Produced by Sue Asscher asschers@bigpond.com
The American edition of the "Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley"calls for a few words by way of preface, for there existed a particularrelationship between the English writer and his transatlantic readers.
From the time that his "Lay Sermons" was published his essays found inthe United States an eager audience, who appreciated above all thingshis directness and honesty of purpose and the unflinching spirit inwhich he pursued the truth. Whether or not, as some affirm, the Americanpublic "discovered" Mr. Herbert Spencer, they responded at once to theinfluence of the younger evolutionary writer, whose wide and exactknowledge of nature was but a stepping-stone to his interest in humanlife and its problems. And when, a few years later, after more than oneinvitation, he came to lecture in the United States and made himselfpersonally known to his many readers, it was this widespread response tohis influence which made his welcome comparable, as was said at thetime, to a royal progress.
His own interest in the present problems of the country and thepossibilities of its future was always keen, not merely as touching thedevelopment of a vast political force—one of the dominant factors ofthe near future—but far more as touching the character of itsapproaching greatness. Huge territories and vast resources were of smallinterest to him in comparison with the use to which they should be put.None felt more vividly than he that the true greatness of a nation woulddepend upon the spirit of the principles it adopted, upon the characterof the individuals who make up the nation and shape the channels inwhich the currents of its being will hereafter flow.
This was the note he struck in the appeal for intellectual sincerity andclearness which he made at the end of his New York "Lectures onEvolution." The same note dominates that letter to his sister—aSoutherner by adoption—which gives his reading of the real issue atstake in the great civil war. Slavery is bad for the slave, but farworse for the master, as sapping his character and making impossiblethat moral vigour of the individual on which is based the collectivevigour of the nation.
The interest with which he followed the later development of socialproblems need not be dwelt on here, except to say that he watched theirearlier maturity in America as an indication of the problems which wouldafterwards call for a solution in his own country. His share in treatingthem was limited to examining the principles of social philosophy onwhich some of the proposed remedies for social troubles were based, andthis examination may be found in his "Collected Essays." But theeducational campaign which he carried on in England had its counterpartin America. It was not only that he was chosen to open the Johns HopkinsUniversity as the type of a new form of education; there and elsewherepupils of his carried out in America his methods of teaching biology,while others engaged in general education would write testifying to theinfluence of his ideas upon their own methods of teaching. But it mustbe remembered that nothing was further from his mind than the desire tofound a school of thought. He only endeavoured as a scholar and astudent to clear up his own thoughts and help others to clear theirs,whether in the intellectual or the moral world. This was the help hesteadfastly hoped