DDR: Collected Essays (1893-1894) [Nine Volumes, Complete Set] by Thomas Henry Huxley

9 Glorious Volumes of  essays by T. H. Huxley (Aldous's grandfather & teacher of H. G. Wells, who was aka Darwin's Bulldog). I bought this set at Half-Life Books some time ago for a pittance, read the first 2 1/2 volumes out loud and posted them online, then for some reason (not lack of love, but it was during an unhinged period of my life, so that might be all the explanation that's needed) stop reading, set the posts to private, and the books then sat on a shelf (next to Henry Thomas Buckle, which is a high honor) for a little over 9 years.

But I've been thinking about those essays a bit over the years...and lately I've been thinking that this would make for a fine DDR project.

It'd be a big one, as the total page count is upward of 3,000 as I remember...but hey, it's also AH's GRANDpa, FF'sS.

So...maybe?

 

Day 1 (DDRD 2,420) June 16, 2024

Read to page 30. And btw, this Volume I, sub-entitled Method and Results, is viii + 430 pages...so its a good two weeks' worth, I think. If the other 8 volumes are comparable in length, this will be a 4 1/2 month long journey. I think I'm game!

And immediately remembered what an excellent writer Mr. Thomas Henry Buckley is. His wisdom, his turns if ohrase, his sarcasm, his allusions...it's just exquisite writing.

"...I have been obliged to content myself through life with saying what I mean in the plainest of plain language, than which, I suppose, there is no habit more ruinous to a man's prospects of advancement." (3)

Btw, this:

Please note: I'm willing to sell at this price. Ill even throw in free shipping...though it'll take about three and a half months for delivery.

Day 2 (DDRD 2,421) June 17, 2024

Read to page 60.

Now, keeping in mind that the chapter I'm reading was published in 1887, check this out:

"It may be said....that...matter has no extension, being reduced to mathematical points serving as centers of 'forces.'" (fn, pp. 60 - 61.)

Sure sounds like quantum physics to me...but preceding Max Planck by 13 years.

Hmmpf.

Day 3 (DDRD 2,422) June 18, 2024

Read to page 102.

You know, T. H. Huxley was kind of the Isaac Asimov of his time. And I know my Asimov's from my elbow. Huxley seems to know a little bit about lots of different scientific fields, and he seems to enjoy breaking big ideas down on into common man language.

Also, this:

"...[A]ny one who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact, rarely get as far as fact; and any one who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the "anticipation of Nature," that is, by the invention of hypotheses, which, though verifiable, often had very little foundation to start with; and, not unfrequently, in spite of a long career of usefulness, turned out to be wholly erroneous in the long run." (62)

Which seems to me to be good advice on how to live. Or, as The Boss said in "Leap of Faith",

It takes a leap of faith to get things going

It takes a leap of faith you gotta show some guts

It takes a leap of faith to get things going

In your heart you must trust

Day 4 (DDRD 2,423) June 19, 2024

Read to page 132. 

Day 5 (DDRD 2,424) June 20, 2024

Read to page 162.

Just in case you ever need to know, peau de chagrin is a French phrase which literally means " skin of sorrow," but (according to Wikipedia) actually refers to a Balzac story entitled "The Magic Skin" or "The Wild Ass's Skin." 

"Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of shagreen (untanned skin from a wild ass) that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of his physical energy." 

Huxley gets a little playful when he talks about protoplasm, eventually leading to his referring to eating mutton as a way to "transubstantiate sheep into man." (147)

He gets even playfuller vis-a-vis consuming a lobster:

"If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the same wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacean might, and probably would, return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature by turning my protoplasm into living lobster." (147 - 148)

🕺➡🦞

Yep.

More ha ha:

"No, so far as I am concerned, the most reverend prelate might dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I should not attempt to stay his hand."  (156)

This was even funnier the first time I read it, as I neglected to note the word "dialectically." As for Agag, alarmed lest 

A but later on, THH refers to people who "are alarmed lest  man's moral nature be debased by the increase of his wisdom." (160) And that, brahs and tahs, is the essence if The American Mind. "Our" attitude towards the intellectual runs the gamut from Suspicion to Hostility, with some station stops at Bemusement, Disdain, and Indifference.

Day 6 (DDRD 2,425) June 21, 2024

Read to page 193.

"We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it." (163)

Also, it looks like Descartes described a robot in 1664. Seems a bit ahead of the curve.

And now, for some quantum physics: "...matter...may be nothing but a multitude of centres of force." (189)

And even more extreme: "'Matter' and 'Force' are...mere names for certain forms of consciousness." (193)

Day 7 (DDRD 2,426) June 22, 2024

Read to page 223.

Hammer Time: "The phenomenal universe is the creation of The Ego...." (211)

On page 212, there's a reference to "a passage in Willis's well-known essay, 'De Anima Brutorum,' published in 1672...."

Which is funny, because every time I bump into one of these quantum physics anticipatory / holographic universe ideas, my thoughts immediately go to a Willis I know and love.

And coincidentally, a first edition of this De anima brutorum treatise is now (only 5 days left!) up for auction at Christie's (https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/fine-printed-books-manuscripts-including-americana/de-anima-brutorum-56/226139)--Starting Bid USD 1,700, Estimated sale price USD 2,500 - USD 3,500. 

Hmmm. 

Oh, P.S. This Thomas* Willis fellow coined the term "neurology." So 🎩s📴.

* Heh heh.

Waitaminute. 1672???? As in 100 years before the USofA was a nation? As in the year Isaac Newton was elected to membership in The Royal Society of London? Holy shit! 2 or 3 thousand bucks is a STEAL for this thing.

Day 8 (DDRD 2,427) June 23, 2024

Read to page 253.

Day 9 (DDRD 2,428) June 24, 2024

Read to page 285.

"That which is to be lamented....is...that society...has no machinery by which to facilitate the descent of incapacity from the higher strata to the lower." (254)

Can I get an Amen?

Here's a troubling thought: "their tolerance is large because their belief is small." (267 - 268)

And if its true, than the corollary--"their tolerance is small because their belief is large"--must also be true. And we certainly do see evidence of that.

Day 10 (DDRD 2,429) June 25, 2024

Read to page 315.

Education "promotes morality and refinement, by teaching men to discipline themselves, and by leading them to see that the highest, as it is the only permanent, content is to be attained, not by groveling in the rank and steaming valleys of sense, but by continual striving towards those high peaks, where, resting in eternal calm, reason discerns the undefined, but bright ideal of the highest Good--"a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night." (289)

Well...that's a mouthful,  ennit?

And that's when it hit me: 

https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/a%20priori

It's not just innate stupidity or even willful ignorance that leads people to disregard the obviously criminal behavior of Donald Trump. It's a priori reasoning. 

Note to self: might need to check out Felix Rocquain, starting here:  https://archive.org/details/revolutionaryspi00rocqiala/mode/1up

Day 11 (DDRD 2,430) June 26, 2024

Read to page 345. So under 100 pages to go...about three more days ought to do it. But I'm in no hurry. Huxley's writing is quite delightful--witty and intelligent.

After raking Rousseau over the coals for 40+ pages, Huxley concludes by saying, "...the gospel of Jean Jacques, in its relation to property, is a very sorry affair...it is the product of an untrustworthy method, applied to assumptions which are devoid of foundation in fact; and...nothing can be more profoundly true than the saying of the great and truly philosophical English jurist, whose recent death we all deplore, that speculations of this sort are rooted in 'impatience of experience and the preference of á priori to all other methods of reasoning reasoning.'" (334 to 335)

Big, big 🔥.

I find it particularly amusing that Huxley refers to Rousseau as "Jean Jacques."

Another book & author which / who sounds interesting:

The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Ancient Greece and Rome by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (1864) Internet Archive has an audiobook version of it, but that's all I've been able to find for $0 so far. And I don't do well with audiobooks. I tend to fall asleep after 7 minutes of listening.

ADDENDUM: Spoke too soon. There's a downloadable PDF of the book available via stacks.stanford.edu . Looks like it's worth a look or two. No, no, thank you.

Day 12 (DDRD 2,431) June 27, 2024

Read to page 376. So tomorrow is it for Volume I. And I am definitely up for proceeding directly into Volume II. I wonder if ill ever get back to Dostoyevsky.

"It is admitted that a tiger has a natural right to eat a man; but if he may eat one man, he may eat another, so that a tiger has a right of property in all men, as potential tiger meat." (346 - 347)

I'm thinking that Potential Tiger Meat would be a great title for an autobiography. Or a band name. It would also look good on a T-shirt. 

Day 13 (DDRD 2,432) June 28, 2024

Read to page 406. Which means I need to read another 24 pages to finish today. I think I can...but we'll see, no money on it.

A big disappointment: "...I am also bound to tell you that neither the pauper child, nor Messrs. Astor, nor the Duke of Westminster, have any more right to the land than the first nigger you may meet...." (381)

I know times were different then, but it's still hard to reconcile the use of the word "nigger" with an intelligent man.

And now for something completely different:

Huxley wonders "whether there is not much more of Greek philosophy and Roman organisation and ritual, than of primitive Christianity,  in the triumphant Catholicism of the fourth and later centuries." (385)

Day 14 (DDRD 2,433) June 29, 2024

Read to page 430 = The End. And so satisfying a read it was that I feel compelled to start Volume II so as to at least get my full 30 pages in today (since at present I've read only 24 today.

"Philosophers, proud of living according to reason, are too apt to forget that people who do not profess themselves to be more than ordinary men mostly live according to unreason; or what seems such to the philosophers." (421)

Maybe that's why I look at Trump and see a selfish, cruel, nasty man, while my friend Linda thinks he was a great president and will undoubtedly vote for him for a third time this November. It's not that she's stupid...and she is a very sweet and kind-hearted person...it's that she is looking at him from a totally different perspective...one I can't understand, but hell, that's not saying much, is it? The older I get, the less I know and the less sure I am about anything. Except that Trump is an evil motherfucker and I prat to God he loses the next election. 

Oh...this:

"I do not hesitate to express the opinion, that, if there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over Nature which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of Want, with its concomitant physical and moral degradation, among the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable consummation. What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction?" (423)

I've also decided to continue this post for the next Volume, thus keeping it out of the spotlight (where it belongs).

So...onward.

Volume II: Darwiniana

vii + 475 = 482, so 16 days' worth.

Read the vii, so starting on page 1 tomorrow. 

Day 15 (DDRD 2,434) June 30, 2024

Read to page 51.

In discussing the word species, Huxley says (with a side order of incredulity, I think, that there are "divines and savants" who believe that there are different species of men. He then adds, "more particularly, that the species negro is so distinct from our own that the Ten Commandments have actually no reference to him." (2) 

I'm pretty sure that he is suggesting that that is ridiculous. I hope so. I am rather opposed to perusing the words of racists.

New word: Pemmican. It's basically pounded dried meat, fat, and some berries, and it stays good for five years on the shelf. It's worth looking up the recipe, let me tell ya. Anyway, Huxley says that Darwin's On the Origin of Species is an intellectual pemmican.

And how about this:

"The myths of Paganism are as dead as Osiris or Zeus, and the man who should revive them, in opposition to the knowledge of our time, would be justly laughed to scorn; but the coeval imaginations current among the rude inhabitants of Palestine, recorded by writers whose very name and age are admitted by every scholar to be unknown, have unfortunately not yet shared their fate, but, even at this day, are regarded by nine-tenths of the civilized world as the authoritative standard of fact and the criterion of the justice of scientific conclusions, in all that relates to the origin of things, and, among them, of species. In this nineteenth century, as at the dawn of modern physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters? Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonize impossibilities—whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the generous new wine of Science into the old bottles of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the same strong party?" (51)

Yowza! Call the fuckin' fire department!

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

🎤💧

Day 16 (DDRD 2,435) July 1, 2024

Read to page 81.

Word of the day:

usufruct

[ yoo-zoo-fruhkt, -soo-, yooz-yoo-, yoos- ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

, Roman and Civil Law.

1. the right of enjoying all the advantages derivable from the use of something that belongs to another, as far as is compatible with the substance of the thing not being destroyed or injured.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/usufruct

So there's that. And now this:

So I guess this was meant to be, eh?

Day 17 (DDRD 2,436) July 2, 2024

Read to page 111.

Word of the day:

saltation

[ sal-tey-shuhn ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

1. 1 a dancing, hopping, or leaping movement.
2. 2 an abrupt movement or transition.
3. 3 Geology. intermittent, leaping movement of particles of sand or gravel, as from the force of wind or running water.
4. 4 Biology. a sudden, drastic genetic mutation or series of mutations occurring between one generation and the next, especially one that generates a new species.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/saltation

Day 18 (DDRD 2,437) July 3, 2024

Read to page 141.

On page 136, Huxley makes reference to "a heretic like myself...." I'm kind if surprised that he could get away with that in 1871.

Day 19 (DDRD 2,438) 🎆🎇July 4, 2024🎇🎆

Read to page 172.

Huxley says that one of the greatest merits of the doctrine of evolution is that "it occupies a position of complete and irreconcilable antagonism to that vigorous and consistent enemy of the highest intellectual, moral, and social life of mankind--the Catholic Church." (147)

Ummm....is THH allowed to say that????

Oh, here's another big 🔥: "a hell of honest men [is] more endurable than a paradise full of angelic shams." (150)

When I got to page 160, I noticed yet another little L shaped mark at the end of a paragraph. I'd noticed a few of these before, and my first thought was that the (or a) previous owner had made them for some reason. But today it occurred to me that they might be my markings...so I took a slide down the YouTube ad found my videos of me reading this book, and like and behold, on October 26, 2014, at 05:45 AM, I was reading on page 160. At least I think it was me:

Although I can't imagine where all that hair came from. 

Day 20 (DDRD 2,439) July 5, 2024

Read to page 202. Reading time has been a bit pinched for the past four days as #2☀ is back home for a bit while a covid scare runs through his apartment house.  Just when you think that shit is over with....

Day 21 (DDRD 2,440) July 6, 2024

Read to page 233.

Day 22 (DDRD 2,441) July 7, 2024

Read to page 265.          

Day 23 (DDRD 2,442) July 8, 2024

Read to page 312.

Word of the Day: 

valetudinarian

[ val-i-tood-n-air-ee-uhn, -tyood- ]

adjective

in poor health; sickly; invalid.

excessively concerned about one's poor health or ailments.

of, relating to, or characterized by invalidism.

First recorded in 1695–1705; valetudinary + -an

(https://www.dictionary.com/browse/valetudinarian)

Because Darwin spent a large portion of the last part of his life as an invalid.

Also, this bit of astonishing perspective on On the Origin of Species: "...it must always be recollected, was considered by the author to be merely an abstract of an opus majus." (295)

Which makes me think of Henry Thomas Buckle and his uncompleted masterwork.

You know, on one ✋, I am enjoying this work, and I think THH is a Mist excellent writer...but on the other ✋️, I wonder about the wisdom of putting all of his Darwin essays into one Volume. Seems to me that THH would have been better served by taking a chronological approach to this 9 volume project.

Just sayin', sir.

Do you remember the "hat" from The Little Prince? Well, here's another one for you. What is thus?

I'll give you a minute to think about it.

🕐

🕑

🕒

🕓

🕔

🕕

🕖

🕗

🕘

🕙

🕚

🕛

《《⏰》》

If you guessed A Horse, then you guessed correctly. Here's what CD had to say about this:

"Now, that is a horse--as mathematicians would say-- reduced to its most simple expression. Carry that in your minds, if you please, as a simplified idea of the structure of the horse." (309)

Yep, got it. 🐎 

Day 24 (DDRD 2,443) July 9, 2024

Read to page 342.

Here's a puzzler:

THH Is talking about the formation of mud, and he says, in part, that after rocks have been ground down into a powdery substance by waves that the ocean currents pull it to the "deeper parts of the ocean, in which it can sink to the bottom, that is, to parts where there is a depth of about fourteen or fifteen fathoms." (334)

Well, fifteen fathoms is only ninety feet, and I am pretty sure that the deepest part of the ocean is significantly deeper than that.

(Just for the record, the deepest part of the ocean is The Challenger Deep, which is 35,768–35,856. And the average depth of the ocean is 12,080 feet. He'll, even the Thames is 66 feet deep. How on earth could Huxley have pulled such a boner?)

And here's a goid example of THH's rather delightful style: "Men of science, like young colts in a fresh pasture, are apt to be exhilarated on being turned into a new field of inquiry, to go off at a hand-gallop, in total disregard of hedges and ditches, to lose sight of the real limitation of their inquiries, and to forget the extreme imperfection of what is really known." (341-342)

Day 25 (DDRD 2,444) July 10, 2024

Read to page 375. 100 pages to go in Volume II!

THH discusses Trolls on page 362:

"There are many men who, though knowing absolutely nothing of the subject with which they may be dealing, wish, nevertheless, to damage the author of some view with which they think fit to disagree. What they do, then, is not to go and learn something about the subject, which one would naturally think the best way of fairly dealing with it; but they abuse the originator of the view they question, in a general manner, and wind up by saying that, "After all, you know, the principles and method of this author are totally opposed to the canons of the Baconian philosophy." Then everybody applauds, as a matter of course, and agrees that it must be so. But if you were to stop them all in the middle of their applause, you would probably find that neither the speaker nor his applauders could tell you how or in what way it was so; neither the one nor the other having the slightest idea of what they mean when they speak of the 'Baconian philosophy.'"

Nothing new under the sun, I guess.

Day 26 (DDRD 2,445) July 11, 2024

Read to page 405. He's telling the short-legged sheep and six-fingered boy story again.

Day 27 (DDRD 2,446) July 12, 2024

Read to page 441. 

Day 28 (DDRD 2,447) July 13, 2024

Read to page 475. The End. So on to Volume III? Maybe. Probably. But I've had an intense hankering to read Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity of late. Thinking about taking a break from THH to do that. Not for lack of love of THH--not at all. Of course, that means I have to find Mission of Gravity, which may prove to be a difficult feat.

THH certainly likes the word "multitudinous." It keeps popping up...seems like at least once in every essay. Btw, the word was most likely coined by William Shake-speare in 1603 in Macbeth. (Just in case you're ever on Jeopardy! and it comes up.)

DDRD 2,448 July 14, 2024

And our survey says...

I'll be back in two weeks, Thomas Henry, so keep a light on.

Slightly more than two weeks later....

Volume III: Science & Education,  v + 451 = 456 pages.

Day 29 (DDRD 2,473) August 8, 2024 

Got a little lost along the way, but now I'm just around the corner from Volume 3.

I've been here before:

That was years and years ago, when I was reading these books out loud. I loved doing that, but I read an article which convinced me that this was copyright infringement, so I stopped and took all of my reading aloud posts... hundreds of them...down.

ANYway...

Read to page 72.

"Thus, having settled the point in the zebra and the horse, our philosopher would have great confidence in the existence of a circulation in the ass." (66)

Mmm-hmmm.

Day 30 (DDRD 2,474) August 9, 2024 

Read to page 102.

Reading "Emancipation--Black and White" is startlingly offensive; it's racist and misogynistic, and it is making me feel ill to read it.

For instance:

"...emancipation may convert the slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperised man...."

"It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places in the hierarchy of civilisation will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest."

"But while our new Paris might hesitate between the youthful Bacchus and the Venus emerging from the foam, he averred that, when Venus and Bacchus had reached thirty, the point no longer admitted of a doubt; the male form having then attained its greatest nobility, while the female is far gone in decadence; and that, at this epoch, womanly beauty, so far as it is independent of grace or expression, is a question of drapery and accessories."

What the fuckety fucking fuck is going on here? Who is this means spirited writer, and what has he done with T. H. Huxley?????

Day 31 (DDRD 2,475) August 10, 2024 

Read to page 133.

"...a parable will sometimes penetrate where syllogism fail to effect an entrance...." (138)

"Certainly the time was that the Levites of culture would have sounded their trumpets against its walls as against an educational Jericho." (140)

Day 32 (DDRD 2,476) August 11, 2024 

Read to page 179. So tomorrow I'll pass the point where I'd previously pooped out (page 199, April 24, 2015).

Day 33 (DDRD 2,477) August 12, 2024 

Read to page 210.

Just in case you need to know, sic cogitavit means "so he thought." Why don't these editors ever provide translations for terms or quotations in other languages?

Here's a blast from the past for me:

"Kant has said that the ultimate object of all knowledge is to give replies to these three questions: What can I do? What ought I to do? What may I hope for? The forms of knowledge which I have enumerated, should furnish such replies as are within human reach, to the first and second of these questions. While to the third, perhaps the wisest answer is, "Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone.

"If this be a just and an exhaustive classification of the forms of knowledge, no question as to their relative importance, or as to the superiority of one to the other, can be seriously raised.

"On the face of the matter, it is absurd to ask whether it is more important to know the limits of one's powers; or the ends for which they ought to be exerted; or the conditions under which they must be exerted. One may as well inquire which of the terms of a Rule of Three sum one ought to know, in order to get a trustworthy result. Practical life is such a sum, in which your duty multiplied into your capacity, and divided by your circumstances, gives you the fourth term in the proportion, which is your deserts, with great accuracy."

To wit:  https://phonynoam.tumblr.com/post/132150672625/so-this-is-kind-of-weird-i-was-getting-ready-to

I'm kind of surprised to see that this corresponds more or less to where I stopped reading this book. i had opened the book at random to this quote, not knowing it was within spitting distance of where I'd abandoned the reading. I guess that's the way it is on this bitch of an earth.

Day 34 (DDRD 2,478) August 13, 2024 

Read to page 240.

Yeah, I know August 13th is missing. I don't know what happened there. I know I didn't miss any reading days, but clearly I fucked up the calendar at some point. Oh well.

Day 35 (DDRD 2,479) August 15, 2024 

Read to page 276.

Thought this was interesting--especially as I just finished reading The Light Eaters:

"Thus, biologists have arrived at the conclusion that a fundamental uniformity of structure pervades the animal and vegetable worlds, and that plants and animals differ from one another simply as diverse modifications of the same great general plan." (276)

Day 36 (DDRD 2,480) August 16, 2024 

Read to page 306.

Day 37 (DDRD 2,481) August 17, 2024 

Read to page 340. More on medical education. This volume isn't nearly as interesting as the previous two.

Day 38 (DDRD 2,482) August 18, 2024 

Read to page 370. Well...sorry to say it, but with 80 pages to go, I am pretty bored with this book.I'm starting to think about shifting to something else again. I've even had a passing thought who high says, "This whole Daily (Devotional--which is meant in jest) Reading thing is bullshit, so why bother?" I think that's just the depression soeaking, but sometimes it's hard to distinguish between actual despair and clear-sightedness when you've become accustomed to unhappiness. 

Fuuuuuuuuuck.

Maybe things will look different tomorrow.

P.S. I was in Half-Price Books today (surprise!) and saw a hardback collection of the notebooks if Samuel R. Delaney which looked very interesting. I got home wishing that I had bought it, then picked this

off my bookshelf, and I'm thinking, "THAT might be more interesting than Volume 4 of Huxley's essays...."

Day 39 (DDRD 2,483) August 19, 2024 

Read to page 400.

Day 40 (DDRD 2,484) August 20, 2024 

Read to page 430.

Day 41 (DDRD 2,485) August 21, 2024 

Read to page 451. 🐷Ah-Bm Ah-B, Ah-B...That's All, Folks!🐷

Finished the reading in the doctor's office, and when Doc had finished scaring the hell out of me he asked what I was reading. Figuring that Thomas Henry Huxley wasn't that well known, I answered, "Essays by T. H. Huxley, who was Aldous' grandfather. He was a big proponent of Darwin, and was known as Darwin's Bulldog." He looked a little surprised, then said, "I just heard that phrase the other day, Darwin's Bulldog." So there's that.

And since today's reading was a bit short...just 21 pages...I decided to go ahead and have at the first few pages of Volume IV. Which, by the way, is sub-titled "Science and Hebrew Tradition," so that gives me some hope. It's xvi + 372 = 388 pages, so looks like 13 days--assuming I stick with it.

So....

Two things, the first a footnote on page vi which says, in part, "The account of the death of Moses in the last eight verses of Deuteronomy was, of course, dictated to and written by himself, like all the rest." How's that for a smartass comment?

The second is on page vi, in which Huxley notes that "Whoever will be saved" must believe, not only all these things, but a great many others of equal repugnancy to common sense and everyday knowledge." This boy is on 🔥!

Funny that I just started reading Isaac Asimov's In the Beginning, which examines the first few chapters of Genesis from a scientific perspective.  I have the feeling Isaac is going to be a lot gentler than Huxley.

Just read to xvi, btw.

Day 42 (DDRD 2,487) August 22, 2024 

Read to page 42.

When I read "the polar regions were once warmer" (37), I needed to know if that was true or an error on the part of the Ghost of Science Past, so I Googled.

"Antarctica hasn’t always had the same climate that it has today. In the geological past (many millions of years ago), Antarctica has been much warmer than present, and fossils found in rocks indicate that at various times even trees have covered much of the continent. These warmer periods in Antarctica were the result of different tectonic configurations and patterns of ocean circulation many millions of years ago (see Key factors behind Antarctica’s climate). However, for at least the last 6 million years, ice has covered most of the continent."

https://discoveringantarctica.org.uk/oceans-atmosphere-landscape/atmosphere-weather-and-climate/climate-change-past-and-future/

There it is.

Day 43 (DDRD 2,488) August 23, 2024 

Read to page 72.

Huxley refers to Paradise Lost as "the English Divina Commedia." (52) Hmmm. That would be scanned. But I still insist that "Free Bird" is the American "Stairway to Heaven."

I was reading at the YMCA today while Joe hit the treadmill, and a woman came up to me and asked what I was reading. I told her that it was a book of essay by T.H. Huxley, and added that he was Aldous' grandpa. She looked like she was in the know and said, "Oh, he wrote 1984, didn't he?" Close enough for me to be happy, but I told her that it was actually Brave New World. She said something positive about that, then told me that I must be an intellectual to be reading that. I gave my usual response: "Well, they don't see this at Kroger." She laughed and we parted.

Day 44 (DDRD 2,489) August 24, 2024

Read to page 102. 

Day 45 (DDRD 2,490) August 25, 2024

Read to page 138. 

Day 46 (DDRD 2,491) August 26, 2024

Read to page 168.

Origami

I did not see Him

Fold the paper, so I think

It was just the wind.

Day 47 (DDRD 2,492) August 27, 2024

Read to page 200.

Day 48 (DDRD 2,493) August 28, 2024

Read to page 230.

Huxley makes reference to the transformation of the backward- looking Lot's wife as "the sudden transmutation of the chemical components of a woman's body into sodium chloride...." (210) Thass a good-a one.

Huxley spends lots of words absolutely destroying the veracity of the Biblical Flood story. 

Speaking of the Flood story...I have been thinking for some time about a little side project. I would like to read the Bible out loud and Comment upon things that I either know a little bit about or that I have thought about. Don't know if I have the energy for that, but...time will tell.

Day 49 (DDRD 2,494) August 29, 2024

Read to page 271. Huxley absolutely destroyed The Flood story...but did show that it was pilfered from an older story which dies seem credible.

In a recent email to a dear friend, I mentioned that I was thinking about dropping Huxley for awhile and hitting Dante's Divine Comedy. I just got a copy from the library, and was thinking I'd be ready to roll in a few days. Today I was reading a Superman comic book (Superman: Lost), and look what was on page 169, panel 1:

Yep.

Day 50 (DDRD 2,495) August 30, 2024

Read to page 301.

And this:

Okay now, that's enough. You're starting to scare me, Universe.

Day 51 (DDRD 2,496) August 31, 2024

Read to page 342, which leaves A mere 30 pages in this volume. Which is probably for tomorrow, but I'm feeling kind of shitty and lazy and depressed, do maybe today. 

THH mentioned (& praised) A book which sounds interesting, Nineteen Years In Polynesia: Missionary Life, Travels And Researches In The Islands Of The Pacific by George Turner. It can be found bound for $40 - $50, but our friends at the Internet Archive will let you read it for free. I read the first few pages and found it quite captivating, and was delighted with the many illustrations. It's on The List.

Day 52 (DDRD 2,497) September 1, 2024

Read to page 372, The End. 

Reference page 369--

                                    --Come ON now, motherfuckers. I said I'd read it next. Now get off my back.