The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, vol 2 | Page 8

of the town and trade of Liverpool, declared that
commerce was a greater civiliser than all the religion and all the
science ever put together in the world, for it taught men to be truthful
and punctual and precise in the execution of their engagements, and
men who were truthful and punctual and precise in the execution of
their engagements had put their feet upon the first rung of the ladder
which led to moral and intellectual elevation.
There were the usual clerical attacks on the address, among the rest a
particularly violent one from a Unitarian pulpit. Writing to Mr.
Samuelson on October 5 he says:--]
Be not vexed on account of the godly. They will have their way. I
found Mr. --'s sermon awaiting me on my return home. It is an able
paper, but like the rest of his cloth he will not take the trouble to make
himself acquainted with the ideas of the man whom he opposes. At
least that is the case if he imagines he brings me under the range of his
guns.
[On October 2 he writes to Tyndall:--]
I have not yet thanked you properly for your great contribution to the
success of our meeting [i.e. his lecture "On the Scientific Uses of the
Imagination"]. I was nervous over the passage about the clergy, but
those confounded parsons seem to me to let you say anything, while
they bully me for a word or a phrase. It's the old story, "one man may
steal a horse while the other may not look over the wall."
[Tyndall was not to be outdone, and replied:--
The parsons know very well that I mean kindness; if I correct them I do
it in love and not in wrath.
One more extract from a letter to Dr. Dohrn, under date of November
17. The first part is taken up with a long and detailed description of the
best English microscopes and their price, for Dr. Dohrn wished to get
one; and my father volunteered to procure it for him. The rest of the
letter has a more general interest as giving his views on the great
struggle between France and Germany then in progress, his distrust of
militarism, and above all, his hatred of lying, political as much as any
other:--]
This wretched war is doing infinite mischief; but I do not see what
Germany can do now but carry it out to the end.
I began to have some sympathy with the French after Sedan, but the

Republic lies harder than the Empire did, and the whole country seems
to me to be rotten to the core. The only figure which stands out with
anything like nobility or dignity, on the French side, is that of the
Empress, and she is only a second-rate Marie-Antoinette. There is no
Roland, no Corday, and apparently no MAN of any description.
The Russian row is beginning, and the rottenness of English
administration will soon, I suppose, have an opportunity of displaying
itself. Bad days are, I am afraid, in store for all of us, and the worst for
Germany if it once becomes thoroughly bitten by the military mad dog.
The "happy family" is flourishing and was afflicted, even over its
breakfast, when I gave out the news that you had been ill.
The wife desires her best remembrances, and we all hope you are
better.
[The high pressure under which Huxley worked, and his abundant
output, continued undiminished through the autumn and winter. Indeed,
he was so busy that he postponed his Lectures to Working Men in
London from October to February 1871. On October 3 he lectured in
Leicester on "What is to be Learned from a Piece of Coal," a parallel
lecture to that of 1868 on "A Piece of Chalk." On the 17th and 24th he
lectured at Birmingham on "Extinct Animals intermediate between
Reptiles and Birds"--a subject which he had made peculiarly his own
by long study; and on December 29 he was at Bradford, and lectured at
the Philosophical Institute upon "The Formation of Coal" ("Collected
Essays" 8.).
He was also busy with two Royal Commissions; still, at whatever cost
of the energy and time due to his own investigations and those
additional labours by which he increased his none too abundant income,
he felt it his duty, in the interests of his ideal of education, to come
forward as a candidate for the newly-instituted School Board for
London. This was the practical outcome of the rising interest in
education all over the country; on its working, he felt, depended
momentous issues--the fostering of the moral and physical well-being
of the nation; the quickening of its intelligence and the maintenance of
its commercial supremacy. Withal, he desired to temper
"book-learning" with something