Science in the Magazines

Abstract

THE personal reminiscences of Huxley, contributed by Mr. George W. Smalley to the current number of Scribner, will bring up pleasant memories to those who were honoured by the friendship of the departed naturalist, and they form an affectionate tribute “to the memory of one of the truest men who ever lived, one of the manliest, and in all points the noblest.” There is in the article so much real testimony to Huxley's greatness, that every student of science will appreciate it. “The emancipation of thought,” truly says Mr. Smalley, “that is Huxley's legacy to his century—that was his continual lesson of intellectual honesty.” Against those who criticised Huxley's philosophical learning we quote these words: “In truth he was a very expert metaphysician, with an extraordinary knowledge of the literature of metaphysics and philosophy. … Huxley was a student, and more than a student, of Descartes. He has written the best short book in existence on Hume. He was a pupil of Aristotle, and therefore not a Platonist. Hobbes taught him much; Berkeley was to him a great thinker; Locke, Butler, and the short list of really great names in English philosophy were all his familiars, while among the great Germans there was, I think, none whom he did not know well—Kant, Hegel, Fichte, and all that illustrious line, not excepting Schopenhauer.” But Huxley's claim to recognition as one of the world's foremost thinkers, now unhappily lost to us, need not be enlarged upon here. “He will be remembered as the great physiologist, the great student, the great controversialist, the great thinker and writer. That he will be remembered need not be doubted. The world, it may still be said, does not willingly let die the memory of those who have made it a better world to live in, whose lives as well as whose teachings have been lessons of devotion, of high aims, of wide accomplishments, of honourable purpose; whose achievements are written imperishably in the annals of their own time. Huxley was one of these, and his monument in his, life's endeavour. There will be no need to inscribe Right Honourable upon his tomb. The name he bore through life will serve both for epitaph and eulogy.”