Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work | Page 3

of Species. John Murray. London, 1887.
Life of Richard Owen. By his grandson. With an Essay on Owen's
Position in Anatomical Science, by T.H. Huxley. John Murray. London,
1894.

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
CHAPTER I
FROM SCHOOL TO LIFE-WORK
Birth--Parentage--School-days--Choice of Medical Profession--Charing
Cross Hospital--End of Medical Studies--Admission to Naval Medical
Service.
Some men are born to greatness: even before their arrival in the world
their future is marked out for them. All the advantages that wealth and
the experience of friends can bring attend their growth to manhood, and
their success almost loses its interest because of the ease with which it
is attained. Few of the leaders of science were in such a position: many
of them, such as Priestley, Davy, Faraday, John Hunter, and Linnæus
were of humble parentage, and received the poorest education: most of
them, like Huxley himself, have come from parents who were able to
do little more for their children than set them out into life along the
ordinary educational avenues. In Huxley's boyhood at least a
comfortable income was necessary for this: in every civilised country
nowadays, state endowments, or private endowments, are ready to help
every capable boy, as far as Huxley was helped, and in his progress
from boyhood to supreme distinction, there is nothing that cannot be
emulated by every boy at school to-day. The minds of human beings
when they are born into the world are as naked as their bodies; it
matters not if parents, grandparents, and remoter ancestors were
unlettered or had the wisdom of all the ages, the new mind has to build

up its own wisdom from the beginning. We cannot even say with
certainty that children inherit mental aptitudes and capacities from their
parents; for as tall sons may come from short parents or beautiful
daughters from ugly parents, so we may find in the capacities of the
parents no traces of the future greatness of their children. None the less
it is interesting to learn what we can about the parents of great men;
and Huxley tells us that he thinks himself to have inherited many
characters of his body and mind from his mother.
Thomas Henry Huxley was born on the 4th of May, 1825, at Ealing,
then a little country village, now united to London as a great suburb.
He was the seventh child of George Huxley, who was second master at
the school of Dr. Nicholson at Ealing. In these days private schools of
varying character were very numerous in England, and this
establishment seems to have been of high-class character, for Cardinal
Newman and many other distinguished men received part of their
education there. His mother, whose maiden name was Rachel Withers,
was, he tells us himself:[A]
"A slender brunette of an emotional and energetic temperament, and
possessed of the most piercing black eyes I ever saw in a woman's head.
With no more education than other women of the middle classes in her
day, she had an excellent mental capacity. Her most distinguishing
characteristic, however, was rapidity of thought. If one ventured to
suggest she had not taken much time to arrive at any conclusion, she
would say, 'I cannot help it. Things flash across me.' That peculiarity
has been passed on to me in full strength: it has often stood me in good
stead: it has sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has always been a
danger. But, after all, if my time were to come over again there is
nothing I would less willingly part with than my inheritance of 'mother
wit.'"
From his father he thinks that he inherited little except an inborn
capacity for drawing, "a hot temper, and that amount of tenacity of
purpose which unfriendly observers sometimes call obstinacy." As it
happened, this natural gift for drawing proved of the greatest service to
him throughout his career. It is imperative that every investigator of the

anatomy of plants and animals should be able to sketch his
observations, and there is no greater aid to seeing things as they are
than the continuous attempt to reproduce them by pencil or brush.
Huxley was christened Thomas Henry, and he was unaware why these
names were chosen, but he humorously records the curious chance that
his parents should have chosen for him the "name of that particular
apostle with whom he had always felt most sympathy."
Of his childhood little is recorded. He remembers being vain of his
curls, and his mother's expressed regret that he soon lost the beauty of
early childhood. He attended for some time the school at Ealing with
which his father was associated, but he has little to say for the training
he received there. He writes:
"My regular school training was of the briefest, perhaps fortunately: for,
though my