Lectures and Essays

Lectures and Essays

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Title: Lectures and Essays
Author: T.H. Huxley
Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6414] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 8,
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LECTURES
AND ESSAYS ***

Produced by Sue Asscher [email protected]

Lectures and Essays
by T.H. Huxley
***

THE PEOPLE'S LIBRARY.

LECTURES AND ESSAYS.

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY.

EDITOR'S NOTE.
Of the great thinkers of the nineteenth century, Thomas Henry Huxley,
son of an Ealing schoolmaster, was undoubtedly the most noteworthy.
His researches in biology, his contributions to scientific controversy,
his pungent criticisms of conventional beliefs and thoughts have
probably had greater influence than the work of any other English
scientist. And yet he was a "self-made" intellectualist. In spite of the
fact that his father was a schoolmaster he passed through no regular
course of education. "I had," he said, "two years of a pandemonium of a
school (between eight and ten) and after that neither help nor sympathy
in any intellectual direction till I reached manhood." When he was
twelve a craving for reading found satisfaction in Hutton's "Geology,"
and when fifteen in Hamilton's "Logic."
At seventeen Huxley entered as a student at Charing Cross Hospital,
and three years later he was M.B. and the possessor of the gold medal
for anatomy and physiology. An appointment as surgeon in the navy
proved to be the entry to Huxley's great scientific career, for he was

gazetted to the "Rattlesnake", commissioned for surveying work in
Torres Straits. He was attracted by the teeming surface life of tropical
seas and his study of it was the commencement of that revolution in
scientific knowledge ultimately brought about by his researches.
Thomas Henry Huxley was born at Ealing on May 4, 1825, and died at
Eastbourne June 29, 1895.
***

LECTURES
AND
ESSAYS
BY
T.H. HUXLEY.

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD. LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK,
TORONTO & MELBOURNE. MCMVIII.
***

CONTENTS.
ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE CAUSES OF THE PHENOMENA
OF ORGANIC NATURE:
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE.
THE PAST CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE.
THE METHOD BY WHICH THE CAUSES OF THE PRESENT AND
PAST CONDITIONS OF ORGANIC NATURE ARE TO BE
DISCOVERED.--THE ORIGINATION OF LIVING BEINGS.
THE PERPETUATION OF LIVING BEINGS, HEREDITARY
TRANSMISSION AND VARIATION.
THE CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE AS AFFECTING THE
PERPETUATION OF LIVING BEINGS.
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE POSITION OF MR.
DARWIN'S WORK, "ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES," IN
RELATION TO THE COMPLETE THEORY OF THE CAUSES OF
THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE.
ESSAYS ON DARWIN'S "ORIGIN OF SPECIES":
THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS.

TIME AND LIFE.
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
CRITICISMS ON "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES".
EVIDENCE AS TO MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE:
ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MAN-LIKE APES.
ON THE RELATIONS OF MAN TO THE LOWER ANIMALS.
ON SOME FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN.
ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL
KNOWLEDGE.
ON THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY.
GEOLOGICAL CONTEMPORANEITY AND PERSISTENT TYPES
OF LIFE.
CORAL AND CORAL REEFS.
YEAST.
THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
***

ON OUR KNOWLEDGE
OF THE CAUSES OF THE PHENOMENA
OF
ORGANIC NATURE.

NOTICE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The Publisher of these interesting Lectures, having made an
arrangement for their publication with Mr. J.A. Mays, the Reporter,
begs to append the following note from Professor Huxley:--
"Mr. J. Aldous Mays, who is taking shorthand notes of my 'Lectures to
Working Men,' has asked me to allow him, on his own account, to print
those Notes for the use of my audience. I willingly accede to this
request, on the understanding that a notice is prefixed to the effect that I
have no leisure to revise the Lectures, or to make alterations in them,
beyond the correction of