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PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.

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PLATE 1. PORTRAIT OF T.H. HUXLEY FROM A DAGUERROTYPE MADE IN 1846.

PLATE 2. FACSIMILE OF SKETCH, "THE LOVES AND GRACES."

PLATE 3. PORTRAIT FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY MAULL AND POLYBLANK, 1857.

PLATE 4. NUMBER 4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE--FROM THE GARDEN. AFTER A WATERCOLOUR SKETCH BY R. HUXLEY.

PLATE 5. PORTRAIT FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY ELLIOTT AND FRY; STEEL ENGRAVING IN "NATURE," FEBRUARY 5, 1874.

Physically I am the son of my mother so completely--even down to peculiar movements of the hands, which made their appearance in me as I reached the age she had when I noticed them--that I can hardly find any trace of my father in myself, except an inborn faculty for drawing, which, unfortunately, in my case, has never been cultivated, a hot temper, and that amount of tenacity of purpose which unfriendly observers sometimes call obstinacy.

My mother was 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 of her day, she had an excellent mental capacity. Her most distinguishing characteristic, however, was rapidity of thought. If one ventured to suggest that 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.

As a child my love for her was a passion. I have lain awake for hours crying because I had a morbid fear of her death; her approbation was my greatest reward, her displeasure my greatest punishment.

I have next to nothing to say about my childhood . In later years my mother, looking at me almost reproachfully, would sometimes say, "Ah! you were such a pretty boy!" whence I had no difficulty in concluding that I had not fulfilled my early promise in the matter of looks. In fact, I have a distinct recollection of certain curls of which I was vain, and of a conviction that I closely resembled that handsome, courtly gentleman, Sir Herbert Oakley, who was vicar of our parish, and who was as a god to us country folk, because he was occasionally visited by the then Prince George of Cambridge. I remember turning my pinafore wrong side forwards in order to represent a surplice, and preaching to my mother's maids in the kitchen as nearly as possible in Sir Herbert's manner one Sunday morning when the rest of the family were at church. That is the earliest indication of the strong clerical affinities which my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer has always ascribed to me, though I fancy they have for the most part remained in a latent state.

My regular school training , was of the briefest, perhaps fortunately; for though my way of life has made me acquainted with all sorts and conditions of men, from the highest to the lowest, I deliberately affirm that the society I fell into at school was the worst I have ever known. We boys were average lads, with much the same inherent capacity for good and evil as any others; but the people who were set over us cared about as much for our intellectual and moral welfare as if they were baby-farmers. We were left to the operation of the struggle for existence among ourselves; bullying was the least of the ill practices current among us. Almost the only cheerful reminiscence in connection with the place which arises in my mind is that of a battle I had with one of my classmates, who had bullied me until I could stand it no longer. I was a very slight lad, but there was a wild-cat element in me which, when roused, made up for lack of weight, and I licked my adversary effectually. However, one of my first experiences of the extremely rough-and-ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the course of things in general, arose out of the fact that I--the victor--had a black eye, while he--the vanquished--had none, so that I got into disgrace and he did not. We made it up, and thereafter I was unmolested. One of the greatest shocks I ever received in my life was to be told a dozen years afterwards by the groom who brought me my horse in a stable-yard in Sydney that he was my quondam antagonist. He had a long story of family misfortune to account for his position; but at that time it was necessary to deal very cautiously with mysterious strangers in New South Wales, and on inquiry I found that the unfortunate young man had not only been "sent out," but had undergone more than one colonial conviction.

My brother and sister who were living at Grove Fields when you visited there, have now retired from the cares of business, and are living very comfortably at Leamington...I suppose you remember Mr. Joseph Russell, who used to live at Avon Dassett. He is now married and gone to live at Grove Fields, so that it is still occupied by a person of the same name as when you knew it. But it is very much altered in appearance since the time when such merry and joyous parties of aunts and cousins used to assemble there. I assure you we have often talked of "Tom Huxley" looking so thin and ill, and pretending to make hay with one hand, while in the other he held a German book! Do you remember it? And the picnic at Scar Bank? And how often too your patience was put to the test in looking for your German books which had been hidden by some of those playful companions who were rather less inclined for learning than yourself?

"in view of experiment to get crystallized carbon. Got it deposited, but not crystallized."

October 5 .--Began speculating on the cause of colours at sunset. Has any explanation of them ever been attempted? from old book.

October 25 .--Read Dr. S. Smith on the Divine Government.--Agree with him partly.--I should say that a general belief in his doctrines would have a very injurious effect on morals.

November 22.--...Had a long talk with my mother and father about the right to make Dissenters pay church rates--and whether there ought to be any Establishment. I maintain that there ought not in both cases--I wonder what will be my opinion ten years hence? I think now that it is against all laws of justice to force men to support a church with whose opinions they cannot conscientiously agree. The argument that the rate is so small is very fallacious. It is as much a sacrifice of principle to do a little wrong as to do a great one.

November 22 .--Had a long argument with Mr. May on the nature of the soul and the difference between it and matter. I maintained that it could not be proved that matter is ESSENTIALLY--as to its base--different from soul. Mr. M. wittily said, soul was the perspiration of matter.

We cannot find the absolute basis of matter: we only know it by its properties; neither know we the soul in any other way. Cogito ergo sum is the only thing that we CERTAINLY know.

Why may not soul and matter be of the same substance , but with different qualities.

Let us suppose then an Eon--a something with no quality but that of existence--this Eon endued with all the intelligence, mental qualities, and that in the highest degree--is God. This combination of intelligence with existence we may suppose to have existed from eternity. At the creation we may suppose that a portion of the Eon was separated from the intelligence, and it was ordained--it became a natural law--that it should have the properties of gravitation, etc.--that is, that it should give to man the ideas of those properties. The Eon in this state is matter in the abstract. Matter, then, is Eon in the simplest form in which it possesses qualities appreciable by the senses. Out of this matter, by the superimposition of fresh qualities, was made all things that are.

January 7.--Came to Rotherhithe.

June 20.--What have I done in the way of acquiring knowledge since January?

Projects begun:--

a. Algebra--Geometry

an excellent work--very tough reading, though.

Became acquainted with constitution of French Chambre des deputes and their parties.

Truths: "I hate all people who want to found sects. It is not error but sects--it is not error but sectarian error, nay, and even sectarian truth, which causes the unhappiness of mankind."--Lessing.

"It is only necessary to grow old to become more indulgent. I see no fault committed that I have not committed myself..."--Goethe.

"One solitary philosopher may be great, virtuous, and happy in the midst of poverty, but not a whole nation..."--Isaac Iselin.

January 30, Sunday evening.

I have for some time been pondering over a classification of knowledge. My scheme is to divide all knowledge in the first place into two grand divisions.

Subjective. / Metaphysics. / Metaphysics proper, Mathematics, Logic, Theology, Morality.

Objective. / Morality, History, Physiology, Physics.

Metaphysics comes immediately, of course, under the first head--that is to say, the relations of the mind to itself; of this Mathematics and Logic, together with Theology, are branches.

I am in doubt under which head to put morality, for I cannot determine exactly in my own mind whether morality can exist independent of others, whether the idea of morality could ever have arisen in the mind of an isolated being or not. I am rather inclined to the opinion that it is objective.

Under the head of objective knowledge comes first Physics, including the whole body of the relations of inanimate unorganised bodies; secondly, Physiology. Including the structure and functions of animal bodies, including language and Psychology; thirdly comes History.

One object for which I have attempted to form an arrangement of knowledge is that I may test the amount of my own acquirements. I shall form an extensive list of subjects on this plan, and as I acquire any one of them I shall strike it out of the list. May the list soon get black! though at present I shall hardly be able, I am afraid, to spot the paper.

"In the mind as in the body the sign of health is unconsciousness."

"Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation."

"Genius is ever a secret to itself."

"The healthy understanding, we should say, is neither the argumentative nor the Logical, but the Intuitive, for the end of understanding is not to prove and find reasons but to know and believe"

"The ages of heroism are not ages of Moral Philosophy. Virtue, when it is philosophised of, has become aware of itself, is sickly and beginning to decline."

October 1845.--I have found singular pleasure--having accidentally raked this Buchlein from a corner of my desk--in looking over these scraps of notices of my past existence; an illustration of J. Paul's saying that a man has but to write down his yesterday's doings, and forthwith they appear surrounded with a poetic halo.

But after all, these are but the top skimmings of these five years' living. I hardly care to look back into the seething depths of the working and boiling mass that lay beneath all this froth, and indeed I hardly know whether I could give myself any clear account of it. Remembrances of physical and mental pain...absence of sympathy, and thence a choking up of such few ideas as I did form clearly within my own mind.

Grief too, yet at the misfortune of others, for I have had few properly my own; so much the worse, for in that case I might have said or done somewhat, but here was powerless.

Oh, Tom, trouble not thyself about sympathy; thou hast two stout legs and young, wherefore need a staff?

Furthermore, it is twenty minutes past two, and time to go to bed.

Buchlein, it will be long before my secretiveness remains so quiet again; make the most of what thou hast got.

The last recorded speech of Professor Teufelsdrockh proposes the toast 'Die Sache der Armen in Gottes und Teufelsnamen' The cause of the Poor is the burden of "Past and Present," "Chartism," and "Latter-Day Pamphlets." To me...this advocacy of the cause of the poor appealed very strongly...because...I had had the opportunity of seeing for myself something of the way the poor live. Not much, indeed, but still enough to give a terrible foundation of real knowledge to my speculations.

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