Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3Huxley, Thomas Henry
History
Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895; Naturalists -- England -- Biography
As the physical strain of the Romanes Lecture and his liability to loss
of voice warned him against any future attempt to deliver a course of
lectures, he altered his design and prepared to put the substance of
these Lectures to Working-Men into a Bible History for young people.
And indeed, he had got so far with his preparation, that the latter
heading was down in his list of work for the last year of his life,
1895. But nothing of it was ever written. Until the work was actually
begun, even the framework upon which it was to be shaped remained in
his mind, and the copious marks in his books of reference were the mere
guide-posts to a strong memory, which retained not words and phrases,
but salient facts and the knowledge of where to find them again.
I find only two occasions on which he wrote to the "Times" this year;
one, when the crusade was begun to capture the Board Schools of London
for sectarianism, and it was suggested that, when on the first School
Board, he had approved of some such definite dogmatic teaching. This he
set right at once in the following letter of April 28, with which may
be compared the letter to Lord Farrer of November 6, 1894:--]
In a leading article of your issue to-day you state, with perfect
accuracy, that I supported the arrangement respecting religious
instruction agreed to by the London School Board in 1871, and hitherto
undisturbed. But you go on to say that "the persons who framed the
rule" intended it to include definite teaching of such theological
dogmas as the Incarnation.
I cannot say what may have been in the minds of the framers of the
rule; but, assuredly, if I had dreamed that any such interpretation
could fairly be put upon it, I should have opposed the arrangement to
the best of my ability.
In fact, a year before the rule was framed I wrote an article in the
"Contemporary Review", entitled "The Board Schools--what they can do,
and what they may do," in which I argued that the terms of the
Education Act excluded such teaching as it is now proposed to include.
And I supported my contention by the following citation from a speech
delivered by Mr. Forster at the Birkbeck Institution in 1870:--
"I have the fullest confidence that in the reading and explaining of
the Bible, what the children will be taught will be the great truths of
Christian life and conduct, which all of us desire they should know,
and that no effort will be made to cram into their poor little minds,
theological dogmas which their tender age prevents them from
understanding."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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