GREAT LIVES IN LITTLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 147, 23 June 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

GREAT LIVES IN LITTLE.

HUXLEY AND LAMB

It illustrates the scope of Duckworth's series of "Great Lives," pocket volumes of about 140 pages, that the subjects of the last two volumes to hand are Thomas Huxley and Charles Lamb, and among those in preparation are Karl Marx and —W. G. Grace! The volume on Huxley, by E. E. Macßride, Professor of Zoology, Imperial College of Science, South Kensington, has a special interest because of the controversies in which Hiixley was so prominent and the subsequent reaction against the materialism that he championed. In this little book, admirable in its arrangement and its temper alike, we have a? scientist in Huxley's own department, not only telling the very interesting story of Huxley's life, but criticising the theories of both Huxley and Darwin. Huxley was a noble figure, and in his industry, his passion for truth, his personal honesty, his enthusiasm for education, he is an example to succeeding ages. If he.had never become the champion of evolution and the, high priest of agnosticism —a term he toined himself—his career would still be worth reading about. He was a lovable man and he was fortunate enough to find happiness, not only in unceasing work, but in an ideal marriage. Bui Huxley the scientist is less important than was Huxley the philosopher and interpreter of life in the light of science, and it is here that Professor Macßride is most valuable. Huxley stood for materialism, but he was not really a materialist. He surprised and annoyed those of his own school of thought by supporting Bible teaching in schools. There must, he held, be a basis for morality. In his insistence on morality he was a true Victorian. Yet perhaps he did more than any .man of his time to weaken belief in revealed religion. Professor Macßride says that he made a great error in regarding animal life as mechanistic. He was a laboratory rather than an out-of-doot naturalist, and the animal to him was always a machine. His biographer's summing up is impressive.

Huxley's propaganda In favour of evolution or the orderly growth of living beings was a magnificent effort, and was fully justified, although his conception of its modus operandi was mistaken. His definition of the agnostic position was a lasting contribution to clarity and honesty of thought, but his philosophy of materialism was radically unsound, and, propagated by his influence and authority, has done enormous damage; it lias led to results which would have horrified Huxley could ho have foreseen them; for example, it has certainly been one of the contributing causes to the establishment of Bolshevism in Russia. Ifor, however Huxley may have Imagined that it was possible to divide the mind into two compartments,'and reserve one for a cold, intellectual materialism and the other for a warm, sympathetic Christian morality, in the long run this, is not feasible. Eventually, as 110 himsef had said, "Right practice is the outcoino of right theory."

Professor Macßrido has written a first-rate biography in little. If he had had more spaco 110 doubt he would have said something about Huxley's extraordinarily effective literary style. Orlo Williams' "Charles Lamb" is a welcome addition to the mass of hooka on one' of the best-loved writers in the whole range of letters. He comprcsses skilfully the domestic story" and the literary record, and he writes with understanding and affection. The disillusioned of this age, of course, must have their fling at Lamb; an English critic said of him the other day, in respect to his care of Mary, that ho only did his duty, so why make so much fuss? Like other biographies, Mr. Williams' shows the foolishness and cruelty of such an attitude.