Public Uses
T. H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist and Educator.
By Cyril Bibby, with Forewords by Sir Julian
Huxley and Aldous Huxley. (Watts, 25s.) GETTING through this short but often tedious book one asks, Can the working life of a dis- tinguished man really boil down into something as dull as this? And the answer, in fairness to Dr. Bibby, is that it probably can, that this is 3 valid summary. In its very dullness Huxley's working life is of cultural interest. He must have been one of the earliest of scientists to peter out into vigorous administrative life and public in- fluence, and he provides a case for examination. True, with his enormous energy and drive to work he did manage a lot of actual teaching and some scientific investigation all through his life, but he clearly spent the best part of himself in, committee work and string-pulling on behalf
of his schemes for advancing education, especially (but not exclusively or narrowly) scientific
ill other Christians into a reasonable perspective; was largely Huxley who shaped the London on its innumerable feet, he brought about teach- sities, he influenced museum policy, he played
education. Dr. Bibby does a service in putting they were incidental to much wider purposes. It School Board, he helped to set London University the battles with the Bishop of Oxford and ing reforms in Aberdeen (of which he served a term as Rector) and the other Scottish univer- a decisive part in establishing the City and Guilds technical and trade examinations system and he was mainly responsible for the early stages of it science teaching in South Kensington, out of a which is growing the colossal technological train- ing centre of Imperial College. All this makes him a culture-hero for present-day educational administrators.
Yet Darwin and Spencer and other scientific friends were sure he was wasting himself, unable to say no, and in Spencer's phrase continually taking two irons out of the fire and putting three in. His life, it seems, can really, be described along the lines of American social psychology in terms of 'role-filling.' The paradox is, as always in such a case, that with the great power and influence he wielded, Huiley's life was being directed for him by the administrators and politicians who continually found him his employments.
What drove him on? The answer is suggested in his remark at the age of twenty-five to his
favourite sister : will leave my mark some- where.' The determination to have influence, the indeterminacy of the 'somewhere, this combina- tion left him at the mercy of whatever invitations his society extended. But the finer side of him is evident in the rest of the remark : 'and it shall be clear and distinct . . . and free from the abominable blur of cant, humbug and self-seeking which surrounds this present world—that is to say, supposing that I am not already tainted Myself, a result of whichI have a morbid dread.' Dr. Bibby urges, of course, that the ambition does not make the idealism any less real. But.he shows the kind of mark Huxley made and the kind of reward that tempted him when he writes of his influence on the reconstitution of London University:
It must have been with a gratifying sense of accumulated authority that Huxley appeared to give evidence to the Gresham Commissioners.
He was President of the Association, Senator of the University of London, Governor of University College; he had long been regarded by the royal medical colleges as an unofficial adviser; many of the other key witnesses were former students or men whose careers he had forwarded—and, to round things off nicely, before the Commission was formed he had been invited to suggest names of suitable members.
Have we any right to feel, as his scientific friends seem to have felt, that he wasted him- self? The parable of the talents is difficult to apply when we have to weigh speeches and com- mittee reports for the London School Board and resolutions about Aberdeen medical degrees in 1874 against scientific papers that might have been written. The public work he did for educa- tion in science could have been done only by someone of scientific ability; but it could surely have been done by a scientist of half the capacity to which Huxley's early brilliance testified. Yet the administrative minds of his time might have resisted the influence of a man of less, eminence. It may be that a waste of talent is the puice our Society exacts for allowing specialists to influence Its affairs; the administrators demand the sacrifice of one of the biggest men because they cannot trust themselves to assess the smaller but still adequate men. Or it may be that they simply use the biggest man who can be tempted by the gratifications of public influence to sacrifice his other possible achievements. Huxley must have been one of the biggest they have ever had.
D. W. HARDING
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