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Page 18
It was no wonder that he was clear and exact in his class lectures,
for he based what he had to say on his own experiment and observation,
and was at pains to verify experimentally the observations of others
which came within his field. Without verification he would not rely
upon them. Indeed, he was so careful to give nothing at second hand
that one of his scientific friends gently reproached him for wasting
his time in re-investigating matters already worked over by competent
observers. "Poor ----," he remarked afterwards, "if that is his own
practice, his work will never live." Of his most important public
addresses, two may be noted as especial _tours de force_. On each
occasion it was specially necessary to speak by the book, but at the
last moment it was impossible to use the carefully prepared notes. One
was the address on the complex and difficult subject of "Animals as
Automata," at the Belfast meeting of the British Association in 1874,
when the atmosphere was electrical after a Presidential address by
John Tyndall which set theologians in an uproar. Years afterwards he
described the incident to Sir E. Ray Lankester:--
I knew that I was treading on very dangerous ground, so I
wrote out uncommonly full and careful notes, and had them in
my hand when I stepped on to the platform.
Then I suddenly became aware of the bigness of the audience,
and the conviction came upon me that, if I looked at my notes,
not one half would hear me. It was a bad ten seconds, but I
made my election and turned the notes face downwards on the
desk.
To this day I do not exactly know how the thing managed to
roll itself out; but it did, as you say, for the best part of
an hour and a-half.
There's a story _pour vous encourager_ if you are ever in a
like fix.
The other was his address at the opening of the John Hopkins
University at Baltimore in 1876. Late on the preceding afternoon he
returned very tired from an expedition to Washington, to find that a
formal dinner and reception awaited him in the evening. He snatched
an hour or two of rest, when a New York reporter arrived demanding the
text of the address, which had to be sent to New York for simultaneous
publication with the Baltimore papers. Now the address was not written
out; it was to be delivered from notes only. From these notes, then,
he delivered it _in extenso_ to the reporter, who took it down in
shorthand, and promised to let him have a copy to lecture from next
morning. But the fair copy did not come till the last moment. To his
horror he found this was written out upon "flimsy," from which it
would be impossible to read properly. Again he turned it down on the
desk and boldly trusted to memory. This second version was taken down
verbatim by the Baltimore reporters in their turn. What if it did not
tally with the New York version? As a matter of fact, it was
almost identical, save for a few curious discrepancies, apparent
contradictions between professed eye-witnesses which the ingenious
critic might perfectly well use to prove that both accounts were
fictitious, and that the pretended original was never delivered under
the conditions alleged.
Mention has been made of his lectures to working men. Of these his
assistant and successor, Professor G.B. Howes, wrote:--
Great as were his class lectures, his working-men's were
greater. Huxley was a great believer in the _distillatio per
ascensum_ of scientific knowledge and culture, and spared
no pains in approaching the artisan and so-called "working
classes." He gave the workmen of his best. The substance of
his _Man's Place in Nature_, one of the most successful and
popular of his writings, and of his _Crayfish_, perhaps the
most perfect zoological treatise ever published, was first
communicated to them. In one of the last conversations I
had with him, I asked his views on the desirability of
discontinuing the workmen's lectures at Jermyn Street, since
the development of working men's colleges and institutes
is regarded by some to have rendered their continuance
unnecessary. He replied, almost with indignation: "With our
central position and resources, we ought to be in a position
to give the workmen that which they cannot get elsewhere";
adding that he would deeply deplore any such discontinuance.
He had begun these in 1855, the second year of his appointment at the
Royal School of Mines. On February 27 of that year he wrote to his
friend Dr. Dyster:--
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