Thomas Henry Huxley
Man's Place in Nature, and Other Essays
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664562272
Table of Contents
I ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MAN-LIKE APES.
II ON THE RELATIONS OF MAN TO THE LOWER ANIMALS.
III ON SOME FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN.
IV THE PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE.
V THE PAST CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE.
VII THE PERPETUATION OF LIVING BEINGS, HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION AND VARIATION.
VIII THE CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE AS AFFECTING THE PERPETUATION OF LIVING BEINGS.
X ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES.
XI ON THE PERSISTENT TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE.
XIII DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
XV A LOBSTER; OR, THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY.
INTRODUCTION
Forty years ago the position of scientific studies was not so firmly established as it is to-day, and a conflict was necessary to secure their general recognition. The forces of obscurantism and of free and easy dogmatism were arrayed against them; and, just as in former centuries astronomy, and in more recent times geology, so in our own lifetime biology, has had to offer a harsh and fighting front, lest its progress be impeded by the hostility born of preconceived opinions, and by the bigotry of self-appointed guardians of conservative views.
The man who probably did as much as any to fight the battle of science in the nineteenth century, and secure the victory for free enquiry and progressive knowledge, is Thomas Henry Huxley; and it is an interesting fact that already the lapse of time is making it possible to bring his writings in cheap form to the notice of a multitude of interested readers. The pugnacious attitude, however, which, forty years ago, was appropriate, has become a little antique now; the conflict is not indeed over, but it has either totally shifted its ground, or is continued on the old battlefield chiefly by survivors, and by a few of a younger generation who have been brought up in the old spirit.
The truths of materialism now run but little risk of being denied or ignored, they run perhaps some danger of being exaggerated. Brilliantly true and successful in their own territory, they are occasionally pushed by enthusiastic disciples over the frontier line into regions where they can do nothing but break down. As if enthusiastic worshippers of motor-cars, proud of their performance on the good roads of France, should take them over into the Sahara or essay them on a Polar expedition.
That represents the mistake which, in modern times, by careless thinkers, is being made. They tend to press the materialistic statements and scientific doctrines of a great man like Huxley, as if they were co-extensive with all existence. This is not really a widening of the materialistic aspect of things, it is a cramping of everything else; it is an attempt to limit the universe to one of its aspects.
But the mistake is not made solely, nor even chiefly, by those eager disciples who are pursuing the delusive gleam of a materialistic philosophy—for these there is hope—to attempt is a healthy exercise, and they will find out their mistake in time; but the mistake is also made by those who are specially impressed with the spiritual side of things, who so delight to see guidance and management everywhere, that they wish to blind their eyes to the very mechanism whereby it is accomplished. They think that those who point out and earnestly study the mechanism are undermining the foundations of faith. Nothing of the kind. A traveller in the deck-cabin of an Atlantic liner may prefer to ignore the engines and the firemen, and all the machinery and toil which is urging him luxuriously forward over the waves in the sunshine; he may try to imagine that he is on a sailing vessel propelled by the free air of heaven alone; but there is just as much utilization of natural forces to a desired end in one case of navigation as in the other, and every detail of the steamship, down to the last drop of sweat from a fireman’s grimy body, is an undeniable reality.
There are people who still resent the conclusions of biology as to man’s place in nature, and try to counteract them; but, as the late Professor Ritchie said (“Philosophical Studies,” page 24)—
“It is a mistake, which has constantly been made in the past by those who are anxious for the spiritual interests of man, to interfere with the changes which are going on in scientific conceptions. Such interference has always ended in the defeat of the supporters of the quasi-scientific doctrines which the growing science of the time has discarded. Theology interfered with Galileo, and gained nothing in the end by its interference. Astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, historical criticism, have at different periods raised alarm in the minds of those who dread a materialistic view of man’s nature; and with the very best intentions they have tried to fight the supposed enemy on his own ground, eagerly welcoming, for instance, every sign of disagreement between Darwinians and Lamarckians, or every dispute between different schools of historical critics, as if the spiritual well-being of mankind were bound up with the scientific beliefs of the seventeenth, or even earlier, century, as if e.g. it made all the difference in man’s spiritual nature whether he was made directly out of inorganic dust or slowly ascended from lower organic forms. These are questions that must be settled by specialists. On the other hand, philosophic criticism is in place when the scientific specialist begins to dogmatize about the universe as a whole, when he speaks for example as if an accurate narrative of the various steps by which the lower forms of life have passed into the higher was a sufficient