Commit it then
to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v13 - Her to Hux
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. But its surface repre-
sents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied
desire the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition,
until at length life and the last handbreadth of the peau de cha-
grin disappear with the gratification of a last wish.
Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of thought
and speculation, and his shadowing forth of physiological truth in
this strange story may have been intentional. At any rate, the
matter of life is a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every vital
act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and the
work of life results directly or indirectly in the waste of proto-
plasm.
Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical
loss; and in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have
light: so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into
carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of
expenditure cannot go on forever. But happily the protoplasmic
## p. 7830 (#656) ###########################################
7830
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
peau de chagrin differs from Balzac's, in its capacity of being
repaired and brought back to its full size after every exertion.
For example, this present lecture, whatever its intellectual
worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which is con-
ceivably expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and
other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital processes
during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller
at the end of the discourse than it was at the beginning. By-and-
by I shall probably have recourse to the substance commonly called
mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original size.
Now this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less
modified, of another animal, a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is
the same matter altered not only by death, but by exposure to
sundry artificial operations in the process of cooking.
But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not ren-
dered it incompetent to resume its old function as matter of life.
A singular inward laboratory which I possess will dissolve a cer-
tain portion of the modified protoplasm; the solution so formed
will pass into my veins; and the subtle influences to which it
will then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into liv-
ing protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man.
-
Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what
animal or what plant I lay under contribution for protoplasm;
and the fact speaks volumes for the general identity of that sub-
stance in all living beings. I share this catholicity of assimilation
with other animals, all of which, so far as we know, could thrive.
equally well on the protoplasm of any of their fellows or of any
plant; but here the assimilative powers of the animal world cease.
A solution of smelling-salts in water, with an infinitesimal pro-
portion of some other saline matters, contains all the elementary
bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm; but as
I need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep a
hungry man from starving, nor would it save any animal what-
ever from a like fate. An animal cannot make protoplasm, but
must take it ready-made from some other animal, or some plant;
the animal's highest feat of constructive chemistry being to con-
vert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is
appropriate to itself.
Therefore in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we must
eventually turn to the vegetable world. The fluid containing
## p. 7831 (#657) ###########################################
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7831
carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, which offers such a Barme-
cide feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of
plants: and with a due supply of only such materials, many a
plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow and multi-
ply until it has increased a millionfold, or a million millionfold,
the quantity of protoplasm which it originally possessed; in this
way building up the matter of life to an indefinite extent from
the common matter of the universe.
After all, what do we know of this terrible "matter," except
as a name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of
our own consciousness? And what do we know of that «< spirit "
over whose threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation
is arising, like that which was heard at the death of Pan, except
that it is also a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause or
condition of states of consciousness? In other words, matter and
spirit are but names for the imaginary substrata of groups of
natural phenomena.
And what is the dire necessity and "iron" law under which
men groan? Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears. I sup-
pose if there be an "iron" law, it is that of gravitation; and if
there be a physical necessity, it is that a stone unsupported must
fall to the ground. But what is all we really know and can know
about the latter phenomenon? Simply that in all human experi-
ence, stones have fallen to the ground under these conditions; that
we have not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so
circumstanced will not fall to the ground; and that we have on
the contrary every reason to believe that it will so fall.
It is very
convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been
fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported
stones will fall to the ground, "a law of nature. " But when,
as commonly happens, we change will into must, we introduce
an idea of necessity which most assuredly does not lie in the
observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover elsewhere.
For my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder.
Fact I know; and Law I know: but what is this Necessity, save
an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?
But if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the
nature of either matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity
is something illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate
conception of law, the materialistic position that there is nothing
in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid
## p. 7832 (#658) ###########################################
7832
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas. The
fundamental doctrines of materialism, like those of spiritualism
and most other "isms," lie outside "the limits of philosophical
inquiry"; and David Hume's great service to humanity is his
irrefragable demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called
himself a skeptic, and therefore others cannot be blamed if they
apply the same title to him; but that does not alter the fact that
the name, with its existing implications, does him gross injustice.
If a
man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of
the moon are, and I reply that I do not know; that neither I
nor any one else have any means of knowing; and that under
these circumstances I decline to trouble myself about the subject
at all, I do not think he has any right to call me a skeptic.
On the contrary, in replying thus I conceive that I am simply
honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy
of time. So Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up a great
many problems about which we are naturally curious, and shows
us that they are essentially questions of lunar politics, in their
essence incapable of being answered, and therefore not worth the
attention of men who have work to do in the world. And he
thus ends one of his essays:·
—
as
―――――――
"If we take in hand any volume of divinity, or school meta-
physics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning
concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental
reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No.
Commit it then
to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. "
Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble
ourselves about matters of which, however important they may
be, we do know nothing and can know nothing? We live in a
world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty
of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can
influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant
than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually it is
necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first,
that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an
extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our voli-
tion counts for something as a condition of the course of events.
Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often
we like to try. Each therefore stands upon the strongest
foundation upon which any belief can rest; and forms one of our
## p. 7833 (#659) ###########################################
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7833
highest truths. If we find that the ascertainment of the order of
nature is facilitated by using one terminology or one set of sym-
bols rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the former;
and no harm can accrue, so long as we bear in mind that we
are dealing merely with terms and symbols.
In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phe-
nomena of matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit
in terms of matter: matter may be regarded as a form of
thought, thought may be regarded as a property of matter; each
statement has certain relative truth. But with a view to the
progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in every way
to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other phe-
nomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature
of those physical conditions or concomitants of thought which are
more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may
in future help us to exercise the same kind of control over the
world of thought as we already possess in respect of the material
world; whereas the alternative or spiritualistic terminology is
utterly barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion
of ideas.
Thus there can be little doubt that the further science ad-
vances, the more extensively and consistently will all the phe-
nomena of nature be represented by materialistic formulæ and
symbols.
But the man of science who, forgetting the limits of philo-
sophical inquiry, slides from these formulæ and symbols into
what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to
place himself on a level with the mathematician who should mis-
take the x's and y's with which he works his problems for real
entities; and with this further disadvantage as compared with the
mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no prac-
tical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may
paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of a life.
## p. 7834 (#660) ###########################################
7834
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
WESTMINSTER ABBEY, OCTOBER 12TH, 1892*
"Gieb diesen Todten mir heraus! »
The Minster speaks
RING me my dead!
To me that have grown,
Stone laid upon stone,
B
As the stormy brood
Of English blood
Has waxed and spread
And filled the world,
With sails unfurled;
With men that may not lie;
With thoughts that cannot die.
Bring me my dead!
Into the storied hall,
Where I have garnered all
My harvest without weed;
My chosen fruits of goodly seed;
And lay him gently down among
The men of State, the men of song:
The men that would not suffer wrong,
The thought-worn chieftains of the mind,
Head servants of the human kind.
Bring me my dead!
The autumn sun shall shed
Its beams athwart the bier's
Heaped blooms; a many tears
Shall flow; his words, in cadence sweet and strong,
Shall voice the full hearts of the silent throng.
Bring me my dead!
And oh! sad wedded mourner, seeking still
For vanished hand-clasp, drinking in thy fill
Of holy grief; forgive, that pious theft
Robs thee of all save memories left.
Not thine to kneel beside the grassy mound,
While dies the western glow, and all around
Is silence, and the shadows closer creep
And whisper softly, All must fall asleep.
* Ode on Tennyson's Death: From the Nineteenth Century, November 1892.
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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
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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. But its surface repre-
sents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied
desire the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition,
until at length life and the last handbreadth of the peau de cha-
grin disappear with the gratification of a last wish.
Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of thought
and speculation, and his shadowing forth of physiological truth in
this strange story may have been intentional. At any rate, the
matter of life is a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every vital
act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and the
work of life results directly or indirectly in the waste of proto-
plasm.
Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical
loss; and in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have
light: so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into
carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of
expenditure cannot go on forever. But happily the protoplasmic
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7830
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
peau de chagrin differs from Balzac's, in its capacity of being
repaired and brought back to its full size after every exertion.
For example, this present lecture, whatever its intellectual
worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which is con-
ceivably expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and
other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital processes
during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller
at the end of the discourse than it was at the beginning. By-and-
by I shall probably have recourse to the substance commonly called
mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original size.
Now this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less
modified, of another animal, a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is
the same matter altered not only by death, but by exposure to
sundry artificial operations in the process of cooking.
But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not ren-
dered it incompetent to resume its old function as matter of life.
A singular inward laboratory which I possess will dissolve a cer-
tain portion of the modified protoplasm; the solution so formed
will pass into my veins; and the subtle influences to which it
will then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into liv-
ing protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man.
-
Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what
animal or what plant I lay under contribution for protoplasm;
and the fact speaks volumes for the general identity of that sub-
stance in all living beings. I share this catholicity of assimilation
with other animals, all of which, so far as we know, could thrive.
equally well on the protoplasm of any of their fellows or of any
plant; but here the assimilative powers of the animal world cease.
A solution of smelling-salts in water, with an infinitesimal pro-
portion of some other saline matters, contains all the elementary
bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm; but as
I need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep a
hungry man from starving, nor would it save any animal what-
ever from a like fate. An animal cannot make protoplasm, but
must take it ready-made from some other animal, or some plant;
the animal's highest feat of constructive chemistry being to con-
vert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is
appropriate to itself.
Therefore in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we must
eventually turn to the vegetable world. The fluid containing
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THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7831
carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, which offers such a Barme-
cide feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of
plants: and with a due supply of only such materials, many a
plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow and multi-
ply until it has increased a millionfold, or a million millionfold,
the quantity of protoplasm which it originally possessed; in this
way building up the matter of life to an indefinite extent from
the common matter of the universe.
After all, what do we know of this terrible "matter," except
as a name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of
our own consciousness? And what do we know of that «< spirit "
over whose threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation
is arising, like that which was heard at the death of Pan, except
that it is also a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause or
condition of states of consciousness? In other words, matter and
spirit are but names for the imaginary substrata of groups of
natural phenomena.
And what is the dire necessity and "iron" law under which
men groan? Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears. I sup-
pose if there be an "iron" law, it is that of gravitation; and if
there be a physical necessity, it is that a stone unsupported must
fall to the ground. But what is all we really know and can know
about the latter phenomenon? Simply that in all human experi-
ence, stones have fallen to the ground under these conditions; that
we have not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so
circumstanced will not fall to the ground; and that we have on
the contrary every reason to believe that it will so fall.
It is very
convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been
fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported
stones will fall to the ground, "a law of nature. " But when,
as commonly happens, we change will into must, we introduce
an idea of necessity which most assuredly does not lie in the
observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover elsewhere.
For my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder.
Fact I know; and Law I know: but what is this Necessity, save
an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?
But if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the
nature of either matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity
is something illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate
conception of law, the materialistic position that there is nothing
in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid
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7832
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas. The
fundamental doctrines of materialism, like those of spiritualism
and most other "isms," lie outside "the limits of philosophical
inquiry"; and David Hume's great service to humanity is his
irrefragable demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called
himself a skeptic, and therefore others cannot be blamed if they
apply the same title to him; but that does not alter the fact that
the name, with its existing implications, does him gross injustice.
If a
man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of
the moon are, and I reply that I do not know; that neither I
nor any one else have any means of knowing; and that under
these circumstances I decline to trouble myself about the subject
at all, I do not think he has any right to call me a skeptic.
On the contrary, in replying thus I conceive that I am simply
honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy
of time. So Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up a great
many problems about which we are naturally curious, and shows
us that they are essentially questions of lunar politics, in their
essence incapable of being answered, and therefore not worth the
attention of men who have work to do in the world. And he
thus ends one of his essays:·
—
as
―――――――
"If we take in hand any volume of divinity, or school meta-
physics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning
concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental
reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No.
Commit it then
to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. "
Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble
ourselves about matters of which, however important they may
be, we do know nothing and can know nothing? We live in a
world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty
of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can
influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant
than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually it is
necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first,
that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an
extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our voli-
tion counts for something as a condition of the course of events.
Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often
we like to try. Each therefore stands upon the strongest
foundation upon which any belief can rest; and forms one of our
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THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
7833
highest truths. If we find that the ascertainment of the order of
nature is facilitated by using one terminology or one set of sym-
bols rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the former;
and no harm can accrue, so long as we bear in mind that we
are dealing merely with terms and symbols.
In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phe-
nomena of matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit
in terms of matter: matter may be regarded as a form of
thought, thought may be regarded as a property of matter; each
statement has certain relative truth. But with a view to the
progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in every way
to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other phe-
nomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature
of those physical conditions or concomitants of thought which are
more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may
in future help us to exercise the same kind of control over the
world of thought as we already possess in respect of the material
world; whereas the alternative or spiritualistic terminology is
utterly barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion
of ideas.
Thus there can be little doubt that the further science ad-
vances, the more extensively and consistently will all the phe-
nomena of nature be represented by materialistic formulæ and
symbols.
But the man of science who, forgetting the limits of philo-
sophical inquiry, slides from these formulæ and symbols into
what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to
place himself on a level with the mathematician who should mis-
take the x's and y's with which he works his problems for real
entities; and with this further disadvantage as compared with the
mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no prac-
tical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may
paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of a life.
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THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
WESTMINSTER ABBEY, OCTOBER 12TH, 1892*
"Gieb diesen Todten mir heraus! »
The Minster speaks
RING me my dead!
To me that have grown,
Stone laid upon stone,
B
As the stormy brood
Of English blood
Has waxed and spread
And filled the world,
With sails unfurled;
With men that may not lie;
With thoughts that cannot die.
Bring me my dead!
Into the storied hall,
Where I have garnered all
My harvest without weed;
My chosen fruits of goodly seed;
And lay him gently down among
The men of State, the men of song:
The men that would not suffer wrong,
The thought-worn chieftains of the mind,
Head servants of the human kind.
Bring me my dead!
The autumn sun shall shed
Its beams athwart the bier's
Heaped blooms; a many tears
Shall flow; his words, in cadence sweet and strong,
Shall voice the full hearts of the silent throng.
Bring me my dead!
And oh! sad wedded mourner, seeking still
For vanished hand-clasp, drinking in thy fill
Of holy grief; forgive, that pious theft
Robs thee of all save memories left.
Not thine to kneel beside the grassy mound,
While dies the western glow, and all around
Is silence, and the shadows closer creep
And whisper softly, All must fall asleep.
* Ode on Tennyson's Death: From the Nineteenth Century, November 1892.
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