Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And WorkMitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
Science
Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work
Mitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895
different times and addressing different and important audiences he
continued to urge the absolute necessity of a knowledge of nature. A
well-known and eloquent passage from an address on "a liberal
education" delivered to working men in 1868 contains the gist of his
reiterated argument:
"Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of
every one of us would, one day or other, depend on his winning or
losing a game of chess, don't you think that we should all
consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and
the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen
eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do you
not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to
scorn upon the father who allowed his son, or the state which
allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a
knight?
Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the
fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and more or less
of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing
something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and
complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for
untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two
players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the
world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of
the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the
other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always
fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he
never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for
ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are
paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the
strong shows delight in strength, and one who plays ill is
checkmated--without haste, but without remorse."
Huxley wished that this scientific education should begin at an early
period of every child's training. In 1869 he wrote:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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