No More Learning

He calls favorite young ladies by their
Christian names, however slightly acquainted with them; and has
a privilege of saluting all brides, mothers, and indeed every
species of lady, on the least holiday occasion. If the husband, for
instance, has met with a piece of luck, he instantly moves for-
ward and gravely kisses the wife on the cheek. The wife then
says, "My niece, sir, from the country;" and he kisses the niece.
The niece, seeing her cousin biting her lips at the joke, says,
«< My cousin Harriet, sir;" and he kisses the cousin. He "never
recollects such weather," except during the "Great Frost," or
when he rode down with "Jack Skrimshire to Newmarket. " He
grows young again in his little grandchildren, especially the one
which he thinks most like himself, which is the handsomest. Yet


## p. 7804 (#626) ###########################################

7804
LEIGH HUNT
he likes best perhaps the one most resembling his wife; and will
sit with him on his lap, holding his hand in silence for a quarter
of an hour together. He plays most tricks with the former, and
makes him sneeze. He asks little boys in general who was the
father of Zebedee's children. If his grandsons are at school he
often goes to see them, and makes them blush by telling the
master of the upper scholars that they are fine boys, and of a
precocious genius. He is much struck when an old acquaintance
dies, but adds that he lived too fast, and that poor Bob was a
sad dog in his youth; "a very sad dog, sir; mightily set upon a
short life and a merry one. "
When he gets very old indeed, he will sit for whole evenings
and say little or nothing; but informs you that there is Mrs.
Jones (the housekeeper) - "She'll talk. "


## p. 7804 (#627) ###########################################



## p. 7804 (#628) ###########################################


THOMAS H. HUXLEY.
Grosch


## p. 7804 (#629) ###########################################

4
1. A
Mede
?
Pi
ཅ ཏ པ 1:|:
Tatt
under the
Joni,
"')
ha csen


## p. 7804 (#630) ###########################################

MUXLEY
THOMAS H
Máy đo ni m nằm lên
4


## p. 7805 (#631) ###########################################

7805
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
(1825-1895)
BY E. RAY LANKESTER
HE Right Honorable Thomas Henry Huxley was the seventh
child of George Huxley, himself a seventh child, and was
born on the 4th of May, 1825, at Ealing, near London. His
father was one of the masters in a large semi-public school at that
place, kept by a Dr. Nicholson. We know very little of this father,
and Huxley himself in a brief autobiographical sketch has nothing to
tell of him except that he passed on to his son "an inborn faculty
for drawing, a hot temper, and a tenacity of purpose which unfriendly
observers sometimes called obstinacy. " Of hi mother he tells us
somewhat more. He inherited from her his extremely black hair
and eyes, his sallow complexion, and (as he thinks) rapidity of thought
and mother wit. His school days (passed presumably in the school
at which his father was a master) left on Huxley only a painful
impression. He speaks of those who were over the boys "caring
about as much for their moral and intellectual welfare as if they
were baby-farmers. " When he was twelve or thirteen, he wished
to become a mechanical engineer; but a medical brother-in-law (Dr.
Salt) took him in hand, and he commenced at this early age the study
of medicine. Eventually he went to Charing Cross Hospital, and
passed the first M. B. examination of the University of London. He
read hard all kinds of literature,-novels, philosophy, history. The
one of his teachers who really interested him, and for whom he cher-
ished ever after a warm regard, was Mr. Wharton Jones, lecturer on
physiology, and surgeon-oculist.
Stern necessity compelled young Huxley, as soon as his medical
course was over, to seek at once, even before he was one-and-twenty,
some post or employment. We know nothing of his relatives at this
time, nor to what extent they assisted him. Apparently he stood
alone and decided for himself. At the suggestion of a fellow-student,
now Sir Joseph Fayrer. Huxley in 1846 applied for admission to the
Medical Service of the Navy. In two months more he was examined
and admitted, and was in attendance at the naval hospital at Haslar
under the care of that fine old naturalist and Arctic voyager, Sir
John Richardson.


## p. 7806 (#632) ###########################################

7806
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
Sir John Richardson took note of young Huxley, and instead of
sending him off to the fevers of the Gold Coast, procured him the
post of assistant surgeon on the surveying ship Rattlesnake, under
Captain Owen Stanley, who had expressed a wish to have a surgeon
who took some interest in science. The four years spent by Huxley
on the Rattlesnake, chiefly off the coast of Australia, were fine train-
ing for him, not only as a naturalist but as a man. He had ample
time to read, and laid in the foundations of that vast store of lit-
erary knowledge which so often astonished his scientific colleagues
in later years.
He also studied the anatomy and physiology of the
transparent oceanic forms-jelly-fish, salpæ, pelagic mollusks, and
worms - with irrepressible ardor and determination; not so much with
the expectation of opening a career in science for himself, as with
the desire of satisfying his own curiosity and exercising his intel-
lectual faculties. One of his most interesting studies (still quoted
with respect)—namely, that on the reproduction of Pyrosoma, the
transparent phosphorescent Ascidian-was carried out in his cabin.
at night, with only a tallow dip to illumine his microscope, whilst a
lively sea caused the ship to roll freely.
The Rattlesnake returned to England at the end of the year 1850.
Huxley found that the scientific papers he had sent home had already
made him famous. By the aid of those who valued the promise given
by his published work, he was allowed by the Admiralty for three.
years to draw pay as a navy surgeon whilst devoting himself to the
working up of the results of his observations when at sea.
In 1851
he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1852 received
one of the Royal medals of the society. In 1853, however, he was
ordered to proceed again to active service, and boldly took the alter-
native course of retiring from the naval service. He found himself
without professional employment or other resource, but trusted to his
pen. For a year or so he worked as a journalist, treating scientific
and literary themes in the weeklies and quarterlies, and still finding
energy to carry on scientific investigations in histology and in the
anatomy of microscopic organisms. His opportunity came in 1854.
through the appointment of his friend Edward Forbes to the chair of
natural history in Edinburgh. Thus was set free the post of lecturer
on natural history at the Royal School of Mines, which, together
with a special post of "naturalist to the Survey," was offered to
Huxley by the director of the Geological Survey and Royal School
of Mines, Sir Henry de la Bèche.
Huxley accepted this post, worth £800 a year, with the intention
of resigning it for one related to physiology whenever such should
offer. He declared he had no interest in "fossils," and in later years
said: "I am afraid there is very little of the genuine naturalist in me.


## p. 7807 (#633) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7807
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 apparatus to serve diverse ends. ” However,
Huxley held this post for thirty-one years, and soon turned his
attention to the fossils he had at first despised. Amongst his most
valuable scientific writings are those which embody his discoveries as
regards fossil animals, fishes, reptiles, and mammals.
There is no doubt that Huxley was fortunate to obtain at the age
of twenty-seven a first-rate post, worth nearly a thousand a year, in
London, and unburdened with any excessive duties. He had to give
during winter (October to end of February) a course of lectures on
five days of the week, and he had to attend in his study at the
Museum in Jermyn Street; but he had not the cares of a laboratory
nor of a collection to fritter away his time. Though he had devoted
disciples, he produced no pupils in the sense in which the German
professor produces them. He carried out his researches alone, with
his own hands, as he had done when at sea; and no younger men
were the objects of his care, or were inspired and directed in his
workshop. Consequently he was able to arrange the employment of
his day in his own way. He wrote largely for the press upon such
topics as belonged to his branch of science; he lectured frequently
in other places besides Jermyn Street; he took an active and im-
portant part in various government commissions, to which his official
position rendered it proper that he should be appointed. A favorite
audience for him to address was that of the Royal Institution, where
the members and their friends, ladies as well as gentlemen, are accus-
tomed to have the latest discoveries in science expounded to them
both by afternoon and evening lectures. Though it is incontestably
established by his own and others' testimony that Huxley was at
first an unattractive lecturer, he gradually developed a marvelous
power of lucid exposition and firm biting eloquence. I should say
that this had not attained its full development until he was about
forty years of age (in 1865), and that his written style developed
pari passu with that of his oral discourse.
As soon as he was appointed to his post in Jermyn Street, Huxley
married the lady to whom he had become engaged in 1847 at Sydney,
Miss Henrietta O. Heathorn, who survives him.
Soon after he returned from the voyage of the Rattlesnake he
made the acquaintance of Charles Darwin in London, and became a
firm friend of his, and of the botanist Hooker. Tyndall he met first
in a railway carriage en route for the meeting of the British Associa-
tion at Ipswich in 1851, and there and then commenced a warm and


## p. 7808 (#634) ###########################################

7808
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
lasting friendship. Huxley, Hooker, and Tyndall became a trium-
virate directing and determining the official side of scientific life in
London, operating through the Royal Society, the Royal Institution,
the Athenæum Club, and the press; influencing and guiding not only
popular opinion, but also such scanty patronage and employment of
scientific men as the British government permits itself.
For the purposes of a brief review, Huxley's life, after his return
from his voyage in 1850 at the age of twenty-five, may be divided
into the four decennia 1850-60, 1860–70, 1870-80, 1880-90, followed by
the five years 1890-95 which bring us to his death. In the first of
these Huxley established his reputation as a comparative anatomist,
and its close found him thoroughly in harness as a palæontologist no
less than a microscopist, the determined exponent of new views in
zoological science, and with the ambition clearly before him of dis-
placing both the personal influence and the loose philosophic teach-
ings of Richard Owen, twenty years his senior and enjoying great
popular and social authority. At the close of this decade appeared
the Origin of Species' by Darwin, and a new activity developed in
Huxley as the defender and exponent of Darwin's views. On the
very day after its publication, in November 1859, owing to a fortu-
nate chance Huxley's was the pen which reviewed the Origin of
Species in the Times. In 1860 he gave a Friday evening lecture on
'Species Races and their Origin' at the Royal Institution; and at the
Oxford meeting of the British Association had his famous encoun-
ter with Samuel Wilberforce, then Bishop of Oxford, who made a
gross and foolish attack upon Huxley individually in reference to his
contention, in opposition to Owen, that there was less difference in
structure between man and the higher apes than there is between
the higher apes and the lower monkeys.
Huxley was up to this date but little known outside scientific cir-
cles. Henceforward he was recognized in London society as a leader
of men in science, and a dangerous swordsman to challenge in a
public arena. In the winter of the same year he gave six evening
lectures to workingmen on The Relation of Man to the Lower
Animals' which appeared later, in 1863, as an illustrated volume
entitled 'Man's Place in Nature. ' In the same year, 1863, he again
addressed six lectures to workingmen, on 'Our Knowledge of the
Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature,' which were subse-
quently published from a short-hand reporter's transcript.
This sec-
ond course, like those which had preceded them, were attended by a
densely packed audience of workingmen, who paid the nominal fee
of sixpence only, for admission to the course. Never was there a
more rapt and enthusiastic audience, and never were greater skill and
power in the exposition of scientific methods and results to such an


## p. 7809 (#635) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7809
audience exhibited. It was in these lectures that Huxley fully real-
ized the great power with which he was gifted.
So till the close of his second London decade he was busy on the
one hand with scientific research in palæontology,-introducing new
and most important views as to the structure of fishes' fins, of rep-
tilia and amphibia and of the vertebrate skull, teaching his regular
students in Jermyn Street, and giving Hunterian lectures on compara-
tive anatomy at the College of Surgeons, and on the other hand
expounding by occasional lectures, brief courses, or weighty essays,
the principles of Darwinism and the new doctrine of organic evolu-
tion, to a wider public.
In 1870 his growing conviction that it lay in his power not merely
to discover new scientific truth, but to put the methods and results
of science before his fellow-men, other than those who were special
students, in such a way as to influence their intellectual life, led
him to accept an invitation to become a candidate for the London
School Board, then first established. He was elected, and made him-
self felt in that assembly as a man not only acute and learned but
wise and just. In 1871 he became Secretary of the Royal Society, a
post which he retained until 1880; and devoted no small portion of
his time and energy to the maintenance of the high position and
influence which he conceived to be the just and historic attribute of
that society.
The enormous amount of varied intellectual work which now occu-
pied his brain, together with the strain of so many duties of such
various kinds, at last resulted in over-fatigue. He took a long holi-
day in Egypt in the winter of 1872, and returned refreshed. Now he
had to organize his laboratory and practical class in the new build-
ings at South Kensington to which the School of Mines was removed,
and where it eventually became known as the Royal College of Sci-
ence. Addresses, magazine articles, Royal Commissions, occupied him
as fully as before his illness: and his visit in 1876 to the United States,
where he gave an address on University Education at the opening of
the Johns Hopkins University and three lectures on Evolution in
New York, was a sort of royal progress; for everywhere his fame
had spread as one who united profound scientific knowledge with an
incisive power of speech, sparkling with wit such as few men of any
kind of career possessed.
Though during this decade (1870-80) Huxley gave more abundantly
of his strength to the delivery of scientific addresses, and to the
writing of essays on subjects so varied as Descartes, Joseph Priest-
ley, the Positive Philosophy, and Administrative Nihilism, yet in it
some of his most brilliant scientific work was accomplished. His full
memoir on the Triassic Crocodile Stagonolepis was published in 1877,
XII-489


## p. 7810 (#636) ###########################################

7810
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
and his memoir on Ceratodus in 1876; but most remarkable of all, his
book on the crayfish, which embodied in popular style an important
study of the crayfishes of all countries, and an important analysis of
the structure of the gill plumes as evidence of affinity and separation,
which formed simultaneously the subject of a memoir presented by
him to the Zoological Society.
About this time (1870-80) Huxley became a member of a very re-
markable society which called itself the Metaphysical Club. This club
met at irregular intervals to dine and discuss the higher philosophy.
It was organized by Mr. James Knowles, the editor of the Nineteenth
Century review, and included amongst its constant frequenters Lord
Tennyson, Froude, Cardinal Manning, Martineau, Bishop MacGee, and
"others of the weightier leaders of English thought. "
Huxley rarely met Mr. Gladstone, for whose mode of thought he
had a great dislike, although he admired the vivacity and irrepress-
ible loquacity of the veteran statesman. I remember his telling me
of a dinner where he had met Gladstone (towards the close of the
«< eighties"), and how he complained that he had not been able to
get a word in edgeways on account of the incessant discourse of
Mr. Gladstone.
Of Ruskin, Huxley's judgment was very severe. His invariable
courtesy would not have allowed him to use such terms in speaking
of Ruskin to a larger circle; but talking to me as we were walking
from Naples to Baiæ in 1872, he referred to the author of Modern
Painters' as "a pernicious idiot. " On the same occasion he spoke
with great kindliness of his old antagonist Owen, and expressed warm
admiration for the continued devotion of Sir Richard, even in his old
age, to original scientific work.
The decennium 1880-90 witnessed Huxley's appointment to the
post of Inspector of Fisheries in addition to his other official work.
This was the first time (and remains the last) that the British govern-
ment had endeavored to secure the services of a competent scientific
man for the post, and credit is due to Sir William Harcourt for his
selection.
In 1883 Huxley received the crowning honor of his life, being
elected President of the Royal Society. But the ill health which had
threatened him in 1870 now returned, with serious complications.
Symptoms of cardiac mischief, together with disturbance both in the
kidneys and lungs, compelled him to give up all his official work. In
1885 he retired from his professorship, from his fishery post, and from
the presidency of the Royal Society, and confined himself to such
work as he could perform in his study at Eastbourne (where in 1890
he built himself a house), or in the Engadine, where he usually spent
the summer. Though he suffered from an unaccountable exhaustion


## p. 7811 (#637) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7811
whenever he was persuaded during these later years to give a public
address, yet he still retained great power of work in the way of writ-
ing. He produced between 1885 and his death in 1895 a large series
of brilliant and interesting essays, especially on the relation of science
to Hebrew and Christian tradition, and on the evolution of theology
and of ethics; and not unfrequently endeavored to fulfill his duty by
addressing the public in « a letter to the Times. " During this period
he was president of the Marine Biological Association, in the found-
ing of which he took an active part, and in 1892 was made by her
Majesty a member of the Privy Council.
It is interesting to note-indeed important, in view of the history
of the activity of one of the greatest intellects of our times-that in
these later years Huxley entirely ceased to make anatomical inves-
tigations, or to deal with those problems of morphological science in
which he was for so long so active. This appears to have been due
not to any purposed change of work, but to an actual inability any
longer to fix his attention on or to derive intellectual interest from
the old problems. New topics, such as the gentians of the Alps, he
could study with some of his old fervor; but where he chiefly found
intellectual pleasure was in the leisurely following out of lines of
thought in regard to the relations of science, philosophy, and religion,
which had been visible to him indeed during his hard-worked years
of public life, but along which he had not before been able to travel
to any extent, owing to lack of time and need of detachment from
other occupations.
In 1888 Huxley received the Copley medal of the Royal Society,
and in 1894 the Darwin medal. His speech at the society's dinner
in 1894 was remarkable for the exhibition of those fine qualities
of gayety, humor, and wisdom which had always characterized his
after-dinner speaking. He occupied himself that winter in assisting,
at considerable personal sacrifice and exertion in the form of writing
and attendance at committees, the movement for a Teaching Univer-
sity in London. But in the early spring of 1895 he suffered badly
from influenza, and he aggravated his condition by attempting to
complete a review of Mr. Arthur J. Balfour's book on The Founda-
tions of Belief. ' His old symptoms reappeared; heart, kidneys, and
lungs were all involved, and after a distressing illness of some weeks
he expired at Eastbourne on June 29th, 1895. He was buried in the
Marylebone Cemetery at Finchley, to the north of London.
Huxley left a large family of grown-up children,- two sons and
four daughters, all married. He had lost his eldest son in early
childhood, and his second daughter after her marriage. His home
life was of the happiest and best kind. "Pater" was the centre of a
remarkable group on Sunday afternoons and evenings, consisting of


## p. 7812 (#638) ###########################################

7812
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
I
young people, the friends of his sons and daughters, and of learned
and eminent persons who had dropped into the pleasant house or
garden in St. John's Wood to enjoy a few moments of the great
man's company during his leisure. After 1868, when he was already
forty-three years of age, but not before, he took to smoking.
well remember him at the "Red Lion's" dinner at Norwich, puffing
a cigarette. In a year he had advanced to a grimy little brier-root,
and kept a very good box of cigars, with which he was always very
generous. My own recollections of him extend to my earliest child-
hood, for he carried me over the rocks on the low-tide shore at
Felixtow in Suffolk, under his arm, in 1851, when I was four years
old, and he a young fellow of six-and-twenty, just returned from the
voyage of the Rattlesnake. Ten years later, when I was a school-
boy, a fortunate find on my part of a rare fossil oölitic mammalian
jaw brought me into association with him; and he encouraged the
profound attachment which I formed for him by providing me with
admission cards to attend as many of his afternoon and evening lect-
ures as I could get to without playing truant from school (happily
a day school-St. Paul's). I drank in his words and steeped myself
in his thoughts. I was present from this date onwards, at all his
great addresses, his battles-royal, his triumphs, his new enterprises, his
illnesses; and I was there, with many other dear friends, at the last,
when the sand of Finchley was thrown down to cover forever that
which had borne the noblest spirit, the keenest intellect, the brightest
wit, and the truest, kindliest heart known to us.
It is eminently true of Huxley that "the style is the man. " His
writings are marked by his individuality,- clear, graceful, humorous,
and incisive. He had a very large share of the artistic temperament,
as was apparent both in his skill in the use of the pencil and in his
extraordinary aptitude in the use of language. He had a fine innate
taste, which demanded excellence in form of expression; and this
was gradually cultivated by his efforts to expound scientific thought
and methods to popular audiences, to a degree which gave him an
unrivaled position as a speaker and writer. His grace and artistic
finish of expression were the more noticeable from the rigid adher-
ence to truth and moderation in statement which characterized all his
utterances; as well as the vast acquaintance with the best literature,
whether English, French, German, or Italian, which could serve to
illustrate his theme. He has been accused, by too ready and super-
ficial critics, of venturing into controversy upon subjects which he
had not really mastered, and also of neglecting scientific research in
order to seek popular approval and reputation. Both suggestions are
absolutely without foundation. He never delivered an attack without
keeping "shot in his locker. » His reply to Mr. Congreve, who had


## p. 7813 (#639) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7813
ventured to challenge some disparaging remarks of his relative to
Comte and the Positive Philosophy, is a delightful instance of the
disappointment of an assailant who thought that Huxley was talk-
ing large about what he had not really studied. His equipment in
regard to Christian and Hebrew tradition was as ample and thorough
as that of his ecclesiastical antagonists. As to his having in any
unwise way neglected the minutiae of scientific research in later
years, it is surely most ungrateful to reproach on this ground one
who did so much detailed research of the best quality in earlier life,
and even when his great strength was failing under the huge weight
of public responsibilities accepted by him, yet showed by such papers
as that on Crayfishes his delight and splendid dexterity in the well-
loved work of morphological research. As Michael Foster has said of
him, "one guiding principle in Huxley's life was the deep conviction
that science was meant not for men of science alone, but for all the
world; and that not in respect to its material benefits only, but also
and even more for its intellectual good. " It was thus by conviction
that Huxley gave a large part of his time and vast power to writings
and addresses which are designed to bring the methods and results
of science home to the mind of the ordinary man. Like Darwin,—
I might indeed say like all men who have been great, and almost in
proportion as they were great,- Huxley was impelled to do what
he did by a sense of duty. In all his philosophical and ethical dis-
cussions, his sensibility to this supreme command is apparent; and
yet (perhaps it is significant of his unquestioning obedience to that
command) he has left no discussion of the origin of that command,
nor any analysis of the grounds upon which it may be considered rea-
sonable or unreasonable for a man to obey or disobey that word. In
his last public lecture (the Romanes lecture delivered at Oxford in
1893) he says: "Finally, to my knowledge, nobody professes to doubt
that so far as we possess a power of bettering things, it is our para-
mount duty to use it, and to train all our intellect and energy to
this supreme service of our kind. " In his autobiographical sketch
written in 1894, he says that the objects which he has had in view
in life
"are briefly these: To promote the application of scientific methods of inves-
tigation 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 popularization of science; to the develop-
ment and organization of scientific education; to the endless series of battles


## p. 7814 (#640) ###########################################

7814
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
and skirmishes over evolution; and to the untiring opposition to that ecclesi-
astical 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. »
In a letter to me written in 1890 he says that he has never val-
ued the individual discoveries of science, great as they are, so much
as her methods; and that he shall be well content if by his efforts
those who come after him will be, in some degree in consequence
of them, less hindered by organized authority in thinking truly and
freely than men were in his younger days.
In 1894 Huxley superintended the arrangement and publication of
his various essays in nine volumes. Many of these had appeared in
earlier collections, such as 'Lay Sermons' and 'American Addresses';
others had never been republished. These volumes, together with his
volume on the Crayfish (International Scientific Series), and his edu-
cational works, Anatomy of Invertebrate Animals, Anatomy of
Vertebrated Animals,' 'Lessons in Physiology,' and 'Physiography,'—
comprise almost the whole of Huxley's writings not addressed to a
special audience of scientific experts. Since his death, whilst a statue
of him is being prepared for erection in the great hall of the British
Museum of Natural History, and medals are to be founded at the
Royal College of Science and at the Royal Society in commemoration
of him and stamped with his features, the grandest memorial of his
scientific fame and achievements is rapidly approaching completion;
namely, a reissue in four royal octavo volumes of all his contribu-
tions to the scientific journals and transactions of scientific societies,
-commencing with his paper published in the Medical Times and
Gazette of 1845 on The Root Sheath of Hairs,' and ending a long
list of two hundred or more memoirs with that on the Alpine species
of Gentian.
E. Ray Lankested
-


## p. 7815 (#641) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7815
ON A PIECE OF CHALK
From Collected Essays,' Vol. viii. ; authorized edition, D. Appleton & Co. ,
New York
A
GREAT chapter of the history of the world is written in the
chalk. Few passages in the history of man can be sup-
ported by such an overwhelming mass of direct and indi-
rect evidence as that which testifies to the truth of the fragment
of the history of the globe which I hope to enable you to read
with your own eyes to-night. Let me add that few chapters of
human history have a more profound significance for ourselves.
I weigh my words well when I assert that the man who should
know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter
carries about in his breeches pocket, though ignorant of all other .
history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ulti-
mate results, to have a truer and therefore a better conception of
this wonderful universe, and of man's relation to it, than the
most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity
and ignorant of those of Nature.
The language of the chalk is not hard to learn; not nearly so
hard as Latin, if you only want to get at the broad features of
the story it has to tell: and I propose that we now set to work
to spell that story out together.
We all know that if we "burn" chalk, the result is quicklime.
Chalk in fact is a compound of carbonic-acid gas and lime; and
when you make it very hot, the carbonic acid flies away and the
lime is left. By this method of procedure we see the lime, but
we do not see the carbonic acid. If on the other hand you were
to powder a little chalk and drop it into a good deal of strong
vinegar, there would be a great bubbling and fizzing, and finally
a clear liquid in which no sign of chalk would appear. Here
you see the carbonic acid in the bubbles; the lime dissolved in
the vinegar vanishes from sight.
There are a great many other
ways of showing that chalk is essentially nothing but carbonic
acid and quicklime. Chemists enunciate the result of all the
experiments which prove this, by stating that chalk is almost
wholly composed of "carbonate of lime. "
It is desirable for us to start from the knowledge of this fact,
though it may not seem to help us very far towards what we
seek. For carbonate of lime is a widely spread substance, and is
met with under very various conditions. All sorts of limestones


## p. 7816 (#642) ###########################################

7816
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
are composed of more or less pure carbonate of lime. The crust
which is often deposited by waters which have drained through
limestone rocks, in the form of what are called stalagmites and
stalactites, is carbonate of lime. Or to take a more familiar
example, the fur on the inside of a tea-kettle is carbonate of
lime; and for anything chemistry tells us to the contrary, the
chalk might be a kind of gigantic fur upon the bottom of the
earth-kettle, which is kept pretty hot below.
But the slice of chalk presents a totally different appearance
when placed under the microscope. The general mass of it is
made up of very minute granules; but imbedded in this matrix
are innumerable bodies, some smaller and some larger, but on a
rough average not more than a hundredth of an inch in diame-
ter, having a well-defined shape and structure. A cubic inch of
some specimens of chalk may contain hundreds of thousands of
these bodies, compacted together with incalculable millions of the
granules.
The examination of a transparent slice gives a good notion of
the manner in which the components of the chalk are arranged,
and of their relative proportions. But by rubbing up some chalk
with a brush in water and then pouring off the milky fluid, so as
to obtain sediments of different degrees of fineness, the granules
and the minute rounded bodies may be pretty well separated from
one another, and submitted to microscopic examination, either
as opaque or as transparent objects. By combining the views
obtained in these various methods, each of the rounded bodies
may be proved to be a beautifully constructed calcareous fabric,
made up of a number of chambers communicating freely with one
another. The chambered bodies are of various forms. One of
the commonest is something like a badly grown raspberry, being
formed of a number of nearly globular chambers of different
sizes congregated together. It is called Globigerina, and some
specimens of chalk consist of little else than Globigerinæ and
granules. Let us fix our attention upon the Globigerina. It is
the spoor of the game we are tracking. If we can learn what it
is and what are the conditions of its existence, we shall see our
way to the origin and past history of the chalk.
The history of the discovery of these living Globigerinæ, and
of the part which they play in rock-building, is singular enough.
It is a discovery which, like others of no less scientific import-
ance, has arisen incidentally out of work devoted to very different


## p. 7817 (#643) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7817
and exceedingly practical interests. When men first took to the
sea, they speedily learned to look out for the shoals and rocks;
and the more the burthen of their ships increased, the more
imperatively necessary it became for sailors to ascertain with
precision the depth of the waters they traversed. Out of this
necessity grew the use of the lead and sounding-line; and ulti-
mately marine surveying, which is the recording of the form of
coasts and of the depth of the sea, as ascertained by the sounding-
lead, upon charts.
At the same time it became desirable to ascertain and to indi-
cate the nature of the sea bottom, since this circumstance greatly
affects its goodness as holding-ground for anchors. Some ingen-
ious tar, whose name deserves a better fate than the oblivion
into which it has fallen, attained this object by "arming" the
bottom of the lead with a lump of grease, to which more or less
of the sand or mud or broken shells, as the case might be, ad-
hered, and was brought to the surface. But however well adapted
such an apparatus might be for rough nautical purposes, scien-
tific accuracy could not be expected from the armed lead; and to
remedy its defects (especially when applied to sounding in great
depths), Lieutenant Brooke of the American Navy some years
ago invented a most ingenious machine, by which a considerable
portion of the superficial layer of the sea bottom can be scooped
out and brought up from any depth to which the lead descends.
In 1853 Lieutenant Brooke obtained mud from the bottom of the
North Atlantic, between Newfoundland and the Azores, at a
depth of more than 10,000 feet. or two miles, by the help of this
sounding apparatus. The specimens were sent for examination
to Ehrenberg of Berlin and to Bailey of West Point; and those
able microscopists found that this deep-sea mud was almost en-
tirely composed of the skeletons of living organisms, the greater
proportion of those being just like the Globigerinæ already known
to occur in the chalk.
-
Thus far the work had been carried on simply in the interests
of science; but Lieutenant Brooke's method of sounding acquired
a high commercial value when the enterprise of laying down the
telegraph cable between this country and the United States was
undertaken. For it became a matter of immense importance to
know not only the depth of the sea over the whole line along
which the cable was to be laid, but the exact nature of the bot-
tom, so as to guard against chances of cutting or fraying the


## p. 7818 (#644) ###########################################

7818
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
strands of that costly rope. The Admiralty consequently ordered
Captain Dayman, an old friend and shipmate of mine, to ascer-
tain the depth over the whole line of the cable and to bring
back specimens of the bottom. In former days, such a command
as this might have sounded very much like one of the impossible
things which the young Prince in the Fairy Tales is ordered to
do before he can obtain the hand of the Princess. However, in
the months of June and July 1857, my friend performed the task
assigned to him with great expedition and precision, without, so
far as I know, having met with any reward of that kind. The
specimens of Atlantic mud which he procured were sent to me to
be examined and reported upon.
The result of all these operations is, that we know the con-
tours and the nature of the surface soil covered by the North
Atlantic for a distance of 1,700 miles from east to west, as well
as we know that of any part of the dry land. It is a prodigious
plain,- one of the widest and most even plains in the world. If
the sea were drained off, you might drive a wagon all the way
from Valentia on the west coast of Ireland, to Trinity Bay in.
Newfoundland; and except upon one sharp incline about 200 miles
from Valentia, I am not quite sure that it would even be neces-
sary to put the skid on, so gentle are the ascents and descents
upon that long route. From Valentia the road would lie down-
hill for about 200 miles, to the point at which the bottom is now
covered by 1,700 fathoms of sea-water. Then would come the
central plain, more than a thousand miles wide, the inequalities
of the surface of which would be hardly perceptible, though the
depth of water upon it now varies from 10,000 to 15,000 feet;
and there are places in which Mont Blanc might be sunk with-
out showing its peak above water. Beyond this the ascent on
the American side commences, and gradually leads for about 300
miles to the Newfoundland shore.
Almost the whole of the bottom of this central plain (which
extends for many hundred miles in a north-and-south direction)
is covered by a fine mud, which when brought to the surface
dries into a grayish-white friable substance. You can write with
this on a blackboard if you are so inclined; and to the eye it
is quite like very soft, grayish chalk. Examined chemically, it
proves to be composed almost wholly of carbonate of lime; and
if you make a section of it, in the same way as that of the piece
of chalk was made, and view it with the microscope, it presents


## p. 7819 (#645) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7819
innumerable Globigerinæ imbedded in a granular matrix. Thus
this deep-sea mud is substantially chalk. I say substantially,
because there are a good many minor differences; but as these
have no bearing on the question immediately before us,—which
is the nature of the Globigerinæ of the chalk,-it is unnecessary
to speak of them.
Globigerinæ of every size, from the smallest to the largest,
are associated together in the Atlantic mud, and the chambers
of many are filled by a soft animal matter. This soft substance
is in fact the remains of the creature to which the Globigerina
shell, or rather skeleton, owes its existence, and which is an ani-
mal of the simplest imaginable description. It is in fact a mere
particle of living jelly, without defined parts of any kind; without
a mouth, nerves, muscles, or distinct organs, and only manifesting
its vitality to ordinary observation by thrusting out and retract-
ing from all parts of its surface long filamentous processes,
which serve for arms and legs. Yet this amorphous particle,
devoid of everything which in the higher animals we call organs,
is capable of feeding, growing, and multiplying; of separating
from the ocean the small proportion of carbonate of lime which
is dissolved in sea-water; and of building up that substance into
a skeleton for itself, according to a pattern which can be imitated
by no other known agency.
The notion that animals can live and flourish in the sea, at
the vast depths from which apparently living Globigerinæ have
been brought up, does not agrce very well with our usual con-
ceptions respecting the conditions of animal life; and it is not so
absolutely impossible as it might at first sight appear to be, that
the Globigerinæ of the Atlantic sea bottom do not live and die
where they are found.
As I have mentioned, the soundings from the great Atlantic
plain are almost entirely made up of Globigerinæ, with the gran-
ules which have been mentioned, and some few other calcareous
shells; but a small percentage of the chalky mud—perhaps at
most some five per cent. of it—is of a different nature, and con-
sists of shells and skeletons composed of silex or pure flint.
These siliceous bodies belong partly to the lowly vegetable organ-
isms which are called Diatomaceæ, and partly to the minute
and extremely simple animals termed Radiolaria. It is quite cer-
tain that these creatures do not live at the bottom of the ocean,
but at its surface, where they may be obtained in prodigious.


## p. 7820 (#646) ###########################################

7820
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
numbers by the use of a properly constructed net. Hence it fol-
lows that these siliceous organisms, though they are not heavier.
than the lightest dust, must have fallen in some cases through
15,000 feet of water before they reached their final resting-place
on the ocean floor. And considering how large a surface these
bodies expose in proportion to their weight, it is probable that
they occupy a great length of time in making their burial jour-
ney from the surface of the Atlantic to the bottom.
Thus not only is it certain that the chalk is the mud of an
ancient sea bottom, but it is no less certain that the chalk sea
existed during an extremely long period, though we may not be
prepared to give a precise estimate of the length of that period
in years.
The relative duration is clear, though the absolute
duration may not be definable. The attempt to affix any precise
date to the period at which the chalk sea began or ended its
existence is baffled by difficulties of the same kind. But the
relative age of the cretaceous epoch may be determined with as
great ease and certainty as the long duration of that epoch.
You will have heard of the interesting discoveries recently
made in various parts of western Europe, of flint implements,
obviously worked into shape by human hands, under circum-
stances which show conclusively that man is a very ancient
denizen of these regions. It has been proved that the whole popu-
lation of Europe whose existence has been revealed to us in this
way, consisted of savages such as the Esquimaux are now; that
in the country which is now France they hunted the reindeer,
and were familiar with the ways of the mammoth and the bison.
The physical geography of France was in those days different
from what it is now, the river Somme, for instance, having cut
its bed a hundred feet deeper between that time and this; and it
is probable that the climate was more like that of Canada or
Siberia than that of western Europe.
The existence of these people is forgotten even in the tradi-
tions of the oldest historical nations. The name and fame of them
had utterly vanished until a few years back; and the amount of
physical change which has been effected since their day renders
it more than probable that, venerable as are some of the histori-
cal nations, the workers of the chipped flints of Hoxne or of
Amiens are to them as they are to us in point of antiquity. But
if we assign to these hoar relics of long-vanished generations of
men the greatest age that can possibly be claimed for them, they


## p. 7821 (#647) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7821
are not older than the drift or bowlder clay, which in comparison
with the chalk is but a very juvenile deposit. You need go no
further than your own seaboard for evidence of this fact. At
one of the most charming spots on the coast of Norfolk, Cromer,
you will see the bowlder clay forming a vast mass, which lies
upon the chalk, and must consequently have come into existence
after it. Huge bowlders of chalk are in fact included in the
clay, and have evidently been brought to the position they now
occupy by the same agency as that which has planted blocks of
syenite from Norway side by side with them.
The chalk, then, is certainly older than the bowlder clay. If
you ask how much, I will again take you no further than the
same spot upon your own coasts for evidence. I have spoken of
the bowlder clay and drift as resting upon the chalk. That is
not strictly true. Interposed between the chalk and the drift is
a comparatively insignificant layer, containing vegetable matter.
But that layer tells a wonderful history. It is full of stumps of
trees standing as they grew. Fir-trees are there with their cones,
and hazel-bushes with their nuts; there stand the stools of oak
and yew trees, beeches and alders. Hence this stratum is appro-
priately called the "forest-bed. "
It is obvious that the chalk must have been upheaved and
converted into dry land before the timber trees could grow upon
it. As the boles of some of these trees are from two to three
feet in diameter, it is no less clear that the dry land thus formed
remained in the same condition for long ages.
And not only
do the remains of stately oaks and well-grown firs testify to the
duration of this condition of things, but additional evidence to
the same effect is afforded by the abundant remains of elephants,
rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, and other great wild beasts, which
it has yielded to the zealous search of such men as the Rev. Mr.
Gunn. When you look at such a collection as he has formed,
and bethink you that these elephantine bones did veritably carry
their owners about, and these great grinders crunch, in the dark
woods of which the forest-bed is now the only trace, it is impos-
sible not to feel that they are as good evidence of the lapse of
time as the annual rings of the tree stumps.
Thus there is a writing upon the wall of cliffs at Cromer, and
whoso runs may read it. It tells us with an authority which
cannot be impeached, that the ancient sea-bed of the chalk sea
was raised up and remained dry land until it was covered with


## p. 7822 (#648) ###########################################

7822
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
forest, stocked with the great game the spoils of which have
rejoiced your geologists. How long it remained in that condition
cannot be said; but "the whirligig of time brought its revenges"
in those days as in these. That dry land with the bones and
teeth of generations of long-lived elephants, hidden away among
the gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sank grad-
ually to the bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with huge
masses of drift and bowlder clay. Sea beasts such as the walrus,
now restricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds
had twittered among the topmost twigs of the fir-trees. How
long this state of things endured we know not, but at length it
came to an end. The upheaved glacial mud hardened into the
soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew once more, the wolf and
the beaver replaced the reindeer and the elephant; and at length
what we call the history of England dawned. .
A small beginning has led us to a great ending. If I were
to put the bit of chalk with which we started into the hot but
obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like
the sun.
It seems to me that this physical metamorphosis is no
false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a
jet of fervent though nowise brilliant thought to-night. It has
become luminous; and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of
the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the
evolution of the earth. And in the shifting, "without haste but
without rest," of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of
the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing
but the natural product of the forces originally possessed by the
substance of the universe.
MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM
From Collected Essays,' Vol. i. ; authorized edition, D. Appleton & Co. ,
New York
I
HOLD with the Materialist that the human body, like all living
bodies, is a machine, all the operations of which will sooner
or later be explained on physical principles. I believe that
we shall sooner or later arrive at a mechanical equivalent of con-
sciousness, just as we have arrived at a mechanical equivalent
of heat. If a pound weight falling through a distance of a foot


## p. 7823 (#649) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7823
gives rise to a definite amount of heat, which may properly be
said to be its equivalent, the same pound weight falling through a
foot on a man's hand gives rise to a definite amount of feeling,
which might with equal propriety be said to be its equivalent
in consciousness. And as we already know that there is a cer-
tain parity between the intensity of a pain and the strength of
one's desire to get rid of that pain, and secondly that there is
a certain correspondence between the intensity of the heat or
mechanical violence which gives rise to the pain and the pain
itself, the possibility of the establishment of a correlation between.
mechanical force and volition becomes apparent. And the same
conclusion is suggested by the fact that within certain limits.
the intensity of the mechanical force we exert is proportioned to
the intensity of our desire to exert it.
Thus I am prepared to go with the Materialists wherever
the true pursuit of the path of Descartes may lead them; and I
am glad on all occasions to declare my belief that their fearless
development of the materialistic aspect of these matters has had
an immense, and a most beneficial, influence upon physiology and
psychology. Nay, more: when they go farther than I think they
are entitled to do,- when they introduce Calvinism into science
and declare that man is nothing but a machine,—I do not see
any particular harm in their doctrines, so long as they admit
that which is a matter of experimental fact; namely, that it is
a machine capable of adjusting itself within certain limits.
I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me
always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of
being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning
before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.
The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right: the
freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest
terms to any one who will take it of me. But when the Materi-
alists stray beyond the borders of their path, and begin to talk
about there being nothing else in the universe but Matter and
Force and Necessary Laws, and all the rest of their "grenadiers,"
I decline to follow them. I go back to the point from which we
started, and to the other path of Descartes. I remind you that
we have already seen clearly and distinctly, and in a manner
which admits of no doubt, that all our knowledge is a knowledge
of states of consciousness. "Matter" and "Force" are, as far
as we can know, mere names for certain forms of consciousness.


## p. 7824 (#650) ###########################################

7824
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
"Necessary" means that of which we cannot conceive the con-
trary. "Law >> means a rule which we have always found to hold
good, and which we expect always will hold good. Thus it is an
indisputable truth that what we call the material world is only
known to us under the forms of the ideal world; and as Descartes
tells us, our knowledge of the soul is more intimate and certain
than our knowledge of the body. If I say that impenetrability is
a property of matter, all that I can really mean is that the con-
sciousness I call extension and the consciousness I call resistance
constantly accompany one another. Why and how they are thus
related is a mystery. And if I say that thought is a property of
matter, all that I can mean is that actually or possibly the con-
sciousness of extension and that of resistance accompany all other
sorts of consciousness. But as in the former case, why they are
thus associated is an insoluble mystery.
From all this it follows that what I may term legitimate
Materialism—that is, the extension of the conceptions and of the
methods of physical science to the highest as well as the lowest
phenomena of vitality-is neither more nor less than a sort of
shorthand Idealism; and Descartes's two paths meet at the summit
of the mountain, though they set out on opposite sides of it.
EVOLUTION AND ETHICS
From Collected Essays,' Vol. ix. ; authorized edition, D. Appleton & Co. ,
New York
TH
HERE is another fallacy which appears to me to pervade
the so-called "ethics of evolution. " It is the notion that
because, on the whole, animals and plants have advanced
in perfection of organization by means of the struggle for exist-
ence and the consequent "survival of the fittest," therefore men
in society, men as ethical beings, must look to the same process
to help them towards perfection. I suspect that this fallacy has
arisen out of the unfortunate ambiguity of the phrase "survival
of the fittest. " "Fittest" has a connotation of "best"; and about
"best" there hangs a moral flavor. In cosmic nature, however,
what is "fittest" depends upon the conditions. Long since, I
ventured to point out that if our hemisphere were to cool again,
the survival of the fittest might bring about in the vegetable
kingdom a population of more and more stunted and humbler


## p. 7825 (#651) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7825
and humbler organisms, until the "fittest" that survived might
be nothing but lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic organisms
as those which give red snow its color; while if it became hotter,
the pleasant valleys of the Thames and Isis might be uninhabit-
able by any animated beings save those that flourish in a tropical
jungle. They as the fittest, the best adapted to the changed
conditions, would survive.
But if we may permit ourselves a larger hope of abatement
of the essential evil of the world than was possible to those who,
in the infancy of exact knowledge, faced the problem of existence
more than a score of centuries ago, I deem it an essential condi-
tion of the realization of that hope that we should cast aside the
notion that the escape from pain and sorrow is the proper object
of life.
We have long since emerged from the heroic childhood of our
race, when good and evil could be met with the same "frolic
welcome"; the attempts to escape from evil, whether Indian or
Greek, have ended in flight from the battle-field; it remains to us
to throw aside the youthful over-confidence and the no less youth-
ful discouragement of nonage. We are grown men, and must
· play the man,
"strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,"
cherishing the good that falls in our way, and bearing the evil
in and around us with stout hearts set on diminishing it. So
far we all may strive in one faith towards one hope:-
SO
"It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles;
but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note may yet be done. "
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE
From the Fortnightly Review
WHA
HAT, truly, can seem to be more obviously different from
one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, than
the various kinds of living beings? What community of
faculty can there be between the brightly colored lichen, which
early resembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock
XIII-490


## p. 7826 (#652) ###########################################

7826
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with
beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge?
Again, think of the microscopic fungus,- a mere infinitesimal
ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply
into countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of
the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which
lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of
California, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or
the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow, and
endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast
circumference.
•
Or turning to the other half of the world of life, picture to
yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live or
have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle,
and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest
ship that ever left dock-yard would founder hopelessly; and
contrast him with the invisible animalcules,- mere gelatinous
specks, multitudes of which could in fact dance upon the point
of a needle with the same ease as the angels of the schoolmen
could in imagination. With these images before your minds, you
may well ask, What community of form or structure is there
between the animalcule and the whale; or between the fungus
and the fig-tree; and à fortiori, between all four?
Finally, if we regard substance or material composition, what
hidden bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her
hair and the blood which courses through her youthful veins; or
what is there in common between the dense and resisting mass
of the oak, or the strong fabric of the tortoise, and those broad
disks of glassy jelly which may be seen pulsating through the
waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere films in the
hand which raises them out of their element?
Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action, are
in the long run resolvable into muscular contraction; and muscu-
lar contraction is but a transitory change in the relative positions
of the parts of a muscle. But the scheme which is large enough
to embrace the activities of the highest form of life covers all
those of the lower creatures. The lowest plant or animalcule
feeds, grows, and reproduces its kind. In addition, all animals
manifest those transitory changes of form which we class under
irritability and contractility; and it is more than probable that
when the vegetable world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all


## p. 7827 (#653) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7827
plants in possession of the same powers at one time or other of
their existence.
I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare and
conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive
plant, or the stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely
spread, and at the same time more subtle and hidden, manifesta-
tions of vegetable contractility. You are doubtless aware that the
common nettle owes its stinging property to the innumerable stiff
and needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover its
surface. Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slen-
der summit, which, though rounded at the end, is of such micro-
scopic fineness that it readily penetrates and breaks off in the
skin. The whole hair consists of a very delicate outer case of
wood, closely applied to the inner surface of which is a layer of
semi-fluid matter, full of innumerable granules of extreme minute-
ness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm, which thus constitutes
a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid, and roughly corresponding
in form with the interior of the hair which it fills. When viewed
with sufficiently high magnifying power, the protoplasmic layer of
the nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of unceasing activity.
Local contractions of the whole thickness of its substance pass
slowly and gradually from point to point, and give rise to the
appearance of progressive waves, just as the bending of success-
ive stalks of corn by a breeze produces the apparent billows of a
cornfield.
But in addition to these movements, and independently of
them, the granules are driven in relatively rapid streams through
channels in the protoplasm which seem to have a considerable
amount of persistence. Most commonly the currents in adjacent
parts of the protoplasm take similar directions; and thus there is
a general stream up one side of the hair and down the other.
But this does not prevent the existence of partial currents which
take different routes; and sometimes trains of granules may be
seen coursing swiftly in opposite directions within a twenty-
thousandth of an inch of one another; while occasionally opposite
streams come into direct collision, and after a longer or shorter
struggle one predominates. The cause of these currents seems to
lie in contractions of the protoplasm which bounds the channels
in which they flow, but which are so minute that the best micro-
scopes show only their effects and not themselves.


## p. 7828 (#654) ###########################################

7828
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
If a drop of blood be drawn by pricking one's finger, and
viewed with proper precautions and under a sufficiently high
microscopic power, there will be seen, among the innumerable
multitude of little circular discoidal bodies or corpuscles which
float in it and give it its color, a comparatively small number of
colorless corpuscles of somewhat larger size and very irregular
shape. If the drop of blood be kept at the temperature of the
body, these colorless corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvel-
ous activity, changing their forms with great rapidity, drawing in
and thrusting out prolongations of their substance, and creeping
about as if they were independent organisms.
The substance which is thus active is a mass of protoplasm;
and its activity differs in detail rather than in principle from that
of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry circumstances the
corpuscle dies and becomes distended into a round mass, in the
midst of which is seen a smaller spherical body, which existed
but was more or less hidden in the living corpuscle, and is called
its nucleus. Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are to be
found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and scattered
through the whole framework of the body. Nay, more: in the
earliest condition of the human organism, in that state in which
it has but just become distinguishable from the egg in which it
arises, it is nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and
every organ of the body was once no more than such an aggre-
gation.
Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out to be what
may be termed the structural unit of the human body. As a
matter of fact, the body in its earliest state is a mere multiple of
such units; and in its perfect condition it is a multiple of such
units variously modified.
But does the formula which expresses the essential structural
character of the highest animal cover all the rest, as the state-
ment of its powers and faculties covered that of all others?
Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm,
and polype, are all composed of structural units of the same
character: namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There
are sundry very low animals, each of which structurally is a mere
colorless blood-corpuscle, leading an independent life. But at the
very bottom of the animal scale even this simplicity becomes
simplified, and all the phenomena of life are manifested by a


## p. 7829 (#655) ###########################################

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7829
Nor are such organ-
particle of protoplasm without a nucleus.
isms insignificant by reason of their want of complexity. It is a
fair question whether the protoplasm of those simplest forms of
life which people an immense extent of the bottom of the sea,
would not outweigh that of all the higher living beings which
inhabit the land put together. And in ancient times, no less than
at the present day, such living beings as these have been the
greatest of rock-builders.
What has been said of the animal world is no less true of
plants. Imbedded in the protoplasm at the broad or attached
end of the nettle hair, there lies a spheroidal nucleus. Careful
examination further proves that the whole substance of the nettle
is made up of a repetition of such masses of nucleated proto-
plasm, each contained in a wooden case, which is modified in
form, sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into a duct or
spiral vessel, sometimes into a pollen grain or an ovule. Traced
back to its earliest state, the nettle arises as the man does, in a
particle of nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as
in the lowest animals, a single mass of such protoplasm may con-
stitute the whole plant, or the protoplasm may exist without a
nucleus.
In the wonderful story of the 'Peau de Chagrin,' the hero
becomes possessed of a magical wild-ass's skin, which yields
him the means of gratifying all his wishes.