Essay Review: From Parson-Hunter to Eco-Prophet: Evolution and Ethics: T. H. Huxley's “Evolution and Ethics” with New Essays on its Victorian and Sociobiological Context

For Huxley and Wilberforce at Oxford and the ensuing mythology see Lucas J. R. , “Wilberforce and Huxley: A legendary encounter”, Historical journal, xx (1979), 313–30; Gilley Sheridan and Loades Ann , “Thomas Henry Huxley: The war between science and religion”, Journal of religion, lxi (1981), 285–308; Jensen J. Vernon , “Return to the Huxley-Wilberforce debate”, The British journal for the history of science, xxi (1988), 161–79.

Huxley Julian , Foreword to Cyril Bibby, T. H. Huxley: Scientist, humanist and educator (London, 1959), p. vii. For the Modern Synthesis see Huxley Julian , Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (London, 1942).

ibid., p. v.

Worster Donald , Nature's economy: A history of ecological ideas (Cambridge, 1977, repr. 1985).

For a sympathetic contemporary on Huxley and scientific naturalism in the 1870s see Morley John , Recollections (2 vols, London, 1921), i, 81–83. See also the subsequent assessments of Greene John R. , “Darwinism as a world view”, in his Science, ideology and world view: Essays in the history of evolutionary ideas (Berkeley, 1981), 128–57; Mandelbaum Maurice , History, man and reason: A study in nineteenth-century thought (Baltimore and London, 1971), 10–19; Turner Frank M. , Between science and religion: The reaction to scientific naturalism in late- Victorian England (New Haven and London, 1974), 8–37. Brush Stephen G. , “The nebular hypothesis and the evolutionary world view”, History of science, xxv (1987), 245–78, p. 268, sees a distinction between “Darwinism” and the “evolutionary worldview”. The latter “was limited in certain ways that Darwinism was not: To unidirectional change, to finite domains of space and time, and to mechanistic causation … [it] could not cope with the radical new factors introduced in the twentieth century … and remains tied to the nineteenth-century universe of thought”. Bartholomew Michael , “Huxley's defence of Darwin”, Annals of science, xxxii (1975), 525–35, argues that despite Huxley's prominent role as Darwin's advocate he never really took to natural selection, and, furthermore, his own work underwent no significant seachange after 1859. But see also, by contrast, di Gregorio Mario , T. H. Huxley's place in natural science (New Haven and London, 1984), esp. pp. xviff.

“D”, “Professor Huxley's somersault”, Free review, i (1893), 18.

Courtney W. L. , “Professor Huxley as a philosopher”, Fortnightly review, n.s., lxiv (1895), 317–22, p. 322; St George Mivart, “Evolution in Professor Huxley”, Nineteenth century, xxxiv (1893), 198–211, pp. 199, 208; Seth Andrew , “Man's place in the cosmos: Professor Huxley on nature and man”, in his Man's place in the cosmos, and other essays (Edinburgh and London), 1–23, p. 1.

Helfand Michael , “T. H. Huxley's Evolution and ethics: The politics of evolution and the evolution of politics”, Victorian studies, xx (1977), 159–77; Jacyna L. S. , “Science and social order in the thought of A. J. Balfour”, Isis, lxxi (1980), 11–34, p. 28: “there was a decided shift in the 1880s and 1890s away from the radical connotations that naturalism had acquired earlier in the century to its deployment as a tool of Conservatism. T. H. Huxley illustrates this change: In his late writings he reneged on his earlier commitment to a naturalistic ethics in order to emphasize the discrepancy between human ethical aspirations and the limits of feasibility imposed on social reorganization by amoral but exigent natural facts.” See also his “Scientific naturalism in Victorian Britain: An essay in the social history of ideas” (Edinburgh University Ph.D., dissertation, 1980).

Huxley T. H. , “Administrative nihilism”, in his Collected essays (9 vols, London, 1894), i: Methods and results, 251–89.

Mill John Stuart , “Nature”, in his Essays on ethics, religion and society: Collected works of John Stuart Mill (27 vols, Toronto, 1969), 373–402, p. 375, cited by Paradis James G. , op. cit. (text under review), 18.

Cf. Turner , op. cit. (ref. 5).

Greene , op. cit. (ref. 5). For post-Paleyan natural theology see Brooke John Hedley , “Natural theology and the plurality of worlds: Observations on the Brewster-Whewell debate”, Annals of science, xxxiv (1977), 221–86; idem, “The natural theology of the geologists: Some theological strata”, in Jordanova L. J. and Porter Roy S. (eds), Images of the Earth: Essays in the history of the environmental sciences (Chalfont St Giles, 1979), 39–64.

Cf. Durant John R. , “The meaning of evolution: Post-Darwinian debates on the significance for man of the theory of evolution, 1858–1908” (Cambridge University Ph.D. dissertation, 1977), 296: “Scientific naturalism inherited many of the most basic assumptions of natural theology; and like its predecessor it constituted an intellectual framework within which an enormous amount of moral, political and religious as well as scientific debate was conducted.” For these continuities see also Turner Frank M. , “Victorian scientific naturalism and Thomas Carlyle”, Victorian studies, xviii (1975), 325–43; Moore James R. , “Charles Darwin lies in Westminster Abbey”, Biological journal of the Linnaean Society, xvii (1982), 97–113; Young Robert M. , Darwin's metaphor: Nature's place in Victorian culture (Cambridge, 1985).

Lightman Bernard , The origins of agnosticism: Victorian unbelief and the limits of knowledge (Baltimore and London, 1987), esp. chs 5 (“Religion, theology and the church agnostic”), 116–45, and 6 (“The new natural theology and the holy trinity of agnosticism”), 146–76. But cf. Barton Ruth , “Evolution: The Whitworth gun in Huxley's war for the liberation of science from theology”, in Oldroyd David and Langham Jan (eds), The wider domain of evolutionary thought (Dordrecht, 1983), 261–87, p. 275, on Huxley's use of religious language as a polemical device with satirical intent. Far from demonstrating the theological affinities of Huxley's faith in science, Barton argues, it was used to ridicule the equivocations of those theologians who sought to accommodate religious dogma and scientific knowledge.

Huxley , op. cit. (ref. 9); Spencer Herbert , “Specialized administration”, Fortnightly review, n.s., x (1871), 627–54.

Huxley T. H. , “Controverted questions”, in his Science and Christian tradition: Collected essays (9 vols, London, 1894), v, 1–58, p. 38. See also Paradis James G. , T. H. Huxley: Man's place in nature (Lincoln, Nebraska and London, 1978), 178–80.

Stephen Leslie , “Ethics and the struggle for existence”, Contemporary review, lxiv (1893), 157–70; Spencer Herbert , “Evolutionary ethics”, The Atheneum, no. 3432 (1893), 193–4.

Gladstone W. E. , An academic sketch: Romanes Lecture (Oxford, 1892).

Cf. Wallace A. R. , “Human progress: Past and future”, in his Studies, scientific and social (2 vols, London, 1900), ii, 493–509, p. 508, on how “the supposed consequences of the theories of Weismann and Galton … appear, if true, to limit or even to destroy all power of further evolution of mankind, except by methods which are revolting to our higher nature”. Wallace cites Ward Lester F. , “The transmission of culture”, Forum, xi (1891), 312–19, p. 319, to the effect that if Weismann's theory were true then “education has no value for the future of mankind, and its benefits are confined exclusively to the generation receiving it”. For a more recent discussion of this debate see Collini Stefan , Liberalism and sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and political argument in England, 1880–1914 (Cambridge, 1979), 171–2.

The essays, culminating in Evolution and ethics, in which Huxley developed these themes were “On the natural equality of man”, “Natural rights and political rights”, “Government: Anarchy or regimentation” (all 1890) in Huxley, op. cit. (ref. 9), 290–430; “Capital — the mother of labour” (1890), “Social diseases and worse remedies” (1891), in Huxley, Collected essays (ref. 9), ix: Evolution and ethics, 147–334. For Huxley's own account of his intentions in writing them see Huxley Leonard , Life and letters of T. H. Huxley (3 vols, London, 1903), iii, 134–46. See also Helfand , op. cit. (ref. 8); Paradis , op. cit. (ref. 16).

Huxley T. H. , “A liberal education: And where to find it”, in his Lay sermons, addresses and reviews (London, 1870), 31–59.

For the shift of the intelligentsia to Liberal Unionism see Roach John , “Liberalism and the Victorian intelligentsia”, Cambridge historical journal, xiii (1957), 71–88; Harvie Christopher , The lights of Liberalism: University Liberals and the challenge of democracy, 1860–86 (London, 1976). For the new liberalism see Richter Melvyn , The politics of conscience: T. H. Green and his age (London, 1964); Clarke Peter , Liberals and social democrats (Cambridge, 1978); Freeden Michael , The New Liberalism: An ideology of social reform (Oxford, 1978); Collini , op. cit. (ref. 19); Vincent Andrew and Plant Raymond , Philosophy, politics and citizenship: The life and thought of the British idealists (Oxford, 1984).

For Huxley's involvement with academic liberals at the two ancient universities through his friendships with W. G. Clark and Henrys Fawcett and Sidgwick at Cambridge and Benjamin Jowett at Oxford see Bibby Cyril , “Thomas Henry Huxley and university development”, Victorian studies, ii (1958–59), 97–116. For shared political involvements with academic liberals—on the Jamaica Committee in 1865, and in the Radical Club between 1865 and the early 1870s—see Harvie , op. cit. (ref. 22), 126–7, 186–8. For his involvement with the short-lived Association of Liberal Thinkers in 1879 see Huxley Leonard , op. cit. (ref. 20), ii, 265–6.

Collini , op. cit. (ref. 19), 40.

For the intelligentsia's estrangement from Gladstone see Hammond J. L. , Gladstone and the Irish nation (London, 1938), 532–45; Harvie Christopher , “Ideology and Home Rule: James Bryce, A. V. Dicey and Ireland, 1880–1887”, English historical review, xci (1976), 298–314. For Huxley on his own estrangement from Gladstone see the conversation of “some time in 1887 or 1888” cited in Leonard Huxley, op. cit. (ref. 20), ii, 46–47: “‘Do you still believe in Gladstone?’ he continued. ‘That man has the greatest intellect in Europe. He was born to be a leader of men, and he has debased himself to be a follower of the masses. If working men were today to vote by a majority that two and two make five, tomorrow Gladstone would believe it, and find them reasons for it which they had never dreamed of.’ He said it slowly and with sorrow”.

Parry J. P. , Democracy and religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867–1875 (Cambridge, 1986).

ibid., 58, 79, 80.

Turner Frank M. , “The Victorian conflict between science and religion: A professional dimension”, Isis, lxix (1978), 365–76.

Burrow J. W. , Whigs and liberals: Continuity and change in English political thought (Oxford, 1978), 20.

Freeden Michael , “Biological and evolutionary roots of the new liberalism”, Political theory, iv (1976), 471–90, p. 481. See also Jones Greta , Social Darwinism and English thought: The interaction between biological and social theory (Brighton, 1980), 61–62, on how Huxley's “The struggle for existence in humanity” transformed the nature of the debate about individualism and collectivism.

Cf. Collini Stefan , “Political theory and the ‘science of society’ in Victorian Britain”, Historical journal, xxiii (1980), 203–31, p. 230, on how the story told by Freeden requires an uncritical acceptance of the scientific legitimacy claimed by the leading new liberal actors for their political conclusions, and the “yawning gulf … between the moral and political values which they are recommending and the evolutionary paraphernalia which, at best enables these values to be conceptualized in a new way, and at worst, merely serve to dress them up in the latest finery”. See also Collini , op. cit. (ref. 19), 26, 174; Plant , op. cit. (ref. 22), 90–93.

Cf. Richter , op. cit. (ref. 22), 268–9, on John Bright and T. H. Green. See also the extended discussion on individualism and collectivism in Collini, op. cit. (ref. 19), 13–50.

Toynbee Arnold , The industrial revolution (London, 1884), 86, argued that two fallacies had pervaded post-Darwinian debate about competition and struggle: First, that all competition was competition for existence; second, “that this struggle for existence is a law of nature, and that therefore all human interference with it is wrong”: “To that I answer that the whole meaning of civilization is interference with this brute struggle. We intend to modify the violence of the fight, and to prevent the weak being trampled underfoot”.

Cowling Maurice , Religion and public doctrine in modern England, ii: Assaults (Cambridge, 1985), 153.

For Huxley at the 1894 British Association see Huxley Leonard , op. cit. (ref. 20), iii, 324–30; Burchfield J. D. , Lord Kelvin and the age of the Earth (London, 1975), 121–2. For Huxley on Balfour see Huxley T. H. , “Mr Balfour's attack on agnosticism”, Nineteenth century, xxxvii (1895), 527–40; idem, “Mr Balfour's attack on agnosticism. II”, published posthumously as an appendix to Houston Peterson, Huxley: Prophet of science (New York, 1932), 315–27. See also the account of the affair in Leonard Huxley, op. cit. (ref. 20), iii, 352–8. For Spencer's contribution to the fray see Spencer Herbert , “Mr Balfour's dialectics”, Fortnightly review, n.s., xvii (1895), 861–73.

Huxley Leonard , op. cit. (ref. 20), iii, 353, 356. For the military metaphor see Moore James R. , The post-Darwinian controversies: A study of the Protestant struggle to come to terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900 (Cambridge, 1979); Barton , op. cit. (ref. 14).

Cf. ibid., 261: “any analysis of Huxley's essays and speeches must take account of their polemical context. They are not to be treated as judicially-balanced analyses of philosophical and theological problems, nor is the superficial meaning of a statement always the whole meaning. What Huxley said, how he said it, and his emphasis, depended on whom he was speaking to and whom he was attacking”.

Cf. Balfour's introduction to Needham Joseph (ed.), Science, religion and reality (London, 1925), 4, on how much the intellectual climate had changed since the late-Victorian “war” between science and religion.

Cf. Renner Stanley , “The garden of civilization: Conrad, Huxley and the ethics of evolution”, Conradiana, vii (1975), 109–20, p. 119, on Wang's protection of Heyt's garden in Victory as a dramatization of Huxley's strictures on the need for civilization to discover the mean between self-assertion and self-restraint.

Paradis , op. cit. (ref. 16), 86–87.

For postmodernity and its suspicion of the grand récit see Lyotard Jean-Francois , The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge (Manchester, 1985); Jay Martin , Marxism and totality: The adventures of a concept from Lukács to Habermas (Cambridge, 1984); Habermas Jürgen , The philosophical discourse of modernity (Cambridge, 1989). For poststructuralism see Dews Peter , Logics of disintegration: Post-structuralism and the claims of critical theory (London, 1987).