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Page 25
A remark made by Huxley about others is very true of himself--that
what matters most is not the microscope, but the man behind it;
not the objects seen, but the interpretation of them and their
relationships. The outward and the inward eye had the same quickness,
the same highly developed sense of form and relationship, backed by a
store of living knowledge; so well organized that it could respond
at once to any suggestion which would throw light on undiscovered
affinities and provide a true base for classification.
While much of his bookwork and writing was done at home, his later
anatomical work was done at his laboratory. As official engagements
multiplied, his time was much broken into; but he snatched every
available moment, often dashing down to South Kensington in a cab for
a half-hour of work between two official meetings. His absorption
in his studies was intense--as at one time he signs himself to his
fellow-worker, W. K. Parker, "Ever yours amphibially," so Jeffery
Parker, his demonstrator, who tells the story, came to him with a
question about the brain of the codfish at a time when he was deep in
the investigation of some invertebrate group. "Codfish?" he replied;
"that's a vertebrate, isn't it? Ask me a fortnight hence, and I'll
consider it."
One more note concerning his method of work. His love of visualizing
his problems regularly led him to make charts to show geographically,
say, the distribution of certain forms of life over the globe, or to
illustrate points of history--such, for example, as a coloured map
of the Aegean, with fifty-mile circles drawn from the centre of the
Cyclades to illustrate the range of Greek civilization as it spread
over the shores of Asia and Europe. And as in writing a book he was
careful first to plan out the scheme of it and the balance of the
parts, so, however much his public addresses gave the impression of
being largely impromptu, he had always thought out carefully every
word he meant to say. "There is," he said, "no greater danger than
the so-called _inspiration of the moment_, which leads you to say
something which is not exactly true, or which you would regret
afterwards."
Yet his was not a strong verbal memory. It was essentially a memory
for facts; he could tear the heart out of a book as swiftly as a
Macaulay, packing the facts into the framework of his knowledge,
and always knowing thereafter where to find his facts or verify his
references. In his speeches it was the compelling thought seeking
expression, and fitting the form of expression exactly to the form
of the thought, that brought the meditated words so infallibly and so
spontaneously to his lips: they were already welded together in mind.
But he had not that kind of memory which, after once reading a page
of a book, can recite the whole word for word, whether prose or verse.
Single phrases embodying a notable image would remain with him, and
remain ready for use as allusive colour or pointed epigram. Many of
these were Biblical phrases, for he knew his Bible well, and admired
not only the grandeur of thought to be found enshrined in it, but its
magnificence as a treasure-house of our English tongue. And, apart
from many scientific terms of his invention, he coined divers words
and phrases which have enriched our language, such as "Agnostic,"
"the ladder from the gutter to the university," the descriptions of
Positivism as "Catholicism without Christianity," and the Salvation
Army methods as "Corybantic Christianity."
His working day began soon after nine, for he was never one of those
people who can do hours of work before breakfast. The working day,
however, regularly went on until midnight, and, as has been mentioned,
was often prolonged by late reading.
The speed with which his mind worked to see through complex questions
and spring swiftly to a conclusion was such that he contrived to do
four ordinary men's work in a single lifetime. But this swiftness of
reaching a conclusion, so useful at most times, was liable sometimes
to betray him. If, however, he found that he had made a mistake, he
was ready to confess the fact. The most celebrated instance of this
was the story of _Bathybius_. In 1868, while soundings were being made
in connection with the laying of the Atlantic cable, certain specimens
of mud were dredged up. The mud was sticky, owing to the presence of
innumerable lumps of a transparent gelatinous substance. This was
in fine granules, which possessed neither a nucleus nor a covering
membrane. Scattered through it were calcareous coccoliths. Such
were the facts; what inference was to be drawn? The only thing this
substance resembled was one of the many simple forms of oceanic life
recently found and described by the great zoologist Haeckel.
I conceive [wrote Huxley] that the granulate heaps and the
transparent gelatinous matter in which they are embedded
represent masses of protoplasm. Take away the cysts which
characterize the _Radiolaria_, and a dead _Sph�rozoum_ would
very nearly represent one of this deep-sea "Urschleim," which
must, I think, be regarded as a new form of those simple
animated beings which have recently been so well described by
Haeckel in his _Monographie der Moneras_.
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