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
I will look up Nietzsche, though I must confess that the profit I
obtain from German authors on speculative questions is not usually
great.
As men of research in positive science they are magnificently laborious
and accurate. But most of them have no notion of style, and seem to
compose their books with a pitchfork.
There are two very different questions which people fail to
discriminate. One is whether evolution accounts for morality, the other
whether the principle of evolution in general can be adopted as an
ethical principle.
The first, of course, I advocate, and have constantly insisted upon.
The second I deny, and reject all so-called evolutional ethics based
upon it.
I am yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Thomas Common, Esq.
Hodeslea, August 31, 1894.
Dear Professor Seth,
I have come to a stop in the issue of my essays for the present, and I
venture to ask your acceptance of the set which I have desired my
publishers to send you.
I hope that at present you are away somewhere, reading novels or
otherwise idling, in whatever may be your pet fashion.
But some day I want you to read the "Prolegomena" to the reprinted
Romanes Lecture.
Lately I have been re-reading Spinoza (much read and little understood
in my youth).
But that noblest of Jews must have planted no end of germs in my
brains, for I see that what I have to say is in principle what he had
to say, in modern language.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The following letters with reference to the long unfinished memoir on
"Spirula" for the "Challenger" reports tell their own story. Huxley was
very glad to find some competent person to finish the work which his
illness had incapacitated him from completing himself. It had been a
burden on his conscience; and now he gladly put all his plates and
experience at the disposal of Professor Pelseneer, though he had
nothing written and would not write anything. He had no wish to claim
even joint authorship for the completed paper; when the question was
first raised, he desired merely that it should be stated that such and
such drawings were made by him; but when Professor Pelseneer insisted
that both names should appear as joint authors, he consented to this
solution of the question.]
Hodeslea, September 17, 1893.
Dear Mr. Murray [Now K.C.B. Director of the "Reports of the
'Challenger'."],
If the plates of Spirula could be turned to account a great burthen
would be taken off my mind.
Professor Pelseneer is every way competent to do justice to the
subject; and he has just what I needed, namely another specimen to
check and complete the work; and besides that, the physical capacity
for dissection and close observation, of which I have had nothing left
since my long illness.
Will you be so good as to tell Professor Pelseneer that I shall be glad
to place the plates at his disposal and to give him all the
explanations I can of the drawings, whenever it may suit his
convenience to take up the work?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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