Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3Huxley, Thomas Henry
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Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895; Naturalists -- England -- Biography
[However, he did not take all his books with him. There was a quantity
of biological works of all sorts which had accumulated in his library
and which he was not likely to use again; these he offered as a parting
gift to the Royal College of Science. On December 8, the Registrar
conveys to him the thanks of the Council for "the valuable library of
biological works," and further informs him that it was resolved:--
That the library shall be kept in the room formerly occupied by the
Dean, which shall be called "The Huxley Laboratory for Biological
Research," and be devoted to the prosecution of original researches in
Biological Science, with which the name of Professor Huxley is
inseparably associated.
Huxley replied as follows:--]
Dear Registrar,
I beg you convey my hearty thanks to the Council for the great kindness
of the minute and resolution which you have sent me. My mind has never
been greatly set on posthumous fame; but there is no way of keeping
memory green which I should like so well as that which they have
adopted towards me.
It has been my fate to receive a good deal more vilipending than (I
hope) I deserve. If my colleagues, with whom I have worked so long, put
too high a value upon my services, perhaps the result may be not far
off justice.
Yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
In addition to the directly controversial articles in the early part of
the year, two other articles on controversial subjects belong to 1891.
"Hasisadra's Adventure," published in the "Nineteenth Century" for
June, completed his long-contemplated examination of the Flood myth. In
this he first discussed the Babylonian form of the legend recorded upon
the clay tablets of Assurbanipal--a simpler and less exaggerated form
as befits an earlier version, and in its physical details keeping much
nearer to the bounds of probability.
The greater part of the article, however, is devoted to a wider
question--How far does geological and geographical evidence bear
witness to the consequences which must have ensued from a universal
flood, or even from one limited to the countries of Mesopotamia? And he
comes to the conclusion that these very countries have been singularly
free from any great changes of the kind for long geological periods.
The sarcastic references in this article to those singular reasoners
who take the possibility of an occurrence to be the same as scientific
testimony to the fact of its occurrence, lead up, more or less, to the
subject of an essay, "Possibilities and Impossibilities," which
appeared in the "Agnostic Annual" for 1892, actually published in
October 1891, and to be found in "Collected Essays", 5 192.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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