reckon the devoted kindness of many friends, have
led to my occupation of various prominent positions, among which the
Presidency of the Royal Society is the highest. It would be mock
modesty on my part, with these and other scientific honours which have
been bestowed upon me, to pretend that I have not succeeded in the
career which I have followed, rather because I was driven into it,
than of my own free will; but I am afraid I should not count even
these things as marks of success, if I could not hope that I had
somewhat helped that movement of opinion which has been called the
New Reformation.
[ Thomas H. Huxley, "Autobiography," from
Collected Essays, vol. 2, Darwiniana, London: Macmillan, 1890. ]
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