The Henson Journals
Mon 4 May 1925
Volume 39, Pages 26 to 27
[26]
Monday, May 4th, 1925.
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That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, & does with ease & pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic machine, with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well forge the anchors of the mind: whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations: one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience: who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.
T. H. Huxley quoted by Julian Huxley, his grandson in a centenary notice published in the 'Observer' on May 3rd, 1925.
[27]
I worked at the book, and wrote as much as a chapter, but all woefully confused and incoherent. Knight came to lunch, and talk business. He seems to get about the diocese to some effect. I walked in the Park for an hour. The weather became almost sultry.
Natural science, from being a toy for speculative minds, has become, & been recognized as, one of the foundations of any civilization which we can for the present envisage. The sciences of dead matter vindicated their immense practical importance during Huxley's life–time: the sciences of living matter are now in train to achieve the same triumph. Nationalism, like a plague of boils, came to a head in country after country, but is itself producing (besides appalling wars) an internationalist anti–toxin which will moderate its violence. The medieval scheme of thought, persisting, however totteringly and with however many modifications, in spite of shock after shock since the time of the Renaissance, has finally crashed to earth. In its place is apparent chaos. But the chaos is in reality due to the rapidity with which mankind is assembling materials for a new edifice.
Julian Huxley.