AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS

by

Thomas Henry Huxley

 Note: The notes at the end of the book were originally referenced by page number. I have instead inserted numbers within the text in the format [xx] and cross-referenced these to the appropriate notes. --D. L. 

Edited, with introduction and notes by Ada L. F. Snell AssociateProfessor Of English Mount Holyoke College

Riverside College Classics Copyright 1909

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

The Life of Huxley

Subject-matter, Structure, and Style of Essays

Suggested Studies

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE

A LIBERAL EDUCATION

ON A PIECE OF CHALK

THE PRINCIPAL SUBJECTS OF EDUCATION

THE METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION

ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE

ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS

NOTES

PREFACE

The purpose of the following selections is to present to studentsof English a few of Huxley's representative essays. Some of theseselections are complete; others are extracts. In the latter case, however, they are not extracts in the sense of being incomplete wholes, for each selection given will be found to have, in Aristotle'sphrase, "a beginning, a middle, and an end. " That they are complete inthemselves, although only parts of whole essays, is due to the fact thatHuxley, in order to make succeeding material clear, often preparesthe way with a long and careful definition. Such is the nature of theextract A Liberal Education, in reality a definition to make distinctand forcible his ideas on the shortcomings of English schools. Such adefinition, also, is The Method of Scientific Investigation. 

The footnotes are those of the author. Other notes on the text have beenincluded for the benefit of schools inadequately equipped with referencebooks. It is hoped, however, that the notes may be found not to be sonumerous as to prevent the training of the student in a self-reliant andscholarly use of dictionaries and reference books; it is hoped, also, that they may serve to stimulate him to trace out for himself morecompletely any subject connected with the text in which he may feel apeculiar interest. It should be recognized that notes are of value onlyas they develop power to read intelligently. If unintelligently reliedupon, they may even foster indifference and lazy mental habits. 

I wish to express my obligation to Miss Flora Bridges, whose carefulreading of the manuscript has been most helpful, and to Professor ClaraF. Stevens, the head of the English Department at Mount Holyoke College, whose very practical aid made this volume possible. 

A. L. F. S. 

INTRODUCTION

I -- THE LIFE OF HUXLEY

Of Huxley's life and of the forces which moulded his thought, theAutobiography gives some account; but many facts which are significantare slighted, and necessarily the later events of his life are omitted. To supplement the story as given by him is the purpose of this sketch. The facts for this account are gathered entirely from the Life andLetters of Thomas Henry Huxley, by his son. For a real acquaintancewith Huxley, the student should consult this source for himself; he willcount the reading of the Life and Letters among the rare pleasures whichhave come to him through books. 

Thomas Henry Huxley was born on May 4, 1825. His autobiography gives afull account of his parents, his early boyhood, and his education. Offormal education, Huxley had little; but he had the richer schoolingwhich nature and life give an eager mind. He read widely; he talkedoften with older people; he was always investigating the why of things. He kept a journal in which he noted thoughts gathered from books, andideas on the causes of certain phenomena. In this journal he frequentlywrote what he had done and had set himself to do in the way ofincreasing his knowledge. Self-conducted, also, was his later educationat the Charing Cross Hospital. Here, like Stevenson in his universitydays, Huxley seemed to be idle, but in reality, he was always busy onhis own private end. So constantly did he work over the microscope thatthe window at which he sat came to be dubbed by his fellow students "TheSign of the Head and Microscope. " Moreover, in his regular courses atCharing Cross, he seems to have done work sufficiently notable to berecognized by several prizes and a gold medal. 

Of his life after the completion of his medical course, of hissearch for work, of his appointment as assistant surgeon on board theRattlesnake, and of his scientific work during the four years' cruise, Huxley gives a vivid description in the autobiography. As a result ofhis investigations on this voyage, he published various essays whichquickly secured for him a position in the scientific world as anaturalist of the first rank. A testimony of the value of this work washis election to membership in the Royal Society. 

Although Huxley had now, at the age of twenty-six, won distinctionin science, he soon discovered that it was not so easy to earn breadthereby. Nevertheless, to earn a living was most important if he were toaccomplish the two objects which he had in view. He wished, in the firstplace, to marry Miss Henrietta Heathorn of Sydney, to whom he had becomeengaged when on the cruise with the Rattlesnake; his second objectwas to follow science as a profession. The struggle to find somethingconnected with science which would pay was long and bitter; and only aresolute determination to win kept Huxley from abandoning it altogether. Uniform ill-luck met him everywhere. He has told in his autobiographyof his troubles with the Admiralty in the endeavor to get his paperspublished, and of his failure there. He applied for a position to teachscience in Toronto; being unsuccessful in this attempt, he appliedsuccessively for various professorships in the United Kingdom, and inthis he was likewise unsuccessful. Some of his friends urged him to holdout, but others thought the fight an unequal one, and advised him toemigrate to Australia. He himself was tempted to practice medicine inSydney; but to give up his purpose seemed to him like cowardice. On theother hand, to prolong the struggle indefinitely when he might quicklyearn a living in other ways seemed like selfishness and an injustice tothe woman to whom he had been for a long time engaged. Miss Heathorn, however, upheld him in his determination to pursue science; and hissister also, he writes, cheered him by her advice and encouragement topersist in the struggle. Something of the man's heroic temper may begathered from a letter which he wrote to Miss Heathorn when his affairswere darkest. "However painful our separation may be, " he says, "thespectacle of a man who had given up the cherished purpose of his life. . . Would, before long years were over our heads, be infinitely morepainful. " He declares that he is hemmed in by all sorts of difficulties. "Nevertheless the path has shown itself a fair one, neither moredifficult nor less so than most paths in life in which a man of energymay hope to do much if he believes in himself, and is at peace within. "Thus relieved in mind, he makes his decision in spite of adverse fate. "My course of life is taken, I will not leave London--I WILL make myselfa name and a position as well as an income by some kind of pursuitconnected with science which is the thing for which Nature has fitted meif she has ever fitted any one for anything. "

But suddenly the long wait, the faith in self, were justified, and theturning point came. "There is always a Cape Horn in one's life thatone either weathers or wrecks one's self on, " he writes to his sister. "Thank God, I think I may say I have weathered mine--not without a gooddeal of damage to spars and rigging though, for it blew deuced hard onthe other side. " In 1854 a permanent lectureship was offered him at theGovernment School of Mines; also, a lectureship at St. Thomas' Hospital;and he was asked to give various other lecture courses. He thus foundhimself able to establish the home for which he had waited eight years. In July, 1855, he was married to Miss Heathorn. 

The succeeding years from 1855 to 1860 were filled with various kindsof work connected with science: original investigation, printing ofmonographs, and establishing of natural history museums. His adviceconcerning local museums is interesting and characteristicallyexpressed. "It [the local museum if properly arranged] will tell bothnatives and strangers exactly what they want to know, and possess greatscientific interest and importance. Whereas the ordinary lumber-roomof clubs from New Zealand, Hindu idols, sharks' teeth, mangy monkeys, scorpions, and conch shells--who shall describe the weary inutility ofit? It is really worse than nothing, because it leads the unwary to lookfor objects of science elsewhere than under their noses. What they wantto know is that their 'America is here, ' as Wilhelm Meister has it. "During this period, also, he began his lectures to workingmen, callingthem Peoples' Lectures. "POPULAR lectures, " he said, "I hold to be anabomination unto the Lord. " Working-men attended these lectures in greatnumbers, and to them Huxley seemed to be always able to speak at hisbest. His purpose in giving these lectures should be expressed in hisown words: "I want the working class to understand that Science and herways are great facts for them--that physical virtue is the base of allother, and that they are to be clean and temperate and all the rest--notbecause fellows in black and white ties tell them so, but because thereare plain and patent laws which they must obey 'under penalties. '"

Toward the close of 1859, Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published. Itraised a great outcry in England; and Huxley immediately came forward aschief defender of the faith therein set forth. He took part in debateson this subject, the most famous of which was the one between himselfand Bishop Wilberforce at Oxford. The Bishop concluded his speechby turning to Huxley and asking, "Was it through his grandfather orgrandmother that he claimed descent from a monkey?" Huxley, as isreported by an eye-witness, "slowly and deliberately arose. A slighttall figure, stern and pale, very quiet and grave, he stood before usand spoke those tremendous words. . . . He was not ashamed to have amonkey for an ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with aman who used great gifts to obscure the truth. " Another story indicatesthe temper of that time. Carlyle, whose writing had strongly influencedHuxley, and whom Huxley had come to know, could not forgive him for hisattitude toward evolution. One day, years after the publication of Man'sPlace in Nature, Huxley, seeing Carlyle on the other side of the street, a broken, pathetic figure, walked over and spoke to him. The old manmerely remarked, "You're Huxley, aren't you? the man that says we areall descended from monkeys, " and passed on. Huxley, however, saw nothingdegrading to man's dignity in the theory of evolution. In a wonderfullyfine sentence he gives his own estimate of the theory as it affectsman's future on earth. "Thoughtful men once escaped from the blindinginfluences of traditional prejudices, will find in the lowly stockwhence man has sprung the best evidence of the splendour of hiscapacities; and will discover, in his long progress through the past, areasonable ground of faith in his attainment of a nobler future. " Asa result of all these controversies on The Origin of Species and ofinvestigations to uphold Darwin's theory, Huxley wrote his first book, already mentioned, Man's Place in Nature. 

To read a list of the various kinds of work which Huxley was doingfrom 1870 to 1875 is to be convinced of his abundant energy and manyinterests. At about this time Huxley executed the plan which he had hadin mind for a long time, the establishment of laboratories for theuse of students. His object was to furnish a more exact preliminarytraining. He complains that the student who enters the medical schoolis "so habituated to learn only from books, or oral teaching, that theattempt to learn from things and to get his knowledge at first hand issomething new and strange. " To make this method of teaching successfulin the schools, Huxley gave practical instruction in laboratory work toschool-masters. 

"If I am to be remembered at all, " Huxley once wrote, "I would rather itshould be as a man who did his best to help the people than by anyother title. " Certainly as much of his time as could be spared from hisregular work was given to help others. His lectures to workingmen andschool-masters have already been mentioned. In addition, he lectured towomen on physiology and to children on elementary science. In orderto be of greater service to the children, Huxley, in spite of delicatehealth, became a member of the London School Board. His immediate objectwas "to temper book-learning with something of the direct knowledge ofNature. " His other purposes were to secure a better physical trainingfor children and to give them a clearer understanding of social andmoral law. He did not believe, on the one hand, in overcrowding thecurriculum, but, on the other hand, he "felt that all education shouldbe thrown open to all that each man might know to what state in life hewas called. " Another statement of his purpose and beliefs is given byProfessor Gladstone, who says of his work on the board: "He resentedthe idea that schools were to train either congregations for churches orhands for factories. He was on the Board as a friend of children. Whathe sought to do for the child was for the child's sake, that it mightlive a fuller, truer, worthier life. "

The immense amount of work which Huxley did in these years told veryseriously on his naturally weak constitution. It became necessary forhim finally for two successive years to stop work altogether. In 1872he went to the Mediterranean and to Egypt. This was a holiday full ofinterest for a man like Huxley who looked upon the history of the worldand man's place in the world with a keen scientific mind. Added to thisscientific bent of mind, moreover, Huxley had a deep appreciation forthe picturesque in nature and life. Bits of description indicatehis enjoyment in this vacation. He writes of his entrance to theMediterranean, "It was a lovely morning, and nothing could be granderthan Ape Hill on one side and the Rock on the other, looking like greatlions or sphinxes on each side of a gateway. " In Cairo, Huxley foundmuch to interest him in archaeology, geology, and the every-day life ofthe streets. At the end of a month, he writes that he is very well andvery grateful to Old Nile for all that he has done for him, not theleast "for a whole universe of new thoughts and pictures of life. " Thetrip, however, did no lasting good. In 1873 Huxley was again very ill, but was under such heavy costs at this time that another vacation wasimpossible. At this moment, a critical one in his life, some of hisclose scientific friends placed to his credit twenty-one hundred poundsto enable him to take the much needed rest. Darwin wrote to Huxleyconcerning the gift: "In doing this we are convinced that we act for thepublic interest. " He assured Huxley that the friends who gave this felttoward him as a brother. "I am sure that you will return this feelingand will therefore be glad to give us the opportunity of aiding you insome degree, as this will be a happiness to us to the last day ofour lives. " The gift made it possible for Huxley to take another longvacation, part of which was spent with Sir Joseph Hooker, a notedEnglish botanist, visiting the volcanoes of Auvergne. After this triphe steadily improved in health, with no other serious illness for tenyears. 

In 1876 Huxley was invited to visit America and to deliver the inauguraladdress at Johns Hopkins University. In July of this year accordingly, in company with his wife, he crossed to New York. Everywhere Huxleywas received with enthusiasm, for his name was a very familiar one. Twoquotations from his address at Johns Hopkins are especially worthy ofattention as a part of his message to Americans. "It has been my fate tosee great educational funds fossilise into mere bricks and mortar in thepetrifying springs of architecture, with nothing left to work them. A great warrior is said to have made a desert and called it peace. Trustees have sometimes made a palace and called it a university. "

The second quotation is as follows:--

I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bignessor your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, territorydoes not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs truesublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is, what are you going todo with all these things? . . . 

The one condition of success, your sole safeguard, is the moral worthand intellectual clearness of the individual citizen. Education cannotgive these, but it can cherish them and bring them to the front inwhatever station of society they are to be found, and the universitiesought to be, and may be, the fortresses of the higher life of thenation. 

After the return from America, the same innumerable occupations werecontinued. It would be impossible in short space even to enumerate allHuxley's various publications of the next ten years. His work, however, changed gradually from scientific investigation to administrativework, not the least important of which was the office of Inspector ofFisheries. A second important office was the Presidency of the RoyalSociety. Of the work of this society Sir Joseph Hooker writes: "Theduties of the office are manifold and heavy; they include attendance atall the meetings of the Fellows, and of the councils, committees, andsub-committees of the Society, and especially the supervision of theprinting and illustrating all papers on biological subjects that arepublished in the Society's Transactions and Proceedings; the latteroften involving a protracted correspondence with the authors. To thismust be added a share in the supervision of the staff officers, of thelibrary and correspondence, and the details of house-keeping. " All thework connected with this and many other offices bespeaks a life toohard-driven and accounts fully for the continued ill-health whichfinally resulted in a complete break-down. 

Huxley had always advocated that the age of sixty was the time for"official death, " and had looked forward to a peaceful "Indian summer. "With this object in mind and troubled by increasing ill-health, he beganin 1885 to give up his work. But to live even in comparative idleness, after so many years of activity, was difficult. "I am sure, " he says, "that the habit of incessant work into which we all drift is as badin its way as dram-drinking. In time you cannot be comfortable withoutstimulus. " But continued bodily weakness told upon him to the extentthat all work became distasteful. An utter weariness with frequentspells of the blues took possession of him; and the story of his lifefor some years is the story of the long pursuit of health in England, Switzerland, and especially in Italy. 

Although Huxley was wretchedly ill during this period, he wrote letterswhich are good to read for their humor and for their pictures of foreigncities. Rome he writes of as an idle, afternoony sort of place fromwhich it is difficult to depart. He worked as eagerly over the historicremains in Rome as he would over a collection of geological specimens. "I begin to understand Old Rome pretty well and I am quite learned inthe Catacombs, which suit me, as a kind of Christian fossils out ofwhich one can reconstruct the body of the primitive Church. " Florence, for a man with a conscience and ill-health, had too many picturegalleries. "They are a sore burden to the conscience if you don't goto see them, and an awful trial to the back and legs if you do, " hecomplained. He found Florence, nevertheless, a lovely place and fullof most interesting things to see and do. His letters with reference tohimself also are vigorously and entertainingly expressed. He writes ina characteristic way of his growing difficulty with his hearing. "Itirritates me not to hear; it irritates me still more to be spoken to asif I were deaf, and the absurdity of being irritated on the last groundirritates me still more. " And again he writes in a more hopeful strain, "With fresh air and exercise and careful avoidance of cold and night airI am to be all right again. " He then adds: "I am not fond of coddling;but as Paddy gave his pig the best corner in his cabin--because 'shure, he paid the rint'--I feel bound to take care of myself as a householdanimal of value, to say nothing of other points. "

Although he was never strong after this long illness, Huxley beganin 1889 to be much better. The first sign of returning vigor was theeagerness with which he entered into a controversy with Gladstone. Huxley had always enjoyed a mental battle; and some of his fiercesttilts were with Gladstone. He even found the cause of better health inthis controversy, and was grateful to the "Grand Old Man" for makinghome happy for him. From this time to his death, Huxley wrote a numberof articles on politics, science, and religion, many of which werepublished in the volume called Controverted Questions. The main value ofthese essays lies in the fact that Huxley calls upon men to give clearreasons for the faith which they claim as theirs, and makes, as a friendwrote of him, hazy thinking and slovenly, half-formed conclusions seemthe base thing they really are. 

The last years of Huxley's life were indeed the longed-for Indiansummer. Away from the noise of London at Eastbourne by the sea, he spentmany happy hours with old-time friends and in his garden, which wasa great joy to him. His large family of sons and daughters andgrandchildren brought much cheer to his last days. Almost to the end hewas working and writing for publication. Three days before his deathhe wrote to his old friend, Hooker, that he didn't feel at all like"sending in his checks" and hoped to recover. He died very quietly onJune 29, 1895. That he met death with the same calm faith and strengthwith which he had met life is indicated by the lines which his wifewrote and which he requested to be his epitaph:--

Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep; For still He giveth Hisbeloved sleep, And if an endless sleep He wills, so best. 

To attempt an analysis of Huxley's character, unique and bafflinglycomplex as it is, is beyond the scope of this sketch; but to giveonly the mere facts of his life is to do an injustice to the vividpersonality of the man as it is revealed in his letters. All his humaninterest in people and things--pets, and flowers, and family--brightensmany pages of the two ponderous volumes. Now one reads of his grief oversome backward-going plant, or over some garden tragedy, as "A lovelyclematis in full flower, which I had spent hours in nailing up, has justdied suddenly. I am more inconsolable than Jonah!" Now one is amusedwith a nonsense letter to one of his children, and again with anaccount of a pet. "I wish you would write seriously to M----. She isnot behaving well to Oliver. I have seen handsomer kittens, but few morelively, and energetically destructive. Just now he scratched away atsomething M---- says cost 13s. 6d. A yard and reduced more or less of itto combings. M---- therefore excludes him from the dining-room andall those opportunities of higher education which he would have in MYhouse. " Frequently one finds a description of some event, so vividlydone that the mere reading of it seems like a real experience. Anaccount of Tennyson's burial in Westminster is a typical bit ofdescription:--

Bright sunshine streamed through the windows of the nave, while thechoir was in half gloom, and as each shaft of light illuminated theflower-covered bier as it slowly travelled on, one thought of the brightsuccession of his works between the darkness before and the darknessafter. I am glad to say that the Royal Society was represented by fourof its chief officers, and nine of the commonalty, including myself. Tennyson has a right to that, as the first poet since Lucretius who hasunderstood the drift of science. 

No parts of the Life and Letters are more enjoyable than thoseconcerning the "Happy Family, " as a friend of Huxley's names hishousehold. His family of seven children found their father a mostengaging friend and companion. He could tell them wonderful sea storiesand animal stories and could draw fascinating pictures. His son writesof how when he was ill with scarlet fever he used to look forward to hisfather's home-coming. "The solitary days--for I was the first victim inthe family--were very long, and I looked forward with intense interestto one half-hour after dinner, when he would come up and draw scenesfrom the history of a remarkable bull-terrier and his family that wentto the seaside in a most human and child-delighting manner. I haveseldom suffered a greater disappointment than when, one evening, I fellasleep just before this fairy half-hour, and lost it out of my life. "

The account of the comradeship between Huxley and his wife reads likea good old-time romance. He was attracted to her at first byher "simplicity and directness united with an unusual degree ofcultivation, " Huxley's son writes. On her he depended for advice in hiswork, and for companionship at home and abroad when wandering in searchof health in Italy and Switzerland. When he had been separated from herfor some time, he wrote, "Nobody, children or anyone else, can be to mewhat you are. Ulysses preferred his old woman to immortality, andthis absence has led me to see that he was as wise in that as in otherthings. " Again he writes, "Against all trouble (and I have had my share)I weigh a wife-comrade 'trew and fest' in all emergencies. "

The letters also give one a clear idea of the breadth of Huxley'sinterests, particularly of his appreciation of the various forms of art. Huxley believed strongly in the arts as a refining and helpful influencein education. He keenly enjoyed good music. Professor Hewes writes ofhim that one breaking in upon him in the afternoon at South Kensingtonwould not infrequently be met "with a snatch of some melody of Bach'sfugue. " He also liked good pictures, and always had among his friendswell-known artists, as Alma-Tadema, Sir Frederick Leighton, andBurne-Jones. He read poetry widely, and strongly advocated the teachingof poetry in English schools. As to poetry, his own preferences areinteresting. Wordsworth he considered too discursive; Shelley was toodiffuse; Keats, he liked for pure beauty, Browning for strength, andTennyson for his understanding of modern science; but most frequently ofall he read Milton and Shakespeare. 

As to Huxley's appearance, and as to the impression which hispersonality made upon others, the description of a friend, Mr. G. W. Smalley, presents him with striking force. "The square forehead, thesquare jaw, the tense lines of the mouth, the deep flashing darkeyes, the impression of something more than strength he gave you, animpression of sincerity, of solid force, of immovability, yet with thegentleness arising from the serene consciousness of his strength--allthis belonged to Huxley and to him alone. The first glance magnetizedhis audience. The eyes were those of one accustomed to command, of onehaving authority, and not fearing on occasion to use it. The hair sweptcarelessly away from the broad forehead and grew rather long behind, yet the length did not suggest, as it often does, effeminacy. He wasmasculine in everything--look, gesture, speech. Sparing of gesture, sparing of emphasis, careless of mere rhetorical or oratorical art, he had nevertheless the secret of the highest art of all, whether inoratory or whatever else--he had simplicity. "

Simplicity, directness, sincerity, --all these qualities describe Huxley;but the one attribute which distinguishes him above all others is loveof truth. A love of truth, as the phrase characterizes Huxley, wouldnecessarily produce a scholarly habit of mind. It was the zealous searchfor truth which determined his method of work. In science, Huxley would"take at second hand nothing for which he vouched in teaching. " Some onereproached him for wasting time verifying what another had already done. "If that is his practice, " he commented, "his work will never live. " Thesame motive made him a master of languages. To be able to read at firsthand the writings of other nations, he learned German, French, Italian, and Greek. One of the chief reasons for learning to read Greek was tosee for himself if Aristotle really did say that the heart had onlythree chambers--an error, he discovered, not of Aristotle, but of thetranslator. It was, moreover, the scholar in Huxley which made himimpatient of narrow, half-formed, foggy conclusions. His own work hasall the breadth and freedom and universality of the scholar, but it has, also, a quality equally distinctive of the scholar, namely, an infiniteprecision in the matter of detail. 

If love of truth made Huxley a scholar, it made him, also, a courageousfighter. Man's first duty, as he saw it, was to seek the truth;his second was to teach it to others, and, if necessary, to contendvaliantly for it. To fail to teach what you honestly know to be true, because it may harm your reputation, or even because it may give pain toothers, is cowardice. "I am not greatly concerned about any reputation, "Huxley writes to his wife, "except that of being entirely honest andstraightforward. " Regardless of warnings that the publication of Man'sPlace in Nature would ruin his career, Huxley passed on to others whatnature had revealed to him. He was regardless, also, of the confusionand pain which his view would necessarily bring to those who had beennourished in old traditions. To stand with a man or two and to do battlewith the world on the score of its old beliefs, has never been an easytask since the world began. Certainly it required fearlessness anddetermination to wrestle with the prejudices against science in themiddle of the nineteenth century--how much may be gathered from thereading of Darwin's Life and Letters. The attitude of the times towardscience has already been indicated. One may be allowed to give one moreexample from the reported address of a clergyman. "O ye men of science, ye men of science, leave us our ancestors in paradise, and you may haveyours in Zoological gardens. " The war was, for the most part, betweenthe clergy and the men of science, but it is necessary to rememberthat Huxley fought not against Christianity, but against dogma; thathe fought not against the past, --he had great reverence for theaccomplishment of the past, --but against unwillingness to accept the newtruth of the present. 

A scholar of the highest type and a fearless defender of true and honestthinking, Huxley certainly was: but the quality which gives meaning tohis work, which makes it live, is a certain human quality due to thefact that Huxley was always keenly alive to the relation of science tothe problems of life. For this reason, he was not content with themere acquirement of knowledge; and for this reason, also, he could notquietly wait until the world should come to his way of thinking. Muchof the time, therefore, which he would otherwise naturally have spentin research, he spent in contending for and in endeavoring to popularizethe facts of science. It was this desire to make his ideas prevailthat led Huxley to work for a mastery of the technique of speaking andwriting. He hated both, but taught himself to do both well. The end ofall his infinite pains about his writing was not because style for itsown sake is worth while, but because he saw that the only way to winmen to a consideration of his message was to make it perfectly clear andattractive to them. Huxley's message to the people was that happiness, usefulness, and even material prosperity depend upon an understandingof the laws of nature. He also taught that a knowledge of the facts ofscience is the soundest basis for moral law; that a clear sense ofthe penalties which Nature inflicts for disobedience of her laws musteventually be the greatest force for the purification of life. If hewas to be remembered, therefore, he desired that he should be rememberedprimarily as one who had helped the people "to think truly and to liverightly. " Huxley's writing is, then, something more than a scholarlyexposition of abstruse matter; for it has been further devoted to theincreasing of man's capacity for usefulness, and to the betterment ofhis life here on earth. 

II -- SUBJECT-MATTER, STRUCTURE, AND STYLE

From the point of view of subject-matter, structure, and style, Huxley'sessays are admirably adapted to the uses of the student in English. The themes of the essays are two, education and science. In thesetwo subjects Huxley earnestly sought to arouse interest and to impartknowledge, because he believed that intelligence in these matters isessential for the advancement of the race in strength and morality. Bothsubjects, therefore, should be valuable to the student. In education, certainly, he should be interested, since it is his main occupation, ifnot his chief concern. Essays like A Liberal Education and The PrincipalSubjects of Education may suggest to him the meaning of all his work, and may suggest, also, the things which it would be well for him toknow; and, even more, a consideration of these subjects may arouse himto a greater interest and responsibility than he usually assumes towardhis own mental equipment. Of greater interest probably will be thesubjects which deal with nature; for the ways of nature are more nearlywithin the range of his real concerns than are the wherefores of study. The story of the formation of a piece of chalk, the substance which liesat the basis of all life, the habits of sea animals, are all subjectsthe nature of which is akin to his own eager interest in the world. 

Undoubtedly the subjects about which Huxley writes will "appeal" tothe student; but it is in analysis that the real discipline lies. Foranalysis Huxley's essays are excellent. They illustrate "the clear powerof exposition, " and such power is, as Huxley wrote to Tyndall, the onequality the people want, --exposition "so clear that they may think theyunderstand even if they don't. " Huxley obtains that perfect clearnessin his own work by simple definition, by keeping steadily before hisaudience his intention, and by making plain throughout his lecture awell-defined organic structure. No X-ray machine is needful to make theskeleton visible; it stands forth with the parts all nicely relatedand compactly joined. In reference to structure, his son and biographerwrites, "He loved to visualize his object clearly. The framework ofwhat he wished to say would always be drawn out first. " Professor RayLankester also mentions Huxley's love of form. "He deals with form notonly as a mechanical engineer IN PARTIBUS (Huxley's own description ofhimself), but also as an artist, a born lover of form, a character whichothers recognize in him though he does not himself set it down in hisanalysis. " Huxley's own account of his efforts to shape his work issuggestive. "The fact is that I have a great love and respect for mynative tongue, and take great pains to use it properly. Sometimes Iwrite essays half-a-dozen times before I can get them into proper shape;and I believe I become more fastidious as I grow older. " And, indeed, there is a marked difference in firmness of structure between theearlier essays, such as On the Educational Value of the Natural HistorySciences, written, as Huxley acknowledges, in great haste, and thelater essays, such as A Liberal Education and The Method of ScientificInvestigation. To trace and to define this difference will be mosthelpful to the student who is building up a knowledge of structure forhis own use. 

According to Huxley's biographer in the Life and Letters of Thomas HenryHuxley, the essays which represent him at his best are those publishedin 1868. They are A Piece of Chalk, A Liberal Education, and On thePhysical Basis of Life. In connection with the comment on these essaysis the following quotation which gives one interesting information as toHuxley's method of obtaining a clear style:--

This lecture on A Piece of Chalk together with two others delivered thisyear, seems to me to mark the maturing of his style into that mastery ofclear expression for which he deliberately labored, the saying exactlywhat he meant, neither too much nor too little, without confusion andwithout obscurity. Have something to say, and say it, was the Duke ofWellington's theory of style; Huxley's was to say that which has to besaid in such language that you can stand cross-examination on eachword. Be clear, though you may be convicted of error. If you are clearlywrong, you will run up against a fact sometime and get set right. If youshuffle with your subject, and study chiefly to use language which willgive a loophole of escape either way, there is no hope for you. 

This was the secret of his lucidity. In no one could Buffon's aphorismon style find a better illustration, Le style c'est l'homme meme. Inhim science and literature, too often divorced, were closely united; andliterature owes him a debt for importing into it so much of the highestscientific habit of mind; for showing that truthfulness need not bebald, and that real power lies more in exact accuracy than in luxurianceof diction. 

Huxley's own theory as to how clearness is to be obtained gets at theroot of the matter. "For my part, I venture to doubt the wisdom ofattempting to mould one's style by any other process than thatof striving after the clear and forcible expression of definiteconceptions; in which process the Glassian precept, first catch yourdefinite conception, is probably the most difficult to obey. "

Perfect clearness, above every other quality of style, certainlyis characteristic of Huxley; but clearness alone does not makesubject-matter literature. In addition to this quality, Huxley's writingwins the reader by the racy diction, the homely illustration, theplain, honest phrasing. All these and other qualities bring one intoan intimate relationship with his subject. A man of vast technicallearning, he is still so interested in the relation of his facts to theproblems of men that he is always able to infuse life into the driestof subjects, in other words, to HUMANIZE his knowledge; and in theestimation of Matthew Arnold, this is the true work of the scholar, thehighest mission of style. 

III -- SUGGESTED STUDIES IN SUBJECT-MATTER, STRUCTURE, AND STYLE

Although fully realizing that the questions here given are only such asare generally used everywhere by instructors in English, the editor has, nevertheless, included them with the hope that some one may find themhelpful. 

The studies given include a few general questions and suggestions onsubject-matter, structure, and style. The questions on structure arebased on an analysis of the whole composition and of the paragraph;those on style are based on a study of sentences and words. Sucha division of material may seem unwarranted; for, it may be urged, firmness of structure depends, to a certain extent, upon sentence-formand words; and clearness of style, to a large extent, upon the form ofthe paragraph and whole composition. The two, certainly, cannot be injustice separated; and especially is it true, more deeply true than theaverage student can be brought to believe, that structure, "MIND, instyle" as Pater phrases it, primarily determines not only clearness, butalso such qualities of style as reserve, refinement, and simple Doricbeauty. Since, however, structure is more obviously associated withthe larger groups, and style with the smaller, the questions have beenarranged according to this division. 

I. Suggestions for the Study of Subject-Matter. 

1. To whom does Huxley address the essay?

2. Can you see any adaptation of his material to his audience?

3. How would A Piece of Chalk be differently presented if given before ascience club?

4. Does Huxley make his subject interesting? If so, how does heaccomplish this?

5. Is the personality of Huxley suggested by the essays? See Life andLetters, vol. Ii, p. 293. 

II. Suggestions for the Study of Structure. 

A. Analysis of the whole composition. 

1. State in one complete sentence the theme of the essay. 

2. Analyze the essay for the logical development of the thought. 

a. Questions on the Introduction. 

In the introduction, how does the author approach his material?

Does he give the main points of the essay?

Does he give his reasons for writing?

Does he narrow his subject to one point of view?

Is the introduction a digression?

b. Questions on the Body. 

Can you find large groups of thought?

Are these groups closely related to the theme and to each other?

Do you find any digressions?

Is the method used in developing the groups inductive or deductive?

Is the method different in different groups?

Are the groups arranged for good emphasis in the whole composition?

c. Questions on the Conclusion. 

How does the author conclude the essay?

Does the conclusion sum up the points of the essay?

Are any new points suggested?

Is the thought of the whole essay stated?

Do you consider it a strong conclusion?

3. Make out an outline which shall picture the skeleton of the essaystudied. In making the outline express the topics in the form ofcomplete statements, phrase the thought for clear sequence, and becareful about such matters as spacing and punctuation. 

B. Analysis of paragraph structure. 

1. Can a paragraph be analyzed in the same manner as the wholecomposition?

2. Can you express the thought of each paragraph in a complete sentence?

3. Can you find different points presented in the paragraph developingthe paragraph topic, as the large groups of the whole compositiondevelop the theme?

4. Are the paragraphs closely related, and how are they bound together?

5. Can any of the paragraphs be combined to advantage?

6. Read from Barrett Wendell's English Composition the chapter onparagraphs. Are Huxley's paragraphs constructed in accordance with theprinciples given in this chapter?

7. Is the paragraph type varied? For paragraph types, see Scott andDenny's Paragraph Writing. 

C. Comparative study of the structure of the essay. 

1. Do you find any difference between Huxley's earlier and lateressays as regards the structure of the whole, or the structure of theparagraph?

2. Which essay seems to you to be most successful in structure?

3. Has the character of the audience any influence upon the structure ofthe essays?

4. Compare the structure of one of Huxley's essays with that of someother essay recently studied. 

5. Has the nature of the material any influence upon the structure ofthe essay?

III. Suggestions for the Study of Style. 

A. Exactly what do you mean by style?

B. Questions on sentence structure. 

1. From any given essay, group together sentences which are long, short, loose, periodic, balanced, simple, compound; note those peculiar, forany reason, to Huxley. 

2. Stevenson says, "The one rule is to be infinitely various; tointerest, to disappoint, to surprise and still to gratify; to be everchanging, as it were, the stitch, and yet still to give the effect ofingenious neatness. "

Do Huxley's sentences conform to Stevenson's rule? Compare Huxley'ssentences with Stevenson's for variety in form. Is there any reason forthe difference between the form of the two writers?

3. Does this quotation from Pater's essay on Style describe Huxley'ssentences? "The blithe, crisp sentence, decisive as a child's expressionof its needs, may alternate with the long-contending, victoriouslyintricate sentence; the sentence, born with the integrity of a singleword, relieving the sort of sentence in which, if you look closely, youcan see contrivance, much adjustment, to bring a highly qualified matterinto compass at one view. "

4. How do Huxley's sentences compare with those of Ruskin, or with thoseof any author recently studied?

5. Are Huxley's sentences musical? How does an author make his sentencesmusical?

C. Questions on words. 

1. Do you find evidence of exactness, a quality which Huxley said helabored for?

2. Are the words general or specific in character?

3. How does Huxley make his subject-matter attractive?

4. From what sources does Huxley derive his words? Are they every-daywords, or more scholarly in character?

5. Do you find any figures? Are these mainly ornamental or do theyre-enforce the thought?

8. Are there many allusions and quotations? Can you easily recognize thesource?

7. Pater says in his essay on Style that the literary artist "begetsa vocabulary faithful to the colouring of his own spirit, and in thestrictest sense original. " Do you find that Huxley's vocabulary suggeststhe man?

8. Does Huxley seem to search for "the smooth, or winsome, or forcibleword, as such, or quite simply and honestly, for the word's adjustmentto its meaning"?

9. Make out a list of the words and proper names in any given essaywhich are not familiar to you; write out the explanation of these in theform of notes giving any information which is interesting and relevant. 

D. General questions on style. 

1. How is Huxley's style adapted to the subject-matter?

2. Can you explain the difference in style of the different essays bythe difference in purpose?

3. Compare Huxley's way of saying things with some other author's way ofsaying things. 

4. Huxley says of his essays to workingmen, "I only wish I had had thesense to anticipate the run these have had here and abroad, and I wouldhave revised them properly. As they stand they are terribly in therough, from a literary point of view. "

Do you find evidences of roughness?

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY -- AUTOBIOGRAPHY [1]

And when I consider, in one view, the many things . . . Which I haveupon my hands, I feel the burlesque of being employed in this manner atmy time of life. But, in another view, and taking in all circumstances, these things, as trifling as they may appear, no less than things ofgreater importance, seem to be put upon me to do. --Bishop Butler to theDuchess of Somerset. 

The "many things" to which the Duchess's correspondent here refers arethe repairs and improvements of the episcopal seat at Auckland. I doubtif the great apologist, greater in nothing than in the simple dignity ofhis character, would have considered the writing an account of himselfas a thing which could be put upon him to do whatever circumstancesmight be taken in. But the good bishop lived in an age when a manmight write books and yet be permitted to keep his private existenceto himself; in the pre-Boswellian [2] epoch, when the germ of thephotographer lay concealed in the distant future, and the interviewerwho pervades our age was an unforeseen, indeed unimaginable, birth oftime. 

At present, the most convinced believer in the aphorism "Bene quilatuit, bene vixit, "[3] is not always able to act up to it. Animportunate person informs him that his portrait is about to bepublished and will be accompanied by a biography which the importunateperson proposes to write. The sufferer knows what that means; either heundertakes to revise the "biography" or he does not. In the former case, he makes himself responsible; in the latter, he allows the publicationof a mass of more or less fulsome inaccuracies for which he will beheld responsible by those who are familiar with the prevalent art ofself-advertisement. On the whole, it may be better to get over the"burlesque of being employed in this manner" and do the thing himself. 

It was by reflections of this kind that, some years ago, I was led towrite and permit the publication of the subjoined sketch. 

I was born about eight o'clock in the morning on the 4th of May, 1825, at Ealing, which was, at that time, as quiet a little country village ascould be found within a half-a-dozen miles of Hyde Park Corner. Now itis a suburb of London with, I believe, 30, 000 inhabitants. My father wasone of the masters in a large semi-public school which at one time had ahigh reputation. I am not aware that any portents preceded my arrivalin this world, but, in my childhood, I remember hearing a traditionalaccount of the manner in which I lost the chance of an endowment ofgreat practical value. The windows of my mother's room were open, inconsequence of the unusual warmth of the weather. For the same reason, probably, a neighbouring beehive had swarmed, and the new colony, pitching on the window-sill, was making its way into the room when thehorrified nurse shut down the sash. If that well-meaning woman had onlyabstained from her ill-timed interference, the swarm might have settledon my lips, and I should have been endowed with that mellifluouseloquence which, in this country, leads far more surely than worth, capacity, or honest work, to the highest places in Church and State. But the opportunity was lost, and I have been obliged to content myselfthrough life with saying what I mean in the plainest of plain language, than which, I suppose, there is no habit more ruinous to a man'sprospects of advancement. 

Why I was christened Thomas Henry I do not know; but it is a curiouschance that my parents should have fixed for my usual denomination uponthe name of that particular Apostle with whom I have always feltmost sympathy. Physically and mentally I am the son of my mother socompletely--even down to peculiar movements of the hands, which madetheir appearance in me as I reached the age she had when I noticedthem--that I can hardly find any trace of my father in myself, except aninborn faculty for drawing, which unfortunately, in my case, has neverbeen cultivated, a hot temper, and that amount of tenacity of purposewhich unfriendly observers sometimes call obstinacy. 

My mother was a slender brunette, of an emotional and energetictemperament, and possessed of the most piercing black eyes I ever sawin a woman's head. With no more education than other women of the middleclasses in her day, she had an excellent mental capacity. Her mostdistinguishing characteristic, however, was rapidity of thought. Ifone ventured to suggest she had not taken much time to arrive at anyconclusion, she would say, "I cannot help it, things flash across me. "That peculiarity has been passed on to me in full strength; it has oftenstood me in good stead; it has sometimes played me sad tricks, and ithas always been a danger. But, after all, if my time were to comeover again, there is nothing I would less willingly part with than myinheritance of mother wit. 

I have next to nothing to say about my childhood. In later years mymother, looking at me almost reproachfully, would sometimes say, "Ah!you were such a pretty boy!" whence I had no difficulty in concludingthat I had not fulfilled my early promise in the matter of looks. Infact, I have a distinct recollection of certain curls of which I wasvain, and of a conviction that I closely resembled that handsome, courtly gentleman, Sir Herbert Oakley, who was vicar of our parish, andwho was as a god to us country folk, because he was occasionally visitedby the then Prince George of Cambridge. [4] I remember turning mypinafore wrong side forwards in order to represent a surplice, andpreaching to my mother's maids in the kitchen as nearly as possible inSir Herbert's manner one Sunday morning when the rest of the family wereat church. That is the earliest indication I can call to mind of thestrong clerical affinities which my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer [5]has always ascribed to me, though I fancy they have for the most partremained in a latent state. 

My regular school training was of the briefest, perhaps fortunately, for though my way of life has made me acquainted with all sorts andconditions of men, from the highest to the lowest, I deliberately affirmthat the society I fell into at school was the worst I have ever known. We boys were average lads, with much the same inherent capacity for goodand evil as any others; but the people who were set over us caredabout as much for our intellectual and moral welfare as if theywere baby-farmers. We were left to the operation of the strugglefor existence among ourselves, and bullying was the least of the illpractices current among us. Almost the only cheerful reminiscence inconnection with the place which arises in my mind is that of a battle Ihad with one of my classmates, who had bullied me until I could stand itno longer. I was a very slight lad, but there was a wild-cat elementin me which, when roused, made up for lack of weight, and I lickedmy adversary effectually. However, one of my first experiences of theextremely rough-and-ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the courseof things in general, arose out of the fact that I--the victor--hada black eye, while he--the vanquished--had none, so that I got intodisgrace and he did not. We made it up, and thereafter I was unmolested. One of the greatest shocks I ever received in my life was to be tolda dozen years afterwards by the groom who brought me my horse in astable-yard in Sydney that he was my quondam antagonist. He had a longstory of family misfortune to account for his position, but at that timeit was necessary to deal very cautiously with mysterious strangers inNew South Wales, and on inquiry I found that the unfortunate young manhad not only been "sent out, " but had undergone more than one colonialconviction. 

As I grew older, my great desire was to be a mechanical engineer, butthe fates were against this and, while very young, I commenced the studyof medicine under a medical brother-in-law. But, though the Instituteof Mechanical Engineers would certainly not own me, I am not sure thatI have not all along been a sort of mechanical engineer in partibusinfidelium. [6] I am now occasionally horrified to think how very littleI ever knew or cared about medicine as the art of healing. The onlypart of my professional course which really and deeply interested me wasphysiology, which is the mechanical engineering of living machines; and, notwithstanding that natural science has been my proper business, I amafraid there is very little of the genuine naturalist in me. I nevercollected anything, and species work was always a burden to me; what Icared for was the architectural and engineering part of the business, the working out of the wonderful unity of plan in the thousands andthousands of diverse living constructions, and the modifications ofsimilar apparatuses to serve diverse ends. The extraordinary attractionI felt towards the study of the intricacies of living structure nearlyproved fatal to me at the outset. I was a mere boy--I think betweenthirteen and fourteen years of age--when I was taken by some olderstudent friends of mine to the first post-mortem examination I everattended. All my life I have been most unfortunately sensitive to thedisagreeables which attend anatomical pursuits, but on this occasion mycuriosity overpowered all other feelings, and I spent two or threehours in gratifying it. I did not cut myself, and none of the ordinarysymptoms of dissection-poison supervened, but poisoned I was somehow, and I remember sinking into a strange state of apathy. By way of a lastchance, I was sent to the care of some good, kind people, friends ofmy father's, who lived in a farmhouse in the heart of Warwickshire. I remember staggering from my bed to the window on the bright springmorning after my arrival, and throwing open the casement. Life seemed tocome back on the wings of the breeze, and to this day the faint odor ofwood-smoke, like that which floated across the farm-yard in the earlymorning, is as good to me as the "sweet south upon a bed of violets. "[7]I soon recovered, but for years I suffered from occasional paroxysms ofinternal pain, and from that time my constant friend, hypochondriacaldyspepsia, commenced his half century of co-tenancy of my fleshlytabernacle. 

Looking back on my "Lehrjahre, "[8] I am sorry to say that I do not thinkthat any account of my doings as a student would tend to edification. In fact, I should distinctly warn ingenuous youth to avoid imitatingmy example. I worked extremely hard when it pleased me, and when it didnot--which was a very frequent case--I was extremely idle (unless makingcaricatures of one's pastors and masters is to be called a branchof industry), or else wasted my energies in wrong directions. I readeverything I could lay hands upon, including novels, and took up allsorts of pursuits to drop them again quite as speedily. No doubt it wasvery largely my own fault, but the only instruction from which I everobtained the proper effect of education was that which I received fromMr. Wharton Jones, who was the lecturer on physiology at the CharingCross School of Medicine. The extent and precision of his knowledgeimpressed me greatly, and the severe exactness of his method oflecturing was quite to my taste. I do not know that I have ever felt somuch respect for anybody as a teacher before or since. I worked hardto obtain his approbation, and he was extremely kind and helpful to theyoungster who, I am afraid, took up more of his time than he hadany right to do. It was he who suggested the publication of my firstscientific paper--a very little one--in the Medical Gazette of 1845, andmost kindly corrected the literary faults which abounded in it, short asit was; for at that time, and for many years afterwards, I detested thetrouble of writing, and would take no pains over it. 

It was in the early spring of 1846, that, having finished my obligatorymedical studies and passed the first M. D. Examination at the LondonUniversity, --though I was still too young to qualify at the Collegeof Surgeons, --I was talking to a fellow-student (the present eminentphysician, Sir Joseph Fayrer), and wondering what I should do to meetthe imperative necessity for earning my own bread, when my friendsuggested that I should write to Sir William Burnett, at thattime Director-General for the Medical Service of the Navy, for anappointment. I thought this rather a strong thing to do, as Sir Williamwas personally unknown to me, but my cheery friend would not listen tomy scruples, so I went to my lodgings and wrote the best letter I coulddevise. A few days afterwards I received the usual official circularacknowledgment, but at the bottom there was written an instructionto call at Somerset House on such a day. I thought that looked likebusiness, so at the appointed time I called and sent in my card, whileI waited in Sir William's ante-room. He was a tall, shrewd-looking oldgentleman, with a broad Scotch accent--and I think I see him now as heentered with my card in his hand. The first thing he did was to returnit, with the frugal reminder that I should probably find it useful onsome other occasion. The second was to ask whether I was an Irishman. I suppose the air of modesty about my appeal must have struck him. Isatisfied the Director-General that I was English to the backbone, andhe made some inquiries as to my student career, finally desiring meto hold myself ready for examination. Having passed this, I was in HerMajesty's Service, and entered on the books of Nelson's [9] old ship, the Victory, for duty at Haslar Hospital, about a couple of months afterI made my application. 

My official chief at Haslar was a very remarkable person, the lateSir John Richardson, an excellent naturalist, and far-famed as anindomitable Arctic traveller. He was a silent, reserved man, outside thecircle of his family and intimates; and, having a full share of youthfulvanity, I was extremely disgusted to find that "Old John, " as weirreverent youngsters called him, took not the slightest notice of myworshipful self either the first time I attended him, as it was my dutyto do, or for some weeks afterwards. I am afraid to think of the lengthsto which my tongue may have run on the subject of the churlishnessof the chief, who was, in truth, one of the kindest-hearted and mostconsiderate of men. But one day, as I was crossing the hospital square, Sir John stopped me, and heaped coals of fire on my head by tellingme that he had tried to get me one of the resident appointments, muchcoveted by the assistant surgeons, but that the Admiralty had put inanother man. "However, " said he, "I mean to keep you here till I can getyou something you will like, " and turned upon his heel without waitingfor the thanks I stammered out. That explained how it was I had not beenpacked off to the West Coast of Africa like some of my juniors, and why, eventually, I remained altogether seven months at Haslar. 

After a long interval, during which "Old John" ignored my existencealmost as completely as before, he stopped me again as we met in acasual way, and describing the service on which the Rattlesnake waslikely to be employed, said that Captain Owen Stanley, who was tocommand the ship, had asked him to recommend an assistant surgeon whoknew something of science; would I like that? Of course I jumped atthe offer. "Very well, I give you leave; go to London at once and seeCaptain Stanley. " I went, saw my future commander, who was very civilto me, and promised to ask that I should be appointed to his ship, as indue time I was. It is a singular thing that, during the few months of mystay at Haslar, I had among my messmates two future Directors-Generalof the Medical Service of the Navy (Sir Alexander Armstrong and Sir JohnWatt-Reid), with the present President of the College of Physicians andmy kindest of doctors, Sir Andrew Clark. 

Life on board Her Majesty's ship in those days was a very differentaffair from what it is now, and ours was exceptionally rough, as wewere often many months without receiving letters or seeing any civilisedpeople but ourselves. In exchange, we had the interest of being aboutthe last voyagers, I suppose, to whom it could be possible to meet withpeople who knew nothing of fire-arms--as we did on the south coast ofNew Guinea--and of making acquaintance with a variety of interestingsavage and semi-civilised people. But, apart from experience ofthis kind and the opportunities offered for scientific work, to me, personally, the cruise was extremely valuable. It was good for me tolive under sharp discipline; to be down on the realities of existence byliving on bare necessaries; to find out how extremely well worth livinglife seemed to be when one woke up from a night's rest on a soft plank, with the sky for canopy and cocoa and weevilly biscuit the sole prospectfor breakfast; and, more especially, to learn to work for the sake ofwhat I got for myself out of it, even if it all went to the bottom and Ialong with it. My brother officers were as good fellows as sailors oughtto be and generally are, but, naturally, they neither knew nor caredanything about my pursuits, nor understood why I should be so zealousin pursuit of the objects which my friends, the middies, [10] christened"Buffons, " after the title conspicuous on a volume of the Suites aBuffon, [11] which stood on my shelf in the chart room. 

During the four years of our absence, I sent home communication aftercommunication to the "Linnean Society, "[12] with the same result as thatobtained by Noah when he sent the raven out of his ark. Tired at lastof hearing nothing about them, I determined to do or die, and in 1849I drew up a more elaborate paper and forwarded it to the RoyalSociety. [13] This was my dove, if I had only known it. But owing to themovements of the ship, I heard nothing of that either until my returnto England in the latter end of the year 1850, when I found that it wasprinted and published, and that a huge packet of separate copies awaitedme. When I hear some of my young friends complain of want of sympathyand encouragement, I am inclined to think that my naval life was not theleast valuable part of my education. 

Three years after my return were occupied by a battle between myscientific friends on the one hand and the Admiralty on the other, asto whether the latter ought, or ought not, to act up to the spirit of apledge they had given to encourage officers who had done scientificwork by contributing to the expense of publishing mine. At last theAdmiralty, getting tired, I suppose, cut short the discussion byordering me to join a ship, which thing I declined to do, and asRastignac, [14] in the Pere Goriot [15] says to Paris, I said to London"a nous deux. " I desired to obtain a Professorship of either Physiologyor Comparative Anatomy, and as vacancies occurred I applied, but invain. My friend, Professor Tyndall, [16] and I were candidates at thesame time, he for the Chair of Physics and I for that of Natural Historyin the University of Toronto, which, fortunately, as it turned out, would not look at either of us. I say fortunately, not from any lack ofrespect for Toronto, but because I soon made up my mind that London wasthe place for me, and hence I have steadily declined the inducements toleave it, which have at various times been offered. At last, in 1854, onthe translation of my warm friend Edward Forbes, to Edinburgh, Sir Henryde la Beche, the Director-General of the Geological Survey, offeredme the post Forbes vacated of Paleontologist and Lecturer on NaturalHistory. I refused the former point blank, and accepted the latter onlyprovisionally, telling Sir Henry that I did not care for fossils, and that I should give up Natural History as soon as I could get aphysiological post. But I held the office for thirty-one years, and alarge part of my work has been paleontological. 

At that time I disliked public speaking, and had a firm conviction thatI should break down every time I opened my mouth. I believe I had everyfault a speaker could have (except talking at random or indulgingin rhetoric), when I spoke to the first important audience I everaddressed, on a Friday evening at the Royal Institution, in 1852. Yet, I must confess to having been guilty, malgre moi, of as much publicspeaking as most of my contemporaries, and for the last ten years itceased to be so much of a bugbear to me. I used to pity myself forhaving to go through this training, but I am now more disposed tocompassionate the unfortunate audiences, especially my ever friendlyhearers at the Royal Institution, who were the subjects of my oratoricalexperiments. 

The last thing that it would be proper for me to do would be to speak ofthe work of my life, or to say at the end of the day whether I thinkI have earned my wages or not. Men are said to be partial judgesof themselves. Young men may be, I doubt if old men are. Life seemsterribly foreshortened as they look back and the mountain they setthemselves to climb in youth turns out to be a mere spur of immeasurablyhigher ranges when, by failing breath, they reach the top. But if I mayspeak of the objects I have had more or less definitely in view since Ibegan the ascent of my hillock, they are briefly these: To promotethe increase of natural knowledge and to forward the application ofscientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life to thebest of my ability, in the conviction which has grown with my growthand strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for thesufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and theresolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believeby which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off. 

It is with this intent that I have subordinated any reasonable, orunreasonable, ambition for scientific fame which I may have permittedmyself to entertain to other ends; to the popularization of science; tothe development and organisation of scientific education; to theendless series of battles and skirmishes over evolution; and to untiringopposition to that ecclesiastical spirit, [17] that clericalism, which inEngland, 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 oneamong many, and I shall be well content to be remembered, or even notremembered, as such. Circumstances, among which I am proud to reckon thedevoted kindness of many friends, have led to my occupation of variousprominent positions, among which the Presidency of the Royal Society isthe highest. It would be mock modesty on my part, with these and otherscientific honours which have been bestowed upon me, to pretend that Ihave not succeeded in the career which I have followed, rather becauseI was driven into it than of my own free will; but I am afraid I shouldnot count even these things as marks of success if I could not hope thatI had somewhat helped that movement of opinion which has been called theNew Reformation. [18]

ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE [19]

This time two hundred years ago--in the beginning of January, 1666--those of our forefathers who inhabited this great and ancientcity, took breath between the shocks of two fearful calamities: one notquite past, although its fury had abated; the other to come. 

Within a few yards of the very spot [20] on which we are assembled, sothe tradition runs, that painful and deadly malady, the plague, appearedin the latter months of 1664; and, though no new visitor, smote thepeople of England, and especially of her capital, with a violenceunknown before, in the course of the following year. The hand of amaster has pictured what happened in those dismal months; and in thattruest of fictions, The History of the Plague Year, Defoe [21] showsdeath, with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through thenarrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silencebroken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; bythe woeful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madderyells of despairing profligates. 

But, about this time in 1666, the death-rate had sunk to nearly itsordinary amount; a case of plague occurred only here and there, andthe richer citizens who had flown from the pest had returned to theirdwellings. The remnant of the people began to toil at the accustomedround of duty, or of pleasure; and the stream of city life bid fair toflow back along its old bed, with renewed and uninterrupted vigour. 

The newly kindled hope was deceitful. The great plague, indeed, returnedno more; but what it had done for the Londoners, the great fire, whichbroke out in the autumn of 1666, did for London; and, in September ofthat year, a heap of ashes and the indestructible energy of the peoplewere all that remained of the glory of five-sixths of the city withinthe walls. 

Our forefathers had their own ways of accounting for each of thesecalamities. They submitted to the plague in humility and in penitence, for they believed it to be the judgment of God. But, towards the firethey were furiously indignant, interpreting it as the effect of themalice of man, --as the work of the Republicans, or of the Papists, according as their prepossessions ran in favour of loyalty or ofPuritanism. 

It would, I fancy, have fared but ill with one who, standing where Inow stand, in what was then a thickly peopled and fashionable part ofLondon, should have broached to our ancestors the doctrine which I nowpropound to you--that all their hypotheses were alike wrong; that theplague was no more, in their sense, Divine judgment, than the fire wasthe work of any political, or of any religious sect; but that they werethemselves the authors of both plague and fire, and that they must lookto themselves to prevent the recurrence of calamities, to all appearanceso peculiarly beyond the reach of human control--so evidently the resultof the wrath of God, or of the craft and subtlety of an enemy. 

And one may picture to one's self how harmoniously the holy cursing ofthe Puritan of that day would have chimed in with the unholy cursingand the crackling wit of the Rochesters and Sedleys, [22] and with therevilings of the political fanatics, if my imaginary plain dealerhad gone on to say that, if the return of such misfortunes were everrendered impossible, it would not be in virtue of the victory of thefaith of Laud, [23] or of that of Milton; and, as little, by the triumphof republicanism, as by that of monarchy. But that the one thing needfulfor compassing this end was, that the people of England should secondthe efforts of an insignificant corporation, the establishment of which, a few years before the epoch of the great plague and the great fire, hadbeen as little noticed, as they were conspicuous. 

Some twenty years before the outbreak of the plague a few calm andthoughtful students banded themselves together for the purpose, as theyphrased it, of "improving natural knowledge. " The ends they proposedto attain cannot be stated more clearly than in the words of one of thefounders of the organisation:--

"Our business was (precluding matters of theology and state affairs) todiscourse and consider of philosophical enquiries, and such as relatedthereunto:--as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, Chymicks, Mechanicks, and Natural Experiments;with the state of these studies and their cultivation at home andabroad. We then discoursed of the circulation of the blood, the valvesin the veins, the venae lacteae, the lymphatic vessels, the Copernicanhypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites ofJupiter, the oval shape (as it then appeared) of Saturn, the spotson the sun and its turning on its own axis, the inequalities andselenography [24] of the moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury, the improvement of telescopes and grinding of glasses for that purpose, the weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuitiesand nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment [25] inquicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies and the degree of accelerationtherein, with divers other things of like nature, some of which werethen but new discoveries, and others not so generally known and embracedas now they are; with other things appertaining to what hath been calledthe New Philosophy, which from the times of Galileo at Florence, and SirFrancis Bacon [26] (Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivatedin Italy, France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as well as with us inEngland. "

The learned Dr. Wallis, [27] writing in 1696, narrates in these words, what happened half a century before, or about 1645. The associates metat Oxford, in the rooms of Dr. Wilkins, who was destined to become abishop; and subsequently coming together in London, they attractedthe notice of the king. And it is a strange evidence of the taste forknowledge which the most obviously worthless of the Stuarts shared withhis father and grandfather, that Charles the Second was not content withsaying witty things about his philosophers, but did wise things withregard to them. For he not only bestowed upon them such attention as hecould spare from his poodles and his mistresses, but, being in his usualstate of impecuniosity, begged for them of the Duke of Ormond; and, thatstep being without effect, gave them Chelsea College, a charter, anda mace: crowning his favours in the best way they could be crowned, byburdening them no further with royal patronage or state interference. 

Thus it was that the half-dozen young men, studious of the "NewPhilosophy, " [28] who met in one another's lodgings in Oxford or inLondon, in the middle of the seventeenth century, grew in numerical andin real strength, until, in its latter part, the "Royal Society for theImprovement of Natural Knowledge" had already become famous, and hadacquired a claim upon the veneration of Englishmen, which it has eversince retained, as the principal focus of scientific activity in ourislands, and the chief champion of the cause it was formed to support. 

It was by the aid of the Royal Society [29] that Newton [30] publishedhis Principia. If all the books in the world, except the PhilosophicalTransactions, [31] were destroyed, it is safe to say that thefoundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vastintellectual progress of the last two centuries would be largely, thoughincompletely, recorded. Nor have any signs of halting or of decrepitudemanifested themselves in our own times. As in Dr. Wallis's days, soin these, "our business is, precluding theology and state affairs, to discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries. " But our"Mathematick" is one which Newton would have to go to school tolearn; our "Staticks, Mechanicks, Magneticks, Chymicks, and NaturalExperiments" constitute a mass of physical and chemical knowledge, aglimpse at which would compensate Galileo [32] for the doings of a scoreof inquisitorial cardinals; our "Physick" and "Anatomy" have embracedsuch infinite varieties of beings, have laid open such new worlds intime and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complexproblems, that the eyes of Vesalius [33] and of Harvey [34] might bedazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain ofmustard seed. 

The fact is perhaps rather too much, than too little, forced upon one'snotice, nowadays, that all this marvellous intellectual growth has a noless wonderful expression in practical life; and that, in this respect, if in no other, the movement symbolised by the progress of the RoyalSociety stands without a parallel in the history of mankind. 

A series of volumes as bulky as the "Transactions of the Royal Society"might possibly be filled with the subtle speculations [35] of theSchoolmen;[36] not improbably, the obtaining a mastery over the productsof mediaeval thought might necessitate an even greater expenditure oftime and of energy than the acquirement of the "New Philosophy"; butthough such work engrossed the best intellects of Europe for a longertime than has elapsed since the great fire, its effects were "writ inwater, "[37] so far as our social state is concerned. 

On the other hand, if the noble first President of the Royal Societycould revisit the upper air and once more gladden his eyes with a sightof the familiar mace, he would find himself in the midst of a materialcivilisation more different from that of his day, than that of theseventeenth was from that of the first century. And if Lord Brouncker's[38] native sagacity had not deserted his ghost, he would need no longreflection to discover that all these great ships, these railways, thesetelegraphs, these factories, these printing-presses, without which thewhole fabric of modern English society would collapse into a mass ofstagnant and starving pauperism, --that all these pillars of our Stateare but the ripples and the bubbles upon the surface of that greatspiritual stream, the springs of which only, he and his fellows wereprivileged to see; and seeing, to recognise as that which it behovedthem above all things to keep pure and undefiled. 

It may not be too great a flight of imagination to conceive our noblerevenant [39] not forgetful of the great troubles of his own day, andanxious to know how often London had been burned down since his timeand how often the plague had carried off its thousands. He would have tolearn that, although London contains tenfold the inflammable matter thatit did in 1666; though, not content with filling our rooms with woodworkand light draperies, we must needs lead inflammable and explosive gasesinto every corner of our streets and houses, we never allow even astreet to burn down. And if he asked how this had come about, we shouldhave to explain that the improvement of natural knowledge has furnishedus with dozens of machines for throwing water upon fires, any one ofwhich would have furnished the ingenious Mr. Hooke, the first "curatorand experimenter" of the Royal Society, with ample materials fordiscourse before half a dozen meetings of that body; and that, to saytruth, except for the progress of natural knowledge, we should nothave been able to make even the tools by which these machines areconstructed. And, further, it would be necessary to add, that althoughsevere fires sometimes occur and inflict great damage, the loss is verygenerally compensated by societies, the operations of which have beenrendered possible only by the progress of natural knowledge in thedirection of mathematics, and the accumulation of wealth in virtue ofother natural knowledge. 

But the plague? My Lord Brouncker's observation would not, I fear, leadhim to think that Englishmen of the nineteenth century are purer inlife, or more fervent in religious faith, than the generation whichcould produce a Boyle, [40] an Evelyn, [41] and a Milton. He might findthe mud of society at the bottom, instead of at the top, but I fear thatthe sum total would be as deserving of swift judgment as at the time ofthe Restoration. [42] And it would be our duty to explain once more, andthis time not without shame, that we have no reason to believe that itis the improvement of our faith, nor that of our morals, which keepsthe plague from our city; but, again, that it is the improvement of ournatural knowledge. 

We have learned that pestilences will only take up their abode amongthose who have prepared unswept and ungarnished residences for them. Their cities must have narrow, unwatered streets, foul with accumulatedgarbage. Their houses must be ill-drained, ill-lighted, ill-ventilated. Their subjects must be ill-washed, ill-fed, ill-clothed. The Londonof 1665 was such a city. The cities of the East, where plague has anenduring dwelling, are such cities. We, in later times, have learnedsomewhat of Nature, and partly obey her. Because of this partialimprovement of our natural knowledge and of that fractional obedience, we have no plague; because that knowledge is still very imperfect andthat obedience yet incomplete, typhoid is our companion and cholera ourvisitor. But it is not presumptuous to express the belief that, whenour knowledge is more complete and our obedience the expression of ourknowledge, London will count her centuries of freedom from typhoidand cholera, as she now gratefully reckons her two hundred years ofignorance of that plague which swooped upon her thrice in the first halfof the seventeenth century. 

Surely, there is nothing in these explanations which is not fullyborne out by the facts? Surely, the principles involved in them are nowadmitted among the fixed beliefs of all thinking men? Surely, it is truethat our countrymen are less subject to fire, famine, pestilence, and all the evils which result from a want of command over and dueanticipation of the course of Nature, than were the countrymen ofMilton; and health, wealth, and well-being are more abundant with usthan with them? But no less certainly is the difference due to theimprovement of our knowledge of Nature, and the extent to which thatimproved knowledge has been incorporated with the household words ofmen, and has supplied the springs of their daily actions. 

Granting for a moment, then, the truth of that which the depreciators ofnatural knowledge are so fond of urging, that its improvement can onlyadd to the resources of our material civilisation; admitting it to bepossible that the founders of the Royal Society themselves lookedfor not other reward than this, I cannot confess that I was guiltyof exaggeration when I hinted, that to him who had the gift ofdistinguishing between prominent events and important events, the originof a combined effort on the part of mankind to improve natural knowledgemight have loomed larger than the Plague and have outshone the glareof the Fire; as a something fraught with a wealth of beneficence tomankind, in comparison with which the damage done by those ghastly evilswould shrink into insignificance. 

It is very certain that for every victim slain by the plague, hundredsof mankind exist and find a fair share of happiness in the world by theaid of the spinning jenny. And the great fire, at its worst, couldnot have burned the supply of coal, the daily working of which, in thebowels of the earth, made possible by the steam pump, gives rise to anamount of wealth to which the millions lost in old London are but as anold song. 

But spinning jenny and steam pump are, after all, but toys, possessingan accidental value; and natural knowledge creates multitudes of moresubtle contrivances, the praises of which do not happen to be sungbecause they are not directly convertible into instruments for creatingwealth. When I contemplate natural knowledge squandering such giftsamong men, the only appropriate comparison I can find for her is toliken her to such a peasant woman as one sees in the Alps, striding everupward, heavily burdened, and with mind bent only on her home; butyet without effort and without thought, knitting for her children. Now stockings are good and comfortable things, and the childrenwill undoubtedly be much the better for them; but surely it would beshort-sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate this toiling motheras a mere stocking-machine--a mere provider of physical comforts?

However, there are blind leaders of the blind, and not a few of them, who take this view of natural knowledge, and can see nothing in thebountiful mother of humanity but a sort of comfort-grinding machine. According to them, the improvement of natural knowledge always has been, and always must be, synonymous with no more than the improvement of thematerial resources and the increase of the gratifications of men. 

Natural knowledge is, in their eyes, no real mother of mankind, bringingthem up with kindness, and, if need be, with sternness, in the way theyshould go, and instructing them in all things needful for their welfare;but a sort of fairy god-mother, ready to furnish her pets with shoes ofswiftness, swords of sharpness, and omnipotent Aladdin's lamps, [43] sothat they may have telegraphs to Saturn, and see the other side of themoon, and thank God they are better than their benighted ancestors. 

If this talk were true, I, for one, should not greatly care to toilin the service of natural knowledge. I think I would just as soon bequietly chipping my own flint axe, after the manner of my forefathersa few thousand years back, as be troubled with the endless malady ofthought which now infests us all, for such reward. But I venture tosay that such views are contrary alike to reason and to fact. Those whodiscourse in such fashion seem to me to be so intent upon trying to seewhat is above Nature, or what is behind her, that they are blind to whatstares them in the face in her. 

I should not venture thus to speak strongly if my justification were notto be found in the simplest and most obvious facts, --if it needed morethan an appeal to the most notorious truths to justify my assertion, that the improvement of natural knowledge, whatever direction it hastaken, and however low the aims of those who may have commenced it--hasnot only conferred practical benefits on men, but, in so doing, haseffected a revolution in their conceptions of the universe and ofthemselves, and has profoundly altered their modes of thinking andtheir views of right and wrong. I say that natural knowledge, seekingto satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas which can alone stillspiritual cravings. I say that natural knowledge, in desiring toascertain the laws of comfort, has been driven to discover those ofconduct, and to lay the foundations of a new morality. 

Let us take these points separately; and first, what great ideas hasnatural knowledge introduced into men's minds?

I cannot but think that the foundations of all natural knowledge werelaid when the reason of man first came face to face with the facts ofNature; when the savage first learned that the fingers of one hand arefewer than those of both; that it is shorter to cross a stream than tohead it; that a stone stops where it is unless it be moved, and that itdrops from the hand which lets it go; that light and heat come and gowith the sun; that sticks burn away in a fire; that plants and animalsgrow and die; that if he struck his fellow savage a blow he would makehim angry, and perhaps get a blow in return, while if he offered him afruit he would please him, and perhaps receive a fish in exchange. Whenmen had acquired this much knowledge, the outlines, rude though theywere, of mathematics, of physics, of chemistry, of biology, of moral, economical, and political science, were sketched. Nor did the germ ofreligion fail when science began to bud. Listen to words which, thoughnew, are yet three thousand years old:--

. . . When in heaven the stars about the moon Look beautiful, when allthe winds are laid, And every height comes out, and jutting peak Andvalley, and the immeasurable heavens Break open to their highest, andall the stars Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart. [44]

If the half savage Greek could share our feelings thus far, it isirrational to doubt that he went further, to find as we do, that uponthat brief gladness there follows a certain sorrow, --the little light ofawakened human intelligence shines so mere a spark amidst the abyssof the unknown and unknowable; seems so insufficient to do more thanilluminate the imperfections that cannot be remedied, the aspirationsthat cannot be realised, of man's own nature. But in this sadness, thisconsciousness of the limitation of man, this sense of an open secretwhich he cannot penetrate, lies the essence of all religion; and theattempt to embody it in the forms furnished by the intellect is theorigin of the higher theologies. 

Thus it seems impossible to imagine but that the foundations of allknowledge--secular or sacred--were laid when intelligence dawned, thoughthe superstructure remained for long ages so slight and feeble as to becompatible with the existence of almost any general view respecting themode of governance of the universe. No doubt, from the first, there werecertain phenomena which, to the rudest mind, presented a constancy ofoccurrence, and suggested that a fixed order ruled, at any rate, amongthem. I doubt if the grossest of Fetish worshippers ever imagined thata stone must have a god within it to make it fall, or that a fruit hada god within it to make it taste sweet. With regard to such mattersas these, it is hardly questionable that mankind from the first tookstrictly positive and scientific views. 

But, with respect to all the less familiar occurrences which presentthemselves, uncultured man, no doubt, has always taken himself as thestandard of comparison, as the centre and measure of the world; norcould be well avoid doing so. And finding that his apparently uncausedwill has a powerful effect in giving rise to many occurrences, henaturally enough ascribed other and greater events to other and greatervolitions and came to look upon the world and all that therein is, asthe product of the volitions of persons like himself, but stronger, andcapable of being appeased or angered, as he himself might be soothedor irritated. Through such conceptions of the plan and working ofthe universe all mankind have passed, or are passing. And we maynow consider what has been the effect of the improvement of naturalknowledge on the views of men who have reached this stage, and whohave begun to cultivate natural knowledge with no desire but that of"increasing God's honour and bettering man's estate. "[45]

For example, what could seem wiser, from a mere material point of view, more innocent, from a theological one, to an ancient people, than thatthey should learn the exact succession of the seasons, as warnings fortheir husbandmen; or the position of the stars, as guides to theirrude navigators?[46] But what has grown out of this search for naturalknowledge of so merely useful a character? You all know the reply. Astronomy, --which of all sciences has filled men's minds with generalideas of a character most foreign to their daily experience, and has, more than any other, rendered it impossible for them to accept thebeliefs of their fathers. Astronomy, --which tells them that this so vastand seemingly solid earth is but an atom among atoms, whirling, no manknows whither, through illimitable space; which demonstrates that whatwe call the peaceful heaven above us, is but that space, filled by aninfinitely subtle matter whose particles are seething and surging, likethe waves of an angry sea; which opens up to us infinite regions wherenothing is known, or ever seems to have been known, but matter andforce, operating according to rigid rules; which leads us to contemplatephaenomena the very nature of which demonstrates that they must havehad a beginning, and that they must have an end, but the very nature ofwhich also proves that the beginning was, to our conceptions of time, infinitely remote, and that the end is as immeasurably distant. 

But it is not alone those who pursue astronomy who ask for breadand receive ideas. What more harmless than the attempt to lift anddistribute water by pumping it; what more absolutely and grosslyutilitarian? Yet out of pumps grew the discussions about Nature'sabhorrence of a vacuum; and then it was discovered that Nature does notabhor a vacuum, but that air has weight; and that notion paved the wayfor the doctrine that all matter has weight, and that the force whichproduces weight is co-extensive with the universe, --in short, to thetheory of universal gravitation and endless force. While learning howto handle gases led to the discovery of oxygen, and to modern chemistry, and to the notion of the indestructibility of matter. 

Again, what simpler, or more absolutely practical, than the attempt tokeep the axle of a wheel from heating when the wheel turns round veryfast? How useful for carters and gig drivers to know something aboutthis; and how good were it, if any ingenious person would find out thecause of such phaenomena, and thence educe a general remedy forthem. Such an ingenious person was Count Rumford;[47] and he andhis successors have landed us in the theory of the persistence, orindestructibility, of force. And in the infinitely minute, as in theinfinitely great, the seekers after natural knowledge of the kindscalled physical and chemical, have everywhere found a definite order andsuccession of events which seem never to be infringed. 

And how has it fared with "Physick" and Anatomy? Have the anatomist, the physiologist, or the physician, whose business it has been to devotethemselves assiduously to that eminently practical and direct end, the alleviation of the sufferings of mankind, --have they been able toconfine their vision more absolutely to the strictly useful? I fear theyare the worst offenders of all. For if the astronomer has set beforeus the infinite magnitude of space, and the practical eternity of theduration of the universe; if the physical and chemical philosophers havedemonstrated the infinite minuteness of its constituent parts, andthe practical eternity of matter and of force; and if both have alikeproclaimed the universality of a definite and predicable order andsuccession of events, the workers in biology have not only accepted allthese, but have added more startling theses of their own. For, as theastronomers discover in the earth no centre of the universe, but aneccentric [48] speck, so the naturalists find man to be no centre of theliving world, but one amidst endless modifications of life; and as theastronomers observe the mark of practically endless time set uponthe arrangements of the solar system so the student of life finds therecords of ancient forms of existence peopling the world for ages, which, in relation to human experience, are infinite. 

Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as dependent for itsmanifestation of particular molecular arrangements as any physical orchemical phenomenon; and wherever he extends his researches, fixed orderand unchanging causation reveal themselves, as plainly as in the rest ofNature. 

Nor can I find that any other fate has awaited the germ of Religion. Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, out of the action andinteraction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it hastaken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theismor Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and theirrelative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it isneedful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the presentdiffers from that of the past, it is because the theology of the presenthas become more scientific than that of the past; because it has notonly renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to seethe necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of books andtraditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs: and of cherishing thenoblest and most human of man's emotions, by worship "for the most partof the silent sort" at the Altar of the Unknown. 

Such are a few of the new conceptions implanted in our minds by theimprovement of natural knowledge. Men have acquired the ideas ofthe practically infinite extent of the universe and of its practicaleternity; they are familiar with the conception that our earth is but aninfinitesimal fragment of that part of the universe which can be seen;and that, nevertheless, its duration is, as compared with our standardsof time, infinite. They have further acquired the idea that man is butone of innumerable forms of life now existing on the globe, and thatthe present existences are but the last of an immeasurable series ofpredecessors. Moreover, every step they have made in natural knowledgehas tended to extend and rivet in their minds the conception of adefinite order of the universe--which is embodied in what are called, by an unhappy metaphor, the laws of Nature--and to narrow the range andloosen the force of men's belief in spontaneity, or in changes otherthan such as arise out of that definite order itself. 

Whether these ideas are well or ill founded is not the question. No onecan deny that they exist, and have been the inevitable outgrowth of theimprovement of natural knowledge. And if so, it cannot be doubted thatthey are changing the form of men's most cherished and most importantconvictions. 

And as regards the second point--the extent to which the improvementof natural knowledge has remodelled and altered what may be termed theintellectual ethics of men, --what are among the moral convictions mostfondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people?

They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis ofbelief; that merit attaches to a readiness to believe; that the doubtingdisposition is a bad one, and scepticism a sin; that when good authorityhas pronounced what is to be believed, and faith has accepted it, reasonhas no further duty. There are many excellent persons who yet hold bythese principles, and it is not my present business, or intention, todiscuss their views. All I wish to bring clearly before your minds isthe unquestionable fact, that the improvement of natural knowledgeis effected by methods which directly give the lie to all theseconvictions, and assume the exact reverse of each to be true. 

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledgeauthority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blindfaith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for everygreat advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejectionof authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilationof the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of scienceholds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerateshold them; not because their verity is testified by portents andwonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he choosesto bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature--whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experimentand to observation--Nature will confirm them. The man of science haslearned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification. 

Thus, without for a moment pretending to despise the practical resultsof the improvement of natural knowledge, and its beneficial influenceon material civilisation, it must, I think, be admitted that the greatideas, some of which I have indicated, and the ethical spirit whichI have endeavoured to sketch, in the few moments which remained at mydisposal, constitute the real and permanent significance of naturalknowledge. 

If these ideas be destined, as I believe they are, to be more and morefirmly established as the world grows older; if that spirit be fated, asI believe it is, to extend itself into all departments of human thought, and to become co-extensive with the range of knowledge; if, as our raceapproaches its maturity, it discovers, as I believe it will, that thereis but one kind of knowledge and but one method of acquiring it; thenwe, who are still children, may justly feel it our highest duty torecognise the advisableness of improving natural knowledge, and so toaid ourselves and our successors in our course towards the noble goalwhich lies before mankind. 

A LIBERAL EDUCATION [49]

The business which the South London Working Men's College has undertakenis a great work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with which thatcollege proposes to grapple, is the greatest work of all those which lieready to a man's hand just at present. 

And, at length, this fact is becoming generally recognised. Youcannot go anywhere without hearing a buzz of more or less confused andcontradictory talk on this subject--nor can you fail to notice that, in one point at any rate, there is a very decided advance upon likediscussions in former days. Nobody outside the agricultural interest nowdares to say that education is a bad thing. If any representative of theonce large and powerful party, which, in former days, proclaimed thisopinion, still exists in the semi-fossil state, he keeps his thoughtsto himself. In fact, there is a chorus of voices, almost distressing intheir harmony, raised in favour of the doctrine that education isthe great panacea for human troubles, and that, if the country is notshortly to go to the dogs, everybody must be educated. 

The politicians tell us, "You must educate the masses because they aregoing to be masters. " The clergy join in the cry for education, for theyaffirm that the people are drifting away from church and chapel intothe broadest infidelity. The manufacturers and the capitalists swellthe chorus lustily. They declare that ignorance makes bad workmen; thatEngland will soon be unable to turn out cotton goods, or steam engines, cheaper than other people; and then, Ichabod! Ichabod![50] the glorywill be departed from us. And a few voices are lifted up in favour ofthe doctrine that the masses should be educated because they are men andwomen with unlimited capacities of being, doing, and suffering, and thatit is as true now, as it ever was, that the people perish for lack ofknowledge. 

These members of the minority, with whom I confess I have a good deal ofsympathy, are doubtful whether any of the other reasons urged in favourof the education of the people are of much value--whether, indeed, someof them are based upon either wise or noble grounds of action. Theyquestion if it be wise to tell people that you will do for them, outof fear of their power, what you have left undone, so long as your onlymotive was compassion for their weakness and their sorrows. And, ifignorance of everything which is needful a ruler should know is likelyto do so much harm in the governing classes of the future, why is it, they ask reasonably enough, that such ignorance in the governing classesof the past has not been viewed with equal horror?

Compare the average artisan and the average country squire, and it maybe doubted if you will find a pin to choose between the two in point ofignorance, class feeling, or prejudice. It is true that the ignorance isof a different sort--that the class feeling is in favour of a differentclass and that the prejudice has a distinct savour of wrong-headednessin each case--but it is questionable if the one is either a bit better, or a bit worse, than the other. The old protectionist theory is thedoctrine of trades unions as applied by the squires, and the moderntrades unionism is the doctrine of the squires applied by the artisans. Why should we be worse off under one regime than under the other?

Again, this sceptical minority asks the clergy to think whether itis really want of education which keeps the masses away from theirministrations--whether the most completely educated men are not as opento reproach on this score as the workmen; and whether, perchance, thismay not indicate that it is not education which lies at the bottom ofthe matter?

Once more, these people, whom there is no pleasing, venture to doubtwhether the glory which rests upon being able to undersell all the restof the world, is a very safe kind of glory--whether we may not purchaseit too dear; especially if we allow education, which ought to bedirected to the making of men, to be diverted into a process ofmanufacturing human tools, wonderfully adroit in the exercise of sometechnical industry, but good for nothing else. 

And, finally, these people inquire whether it is the masses alone whoneed a reformed and improved education. They ask whether the richest ofour public schools might not well be made to supply knowledge, as wellas gentlemanly habits, a strong class feeling, and eminent proficiencyin cricket. They seem to think that the noble foundations of our olduniversities are hardly fulfilling their functions in their presentposture of half-clerical seminaries, half racecourses, where men aretrained to win a senior wranglership, [51] or a double-first, [52] ashorses are trained to win a cup, with as little reference to the needsof after-life in the case of a man as in that of the racer. And, whileas zealous for education as the rest, they affirm that, if the educationof the richer classes were such as to fit them to be the leaders andthe governors of the poorer; and, if the education of the poorer classeswere such as to enable them to appreciate really wise guidance and goodgovernance, the politicians need not fear mob-law, nor the clergy lamenttheir want of flocks, nor the capitalists prognosticate the annihilationof the prosperity of the country. 

Such is the diversity of opinion upon the why and the wherefore ofeducation. And my hearers will be prepared to expect that the practicalrecommendations which are put forward are not less discordant. There isa loud cry for compulsory education. We English, in spite of constantexperience to the contrary, preserve a touching faith in the efficacy ofacts of Parliament; and I believe we should have compulsory educationin the courses of next session, if there were the least probability thathalf a dozen leading statesmen of different parties would agree whatthat education should be. 

Some hold that education without theology is worse than none. Othersmaintain, quite as strongly, that education with theology is in the samepredicament. But this is certain, that those who hold the first opinioncan by no means agree what theology should be taught; and that those whomaintain the second are in a small minority. 

At any rate "make people learn to read, write, and cipher, " say a greatmany; and the advice is undoubtedly sensible as far as it goes. But, as has happened to me in former days, those who, in despair of gettinganything better, advocate this measure, are met with the objection thatit is very like making a child practise the use of a knife, fork, andspoon, without giving it particle of meat. I really don't know whatreply is to be made to such an objection. 

But it would be unprofitable to spend more time in disentangling, or rather in showing up the knots in, the ravelled skeins of ourneighbours. Much more to the purpose is it to ask if we possess any clueof our own which may guide us among these entanglements. And by way ofa beginning, let us ask ourselves--What is education? Above all things, what is our ideal of a thoroughly liberal education?--of that educationwhich, if we could begin life again, we would give ourselves--of thateducation which, if we could mould the fates to our own will, we wouldgive our children? Well, I know not what may be your conceptions uponthis matter, but I will tell you mine, and I hope I shall find that ourviews are not very discrepant. 

Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every oneof us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a gameof chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primaryduty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to havea notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving andgetting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with adisapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son, or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing apawn from a knight?

Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those whoare connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rulesof a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It isa game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of usbeing one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboardis the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rulesof the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the otherside is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks amistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man whoplays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowinggenerosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one whoplays ill is checkmated--without haste, but without remorse. 

My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in whichRetzsch [53] has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angelwho is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win--andI should accept it as an image of human life. 

Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mightygame. In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect inthe laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely thingsand their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of theaffections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move inharmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor lessthan this. Anything which professes to call itself education must betried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I willnot call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or ofnumbers, upon the other side. 

It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thingas an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose that an adult man, in the full vigour of his faculties, could be suddenly placed in theworld, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he bestmight. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Naturewould begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, theproperties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow tellinghim to do this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would receivean education which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and adequateto his circumstances, though there would be no extras and very fewaccomplishments. 

And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam or, better still, anEve, a new and greater world, that of social and moral phenomena, wouldbe revealed. Joys and woes, compared with which all others might seembut faint shadows, would spring from the new relations. Happiness andsorrow would take the place of the coarser monitors, pleasure and pain;but conduct would still be shaped by the observation of the naturalconsequences of actions; or, in other words, by the laws of the natureof man. 

To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new as to Adam. Andthen, long before we were susceptible of any other modes of instruction, Nature took us in hand, and every minute of waking life brought itseducational influence, shaping our actions into rough accordance withNature's laws, so that we might not be ended untimely by too grossdisobedience. Nor should I speak of this process of education as pastfor any one, be he as old as he may. For every man the world is as freshas it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him whohas the eyes to see them. And Nature is still continuing her patienteducation of us in that great university, the universe, of which we areall members--Nature having no Test-Acts. [54]

Those who take honours in Nature's university, who learn the laws whichgovern men and things and obey them, are the really great and successfulmen in this world. The great mass of mankind are the "Poll, "[55] whopick up just enough to get through without much discredit. Those whowon't learn at all are plucked;[56] and then you can't come up again. Nature's pluck means extermination. 

Thus the question of compulsory education is settled so far as Natureis concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and passed longago. But, like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh andwasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilfuldisobedience--incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first;but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why yourears are boxed. 

The object of what we commonly call education--that education in whichman intervenes and which I shall distinguish as artificial education--isto make good these defects in Nature's methods; to prepare the child toreceive Nature's education, neither incapably nor ignorantly, nor withwilful disobedience; and to understand the preliminary symptoms ofher pleasure, without waiting for the box on the ear. In short, allartificial education ought to be an anticipation of natural education. And a liberal education is an artificial education which has not onlyprepared a man to escape the great evils of disobedience to naturallaws, but has trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards, which Nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties. 

That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trainedin youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does withease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of;whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts ofequal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well asforge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledgeof the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of heroperations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, theservant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect othersas himself. 

Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; forhe is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature. He willmake the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely;she as his ever beneficent mother; he as her mouthpiece, her consciousself, her minister and interpreter. 

ON A PIECE OF CHALK [57]

If a well were sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, thediggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substancealmost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as"chalk. "

Not only here, but over the whole county of Norfolk, the well-sinkermight carry his shaft down many hundred feet without coming to the endof the chalk; and, on the sea-coast, where the waves have pared awaythe face of the land which breasts them, the scarped faces of the highcliffs are often wholly formed of the same material. Northward, thechalk may be followed as far as Yorkshire; on the south coast it appearsabruptly in the picturesque western bays of Dorset, and breaks intothe Needles of the Isle of Wight;[58] while on the shores of Kent itsupplies that long line of white cliffs to which England owes her nameof Albion. 

Were the thin soil which covers it all washed away, a curved bandof white chalk, here broader, and there narrower, might be followeddiagonally across England from Lulworth in Dorset, to Flamborough Head[59] in Yorkshire--a distance of over two hundred and eighty miles asthe crow flies. 

From this band to the North Sea, on the east, and the Channel, on theSouth, the chalk is largely hidden by other deposits; but, except in theWeald [60] of Kent and Sussex, it enters into the very foundation of allthe south-eastern counties. 

Attaining, as it does in some places, a thickness of more than athousand feet, the English chalk must be admitted to be a mass ofconsiderable magnitude. Nevertheless, it covers but an insignificantportion of the whole area occupied by the chalk formation of the globe, which has precisely the same general characters as ours, and is foundin detached patches, some less, and others more extensive, than theEnglish. 

Chalk occurs in north-west Ireland; it stretches over a large part ofFrance, --the chalk which underlies Paris being, in fact, a continuationof that of the London basin; it runs through Denmark and Central Europe, and extends southward to North Africa; while eastward, it appears in theCrimea and in Syria, and may be traced as far as the shores of the Seaof Aral, in Central Asia. 

If all the points at which true chalk occurs were circumscribed, theywould lie within an irregular oval about three thousand miles in longdiameter--the area of which would be as great as that of Europe, andwould many times exceed that of the largest existing inland sea--theMediterranean. 

Thus the chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth'scrust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions towhich it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs. The undulating downs and rounded coombs, covered with sweet-grassedturf, of our inland chalk country, have a peacefully domestic andmutton-suggesting prettiness, but can hardly be called either grandor beautiful. But on our southern coasts, the wall-sided cliffs, manyhundred feet high, with vast needles and pinnacles standing out inthe sea, sharp and solitary enough to serve as perches for the warycormorant confer a wonderful beauty and grandeur upon the chalkheadlands. And, in the East, chalk has its share in the formation ofsome of the most venerable of mountain ranges, such as the Lebanon. 

What is this wide-spread component of the surface of the earth? andwhence did it come?

You may think this no very hopeful inquiry. You may not unnaturallysuppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead tono result, save that of entangling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refutation and of verification. 

If such were really the case, I should have selected some other subjectthan a "piece of chalk" for my discourse. But, in truth, after muchdeliberation, I have been unable to think of any topic which would sowell enable me to lead you to see how solid is the foundation upon whichsome of the most startling conclusions of physical science rest. 

A great chapter of the history of the world is written in the chalk. Fewpassages in the history of man can be supported by such an overwhelmingmass of direct and indirect evidence as that which testifies to thetruth of the fragment of the history of the globe, which I hope toenable you to read, with your own eyes, tonight. 

Let me add, that few chapters of human history have a more profoundsignificance for ourselves. I weigh my words well when I assert, thatthe man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which everycarpenter carries about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of allother history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to itsultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conceptionof this wonderful universe, and of man's relation to it, than the mostlearned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorantof those of Nature. 

The language of the chalk is not hard to learn, not nearly so hard asLatin, if you only want to get at the broad features of the story it hasto tell; and I propose that we now set to work to spell that story outtogether. 

We all know that if we "burn" chalk the result is quicklime. Chalk, infact, is a compound of carbonic acid gas, and lime, and when you make itvery 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 thecarbonic acid. If, on the other hand, you were to powder a little chalkand drop it into a good deal of strong vinegar, there would be a greatbubbling and fizzing, and, finally, a clear liquid, in which no sign ofchalk would appear. Here you see the carbonic acid in the bubbles; thelime, dissolved in the vinegar, vanishes from sight. There are agreat many other ways of showing that chalk is essentially nothing butcarbonic acid and quicklime. Chemists enunciate the result of all theexperiments which prove this, by stating that chalk is almost whollycomposed of "carbonate of lime. "

It is desirable for us to start from the knowledge of this fact, thoughit may not seem to help us very far towards what we seek. For carbonateof lime is a widely spread substance, and is met with under very variousconditions. All sorts of limestones are composed of more or less purecarbonate of lime. The crust which is often deposited by waters whichhave drained through limestone rocks, in the form of what are calledstalagmites and stalactites, is carbonate of lime. Or, to take a morefamiliar example, the fur on the inside of a tea-kettle is carbonate oflime; and, for anything chemistry tells us to the contrary, the chalkmight be a kind of gigantic fur upon the bottom of the earth-kettle, which is kept pretty hot below. 

Let us try another method of making the chalk tell us its own history. To the unassisted eye chalk looks simply like a very loose and open kindof stone. But it is possible to grind a slice of chalk down so thin thatyou can see through it--until it is thin enough, in fact, to be examinedwith any magnifying power that may be thought desirable. A thin slice ofthe fur of a kettle might be made in the same way. If it were examinedmicroscopically, it would show itself to be a more or less distinctlylaminated mineral substance and nothing more. 

But the slice of chalk presents a totally different appearance whenplaced under the microscope. The general mass of it is made up of veryminute granules; but, imbedded in this matrix, are innumerable bodies, some smaller and some larger, but, on a rough average, not more thana hundredth of an inch in diameter, having a well-defined shape andstructure. A cubic inch of some specimens of chalk may contain hundredsof thousands of these bodies, compacted together with incalculablemillions of the granules. 

The examination of a transparent slice gives a good notion of the mannerin which the components of the chalk are arranged, and of their relativeproportions. But, by rubbing up some chalk with a brush in water andthen pouring off the milky fluid, so as to obtain sediments of differentdegrees of fineness, the granules and the minute rounded bodies may bepretty well separated from one another, and submitted to microscopicexamination, either as opaque or as transparent objects. By combiningthe views obtained in these various methods, each of the rounded bodiesmay be proved to be a beautifully constructed calcareous fabric, madeup of a number of chambers, communicating freely with one another. Thechambered bodies are of various forms. One of the commonest is somethinglike a badly grown raspberry, being formed of a number of nearlyglobular chambers of different sizes congregated together. It is calledGlobigerina, and some specimens of chalk consist of little else thanGlobigerina and granules. 

Let us fix our attention upon the Globigerina. It is the spoor ofthe game we are tracking. If we can learn what it is and what are theconditions of its existence, we shall see our way to the origin and pasthistory of the chalk. 

A suggestion which may naturally enough present itself is, that thesecurious bodies are the result of some process of aggregation which hastaken place in the carbonate of lime; that, just as in winter, the rimeon our windows simulates the most delicate and elegantly arborescentfoliage--proving that the mere mineral water may, under certainconditions, assume the outward form of organic bodies--so this mineralsubstance, carbonate of lime, hidden away in the bowels of the earth, has taken the shape of these chambered bodies. I am not raising a merelyfanciful and unreal objection. Very learned men, in former days, haveeven entertained the notion that all the formed things found in rocksare of this nature; and if no such conception is at present held to beadmissible, it is because long and varied experience has now shownthat mineral matter never does assume the form and structure we findin fossils. If any one were to try to persuade you that an oyster-shell(which is also chiefly composed of carbonate of lime) had crystallizedout of sea-water, I suppose you would laugh at the absurdity. Yourlaughter would be justified by the fact that all experience tends toshow that oyster-shells are formed by the agency of oysters, and in noother way. And if there were no better reasons, we should be justified, on like grounds, in believing that Globigerina is not the product ofanything but vital activity. 

Happily, however, better evidence in proof of the organic nature of theGlobigerinae than that of analogy is forthcoming. It so happens thatcalcareous skeletons, exactly similar to the Globigerinae of the chalk, are being formed, at the present moment, by minute living creatures, which flourish in multitudes, literally more numerous than the sands ofthe sea-shore, over a large extent of that part of the earth's surfacewhich is covered by the ocean. 

The history of the discovery of these living Globigerinae, and of thepart which they play in rock building, is singular enough. It is adiscovery which, like others of no less scientific importance, hasarisen, incidentally, out of work devoted to very different andexceedingly practical interests. 

When men first took to the sea, they speedily learned to look out forshoals and rocks; and the more the burthen of their ships increased, the more imperatively necessary it became for sailors to ascertain withprecision the depths of the waters they traversed. Out of thisnecessity grew the use of the lead and sounding line; and, ultimately, marine-surveying, which is the recording of the form of coasts and ofthe depth of the sea, as ascertained by the sounding-lead, upon charts. 

At the same time, it became desirable to ascertain and to indicate thenature of the sea-bottom, since this circumstance greatly affects itsgoodness as holding ground for anchors. Some ingenious tar, whose namedeserves a better fate than the oblivion into which it has fallen, attained this object by "arming" the bottom of the lead with a lump ofgrease, to which more or less of the sand or mud, or broken shells, asthe case might be, adhered, and was brought to the surface. But, howeverwell adapted such an apparatus might be for rough nautical purposes, scientific accuracy could not be expected from the armed lead, and toremedy its defects (especially when applied to sounding in great depths)Lieut. Brooke, [61] of the American Navy, some years ago invented a mostingenious machine, by which a considerable portion of the superficiallayer of the sea-bottom can be scooped out and brought up from any depthto which the lead descends. 

In 1853, Lieut. Brooke obtained mud from the bottom of the NorthAtlantic, between Newfoundland and the Azores, at a depth of more thanten thousand feet, or two miles, by the help of this sounding apparatus. The specimens were sent for examination to Ehrenberg [62] of Berlin, and to Bailey of West Point, [63] and those able microscopists foundthat this deep-sea mud was almost entirely composed of the skeletons ofliving organisms--the greater proportion of these being just like theGlobigerinae already known to occur in the chalk. 

Thus far, the work had been carried on simply in the interests ofscience, but Lieut. Brooke's method of sounding acquired a highcommercial value, when the enterprise of laying down the telegraph-cable[64] between this country and the United States was undertaken. For itbecame a matter of immense importance to know, not only the depth of thesea over the whole line along which the cable was to be laid, but theexact nature of the bottom, so as to guard against chances of cuttingor fraying the strands of that costly rope. The Admiralty consequentlyordered Captain Dayman, an old friend and shipmate of mine, to ascertainthe depth over the whole line of the cable, and to bring back specimensof the bottom. In former days, such a command as this might have soundedvery much like one of the impossible things which the young prince inthe Fairy Tales is ordered to do before he can obtain the hand of thePrincess. However, in the months of June and July, 1857, my friendperformed the task assigned to him with great expedition and precisionwithout, 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 beexamined and reported upon. *

 * See Appendix to Captain Dayman's "Deep-sea Soundings in the North Atlantic Ocean, between Ireland and Newfoundland, made in H. M. S. Cyclops. Published by order of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, 1858. " They have since formed the subject of an elaborate Memoir by Messrs. Parker and Jones, published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1865. 

The result of all these operations is, that we know the contours and thenature of the surface-soil covered by the North Atlantic, for a distanceof seventeen hundred miles from east to west, as well as we know that ofany part of the dry land. 

It is a prodigious plain--one of the widest and most even plains in theworld. If the sea were drained off, you might drive a wagon all theway from Valentia, on the west coast of Ireland, to Trinity Bay, inNewfoundland. And, except upon one sharp incline about two hundred milesfrom Valentia, I am not quite sure that it would even be necessary toput the skid on, so gentle are the ascents and descents upon that longroute. From Valentia the road would lie down-hill for about 200 milesto the point at which the bottom is now covered by 1700 fathoms ofsea-water. Then would come the central plain, more than a thousandmiles wide, the inequalities of the surface of which would be hardlyperceptible, though the depth of water upon it now varies from 10, 000to 15, 000 feet; and there are places in which Mont Blanc might be sunkwithout showing its peak above water. Beyond this, the ascent on theAmerican side commences, and gradually leads, for about 300 miles, tothe Newfoundland shore. 

Almost the whole of the bottom of this central plain (which extends formany hundred miles in a north and south direction) is covered by a finemud, which, when brought to the surface, dries into a greyish-whitefriable substance. You can write with this on a blackboard, if you areso inclined; and, to the eye, it is quite like very soft, greyish chalk. Examined chemically, it proves to be composed almost wholly of carbonateof lime; and if you make a section of it, in the same way as that of thepiece of chalk was made, and view it with the microscope, it presentsinnumerable Globigerinae embedded 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 nobearing on the question immediately before us, --which is the nature ofthe Globigerinae of the chalk, --it is unnecessary to speak of them. 

Globigerinae of every size, from the smallest to the largest, areassociated together in the Atlantic mud, and the chambers of many arefilled by a soft animal matter. This soft substance is, in fact, theremains of the creature to which the Globigerina shell, or ratherskeleton, owes its existence--and which is an animal of the simplestimaginable 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 ordinaryobservation by thrusting out and retracting from all parts of itssurface, long filamentous processes, which serve for arms and legs. Yet this amorphous particle, devoid of everything which, in the higheranimals, we call organs, is capable of feeding, growing and multiplying;of separating from the ocean the small proportion of carbonate of limewhich is dissolved in sea-water; and of building up that substance intoa skeleton for itself, according to a pattern which can be imitated byno other known agency. 

The notion that animals can live and flourish in the sea, at the vastdepths from which apparently living Globigerinae have been broughtup, does not agree very well with our usual conceptions respecting theconditions of animal life; and it is not so absolutely impossible asit might at first appear to be, that the Globigerinae of the Atlanticsea-bottom do not live and die where they are found. 

As I have mentioned, the soundings from the great Atlantic plain arealmost entirely made up of Globigerinae, with the granules whichhave been mentioned and some few other calcareous shells; but a smallpercentage of the chalky mud--perhaps at most some five per cent ofit--is of a different nature, and consists of shells and skeletonscomposed of silex, or pure flint. These silicious bodies belong partlyto the lowly vegetable organisms which are called Diatomaceae, andpartly to the minute, and extremely simple, animals, termed Radiolaria. It is quite certain that these creatures do not live at the bottom ofthe ocean, but at its surface--where they may be obtained in prodigiousnumbers by the use of a properly constructed net. Hence it follows thatthese silicious organisms, though they are not heavier than the lightestdust, must have fallen, in some cases, through fifteen thousand feet ofwater, before they reached their final resting-place on the ocean floor. And, considering how large a surface these bodies expose in proportionto their weight, it is probable that they occupy a great length of timein making their burial journey from the surface of the Atlantic to thebottom. 

But if the Radiolaria and Diatoms are thus rained upon the bottom of thesea, from the superficial layer of its waters in which they pass theirlives, it is obviously possible that the Globigerinae may be similarlyderived; and if they were so, it would be much more easy tounderstand how they obtain their supply of food than it is at present. Nevertheless, the positive and negative evidence all points the otherway. The skeletons of the full-grown, deep-sea Globigerinae are soremarkably solid and heavy in proportion to their surface as to seemlittle fitted for floating; and, as a matter of fact, they are not to befound along with the Diatoms and Radiolaria, in the uppermost stratum ofthe open ocean. 

It has been observed, again, that the abundance of Globigerinae, inproportion to other organisms, of like kind, increases with the depthof the sea; and that deep-water Globigerinae are larger than thosewhich live in shallower parts of the sea; and such facts negative thesupposition that these organisms have been swept by currents from theshallows into the deeps of the Atlantic. 

It therefore seems to be hardly doubtful that these wonderful creatureslive and die at the depths in which they are found. 

However, the important points for us are, that the living Globigerinaeare exclusively marine animals, the skeletons of which abound at thebottom of deep seas; and that there is not a shadow of reason forbelieving that the habits of the Globigerinae of the chalk differed fromthose of the existing species. But if this be true, there is no escapingthe conclusion that the chalk itself is the dried mud of an ancient deepsea. 

In working over the soundings collected by Captain Dayman, I wassurprised to find that many of what I have called the "granules" of thatmud, were not, as one might have been tempted to think at first, themere powder and waste of Globigerinae, but that they had a definite formand size. I termed these bodies "coccoliths, " and doubted theirorganic nature. Dr. Wallich [65] verified my observation, and added theinteresting discovery, that, not unfrequently, bodies similar to these"coccoliths" were aggregated together into spheroids, which he termed"coccospheres. " So far as we knew, these bodies, the nature of whichis extremely puzzling and problematical, were peculiar to the Atlanticsoundings. 

But, a few years ago, Mr. Sorby, [66] in making a careful examinationof the chalk by means of thin sections and otherwise, observed, asEhrenberg had done before him, that much of its granular basis possessesa definite form. Comparing these formed particles with those in theAtlantic soundings, he found the two to be identical; and thus provedthat the chalk, like the soundings, contains these mysteriouscoccoliths and coccospheres. Here was a further and a most interestingconfirmation, from internal evidence, of the essential identity ofthe chalk with modern deep-sea mud. Globigerinae, coccoliths, andcoccospheres are round as the chief constituents of both, and testifyto the general similarity of the conditions under which both have beenformed. 

The evidence furnished by the hewing, facing, and superposition of thestones of the Pyramids, that these structures were built by men, hasno greater weight than the evidence that the chalk was built byGlobigerinae; and the belief that those ancient pyramid-builders wereterrestrial and air-breathing creatures like ourselves, is it not betterbased than the conviction that the chalk-makers lived in the sea?

But as our belief in the building of the Pyramids by men is not onlygrounded on the internal evidences afforded by these structures, butgathers strength from multitudinous collateral proofs, and is clinchedby the total absence of any reason for a contrary belief; so theevidence drawn from the Globigerinae that the chalk is an ancientsea-bottom, is fortified by innumerable independent lines of evidence;and our belief in the truth of the conclusion to which all positivetestimony tends, receives the like negative justification from the factthat no other hypothesis has a shadow of foundation. 

It may be worth while briefly to consider a few of these collateralproofs that the chalk was deposited at the bottom of the sea. 

The great mass of the chalk is composed, as we have seen, of theskeletons of Globigerinae, and other simple organisms, imbedded ingranular matter. Here and there, however, this hardened mud of theancient sea reveals the remains of higher animals which have lived anddied, and left their hard parts in the mud, just as the oysters die andleave their shells behind them, in the mud of the present seas. 

There are, at the present day, certain groups of animals which are neverfound in fresh waters, being unable to live anywhere but in the sea. Such are the corals; those corallines which are called Polycoa; thosecreatures which fabricate the lamp-shells, and are called Brachiopoda;the pearly Nautilus, and all animals allied to it; and all the forms ofsea-urchins and star-fishes. 

Not only are all these creatures confined to salt water at the presentday; but, so far as our records of the past go, the conditions of theirexistence have been the same: hence, their occurrence in any deposit isas strong evidence as can be obtained, that that deposit was formed inthe sea. Now the remains of animals of all the kinds which have beenenumerated, occur in the chalk, in greater or less abundance; while notone of those forms of shell-fish which are characteristic of fresh waterhas yet been observed in it. 

When we consider that the remains of more than three thousand distinctspecies of aquatic animals have been discovered among the fossils of thechalk, that the great majority of them are of such forms as are now metwith only in the sea, and that there is no reason to believe that anyone of them inhabited fresh water--the collateral evidence that thechalk represents an ancient sea-bottom acquires as great force as theproof derived from the nature of the chalk itself. I think you will nowallow that I did not overstate my case when I asserted that we haveas strong grounds for believing that all the vast area of dry land, atpresent occupied by the chalk, was once at the bottom of the sea, as wehave for any matter of history whatever; while there is no justificationfor any other belief. 

No less certain it is that the time during which the countries we nowcall south-east England, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, were more or less completely covered by a deep sea, was ofconsiderable duration. 

We have already seen that the chalk is, in places, more than a thousandfeet thick. I think you will agree with me, that it must have takensome time for the skeletons of animalcules of a hundredth of an inch indiameter to heap up such a mass as that. I have said that throughout thethickness of the chalk the remains of other animals are scattered. These remains are often in the most exquisite state of preservation. The valves of the shell-fishes are commonly adherent; the long spinesof some of the sea-urchins, which would be detached by the smallestjar, often remain in their places. In a word, it is certain that theseanimals have lived and died when the place which they now occupy wasthe surface of as much of the chalk as had then been deposited; and thateach has been covered up by the layer of Globigerina mud, upon which thecreatures imbedded a little higher up have, in like manner, lived anddied. But some of these remains prove the existence of reptiles of vastsize in the chalk sea. These lived their time, and had their ancestorsand descendants, which assuredly implies time, reptiles being of slowgrowth. 

There is more curious evidence, again, that the process of covering up, or, in other words, the deposit of Globigerina skeletons, did not go onvery fast. It is demonstrable that an animal of the cretaceous sea mightdie, that its skeleton might lie uncovered upon the sea-bottom longenough to lose all its outward coverings and appendages by putrefaction;and that, after this had happened, another animal might attach itselfto the dead and naked skeleton, might grow to maturity, and might itselfdie before the calcareous mud had buried the whole. 

Cases of this kind are admirably described by Sir Charles Lyell. [67]He speaks of the frequency with which geologists find in the chalk afossilized sea-urchin, to which is attached the lower valve of a Crania. This is a kind of shell-fish, with a shell composed of two pieces, ofwhich, as in the oyster, one is fixed and the other free. 

"The upper valve is almost invariably wanting, though occasionally foundin a perfect state of preservation in the white chalk at some distance. In this case, we see clearly that the sea-urchin first lived from youthto age, then died and lost its spines, which were carried away. Then theyoung Crania adhered to the bared shell, grew and perished in its turn;after which, the upper valve was separated from the lower, before theEchinus [68] became enveloped in chalky mud. "

A specimen in the Museum of Practical Geology, in London, still furtherprolongs the period which must have elapsed between the death of thesea-urchin, and its burial by the Globigerinae. For the outward face ofthe valve of a Crania, which is attached to a sea-urchin (Micraster), is itself overrun by an incrusting coralline, which spreads thence overmore or less of the surface of the sea-urchin. It follows that, afterthe upper valve of the Crania fell off, the surface of the attachedvalve must have remained exposed long enough to allow of the growth ofthe whole corraline, since corallines do not live imbedded in mud. 

The progress of knowledge may, one day, enable us to deduce from suchfacts as these the maximum rate at which the chalk can have accumulated, and thus to arrive at the minimum duration of the chalk period. Supposethat the valve of the Crania upon which a coralline has fixed itself inthe way just described, is so attached to the sea-urchin that no part ofit is more than an inch above the face upon which the sea-urchin rests. Then, as the coralline could not have fixed itself, if the Crania hadbeen covered up with chalk mud, and could not have lived had itselfbeen so covered it follows, that an inch of chalk mud could not haveaccumulated within the time between the death and decay of the softparts of the sea-urchin and the growth of the coralline to the full sizewhich it has attained. If the decay of the soft parts of the sea-urchin;the attachment, growth to maturity, and decay of the Crania; and thesubsequent attachment and growth of the coralline, took a year (which isa low estimate enough), the accumulation of the inch of chalk must havetaken more than a year: and the deposit of a thousand feet of chalkmust, consequently, have taken more than twelve thousand years. 

The foundation of all this calculation is, of course, a knowledge of thelength of time the Crania and the coralline needed to attain their fullsize; and, on this head, precise knowledge is at present wanting. Butthere are circumstances which tend to show, that nothing like an inch ofchalk has accumulated during the life of a Crania; and, on any probableestimate of the length of that life, the chalk period must have had amuch longer duration than that thus roughly assigned to it. 

Thus, not only is it certain that the chalk is the mud of an ancientsea-bottom; but it is no less certain, that the chalk sea existedduring an extremely long period, though we may not be prepared to givea precise estimate of the length of that period in years. The relativeduration is clear, though the absolute duration may not be definable. The attempt to affix any precise date to the period at which the chalksea began, or ended, its existence, is baffled by difficulties ofthe same kind. But the relative age of the cretaceous epoch may bedetermined with as great ease and certainty as the long duration of thatepoch. 

You will have heard of the interesting discoveries recently made, invarious parts of Western Europe, of flint implements, obviously workedinto shape by human hands, under circumstances which show conclusivelythat man is a very ancient denizen of these regions. 

It has been proved that the old populations of Europe, whose existencehas been revealed to us in this way, consisted of savages, such as theEsquimaux are now; that, in the country which is now France, they huntedthe reindeer, and were familiar with the ways of the mammoth and thebison. The physical geography of France was in those days different fromwhat it is now--the river Somme, [69] for instance, having cut its beda 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 ofWestern Europe. 

The existence of these people is forgotten even in the traditions ofthe oldest historical nations. The name and fame of them had utterlyvanished until a few years back; and the amount of physical change whichhas been effected since their day, renders it more than probable that, venerable as are some of the historical nations, the workers of thechipped flints of Hoxne or of Amiens [70] are to them, as they are tous, in point of antiquity. 

But, if we assign to these hoar relics of long-vanished generations ofmen the greatest age that can possibly be claimed for them, they arenot older than the drift, or boulder clay, which, in comparison with thechalk, is but a very juvenile deposit. You need go no further than yourown sea-board for evidence of this fact. At one of the most charmingspots on the coast of Norfolk, Cromer, you will see the boulder clayforming a vast mass, which lies upon the chalk, and must consequentlyhave come into existence after it. Huge boulders of chalk are, in fact, included in the clay, and have evidently been brought to the positionthey now occupy, by the same agency as that which has planted blocks ofsyenite from Norway side by side with them. 

The chalk, then, is certainly older than the boulder clay. If you askhow much, I will again take you no further than the same spot upon yourown coasts for evidence. I have spoken of the boulder clay and drift asresting upon the chalk. That is not strictly true. Interposed betweenthe 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 therewith their cones, and hazel-bushes with their nuts; there stand thestools of oak and yew trees, beeches and alders. Hence this stratum isappropriately called the "forest-bed. "

It is obvious that the chalk must have been up-heaved and converted intodry land, before the timber trees could grow upon it. As the boles ofsome of these trees are from two to three feet in diameter, it is noless clear that the dry land this formed remained in the same conditionfor long ages. And not only do the remains of stately oaks andwell-grown firs testify to the duration of this condition of things, but additional evidence to the same effect is afforded by the abundantremains of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotomuses and other great wildbeasts, which it has yielded to the zealous search of such men as theRev. Mr. Gunn. [71]

When you look at such a collection as he has formed, and bethink youthat these elephantine bones did veritably carry their owners about, andthese great grinders crunch, in the dark woods of which the forest-bedis now the only trace, it is impossible not to feel that they areas good evidence of the lapse of time as the annual rings of thetree-stumps. 

Thus there is a writing upon the walls of cliffs at Cromer, and whosoruns may read it. It tells us, with an authority which cannot beimpeached, that the ancient sea-bed of the chalk sea was raised up, andremained dry land, until it was covered with forest, stocked with thegreat game whose spoils have rejoiced your geologists. How long itremained in that condition cannot be said; but "the whirligig of time[72] brought its revenges" in those days as in these. That dry land, with the bones and teeth of generations of long-lived elephants, hiddenaway among the gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sankgradually to the bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with hugemasses of drift and boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus, nowrestricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds had twitteredamong the topmost twigs of the fir-trees. How long this state of thingsendured we know not, but at length it came to an end. The upheavedglacial mud hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew oncemore, the wolf and the beaver replaced the reindeer and the elephant;and at length what we call the history of England dawned. 

Thus you have within the limits of your own county, proof that the chalkcan justly claim a very much greater antiquity than even the oldestphysical traces of mankind. But we may go further and demonstrate, byevidence of the same authority as that which testifies to the existenceof the father of men, that the chalk is vastly older than Adam himself. 

The Book of Genesis informs us that Adam, immediately upon his creation, and before the appearance of Eve, was placed in the Garden of Eden. The problem of the geographical position of Eden has greatly vexedthe spirits of the learned in such matters, but there is one pointrespecting which, so far as I know, no commentator has ever raised adoubt. This is, that of the four rivers which are said to run out of it, Euphrates and Hiddekel [73] are identical with the rivers now known bythe names of Euphrates and Tigris. 

But the whole country in which these mighty rivers take their origin, and through which they run, is composed of rocks which are either of thesame age as the chalk, or of later date. So that the chalk must not onlyhave been formed, but, after its formation, the time required for thedeposit of these later rocks, and for their upheaval into dry land, musthave elapsed, before the smallest brook which feeds the swift stream of"the great river, the river of Babylon, "[74] began to flow. 

Thus, evidence which cannot be rebutted, and which need not bestrengthened, though if time permitted I might indefinitely increase itsquantity, compels you to believe that the earth, from the time of thechalk to the present day, has been the theatre of a series of changes asvast in their amount, as they were slow in their progress. The areaon which we stand has been first sea and then land, for at least fouralternations; and has remained in each of these conditions for a periodof great length. 

Nor have these wonderful metamorphoses of sea into land, and of landinto sea, been confined to one corner of England. During the chalkperiod, or "cretaceous epoch, " not one of the present great physicalfeatures of the globe was in existence. Our great mountain ranges, Pyrenees, Alps, Himalayas, Andes, have all been upheaved since the chalkwas deposited, and the cretaceous sea flowed over the sites of Sinai andArarat. 

All this is certain, because rocks of cretaceous, or still later, datehave shared in the elevatory movements which gave rise to these mountainchains; and may be found perched up, in some cases, many thousand feethigh upon their flanks. And evidence of equal cogency demonstrates that, though, in Norfolk, the forest-bed rests directly upon the chalk, yetit does so, not because the period at which the forest grew immediatelyfollowed that at which the chalk was formed, but because an immenselapse of time, represented elsewhere by thousands of feet of rock, isnot indicated at Cromer. 

I must ask you to believe that there is no less conclusive proof that astill more prolonged succession of similar changes occurred, before thechalk was deposited. Nor have we any reason to think that the first termin the series of these changes is known. The oldest sea-beds preservedto us are sands, and mud, and pebbles, the wear and tear of rocks whichwere formed in still older oceans. 

But, great as is the magnitude of these physical changes of the world, they have been accompanied by a no less striking series of modificationsin its living inhabitants. 

All the great classes of animals, beasts of the field, fowls of the air, creeping things, and things which dwell in the waters, flourished uponthe globe long ages before the chalk was deposited. Very few, however, if any, of these ancient forms of animal life were identical with thosewhich now live. Certainly not one of the higher animals was of the samespecies as any of those now in existence. The beasts of the field, inthe days before the chalk, were not our beasts of the field, nor thefowls of the air such as those which the eye of men has seen flying, unless his antiquity dates infinitely further back than we at presentsurmise. If we could be carried back into those times, we should be asone suddenly set down in Australia before it was colonized. We shouldsee mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, snails, and the like, clearly recognisable as such, and yet not one of them would be just thesame as those with which we are familiar, and many would be extremelydifferent. 

From that time to the present, the population of the world has undergoneslow and gradual, but incessant changes. There has been no grandcatastrophe--no destroyer has swept away the forms of life of oneperiod, and replaced them by a totally new creation; but one specieshas vanished and another has taken its place; creatures of one type ofstructure have diminished, those of another have increased, as time haspassed on. And thus, while the differences between the living creaturesof the time before the chalk and those of the present day appearstartling, if placed side by side, we are led from one to the other bythe most gradual progress, if we follow the course of Nature throughthe whole series of those relics of her operations which she has leftbehind. 

And it is by the population of the chalk sea that the ancient and themodern inhabitants of the world are most completely connected. Thegroups which are dying out flourish, side by side, with the groups whichare now the dominant forms of life. 

Thus the chalk contains remains of those strange flying and swimmingreptiles, the pterodactyl, the ichthyosaurus, and the plesiosaurus, which are found in no later deposits, but abounded in preceding ages. The chambered shells called ammonites and belemnites, which are socharacteristic of the period preceding the cretaceous, in like mannerdie with it. 

But, amongst these fading remainders of a previous state of things, are some very modern forms of life, looking like Yankee pedlars amonga tribe of Red Indians. Crocodiles of modern type appear; bony fishes, many of them very similar to existing species almost supplant the formsof fish which predominate in more ancient seas; and many kinds of livingshellfish first become known to us in the chalk. The vegetation acquiresa modern aspect. A few living animals are not even distinguishable asspecies, from those which existed at that remote epoch. The Globigerinaof the present day, for example, is not different specifically from thatof the chalk; and the same may be said of many other Foraminifera. Ithink it probable that critical and unprejudiced examination will showthat more than one species of much higher animals have had a similarlongevity; but the only example, which I can at present give confidentlyis the snake's-head lamp-shell (Terebratulina caput serpentis), whichlives in our English seas and abounded (as Terebratulina striata ofauthors) in the chalk. 

The longest line of human ancestry must hide its diminished head beforethe pedigree of this insignificant shell-fish. We Englishmen are proudto have an ancestor who was present at the Battle of Hastings. Theancestors of Terebratulina caput serpentis may have been present at abattle of Ichthyosauria in that part of the sea which, when the chalkwas forming, flowed over the site of Hastings. While all around haschanged, this Terebratulina has peacefully propagated its species fromgeneration to generation, and stands to this day, as a living testimonyto the continuity of the present with the past history of the globe. 

Up to this moment I have stated, so far as I know, nothing butwell-authenticated facts, and the immediate conclusions which they forceupon the mind. 

But the mind is so constituted that it does not willingly rest in factsand immediate causes, but seeks always after a knowledge of the remoterlinks in the chain of causation. 

Taking the many changes of any given spot of the earth's surface, fromsea to land and from land to sea, as an established fact, we cannotrefrain from asking ourselves how these changes have occurred. And whenwe have explained them--as they must be explained--by the alternate slowmovements of elevation and depression which have affected the crust ofthe earth, we go still further back, and ask, Why these movements?

I am not certain that any one can give you a satisfactory answer to thatquestion. Assuredly I cannot. All that can be said, for certain, is, that such movements are part of the ordinary course of nature, inasmuchas they are going on at the present time. Direct proof may be given, that some parts of the land of the northern hemisphere are at thismoment insensibly rising and others insensibly sinking; and there isindirect, but perfectly satisfactory, proof, that an enormous area nowcovered by the Pacific has been deepened thousands of feet, since thepresent inhabitants of that sea came into existence. 

Thus there is not a shadow of a reason for believing that the physicalchanges of the globe, in past times have been effected by other thannatural causes. 

Is there any more reason for believing that the concomitantmodifications in the forms of the living inhabitants of the globe havebeen brought about in other ways?

Before attempting to answer this question, let us try to form a distinctmental picture of what has happened, in some special case. 

The crocodiles are animals which, as a group, have a very vastantiquity. They abounded ages before the chalk was deposited; theythrong the rivers in warm climates, at the present day. There is adifference in the form of the joints of the back-bone, and in some minorparticulars, between the crocodiles of the present epoch and those whichlived before the chalk; but in the cretaceous epoch, as I have alreadymentioned, the crocodiles had assumed the modern type of structure. Notwithstanding this, the crocodiles of the chalk are not identicallythe same as those which lived in the times called "older tertiary, "which succeeded the cretaceous epoch; and the crocodiles of the oldertertiaries are not identical with those of the newer tertiaries, nor arethese identical with existing forms. I leave open the question whetherparticular species may have lived on from epoch to epoch. But eachepoch has had its peculiar crocodiles; though all, since the chalk, havebelonged to the modern type, and differ simply in their proportions, andin such structural particulars as are discernible only to trained eyes. 

How is the existence of this long succession of different species ofcrocodiles to be accounted for?

Only two suppositions seem to be open to us--Either each species ofcrocodile has been specially created, or it has arisen out of somepre-existing form by the operation of natural causes. 

Choose your hypothesis; I have chosen mine. I can find no warranty forbelieving in the distinct creation of a score of successive species ofcrocodiles in the course of countless ages of time. Science gives nocountenance to such a wild fancy; nor can even the perverse ingenuityof a commentator pretend to discover this sense, in the simple wordsin which the writer of Genesis records the proceedings of the fifth andsixth days of the Creation. 

On the other hand, I see no good reason for doubting the necessaryalternative, that all these varied species have been evolved frompre-existing crocodilian forms, by the operation of causes as completelya part of the common order of nature, as those which have effected thechanges of the inorganic world. 

Few will venture to affirm that the reasoning which applies tocrocodiles loses its force among other animals, or among plants. If oneseries of species has come into existence by the operation of naturalcauses, it seems folly to deny that all may have arisen in the same way. 

A small beginning has led us to a great ending. If I were to put the bitof chalk with which we started into the hot but obscure flame of burninghydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to me thatthis physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has beenthe result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowisebrilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our kensome stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "withouthaste, but without rest"[75] of the land and sea, as in the endlessvariation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observednothing but the natural product of the forces originally possessed bythe substance of the universe. 

THE PRINCIPAL SUBJECTS OF EDUCATION [76]

I know quite well that launching myself into this discussion [77] is avery dangerous operation; that it is a very large subject, and onewhich is difficult to deal with, however much I may trespass uponyour patience in the time allotted to me. But the discussion is sofundamental, it is so completely impossible to make up one's mind onthese matters until one has settled the question, that I will evenventure to make the experiment. A great lawyer-statesman and philosopherof a former age--I mean Francis Bacon [78]--said that truth came outof error much more rapidly than it came out of confusion. There is awonderful truth in that saying. Next to being right in this world, thebest of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because youwill come out somewhere. If you go buzzing about between right andwrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you areabsolutely and thoroughly and persistently wrong, you must, some ofthese days, have the extreme good fortune of knocking your head againsta fact, and that sets you all straight again. So I will not troublemyself as to whether I may be right or wrong in what I am about to say, but at any rate I hope to be clear and definite; and then you will beable to judge for yourselves whether, in following out the train ofthought I have to introduce, you knock your heads against facts or not. 

I take it that the whole object of education is, in the first place, to train the faculties of the young in such a manner as to give theirpossessors the best chance of being happy [79] and useful in theirgeneration; and, in the second place, to furnish them with the mostimportant portions of that immense capitalised experience of the humanrace which we call knowledge of various kinds. I am using the termknowledge in its widest possible sense; and the question is, whatsubjects to select by training and discipline, in which the object Ihave just defined may be best attained. 

I must call your attention further to this fact, that all the subjectsof our thoughts--all feelings and propositions (leaving aside oursensations as the mere materials and occasions of thinking and feeling), all our mental furniture--may be classified under one of two heads--aseither within the province of the intellect, something that can be putinto propositions and affirmed or denied; or as within the provinceof feeling, or that which, before the name was defiled, was calledthe aesthetic side of our nature, and which can neither be proved nordisproved, but only felt and known. 

According to the classification which I have put before you, then, thesubjects of all knowledge are divisible into the two groups, mattersof science and matters of art; for all things with which the reasoningfaculty alone is occupied, come under the province of science; and inthe broadest sense, and not in the narrow and technical sense in whichwe are now accustomed to use the word art, all things feelable, allthings which stir our emotions, come under the term of art, in the senseof the subject-matter of the aesthetic faculty. So that we are shutup to this--that the business of education is, in the first place, toprovide the young with the means and the habit of observation; and, secondly, to supply the subject-matter of knowledge either in the shapeof science or of art, or of both combined. 

Now, it is a very remarkable fact--but it is true of most things in thisworld--that there is hardly anything one-sided, or of one nature; andit is not immediately obvious what of the things that interest us may beregarded as pure science, and what may be regarded as pure art. It maybe that there are some peculiarly constituted persons who, before theyhave advanced far into the depths of geometry, find artistic beautyabout it; but, taking the generality of mankind, I think it may besaid that, when they begin to learn mathematics, their whole soulsare absorbed in tracing the connection between the premisses and theconclusion, and that to them geometry is pure science. So I think itmay be said that mechanics and osteology are pure science. On the otherhand, melody in music is pure art. You cannot reason about it; thereis no proposition involved in it. So, again, in the pictorial art, anarabesque, or a "harmony in grey, "[80] touches none but the aestheticfaculty. But a great mathematician, and even many persons who are notgreat mathematicians, will tell you that they derive immense pleasurefrom geometrical reasonings. Everybody knows mathematicians speak ofsolutions and problems as "elegant, " and they tell you that a certainmass of mystic symbols is "beautiful, quite lovely. " Well, you do notsee it. They do see it, because the intellectual process, the process ofcomprehending the reasons symbolised by these figures and these signs, confers upon them a sort of pleasure, such as an artist has in visualsymmetry. Take a science of which I may speak with more confidence, andwhich is the most attractive of those I am concerned with. It is what wecall morphology, which consists in tracing out the unity in variety ofthe infinitely diversified structures of animals and plants. I cannotgive you any example of a thorough aesthetic pleasure more intenselyreal than a pleasure of this kind--the pleasure which arises in one'smind when a whole mass of different structures run into one harmonyas the expression of a central law. That is where the province of artoverlays and embraces the province of intellect. And, if I may ventureto express an opinion on such a subject, the great majority of forms ofart are not in the sense what I just now defined them to be--pureart; but they derive much of their quality from simultaneous and evenunconscious excitement of the intellect. 

When I was a boy, I was very fond of music, and I am so now; and it sohappened that I had the opportunity of hearing much good music. Amongother things, I had abundant opportunities of hearing that great oldmaster, Sebastian Bach. I remember perfectly well--though I knewnothing about music then, and, I may add, know nothing whatever about itnow--the intense satisfaction and delight which I had in listening, bythe hour together, to Bach's fugues. It is a pleasure which remains withme, I am glad to think; but, of late years, I have tried to find outthe why and wherefore, and it has often occurred to me that the pleasurederived from musical compositions of this kind is essentially of thesame nature as that which is derived from pursuits which are commonlyregarded as purely intellectual. I mean, that the source of pleasure isexactly the same as in most of my problems in morphology--that youhave the theme in one of the old master's works followed out in all itsendless variations, always appearing and always reminding you of unityin variety. So in painting; what is called "truth to nature" is theintellectual element coming in, and truth to nature depends entirelyupon the intellectual culture of the person to whom art is addressed. Ifyou are in Australia, you may get credit for being a good artist--Imean among the natives--if you can draw a kangaroo after a fashion. But, among men of higher civilisation, the intellectual knowledge we possessbrings its criticism into our appreciation of works of art, and we areobliged to satisfy it, as well as the mere sense of beauty in colour andin outline. And so, the higher the culture and information of thosewhom art addresses, the more exact and precise must be what we call its"truth to nature. "

If we turn to literature, the same thing is true, and you find worksof literature which may be said to be pure art. A little song ofShakespeare or of Goethe is pure art; it is exquisitely beautiful, although its intellectual content may be nothing. A series of picturesis made to pass before your mind by the meaning of words, and the effectis a melody of ideas. Nevertheless, the great mass of the literaturewe esteem is valued, not merely because of having artistic form, butbecause of its intellectual content; and the value is the higher themore precise, distinct, and true is that intellectual content. And, if you will let me for a moment speak of the very highest forms ofliterature, do we not regard them as highest simply because the more weknow the truer they seem, and the more competent we are to appreciatebeauty the more beautiful they are? No man ever understands Shakespeareuntil he is old, though the youngest may admire him, the reason beingthat he satisfies the artistic instinct of the youngest and harmoniseswith the ripest and richest experience of the oldest. 

I have said this much to draw your attention to what, in my mind, liesat the root of all this matter, and at the understanding of one anotherby the men of science on the one hand, and the men of literature, andhistory, and art, on the other. It is not a question whether one orderof study or another should predominate. It is a question of whattopics of education you shall select which will combine all the needfulelements in such due proportion as to give the greatest amount offood, support, and encouragement to those faculties which enable us toappreciate truth, and to profit by those sources of innocent happinesswhich are open to us, and, at the same time, to avoid that which is bad, and coarse, and ugly, and keep clear of the multitude of pitfalls anddangers which beset those who break through the natural or moral laws. 

I address myself, in this spirit, to the consideration of the questionof the value of purely literary education. Is it good and sufficient, oris it insufficient and bad? Well, here I venture to say that there areliterary educations and literary educations. If I am to understandby that term the education that was current in the great majority ofmiddle-class schools, and upper schools too, in this country when I wasa boy, and which consisted absolutely and almost entirely in keepingboys for eight or ten years at learning the rules of Latin and Greekgrammar, construing certain Latin and Greek authors, and possibly makingverses which, had they been English verses, would have been condemnedas abominable doggerel, --if that is what you mean by liberal education, then I say it is scandalously insufficient and almost worthless. Myreason for saying so is not from the point of view of science at all, but from the point of view of literature. I say the thing professes tobe literary education that is not a literary education at all. It wasnot literature at all that was taught, but science in a very bad form. It is quite obvious that grammar is science and not literature. Theanalysis of a text by the help of the rules of grammar is just as much ascientific operation as the analysis of a chemical compound by the helpof the rules of chemical analysis. There is nothing that appeals to theaesthetic faculty in that operation; and I ask multitudes of men ofmy own age, who went through this process, whether they ever had aconception of art or literature until they obtained it for themselvesafter leaving school? Then you may say, "If that is so, if the educationwas scientific, why cannot you be satisfied with it?" I say, becausealthough it is a scientific training, it is of the most inadequate andinappropriate kind. If there is any good at all in scientific educationit is that men should be trained, as I said before, to know things forthemselves at first hand, and that they should understand every step ofthe reason of that which they do. 

I desire to speak with the utmost respect of that science--philology--ofwhich grammar is a part and parcel; yet everybody knows that grammar, asit is usually learned at school, affords no scientific training. It istaught just as you would teach the rules of chess or draughts. On theother hand, if I am to understand by a literary education the studyof the literatures of either ancient or modern nations--but especiallythose of antiquity, and especially that of ancient Greece; if thisliterature is studied, not merely from the point of view of philologicalscience, and its practical application to the interpretation of texts, but as an exemplification of and commentary upon the principles ofart; if you look upon the literature of a people as a chapter in thedevelopment of the human mind, if you work out this in a broad spirit, and with such collateral references to morals and politics, and physicalgeography, and the like as are needful to make you comprehend what themeaning of ancient literature and civilisation is, --then, assuredly, it affords a splendid and noble education. But I still think it issusceptible of improvement, and that no man will ever comprehend thereal secret of the difference between the ancient world and our presenttime, unless he has learned to see the difference which the latedevelopment of physical science has made between the thought of this dayand the thought of that, and he will never see that difference, unlesshe has some practical insight into some branches of physical science;and you must remember that a literary education such as that which Ihave just referred to, is out of the reach of those whose school life iscut short at sixteen or seventeen. 

But, you will say, all this is fault-finding; let us hear what you havein the way of positive suggestion. Then I am bound to tell you that, if I could make a clean sweep of everything--I am very glad I cannotbecause I might, and probably should, make mistakes, --but if I couldmake a clean sweep of everything and start afresh, I should, in thefirst place, secure that training of the young in reading and writing, and in the habit of attention and observation, both to that which istold them, and that which they see, which everybody agrees to. But inaddition to that, I should make it absolutely necessary for everybody, for a longer or shorter period, to learn to draw. Now, you may say, there are some people who cannot draw, however much they may be taught. I deny that in toto, because I never yet met with anybody who could notlearn to write. Writing is a form of drawing; therefore if you give thesame attention and trouble to drawing as you do to writing, depend uponit, there is nobody who cannot be made to draw, more or less well. Do not misapprehend me. I do not say for one moment you would make anartistic draughtsman. Artists are not made; they grow. You may improvethe natural faculty in that direction, but you cannot make it; but youcan teach simple drawing, and you will find it an implement of learningof extreme value. I do not think its value can be exaggerated, becauseit gives you the means of training the young in attention and accuracy, which are the two things in which all mankind are more deficient than inany other mental quality whatever. The whole of my life has been spentin trying to give my proper attention to things and to be accurate, andI have not succeeded as well as I could wish; and other people, I amafraid, are not much more fortunate. You cannot begin this habit tooearly, and I consider there is nothing of so great a value as the habitof drawing, to secure those two desirable ends. 

Then we come to the subject-matter, whether scientific or aesthetic, ofeducation, and I should naturally have no question at all about teachingthe elements of physical science of the kind I have sketched, in apractical manner; but among scientific topics, using the word scientificin the broadest sense, I would also include the elements of the theoryof morals and of that of political and social life, which, strangelyenough, it never seems to occur to anybody to teach a child. I wouldhave the history of our own country, and of all the influences whichhave been brought to bear upon it, with incidental geography, not asa mere chronicle of reigns and battles, but as a chapter in thedevelopment of the race, and the history of civilisation. 

Then with respect to aesthetic knowledge and discipline, we have happilyin the English language one of the most magnificent storehouses ofartistic beauty and of models of literary excellence which exists inthe world at the present time. I have said before, and I repeat it here, that if a man cannot get literary culture of the highest kind out ofhis Bible, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Hobbes, [81] andBishop Berkeley, [82] to mention only a few of our illustrious writers--Isay, if he cannot get it out of those writers he cannot get it out ofanything; and I would assuredly devote a very large portion of the timeof every English child to the careful study of the models of Englishwriting of such varied and wonderful kind as we possess, and, what isstill more important and still more neglected, the habit of using thatlanguage with precision, with force, and with art. I fancy we are almostthe only nation in the world who seem to think that composition comesby nature. The French attend to their own language, the Germans studytheirs; but Englishmen do not seem to think it is worth their while. Nor would I fail to include, in the course of study I am sketching, translations of all the best works of antiquity, or of the modern world. It is a very desirable thing to read Homer in Greek; but if you don'thappen to know Greek, the next best thing we can do is to read as good atranslation of it as we have recently been furnished with in prose. [83]You won't get all you would get from the original, but you may get agreat deal; and to refuse to know this great deal because you cannot getall, seems to be as sensible as for a hungry man to refuse bread becausehe cannot get partridge. Finally, I would add instruction in eithermusic or painting, or, if the child should be so unhappy, as sometimeshappens, as to have no faculty for either of those, and no possibilityof doing anything in any artistic sense with them, then I would see whatcould be done with literature alone; but I would provide, in the fullestsense, for the development of the aesthetic side of the mind. In myjudgment, those are all the essentials of education for an Englishchild. With that outfit, such as it might be made in the time givento education which is within the reach of nine-tenths of thepopulation--with that outfit, an Englishman, within the limits ofEnglish life, is fitted to go anywhere, to occupy the highest positions, to fill the highest offices of the State, and to become distinguishedin practical pursuits, in science, or in art. For, if he have theopportunity to learn all those things, and have his mind disciplinedin the various directions the teaching of those topics would havenecessitated, then, assuredly, he will be able to pick up, on his roadthrough life, all the rest of the intellectual baggage he wants. 

If the educational time at our disposition were sufficient, thereare one or two things I would add to those I have just now called theessentials; and perhaps you will be surprised to hear, though I hope youwill not, that I should add, not more science, but one, or, if possible, two languages. The knowledge of some other language than one's own is, in fact, of singular intellectual value. Many of the faults and mistakesof the ancient philosophers are traceable to the fact that they knewno language but their own, and were often led into confusing the symbolwith the thought which it embodied. I think it is Locke [84] who saysthat one-half of the mistakes of philosophers have arisen from questionsabout words; and one of the safest ways of delivering yourself from thebondage of words is, to know how ideas look in words to which you arenot accustomed. That is one reason for the study of language; anotherreason is, that it opens new fields in art and in science. Another isthe practical value of such knowledge; and yet another is this, thatif your languages are properly chosen, from the time of learning theadditional languages you will know your own language better than everyou did. So, I say, if the time given to education permits, add Latinand German. Latin, because it is the key to nearly one-half of Englishand to all the Romance languages; and German, because it is the key toalmost all the remainder of English, and helps you to understand arace from whom most of us have sprung, and who have a character anda literature of a fateful force in the history of the world, such asprobably has been allotted to those of no other people, except the Jews, the Greeks, and ourselves. Beyond these, the essential and the eminentlydesirable elements of all education, let each man take up his specialline--the historian devote himself to his history, the man of scienceto his science, the man of letters to his culture of that kind, and theartist to his special pursuit. 

Bacon has prefaced some of his works with no more than this: FranciscusBacon sic cogitavit;[85] let "sic cogitavi" be the epilogue to what Ihave ventured to address to you to-night. 

THE METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION [86]

The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression ofthe necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the modeat which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise andexact. There is no more difference, but there is just the same kind ofdifference, between the mental operations of a man of science and thoseof an ordinary person, as there is between the operations and methods ofa baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and theoperations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysisby means of his balance and finely graduated weights. It is not thatthe action of the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working; butthe beam of one is set on an infinitely finer axis than the other, andof course turns by the addition of a much smaller weight. 

You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you some familiarexample. You have all heard it repeated, I dare say, that men of sciencework by means of induction and deduction, and that by the help of theseoperations, they, in a sort of sense, wring from Nature certain otherthings, which are called natural laws, and causes, and that out ofthese, by some cunning skill of their own, they build up hypotheses andtheories. And it is imagined by many, that the operations of the commonmind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that theyhave to be acquired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft. To hear all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man ofscience must be constituted differently from that of his fellow men; butif you will not be frightened by terms, you will discover that you arequite wrong, and that all these terrible apparatus [87] are being usedby yourselves every day and every hour of your lives. 

There is a well-known incident in one of Moliere's plays, [88] where theauthor makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that hehad been talking prose during the whole of his life. In the same way, Itrust, that you will take comfort, and be delighted with yourselves, onthe discovery that you have been acting on the principles of inductiveand deductive philosophy during the same period. Probably there is notone here who has not in the course of the day had occasion to set inmotion a complex train of reasoning, of the very same kind, thoughdiffering of course in degree, as that which a scientific man goesthrough in tracing the causes of natural phenomena. 

A very trivial circumstance will serve to exemplify this. Suppose yougo into a fruiterer's shop, wanting an apple, --you take up one, and, onbiting it, you find it is sour; you look at it, and see that it is hardand green. You take up another one, and that too is hard, green, andsour. The shopman offers you a third; but, before biting it, you examineit, and find that it is hard and green, and you immediately say that youwill not have it, as it must be sour, like those that you have alreadytried. 

Nothing can be more simple than that, you think; but if you will takethe trouble to analyse and trace out into its logical elements what hasbeen done by the mind, you will be greatly surprised. In the first placeyou have performed the operation of induction. You found that, intwo experiences, hardness and greenness in apples went together withsourness. It was so in the first case, and it was confirmed by thesecond. True, it is a very small basis, but still it is enough to makean induction from; you generalise the facts, and you expect to findsourness in apples where you get hardness and greenness. You found uponthat a general law that all hard and green apples are sour; and that, so far as it goes, is a perfect induction. Well, having got your naturallaw in this way, when you are offered another apple which you find ishard and green, you say, "All hard and green apples are sour; thisapple is hard and green, therefore this apple is sour. " That train ofreasoning is what logicians call a syllogism, and has all its variousparts and terms, --its major premiss, its minor premiss and itsconclusion. And, by the help of further reasoning, which, if drawn out, would have to be exhibited in two or three other syllogisms, you arriveat your final determination, "I will not have that apple. " So that, yousee, you have, in the first place, established a law by induction, andupon that you have founded a deduction, and reasoned out the specialparticular case. Well now, suppose, having got your conclusion of thelaw, that at some time afterwards, you are discussing the qualitiesof apples with a friend: you will say to him, "It is a very curiousthing, --but I find that all hard and green apples are sour!" Your friendsays to you, "But how do you know that?" You at once reply, "Oh, becauseI have tried them over and over again, and have always found them to beso. " Well, if we were talking science instead of common sense, we shouldcall that an experimental verification. And, if still opposed, you gofurther, and say, "I have heard from the people in Somersetshire andDevonshire, where a large number of apples are grown, that they haveobserved the same thing. It is also found to be the case in Normandy, and in North America. In short, I find it to be the universal experienceof mankind wherever attention has been directed to the subject. "Whereupon, your friend, unless he is a very unreasonable man, agreeswith you, and is convinced that you are quite right in the conclusionyou have drawn. He believes, although perhaps he does not know hebelieves it, that the more extensive verifications are, --that the morefrequently experiments have been made, and results of the same kindarrived at, --that the more varied the conditions under which the sameresults are attained, the more certain is the ultimate conclusion, andhe disputes the question no further. He sees that the experiment hasbeen tried under all sorts of conditions, as to time, place, and people, with the same result; and he says with you, therefore, that the law youhave laid down must be a good one, and he must believe it. 

In science we do the same thing;--the philosopher exercises preciselythe same faculties, though in a much more delicate manner. In scientificinquiry it becomes a matter of duty to expose a supposed law to everypossible kind of verification, and to take care, moreover, that this isdone intentionally, and not left to a mere accident, as in the case ofthe apples. And in science, as in common life, our confidence in a lawis in exact proportion to the absence of variation in the result of ourexperimental verifications. For instance, if you let go your grasp ofan article you may have in your hand, it will immediately fall tothe ground. That is a very common verification of one of the bestestablished laws of nature--that of gravitation. The method by which menof science establish the existence of that law is exactly the same asthat by which we have established the trivial proposition aboutthe sourness of hard and green apples. But we believe it in such anextensive, thorough, and unhesitating manner because the universalexperience of mankind verifies it, and we can verify it ourselves at anytime; and that is the strongest possible foundation on which any naturallaw can rest. 

So much, then, by way of proof that the method of establishing laws inscience is exactly the same as that pursued in common life. Let us nowturn to another matter (though really it is but another phase of thesame question), and that is, the method by which, from the relations ofcertain phenomena, we prove that some stand in the position of causestowards the others. 

I want to put the case clearly before you, and I will therefore show youwhat I mean by another familiar example. I will suppose that one of you, on coming down in the morning to the parlor of your house, finds that atea-pot and some spoons which had been left in the room on the previousevening are gone, --the window is open, and you observe the mark of adirty hand on the window-frame, and perhaps, in addition to that, younotice the impress of a hob-nailed shoe on the gravel outside. All thesephenomena have struck your attention instantly, and before two secondshave passed you say, "Oh, somebody has broken open the window, enteredthe room, and run off with the spoons and the tea-pot!" That speech isout of your mouth in a moment. And you will probably add, "I know therehas; I am quite sure of it!" You mean to say exactly what you know;but in reality you are giving expression to what is, in all essentialparticulars, an hypothesis. You do not KNOW it at all; it is nothing butan hypothesis rapidly framed in your own mind. And it is an hypothesisfounded on a long train of inductions and deductions. 

What are those inductions and deductions, and how have you got at thishypothesis? You have observed in the first place, that the windowis open; but by a train of reasoning involving many inductions anddeductions, you have probably arrived long before at the generallaw--and a very good one it is--that windows do not open of themselves;and you therefore conclude that something has opened the window. Asecond general law that you have arrived at in the same way is, thattea-pots and spoons do not go out of a window spontaneously, and you aresatisfied that, as they are not now where you left them, they have beenremoved. In the third place, you look at the marks on the windowsill, and the shoe-marks outside, and you say that in all previous experiencethe former kind of mark has never been produced by anything else butthe hand of a human being; and the same experience shows that no otheranimal but man at present wears shoes with hob-nails in them such aswould produce the marks in the gravel. I do not know, even if we coulddiscover any of those "missing links" that are talked about, that theywould help us to any other conclusion! At any rate the law which statesour present experience is strong enough for my present purpose. You nextreach the conclusion that, as these kind [89] of marks have not beenleft by any other animal than man, or are liable to be formed in anyother way than a man's hand and shoe, the marks in question have beenformed by a man in that way. You have, further, a general law, foundedon observation and experience, and that, too, is, I am sorry to say, avery universal and unimpeachable one, --that some men are thieves;and you assume at once from all these premisses--and that is whatconstitutes your hypothesis--that the man who made the marks outside andon the window-sill, opened the window, got into the room, and stoleyour tea-pot and spoons. You have now arrived at a vera causa;--youhave assumed a cause which, it is plain, is competent to produce all thephenomena you have observed. You can explain all these phenomena only bythe hypothesis of a thief. But that is a hypothetical conclusion, of thejustice of which you have no absolute proof at all; it is only renderedhighly probable by a series of inductive and deductive reasonings. 

I suppose your first action, assuming that you are a man of ordinarycommon sense, and that you have established this hypothesis to your ownsatisfaction, will very likely be to go off for the police, and setthem on the track of the burglar, with the view to the recovery of yourproperty. But just as you are starting with this object, some personcomes in, and on learning what you are about, says, "My good friend, you are going on a great deal too fast. How do you know that the man whoreally made the marks took the spoons? It might have been a monkey thattook them, and the man may have merely looked in afterwards. " You wouldprobably reply, "Well, that is all very well, but you see it is contraryto all experience of the way tea-pots and spoons are abstracted; sothat, at any rate, your hypothesis is less probable than mine. " Whileyou are talking the thing over in this way, another friend arrives, oneof the good kind of people that I was talking of a little while ago. Andhe might say, "Oh, my dear sir, you are certainly going on a greatdeal too fast. You are most presumptuous. You admit that all theseoccurrences took place when you were fast asleep, at a time when youcould not possibly have known anything about what was taking place. Howdo you know that the laws of Nature are not suspended during the night?It may be that there has been some kind of supernatural interference inthis case. " In point of fact, he declares that your hypothesis is oneof which you cannot at all demonstrate the truth, and that you are by nomeans sure that the laws of Nature are the same when you are asleep aswhen you are awake. 

Well, now, you cannot at the moment answer that kind of reasoning. Youfeel that your worthy friend has you somewhat at a disadvantage. Youwill feel perfectly convinced in your own mind, however, that you arequite right, and you say to him, "My good friend, I can only be guidedby the natural probabilities of the case, and if you will be kind enoughto stand aside and permit me to pass, I will go and fetch the police. "Well, we will suppose that your journey is successful, and that by goodluck you meet with a policeman; that eventually the burglar is foundwith your property on his person, and the marks correspond to his handand to his boots. Probably any jury would consider those facts a verygood experimental verification of your hypothesis, touching the causeof the abnormal phenomena observed in your parlor, and would actaccordingly. 

Now, in this supposititious case, I have taken phenomena of a verycommon kind, in order that you might see what are the different steps inan ordinary process of reasoning, if you will only take the trouble toanalyse it carefully. All the operations I have described, you willsee, are involved in the mind of any man of sense in leading him toa conclusion as to the course he should take in order to make good arobbery and punish the offender. I say that you are led, in that case, to your conclusion by exactly the same train of reasoning as that whicha man of science pursues when he is endeavouring to discover the originand laws of the most occult phenomena. The process is, and always mustbe, the same; and precisely the same mode of reasoning was employed byNewton [90] and Laplace [91] in their endeavours to discover and definethe causes of the movements of the heavenly bodies, as you, with yourown common sense, would employ to detect a burglar. The only differenceis, that the nature of the inquiry being more abstruse, every step hasto be most carefully watched, so that there may not be a single crackor flaw in your hypothesis. A flaw or crack in many of the hypothesesof daily life may be of little or no moment as affecting the generalcorrectness of the conclusions at which we may arrive; but, in ascientific inquiry, a fallacy, great or small, is always of importance, and is sure to be in the long run constantly productive of mischievousif not fatal results. 

Do not allow yourselves to be misled by the common notion that anhypothesis is untrustworthy simply because it is an hypothesis. It isoften urged, in respect to some scientific conclusion, that, afterall, it is only an hypothesis. But what more have we to guide us innine-tenths of the most important affairs of daily life than hypotheses, and often very ill-based ones? So that in science, where the evidence ofan hypothesis is subjected to the most rigid examination, we may rightlypursue the same course. You may have hypotheses, and hypotheses. A manmay say, if he likes, that the moon is made of green cheese: that is anhypothesis. But another man, who has devoted a great deal of time andattention to the subject, and availed himself of the most powerfultelescopes and the results of the observations of others, declares thatin his opinion it is probably composed of materials very similar tothose of which our own earth is made up: and that is also only anhypothesis. But I need not tell you that there is an enormous differencein the value of the two hypotheses. That one which is based on soundscientific knowledge is sure to have a corresponding value; and thatwhich is a mere hasty random guess is likely to have but little value. Every great step in our progress in discovering causes has been madein exactly the same way as that which I have detailed to you. A personobserving the occurrence of certain facts and phenomena asks, naturallyenough, what process, what kind of operation known to occur in Natureapplied to the particular case, will unravel and explain the mystery?Hence you have the scientific hypothesis; and its value will beproportionate to the care and completeness with which its basis had beentested and verified. It is in these matters as in the commonest affairsof practical life: the guess of the fool will be folly, while the guessof the wise man will contain wisdom. In all cases, you see that thevalue of the result depends on the patience and faithfulness withwhich the investigator applies to his hypothesis every possible kind ofverification. 

ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE [92]

In order to make the title of this discourse generally intelligible, Ihave translated the term "Protoplasm, " which is the scientific name ofthe substance of which I am about to speak, by the words "the physicalbasis of life. " I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such athing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel--so widelyspread is the conception of life as a something which works throughmatter, but is independent of it; and even those who are aware thatmatter and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared forthe conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase, "THE physical basis ormatter of life, " that there is some one kind of matter which is commonto all living beings, and that their endless diversities are boundtogether by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when firstapprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost shocking to commonsense. 

What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different from one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, than the various kinds ofliving beings? What community of faculty can there be between thebright-coloured lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineralincrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, towhom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds withknowledge?

Again, think of the microscopic fungus--a mere infinitesimal ovoidparticle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply intocountless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealthof foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between thisbald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to thedimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acreswith its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come andgo around its vast circumference. Or, turning to the other half of theworld of life, picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, [93] hugestof beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feetof bone, muscle and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which thestoutest ship that ever left dockyard would flounder hopelessly; andcontrast him with the invisible animalcules--mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, in fact, dance upon the point of a needlewith the same ease as the angels of the Schoolmen could, in imagination. With these images before your minds, you may well ask, what communityof form, or structure, is there between the animalcule and the whale;or between the fungus and the fig-tree? And, a fortiori, [94] between allfour?

Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition, what hiddenbond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her hair and the bloodwhich courses through her youthful veins; or, what is there in commonbetween the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabricof the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seenpulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to merefilms in the hand which raises them out of their element?

Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of everyone who ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a singlephysical basis of life underlying all the diversities of vitalexistence; but I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstandingthese apparent difficulties, a threefold unity--namely, a unity ofpower or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantialcomposition--does pervade the whole living world. 

No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the first place to provethat the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of living matter, diverse asthey may be in degree, are substantially similar in kind. 

Goethe has condensed a survey of all powers of mankind into thewell-known epigram:--[95]

"Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich ernahren Kinderzeugen, und die nahren so gut es vermag. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell' er sich wie er auch will. "

In physiological language this means, that all the multifarious andcomplicated activities of man are comprehensible under three categories. Either they are immediately directed towards the maintenance anddevelopment of the body, or they effect transitory changes in therelative positions of parts of the body, or they tend towards thecontinuance of the species. Even those manifestations of intellect, offeeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, arenot excluded from this classification, inasmuch as to every one butthe subject of them, they are known only as transitory changes in therelative positions of parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and everyother form of human action are, in the long run, resolvable intomuscular contraction, and muscular contraction is but a transitorychange in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But thescheme which is large enough to embrace the activities of the highestform of life, covers all those of the lower creatures. The lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds, grows, and reproduces its kind. In addition, allanimals manifest those transitory changes of form which we class underirritability and contractility; and, it is more than probable, that whenthe vegetable world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all plants inpossession of the same powers, at one time or other of their existence. 

I am not now alluding to such phaenomena, at once rare and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plants, or thestamens of the barberry, but to much more widely spread, and at the sametime, more subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contractility. You are doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its stingingproperty to the innumerable stiff and needle-like, though exquisitelydelicate, hairs which cover its surface. Each stinging-needle tapersfrom a broad base to a slender summit, which, though rounded at the end, is of such microscopic fineness that it readily penetrates, and breaksoff in, the skin. The whole hair consists of a very delicate outer caseof wood, closely applied to the inner surface of which is a layer ofsemi-fluid matter, full of innumerable granules of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm, which thus constitutes a kind ofbag, full of a limpid liquid, and roughly corresponding in form withthe interior of the hair which it fills. When viewed with a sufficientlyhigh magnifying power, the protoplasmic layer of the nettle hair is seento be in a condition of unceasing activity. Local contractions of thewhole thickness of its substance pass slowly and gradually from point topoint, and give rise to the appearance of progressive waves, just as thebending of successive stalks of corn by a breeze produces the apparentbillows of a cornfield. 

But, in addition to these movements, and independently of them, thegranules are driven, in relatively rapid streams, through channels inthe protoplasm which seem to have a considerable amount of persistence. Most commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the protoplasm takesimilar directions; and, thus, there is a general stream up one side ofthe hair and down the other. But this does not prevent the existence ofpartial currents which take different routes; and sometimes trains ofgranules may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite directions withina twenty-thousandth of an inch of one another; while, occasionally, opposite streams come into direct collision, and, after a longer orshorter struggle, one predominates. The cause of these currents seems tolie in contractions of the protoplasm which bounds the channels in whichthey flow, but which are so minute that the best microscopes show onlytheir effects, and not themselves. 

The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned within thecompass of the microscopic hair of a plant, which we commonly regardas a merely passive organism, is not easily forgotten by one who haswatched its display, continued hour after hour, without pause or signof weakening. The possible complexity of many other organic forms, seemingly as simple as the protoplasm of the nettle, dawns upon one;and the comparison of such a protoplasm to a body with an internalcirculation, which has been put forward by an eminent physiologist, loses much of its startling character. Currents similar to those ofthe hairs of the nettle have been observed in a great multitude ofvery different plants, and weighty authorities have suggested thatthey probably occur, in more or less perfection, in all young vegetablecells. If such be the case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropicalforest is, after all, due only to the dulness of our hearing; and couldour ears catch the murmur of these tiny Maelstroms, [96] as they whirlin the innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a great city. 

Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the exception, thatcontractility should be still more openly manifested at some periods oftheir existence. The protoplasm of Algae and Fungi becomes, under manycircumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its woody case, and exhibits movements of its whole mass, or is propelled by thecontractility of one, or more, hair-like prolongations of its body, which are called vibratile cilia. And, so far as the conditions of themanifestation of the phaenomena of contractility have yet been studied, they are the same for the plant as for the animal. Heat and electricshocks influence both, and in the same way, though it may be indifferent degrees. It is by no means my intention to suggest that thereis no difference in faculty between the lowest plant and the highest, orbetween plants and animals. But the difference between the powers of thelowest plant, or animal, and those of the highest, is one of degree, not of kind, and depends, as Milne-Edwards [97] long ago so well pointedout, upon the extent to which the principle of the division of labour iscarried out in the living economy. In the lowest organism all partsare competent to perform all functions, and one and the same portion ofprotoplasm may successfully take on the function of feeding, moving, orreproducing apparatus. In the highest, on the contrary, a great numberof parts combine to perform each function, each part doing its allottedshare of the work with great accuracy and efficiency, but being uselessfor any other purpose. 

On the other hand, notwithstanding all the fundamental resemblanceswhich exist between the powers of the protoplasm in plants and inanimals, they present a striking difference (to which I shall advertmore at length presently), in the fact that plants can manufacture freshprotoplasm out of mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged toprocure it ready made, and hence, in the long run, depend upon plants. Upon what condition this difference in the powers of the two greatdivisions of the world of life depends, nothing is at present known. 

With such qualifications as arises [98] out of the last-mentionedfact, it may be truly said that the acts of all living things arefundamentally one. Is any such unity predicable of their forms? Let usseek in easily verified facts for a reply to this question. If a dropof blood be drawn by pricking one's finger, and viewed with properprecautions, and under a sufficiently high microscopic power, there willbe seen, among the innumerable multitude of little, circular, discoidalbodies, or corpuscles, which float in it and give it its colour, acomparatively small number of colourless corpuscles, of somewhat largersize and very irregular shape. If the drop of blood be kept at thetemperature of the body, these colourless corpuscles will be seen toexhibit a marvellous activity, changing their forms with great rapidity, drawing in and thrusting out prolongations of their substance, andcreeping about as if they were independent organisms. 

The substance which is thus active is a mass of protoplasm, and itsactivity differs in detail, rather than in principle, from that of theprotoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry circumstances the corpuscle diesand becomes distended into a round mass, in the midst of which is seena smaller spherical body, which existed, but was more or less hidden, in the living corpuscle, and is called its nucleus. Corpuscles ofessentially similar structure are to be found in the skin, in the liningof the mouth, and scattered through the whole framework of the body. Nay, more; in the earliest condition of the human organism, in thatstate in which it has but just become distinguishable from the egg inwhich it arises, it is nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body was, once, no more than such an aggregation. 

Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out to be what may be termedthe structural unit of the human body. As a matter of fact, the body, inits earliest state, is a mere multiple of such units; and in its perfectcondition, it is a multiple of such units, variously modified. 

But does the formula which expresses the essential structural characterof the highest animal cover all the rest, as the statement of its powersand faculties covered that of all others? Very nearly. Beast andfowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polype, are all composed ofstructural units of the same character, namely, masses of protoplasmwith a nucleus. There are sundry very low animals, each of which, structurally, is a mere colourless blood-corpuscle, leading anindependent life. But, at the very bottom of the animal scale, eventhis simplicity becomes simplified, and all the phaenomena of life aremanifested by a particle of protoplasm without a nucleus. Nor are suchorganisms insignificant by reason of their want of complexity. It is afair question whether the protoplasm of those simplest forms of life, which people an immense extent of the bottom of the sea, would notoutweigh that of all the higher living beings which inhabit the land puttogether. And in ancient times, no less than at the present day, suchliving 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 nettlehair, there lies a spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination furtherproves that the whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetitionof such masses of nucleated protoplasm, each contained in a wooden case, which is modified in form, sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes intoa 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, ina particle of nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as inthe lowest animals, a single mass of such protoplasm may constitute thewhole plant, or the protoplasm may exist without a nucleus. 

Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how is one mass ofnon-nucleated protoplasm to be distinguished from another? why call one"plant" and the other "animal"?

The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned, plants and animalsare not separable, and that, in many cases, it is a mere matter ofconvention whether we call a given organism an animal or a plant. Thereis a living body called Aethalium septicum, which appears upon decayingvegetable substances, and, in one of its forms, is common upon thesurfaces of tan-pits. In this condition it is, to all intents andpurposes, a fungus, and formerly was always regarded as such; but theremarkable investigations of De Bary [99] have shown that, in anothercondition, the Aethalium is an actively locomotive creature, and takesin solid matters, upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting themost characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant; or is it ananimal? Is it both; or is it neither? Some decide in favour of the lastsupposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, a sort of biologicalNo Man's Land [100] for all these questionable forms. But, as it isadmittedly impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between thisno man's land and the vegetable world on the one hand, or the animal, on the other, it appears to me that this proceeding merely doubles thedifficulty which, before, was single. 

Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It isthe clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remainsclay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brickor sun-dried clod. 

Thus it becomes clear that all living powers are cognate, and that allliving forms are fundamentally of one character. The researches ofthe chemist have revealed a no less striking uniformity of materialcomposition in living matter. 

In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investigation can tellus little or nothing, directly, of the composition of living matter, inasmuch as such matter must needs die in the act of analysis, --and uponthis very obvious ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to besomewhat frivolous, have been raised to the drawing of any conclusionswhatever respecting the composition of actually living matter, fromthat of the dead matter of life, which alone is accessible to us. Butobjectors of this class do not seem to reflect that it is also, instrictness, true that we know nothing about the composition of any bodywhatever, as it is. The statement that a crystal of calc-sparconsists of carbonate of lime, is quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes, it may be resolved into carbonic acid andquicklime. If you pass the same carbonic acid over the very quicklimethus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of lime again; but it willnot be calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can it, therefore, be said thatchemical analysis teaches nothing about the chemical composition ofcalc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but it is hardly more sothan the talk one occasionally hears about the uselessness of applyingthe results of chemical analysis to the living bodies which have yieldedthem. 

One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such refinements, and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet been examined containthe four elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in verycomplex union, and that they behave similarly towards several reagents. To this complex combination, the nature of which has never beendetermined with exactness, the name of Protein has been applied. Andif we use this term with such caution as may properly arise out of ourcomparative ignorance of the things for which it stands, it may betruly said, that all protoplasm is proteinaceous, or, as the white, oralbumen, of an egg is one of the commonest examples of a nearly pureproteine matter, we may say that all living matter is more or lessalbuminoid. 

Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms of protoplasm areaffected by the direct action of electric shocks; and yet the number ofcases in which the contraction of protoplasm is shown to be affected bythis agency increases every day. 

Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence, that all forms ofprotoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation at atemperature of 40-50 degrees centigrade, which has been called"heat-stiffening, " though Kuhne's [101] beautiful researches have provedthis occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law holds good for all. 

Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the existence of a generaluniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or physical basis, oflife, in whatever group of living beings it may be studied. But it willbe understood that this general uniformity by no means excludes anyamount of special modifications of the fundamental substance. Themineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity of characters, though no one doubts that, under all these Protean changes, it is oneand the same thing. 

And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin, of the matterof life?

Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused throughoutthe universe in molecules, which are indestructible and unchangeablein themselves; but, in endless transmigration, unite in innumerablepermutations, into the diversified forms of life we know? Or, is thematter of life composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only inthe manner in which its atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of ordinarymatter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done?

Modern science does not hesitate a moment between these alternatives. Physiology writes over the portals of life--

"Debemur morti nos nostraque, "[102]

with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to thatmelancholy line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether fungusor oak, worm or man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies andis resolved into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is alwaysdying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless itdied. 

In the wonderful story of the Peau de Chagrin, [103] the hero becomespossessed of a magical wild ass' skin, which yields him the means ofgratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration ofthe proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinksin proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life andthe last handbreadth of the peau de chagrin, disappear with thegratification of a last wish. 

Balzac's [104] studies had led him over a wide range of thought andspeculation, and his shadowing forth of physiological truth in thisstrange story may have been intentional. At any rate, the matter of lifeis a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every vital act it is somewhatthe smaller. All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm. 

Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have light--so mucheloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, andurea. It is clear that this process of expenditure cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic peau de chagrin differs fromBalzac's in its capacity of being repaired, and brought back to its fullsize, after every exertion. 

For example, this present lecture, whatever its intellectual worthto you, has a certain physical value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodilysubstance wasted in maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end of thediscourse than it was at the beginning. By and by, I shall probably haverecourse to the substance commonly called mutton, for the purpose ofstretching it back to its original size. Now this mutton was once theliving protoplasm, more or less modified, of another animal--a sheep. AsI shall eat it, it is the same matter altered, not only by death, but byexposure to sundry artificial operations in the process of cooking. 

But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not rendered itincompetent to resume its old functions as matter of life. A singularinward laboratory, which I possess, will dissolve a certain portion ofthe modified protoplasm; the solution so formed will pass into myveins; and the subtle influences to which it will then be subjected willconvert the dead protoplasm into living protoplasm, and transubstantiatesheep into man. 

Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I mightsup upon lobster, and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergothe same wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return tomy own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacean might, andprobably would, return the compliment, and demonstrate our common natureby turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better wereto be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I should findthe protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible into man, with nomore trouble than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, thanthat of the lobster. 

Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what animal, or whatplant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm, and the fact speaksvolumes for the general identity of that substance in all living beings. I share this catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all ofwhich, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the protoplasm ofany of their fellows, or of any plant; but here the assimilative powersof the animal world cease. A solution of smelling-salts in water, withan infinitesimal proportion of some other saline matters, contains allthe elementary bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm;but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep ahungry man from starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from alike fate. An animal cannot make protoplasm, but must take it ready-madefrom some other animal, or some plant--the animal's highest feat ofconstructive chemistry being to convert dead protoplasm into that livingmatter of life which is appropriate to itself. 

Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventuallyturn to the vegetable world. A fluid containing carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts, which offers such a Barmecide feast [105] to theanimal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of plants; and, with adue supply of only such materials, many a plant will not only maintainitself in vigour, but grow and multiply until it has increased amillion-fold, or a million million-fold, the quantity of protoplasmwhich it originally possessed; in this way building up the matter oflife, to an indefinite extent, from the common matter of the universe. 

Thus, the animal can only raise the complex substance of dead protoplasmto the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm; while theplant can raise the less complex substances--carbonic acid, water, andnitrogenous salts--to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not to thesame level. But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example, appear to need higher compounds to start with; and no knownplant can live upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. A plantsupplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal in his bathof smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all the constituentsof protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need the process of simplification ofvegetable food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at thelimit of the plant's thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic acid, and all theother needful constituents be supplied except nitrogenous salts, and anordinary plant will still be unable to manufacture protoplasm. 

Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right tospeculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence of that continualdeath which is the condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonicacid, water, and nitrogenous compounds, which certainly possess noproperties but those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms ofordinary matter, and from none which are simpler, the vegetable worldbuilds up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal world a-going. Plants are the accumulators of the power which animals distribute anddisperse. 

But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter of lifedepends on the pre-existence of certain compounds; namely, carbonicacid, water, and certain nitrogenous bodies. Withdraw any one of thesethree from the world, and all vital phaenomena come to an end. They areas necessary to the protoplasm of the plant, as the protoplasm of theplant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogenare all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen unite in certainproportions and under certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid;hydrogen and oxygen produce water; nitrogen and other elements give riseto nitrogenous salts. These new compounds, like the elementary bodiesof which they are composed, are lifeless. But when they are broughttogether, under certain conditions, they give rise to the still morecomplex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phaenomena oflife. 

I see no break in this series of steps in molecular complication, and Iam unable to understand why the language which is applicable to any oneterm of the series may not be used to any of the others. We think fit tocall different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers and activities of these substances asthe properties of the matter of which they are composed. 

When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and anelectric spark is passed through them, they disappear, and a quantityof water, equal in weight to the sum of their weights, appears in theirplace. There is not the slightest parity between the passive and activepowers of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen whichhave given rise to it. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and far below thattemperature, oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whoseparticles tend to rush away from one another with great force. Water, atthe same temperature, is a strong though brittle solid whose particlestend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build upfrosty imitations of the most complex forms of vegetable foliage. 

Nevertheless we call these, and many other strange phaenomena, theproperties of the water, and we do not hesitate to believe that, insome way or another, they result from the properties of the componentelements of the water. We do not assume that a something called"aquosity" entered into and took possession of the oxidated hydrogen assoon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous particles to theirplaces in the facets of the crystal, or amongst the leaflets of thehoar-frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope and in the faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by and by be able to seeour way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties ofwater, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from theform of its parts and the manner in which they are put together. 

Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, andnitrogenous salts disappear, and in their place, under the influence ofpre-existing living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the matter oflife makes its appearance?

It is true that there is no sort of parity between the properties of thecomponents and the properties of the resultant, but neither was there inthe case of the water. It is also true that what I have spoken of asthe influence of pre-existing living matter is something quiteunintelligible; but does anybody quite comprehend the modus operandi[106] of an electric spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen andhydrogen?

What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the existencein the living matter of a something which has no representative, orcorrelative, in the not living matter which gave rise to it? What betterphilosophical status has "vitality" than "aquosity"? And why should"vitality" hope for a better fate than the other "itys" which havedisappeared since Martinus Scriblerus [107] accounted for the operationof the meat-jack [108] by its inherent "meat-roasting quality, " andscorned the "materialism" of those who explained the turning of the spitby a certain mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney. 

If scientific language is to possess a definite and constantsignification whenever it is employed, it seems to me that we arelogically bound to apply to the protoplasm, or physical basis of life, the same conceptions as those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the phaenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so are thosepresented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties. 

If the properties of water may be properly said to result from thenature and disposition of its component molecules, I can find nointelligible ground for refusing to say that the properties ofprotoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its molecules. 

But I bid you beware that, in accepting these conclusions, you areplacing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which, in most people'sestimation, is the reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes ofheaven. It may seem a small thing to admit that the dull vital actionsof a fungus, or a foraminifer, are the properties of their protoplasm, and are the direct results of the nature of the matter of which theyare composed. But if, as I have endeavoured to prove to you, theirprotoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily convertedinto, that of any animal, I can discover no logical halting-placebetween the admission that such is the case, and the further concessionthat all vital action may, with equal propriety, be said to be theresult of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. Andif so, it must be true, in the same sense and to the same extent, thatthe thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughtsregarding them, are the expression of molecular changes in that matterof life which is the source of our other vital phaenomena. [109]

ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS [110]

The marine productions which are commonly known by the names of "Corals"and "Corallines, " were thought by the ancients to be sea-weeds, whichhad the singular property of becoming hard and solid, when they werefished up from their native depths and came into contact with the air. 

"Sic et curalium, quo primum contigit auras Tempore durescit: mollisfuit herba sub undis, "[111]

says Ovid (Metam. Xv); and it was not until the seventeenth century thatBoccone [112] was emboldened, by personal experience of the facts, todeclare that the holders of this belief were no better than "idiots, "who had been misled by the softness of the outer coat of the living redcoral to imagine that it was soft all through. 

Messer Boccone's strong epithet is probably undeserved, as the notion hecontroverts, in all likelihood, arose merely from the misinterpretationof the strictly true statement which any coral fisherman would make toa curious inquirer; namely, that the outside coat of the red coral isquite soft when it is taken out of the sea. At any rate, he did goodservice by eliminating this much error from the current notions aboutcoral. But the belief that corals are plants remained, not only in thepopular, but in the scientific mind; and it received what appeared to bea striking confirmation from the researches of Marsigli [113] in 1706. For this naturalist, having the opportunity of observing freshly-takenred coral, saw that its branches were beset with what looked likedelicate and beautiful flowers each having eight petals. It was truethat these "flowers" could protrude and retract themselves, but theirmotions were hardly more extensive, or more varied, than those of theleaves of the sensitive plant; and therefore they could not be held tomilitate against the conclusion so strongly suggested by their form andtheir grouping upon the branches of a tree-like structure. 

Twenty years later, a pupil of Marsigli, the young Marseilles physician, Peyssonel, conceived the desire to study these singular sea-plants, andwas sent by the French Government on a mission to the Mediterranean forthat purpose. The pupil undertook the investigation full of confidencein the ideas of his master, but being able to see and think for himself, he soon discovered that those ideas by no means altogether correspondedwith reality. In an essay entitled "Traite du Corail, " which wascommunicated to the French Academy of Science, but which has never beenpublished, Peyssonel writes:--

"Je fis fleurir le corail dans des vases pleins d'eau de mer, etj'observai que ce que nous croyons etre la fleur de cette pretendueplante n'etait au vrai, qu'un insecte semblable a une petite Ortie ouPoulpe. J'avais le plaisir de voir remuer les pattes, ou pieds, de cetteOrtie, et ayant mis le vase plein d'eau ou le corail etait a une doucechaleur aupres du feu, tous les petits insectes s'epanouirent. --L'Ortiesortie etend les pieds, et forme ce que M. De Marsigli et moi avionspris pour les petales de la fleur. Le calice de cette pretendue fleurest le corps meme de l'animal avance et sorti hors de la cellule. "*[114]

 * This extract from Peyssonel's manuscript is given by M. Lacaze Duthiers in his valuable Histoire Naturelle du Corail (1866). 

The comparison of the flowers of the coral to a "petite ortie, " or"little nettle, " is perfectly just, but needs explanation. "Ortie demer, " or "sea-nettle, " is, in fact, the French appellation for our"sea-anemone, " a creature with which everybody, since the great aquariummania, must have become familiar, even to the limits of boredom. In1710, the great naturalist, Reaumur, [115] had written a memoir for theexpress purpose of demonstrating that these "orties" are animals; andwith this important paper Peyssonel must necessarily have been familiar. Therefore, when he declared the "flowers" of the red coral to be little"orties, " it was the same thing as saying that they were animals of thesame general nature as sea-anemones. But to Peyssonel's contemporariesthis was an extremely startling announcement. It was hard to imagine theexistence of such a thing as an association of animals into a structurewith stem and branches altogether like a plant, and fixed to the soilas a plant is fixed; and the naturalists of that day preferred not toimagine it. Even Reaumur could not bring himself to accept the notion, and France being blessed with Academicians, whose great function (as thelate Bishop Wilson [116] and an eminent modern writer [117] have so wellshown) is to cause sweetness and light to prevail, and to prevent suchunmannerly fellows as Peyssonel from blurting out unedifying truths, they suppressed him; and, as aforesaid, his great work remained inmanuscript, and may at this day be consulted by the curious in thatstate, in the Bibliotheque du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle. Peyssonel, who evidently was a person of savage and untameable disposition, so farfrom appreciating the kindness of the Academicians in giving him time toreflect upon the unreasonableness, not to say rudeness, of making publicstatements in opposition to the views of some of the most distinguishedof their body, seems bitterly to have resented the treatment he metwith. For he sent all further communications to the Royal Society ofLondon, which never had, and it is to be hoped never will have, anything of an academic constitution; and finally he took himself off toGuadaloupe, and became lost to science altogether. 

Fifteen or sixteen years after the date of Peyssonel's suppressed paper, the Abbe Trembley [118] published his wonderful researches upon thefresh-water Hydra. Bernard de Jussieu [119] and Guettard [120] followedthem up by like inquiries upon the marine sea-anemones and corallines;Reaumur, convinced against his will of the entire justice of Peyssonel'sviews, adopted them, and made him a half-and-half apology in the prefaceto the next published volume of the "Memoires pour servir l'Histoire desInsectes;" and, from this time forth, Peyssonel's doctrine thatcorals are the work of animal organisms has been part of the body ofestablished scientific truth. 

Peyssonel, in the extract from his memoir already cited, compares theflower-like animal of the coral to a "poulpe, " which is the Frenchform of the name "polypus, "--"the many-footed, "--which the ancientnaturalists gave to the soft-bodied cuttlefishes, which, like the coralanimal, have eight arms, or tentacles, disposed around a central mouth. Reaumur, admitting the analogy indicated by Peyssonel, gave the nameof polypes, not only to the sea-anemone, the coral animal, and thefresh-water Hydra, but to what are now known as the Polyzoa, and hetermed the skeleton which they fabricate a "polypier, " or "polypidom. "

The progress of discovery, since Reaumur's time, has made us verycompletely acquainted with the structure and habits of all thesepolypes. We know that, among the sea-anemones and coral-forming animals, each poylpe has a mouth leading to a stomach, which is open at its innerend, and thus communicates freely with the general cavity of the body;that the tentacles placed round the mouth are hollow, and that theyperform the part of arms in seizing and capturing prey. It is known thatmany of these creatures are capable of being multiplied by artificialdivision, the divided halves growing, after a time, into complete andseparate animals; and that many are able to perform a very similarprocess naturally, in such a manner that one polype may, by repeatedincomplete divisions, give rise to a sort of sheet, or turf, formed byinnumerable connected, and yet independent, descendants. Or, what isstill more common, a polype may throw out buds, which are converted intopolypes, or branches bearing polypes, until a tree-like mass, sometimesof very considerable size, is formed. 

This is what happens in the case of the red coral of commerce. A minutepolype, fixed to the rocky bottom of the deep sea, grows up into abranched trunk. The end of every branch and twig is terminated bya polype; and all the polypes are connected together by a fleshysubstance, traversed by innumerable canals which place each polype incommunication with every other, and carry nourishment to the substanceof the supporting stem. It is a sort of natural cooperative store, every polype helping the whole, at the same time as it helps itself. Theinterior of the stem, like that of the branches, is solidified by thedeposition of carbonate of lime in its tissue, somewhat in the samefashion as our own bones are formed of animal matter impregnated withlime salts; and it is this dense skeleton (usually turned red by apeculiar colouring matter) cleared of the soft animal investment, asthe hard wood of a tree might be stripped of its bark, which is the redcoral. 

In the case of the red coral, the hard skeleton belongs to the interiorof the stem and branches only; but in the commoner white corals, eachpolype has a complete skeleton of its own. These polypes are sometimessolitary, in which case the whole skeleton is represented by a singlecup, with partitions radiating from its centre to its circumference. When the polypes formed by budding or division remain associated, thepolypidom is sometimes made up of nothing but an aggregation of thesecups, while at other times the cups are at once separated and heldtogether, by an intermediate substance, which represents the branchesof the red coral. The red coral polype again is a comparatively rareanimal, inhabiting a limited area, the skeleton of which has but a veryinsignificant mass; while the white corals are very common, occurin almost all seas, and form skeletons which are sometimes extremelymassive. 

With a very few exceptions, both the red and the white coral polypesare, in their adult state, firmly adherent to the sea-bottom; nor dotheir buds naturally become detached and locomotive. But, in addition tobudding and division, these creatures possess the more ordinary methodsof multiplication; and, at particular seasons, they give rise tonumerous eggs of minute size. Within these eggs the young are formed, and they leave the egg in a condition which has no sort of resemblanceto the perfect animal. It is, in fact, a minute oval body, many hundredtimes smaller than the full grown creature, and it swims about withgreat activity by the help of multitudes of little hair-like filaments, called cilia, with which its body is covered. These cilia all lash thewater in one direction, and so drive the little body along as if it werepropelled by thousands of extremely minute paddles. After enjoying itsfreedom for a longer or shorter time, and being carried either by theforce of its own cilia, or by currents which bear it along, the embryocoral settles down to the bottom, loses its cilia, and becomes fixed tothe rock, gradually assuming the polype form and growing up to the sizeof its parent. As the infant polypes of the coral may retain this freeand active condition for many hours, or even days, and as a tidal orother current in the sea may easily flow at the speed of two or evenmore miles in an hour, it is clear that the embryo must often betransported to very considerable distances from the parent. And it iseasily understood how a single polype, which may give rise to hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of embryos, may, by this process of partlyactive and partly passive migration, cover an immense surface with itsoffspring. 

The masses of coral which may be formed by the assemblages of polypeswhich spring by budding, or by dividing, from a single polype, occasionally attain very considerable dimensions. Such skeletons aresometimes great plates, many feet long and several feet in thickness; orthey may form huge half globes, like the brainstone corals, or may reachthe magnitude of stout shrubs or even small trees. There is reason tobelieve that such masses as these take a long time to form, andhence that the age a polype tree, or polype turf, may attain, may beconsiderable. But, sooner or later, the coral polypes, like all otherthings, die; the soft flesh decays, while the skeleton is left as astony mass at the bottom of the sea, where it retains its integrity fora longer or a shorter time, according as its position affords more orless protection from the wear and tear of the waves. 

The polypes which give rise to the white coral are found, as has beensaid, in the seas of all parts of the world; but in the temperate andcold oceans they are scattered and comparatively small in size, so thatthe skeletons of those which die do not accumulate in any considerablequantity. But it is otherwise in the greater part of the ocean whichlies in the warmer parts of the world, comprised within a distance ofabout eighteen hundred miles on each side of the equator. Within thezone thus bounded, by far the greater part of the ocean is inhabited bycoral polypes, which not only form very strong and large skeletons, butassociate together into great masses, like the thickets and the meadowturf, or, better still, the accumulations of peat, to which plants giverise on dry land. These masses of stony matter, heaped up beneath thewaters of the ocean, become as dangerous to mariners as so much ordinaryrock, and to these, as to the common rock ridges, the seaman gives thename of "reefs. "

Such coral reefs cover many thousand square miles in the Pacific and inthe Indian Oceans. There is one reef, or rather great series of reefs, called the Barrier Reef, which stretches, almost continuously, for morethan eleven hundred miles off the east coast of Australia. Multitudesof the islands in the Pacific are either reefs themselves, or aresurrounded by reefs. The Red Sea is in many parts almost a maze of suchreefs, and they abound no less in the West Indies, along the coast ofFlorida, and even as far north as the Bahama Islands. But it is a veryremarkable circumstance that, within the area of what we may call the"coral zone, " there are no coral reefs upon the west coast of America, nor upon the west coast of Africa; and it is a general fact that thereefs are interrupted, or absent, opposite the mouths of great rivers. The causes of this apparent caprice in the distribution of coral reefsare not far to seek. The polypes which fabricate them require for theirvigorous growth a temperature which must not fall below 68 degreesFahrenheit all the year round, and this temperature is only to befound within the distance on each side of the equator which has beenmentioned, or thereabouts. But even within the coral zone this degree ofwarmth is not everywhere to be had. On the west coast of America, and onthe corresponding coast of Africa, the currents of cold water from theicy regions which surround the South Pole set northward, and it appearsto be due to their cooling influence that the sea in these regions isfree from the reef builders. Again, the coral polypes cannot live inwater which is rendered brackish by floods from the land, or which isperturbed by mud from the same source, and hence it is that they ceaseto exist opposite the mouths of rivers, which damage them in both theseways. 

Such is the general distribution of the reef-building corals, but thereare some very interesting and singular circumstances to be observed inthe conformation of the reefs, when we consider them individually. Thereefs, in fact, are of three different kinds; some of them stretch outfrom the shore, almost like a prolongation of the beach, covered onlyby shallow water, and in the case of an island, surrounding it like afringe of no considerable breadth. These are termed "fringing reefs. "Others are separated by a channel which may attain a width of manymiles, and a depth of twenty or thirty fathoms or more, from the nearestland; and when this land is an island, the reef surrounds it like a lowwall, and the sea between the reef and the land is, as it were, a moatinside this wall. Such reefs as these are called "encircling" when theysurround an island; and "barrier" reefs, when they stretch parallel withthe coast of a continent. In both these cases there is ordinary dry landinside the reef, and separated from it only by a narrower or a wider, a shallower or a deeper, space of sea, which is called a "lagoon, "or "inner passage. " But there is a third kind of reef, of very commonoccurrence in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, which goes by the nameof "atoll. " This is, to all intents and purposes, an encircling reef, without anything to encircle; or, in other words, without an islandin the middle of its lagoon. The atoll has exactly the appearance of avast, irregularly oval, or circular, breakwater, enclosing smooth waterin its midst. The depth of the water in the lagoon rarely exceeds twentyor thirty fathoms, but, outside the reef, it deepens with great rapidityto two hundred or three hundred fathoms. The depth immediately outsidethe barrier, or encircling, reefs, may also be very considerable; but, at the outer edge of a fringing reef, it does not amount usually to morethan twenty or twenty-five fathoms; in other words, from one hundred andtwenty to one hundred and fifty feet. 

Thus, if the water of the ocean should be suddenly drained away, weshould see the atolls rising from the sea-bed like vast truncated cones, and resembling so many volcanic craters, except that their sideswould be steeper than those of an ordinary volcano. In the case of theencircling reefs, the cone, with the enclosed island, would look likeVesuvius with Monte Nuovo within the old crater of Somma;[121] while, finally, the island with a fringing reef would have the appearance of anordinary hill, or mountain, girded by a vast parapet, within which wouldlie a shallow moat. And the dry bed of the Pacific might afford groundsfor an inhabitant of the moon to speculate upon the extraordinarysubterranean activity to which these vast and numerous "craters" borewitness!

When the structure of a fringing reef is investigated, the bottom of thelagoon is found to be covered with fine whitish mud, which results fromthe breaking up of the dead corals. Upon this muddy floor there lie, here and there, growing corals, or occasionally great blocks of deadcoral, which have been torn by storms from the outer edge of the reef, and washed into the lagoon. Shellfish and worms of various kinds abound;and fish, some of which prey upon the coral, sport in the deeper pools. But the corals which are to be seen growing in the shallow waters of thelagoon are of a different kind from those which abound on the outer edgeof the reef, and of which the reef is built up. Close to the seawardedge of the reef, over which, even in calm weather, a surf almost alwaysbreaks, the coral rock is encrusted with a thick coat of a singularvegetable organism, which contains a great deal of lime--the so-calledNullipora. Beyond this, in the part of the edge of the reef which isalways covered by the breaking waves, the living, true, reef-polypesmake their appearance; and, in different forms, coat the steep seawardface of the reef to a depth of one hundred or even one hundred and fiftyfeet. Beyond this depth the sounding-lead rests, not upon the wall-likeface of the reef, but on the ordinary shelving sea-bottom. And thedistance to which a fringing reef extends from the land corresponds withthat at which the sea has a depth of twenty or five-and-twenty fathoms. 

If, as we have supposed, the sea could be suddenly withdrawn from aroundan island provided with a fringing reef, such as the Mauritius, [122]the reef would present the aspect of a terrace, its seaward face, onehundred feet or more high, blooming with the animal flowers of thecoral, while its surface would be hollowed out into a shallow andirregular moat-like excavation. 

The coral mud, which occupies the bottom of the lagoon, and with whichall the interstices of the coral skeletons which accumulate to formthe reef are filled up, does not proceed from the washing action of thewaves alone; innumerable fishes, and other creatures which prey upon thecoral, add a very important contribution of finely-triturated calcareousmatter; and the corals and mud becoming incorporated together, graduallyharden and give rise to a sort of limestone rock, which may vary a gooddeal in texture. Sometimes it remains friable and chalky, but, moreoften, the infiltration of water, charged with carbonic acid, dissolvessome of the calcareous matter, and deposits it elsewhere in theinterstices of the nascent rock, thus glueing and cementing theparticles together into a hard mass; or it may even dissolve thecarbonate of lime more extensively, and re-deposit it in a crystallineform. On the beach of the lagoon, where the coral sand is washed intolayers by the action of the waves, its grains become thus fused togetherinto strata of a limestone, so hard that they ring when struck with ahammer, and inclined at a gentle angle, corresponding with that of thesurface of the beach. The hard parts of the many animals which live uponthe reef become imbedded in this coral limestone, so that a block maybe full of shells of bivalves and univalves, or of sea urchins; and evensometimes encloses the eggs of turtles in a state of petrification. The active and vigorous growth of the reef goes on only at the seawardmargins, where the polypes are exposed to the wash of the surf, andare thereby provided with an abundant supply of air and of food. The interior portion of the reef may be regarded as almost wholly anaccumulation of dead skeletons. Where a river comes down from the landthere is a break in the reef, for the reasons which have been alreadymentioned. 

The origin and mode of formation of a fringing reef, such as that justdescribed, are plain enough. The embryos of the coral polypes have fixedthemselves upon the submerged shore of the island, as far out as theycould live, namely, to a depth of twenty or twenty-five fathoms. Onegeneration has succeeded another, building itself up upon the deadskeletons of its predecessor. The mass has been consolidated bythe infiltration of coral mud, and hardened by partial solution andredeposition, until a great rampart of coral rock one hundred or onehundred and fifty feet high on its seaward face has been formed allround the island, with only such gaps as result from the outflow ofrivers, in the place of sally-ports. 

The structure of the rocky accumulation in the encircling reefs andin the atolls is essentially the same as in the fringing reef. But, inaddition to the differences of depth inside and out, they present someother peculiarities. These reefs, and especially the atolls, are usuallyinterrupted at one part of their circumference, and this part is alwayssituated on the leeward side of the reef, or that which is the moresheltered side. Now, as all these reefs are situated within the regionin which the tradewinds prevail, it follows that, on the north side ofthe equator, where the trade-wind is a northeasterly wind, the openingof the reef is on the southwest side: while in the southern hemisphere, where the trade-winds blow from the southeast, the opening lies to thenorthwest. The curious practical result follows from this structure, that the lagoons to these reefs really form admirable harbours, ifa ship can only get inside them. But the main difference between theencircling reefs and the atolls, on the one hand, and the fringing reefson the other, lies in the fact of the much greater depth of water on theseaward faces of the former. As a consequence of this fact, the wholeof this face is not, as it is in the case of the fringing reef, coveredwith living coral polypes. For, as we have seen, these polypes cannotlive at a greater depth than about twenty-five fathoms; and actualobservation has shown that while, down to this depth, the sounding-leadwill bring up branches of live coral from the outer wall of such a reef, at a greater depth it fetches to the surface nothing but dead coral andcoral sand. We must, therefore, picture to ourselves an atoll, or anencircling reef, as fringed for one hundred feet, or more, from itssummit, with coral polypes busily engaged in fabricating coral; while, below this comparatively narrow belt, its surface is a bare and smoothexpanse of coral sand, supported upon and within a core of corallimestone. Thus, if the bed of the Pacific were suddenly laid bare, aswas just now supposed, the appearance of the reef-mountains would beexactly the reverse of that presented by many high mountains on land. For these are white with snow at the top, while their bases are clothedwith an abundant and gaudily-coloured vegetation. But the coral coneswould look grey and barren below, while their summits would be gay witha richly-coloured parterre of flowerlike coral polypes. 

The practical difficulties of sounding upon, and of bringing up portionsof, the seaward face of an atoll or of an encircling reef, are so great, in consequence of the constant and dangerous swell which sets towardsit, that no exact information concerning the depth to which the reefsare composed of coral has yet been obtained. There is no reason todoubt, however, that the reef-cone has the same structure from itssummit to its base, and that its sea-wall is throughout mainly composedof dead coral. 

And now arises a serious difficulty. If the coral polypes cannot live ata greater depth than one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet, how canthey have built up the base of the reef-cone, which may be two thousandfeet, or more, below the surface of the sea?

In order to get over this objection, it was at one time supposed thatthe reef-building polypes had settled upon the summits of a chain ofsubmarine mountains. But what is there in physical geography to justifythe assumption of the existence of a chain of mountains stretching forone thousand miles or more, and so nearly of the same height, that noneshould rise above the level of the sea, nor fall one hundred and fiftyfeet below that level?

How, again, on this hypothesis, are atolls to be accounted for, unless, as some have done, we take refuge in the wild supposition that everyatoll corresponds with the crater of a submarine volcano? And whatexplanation does it afford of the fact that, in some parts of the ocean, only atolls and encircling reefs occur, while others present none butfringing reefs?

These and other puzzling facts remained insoluble until the publication, in the year 1840, of Mr. Darwin's famous work on coral reefs;[123] inwhich a key was given to all the difficult problems connected with thesubject, and every difficulty was shown to be capable of solution bydeductive reasoning from a happy combination of certain well-establishedgeological and biological truths. Mr. Darwin, in fact, showed that, so long as the level of the sea remains unaltered in any area in whichcoral reefs are being formed, or if the level of the sea relativelyto that of the land is falling, the only reefs which can be formedare fringing reefs. While if, on the contrary, the level of the sea isrising relatively to that of the land, at a rate not faster than thatat which the upward growth of the coral can keep pace with it, the reefwill gradually pass from the condition of a fringing, into that of anencircling or barrier reef. And, finally, that if the relative level ofthe sea rise so much that the encircled land is completely submerged, the reef must necessarily pass into the condition of an atoll. 

For, suppose the relative level of the sea to remain stationary, after afringing reef has reached that distance from the land at which the depthof water amounts to one hundred and fifty feet. Then the reef cannotextend seaward by the migration of coral germs, because these coralgerms would find the bottom of the sea to be too deep for them to livein. And the only manner in which the reef could extend outwards, wouldbe by the gradual accumulation, at the foot of its seaward face, of atalus of coral fragments torn off by the violence of the waves, whichtalus might, in course of time, become high enough to bring its uppersurface within the limits of coral growth, and in that manner provide asort of factitious sea-bottom upon which the coral embryos might perch. If, on the other hand, the level of the sea were slowly and graduallylowered, it is clear that the parts of its bottom originally beyond thelimit of coral growth would gradually be brought within the requireddistance of the surface, and thus the reef might be indefinitelyextended. But this process would give rise neither to an encircling reefnor to an atoll, but to a broad belt of upheaved coral rock, increasingthe dimensions of the dry land, and continuous seawards with the freshfringing reef. 

Suppose, however, that the sea-level rose instead of falling, at thesame slow and gradual rate at which we know it to be rising in someparts of the world, --not more, in fact, than a few inches, or, at most, a foot or two, in a hundred years. Then, while the reef would be unableto extend itself seaward, the sea-bottom outside it being gradually moreand more removed from the depth at which the life of the coral polypesis possible, it would be able to grow upwards as fast as the searose. But the growth would take place almost exclusively around thecircumference of the reef, this being the only region in which the coralpolypes would find the conditions favourable for their existence. Thebottom of the lagoon would be raised, in the main, only by thecoral debris and coral mud, formed in the manner already described;consequently, the margins of the reef would rise faster than the bottom, or, in other words, the lagoon would constantly become deeper. And, atthe same time, it would gradually increase in breadth; as the risingsea, covering more of the land, would occupy a wider space between theedge of the reef and what remained of the land. Thus the rising seawould eventually convert a large island with a fringing reef into asmall island surrounded by an encircling reef. And it will be obviousthat when the rising of the sea has gone so far as completely to coverthe highest points of the island, the reef will have passed into thecondition of an atoll. 

But how is it possible that the relative level of the land and seashould be altered to this extent? Clearly, only in one of two ways:either the sea must have risen over those areas which are now covered byatolls and encircling reefs; or, the land upon which the sea rests musthave been depressed to a corresponding extent. 

If the sea has risen, its rise must have taken place over the wholeworld simultaneously, and it must have risen to the same height over allparts of the coral zone. Grounds have been shown for the belief that thegeneral level of the sea may have been different at different times; ithas been suggested, for example, that the accumulation of ice about thepoles during one of the cold periods of the earth's history necessarilyimplies a diminution in the volume of the sea proportioned to the amountof its water thus permanently locked up in the Arctic and Antarcticice-cellars; while, in the warm periods, the greater or lessdisappearance of the polar ice-cap implies a corresponding addition ofwater to the ocean. And no doubt this reasoning must be admitted to besound in principle; though it is very hard to say what practical effectthe additions and subtractions thus made have had on the level of theocean; inasmuch as such additions and subtractions might be eitherintensified or nullified, by contemporaneous changes in the level of theland. And no one has yet shown that any such great melting of polar ice, and consequent raising of the level of the water of the ocean, has takenplace since the existing atolls began to be formed. 

In the absence of any evidence that the sea has ever risen to the extentrequired to give rise to the encircling reefs and the atolls, Mr. Darwinadopted the opposite hypothesis, viz. , that the land has undergoneextensive and slow depression in those localities in which thesestructures exist. 

It seems, at first, a startling paradox, to suppose that the landis less fixed than the sea; but that such is the case is the uniformtestimony of geology. Beds of sandstone or limestone, thousands of feetthick, and all full of marine remains, occur in various parts of theearth's surface, and prove, beyond a doubt, that when these bedswere formed, that portion of the sea-bottom which they then occupiedunderwent a slow and gradual depression to a distance which cannot havebeen less than the thickness of those beds, and may have been very muchgreater. In supposing, therefore, that the great areas of the Pacificand of the Indian Ocean, over which atolls and encircling reefs arefound scattered, have undergone a depression of some hundreds, or, it may be, thousands of feet, Mr. Darwin made a supposition which hadnothing forced or improbable, but was entirely in accordance with whatwe know to have taken place over similarly extensive areas, in otherperiods of the world's history. But Mr. Darwin subjected his hypothesisto an ingenious indirect test. If his view be correct, it is clear thatneither atolls, nor encircling reefs, should be found in those portionsof the ocean in which we have reason to believe, on independent grounds, that the sea-bottom has long been either stationary, or slowly rising. Now it is known that, as a general rule, the level of the land is eitherstationary, or is undergoing a slow upheaval, in the neighborhood ofactive volcanoes; and, therefore, neither atolls nor encircling reefsought to be found in regions in which volcanoes are numerous and active. And this turns out to be the case. Appended to Mr. Darwin's great workon coral reefs, there is a map on which atolls and encircling reefs areindicated by one colour, fringing reefs by another, and active volcanoesby a third. And it is at once obvious that the lines of active volcanoeslie around the margins of the areas occupied by the atolls and theencircling reefs. It is exactly as if the upheaving volcanic agencieshad lifted up the edges of these great areas, while their centres hadundergone a corresponding depression. An atoll area may, in short, bepictured as a kind of basin, the margins of which have been pushed up bythe subterranean forces, to which the craters of the volcanoes have, atintervals, given vent. 

Thus we must imagine the area of the Pacific now covered by thePolynesian Archipelago, as having been, at some former time, occupiedby large islands, or, may be, by a great continent, with the ordinarilydiversified surface of plain, and hill, and mountain chain. The shoresof this great land were doubtless fringed by coral reefs; and, as itslowly underwent depression, the hilly regions, converted into islands, became, at first, surrounded by fringing reefs, and then, as depressionwent on, these became converted into encircling reefs, and these, finally, into atolls, until a maze of reefs and coral-girdled isletstook the place of the original land masses. 

Thus the atolls and the encircling reefs furnish us with clear, thoughindirect, evidence of changes in the physical geography of large partsof the earth's surface; and even, as my lamented friend, the lateProfessor Jukes, [124] has suggested, give us indications of the mannerin which some of the most puzzling facts connected with the distributionof animals have been brought about. For example, Australia and NewGuinea are separated by Torres Straits, a broad belt of sea one hundredor one hundred and twenty miles wide. Nevertheless, there is in manyrespects a curious resemblance between the land animals which inhabitNew Guinea and the land animals which inhabit Australia. But, at thesame time, the marine shellfish which are found in the shallow watersof the shores of New Guinea are quite different from those which aremet with upon the coasts of Australia. Now, the eastern end of TorresStraits is full of atolls, which, in fact, form the northern terminationof the Great Barrier Reef which skirts the eastern coast of Australia. It follows, therefore, that the eastern end of Torres Straits is anarea of depression, and it is very possible, and on many grounds highlyprobable, that, in former times, Australia and New Guinea were directlyconnected together, and that Torres Straits did not exist. If this werethe case, the existence of cassowaries and of marsupial quadrupeds, both in New Guinea and in Australia, becomes intelligible; while thedifference between the littoral molluscs of the north and the southshores of Torres Straits is readily explained by the great probabilitythat, when the depression in question took place, and what was, atfirst, an arm of the sea became converted into a strait separatingAustralia from New Guinea, the northern shore of this new sea becametenanted with marine animals from the north, while the southern shorewas peopled by immigrants from the already existing marine Australianfauna. 

Inasmuch as the growth of the reef depends upon that of successivegenerations of coral polypes, and as each generation takes a certaintime to grow to its full size, and can only separate its calcareousskeleton from the water in which it lives at a certain rate, it is clearthat the reefs are records not only of changes in physical geography, but of the lapse of time. It is by no means easy, however, to estimatethe exact value of reef chronology, and the attempts which have beenmade to determine the rate at which a reef grows vertically have yieldedanything but precise results. A cautious writer, Mr. Dana, [125] whoseextensive study of corals and coral reefs makes him an eminentlycompetent judge, states his conclusion in the following terms:--

"The rate of growth of the common branching madrepore is not over oneand a half inches a year. As the branches are open, this would not beequivalent to more than half an inch in height of solid coral for thewhole surface covered by the madrepore; and, as they are also porous, to not over three-eighths of an inch of solid limestone. But a coralplantation has large bare patches without corals, and the coral sandsare widely distributed by currents, part of them to depths over onehundred feet where there are no living corals; not more than one-sixthof the surface of a reef region is, in fact, covered with growingspecies. This reduces the three-eighths to ONE-SIXTEENTH. Shells andother organic relics may contribute one-fourth as much as corals. At theoutside, the average upward increase of the whole reef-ground per yearwould not exceed ONE-EIGHTH of an inch. 

"Now some reefs are at least two thousand feet thick, which atone-eighth of an inch a year, corresponds to one hundred and ninety-twothousand years. "*

 * Dana, Manual of Geology, p. 591. 

Halve, or quarter, this estimate if you will, in order to be certain oferring upon the right side, and still there remains a prodigiousperiod during which the ancestors of existing coral polypes havebeen undisturbedly at work; and during which, therefore, the climatalconditions over the coral area must have been much what they are now. 

And all this lapse of time has occurred within the most recent period ofthe history of the earth. The remains of reefs formed by coral polypesof different kinds from those which exist now, enter largely into thecomposition of the limestones of the Jurassic period;[126] and stillmore widely different coral polypes have contributed their quota to thevast thickness of the carboniferous and Devonian strata. Then as regardsthe latter group of rocks in America, the high authority already quotedtells us:--

"The Upper Helderberg period is eminently the coral reef period of thepalaeozoic ages. Many of the rocks abound in coral, and are as trulycoral reefs as the modern reefs of the Pacific. The corals are sometimesstanding on the rocks in the position they had when growing: others arelying in fragments, as they were broken and heaped by the waves; andothers were reduced to a compact limestone by the finer triturationbefore consolidation into rock. This compact variety is the most commonkind among the coral reef rocks of the present seas; and it oftencontains but few distinct fossils, although formed in water thatabounded in life. At the fall of the Ohio, near Louisville, there is amagnificent display of the old reef. Hemispherical Favosites, five orsix feet in diameter, lie there nearly as perfect as when they werecovered by their flowerlike polypes; and besides these, there arevarious branching corals, and a profusion of Cyathophyllia, orcup-corals. "*

 * Dana, Manual of Geology, p. 272. 

Thus, in all the great periods of the earth's history of which we knowanything, a part of the then living matter has had the form of polypes, competent to separate from the water of the sea the carbonate of limenecessary for their own skeletons. Grain by grain, and particle byparticle, they have built up vast masses of rock, the thickness of whichis measured by hundreds of feet, and their area by thousands of squaremiles. The slow oscillations of the crust of the earth, producing greatchanges in the distribution of land and water, have often obligedthe living matter of the coral-builders to shift the locality of itsoperations; and, by variation and adaptation to these modifications ofcondition, its forms have as often changed. The work it has done in thepast is, for the most part, swept away, but fragments remain, and, ifthere were no other evidence, suffice to prove the general constancyof the operations of Nature in this world, through periods of almostinconceivable duration. 

NOTES

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

[Footnote 1: Autobiography: Huxley's account of this sketch, written in1889, is as follows: "A man who is bringing out a series of portraits ofcelebrities, with a sketch of their career attached, has bothered meout of my life for something to go with my portrait, and to escape theabominable bad taste of some of the notices, I have done that. "]

[Footnote 2: pre-Boswellian epoch: the time before Boswell. JamesBoswell (1740-1795) wrote the famous Life of Samuel Johnson. Mr. LeslieStephen declares that this book "became the first specimen of a newliterary type. " "It is a full-length portrait of a man's domestic lifewith enough picturesque detail to enable us to see him through the eyesof private friendship. . . . " A number of biographers since Boswell haveimitated his method; and Leslie Stephen believes that "we owe it in somedegree to his example that we have such delightful books as Lockhart'sLife of Scott or Mr. Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay. "]

[Footnote 3: "Bene qui latuit, bene vixit": from Ovid. He who has kepthimself well hidden, has lived well. ]

[Footnote 4: Prince George of Cambridge: the grandson of King GeorgeIII, second Duke of Cambridge, and Commander-in-chief of the BritishArmy. ]

[Footnote 5: Mr. Herbert Spencer (1820--1903): a celebrated Englishphilosopher and powerful advocate of the doctrine of evolution. Spenceris regarded as one of the most profound thinkers of modern times. He wasone of Huxley's closest friends. ]

[Footnote 6: in partibus infidelium: in the domain of the unbelievers. ]

[Footnote 7: "sweet south upon a bed of violets. " Cf. Twelfth Night, ActI, sc. I, l. 5. 

 O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour. 

For the reading "sweet south" instead of "sweet sound, " see Rolfe'sedition of Twelfth Night. ]

[Footnote 8: "Lehrjahre": apprenticeship. 

Charing Cross School of Medicine: a school connected with the CharingCross Hospital in the Strand, London. ]

[Footnote 9: Nelson: Horatio Nelson, a celebrated English Admiral bornin Norfolk, England, 1758, and died on board the Victory at Trafalgar, 1805. It was before the battle off Cape Trafalgar that Nelson hoistedhis famous signal, "England expects every man will do his duty. " Cf. Tennyson's Ode to the Duke of Wellington, stanza VI, for a famoustribute to Nelson. ]

[Footnote 10: middies: abbreviated form for midshipmen. ]

[Footnote 11: Suites a Buffon: sequels to Buffon. Buffon (1707-1781) wasa French naturalist who wrote many volumes on science. ]

[Footnote 12: Linnean Society: a scientific society formed in 1788 underthe auspices of several fellows of the Royal Society. ]

[Footnote 13: Royal Society: The Royal Society for Improving NaturalKnowledge; the oldest scientific society in Great Britain, and one ofthe oldest in Europe. It was founded by Charles II, in 1660, its nucleusbeing an association of learned men already in existence. It is supposedto be identical with the Invisible College which Boyle mentions in 1646. It was incorporated under the name of The Royal Society in 1661. Thepublications of the Royal Society are called Philosophical Transactions. The society has close connection with the government, and has assistedthe government in various important scientific undertakings amongwhich may be mentioned Parry's North Pole expedition. The society alsodistributes $20, 000 yearly for the promotion of scientific research. ]

[Footnote 14: Rastignac: a character in Le Pere Goriot. At the close ofthe story Rastignac says, "A nous deux, maintenant":--Henceforth thereis war between us. ]

[Footnote 15: Pere Goriot: a novel of Balzac's with a plot similar toKing Lear. ]

[Footnote 16: Professor Tyndall (1820-1893): a distinguished Britishphysicist and member of the Royal Society. He explored with Huxley theglaciers of Switzerland. His work in electricity, radiant heat, lightand acoustics gave him a foremost place in science. ]

[Footnote 17: Ecclesiastical spirit: the spirit manifested by the clergyof England in Huxley's time against the truths of science. The clergyconsidered scientific truth to be disastrous to religious truth. Huxley's attitude toward the teaching of religious truth is illuminatedby this quotation, which he uses to explain his own position: "I havethe fullest confidence that in the reading and explaining of the Bible, what the children will be taught will be the great truths of ChristianLife and conduct, which all of us desire they should know, and that noeffort will be made to cram into their poor little minds, theologicaldogmas which their tender age prevents them from understanding. "Huxley defines his idea of a church as a place in which, "week byweek, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstractpropositions in theology, but to the setting before men's minds of anideal of true, just and pure living; a place in which those who areweary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment's rest in thecontemplation of the higher life which is possible for all, thoughattained by so few; a place in which the man of strife and of businessshould have time to think how small, after all, are the rewards hecovets compared with peace and charity. "]

[Footnote 18: New Reformation: Huxley writes: "We are in the midst ofa gigantic movement greater than that which preceded and produced theReformation, and really only the continuation of that movement. . . . But this organization will be the work of generations of men, and thosewho further it most will be those who teach men to rest in no lie, andto rest in no verbal delusion. "]

ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE (1866)

[Footnote 19: On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge:from Method and Results: also published in Lay Sermons, Addresses andReviews. ]

For the history of the times mentioned in this essay, see Green's ShortHistory of the English People. ]

[Footnote 20: The very spot: St. Martin's Borough Hall and PublicLibrary, on Charing Cross Road, near Trafalgar Square. ]

[Footnote 21: Defoe (1661-1731): an English novelist and politicalwriter. On account of his political writings Defoe was sentencedto stand in the pillory, and to be "imprisoned during the Queen'spleasure. " During this imprisonment he wrote many articles. Later inlife he wrote Robinson Crusoe, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of MollFlanders, Journal of the Plague Year, and other books less well known. ]

[Footnote 22: unholy cursing and crackling wit of the Rochesters andSedleys: John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, and Sir CharlesSedley, were both friends of Charles II, and were noted for biting witand profligacy. Green, in his Short History of the English People, thusdescribes them: "Lord Rochester was a fashionable poet, and the titlesof some of his poems are such as no pen of our day could copy. SirCharles Sedley was a fashionable wit, and the foulness of his words madeeven the porters in the Covent Garden belt him from the balcony when heventured to address them. "]

[Footnote 23: Laud: Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud was born in 1573, andbeheaded at London in 1645. He was throughout the reign of Charles I astaunch supporter of the King. He was impeached by the Long Parliamentin 1640 and executed on Tower Hill, in 1645. ]

[Footnote 24: selenography: the scientific study of the moon withspecial reference to its physical condition. ]

[Footnote 25: Torricellian experiment: a reference to the discovery ofthe principle of the barometer by the Italian, Torricelli, in 1643. ]

[Footnote 26: Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626): Bacon endeavored to teachthat civilization cannot be brought to a high point except as manapplies himself to the study of the secrets of nature, and usesthese discoveries for inventions which will give him power over hisenvironment. The chief value of the work was that it called attentionto the uses of induction and to the experimental study of facts. SeeRoger's A Student's History of Philosophy, page 243. ]

[Footnote 27: The learned Dr. Wallis (1616-1703): Dr. Wallis is regardedas the greatest of Newton's predecessors in mathematical history. Hisworks are numerous and are on a great variety of subjects. He was one ofthe first members of the Royal Society. ]

[Footnote 28: "New Philosophy": Bacon's ideas on science and philosophyas set forth in his works. ]

[Footnote 29: Royal Society: see note, page 11. ]

[Footnote 30: Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1721): a distinguished naturalphilosopher of England. Newton was elected a member of the RoyalSociety in 1672. His most important scientific accomplishment was theestablishing of the law of universal gravitation. The story of thefall of the apple was first related by Voltaire to whom it was given byNewton's niece. ]

[Footnote 31: "Philosophical Transactions": the publications of theRoyal Society. ]

[Footnote 32: Galileo (1564-1642): a famous Italian astronomer. His mostnoted work was the construction of the thermometer and a telescope. Hediscovered the satellites of Jupiter in 1610. In 1610, also, he observedthe sun's spots. His views were condemned by the Pope in 1616 and in1633 he was forced by the Inquisition to abjure the Copernican theory. ]

[Footnote 33: Vesalius (1514-1564): a noted Belgian anatomist. ]

[Footnote 34: Harvey (1578-1657): an English physiologist and anatomist. He is noted especially for his discovery of the circulation of theblood. ]

[Footnote 35: Subtle speculations: Selby gives examples from questionsdiscussed by Thomas Aquinas. Whether all angels belong to the samegenus, whether demons are evil by nature, or by will, whether they canchange one substance into another, . . . Whether an angel can move fromone point to another without passing through intermediate space. ]

[Footnote 36: Schoolmen: a term used to designate the followers ofscholasticism, a philosophy of dogmatic religion which assumed a certainsubject-matter as absolute and unquestionable. The duty of the Schoolmanwas to explain church doctrine; these explanations were characterizedby fine distinctions and by an absence of real content. See Roger's AStudent's History of Philosophy; also Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophyand Psychology. ]

[Footnote 37: "writ in water": an allusion to Keats' request that thewords "Here lies one whose name was writ in water" be his epitaph. Thewords are inscribed on his tomb in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome. ]

[Footnote 38: Lord Brouncker: The first president of the Royal Societyafter its incorporation in 1662 was Lord Brouneker. ]

[Footnote 39: revenant: ghost. ]

[Footnote 40: Boyle: Robert Boyle (1627-1691): a British chemist andnatural philosopher who was noted especially for his discovery ofBoyle's law of the elasticity of air. ]

[Footnote 41: Evelyn (1620-1706): an English author and member of theRoyal Society. His most important work is the Diary, valuable for thefull account which it gives of the manners and customs of the time. ]

[Footnote 42: The Restoration: In English history the re-establishingof the English monarchy with the return of King Charles II in 1660;by extension the whole reign of Charles II: as, the dramatists of theRestoration. Century Dictionary. ]

[Footnote 43: Aladdin's lamps: a reference to the story of the WonderfulLamp in the Arabian Nights. The magic lamp brought marvelous goodfortune to the poor widow's son who possessed it. Cf. Also Lowell'sAladdin:--

 When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend or a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp; When I could not sleep for the cold, I had fire enough in my brain, And builded, with roofs of gold, My beautiful castles in Spain!]

[Footnote 44: "When in heaven the stars": from Tennyson's Specimens of aTranslation of the Iliad in Blank Verse. ]

[Footnote 45: "increasing God's honour and bettering man's estate":Bacon's statement of his purpose in writing the Advancement ofLearning. ]

[Footnote 46: For example, etc. : could the sentence beginning thus bewritten in better form?]

[Footnote 47: Rumford (1738-1814): Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, aneminent scientist. Rumford was born in America and educated at Harvard. Suspected of loyalty to the King at the time of the revolution, he wasimprisoned. Acquitted, he went to England where he became prominent inpolitics and science. Invested with the title of Count by the Holy RomanEmpire, he chose Rumford for his title after the name of the littleNew Hampshire town where he had taught. He gave a large sum of money toHarvard College to found the Rumford professorship of science. ]

[Footnote 48: eccentric: out of the centre. ]

A LIBERAL EDUCATION (1868)

[Footnote 49: A Liberal Education: from Science and Education; alsopublished in Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews. ]

[Footnote 50: Ichabod: cf. 1 Sam. Iv, 21. ]

[Footnote 51: senior wranglership: in Cambridge University, England, one who has attained the first class in the elementary division of thepublic examination for honors in pure and mixed mathematics, commonlycalled the mathematical tripos, those who compose the second rank ofhonors being designated senior optimes, and those of the third orderjunior optimes. The student taking absolutely the first place in themathematical tripos used to be called senior wrangler, those followingnext in the same division being respectively termed second, third, fourth, etc. , wranglers. Century Dictionary. ]

[Footnote 52: double-first: any candidate for the degree of Bachelor ofArts in Oxford University who takes first-class honors in both classicsand mathematics is said to have won a double-first. ]

[Footnote 53: Retzsch (1779-1857): a well-known German painter andengraver. ]

[Footnote 54: Test-Act: an English statute of 1673. It compelled allpersons holding office under the crown to take the oaths of supremacyand of allegiance, to receive the sacrament according to the usageof the Church of England, and to subscribe to the Declaration againstTransubstantiation. ]

[Footnote 55: Poll: an abbreviation and transliteration of [FootnoteGreek words], "the mob"; university slang for the whole body of studentstaking merely the degree of Bachelor of Arts, at Cambridge. ]

[Footnote 56: pluck: the rejection of a student, after examinations, whodoes not come up to the standard. ]

ON A PIECE OF CHALK

[Footnote 57: On a Piece of Chalk: a lecture to working-men from LaySermons, Addresses and Reviews. ]

[Footnote 58: Needles of the Isle of Wight: the needles are threewhite, pointed rocks of chalk, resting on dark-colored bases, andrising abruptly from the sea to a height of 100 feet. Baedeker's GreatBritain. ]

[Footnote 59: Lulworth in Dorset, to Flamborough Head: Lulworth is onthe southern coast of England, west of the Isle of Wight: FlamboroughHead is on the northeastern coast of England and extends into the GermanOcean. ]

[Footnote 60: Weald: a name given to an oval-shaped chalk area inEngland, beginning near the Straits of Dover, and extending into thecounties of Kent, Surrey, Hants, and Sussex. ]

[Footnote 61: Lieut. Brooke: Brooke devised an apparatus for deep-seasounding from which the weight necessary to sink the instrument rapidly, was detached when it reached the bottom. The object was to relieve thestrain on the rope caused by rapid soundings. Improved apparatuses havebeen invented since the time of Brooke. ]

[Footnote 62: Ehrenberg (1795-1876): a German naturalist noted for hisstudies of Infusoria. ]

[Footnote 63: Bailey of West Point (1811-1857): an American naturalistnoted for his researches in microscopy. ]

[Footnote 64: enterprise of laying down the telegraph-cable: the firstAtlantic telegraph-cable between England and America was laid in 1858 byCyrus W. Field of New York. Messages were sent over it for a few weeks;then it ceased to act. A permanent cable was laid by Mr. Field in 1866. ]

[Footnote 65: Dr. Wallich (1786-1854): a Danish botanist and member ofthe Royal Society. ]

[Footnote 66: Mr. Sorby: President of the Geological Society ofEngland, and author of many papers on subjects connected with physicalgeography. ]

[Footnote 67: Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875): a British geologist, andone of the first to uphold Darwin's Origin of Species. ]

[Footnote 68: Echinus: the sea-urchin; an animal which dwells in aspheroidal shell built up from polygonal plates, and covered with sharpspines. ]

[Footnote 69: Somme: a river of northern France which flows into theEnglish Channel northeast of Dieppe. ]

[Footnote 70: the chipped flints of Hoxne and Amiens: the rudeinstruments which were made by primitive man were of chipped flint. Numerous discoveries of large flint implements have been made in thenorth of France, near Amiens, and in England. The first noted flintimplements were discovered in Hoxne, Suffolk, England, 1797. Cf. Evans'Ancient Stone Implements and Lyell's Antiquity of Man. ]

[Footnote 71: Rev. Mr. Gunn (1800-1881): an English naturalist. Mr. Gunn sent from Tasmania a large number of plants and animals now in theBritish Museum. ]

[Footnote 72: "the whirligig of time": cf. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act V, se. I, l. 395. ]

[Footnote 73: Euphrates and Hiddekel: cf. Genesis ii, 14. ]

[Footnote 74: the great river, the river of Babylon: cf. Genesis xv, 18]

[Footnote 75: Without haste, but without rest: from Goethe's ZahmeXenien. In a letter to his sister, Huxley says: "And then perhaps by thefollowing of my favorite motto, --

 "'Wie das Gestirn, Ohne Hast, Ohne Rast'--

 something may be done, and some of Sister Lizzie's fond imaginations turn out not altogether untrue. " The quotation entire is as follows:--

 Wie das Gestirn, Ohne Hast, Aber ohne Rast, Drehe sich jeder Um die eigne Last. ]

THE PRINCIPAL SUBJECTS OF EDUCATION (1882)

[Footnote 76: The Principal Subjects of Education: an extract from theessay, Science and Art in Relation to Education. ]

[Footnote 77: this discussion: "this" refers to the last sentence in thepreceding paragraph, in which Huxley says that it will be impossible todetermine the amount of time to be given to the principal subjectsof education until it is determined "what the principal subjects ofeducation ought to be. "]

[Footnote 78: Francis Bacon: cf. Note [Footnote 26]. ]

[Footnote 79: the best chance of being happy: In connection withHuxley's work on the London School Board, his biographer says thatHuxley did not regard "intellectual training only from the utilitarianpoint of view; he insisted, e. G. , on the value of reading for amusementas one of the most valuable uses to hardworked people. "]

[Footnote 80: "Harmony in grey": cf. With l. 34 in Browning's Andrea delSarto. ]

[Footnote 81: Hobbes (1588-1679): noted for his views of human natureand of politics. According to Minto, "The merits ascribed to his styleare brevity, simplicity and precision. "]

[Footnote 82: Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753): an Irish prelate noted forhis philosophical writings and especially for his theory of vision whichwas the foundation for modern investigations of the subject. "His stylehas always been esteemed admirable; simple, felicitous and sweetlymelodious. His dialogues are sustained with great skill. " Minto's Manualof English Prose Literature. ]

[Footnote 83: We have been recently furnished with in prose: The Iliadof Homer translated by Lang, Leaf and Myers, the first edition ofwhich appeared in 1882, is probably the one to which Huxley refers. TheOdyssey, translated by Butcher and Lang, appeared in 1879. Among thebest of the more recent translations of Homer are the Odyssey by GeorgeHerbert Palmer; the Iliad by Arthur S. Way, and the Odyssey by the sameauthor. ]

[Footnote 84: Locke (1632-1704): an English philosopher of greatinfluence. His chief work is An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. ]

[Footnote 85: Franciscus Bacon sic cogitavit: thus Francis Baconthought. ]

THE METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION (1863)

[Footnote 86: The Method of Scientific Investigation is an extractfrom the third of six lectures given to workingmen on The Causes of thePhenomena of Organic Nature in Darwiniana. ]

[Footnote 87: these terrible apparatus: apparatus is the form for boththe singular and plural; apparatuses is another form for the plural. ]

[Footnote 88: Incident in one of Moliere's plays: the allusion is to thehero, M. Jourdain in the play, "La Bourgeois Gentilbomme. "]

[Footnote 89: these kind: modern writers regard kind as singular. Shakespeare treated it as a plural noun, as "These kind of knaves Iknew. "]

[Footnote 90: Newton: cf. [Footnote 30]. ]

[Footnote 91: Laplace (1749-1827): a celebrated French astronomer andmathematician. He is best known for his theory of the formation of theplanetary systems, the so-called "nebular hypothesis. " Until recentlythis hypothesis has generally been accepted in its main outlines. Itis now being supplanted by the "Spiral Nebular Hypothesis" developedby Professors Moulton and Chamberlin of the University of Chicago. SeeMoulton's Introduction to Astronomy, p. 463. ]

ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE (1868)

[Footnote 92: On the Physical Basis of Life: from Methods and Results;also published in Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews. "The substance ofthis paper was contained in a discourse which was delivered in Edinburghon the evening of Sunday, the 8th of November, 1868--being the firstof a series of Sunday evening addresses upon non-theological topics, instituted by the Rev. J. Cranbrook. Some phrases, which could possessonly a transitory and local interest, have been omitted; instead ofthe newspaper report of the Archbishop of York's address, his Grace'ssubsequently published pamphlet On the Limits of Philosophical inquiryis quoted, and I have, here and there, endeavoured to express my meaningmore fully and clearly than I seem to have done in speaking--if I mayjudge by sundry criticisms upon what I am supposed to have said, whichhave appeared. But in substance, and, so far as my recollectionserves, in form, what is here written corresponds with what was theresaid. "--Huxley. ]

[Footnote 93: Finner whale: a name given to a whale which has a dorsalfin. A Finner whale commonly measures from 60 to 90 feet in length. ]

[Footnote 94: A fortiori: with stronger reason: still moreconclusively. ]

[Footnote 95: well-known epigram: from Goethe's Venetianische Epigramme. The following is a translation of the passage: Why do the people pusheach other and shout? They want to work for their living, bring forthchildren; and feed them as well as they possibly can. . . . No man canattain to more, however much he may pretend to the contrary. ]

[Footnote 96: Maelstroms: a celebrated whirlpool or violent current inthe Arctic Ocean, near the western coast of Norway, between the islandsof Moskenaso and Mosken, formerly supposed to suck in and destroyeverything that approached it at any time, but now known not to bedangerous except under certain conditions. Century Dictionary. Cf. AlsoPoe's Descent into the Maelstrom. ]

[Footnote 97: Milne-Edwards (1800-1885): a French naturalist. HisElements de Zoologie won him a great reputation. ]

[Footnote 98: with such qualifications as arises: a typographicalerror. ]

[Footnote 99: De Bary (1831-1888): a German botanist noted especiallyfor his researches in cryptogamic botany. ]

[Footnote 100: No Man's Land: Huxley probably intends no specificgeographical reference. The expression is common as a designation ofsome remote and unfrequented locality. ]

[Footnote 101: Kuhne (1837-1900): a German physiologist and professor ofscience at Amsterdam and Heidelberg. ]

[Footnote 102: Debemur morti nos nostraque: Horace--Ars Poetica, line63. 

 As forests change their foliage year by year, Leaves, that come first, first tall and disappear; So antique words die out, and in their room, Others spring up, of vigorous growth and bloom; Ourselves and all that's ours, to death are due, And why should words not be mortal too?

Martin's translation. ]

[Footnote 103: peau de chagrin: skin of a wild ass. ]

[Footnote 104: Balzac (1799-1850): a celebrated French novelist of therealistic school of fiction. ]

[Footnote 105: Barmecide feast: the allusion is to a story in theArabian Nights in which a member of the Barmecide family places asuccession of empty dishes before a beggar, pretending that they containa rich repast. ]

[Footnote 106: modus operandi: method of working. ]

[Footnote 107: Martinus Scriblerus: a reference to Memoirs of MartinusScriblerus written principally by John Arbuthnot, and published in1741. The purpose of the papers is given by Warburton and Spence inthe following extracts quoted from the Preface to the Memoirs of theExtraordinary Life, Works and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus inElwin and Courthope's edition of Pope's works, vol. X, p. 273:-- "Mr. Pope, Dr. Arbuthnot, and Dr. Swift, in conjunction, formed the projectof a satire on the abuses of human learning; and to make it betterreceived, proposed to execute it in the manner of Cervantes (theoriginal author of this species of satire) under a continued narrativeof feigned adventures. They had observed that those abuses still kepttheir ground against all that the ablest and gravest authors could sayto discredit them; they concluded, therefore, the force of ridicule waswanting to quicken their disgrace; and ridicule was here in its place, when the abuses had been already detected by sober reasoning; andtruth in no danger to suffer by the premature use of so powerful aninstrument. "]

"The design of this work, as stated by Pope himself, is to ridicule allthe false tastes in learning under the character of a man of capacityenough, that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciouslyin each. It was begun by a club of some of the greatest wits of theage--Lord Oxford, the Bishop of Rochester, Pope, Congreve, Swift, Arbuthnot, and others. Gay often held the pen; and Addison liked it verywell, and was not disinclined to come into it. "]

[Footnote 108: accounted for the operation of the meat-jack: from thepaper "To the learned inquisitor into nature, Martinus Scriblerus: thesociety of free thinkers greeting. " Elwin and Courthope, Pope's works, vol. ?, p. 332. ]

[Footnote 109: The remainder of the essay endeavors to meet the chargeof materialism. The following is the conclusion:--"In itself it is oflittle moment whether we express the phaenomena of matter in terms ofspirit; or the phaenomena of spirit in terms of matter: matter may beregarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property ofmatter--each statement has a certain relative truth. But with a view tothe progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in every wayto be preferred. For it connects thought with the other phaenomena ofthe universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those physicalconditions, or concomitants of thought, which are more or lessaccessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help usto exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought, aswe already possess in respect of the material world; whereas, thealternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leadsto nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. 

"Thus there can be little doubt, that the further science advances, themore extensively and consistently will all the phaenomena of Naturebe represented by materialistic formulae and symbols. But the man ofscience, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slidesfrom these formulae and symbols into what is commonly understoodby materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with themathematician, who should mistake the x's and y's with which he workshis problems, for real entities--and with this further disadvantage, ascompared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are ofno practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism mayparalyze the energies and destroy the beauty of a life. "]

ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS (1870)

[Footnote 110: On Coral and Coral Reefs: from Critiques and Addresses. The essay was published in 1870. ]

[Footnote 111: Sic et curalium: Thus also the coral, as soon as ittouches the air turns hard. It was a soft plant under the water. ]

[Footnote 112: Boccone (1633-1704): a noted Sicilian naturalist. ]

[Footnote 113: Marsigli (1658-1730): an Italian soldier and naturalist. He wrote A Physical History of the Sea. ]

[Footnote 114: "Traite du Corail": "I made the coral bloom in vases fullof sea-water, and I noticed that what we believe to be the flower ofthis so-called plant was in reality only an insect similar to a littlenettle or polype. I had the pleasure to see the paws or feet of thisnettle move, and having placed the vase full of water in which the coralwas, near the fire, at a moderate heat, all the little insects expanded, the nettle stretched out its feet and formed what M. De Marsigli andI had taken for the petals of the flower. The calyx of this so-calledflower is the very body of the animal issued from its cell. "]

[Footnote 115: Reaumur (1683-1757): a French physiologist andnaturalist, best known as the inventor of the Reaumur thermometer. Hewas a member of the French Academy of Science. ]

[Footnote 116: Bishop Wilson: Thomas Wilson (1663-1755), bishop of theIsle of Man. Details of his life are given in the folio edition of hisworks (1782). An appreciation of his religious writings is given byMatthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy. Bishop Wilson's words, "To makereason and the will of God prevail, " are the theme of Arnold's essay, Sweetness and Light. ]

[Footnote 117: An eminent modern writer: Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), eldest son of Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby; a distinguished criticand poet, and professor of poetry at Oxford. The allusion is to Arnold'sessay, Sweetness and Light. The phrase, "sweetness and light, " isone which Aesop uses in Swift's Battle of the Books to sum up thesuperiority of the ancients over the moderns. "As for us, the ancients, we are content, with the bee, to pretend to nothing of our own beyondour wings and our voice, that is to say, our flights and our language;for the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor andsearch, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is, that instead of dirt and poison we have rather chose to fill our hiveswith honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest things, which are sweetness and light. " Arnold's purpose in the essay isto define the cultured man as one who endeavors to make beauty andintelligence prevail everywhere. ]

[Footnote 118: Abbe Trembley (1700-1784): a Swiss naturalist. He wrote"Memoires pour servir a l'histoire d'un genre de polypes d'eau douce, abras en forme de cornes. "]

[Footnote 119: Bernard de Jussieu (1699-1776): a French botanist;founder of the natural classification of plants. He was superintendentof the Trianon Gardens. ]

[Footnote 120: Guettard (1715-1786): a French naturalist. ]

[Footnote 121: Monte Nuovo within the old crater of Somma: Monte Nuovo, a mountain west of Naples; Somma, a mountain north of Vesuvius whichwith its lofty, semicircular cliff encircles the active cone ofVesuvius. ]

[Footnote 122: Mauritius: an island in the Indian Ocean; Huxley visitedthe island when on the voyage with the Rattlesnake. He wrote to hismother of his visit: "This island is, you know, the scene of SaintPierre's beautiful story of Paul and Virginia, over which I suppose mostpeople have sentimentalized at one time or another of their lives. Until we reached here I did not know that the tale was like the lady'simprover--a fiction founded on fact, and that Paul and Virginia were atone time flesh and blood, and that their veritable dust was buried atPamplemousses in a spot considered as one of the lions of the place, andvisited as classic ground. "]

[Footnote 123: Mr. Darwin's coral reefs: The Structure and Distributionof Coral Reefs, published in 1848. ]

[Footnote 124: Professor Jukes (1811-1869): an English geologist. ]

[Footnote 125: Mr. Dana (1813-1895): a well-known American geologist andmineralogist; a professor at Yale from 1845. He wrote a number of booksamong which is Coral and Coral Reefs. ]

[Footnote 126: Jurassic period: that part of the geological series whichis older than the Cretaceous and newer than the Triassic; so called fromthe predominance of rocks of this age in the Jura Mountains. The threegreat divisions of fossiliferous rocks are called the Triassic, theJurassic, and the Cretaceous. ]

REFERENCE BOOKS

The following reference books are suggested for a more completetreatment of various points in the text:--Andrews' History of England. Green's Short History of the English People. Traill's Social England. Roger's A Student's History of Philosophy. Royce's The Spirit ofModern Philosophy. Huxley's Life and Letters. Smalley's Mr. Huxley, inScribner's Magazine for October, 1905. Darwin's Life and Letters.