The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, vol 2 | Page 6

article on "Yeast" in the "Contemporary Review" for December
1871. He laboriously repeated Pasteur's experiments, and for years a
quantity of flasks and cultures used in this work remained at South
Kensington, until they were destroyed in the eighties. Of this work Sir J.
Hooker writes to him:--
You have made an immense leap in the association of forms, and I
cannot but suppose you approach the final solution...
I have always fancied that it was rather brains and boldness, than eyes
or microscopes that the mycologists wanted, and that there was more
brains in Berkeley's [Reverend M.J. Berkeley.] crude discoveries than
in the very best of the French and German microscopic verifications of
them, who filch away the credit of them from under Berkeley's nose,
and pooh-pooh his reasoning, but for which we should be, as we were.
In his Presidential Address, "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis" ("Collected
Essays" 8 page 229), he discussed the rival theories of spontaneous
generation and the universal derivation of life from precedent life, and
professed his belief, as an act of philosophic faith, that at some remote
period, life had arisen out of inanimate matter, though there was no
evidence that anything of the sort had occurred recently, the germ
theory explaining many supposed cases of spontaneous generation. The
history of the subject, indeed, showed] "the great tragedy of
Science--the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact--which is
so constantly being enacted under the eyes of philosophers," and
recalled the warning "that it is one thing to refute a proposition, and
another to prove the truth of a doctrine which, implicitly or explicitly,
contradicts that proposition."
[Two letters to Dr. Dohrn refer to this address and to the meeting of the
Association.]
Jermyn Street, April 30, 1870.
My dear Whirlwind,
I have received your two letters; and I was just revolving in my mind
how best to meet your wishes in regard to the very important project
mentioned in the first, when the second arrived and put me at rest.
I hope I need not say how heartily I enter into all your views, and how
glad I shall be to see your plan for "Stations" carried into effect. [Dr.

Dohrn succeeded in establishing such a zoological "station" at Naples.]
Nothing could have a greater influence upon the progress of zoology.
A plan was set afoot here some time ago to establish a great marine
Aquarium at Brighton by means of a company. They asked me to be
their President, but I declined, on the ground that I did not desire to
become connected with any commercial undertaking. What has become
of the scheme I do not know, but I doubt whether it would be of any
use to you, even if any connection could be established.
As soon as you have any statement of your project ready, send it to me
and I will take care that it is brought prominently before the British
public so as to stir up their minds. And then we will have a regular
field-day about it in Section D at Liverpool.
Let me know your new ideas about insects and vertebrata as soon as
possible, and I promise to do my best to pull them to pieces. What
between Kowalesky and his Ascidians, Miklucho-Maclay [A Russian
naturalist, and close friend of Haeckel's, who later adventured himself
alone among the cannibals of New Guinea.] and his Fish-brains, and
you and your Arthropods, I am becoming schwindelsuchtig, and spend
my time mainly in that pious ejaculation "Donner and Blitz," in which,
as you know, I seek relief. Then there is our Bastian who is making
living things by the following combination:--
Prescription: Ammoniae Carbonatis Sodae Phosphatis Aquae
destillatae quantum sufficit Caloris 150 degrees Centigrade Vacui
perfectissimi Patientiae.
Transubstantiation will be nothing to this if it turns out to be true, and
you may go and tell your neighbour Januarius to shut up his shop as the
heretics mean to outbid him.
Now I think that the best service I can render to all you enterprising
young men is to turn devil's advocate, and do my best to pick holes in
your work.
By the way, Miklucho-Maclay has been here; I have seen a good deal
of him, and he strikes me as a man of very considerable capacity and
energy. He was to return to Jena to-day.
My friend Herbert Spencer will be glad to learn that you appreciate his
book. I have been HIS devil's advocate for a number of years, and there
is no telling how many brilliant speculations I have been the means of
choking in an embryonic state.

My wife does not know that I am writing to you, or she would say
apropos of your last paragraph that you are an entirely unreasonable
creature in