Around 1835, Thomas’ father decided to leave Ealing for Coventry, the place where the family had ancestral roots. George was so disillusioned with his poor salary that he decided to settle in Coventry hoping for better prospects.
In the ribbon-weaving city, the 10-year boy was left footloose as his parents were overloaded with the family responsibilities. Thomas used to wander in the city in spare time. Though, his parents were Anglicans, the members of the Church of England, Thomas was not at all orthodox. Instead, he sympathized with the city’s non-conformist weavers, who tried to get religious equality and to end the autocracy of Anglicans on the public institutions.
Thomas’ family, an unfortunate one, had to live under very straitened circumstances at Conventry too. His father had a letter of recommendation from a former student of Ealing School and a wealthy person, John Henry Newman. So, he could get a job as a manager of a small local savings bank of Coventry. But his salary was insufficient to provide the formal education to the Huxley siblings. But young Thomas did not allow his education to suffer after his departure from the Ealing School. He continued to pick up knowledge of languages and science through his own efforts.
Despite little formal education, Thomas read voraciously the volumes of science, history, and philosophy. At the age of 12, he read Hutton’s Geology and consumed Hamilton’s Logic. He would spend his nights reading in candlelight. He devoured book after book to satisfy his gigantic appetite. He also learnt German. Fascinated by science and religion, he deeply studied Unitarian works in the following years. These writings were a big challenge for the conservative views, dominant in natural history and natural theology in those days. The explanations of cause-and-effect theory and denial of the duality of spirit and matter were excellently covered in it.
When Thomas was still a young boy, a society was established for the diffusion of useful knowledge so that people could take their choice of innumerable encyclopaedias and factual periodicals. There were all sorts of books, cheaper and readily available. Thomas used these books and made himself familiar with the various fields and the world around him. His wide interest came out in a plan of study, which included German and Italian, physics and physiology. He tried to classify all the knowledge in his mind and slowly bent towards philosophy. The flow of knowledge would often confuse him for sometime. As he wrote, he would try to understand the philosophical writings, but with, "doubt under which head to put morality, for I cannot determine exactly in my own mind whether morality can exist independent of others, whether the idea of morality could ever have arisen in the mind of an isolated being or not."
In his teens, he was highly influenced by Thomas Carlyle’s books, in which he found sanction for his own, sympathy for the downtrodden. Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, Heroes and Hero–Worship and The French Revolution appealed to the 15-year boy to become conscious of his powers. These books taught him that religious feeling of fear and wonder were distinct from theology, which concerned with gods and miraculous events. Thomas learnt that morality was a cultural product, which left it open to a scientific explanation. The seeds of Thomas’ agnosticism, scientific zeal and understanding of sectarian political power play were sown during this learning period.
Science – Under Dominance of the Church
What led Thomas towards the field of science and medicine was the growing discontent swirling around him. The development of science was under the supervision of the Church authorities. The discovery of the chemical composition of matter was under siege, similarly as the abilities and powers of scientists. Rather, science was the ‘heritage’ of wealthy gentlemen, with the resources and leisure to fulfill their interests, or of those people who were under the patronage of such wealthy people. And again, the rich who enjoyed playing with a ‘toy’ named science, had obtained the backing from the archbishops. The total scenario seemed prohibiting the progress of science towards its peak.
However, there were few streets in England, with their desperate poor, the believers of atheism, evolution and socialism. Their opponents included the priests who derisively called them the ‘Red Lamarckians’, because they followed the thoughts of famous French evolutionist, Jean Baptiste Lamarck. These intellectuals called themselves ‘dissenters’, who opposed the established Church and the education system. Young Thomas was very much influenced by this movement and confederated him with it. A hidden desire to make his way as a scientist blossomed in his heart and with the age, it increased.
An Apprentice Becomes a Doctor
As a boy, Thomas always dreamt of becoming an engineer, but the financial condition of his family did not allow him to choose that stream. And when he was about 14, his two sisters got married to doctors. So for him, it was inevitable to enter the ‘familiar’ field of medicine and surgery.
One of his sisters, who married to Dr John Charles Cooke of Coventry, migrated to London with her husband, after a year. Young Thomas also accompanied them. At the age of 15, he began irregular medical apprenticeship under his brother-in-law. Thomas described Dr Cooke as ‘a bloated mass of beer and opium’ and wondered ‘how Cookedom is to be saved from entire submergence.’ Dr Cooke was working in an area of poverty-stricken tenements, where most of the patients died of malnutrition and typhoid. And such casualties were secretly buried on wasteland, without much expense or ceremony.
During this period, he also assisted Dr Chandler from London in Rotherhithe surgery. Young Thomas found himself alone among the helpless doctors, who were ruled by the archbishops and vicars of the Church of England. His lifelong opponents, the archbishops, had held fast to the notion that nature worked out of God’s divine plan. Thomas had no alternative but to be a mute spectator of the drama performed by the ‘puppet’ medical persons who were totally under the control of the licensing boards, administered by the scions of privilege.
As his biographer Desmond wrote : "That January, Tom found himself alone in a tiny Rotherhithe surgery. The horrors he saw there were to mark him for life. The poor of East London were as little known as the ‘Savages of Australia’. Yet no aborigine was half so savage, so unclean as these troglodyte tenement dwellers. Rooms were putrid from overflowing cesspools. Even sanitation pioneers such as Southwood Smith (who took Dickens to see the fever nests) needed a dose of fanaticism, as a sort of moral coca, to stomach the sights. Starvation left the children emaciated and typhoid killed them. Even death brought its own shame. Wasteland burials were so common in Rotherhithe that rotting bodies were thrown up with each new interment. It was a macabre winter."
The period in the East End left him with horrible memories of poverty and squalor. He wrote that he "used to wonder sometimes why these people did not sally forth in mass and get a few hours eating and drinking and plunder to their heart’s content, before the police could stop and hang a few of them!"
Thomas worked for two years with his brother-in-law. Simultaneously, he received some formal medical training in a private training college. While at this college, he passed several examinations with distinction. He was awarded a number of prizes, including a botany prize, but the best reward was a free scholarship. In those days, a few seats were reserved for gentlemen’s sons, who could not afford the fees for higher studies. Thomas and his brother, James were fortunate to secure free places at the newly opened Charing Cross Hospital, through the scholarships for ‘Young Gentleman of respectable but unfortunate families.’
At Charing, Thomas had no difficulty in studying chemistry, anatomy and physiology because of his vast reading; he received many prizes in these subjects. Apart from studies, he would spend a good deal of time making caricatures of his teachers and also in further reading. He bore the fruits of his hard efforts by winning a gold medal in the first medical examination of the University of London.
In 1845, he received his medical degree. Though he was a student, he could publish his first research paper, adding one more feather in his cap. Then, he took admission in the Royal College of Surgeons.
Born In a ‘Foggy’ Atmosphere
Thomas Huxley was born in an old English village of Ealing near London, on May 4, 1825. The Ealing of Huxley’s childhood was a nice village, breathing in the pleasant air coming through wide-open fields, farmlands, and flowing streams. The orchard trees of the aristocratic landlords had made Ealing a ‘royal village’. It was a typical rustic village dotting the English countryside. It gained life every June as the villagers enjoyed the three-day fair, by racing, gambling and drinking. Huxley has not left more records of his early life. It seems that he deliberately avoided sketching out his unhappy early years.
Thomas Huxley’s nickname was ‘Tom’. His mother, Rachel Huxley, was a lady with brown hair and piercing black eyes. She was an energetic woman with a great rapidity of thoughts. Tom resembled Rachel. Rachel had lost her two children in their infancy and Tom was the youngest of six children. As a child, feeling insecure, Tom would often lay awake at night, crying for a morbid fear that his mother might die.
His father, George Huxley, was a struggling schoolmaster. He taught mathematics at the local school but his income was not sufficient to run a big family of six children. The Huxley family lived in a ramshackle house, just above a butcher’s shop opposite St Mary’s Church, rented at £27 per annum.
The Huxley kids were brought up in the struggling English society. When Tom was five, William IV became the king of England. During the 1830s and 40s, the economic and social misery swept over the country that inspired writers like Gaskell (Mary Barton) and Charles Dickens to create immortal word sketches. The Industrial Revolution and the increasing factory zone, like fungi, carved a path of destitution in the country that had an indelible impression on the young boy.
Unhappy Early Years
Thomas had an extremely unhappy childhood. His growing years had left long-lasting imprints on his character. During his early years, he felt himself surrounded with social instability, penury, political anarchy, unorganized industrialization and the dominance of the Church of England. Moreover, his family atmosphere was also disturbed.
He always remained thirsty for love and security. From childhood to adulthood, he had to face many sad events. His mother died of heart disease, when he was 27. His father suffered no shock because he was sunk in worse than childish imbecility of mind and died at the Barming asylum. Thomas’ elder brothers, George and James also suffered from extreme mental anxiety in their later years of life and became almost mental wrecks. His two elder sisters were married to doctors, but as a brother, he had to aid them financially, as they lived on scarce resources. William, six years elder to Thomas, estranged from him for 30 years after his marriage, despite living in London.
An author, Beatrice Webb, who was presumably ignorant of the strange family history of Huxley, had once made the most percipient comment on his character : "Huxley, when not working, dreams strange things : carries on lengthy conversation between unknown persons living within his brain. There is a strain of madness in them."
Perhaps, throughout his life, Huxley tried to fill the vacuum and emotional scarcity created in his mind due to his early unhappy years.
Schooling Years
Thomas was aware of the conditions of the lives around him, and in later years, he frankly declared, "I am a plebeian, and I stand by my order." The Huxley boys were more fortunate than others were as they could attend the Great Ealing School, only because his father was a teacher there. But Thomas did not count this as his good fortune. In those days, the Great Ealing was considered to be the finest private school in England, where even Prince Louis Philippe, the ‘Citizen King’ of France, served as a teacher for a period during his exile from his country ranking almost with Eton and Harrow. The teaching of the school was well appreciated as it paved the way for the future Cardinal Newman to the prestigious Oxford University at the age of 16. Extra-curricular activities like riding, shooting and performances of classical plays were considered superior to those of Westminster school. The school had other notable students like William Thackeray, the novelist and W S Gilbert, the librettist. But as far as mathematics was concerned, the teaching was the worst. There was not a single boy, who could even explain the difference between an equilateral and an obtuse-angled triangle. Perhaps, his father was labeled as an ineffective mathematics teacher and Thomas had a hard life at school as the son of such an unsuccessful teacher. Thomas was often beaten and abused as a ‘fag’ in one of the 300-odd rich boys at the school.
Later, Thomas expressed his worst early memories to his friend, Herbert Spencer; "I had two years of a pandemonium of a school." And he deliberately affirmed that, in the whole life, he was acquainted with the highest and the lowest categories of people but ‘the worst society’ he had known was at the Great Ealing School. In short, Thomas was miserably unhappy in his school days, a two-year span of 1833-34.
The Voracious Student
Around 1835, Thomas’ father decided to leave Ealing for Coventry, the place where the family had ancestral roots. George was so disillusioned with his poor salary that he decided to settle in Coventry hoping for better prospects.
In the ribbon-weaving city, the 10-year boy was left footloose as his parents were overloaded with the family responsibilities. Thomas used to wander in the city in spare time. Though, his parents were Anglicans, the members of the Church of England, Thomas was not at all orthodox. Instead, he sympathized with the city’s non-conformist weavers, who tried to get religious equality and to end the autocracy of Anglicans on the public institutions.
Thomas’ family, an unfortunate one, had to live under very straitened circumstances at Conventry too. His father had a letter of recommendation from a former student of Ealing School and a wealthy person, John Henry Newman. So, he could get a job as a manager of a small local savings bank of Coventry. But his salary was insufficient to provide the formal education to the Huxley siblings. But young Thomas did not allow his education to suffer after his departure from the Ealing School. He continued to pick up knowledge of languages and science through his own efforts.
Despite little formal education, Thomas read voraciously the volumes of science, history, and philosophy. At the age of 12, he read Hutton’s Geology and consumed Hamilton’s Logic. He would spend his nights reading in candlelight. He devoured book after book to satisfy his gigantic appetite. He also learnt German. Fascinated by science and religion, he deeply studied Unitarian works in the following years. These writings were a big challenge for the conservative views, dominant in natural history and natural theology in those days. The explanations of cause-and-effect theory and denial of the duality of spirit and matter were excellently covered in it.
When Thomas was still a young boy, a society was established for the diffusion of useful knowledge so that people could take their choice of innumerable encyclopaedias and factual periodicals. There were all sorts of books, cheaper and readily available. Thomas used these books and made himself familiar with the various fields and the world around him. His wide interest came out in a plan of study, which included German and Italian, physics and physiology. He tried to classify all the knowledge in his mind and slowly bent towards philosophy. The flow of knowledge would often confuse him for sometime. As he wrote, he would try to understand the philosophical writings, but with, "doubt under which head to put morality, for I cannot determine exactly in my own mind whether morality can exist independent of others, whether the idea of morality could ever have arisen in the mind of an isolated being or not."
In his teens, he was highly influenced by Thomas Carlyle’s books, in which he found sanction for his own, sympathy for the downtrodden. Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, Heroes and Hero–Worship and The French Revolution appealed to the 15-year boy to become conscious of his powers. These books taught him that religious feeling of fear and wonder were distinct from theology, which concerned with gods and miraculous events. Thomas learnt that morality was a cultural product, which left it open to a scientific explanation. The seeds of Thomas’ agnosticism, scientific zeal and understanding of sectarian political power play were sown during this learning period.
Science – Under Dominance of the Church
What led Thomas towards the field of science and medicine was the growing discontent swirling around him. The development of science was under the supervision of the Church authorities. The discovery of the chemical composition of matter was under siege, similarly as the abilities and powers of scientists. Rather, science was the ‘heritage’ of wealthy gentlemen, with the resources and leisure to fulfill their interests, or of those people who were under the patronage of such wealthy people. And again, the rich who enjoyed playing with a ‘toy’ named science, had obtained the backing from the archbishops. The total scenario seemed prohibiting the progress of science towards its peak.
However, there were few streets in England, with their desperate poor, the believers of atheism, evolution and socialism. Their opponents included the priests who derisively called them the ‘Red Lamarckians’, because they followed the thoughts of famous French evolutionist, Jean Baptiste Lamarck. These intellectuals called themselves ‘dissenters’, who opposed the established Church and the education system. Young Thomas was very much influenced by this movement and confederated him with it. A hidden desire to make his way as a scientist blossomed in his heart and with the age, it increased.
An Apprentice Becomes a Doctor
As a boy, Thomas always dreamt of becoming an engineer, but the financial condition of his family did not allow him to choose that stream. And when he was about 14, his two sisters got married to doctors. So for him, it was inevitable to enter the ‘familiar’ field of medicine and surgery.
One of his sisters, who married to Dr John Charles Cooke of Coventry, migrated to London with her husband, after a year. Young Thomas also accompanied them. At the age of 15, he began irregular medical apprenticeship under his brother-in-law. Thomas described Dr Cooke as ‘a bloated mass of beer and opium’ and wondered ‘how Cookedom is to be saved from entire submergence.’ Dr Cooke was working in an area of poverty-stricken tenements, where most of the patients died of malnutrition and typhoid. And such casualties were secretly buried on wasteland, without much expense or ceremony.
During this period, he also assisted Dr Chandler from London in Rotherhithe surgery. Young Thomas found himself alone among the helpless doctors, who were ruled by the archbishops and vicars of the Church of England. His lifelong opponents, the archbishops, had held fast to the notion that nature worked out of God’s divine plan. Thomas had no alternative but to be a mute spectator of the drama performed by the ‘puppet’ medical persons who were totally under the control of the licensing boards, administered by the scions of privilege.
As his biographer Desmond wrote : "That January, Tom found himself alone in a tiny Rotherhithe surgery. The horrors he saw there were to mark him for life. The poor of East London were as little known as the ‘Savages of Australia’. Yet no aborigine was half so savage, so unclean as these troglodyte tenement dwellers. Rooms were putrid from overflowing cesspools. Even sanitation pioneers such as Southwood Smith (who took Dickens to see the fever nests) needed a dose of fanaticism, as a sort of moral coca, to stomach the sights. Starvation left the children emaciated and typhoid killed them. Even death brought its own shame. Wasteland burials were so common in Rotherhithe that rotting bodies were thrown up with each new interment. It was a macabre winter."
The period in the East End left him with horrible memories of poverty and squalor. He wrote that he "used to wonder sometimes why these people did not sally forth in mass and get a few hours eating and drinking and plunder to their heart’s content, before the police could stop and hang a few of them!"
Thomas worked for two years with his brother-in-law. Simultaneously, he received some formal medical training in a private training college. While at this college, he passed several examinations with distinction. He was awarded a number of prizes, including a botany prize, but the best reward was a free scholarship. In those days, a few seats were reserved for gentlemen’s sons, who could not afford the fees for higher studies. Thomas and his brother, James were fortunate to secure free places at the newly opened Charing Cross Hospital, through the scholarships for ‘Young Gentleman of respectable but unfortunate families.’
At Charing, Thomas had no difficulty in studying chemistry, anatomy and physiology because of his vast reading; he received many prizes in these subjects. Apart from studies, he would spend a good deal of time making caricatures of his teachers and also in further reading. He bore the fruits of his hard efforts by winning a gold medal in the first medical examination of the University of London.
In 1845, he received his medical degree. Though he was a student, he could publish his first research paper, adding one more feather in his cap. Then, he took admission in the Royal College of Surgeons.
Dr Huxley on ‘HMS Rattlesnake’
Thomas Huxley, with a doctorate in his hand, needed to earn his living and moreover he had to repay the debts he borrowed during his student life. At this stage, he did not require higher studies, but money. So, in 1846, he became an Assistant Surgeon in the Royal Navy.
However he failed to secure the desired position of a resident doctor at the Royal Navy Hospital. Huxley was ordered to handle the charge as a medical officer on board of ‘donkey frigate’ survey-ship, HMS Rattlesnake, set to depart for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and New Guinea.
Huxley began his voyage of discovery on December 1, 1846. Some 15 years earlier, the legendary voyage of Darwin on the ship, Beagle, had revealed many a truths of nature and history was going to repeat itself. Only Huxley’s voyage did not last as long as Darwin’s, and came to an end successfully in four years.
During protected voyaging in Australian waters, Huxley was exposed to a new world – the world of scientific mysteries. During the voyage, he also wrote a diary from 1846 to 1850, which was later edited by his grandson, Julian Huxley, titled ‘T H Huxley’s Diary of the Voyage of HMS Rattlesnake’, 40 years after Huxley’s death. In the diary, he had described his exciting experiences during the period.
The vessel, HMS Rattlesnake, leaked at the seams and swarmed with cockroaches. The lower-deck berth was hardly 4’ 10" in height and it was the most uncomfortable part of the ship for Huxley, who was 5’ 11" in height. Huxley had vividly described the bad conditions on the HMS Rattlesnake in his diary : "I wonder if it is possible for the mind of man to conceive anything more degradingly offensive than the condition of us 150 men, shut up in this wooden box, being watered with hot water, as we are now… It’s too hot to sleep, and my sole amusement consists in watching the cockroaches, which are in a state of intense excitement and happiness."
Despite of cockroaches and scarce means for scientific research on board, there was something more interesting than compensating advantages. Huxley’s senior John Macgillivary, the official naturalist, was much enthusiastic about the interesting young medico. Huxley would assist him with pleasure and in return, Macgillivary would allow Huxley to carry on his own research. The captain of HMS Rattlesnake, Owen Stanley, allowed him to work in the chart room to use books and microscope. Huxley, with much difficulty and less comfort, performed scientific research on the creatures living on the surface of sea.
Nettie
Leaving Spithead on December 3, 1846, cruising inside the Great Barrier Reef and up through the Torres Straits, Huxley devoted his time to marine life, but not completely. While ‘diving’ into the depths of the sea, he found a ‘pearl’ that ornamented his life forever. She was Henrietta Anne Heathorn, né, Nettie, a brewer’s daughter.
When HMS Rattlesnake neared Mauritius in the May of 1847, Huxley found himself in heaven. He wrote to his mother that the place was ‘a complete paradise, and if I had nothing better to do, I should pick up some pretty French Eve (and there are plenty) and turn to Adam." And, Huxley really turned to Adam, when the beautiful Henrietta (Nettie) met him on the port of Sydney. She was three months younger to the handsome doctor. Huxley boldly went to her and asked for a dance. Nettie was attracted by his sense of humor and intellect. They had several meetings over a period of few months. Nettie later told about the wonderful evening when she met him for the second time, "…what an evening of glamour it was… Before we left, he begged of me the red camellia I wore." The camellia was found preserved amongst his papers after his death.
A whirlwind romance in Sydney ended in the engagement of the English sailor and the Australian girl. The courtship period lasted for 8 years, till their marriage in 1855.
Received Praise, Not Pudding
By this time, Huxley considered it his moral duty to weigh the evidences before believing Church dogmas. He sailed to the Great Barrier Reef and up to the southern coast of New Guinea, drew Papuans. He also faced terrible mental collapses in the intense heat of the Coral Sea, with the only worry about the worth of his scientific research. Huxley had the great advantage of studying biology, not theoretically but practically, thousands of miles away from the monotonous university education. There was no teacher to tell him what he should study in a specimen, dredged up in his adapted wire-mesh meat cover. His observations were totally novel and unchallengable. Without any instructor and with few books in hand, Huxley got excellent result of his zoological research. The aristocratic Captain of the HMS Rattlesnake, Owen Stanley, helped Huxley mail his research papers. From each port, during his voyage, he sent it to his father who was the bishop of Norwich, for London publication.
When Huxley returned home in 1850, he found that his hard efforts bore fruits, as he was welcomed on his land by bestowing upon him recognition of a budding scientist. The English scientists accepted his potential, by making him a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851. Huxley’s meteoric rise in the world of science introduced him with intellectuals like Charles Lyell – the geologist, Joseph Hooker – the botanist, Herbert Spencer – the philosopher, and Charles Darwin – the naturalist. Huxley was a young cub amongst these established personalities, who bound themselves with a string of everlasting friendship with Huxley. With his eldest sister Eliza, né, Lizze, Huxley shared a very close emotional bond. At this happiest moment of his life, he conveyed his feelings to her, "I have taken a better position than I could have excepted among these grandees, and I find them all immensely civil and ready to help me on."
In 1852, Huxley won the Royal Medal for his remarkable contribution in the field of science. The next year, he became a councilor of the Society. But it was all mere appreciation, no pudding. Moreover, what he most needed was, firstly, time for research, and secondly, to make him capable financially, so he could bring his foreigner fiancée Nettie, to England. The British Treasury allowed him time to finish his Oceanic Hydrozoa research, but on half pay.
Sir Richard Owen, a reputed anatomist, jealous by nature, asked the First Lord of Admiralty to relieve Huxley of normal naval duties so that he could complete his research. The Royal Society and the British Association, both emphasized on it and as a result, Huxley was put on leave for six months. It extended for further 12 months and then another one and a half-years. Huxley worked very hard and did a great deal of research on the Oceanic Hydrozoa, but it remained unpublished for long. Huxley was not financially sound; so he demanded that since his research was carried out during his naval voyage, the Admiralty should finance for the publication of his work. But as Huxley was no more an official naturalist on HMS Rattlesnake, his reasonable demand fell to deaf ears. When he was awarded the Royal Society’s Gold Medal, he promised his friend, "I will ‘roar you like any sucking dove’ at the dinner." But Huxley had been long used to strict discipline and was not that much disobedient to criticize any act of his superiors. But more or less, he could not prevent himself from making an acid remark, "The Government of this country, of this great country, has been two years debating whether it should grant the £300, necessary for the publication of these researches or not."
Neither the Admiralty nor Huxley were easily moved against their will. The conflict ended on March 3, 1854, with his expulsion from the Royal Navy. Indeed, it was the best start for the young man in London.
Diversion into Academic Career
Huxley did a painstaking analysis of thousands of mostly invertebrate specimen, which he collected, supporting himself on a stipend from Navy and by writing popular science articles. Then, he had no alternative other than finding a job. He tried for some academic posts in science, but such jobs were rare as Britain’s Oxford trained professors preferred to learn classics and the public schools considered science dehumanizing.
Prohibited by his naval career and disappointed by the hopeless status of English education, Huxley even thought about immigrating to Australia and becoming a brewer. In such struggling situation, he wrote to his fianceé, "To attempt to live by any scientific pursuit is a farce… A man of science may earn great distinction but not bread. He will get invitations to all sorts of dinners and conversations, but not enough income to pay his cab fare."
Huxley was quite depressed during this time, but at the same time, he was not completely pessimistic. Future’s uncertainty was breaking his heart, but not his mind. The only thing that possessed his mind was a doubt whether he would succeed in any field. Though it seemed difficult to fulfill his desire in that phase, he revealed to his dear sister, Lizzie : "I will leave my mark somewhere, and it shall be clear and distinct and free from the abominable blur of cant, humbug and self-seeking which surrounds his present world’ that is to say, supposing that I am not already unconsciously tainted myself, a result of which I have a morbid dread."
The Industrial Revolution of 1848 had come and gone, leaving Huxley once again struggling to make a mark in the field of science.
A Lecturer
Huxley tried to get the chair of Natural History at Sydney, applied for an appointment at the University of Toronto, knocked the doors of several colleges in London, including King’s College, but returned empty-handed. In summer of 1853, he was determined to fight against the hostile situations. He wrote to his fianceé, "My course in life is taken. I will not leave London – I will make myself a name and a position as well as an income by some kind of pursuit connected with science, which is the thing for which nature has fitted me if she has ever fitted any one for anything."
At last, after four years, his fortune took a turn in 1854, when he managed to secure lectureship at the Royal School of Mines in Central London. At the same time, new professional ethos swept the country. Working as a professor of Natural History and Paleontology, Huxley also organized public lectures for the liberation of science. The fortune had opened the doors for him. He was offered chairs at the Royal Institutions and the Royal College of Surgeons, simultaneously. He accepted the offers and worked hard for the advancement of education and science. He trained the lecturers and teachers in the science stream and gave a meritocratic exam based approach to education.
An Affectionate Family Person
As his position stabilized, he sent a long awaited message to her fiancée. Their separation of eight years ended with Nettie’s arrival to England. Huxley wrote in his diary : "God help me ! I discover that I am as bad as any young fool who knows no better, and if the necessity for giving six lectures a week did not sternly interfere, I should be hanging about her ladyship’s apron-strings all day."
Unfortunately, England’s climate did not suit Nettie. In fact, her health deteriorated due to improper medicinal care. When Huxley saw her on the port of England, he was very shocked by the gloomy face and skeleton like body. The delicate lady, perhaps, could not bear the long parting from her beloved. The consultant physician declared that she would live only six months. Huxley, the true lover, declared, "Well, six months or not, she is going to be my wife."
And they married. The newly wedded couple honeymooned at Tenby and enjoyed the seashore. Destiny favored Huxley and Nettie recovered.
Next year’s Christmas was memorable for the couple as Nettie gifted her husband a baby boy. Noel was "a fair-haired, blue-eyed, stout little Trojan, very like his mother". In the coming years, Nettie bore him other seven children named Jessie, Martin, Leonard, Rachel, Marian, Henry and Ethel. Huxley himself had an unhappy childhood, but he provided an ideal atmosphere for his growing kids. His married life was happy till the death of his wife in 1887. Huxley was satisfied with his personal life and would always advise his bachelor friends to marry and live a blessed social life. His family was such that it was once described as ‘a Republic tempered by epigram’.
‘Darwin’s Bulldog’
On one side, Huxley was busy in his family and the educational and scientific progress. On the other, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace shook up the scientific world by publishing Darwin’s Origin of Species in June 1859. Huxley was the first supporter to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. His famous letter to Darwin, dated November 23, 1859, is the evidence that Huxley did more than anyone else to advance the theory’s acceptance in the world. The letter read :
"I finished your book yesterday… Since I read Von Baer’s Essays nine years ago, no work on Natural History, Science I have met with has made so great an impression on me and I do most heartily thank you for the great store of new views you have given me…
As for your doctrines, I am prepared to go to the stake if requisite…
I trust, you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable abuse and misrepresentation, which unless I greatly mistake is in store for you…
And as to the curs, which will bark and yelp – you must recollect that some of your friends at any rate are endowed with an amount of combativeness, which (though you have often and justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead….
I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness…"
Huxley was so passionate that he was criticized by some as ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ for his outspoken support to Darwin’s theory. In fact, he did not swallow the theory blindly and uncritically; instead, he challenged the authenticity of several aspects and figured out a number of problems, too. He had done original research in zoology and paleontology, proving himself to be a great biologist of his own mettle.
The Challenging Phase
Huxley lived an active life within and outside the laboratory. In the later period of his life, he was active in various campaigns, in addition to lend support to the theory of evolution.
On June 30, 1860, he debated with the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce. In this famous debate, organized by British Association for Advancement of Science, Huxley successfully crushed the viewpoints of Religion, Faith and Belief that had invaded in the field of science by his scientific and rationalist approach. Beginning from this memorable success until his death, he gave a number of lectures on organic evolution at various places and led his arguments in such a way that eventually convinced others.
Many of Huxley’s works proved to be quite controversial. He believed that mankind should be viewed as a product of evolutionary processes. In 1863, he published his much debated work, Zoological Evidences as to Man’s Place in Nature. This book was published only five years after Darwin’s Origin of Species.
During this period, he came across his teenage idol, Carlyle. Once, while crossing a street, he saw Carlyle and greeted him. Carlyle, at the fag end of his life, hardly spoke to him. He just looked up, peered into Huxley’s eyes and said, "You’re Huxley, aren’t you ? The man who says we all descended from monkeys…" and walked on. Even after this experience, Huxley felt pride for having spoken to his long respected mentor, to whom he remained ever grateful for his influence.
Departure Of an ‘Agnostic’
In the following years, Huxley was posted on a number of designations and he traveled extensively for the advancement of science and education. He implemented many reformative action plans. His warfare image and political influence got him a nickname, ‘The General’. He always remained a headline grabber by his novel thoughts and revolutionary talks. His last major talk was on Evolution and Ethics at the University of Oxford in 1893.
Meanwhile, he suffered from pleurisy and heart disease in London’s smog. So, he moved with his family to Eastbourne, on the Sussex Coast. He spent his last decade as a reputed statesman of science, whose trademark of ‘National Darwinism’ turned science against socialism and made it free from the chains of Church dominance. He was accepted as a brilliant propagandist for science, as much as a patriot educationist. The conservative Prime Minister, Robert Cecil, bestowed Huxley by appointing him to the Privy Council in 1892. The Right Honorable T H Huxley was considered the patriarch of an expanding intellectual dynasty, as he supported and advanced many intellectual personalities in various fields. Among his family members, four maintained the heritage of their ancestor’s mission. His son, Leonard Huxley became a prominent editor and ‘a man of letters’. His three grand children, his three jewels, glittered on their own – Julian Huxley and Andrew Huxley were eminent biologists and Aldous Huxley was a world-renowned author.
The greatest Victorian scientist, leaving this great heritage for us, died of heart attack on June 29, 1895, during a lecture on his coined term Agnosticism, making us realize ‘One can know nothing of ultimate reality, whether spiritual or material.’
On his tombstone were inscribed three sparkling lines from a poem written by his beloved, Nettie :
Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep
For still he giveth His beloved sleep,
And it an endless sleep He wills, so best.
"I will leave my mark somewhere, and it shall be clear and distinct."
Educated in the background of Church dominance over science and education, Professor Huxley was an epoch of the 19th century. A self-educated, intellectual giant and a pioneering genius, his impacts can be felt on the science and education not only in the Victorian England but also on the world today.
Beginning his career as an apprentice of a surgeon, Huxley left no field untouched. During his 65 years of career, he served as a naval surgeon, a zoologist, a teacher, an educationist, an author, a lecturer and a crusader for the liberation of human intelligence. The foremost supporter of Darwinism, he was honored as the President of the first school board of London and of the world. The winner of Royal, Copley and Darwin medals, Huxley is regarded as one of the most pertinacious agnostics, the believer of the things that are proved rationally or scientifically. He dared to break the dominance of Church and opened the doors of knowledge for the young rebels, demolishing the natural imbecility of the human race.
The greatest Englishman of all time has been truly paid tribute by the essayist H L Mencken :
"All of us owe a vast debt to Huxley, especially all of us of English speech, for it was he, more than any other man, who worked that great change in human thought which marked the Nineteenth Century."
May 4, 1825 Born in Ealing, Middlesex, England.
1835 The Huxley family moved to Coventry.
1840 Went to London as a medical apprentice to his brother-in-law.
1842 Secured a free scholarship and began his medical studies at Charing Cross Hospital.
1845
Received his medical degree from the University of London.
Got admission at the Royal College of Surgeons.
1846 Entered the Royal Navy as an Assistant Surgeon and was posted aboard a survey ship, HMS Rattelsnake.
1850 Returned to England.
1851 Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
1854 Became a professor of Natural History and Paleontology at the Royal School of Mines.
1855 Married Henrietta Anne Heathorn.
1859
Darwin’s The Origin of Species, based on his theory of evolution published.
Huxley became the foremost supporter of Darwinism.
June 30,1860
His famous debate with Archbishop Samuel Wilberforce at the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Referred as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’.
1863 Publication of Huxley’s famous work, Zoological Evidences as to Man’s Place in Nature.
1864 Formed the X–Club for the advancement of science with friends – botanist, Joseph Hooker, philosopher, Herbert Spencer and physicist, John Tyndall.
1870
Joined the Eton College governing board and the London School Board.
Served as President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
1883 Became the President of the Royal Society of England.
1869 Coined the new term – Agnostic.
1890 His health deteriorated in London’s smog. Moved to Eastbourn on the Sussex Coast in England.
1892 Was appointed to the Privy Council by Prime Minister Robert Cecil.
1876 Went to America where he made the succession of fossil horses, the Demonstrative Evidence of Evolution.
1893
His last major talk on Evolution and Ethics at the University of Oxford.
June 29,1895 Died at Eastbourne, Sussex, England.
Importance of His Works
Huxley’s career testifies the wealth of his scientific investigations, the establishment of young generation and it also advises disciplined education. His works are pertinent today and they help us understand our culture and issues. Huxley’s works give the best solutions for the world-problems that afflict the people today. Some of the major points of his works are enlisted below :
• The necessity of knowing about cultures other than our own.
• The havoc to the species of global over-population.
• The process of evolution, particularly of human evolution.
• The inherited or acquired features that differentiate the races and the genders.
• The relevance of race as a classifying system for mankind.
• The movement to throw away the orthodox beliefs and to accept the traditions of a liberal education.
• The role of government in developing academic program, supporting museums and awareness of health.
• The assertion of the reality of devils and witches and of other irrationalities.
• The attack on science, as not being an analysis of reality but an expression of scientist’s prejudices, classes, racial and gender.
• The debate between religious fundamentalism and secularism.
• The necessity of individualism.
His Most Notable Publications
• Evidences as to Man’s Place in Nature, 1863
• On Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature, 1863
• On Piece of Chalk – an Essay, 1868
• An Introduction to the Classification of Animals, 1869
• A Manual of the Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals, 1871
• A Manual of the Anatomy of Invertebrated Animals, 1877
• American Addresses, 1877
• The Crayfish: An Introduction to the Study of Zoology, 1879
• Agnosticism, 1889
• Essays on Some Controverted Questions, 1892
• Evolution and Ethics, 1893
• Collected Essays, IX Volumes (Published posthumously), 1898-1903, edited by Foster and Lankester
• T H Huxley’s Diary of the Voyage of HMS Rattlesnake (Published posthumously) 1935, edited by Julian Huxley
• The savage of civilization is a more dangerous animal than any other wild beast.
• Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
• It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
• There is nobody so hard to teach properly and well as people who know nothing about a subject.
• What I like about the family is the way they all seem to care so much for each other.
• I will leave my mark somewhere, and it shall be clear and distinct.
• I always find that I acquire influence, generally more than I want.
• There is no popular teacher who has contributed more to the awakening of the intellect.
• If I were not a man, I think I should like to be a tug.
• Living nature is not a mechanism but a poem.
• The aesthetic faculties of the human soul have been foreshadowed in the Infinite mind.
• True science and true religion are twin sisters, and the separation of either from the other is sure to prove the death of both.
• What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to be the soul.
• The modern world is full of artillery; and we turn out our children to do battle in it, equipped with the shield and sword of an ancient gladiator.
• If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger ?
• The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s time.
• Veracity is the heart of morality.
• …A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
• Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
• There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.
• Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
• In matters of intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard for any other consideration.
• Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
• The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence.
• The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to put the other somewhat higher.
• The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
• All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
• It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.
• Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
• Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind’s throwing.
• That which I mean by ‘Science’ is not mere physical science but all the results of exact methods of thought whatever be the subject matter to which they are applied.
• Great is humbug and it will prevail, unless the people who do not like it will hit hard. The beast has no brains, but you can knock the heart out of him.
• Any social condition in which the development of wealth involves the misery, the physical weakness, and the degradation of the worker, is absolutely and infallibly doomed to collapse. Your bayonets and cutlasses will break under your hand.
• In science, faith is based solely on the assent of intellect; and the most complete submission to ascertain truth is wholly voluntary, because it is accompanied by perfect freedom, nay, by every encouragement, to test and try that truth to the uttermost.
• …Truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.
• It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a super inducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.
•Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about, but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before.
• The only religion that appeals to me is prophetic Judaism. Add to it something from the best stoics and something from Spinoza and something from Goethe, and there is a religion for men.
• Men, my dear, are very queer animals, a mixture of horse-nervousness, ass-stubbornness and camel-malice – with an angel bobbing about unexpectedly like the apple in the posset.
• Posthumous fame is not particularly attractive to me, but, if I am to be remembered at all, I would rather it should be as ‘a man who did his best to help the people, than by any other title.
His Major Designations
• President of the Ethnological Society (1868-71).
• Principal of the New Working Men’s College of London (1868-80).
• President of the Geological Society (1869-71).
• President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1870).
• Member of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction (1870-75).
• President of the Royal Society (1883-85).
• President of the Marine Biological Association (1884-90).
• Member of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction (1870-75).
• Advisor of a Vocational Central Institution for Technical Education, London (opened in 1884).
