Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work | Page 5

sorts of pursuits to drop them again quite speedily."
It is almost certain, however, that Huxley underestimated the value of
this time. He stored his mind with both literature and science, and laid
the foundation of the extremely varied intellectual interests which
afterwards proved to him of so much value. It is certain, also, that
during this time he acquired a fair knowledge of French and German. It
would be difficult to exaggerate the value to him of this addition to his
weapons for attacking knowledge. To do the best work in any scientific
pursuit it is necessary to freshen one's own mind by contact with the
ideas and results of other workers. As these workers are scattered over
different countries it is necessary to transcend the confusion of Babel
and read what they write in their own tongues. When Huxley was
young, the great reputation of Cuvier overshadowed English anatomy,
and English anatomists did little more than seek in nature what Cuvier
had taught them to find. In Germany other men and other ideas were to
be found. Johannes Mueller and Von Baer were attacking the problems
of nature in a spirit that was entirely different, and Huxley, by
combining what he was taught in England with what he learned from
German methods, came to his own investigations with a wider mind.
But his conquest of French and German brought with it advantages in
addition to these technical gains. There is no reason to believe that he
troubled himself with grammatical details and with the study of these
languages as subjects in themselves. He acquired them simply to
discover the new ideas concealed in them, and he by no means confined
himself to the reading of foreign books on the subjects of his own

studies. He read French and German poetry, literature, and philosophy,
and so came to have a knowledge of the ideas of those outside his own
race on all the great problems that interest mankind. A good deal has
been written as to the narrowing tendency of scientific pursuits, but
with Huxley, as with all the scientific men the present writer has known,
the mechanical necessity of learning to read other languages has
brought with it that wide intellectual sympathy which is the beginning
of all culture and which is not infrequently missed by those who have
devoted themselves to many grammars and a single literature. The old
proverb, "Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well," has only value
when "well" is properly interpreted. Although the science of language
is as great as any science, it is not the science of language, but the
practical interpretation of it, that is of value to most people, and there is
much to be said for the method of anatomists like Huxley, who passed
lightly over grammatical _minutiæ_ and went straight with a dictionary
to the reading of each new tongue.
After a short period of apprenticeship, or sometimes during the course
of it, the young medical students "walked" a hospital. This consisted in
attending the demonstrations of the physicians and surgeons in the
wards of the hospital and in pursuing anatomical, chemical, and
physiological study in the medical school attached to the hospital. A
large fee was charged for the complete course, but at many of the
hospitals there were entrance scholarships which relieved those who
gained them of all cost. In 1842 Huxley and his elder brother, James,
applied for such free scholarships at Charing Cross Hospital. There is
no record in the books of the hospital as to what persons supported the
application. The entry in the minutes for September 6, 1842, states that
"Applications from the following gentlemen (including the two sons of
Mr. George Huxley, late senior assistant master in Ealing School), were
laid before the meeting, and their testimonials being approved of, it was
decided that those gentlemen should be admitted as free scholars, if
their classical attainments should be found upon examination to be
satisfactory."
It appears that the two Huxleys were able to satisfy the probably

unexacting demands of the classical examiners, for they began their
hospital work in October of the same year.
Those who know the magnificent laboratories and lecture-rooms which
have grown up in connection with the larger London hospitals must
have difficulty in realising the humble arrangements for teaching
students in the early forties. What endowments there were--and
Charing Cross was never a richly endowed hospital--were devoted
entirely to the hospital as opposed to the teaching school. There were
no separate buildings for anatomy, physiology, and so forth. At
Charing Cross the dissecting-room was in a cellar under the hospital,
and subjects like chemistry, botany, physiology, and so forth were
crowded into inconvenient side rooms. The teachers were not
specialists, devoting their whole attention to particular branches of