Discourses: Biological and Geological Essays

Discourses: Biological and
Geological Essays

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Title: Discourses Biological and Geological Essays
Author: Thomas H. Huxley
Release Date: November 12, 2003 [EBook #10060]
Language: English
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DISCOURSES:
BIOLOGICAL & GEOLOGICAL

ESSAYS
BY
THOMAS H. HUXLEY
1894

PREFACE
The contents of the present volume, with three exceptions, are either
popular lectures, or addresses delivered to scientific bodies with which
I have been officially connected. I am not sure which gave me the more
trouble. For I have not been one of those fortunate persons who are able
to regard a popular lecture as a mere hors d'oeuvre, unworthy of being
ranked among the serious efforts of a philosopher; and who keep their
fame as scientific hierophants unsullied by attempts--at least of the
successful sort--to be understanded of the people.
On the contrary, I found that the task of putting the truths learned in the
field, the laboratory and the museum, into language which, without
bating a jot of scientific accuracy shall be generally intelligible, taxed
such scientific and literary faculty as I possessed to the uttermost;
indeed my experience has furnished me with no better corrective of the
tendency to scholastic pedantry which besets all those who are
absorbed in pursuits remote from the common ways of men, and
become habituated to think and speak in the technical dialect of their
own little world, as if there were no other.
If the popular lecture thus, as I believe, finds one moiety of its
justification in the self-discipline of the lecturer, it surely finds the
other half in its effect on the auditory. For though various sadly
comical experiences of the results of my own efforts have led me to
entertain a very moderate estimate of the purely intellectual value of
lectures; though I venture to doubt if more than one in ten of an average
audience carries away an accurate notion of what the speaker has been
driving at; yet is that not equally true of the oratory of the hustings, of

the House of Commons, and even of the pulpit?
Yet the children of this world are wise in their generation; and both the
politician and the priest are justified by results. The living voice has an
influence over human action altogether independent of the intellectual
worth of that which it utters. Many years ago, I was a guest at a great
City dinner. A famous orator, endowed with a voice of rare flexibility
and power; a born actor, ranging with ease through every part, from
refined comedy to tragic unction, was called upon to reply to a toast.
The orator was a very busy man, a charming conversationalist and by
no means despised a good dinner; and, I imagine, rose without having
given a thought to what he was going to say. The rhythmic roll of
sound was admirable, the gestures perfect, the earnestness impressive;
nothing was lacking save sense and, occasionally, grammar. When the
speaker sat down the applause was terrific and one of my neighbours
was especially enthusiastic. So when he had quieted down, I asked him
what the orator had said. And he could not tell me.
That sagacious person John Wesley, is reported to have replied to some
one who questioned the propriety of his adaptation of sacred words to
extremely secular airs, that he did not see why the Devil should be left
in possession of all the best tunes. And I do not see why science should
not turn to account the peculiarities of human nature thus exploited by
other agencies: all the more because science, by the nature of its being,
cannot desire to stir the passions, or profit by the weaknesses, of human
nature. The most zealous of popular lecturers can aim at nothing more
than the awakening of a sympathy for abstract truth, in those who do
not really follow his arguments; and of a desire to know more and
better in the few who do.
At the same time it must be admitted that the popularization of science,
whether by lecture or essay, has its drawbacks. Success in this
department has its perils for those who succeed. The "people who fail"
take their revenge, as we have recently had occasion to observe, by
ignoring all the rest of a man's work and glibly labelling him a more
popularizer. If the