Of marriage and single life

I. A brief summary
As we all know, Francis Bacon, the chief
figure of the English Renaissance, is a very
famous as an English statesman, essayist,
and philosopher of science. Of Marriage
and Single Life is one of his most well-
known essays, which analyzes and
compares marriage with single life in
different aspects, such as characters, public
service and personal qualities. While, there
seems to be not so comprehensive from
people’s perspective today.
Bacon’s basic opinion is that marriage is
good to both individual and society. His
analysis is taken step by step. At first, a
single man believes that a man with wife
and children, who are obstacles to both
great courses and little trivial, is the slave of
fortune. Especially some miser men think
children are the bills of charges and will
reduce their riches. And foremost reason is
that to be single is to be free, while wife and
children are the bonds to his freedom.
However, a single life has some good
aspects. “Unmarried men are best friends,
best masters, and best servants.” But single
life could also make a man indifferent, facile
and corrupt for judges and magistrates,
coward for soldiers without combat power
and perseverance. Marriage makes a man
be responsible, tender, enthusiastic and
warm-hearted. Finally, Bacon pointed that
“wives are young men’s mistresses,
companions for middle age, and old men’s
nurses”. Even though a wife marries a bad
husband, marriage offers a good chance for
husband to correct themselves.
Ⅲ Analysis
This essay considers "wives" and children
(assuming his readers are male) and
balances their advantages against their
disadvantages in such a way that it's
difficult to decide whether marriage is a
good or a bad idea. Bad marriages,
however, he suggests can be analyzed
more easily by their effects upon the
women in them.
Bacon first states with apparent confidence
that ‘He that hath wife and children hath
given hostages to fortune, for they are
impediments to great enterprises’, a
statement that on the face of it is closed
and certain.
However, Bacon’s essays are also
motivated by a sense of exploration, and
any resolution of idea is soon left behind.
Following the above sentence he departs
from the question of whether women and
children are impediments and continues:
Certainly the best works […] have
proceeded from the unmarried or childless
men; which both in affection and means
have married and endowed the public. Yet
it were great reason that those that have
children should have greatest care of future
times, unto which they know they must
transmit their dearest treasures. Some
there are, who though they lead a single
life, their thoughts do end with themselves,
and count future times impertinences.
The word ‘certainly’, with which this
passage begins is progressively
demolished till only uncertainty is left. The
argument winds back to contradict itself:
men without children are more likely to
endow the future, yet men with them want
the future to be good for their offspring,
while some single men think anything
beyond their own lives irrelevant. All that
remains is a suggestion of various truths,
none of which is absolute.
Bacon views marriage as bondage. First,
"they are impediments to great enterprises".
Second, "the best works, and of greatest
merit for the public, have proceeded from
the unmarried or childless men ..." Notice
what else Bacon says about single men:
They are "best friends, best masters, best
servants ..." However, everything Bacon
says about single men and women is not
complimentary.
He goes on to say how a wife and children
as "a kind of discipline of humanity". One of
Bacon's well known quotes is toward the
end of his essay: "Wives are young men's
mistresses, companions for middle age,
and old men's nurses".
Notice how straightforward is Bacon's
writings.

Summary
Satan opens the debate in Pandemonium
by claiming that Heaven is not yet lost, and
that the fallen angels (or devils) might rise
up stronger in another battle if they work
together. He opens the floor, and the pro-
war devil Moloch speaks first. Moloch was
one of the fiercest fighters in the war in
Heaven, and he anxiously pleads for
another open war, this time armed with the
weapons of Hell. He reasons that nothing,
even their destruction, could be worse than
Hell, and so they have nothing to lose by
another attack. Belial speaks up to
contradict him. He eloquently offers calm
reason to counter Moloch’s fiery temper,
and claims that God has not yet punished
them as fiercely as he might if they went to
war with him again. After all, they are no
longer chained to the fiery lake, which was
their previous and worse punishment; since
God may one day forgive them, it is better
that they live with what they now have. But
peace is not really what he advocates;
rather, Belial uses his considerable
intelligence to find excuses to prevent
further war and to advocate lassitude and
inaction. Mammon speaks up next, and
refuses to ever bow down to God again. He
prefers to peacefully advance their freedom
and asks the devils to be industrious in Hell.
Through hard work, the devils can make
Hell their own kingdom to mimic Heaven.
This argument meets with the greatest
support among the legions of the fallen,
who receive his suggestion with applause.
Quiet falls upon the crowd as the respected
Beelzebub begins to speak. He also prefers
freedom to servitude under God, but
counsels a different course of action than
those previously advocated. Apparently, he
says, rumors have been circulating in
Heaven about a new world that is to be
created, to be filled with a race called Man,
whom God will favor more than the angels.
Beelzebub advises, at Satan’s secret
behest, that they seek their revenge by
destroying or corrupting this new beloved
race. The rest of the devils agree and vote
unanimously in favor of this plan. They
must now send a scout to find out about
this new world, and in a feat of staged
heroics, Satan volunteers himself.
While the other devils break into groups to
discuss the outcome of the debate and to
build other structures, Satan flies off to find
Hell’s gate. When he approaches, he sees
that it is actually nine gates—three each of
brass, iron, and adamantine—and that two
strange shapes stand guard in front. One
looks like a woman down to her waist, but
below has the form of a serpent, with a
pack of howling dogs around her waist. The
other is only a dark shape. Satan chooses
to confront the shape, demanding passage
through the gates. They are about to do
battle when the woman-beast cries out. She
explains to Satan who she and her
companion are and how they came to be,
claiming that they are in fact Satan’s own
offspring. While Satan was still an angel,
she sprang forth from his head, and was
named Sin. Satan then incestuously
impregnated her, and she gave birth to a
ghostly son named Death. Death in turn
raped his mother Sin, begetting the dogs
that now torment her. Sin and Death were
then assigned to guard the gate of Hell and
hold its keys.
Apparently, Satan had forgotten these
events. Now he speaks less violently to
them and explains his plot against God.
After Satan’s persuasion, they are more
than eager to help him. Sin unlocks the
great gates, which open into the vast dark
abyss of night. Satan flies out but then
begins to fall, until a cloud of fire catches
and carries him. He hears a great tumult of
noise and makes his way toward it; it is
Chaos, ruler of the abyss. Chaos is joined
by his consort Night, with Confusion,
Discord and others at their side. Satan
explains his plan to Chaos as well. He asks
for help, saying that in return he will reclaim
the territory of the new world, thus returning
more of the universe to disorder. Chaos
agrees and points out the way to where the
Earth has recently been created. With great
difficulty, Satan moves onward, and Sin and
Death follow far behind, building a bridge
from Hell to Earth on which evil spirits can
travel to tempt mortals.
Analysis
Just as Book I may be seen as a parody of
military heroism, the devils’ debate in Book
II can be read as a parody of political
debate. Their nonviolent and democratic
decision to wreak the destruction of
humankind shows the corruption of fallen
reason, which can make evil appear as
good. Milton depicts the devils’ organization
ironically, as if he were commending it.
Satan, for example, diplomatically urges
others “to union, and firm faith, and firm
accord,” making Hell’s newly formed
government sound legitimate and powerful
when it is in fact grossly illegitimate and
powerless (II.36). It is possible that Milton
here satirizes politicians and political
debates in general, not just corrupt
politicians. Certainly, Milton had witnessed
enough violent political struggles in his time
to give him cause to demonize politicians
as a species. Clearly, the debate in Hell
weighs only different evils, rather than
bringing its participants closer to truth.
This scene also demonstrates Milton’s
cynicism about political institutions and
organizations. The devils’ behavior
suggests that political power tends to
corrupt individuals who possess it. Even
learned politicians, as Belial is here in Book
II, who possess great powers of reason and
intellectual discourse, have the power to
deceive the less-educated public. In his
other writings, Milton argues that political
and religious organizations have the
potential to do evil things in the name of
order and union. After the debate in Hell is
concluded, the object of parody shifts to
philosophers and religious thinkers.
Following the debate, the devils break into
groups, some of which continue to speak
and argue without any resolution or
amenable conclusion. Similar debates over
the sources of evil and of political authority
were fiercely contested in Milton’s time.
Milton calls the devils’ discussions “vain
wisdom all, and false philosophy,” a
criticism which he extends in his other
writings to the words of the religious leaders
of his time (II.565).
Critical Commentry on Bacon’s
Essay ‘Of Marriage And Single Life’

"He that hath wife and children hath given

hostages to fortune; for they are
impediments to great enterprises, either of
virtue or mischief."

Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

English philosopher, statesman, and

lawyer.
 Essays, "Of Marriage and the Single Life"

(Bacon, who is notorious for

his Machiavellism, is also very simple
and pleasant when the subject
happens to be of human interestapart
from ambition or politics etc. Bacon’s
scholarship, observation, wisdom
and analytical faculties are
always evident ; and are employed to
great advantage. )

The essay Of Marriage And Single

Life was published in the second edition of
Bacon’s Essays (1612). In Of Marriage And
Single Life the essayist have given a
comparative study between the traits and
characteristics, virtues and vices of married
and unmarried persons.

1. Nature: A man having a family to

maintain will generally take no risks. As he
has the responsibility to look after his wife
and children; a man is in no position to
undertake great enterprises whether these
are directed to good purposes or evil.
Certainly the best works and of greatest
merit for the public have proceeded from
the unmarried or childless
man. Because, the persons who are married
and have children should have greatest care
of future times.
Francis Bacon

2. Reasons for not getting married:These

are various reasons for which some people
remain unmarried. Some of these are as
under.

(i) Some persons lead a single life because

their thoughts do end with themselves.

(ii) Some chronic bachelors think that wife

and children are bills and charges. Since
they do not want to spend any money, they
prefer to b
e unmarried,

(iii) Some unmarried persons are foolish

rich covetous men, as they take pride in
having no children because they may be
thought so much the richer. They often
hear 'he (the rich person) hath a great
charge of children as if it were abatement to
his riches.'

(iv) The most ordinary cause of a single life

is liberty- Especially in certain self pleasing
and their humorous minds “They look upon
even their belts and garters to be curbs on
their liberty.
3. Qualities of Unmarried
Persons: Unmarried men are best friends,
best masters and best servants. Some
professions are proper only for unmarried
persons - A clergyman should not get
married. If he has a family, he will not save
any money or affection to offer to others.

It does not matter if judges and magistrates

do not marry. If they are corrupt they will
receive bribes through agents which are
much worse than wives.

4. Qualities of Married Persons: Married

person are better citizens because the
unmarried persons having no responsibility
find it easy to flee from the country if it
becomes necessary for them to do so.
(i) It is better for soldiers to be married.
They fight much better if just before the
battle they are reminded by their
commanders of their families waiting for
them back at home. Turkish soldiers are so
vulgar and base.

(ii) Having a wife and children develops the

softer feelings of a man. An unmarried man
may give more charity because he can easily
spare the money for the purpose. But
otherwise he is likely to be more cruel and
hard hearted than a married man.

5. Wives and Husbands: Women who are

faithful to their husbands are often proud of
their chastity. If a wife thinks her husband
to be wise he will command her loyalty as
well as obedience. A wife does not respect a
jealous husband: "For a Youngman a wife is
a mistress. For a middle-aged man she is a
companion. For an old man, she serves as a
nurse. This means that a man may marry at
any age."

Concluding Words: There can be no doubt

about Bacon’s greatness as an essayist or a
prose artist. The essay Of Marriage And
Single Life clearly demonstrates Bacon’s
powers and talents. Bacon was a scholar, a
man of sound commonsense and great
practical wisdom. H was a scientist by
temperament, a judge by profession, a
great Parliamentarian with a shrewd and
observant eye. Bacon exploits all his
attributes to the maximum to achieve his
purpose. He has very keen insight into
human character id affairs. He has the rare
talent of discussing everything from various
angles and cents of view. He expresses his
ideas and observations effectively and
forcefully. His arguments are logical and
convincing — most of them are drab from
everyday life. The choice of his images is
also very happy. His illustrations and
discussions are so powerful that they never
fail to achieve their purpose. Bacon is a
scholar and a practical philosopher who
speculates about commonplace subjects and
makes them enliven and exalted with his
treatment. Morality, if it suits the purpose
of practical utility, has a place in his scheme
of this. His talent for condensation
(epigrammatic quality) is also employed to
advantage here— “for charity will hardly
water the ground where it must first fill a
pool.”

Such passages have the force of a rapier, the

grace of a beautiful poem and also the
quality of being automatically committed to
marria
After Beelzebub takes the floor, it becomes
clear that the caucus has been a foregone
conclusion. Satan lets the sides rhetorically
engage each other before he announces
through Beelzebub the plan he had all
along. Satan and Beelzebub conspire to
win the argument, and do, without any of
the other devils recognizing the fraud.
Satan’s volunteering to be the scout then
silences all possible dissent, since he is
heralded as the leader of Hell. Here again
is a parody of Hell mimicking Heaven:
Satan offers to sacrifice himself for the
good of the other devils, in a twisted
imitation of Christ. The parallel is made
even more blatant when Sin cries out to
Satan at the gate of Hell: “O father, what
intends thy hand . . . against thy only son?”
(II.727–728). Sin’s statement foreshadows
how God will send his only Son to die, for
the good of the humankind. Satan believes
he is free, and both Belial and Mammon
celebrate the freedom of the devils even in
Hell, and yet we see that they have no
power to do anything except distort
Heavenly things, twisting them into evil,
empty imitations.
Satan’s encounter with Sin and Death is an
allegory, in which the three characters and
their relationships represent abstract ideas.
Sin is the first child of Satan, brought to life
by Satan’s disobedience. Since Satan is the
first of God’s creations to disobey, he
personifies disobedience, and the fact that
Sin is his daughter suggests that all sins
arise from disobedience and ingratitude
toward God. To those who behold her birth,
she is first frightening but then seems
strangely attractive, suggesting the
seductive allure of sin to the ordinary
individual. Sin dwells alone and in utter
torment, representing the ultimate fate of
the sinner. That Death is Sin’s offspring
indicates Milton’s belief that death is not
simply a biological fact of life but rather a
punishment for sin and disobedience, a
punishment that nobody escapes.
Study Questions
1. Satan is the most well-developed
character in Paradise Lost.Is he a
sympathetic character? Examine one of his
soliloquies and identify the character traits
and poetic techniques that make him seem
appealing or forgivable.
One reason that Satan is easy to
sympathize with is that he is much more
like us than God or the Son are. As the
embodiment of human errors, he is much
easier for us to imagine and empathize with
than an omniscient deity. Satan’s character
and psychology are all very human, and his
envy, pride, and despair are
understandable given his situation. But
Satan’s speeches, while undeniably
moving, subtly display their own
inconsistency and error.
When Satan first sees Earth and Paradise
in Book III, he is overcome with grief. His
description of his situation is eloquent; his
expression of pain is moving. Perhaps we
pity Satan as he struggles to find his new
identity while reflecting on his recent
mistakes. Likewise, his feeling of despair
resonates with feelings that all human
beings undergo at some point. However,
Satan’s despair becomes fuel for his ever-
increasing evil, rather than the foundation
for repentance. His anger and irrationality
overcomes him, and he resolves to make
evil his virtue. In many ways Satan
becomes more understandable in this
speech for his pitiable human qualities, and
he becomes more interesting as well due to
the unpredictability of his character. But
overall, his ever-increasing stubbornness
and devilish pride makes him less
forgivable.
2. Trace the appearance of
autobiographical details in Paradise
Lost.How are these details important to the
story? What is the identity and role of the
narrator?
Traditionally, critics make a distinction
between the author and the speaker of a
poem, or between the author and the
narrator. Paradise Lost, however, identifies
the narrator with Milton in several of the
invocations that open individual books.
Milton inserts autobiographical references
to make the reader know that it is he—not
an imaginary, unnamed character—who is
narrating.
The autobiographical details in Milton’s
three invocations allow Milton to
simultaneously express his purpose and his
Christian humility. Milton explains to his
audience that his purpose is just and his
humility is real. First, in his invocation in
Book I, he hopes his darkness (or
blindness) will be illuminated so he can
learn the facts of his story he will tell. In his
second invocation, in Book III, he praises
Holy Light and again hopes that his
blindness will be corrected, at least
metaphorically. He also expresses his fear
that he may have waited too long to begin
writing his epic poem; he fears his age may
cloud his reason, or that he has passed his
creative and stylistic peaks. In the final
invocation, in Book VII, Milton asks for help
in making the narrative transition from
Heaven to Earth. In a display of humility, he
asks for help in finishing his story. This
invocation presents Milton as a devoted
follower and writer with fallible qualities. His
pleas to his heavenly muse parallel Adam
and Eve’s repentance and request for
guidance. Milton’s interjections diminish the
possibility that the story will become simply
a vehicle of his ego and opinions. These
autobiographical details endow his
narration with a sense of authority.
3. Traditional Christian belief holds that the
Son and the Father are two parts of the
same God, but Milton presents the Son as
a fundamentally separate entity from God
the Father. How does this distinction affect
the plot of Paradise Lost?
Milton deviates from traditional Christian
theology concerning the Holy Trinity. He
explains in Paradise Lost his belief that God
the Father existed with the Holy Spirit,
another part of the Trinity, who wandered
about the “vast abyss” (I.21). But, Milton
explains, God the Son had not yet been
created. God the Father creates him
afterward, and appoints him as his second-
in-command. Indeed, this depiction of the
Son’s origin conflicts with the Bible. But in
both the Bible and in Milton’s story, the
appointment of the Son as second-in-
command leads to Satan’s envy and
rebellion. In this way, Milton’s separation of
the Father and the Son allows for Satan’s
outrage to be more understandable, and at
least more believable. While Milton did not
completely believe in every aspect of the
Holy Trinity as it was believed by others in
his time, he does believe that God the
Father and God the Son have equal powers
but with different roles.
The Father and the Son are essentially one
entity, but the construction of Paradise
Lost as a story with characters who must
interact with each other allows Milton to
explore their separate roles and their
unfathomable relationship. In many scenes,
God the Father sends God the Son to
perform certain tasks, like the creation of
the universe, of Earth, and Adam. The Bible
explains that God himself, not Jesus the
Son, performed these tasks, and Milton
agrees. In these scenes, the Father merely
works through his Son. Since Milton
believes that God the Father is unknowable
and unimaginable, God the Son becomes
his knowable and imaginable
representation. In other words, the Son
(Jesus) becomes the mobile version of God
and the mediator between humankind and
God the Father.
Suggested Essay Topics
1. Milton places great emphasis on man’s
autonomous reason andfree will. Do Adam
and Eve show evidence of being ruled by
reason before the fall?
2. Examine the passages in which Milton
discusses the nature of women as
compared to men. Do you think it is correct
to label Milton a misogynist?
3. Paradise Lost includes many characters
who can be easily compared and
contrasted with each other. For instance,
God and Satan stand as complete
opposites; Satan, Sin, and Death form an
evil version of the Holy Trinity; Adam and
Eve seem to be far from equally made and
disposed for life in Paradise; even God the
Father and God the Son have differences.
Pick one of these pairs and describe their
differences as well as their similarities.
4. Based on the text of Paradise Lost, how
do you think Milton would justify his
alterations of and additions to the Bible,
given the fact that he was a devout
Christian?
PARADISE LOST
John Milton
←
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
→
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often
universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Importance of Obedience to God
The first words of Paradise Lost state that
the poem’s main theme will be “Man’s first
Disobedience.” Milton narrates the story of
Adam and Eve’s disobedience, explains
how and why it happens, and places the
story within the larger context of Satan’s
rebellion and Jesus’ resurrection. Raphael
tells Adam about Satan’s disobedience in
an effort to give him a firm grasp of the
threat that Satan and humankind’s
disobedience poses. In essence, Paradise
Lostpresents two moral paths that one can
take after disobedience: the downward
spiral of increasing sin and degradation,
represented by Satan, and the road to
redemption, represented by Adam and Eve.
While Adam and Eve are the first humans
to disobey God, Satan is the first of all
God’s creation to disobey. His decision to
rebel comes only from himself—he was not
persuaded or provoked by others. Also, his
decision to continue to disobey God after
his fall into Hell ensures that God will not
forgive him. Adam and Eve, on the other
hand, decide to repent for their sins and
seek forgiveness. Unlike Satan, Adam and
Eve understand that their disobedience to
God will be corrected through generations
of toil on Earth. This path is obviously the
correct one to take: the visions in Books XI
and XII demonstrate that obedience to God,
even after repeated falls, can lead to
humankind’s salvation.
The Hierarchical Nature of the Universe
Paradise Lost is about hierarchy as much
as it is about obedience. The layout of the
universe—with Heaven above, Hell below,
and Earth in the middle—presents the
universe as a hierarchy based on proximity
to God and his grace. This spatial hierarchy
leads to a social hierarchy of angels,
humans, animals, and devils: the Son is
closest to God, with the archangels and
cherubs behind him. Adam and Eve and
Earth’s animals come next, with Satan and
the other fallen angels following last. To
obey God is to respect this hierarchy.
Satan refuses to honor the Son as his
superior, thereby questioning God’s
hierarchy. As the angels in Satan’s camp
rebel, they hope to beat God and thereby
dissolve what they believe to be an unfair
hierarchy in Heaven. When the Son and the
good angels defeat the rebel angels, the
rebels are punished by being banished far
away from Heaven. At least, Satan argues
later, they can make their own hierarchy in
Hell, but they are nevertheless subject to
God’s overall hierarchy, in which they are
ranked the lowest. Satan continues to
disobey God and his hierarchy as he seeks
to corrupt mankind.
Likewise, humankind’s disobedience is a
corruption of God’s hierarchy. Before the
fall, Adam and Eve treat the visiting angels
with proper respect and acknowledgement
of their closeness to God, and Eve
embraces the subservient role allotted to
her in her marriage. God and Raphael both
instruct Adam that Eve is slightly farther
removed from God’s grace than Adam
because she was created to serve both
God and him. When Eve persuades Adam
to let her work alone, she challenges him,
her superior, and he yields to her, his
inferior. Again, as Adam eats from the fruit,
he knowingly defies God by obeying Eve
and his inner instinct instead of God and his
reason. Adam’s visions in Books XI and XII
show more examples of this disobedience
to God and the universe’s hierarchy, but
also demonstrate that with the Son’s
sacrifice, this hierarchy will be restored
once again.
The Fall as Partly Fortunate
After he sees the vision of Christ’s
redemption of humankind in Book XII,
Adam refers to his own sin as a felix
culpa or “happy fault,” suggesting that the
fall of humankind, while originally seeming
an unmitigated catastrophe, does in fact
bring good with it. Adam and Eve’s
disobedience allows God to show his mercy
and temperance in their punishments and
his eternal providence toward humankind.
This display of love and compassion, given
through the Son, is a gift to humankind.
Humankind must now experience pain and
death, but humans can also experience
mercy, salvation, and grace in ways they
would not have been able to had they not
disobeyed. While humankind has fallen
from grace, individuals can redeem and
save themselves through continued
devotion and obedience to God. The
salvation of humankind, in the form of The
Son’s sacrifice and resurrection, can begin
to restore humankind to its former state. In
other words, good will come of sin and
death, and humankind will eventually be
rewarded. This fortunate result justifies
God’s reasoning and explains his ultimate
plan for humankind.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts,
and literary devices that can help to
develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Light and Dark
Opposites abound in Paradise
Lost, including Heaven and Hell, God and
Satan, and good and evil. Milton’s uses
imagery of light and darkness to express all
of these opposites. Angels are physically
described in terms of light, whereas devils
are generally described by their shadowy
darkness. Milton also uses light to
symbolize God and God’s grace. In his
invocation in Book III, Milton asks that he
be filled with this light so he can tell his
divine story accurately and persuasively.
While the absence of light in Hell and in
Satan himself represents the absence of
God and his grace.
The Geography of the Universe
Milton divides the universe into four major
regions: glorious Heaven, dreadful Hell,
confusing Chaos, and a young and
vulnerable Earth in between. The opening
scenes that take place in Hell give the
reader immediate context as to Satan’s plot
against God and humankind. The
intermediate scenes in Heaven, in which
God tells the angels of his plans, provide a
philosophical and theological context for the
story. Then, with these established settings
of good and evil, light and dark, much of the
action occurs in between on Earth. The
powers of good and evil work against each
other on this new battlefield of Earth. Satan
fights God by tempting Adam and Eve,
while God shows his love and mercy
through the Son’s punishment of Adam and
Eve.
Milton believes that any other information
concerning the geography of the universe is
unimportant. Milton acknowledges both the
possibility that the sun revolves around the
Earth and that the Earth revolves around
the sun, without coming down on one side
or the other. Raphael asserts that it does
not matter which revolves around which,
demonstrating that Milton’s cosmology is
based on the religious message he wants
to convey, rather than on the findings of
contemporaneous science or astronomy.
Conversation and Contemplation
One common objection raised by readers
of Paradise Lost is that the poem contains
relatively little action. Milton sought to divert
the reader’s attention from heroic battles
and place it on the conversations and
contemplations of his characters.
Conversations comprise almost five
complete books of Paradise Lost, close to
half of the text. Milton’s narrative emphasis
on conversation conveys the importance he
attached to conversation and
contemplation, two pursuits that he believed
were of fundamental importance for a moral
person. As with Adam and Raphael, and
again with Adam and Michael, the sharing
of ideas allows two people to share and
spread God’s message. Likewise,
pondering God and his grace allows a
person to become closer to God and more
obedient. Adam constantly contemplates
God before the fall, whereas Satan
contemplates only himself. After the fall,
Adam and Eve must learn to maintain their
conversation and contemplation if they
hope to make their own happiness outside
of Paradise.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures,
and colors used to represent abstract ideas
or concepts.
The Scales in the Sky
As Satan prepares to fight Gabriel when he
is discovered in Paradise, God causes the
image of a pair of golden scales to appear
in the sky. On one side of the scales, he
puts the consequences of Satan’s running
away, and on the other he puts the
consequences of Satan’s staying and
fighting with Gabriel. The side that shows
him staying and fighting flies up, signifying
its lightness and worthlessness. These
scales symbolize the fact that God and
Satan are not truly on opposite sides of a
struggle—God is all-powerful, and Satan
and Gabriel both derive all of their power
from Him. God’s scales force Satan to
realize the futility of taking arms against one
of God’s angels again.
Adam’s Wreath
The wreath that Adam makes as he and
Eve work separately in Book IX is symbolic
in several ways. First, it represents his love
for her and his attraction to her. But as he is
about to give the wreath to her, his shock in
noticing that she has eaten from the Tree of
Knowledge makes him drop it to the
ground. His dropping of the wreath
symbolizes that his love and attraction to
Eve is falling away. His image of her as a
spiritual companion has been shattered
completely, as he realizes her fallen state.
The fallen wreath represents the loss of
pure love.
 Book 2 opens with Satan sitting on his
throne; he addresses his legions, saying
that he still hopes to regain Heaven.
 He says that now they must debate
about the most effective way to fight
God; he asks whether all out war or
something more subtle is better.
 Moloch speaks first; he's in favor of
open war with God. They should just
batter God's throne with all they've got
because things can't be possibly get any
worse.
 Belial – a really clever speaker – is up
next. He's not in favor of open war
because Heaven is too well-fortified and
will easily expel the foreign invaders.
 And besides, being an angel, even in
Hell, is better than death; things could
be worse. They could be burned alive by
 the fires of Hell, chained to the burning
lake, etc.
 Actually, Belial is against any form of
war because God will figure out their
plans and defeat them. Who knows?
Maybe God will relax his punishment if
they just put up with it for a while.
 Mammon is up next; he says it is
impossible to defeat God and, even if
He forgives everybody, they'll have to be
slaves and pay tribute to Him. Not worth
it.
 They should just do what they want in
Hell, because they're free there. With a
little hard work, they can make the best
of their situation.
 There is applause after this speech; the
fallen angels are afraid of another war,
and would rather build an empire in Hell
to rival Heaven's.
 Beelzebub rises up; he says it's a joke
to think they can have their own empire
 in Hell. God will eventually exert his
dominion over it too.
 There will be no peace, but they don't
necessarily have to assault Heaven.
Rumor has it that God is building a new
world. They should check it out.
 Maybe they can destroy mankind, or
"Seduce them to our [the devil's] party"
(2.368).
 The fallen angels vote in favor of
Beelzebub's plan…supposedly. It
sounds rigged.
 He resumes his speech and asks who is
bold enough to try and find this new
world?
 Nobody volunteers, and all the angels
are afraid; this is a bold, important, and
dangerous task.
 Satan stands up and addresses the
council. He says Hell is a really strong
prison and it's hard to get out; if one
gets out, then one has to deal with a
dark place that has no being
 ("unessential Night"). It's like stepping
off the planet into something unknown.
 He says he wouldn't be a good
sovereign, though, if he were afraid of
doing something. He's the leader and
should brave more dangers. He'll look
for the new world.
 He tells the angels to make Hell cozier
while he's away.
 The fallen angels greatly respect their
leader; they treat him like a "God…equal
to the highest in Heav'n" (2.479). He's
risking his own life for their sake after
all.
 They shouldn't get too excited; this
prospect is kind of like a gleam of
sunshine when it's clearly going to rain.
 The highest-ranking angels emerge
from Pandemonium with Satan, who is
surrounded by a group of heavily-armed
soldiers.
 Trumpets made of fake gold proclaim
the result of the council; Hell resounds
with cheering.
 The leaders each go their own way, to
relax or chill out – to find "truce for [their]
restless thoughts'' – while they wait for
Satan to return.
 Some angels tear up rocks and create a
huge ruckus; some of them go off and
sing songs. Still others go off in the hills
to meditate on philosophical subjects.
Some even have races!
 One group assembles into platoons and
goes in search of an "easier habitation"
– i.e., a nicer place to live. Each group
travels along the banks of one of the
four rivers of Hell (Styx, Acheron,
Cocytus, Phlegeton).
 Beyond these is the river of
forgetfulness, Lethe. And beyond that,
the platoons discover that Hell is a
frozen wasteland. Huh?
 That's right, it's snowing and there's hail.
Basically it's like Antarctica. It's so cold,
though, it almost burns. "Cold performs
the effect of Fire," Milton says.
 Apparently the fallen angels will be
forced to spend time in this part of Hell
on a regular basis, frozen in ice; the
change from fire to ice is brutal.
 Meanwhile, Satan makes his way
towards the gates of Hell, which are
very strong, and surrounded by fire.
There are three of them (one brass, one
iron, one "adamantine rock").
 There are two figures on either side of
the gate. The first is a female from the
head to the waist, but below the waist,
she's a serpentine. Around her waist are
little hell-hounds that constantly bark but
sometimes retreat into her womb.
Disgusting!
 The other is dark and black; he appears
shapeless, and is very terrible (sorry,
that's all Milton gives us). He wears a
 fake crown on his head, and is
introduced at line 666. Hmmm….
 Satan is not afraid; he addresses them,
saying he's going through that gate no
matter what.
 The male asks him if he's the rebel
angel that started a huge war in
Heaven. He (the shapeless figure) is in
charge here, not Satan.
 Satan and this figure stare each other
down (like two thunder clouds), almost
as if they were about to duel. Each
plans to kill the other with one stroke,
but the female jumps between them.
 She asks Satan why he's about to kill
his….son! And she asks the other why
he's about kill his…father!
 Satan asks her what she's talking about,
and she tells him: during the planning of
the revolt in Heaven, she (still unnamed)
sprung forth from the left side of his
head! The rebel angels named her Sin.
 Satan had a secret sexual relationship
with his daughter Sin and impregnated
her; she fell with the angels from
Heaven, was given the key to Hell, and
gave birth to Death (the shapeless guy).
 Death eventually raped ("embraces
forcible and foul") Sin (his mother), who
gave birth to those hell hounds around
her waist. They howl and gnaw out her
insides.
 Satan tells Sin that he's trying to free his
angels and that he's going in search of
God's newly-created world. He'll let Sin
and Death roam free there if he finds it.
 Sin says that God has forbidden her to
open the gates. Why should she listen
to God, though, since He's exiled her?
Besides, he's not her real dad, Satan is.
 Sin opens the gates; a thunderous
sound is heard, and flames and smoke
burst out. Beyond is "a dark/ Illimitable
Ocean without bound,/ Without
dimension" (2.891-893).
 Satan observes this place – it's called
Chaos, and it is hot, cold, moist, and dry
all at once. It's really loud, louder than
the sounds of war or the sound of the
earth imploding.
 Satan takes flight; his journey takes him
over a number of strange, hybrid
substances; he has to walk-fly, crawl,
swim, basically move in every which
way. This is Chaos, after all.
 He hears some sounds and moves
towards them, eventually coming to
Chaos' throne. He tells him (Chaos) that
he's trying to find the borders of Heaven
and asks for directions.
 Chaos says he knows who he is; he
heard the angels fall and saw the
heavenly angels pursue them.
 He directs Satan towards earth, and
Satan takes off like a pyramid of fire.
 Satan approaches Heaven, and he can
see its light shining into the dark abyss.
He also notices the universe (Milton
 calls it the "world"), hanging from
Heaven by a golden chain.
 He moves towards it "full fraught with
mischievous revenge."

OF MARRIAGE AND SINGLE LIFE

Edit 0 1…
Of Marriage and Single Life

Bacon presents the merits and demerits of

married life and single life in his essay, “Of
Marriage and Single Life”.
Married man is burdened with wife and
children, which prevents him from performing
greater things which may be good or evil. So,
married man never takes risks.

Unmarried or childless man is helpful to the

society. As he is free from any burden, he can
serve the society. Moreover, since he is
childless he can shower his affection on public.
He treats the public as the married man would
treat his family.

Unmarried man is worried about the present

whereas the married one worries for the
welfare of their children in future. The former is
not worried about the future.

There are some men who prefer riches instead

of children. Men prefer to remain single
because they value freedom more. These men
are selfish in the view of Bacon. They are
intolerant to any curbs or controls.

Unmarried persons can be good friends, good

employers and good subordinates but they can
never be good citizens.

A clergyman has to remain single in order to

serve others. If he has a family he cannot serve
others.
Judges do not need a wife at all as they
undergo greater hardships by the agents who
help in bribery.
Soldiers can get married because the thought
of their wives make them perform well.

Married men are kind hearted whereas

unmarried men are cruel but for they can
spend money for charity.
If a wife thinks that her husband is wise she will
be loyal and obedient. Jealous husband will not
he respected by wife.

For a young man wife is a mistress. For a

middle-aged man she is a companion. For a old
age man she is a nurse.
Bad husbands always have good wives because
the wife may be happy when he showers
occasional affection, which would be great. Or
she can be proud of her patience.

If a woman chooses a bad husband then she

will be more devoted to show to the world that
her choice was right.
Of Marriage and Single Life
by Francis Bacon

HE that hath wife and children hath given

hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to
great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Meaning … A married man has a wife and
children, to whose upkeep, welfare and security
he remains deeply committed. This is true for all
societies, in all ages and in all lands. Such
entanglement restricts his freedom to endeavor
for something that his heart yearns for. It can
something very noble and sublime or something
wicked and devious.
Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit
for the public, have proceeded from the
unmarried or childless men; which both in
affection and means have married and endowed
the public.
Meaning …. When a person is yet to be
betrothed, he is un-fettered and free of cares and
worries. History shows that most mind-boggling
achievements in the fields of art, literature,
science etc. have come from men and women
when they were single.

Yet it were great reason that those that have

children should have greatest care of future
times; unto which they know they must transmit
their dearest pledges.
Meaning … However, it is also a fact that men
with children tend to think of future with great
seriousness and commitment. This drives them
to give their best to enterprises or efforts that
can bring fruit in the years to come.
Some there are, who though they lead a single
life, yet their thoughts do end with themselves,
and account future times impertinences.
Meaning … But, there are some men, who
during their bachelorhood, while away their
time and energy in wasteful ways or in
indolence. They seldom show any remorse or
regret for such frittering away of opportunity.
No feeling of shame comes to their mind for
such inaction.
Nay, there are some other that account wife and
children but as bills of charges. Nay more, there
are some foolish rich covetous men, that take a
pride in having no children, because they may
be thought so much the richer.
Meaning …. There are some married men who
feel their wives and children are nothing but
unwanted burden. There are some half-witted
rich people, who willingly do not want to
procreate and have offspring. They fear that by
having children, they create claimants to their
property. Such thinking is ludicrous and bizarre.
For perhaps they have heard some talk, Such an
one is a great rich man, and another except to it,
Yea, but he hath a great charge of children; as if
it were an abatement to his riches.
Meaning …. Such greedy rich people are
influenced by
loose gossip. They hear people talking about the
fabulous wealth of some men, but at the same
time qualifying their awe by saying that the man
has a large family to look after as burden. Such
ill-conceived opinion sways some greedy people
not have any progeny at all.
But the most ordinary cause of a single life is
liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and
humorous minds, which are so sensible of every
restraint, as they will go near to think their
girdles and garters to be bonds and shackles.
Meaning ….. There are people who choose to
remain single because they feel, though
absurdly, that unmarried life assures them of
lifelong freedom from cares and worries and
obligations. These persons are self-centered and
naïve. They feel marriage leads to bondage, no
matter the bliss and fulfillment it brings.
Unmarried men are best friends, best masters,
best servants; but not always best subjects; for
they are light to run away; and almost all
fugitives are of that condition.
Meaning … Unmarried men make good
employees, good friends, and good people to
work under, because they give their full time
and attention to their jobs. But, these people are
unsteady and volatile. With no roots (family) to
hold them, they can desert you at any time.
A single life doth well with churchmen; for
charity will hardly water the ground where it
must first fill a pool. It is indifferent for judges
and magistrates; for if they be facile and
corrupt, you shall have a servant five times
worse than a wife.
Meaning …. Wealthy bachelors are much
sought after by churches, because they can
donate generously with no family liability to
worry about. A married man thinks twice before
parting with their wealth as they need to provide
for the sustenance of their family members.
Judges and magistrates hold great responsibility
for the society. They should be honest, dutiful,
and capable of fine reasoning. A free-wheeling
bachelor with no restraint and no family as
anchor, is more likely to be flippant and
indiscrete in his thinking and action. If such as
person is appointed as a judge or magistrate, he
will prove to be a big liability for the society
and to himself. The responsibility of a wife’s
upkeep and security is much less than the
burden of being erratic as in case of a bachelor.
For soldiers, I find the generals commonly in
their hortatives put men in mind of their wives
and children; and I think the despising of
marriage amongst the Turks maketh the vulgar
soldier more base.
Meaning …. In armies, the generals remind the
soldiers of their commitment to their wives and
children while extolling the virtues of chivalry,
patriotism and duty in the battlefield. It has been
seen among the Turks that unmarried soldiers
tend to be very uncouth and vile in their conduct
while dealing with a vanquished enemy.
Certainly wife and children are a kind of
discipline of humanity; and single men, though
they may be many times more charitable,
because their means are less exhaust, yet, on the
other side, they are more cruel and hardhearted
(good to make severe inquisitors), because their
tenderness is not so oft called upon.
Meaning … Wife and children curb animal
tendencies in men by creating a salutary and
loving atmosphere at home. Single men may be
relatively more wealthy, and, thus, capable of
making larger donations to charity. However,
they are deprived of the soft touch of feminine
companionship. As a result, they tend to be
more brutal, vengeful and cruel in their conduct.
They do not get to engage in introspection to
examine their deeds from a moral standpoint.
Grave natures, led by custom, and therefore
constant, are commonly loving husbands, as was
said of Ulysses, vetulam suam prætulit
immortalitati [he preferred his old wife to
immortality]. Chaste women are often proud
and froward, as presuming upon the merit of
their chastity.
Meaning …. Men with self-respect, who are
steady and ethical, make good husbands. They
do not waver or stray. They remain loyal to their
wives in their dotage. In the same way, woman
value chastity, and guard it as a precious
treasure. They are conscious of the fact that
have preserved their purity by spurning
temptations of immoral sex.
It is one of the best bonds both of chastity and
obedience in the wife, if she think her husband
wise; which she will never do if she find him
jealous.
Meaning … A chaste woman is not only proud
of herself, but of her loyal husband. The bond
between the two is enduring, and based on
mutual respect. If a man is jealous, he will
undermine his standing before his wife, and lose
her adoration.
Wives are young men’s mistresses; companions
for middle age; and old men’s nurses. So as a
man may have a quarrel to marry when he will.
But yet he was reputed one of the wise men, that
made answer to the question, when a man
should marry,—A young man not yet, an elder
man not at all.
Meaning.. For a recently married young man, a
wife becomes the source of all sensual pleasure.
He gets the attention and love that a mistress
lavishes on her paramour. As he reaches her
middle age, the wife becomes companion
sharing his moments of joy and sorrow,
successes and failures, and triumphs and
tragedies. In the old age, when limbs weaken
and vision fails, a man gets a helping hand from
his wife to move on. So, the opportune time to
tie the nuptial knot may present a cruel dilemma
for young man as his body craves for courtship.
Wise men have given some sane advice in this
regard. They have suggested that a young man
must not rush into a marriage when he is
immature to shoulder the responsibilities of
family. He should patiently wait for appropriate
time. In the same vein, an old man must not take
a wife just because there are maidens available
to be his wife. Marrying in old age leads to
many undesirable consequences.
It is often seen that bad husbands have very
good wives; whether it be that it raiseth the
price of their husband’s kindness when it
comes; or that the wives take a pride in their
patience.
Meaning .. At times, we get to see patient, noble
and kind wives ending up with tyrannical, cruel
and insensitive husbands. These wives feel
greatly elated when their cruel husbands show
even a small gesture of love and kindness. Such
noble women feel proud about their capacity to
endear hardship in their effort to preserve their
marriages.
But this never fails, if the bad husbands were of
their own choosing, against their friends’
consent; for then they will be sure to make good
their own folly.
Meaning …. Despite having such noble women
as their wives, if some husbands do not mend
their ways, it will be judged that it is their
monumental failure.
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Paradise Lost

by John Milton
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 INTRO
 SUMMARY
 THEMES
 Fate and Free Will
 Sin
 Pride
 Innocence
 Lies and Deceit
 Revenge
 Language and Communication
 Sex
 QUOTES
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 PARADISE LOST THEMES

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Paradise Lost Themes

Fate and Free Will

Fate and free will are major topics in Paradise
Lost. God reveals that he knows what will
happen to Adam and Eve, but resolutely denies
that there is any such thing as fate. Huh? God
knows what wil...

Sin
Paradise Lost is about Adam and Eve's fall, the
original sin! So it's no surprise that sin is a
prominent theme in the poem. Don't forget
that we also learn a lot about Satan's major sin
(he tried...

Pride
Ah yes pride. Doesn't it seem like we're always
talking about pride? Satan is the exemplar of
pride par excellence. In Paradise Lost, he is too
proud to accept God's Son as the boss in
Heaven; he t...

Innocence
Paradise Lost takes place almost exclusively in a
time and place when death, sin, and lying didn't
exist. In other words, it deals with a time when
humanity was still innocent. While Milton is
very...

Lies and Deceit

In Paradise Lost, Satan is the ultimate trickster.
He flat out lies to Eve, telling her the Forbidden
Fruit has powers that it doesn't. Beyond that,
however, he is somehow able to convince a
third...

Revenge
In many respects, Paradise Lost is a sort of
revenge tragedy. Adam and Eve are the
innocent victims of Satan's attempts to seek
revenge against God. He sort of feels bad about
it – he even cr...
Language and Communication
In Book 5 of Paradise Lost, Adam asks the angel
Raphael a lot of questions, and he mentions
several times the difficulty of describing and
explaining heavenly matters in mortal
language. Raphael's...

Sex
There's not a lot of sex in Paradise Lost, but
Adam and Eve do have a famous love-making
scene in Book 4. After the Fall, they have a
slightly steamier sex scene that is more lustful
and less lovey...

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Spoonerism – The Art of Rib-tickling

Utterances
What is spoonerism? Who is this
Spooner? How has he enriched
the English language? Read on
and learn about a great legend
and his famous rib-tickling
utterances.

Once a wayfaring stranger stopped a

reverend in the street and enquired of
him about a certain route. Pat came
the reply, “Just go down by Town
Drain!” He is actually supposed to
say, “Just go down by Down
Train”

The wayfaring stranger stood still

with an apoplectic expression on his
face, looking at the figure walking off
majestically. Obviously he was not
aware that he talked to a legend just
then. And this very legend had the
audacity to shock and enrage Her
Majesty by addressing the Queen
as ‘Our Queer Old Dean’ instead
of ‘Our Dear Old Queen’.

Later when someone appreciated his

survival from implications for his
discourteous remark to Her Majesty,
he is supposed to have remarked to
the bewilderment of the
questioner, ‘The Lord indeed is
shoving leopard.’ For he meant, of
course, ‘the Lord indeed is a loving
shepherd’… to have shepherded him
from crisis.
 Who was this legend that the Lord
was so merciful to have shepherded
him from crisis to crisis?

Rev Dr William Archibald Spooner

In 19th century, there lived a

gentleman called Dr. Rev. William
Archibald Spooner {1844-1930}, a
distinguished Anglican clergyman and
a warden of New College at Oxford.
 Spoonerism is what an accidental or
intentional transposition of sounds or
letters in a spoken sentence in a way
the sense completely gets changed
often acquiring hilarious undertones,
other than the intended one. In other
words spoonerism is simply
metathesis. It is generally committed
by the slip of the tongue. And this ‘tip
of the lung’ err… ‘slip of the
tongue’ was a natural phenomena
with Dr. Rev. William Archibald
Spooner, which catapulted him to the
dizzying heights of fame thus making
him a legend in his own lifetime.

One day, a lady was occupying Dr.

Spooner’s pew in the church. He
came. He saw and said, “Lady you
are peccupewing my pie”. Actually
he was supposed to say, “Lady you
are occupying my pew”. The dazed
lady of course vacated the pew
throwing nervous side glances at him.

Once a student missed his history

lectures. Dr. Spooner irked at his
absence shouted, “You hissed my
mystery lectures, why?” {He
wanted to say, “You missed my
history lectures?”}. The student
didn’t know whether to laugh or sulk.
On another occasion the church
reverberated with suppressed
laughter, when Rev Spooner, in the
course of conducting a choir in the
church solemnly said, “All rise and let
us sing, ‘Kinkering Congs their
titles take’ {the hymn actually
is “Conquering Kings their titles
take”}.

Rev Dr Spooner while conducting a

marriage, he simply said, ‘It is now
kisstomary to cuss the bride’ {he
actually wanted to say ‘It is now
customary to kiss the bride’} to
the shocking dismay of many, himself
having the last laugh. While lecturing
the class he once said, "He was
killed by a blushing crow".
Whereas Dr Spooner meant to
say, "He was killed by a crushing
blow."
 On another occasion, Rev Spooner
was escorting a nasty bigwig to the
church. Upon entering the premises,
the others reported to have heard him
say, ‘Let me sew you to your
sheet’. {He is supposed to say, ‘Let
me see you to your seat’} The
bigwig simply glared at Dr
Spooner. Was he malicious digging at
others and himself having the last
laugh. Was he so mean? No, he was a
good scholar and a good teacher.

As for his ‘slip of the tongue’, it

comes very naturally to him. In fact,
Julian Huxley puts it on record saying,
“Dr. Spooner was not conscious of
any of his actual lapses at the time he
made them. It was this involuntary
action that has to do “something a
little wrong with some of the
association centers in his brain.” That
explains the phenomena of his scoring
“last laughs” at others; and at times
himself became a victim of his own
lapses. Sir Julian Sorell Huxley, the
renowned biologist and scholar, who
worked under him as a Fellow of New
College when Dr. Spooner was the
Don of that ancient Foundation.

On one occasion, he even seems to

have made a butt of himself. Dr
Spooner was taking a stroll in the
college grounds deeply engrossed in
his thoughts. Suddenly, his hat blew
off. And running after it he
shouted, “Oh Please, will nobody
pat my hiccup.” But of course
someone picked up his hat.

Spooner on Sermon

With all these peculiarities it sounds

incredible that he became famous. He
endeared himself to one and all
becoming a legend in his own lifetime
with his kind of ‘kink’erring
utterances called spoonerisms. Some
say Spooner rarely committed
spoonerisms. Many of his spoonerisms
are alleged to have invented by
unknown motley faces and attributing
them onto Dr Spooner. Indeed Dr.
Rev. William Archibald Spooner was
quite aware and knew of his
reputation. In one of the College
meetings, Dr. Spooner concluded his
wonderful little speech with “And now
I suppose I would better sit down, or I
might be saying… err… one of those
things.”

He did say one of those things

hundreds of times during his lifetime
thus enriching the English language
with lots of humor and hilarity of
which the sound still reverberates in
the hearts of the English language
enthusiasts.
A Debate in Hell
By Jimmy Maher
The first part of Book 2 of John
Milton’s Paradise Lost tells of a great debate in
Hell among Satan and his minions concerning
what should be done now that they have b
een cast from Heaven. Two advocate another
attack on Heaven, albeit by very different
methods, while two advise against it. The whole
exchange can be read as a parody of the
democratic process, as the fallen angels decide
in the most nonviolent, "civilized" of manners to
bring destruction down upon all mankind.
Perhaps the debate is a reflection of Milton’s
disillusionment with Cromwell and his failed
experiment in English republicanism. In this
essay, however, I will set aside Milton’s
possible ironic intentions and evaluate the
debaters’ arguments on their own merits, with
the objective of answering a simple question:
did the best man win?
The first minion to speak is Moloch, "the
strongest and the fiercest spirit" (44). He is a
warrior, a being of action, not given to thought
or nuance. He rather allows his emotions and his
pride to guide his actions, and the emotion he
feels at the moment is anger, for his pride has
been sorely wounded. I believe that Lydia
Dittler Schulman characterizes him quite well:
Of all the devils, Moloch most resembles
a stoical military leader of classical
times. Subjection is abhorrent to him.
Moloch’s sense of identity and his
stature among the devils is based on his
military prowess; open war, therefore, is
in his self-interest (78).
Therefore, Moloch advocates immediate attack,
with no more thought or debate whatsoever on
the subject:
My sentence is for open war: of wiles,
More unexpért, I boast not: them let
those
Contrive who, or when they need, not
now (51-53).
He feels that Hell is a "den of shame" (58), and
that it would be deeply shameful for Satan and
his lieutenants to simply accept their fate and
remain there. Moloch briefly addresses those
who might advocate caution, who might say that
"the way seems difficult and steep to scale"
(71), by saying that their descent from Heaven
and their forced exile in Hell are far, far worse
than any battle could possibly be, and so there is
really nothing left to fear. Moloch is not sure if
the fallen angels are immortal. If they are not,
and the forces of Heaven defeat and kill them in
battle, that will be "happier far / Than miserable
to have eternal being" (97-98) as outcasts in
Hell. If they are immortal, then they have
absolutely nothing to lose, for no fate could be
worse than their current outcast state. Moloch
certainly does not appear to be a deep thinker,
yet the logical construction he has just
formulated here is actually quite clever. He
concludes by stating that, even if the fallen
angels attack heaven again and lose, they may
nevertheless gain a certain revenge if they can
just "alarm / Though inaccessible, His fatal
throne" (103-104). Moloch’s hatred is such that
attacking Heaven just for the sake of causing its
inhabitants even brief distress and fear is reason
enough for him.
The next devil to speak is Belial. He appears to
be kind and wise, but his refined manner hides a
black heart:
A fairer person lost not Heav’n: he
seemed
For dignity composed and high explóit:
But all was false and hollow… (110-
112)
Belial is almost a caricature of the slimy
politician. His words are honeyed, his
appearance pleasing, and his arguments
persuasive, but "his thoughts were low" (115).
He uses his oratorical gifts to counter Moloch’s
arguments for an immediate attack upon
Heaven, addressing each of Moloch’s points in
turn. First of all, he asserts that the whole
enterprise would be not just doubtful, as Moloch
characterized it, but fundamentally hopeless.
Whether they attempted to sneak into Heaven or
launch a full frontal assault, the ultimate result
would be the same. After they had done their
worst, "yet our great Enemy / All incorruptible
would on his throne / Sit unpolluted" (137-139),
for even Hell has no power to destroy that
which created the world. Of course, Moloch had
himself allowed a strong possibility of defeat,
but claimed that even this would be better than a
life of exile. Belial dismisses these claims. He
does not accept that to die, to be "swallowed up
and lost / In the wide womb of uncreated Night"
(149-150), would be superior to continued
existence under present circumstances. This is
an arguable point, being as it is something of a
value judgment. More compellingly, though, he
notes that the devils’ present circumstance is
hardly the worst that God could do to them if
they angered Him again. Indeed, they have
already experienced much worse:
What when we fled amain, pursued and
strook
With Heav’n’s afflicting thunder, and
besought
The deep to shelter us? This Hell then
seemed
A refuge from those wounds: or when
we lay
Chained on the burning lake? That sure
was worse (165-169).
In addition to these torments that the devils
already have firsthand knowledge of, Belial can
imagine many more, and takes time to describe
them quite graphically to the group. Thus he
consuls that the devils not anger God further by
attacking Him again.
Belial’s speech is quite powerful, but it has
something of a fatal flaw, which perhaps mirrors
a flaw in the personality who has crafted it.
Although he does a very good job of telling the
other devils why they should not attack heaven,
he offers no alternative plan of action. His
argument is entirely a negative refutation of
Moloch’s position. Apparently the devils are to
simply accept their fate and do nothing. In
Milton’s own words, he "counseled ignoble ease
and peaceful sloth, / Not peace" (227-228).
Schulman notes another problem with Belial’s
argument: namely, he is not addressing the point
of the debate at all, for "the entire council has
already approved Satan’s declaration for
continued war against the Tyrant of Heaven"
(Schulman 79). She thus feels that Belial, true to
Milton’s description of his character, is being
rather disingenuous in arguing this point at all. I
am not quite sure that this analysis bears up,
however, for I am not at all sure that the
question of continued war is as decided in the
minds of the devils as Schulman, and perhaps
Satan, believe. Certainly it is hard to account for
the reception that the next speaker is given if
war is indeed irrevocably decided on in the
minds of the rank and file.
That next speaker is Mammon. Like Belial, he
feels that another attack on Heaven would be
foolhardy. Indeed, he actually accepts virtually
all of Belial’s principal assertions, but goes a bit
further by offering his opinion on not just what
should not be done, but also on what should be
done. First, he points out that there is no
scenario by which the devils might find
happiness outside of Hell. He agrees with Belial
that victory in a war with Heaven is impossible,
and he also says that even if there were a way to
be reconciled with God, this would not lead to
peace of mind. Forevermore they would have to:
Stand in his presence humble, and
receive
 Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his
throne
With warbled hymns, and his Godhead
sing
Forced hallelujahs (240-243).
An eternity of such deference "to whom we
hate" (248) is absolutely unthinkable. And so,
since further conflict with Heaven would be
hopeless and reconciliation unbearable, he
advises that the devils accept their present
circumstance. He rejects Belial’s essential
nihilism, though, in advocating that they make
their exile into a happy, fruitful existence by
industriously building Hell into a place that
might someday rival Heaven in beauty and
splendor. The devils can "seek / Our own good
from ourselves" (252-253). They will choose
"hard liberty before the easy yoke / Of servile
pomp" (256-257).
Mammon’s argument has a very positive
reception among the devils, and appears ready
to carry the day, when Beelzebub, second in
stature only to Satan himself, rises to speak. He
refutes Mammon’s argument by noting that, no
matter how splendid a kingdom the devils make
of Hell, they will always remain subservient to
Heaven, allowed to exist only by God’s
indulgence. Any notion they may have that they
are independent is mere illusion. They will in
fact remain "in strictest bondage, though thus
far removed" (321). There can be no discussion
of peace:
War hath determined us, and foiled with
loss
Irrepparable; terms of peace yet none
Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace
will be giv’n
To us enslaved, but custody severe?
(330-334).
In stating that war with Heaven is the only
possible course, Beelzebub might seem to be
agreeing with Moloch at this point. However,
Beelzebub is much more devious and clever
than that rash warrior, and advocates something
considerably different than another direct frontal
assault. Hell cannot defeat Heaven on the
battlefield, but it might achieve a victory of
sorts through wile. Beelzebub notes that God is
about to create a new race of beings known as
Man, less than the angels "in power and
excellence, but favoured more" (350). The
implication is that God loves these new
creations of his more than anything else, and
therein Beelzebub sees opportunity. He suggests
that the devils investigate this new race
carefully to see if it might be possible to wound
God through them, for "though Heav’n be shut,
/ And Heav’n’s high Arbitrator sit secure / In his
own strength, this place may lie exposed" (358-
360). It may be possible to lay waste to man’s
kingdom through hellfire, or, even better, to
seduce this God’s most beloved creation into
joining the devils in war with Him. Beelzebub’s
plan is almost classically cruel, using as it does
God’s own loved ones against him.
Unsurprisingly, it is received with great
enthusiasm by the assembled devils, thus setting
in motion the events that will propel the plot of
the remaining ten books of the epic.
In an aside that is very important for our
purposes, Milton mentions that Beelzebub’s
plan did not in fact originate with him, but was
"first devised / by Satan" (379-380), then
apparently given to Beelzebub to propose to the
group. Thus is Satan shown to be a consummate
diplomat and politician, an "astute propagandist
presiding over the debate" (Hamilton 21).
Schulman believes that this revelation
effectively invalidates the entire proceeding
debate:
Numerous commentators have pointed to
the rigged nature of the supposedly
democratic debate in Pandemonium: it
was a sham from the beginning,
contrived by Satan to provide the
infernal oligarchs with a false sense of
their equality and rights and thereby to
secure his autocratic rule (79-80).
Achinstein makes the same point, saying that
"Satan’s tyranny consists partly in not allowing
free debate" (203). However, I feel both
overstate their case somewhat. While Satan is
certainly guilty of manipulating the forum to his
advantage behind the scenes, this is also
something that every politician in modernity and
antiquity engages in. Everyone was allowed to
speak their case, and the assembled devils were
allowed to choose freely among the options
presented. This is the essence of the democratic
process; the rest is simply the inevitable politics
that go along with that process.
In enthusiastically embracing Beelzebub and
Satan’s evil scheme, the other devils reveal their
fundamentally corrupted natures. They have
been given an opportunity to begin to heal the
breach with Heaven, or to recuse themselves
from Heaven’s affairs entirely, or at least to
choose an honorable, direct battle with Heaven.
They reject all of these options, choosing
instead the low road of treachery and deceit.
This trope of unwise choices leading to bitter
consequences occurs over and over again
in Paradise Lost, and indeed is perhaps the
epic’s most consistent theme. The devils’
present situation was of course precipitated by
Satan’s rebellion and fall from Heaven, and
Adam and Eve’s mutual moral weakness come
to dominate the later sections of the work.
Similarly, the devils here have free will and
perhaps even an opportunity for redemption of a
sort, yet make the wrong choice again. In doing
so, they in a sense fall yet again. Satan’s own
moral transformation from an honorable if far
too proud warrior to a depraved schemer is
reflected in his physical appearance. Even here
in Book 2 the moral transformation has begun.
The Satan of Book 1 who claimed it was "Better
to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n" (263)
now in Book 2 plots his depraved, petty little
schemes for revenge upon Him who is stronger
than he. Over the course of Paradise Lost, Satan
is physically transformed from an angel of
heart-stopping beauty to a lowly, utterly
debased serpent, groveling before Eve and even
offering to lick her feet. Milton’s refusal to
make Satan into a caricature of evil lends the
epic much of its multifaceted complexity.
"Having introduced the complexity of a Satan
who still has the potential for good, one can
hardly accept the crudity of straightforward
evil" (Newlyn 74). Satan’s story is almost
Shakespearian in its tragic pathos, and the epic
as a whole thus becomes the story of Satan and
his lieutenants’ fall as well as Man’s.
If we accept as Milton seems to that the choice
the devils end up making is not just the wrong
one but the worst possible one, we are still left
with another question, namely: Which choice, if
any, was most correct? To me, the answer seems
fairly obvious. While Moloch’s argument
carries with it a certain warrior’s integrity, it
hardly holds up to real scrutiny. Both its
assumptions and its conclusions seem
hopelessly flawed, as Belial points out more
than ably. Belial gets closer to a solution in
pointing out those flaws, but he does not go far
enough. He argues that the devils essentially
give up, accept their fate, and languish away in
Hell as defeated beings for eternity. Mammon
does not so much disagree with Belial as expand
upon his argument. He agrees that further
conflict with Heaven would be very unwise, but
goes on to offer a credible alternative, the
remaking of Hell into a land of which the
devils’ can be proud. This seems to me not only
the best choice but in fact the only choice which
is even remotely tenable, and the devils in fact
are largely in agreement with him before they
are seduced by Beelzebub’s assertion that a
devious form of revenge against God is still
possible.
Of course, in judging Mammon’s argument the
best I am looking at Paradise Lost through the
eyes of a twenty-first century American to
whom Mammon’s arguments have a distinct
"contemporary ring" (Schulman 79). Whether
Milton or his contemporaries would see the
subject in the same way is a bit of an open
question. It is however interesting just how
perfectly Mammon’s argument mirrors our
modern Western notion of moral virtue,
particularly as it exists here in the United States.
In essence, Mammon argues that the devils
should simply accept their present
circumstances, put both the past and the
bitterness it often engenders away, and make the
best of their situation. Many would see such an
approach as almost synonymous with the
"American way" of industry, optimism, and
hard work. If nothing else, the situation is
delicious for its irony: here we have a fallen
minion of Satan expressing some of the core
values of a nation that is still largely Christian.
It also points to one of the most compelling
aspect of Milton’s work, his refusal to
completely demonize Satan and his followers.
They in fact often appear as rational, even
appealing characters. In doing so, Milton most
likely meant to illustrate that the way to Hell is
an easy one which is not followed only by those
who set out with evil in their hearts. The same
approach, however, also allows a different and
dramatically different reading of the epic as a
whole, one which would likely have shocked
Milton himself. Satan is in fact the most
compelling and charismatic character in the
story, and he and the other devils can be seen as
brave souls who have chosen freedom and self-
determination over a life of servitude, albeit
comfortable servitude. This multiplicity of
viewpoints that it allows helps to make Paradise
Lost the fascinating work that it is.
Works Cited
Achinstein, Sharon. Milton and the
Revolutionary Reader. Princeton University
Press: Princeton, 1994.
Hamilton, G. Rostrevor. Hero or Fool? A Study
of Milton’s Satan. George Allen and Unwin:
London, 1944.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Penguin: New
York, 2000.
Newlyn, Lucy. Paradise Lost and the Romantic
Reader. Clarendon: Oxford, 1993.
Schulman, Lydia Dittler. Paradise Lost and the
Rise of the American Republic.
Northeastern University Press: Boston, 1992.

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Julian Huxley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Australian rugby union footballer,
see Julian Huxley (rugby union).

Sir Julian Huxley

 Julian Huxley c. 1964

Born Julian Sorell Huxley

22 June 1887
London, England
Died 14 February 1975 (aged 87)
London, England
Residen United Kingdom
ce
Nationa British
lity
Fields Evolutionary biology
Instituti Rice Institute, Oxford University,
ons Kings College London, Zoological
Society, UNESCO
Alma Balliol College, Oxford
mater
Known Modern evolutionary
for synthesis,Humanism, UNESCO,Conser
vation, Eugenics
Influen T. H. Huxley, W. G. (Piggy) Hill
ces
Influen E. B. Ford, Gavin de Beer, Aldous
ced Huxley
Notable Kalinga Prize (1953)
awards Darwin Medal
Darwin-Wallace Medal (Silver, 1958)
Lasker Award
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS[1] (22 June
1887 – 14 February 1975) was a
British evolutionary biologist, eugenicist,
andinternationalist. He was a proponent
of natural selection, and a leading figure in
the mid-twentieth century modern
evolutionary synthesis. He was secretary of
the Zoological Society of London (1935–
1942), the first Director of UNESCO, a
founding member of the World Wildlife
Fund and the first President of the British
Humanist Association.
Huxley was well known for his presentation
of science in books and articles, and on
radio and television. He directed an Oscar-
winning wildlife film. He was awarded
UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the
popularisation of science in 1953,
the Darwin Medal of theRoyal Society in
1956,[1] and the Darwin–Wallace Medal of
the Linnaean Society in 1958. He was
also knighted in that same year, 1958, a
hundred years after Charles
 Darwin and Alfred Russel
Wallace announced the theory of evolution
by natural selection. In 1959 he received a
Special Award of the Lasker Foundation in
the category Planned Parenthood – World
Population. Huxley was a prominent
member of the British Eugenics Society and
its president from 1959–1962.
There is a public house named after Sir
Julian in Selsdon, Surrey, close to
the Selsdon Wood Nature Reserve which
he helped establish.
Contents
[hide]
 1Life
o 1.1Early life

o 1.2Early career

o 1.3Mid career

o 1.4Later career

 2Special themes
o 2.1Evolution
 2.1.1Personal influence
 2.1.2Evolutionary synthesis

 2.1.3Evolutionary progress

o 2.2Secular humanism

 2.2.1Religious naturalism

o 2.3Eugenics and race

o 2.4Public life and popularisation

o 2.5Terms coined

o 2.6Titles and phrases

 3Works
 4References
 5Biographies
 6External links
Life[edit]
See also: Huxley family
Early life[edit]
Huxley came from the distinguished Huxley
family. His brother was the writer Aldous
Huxley, and his half-brother a fellow
biologist and Nobel laureate, Andrew
Huxley; his father was writer and
editor Leonard Huxley; and his paternal
grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley, a
friend and supporter of Charles Darwin and
proponent of evolution. His maternal
grandfather was the academic Tom Arnold,
his great-uncle was poet Matthew
Arnold and his great-grandfather
was Thomas Arnold of Rugby School.

Family tree
Huxley was born on 22 June 1887, at the
London house of his aunt, the novelist Mary
Augusta Ward, while his father was
attending the jubilee celebrations of Queen
Victoria. Huxley grew up at the family home
in Surrey, England, where he showed an
early interest in nature, as he was given
lessons by his grandfather, Thomas Henry
Huxley. When he heard his grandfather
talking at dinner about the lack of parental
care in fish, Julian piped up with "What
about the stickleback, Gran'pater?" Also,
according to Julian himself, his grandfather
took him to visit J. D. Hooker at Kew.[2]

T. H. Huxley with Julian in 1893

At the age of thirteen Huxley attended Eton
College as a King's Scholar, and continued
to develop scientific interests; his
grandfather had influenced the school to
build science laboratories much earlier. At
Eton he developed an interest in
ornithology, guided by science master W.
D. "Piggy" Hill. "Piggy was a genius as a
teacher… I have always been grateful to
him."[3] In 1905 Huxley won a scholarship
in Zoology to Balliol College, Oxford.
In 1906, after a summer in Germany,
Huxley took his place in Oxford, where he
developed a particular interest
in embryology and protozoa. In the autumn
term of his final year, 1908, his mother died
from cancer at only 46: a terrible blow for
her husband, three sons, and eight-year-old
daughter Margaret. That same year he won
the Newdigate Prize for his poem
"Holyrood". In 1909 he graduated with first
class honours, and spent that July at the
international gathering for the centenary of
Darwin's birth, held at the University of
Cambridge. Also, it was the fiftieth
anniversary of the publication of the Origin
of species.
Early career[edit]
Huxley was awarded a scholarship to
spend a year at the Naples Marine
Biological Station where he developed his
interest in developmental biology by
investigating sea squirts and sea urchins. In
1910 he was appointed as Demonstrator in
the Department of Zoology and
Comparative Anatomy at Oxford University,
and started on the systematic observation
of the courtship habits of water birds such
as thecommon redshank (a wader)
and grebes (which are divers). Bird
watching in childhood had given Huxley his
interest in ornithology, and he helped
devise systems for the surveying and
conservation of birds. His particular interest
was bird behaviour, especially the courtship
of water birds. His 1914 paper on the great
crested grebe, later published as a book,
was a landmark in avian ethology; his
invention of vivid labels for the rituals (such
as 'penguin dance', 'plesiosaurus race' etc.)
made the ideas memorable and interesting
to the general reader.[4]
Great crested grebes
In 1912 his life took a new turn. He was
asked by Edgar Odell Lovett to take the
lead in setting up the new Department of
Biology at the newly created Rice Institute
(now Rice University) in Houston, Texas,
which he accepted, planning to start the
following year. Huxley made an exploratory
trip to the United States in September 1912,
visiting a number of leading universities as
well as the Rice Institute. At T. H. Morgan's
fly lab (Columbia University) he invited H. J.
Muller to join him at Rice. Muller agreed to
be his deputy, hurried to complete his PhD
and moved to Houston for the beginning of
the 1915–1916 academic year. At Rice,
Muller taught biology and
continued Drosophila lab work.
 Julian Huxley
British Army Intelligence Corps1918
Before taking up the post of Assistant
Professor at the Rice Institute, Huxley spent
a year in Germany preparing for his
demanding new job. Working in a
laboratory just months before the outbreak
of World War I, Huxley overheard fellow
academics comment on a passing aircraft
"it will not be long before those planes are
flying over England". In 1913 Huxley had
a nervous breakdown after the break-up of
his relationship with 'K',[5] and rested in a
nursing home. His depression returned the
next year, and he and his brother Trevelyan
(two years his junior) ended up in the same
nursing home. Sadly,
Trevelyan hanged himself. Depressive
illness had afflicted others in the Huxley
family.
One pleasure of Huxley's life in Texas was
the sight of his first hummingbird, though
his visit to Edward Avery McIlhenny's estate
on Avery Island in Louisiana was more
significant. The McIlhennys and their Avery
cousins owned the entire island, and the
McIlhenny branch used it to produce their
famous Tabasco sauce. Birds were one of
McIlhenny's passions, however, and around
1895 he had set up a private sanctuary on
the Island, called Bird City. There Huxley
found egrets, herons and bitterns. These
water birds, like the grebes, exhibit mutual
courtship, with the pairs displaying to each
other, and with the secondary sexual
characteristics equally developed in both
sexes.[6]
In September 1916 Huxley returned to
England from Texas to assist in the war
effort, working in the British Army
Intelligence Corps, first inSussex, and then
in northern Italy. After the war he became
a Fellow at New College, Oxford, and was
made Senior Demonstrator in the University
Department of Zoology. In fact, Huxley took
the place of his old tutor Geoffrey Smith,
who had been killed in the battle of the
Somme on the Western Front.
In 1919 Huxley married Juliette Baillot
(1896–1994). She was a French Swiss girl
whom he had met at Garsington Manor, the
country house of Lady Ottoline Morrell,
a Bloomsbury Group socialite with a
penchant for artists and intellectuals. The
newly-weds' life together included students,
faculty wives, grebes and, unfortunately,
another depressive breakdown, this time
rather serious. From his wife's
autobiography it seems his mental illness
took the form of a bipolar disorder, with the
depressive phases being of moderate to
severe intensity. It took a long time for him
to recover on this occasion, but despite this
he left a legacy of students who admired
him, and who became leaders in zoology
for the next thirty or forty years. E. B.
Ford always remembered his openness and
encouragement at the start of his career.[7][8]

Huxley with his two sons, Anthony and

Francis.
In 1925 Huxley moved to King's College
London as Professor of Zoology, but in
1927, to the amazement of his colleagues
and on the prodding of H. G. Wells whom
he had promised 1,000 words a day,[9] he
resigned his chair to work full-time with
Wells and his son G. P. Wells on The
Science of Life (see below). For some time
Huxley retained his room at King's College,
and continued as Honorary Lecturer in the
Zoology Department. From 1927 to 1931 he
was also Fullerian Professor of
Physiology at the Royal Institution, where
he gave an annual lectures series. No-one
realised it at the time (why would they?), but he
had come to the end of his life as a
university academic.

Juliette Huxley, c.1929.

In 1929, after finishing work on The Science
of Life, Huxley visited East Africa to advise
the Colonial Office on education in British
East Africa (for the most
part Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika). He
discovered that the wildlife on
the Serengeti plain was almost undisturbed
because the tsetse fly (the vector for
the trypanosome parasite which
causes sleeping sickness in humans)
prevented human settlement there. He tells
about these experiences in Africa
view (1931), and so does his wife.[10] She
reveals that he fell in love with an 18-year-
old American girl on board ship (when
Juliette was not present), and then
presented Juliette with his ideas for an
open marriage: "What Julian really wanted
was… a definite freedom from the
conventional bonds of marriage." The
couple separated for a while; Julian
travelled to the US, hoping to land a
suitable appointment and, in due course, to
marry Miss Weldmeier. He left no account
of what transpired, but he was evidently not
successful, and returned to England to
resume his marriage in 1931. For the next
couple of years Huxley still angled for an
appointment in the US, without success.[11]
Mid career[edit]
As the 1930s started, Huxley travelled
widely and took part in a variety of activities
which were partly scientific and partly
political. In 1931 Huxley visited
the USSR at the invitation of Intourist,
where initially he admired the results of
social and economic planning on a large
scale. Later, back in the United Kingdom,
he became a founding member of the think
tank Political and Economic Planning.
In the 1930s Huxley visited Kenya and
other East African countries to see the
conservation work, including the creation
of national parks, which was happening in
the few areas that remained uninhabited
due to malaria. From 1933 to 1938 he was
a member of the committee for Lord
Hailey's Africa Survey.
Huxley lights a cigarette under his
grandfather's portrait, c.1935.
In 1935 Huxley was appointed secretary to
the Zoological Society of London, and spent
much of the next seven years running the
society and its zoological gardens,
the London Zoo and Whipsnade Park,
alongside his writing and research. The
previous Director, Peter Chalmers Mitchell,
had been in post for many years, and had
skillfully avoided conflict with the Fellows
and Council. Things were rather different
when Huxley arrived. Huxley was not a
skilled administrator; his wife said "He was
impatient… and lacked tact".[12] He
instituted a number of changes and
innovations, more than some approved of.
For example, Huxley introduced a whole
range of ideas designed to make the Zoo
child-friendly. Today, this would pass
without comment; but then it was more
controversial. He fenced off the Fellows'
Lawn to establish Pets Corner; he
appointed new assistant curators,
encouraging them to talk to children; he
initiated the Zoo Magazine.[13] Fellows and
their guests had the privilege of free entry
on Sundays, a closed day to the general
public. Today, that would be unthinkable,
and Sundays are now open to the public.
Huxley's mild suggestion (that the guests
should pay) encroached on territory the
Fellows thought was theirs by right.
In 1941 Huxley was invited to the United
States on a lecturing tour, and generated
some controversy by saying that he thought
the United States should join World War II:
a few weeks later came the attack on Pearl
Harbor. When the US joined the war, he
found it difficult to get a passage back to
the UK, and his lecture tour was extended.
The Council of the Zoological Society—"a
curious assemblage… of wealthy amateurs,
self-perpetuating and autocratic"[14]—
uneasy with their secretary, used this as an
opportunity to remove him. This they did by
abolishing his post "to save expenses".
Since Huxley had taken a half-salary cut at
the start of the war, and no salary at all
whilst he was in America, the Council's
action was widely read as a personal attack
on Huxley. A public controversy ensued,
but eventually the Council got its way.
In 1943 he was asked by the British
government to join the Colonial
Commission on Higher Education. The
Commission's remit was to survey the West
African Commonwealthcountries for
suitable locations for the creation of
universities. There he acquired a disease,
went down with hepatitis, and had a serious
mental breakdown. He was completely
disabled, treated with ECT, and took a full
year to recover. He was 55.
Later career[edit]
Huxley, a lifelong internationalist with a
concern for education, got involved in the
creation of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), and became the organization's
first director-general in 1946. His term of
office, six years in the Charter, was cut
down to two years at the behest of the
American delegation.[15] The reasons are
not known for sure, but his left-wing
tendencies and humanism were likely
factors. In a fortnight he dashed off a 60-
page booklet on the purpose and
philosophy of UNESCO, eventually printed
and issued as an official document. There
were, however, many conservative
opponents of his scientific humanism. His
idea of restraining population growth with
birth control was anathema to both
the Catholic Church and
the Comintern/Cominform. In its first few
years UNESCO was dynamic and broke
new ground; since Huxley it has become
larger, more bureaucratic and
stable.[16][17] The personal and social side of
the years in Paris are well described by his
wife.[18]
Huxley's internationalist and conservation
interests also led him, with Victor Stolan, Sir
Peter Scott, Max Nicholson and Guy
Mountfort, to set up the WWF (World Wide
Fund for Nature under its former name of
the World Wildlife Fund).
Another post-war activity was Huxley's
attack on the Soviet politico-scientist Trofim
Lysenko, who had espoused
a Lamarckian heredity, made unscientific
pronouncements on agriculture, used his
influence to destroy classical genetics in
Russia and to move genuine scientists from
their posts. In 1940, the leading botanical
geneticist Nikolai Vavilov was arrested, and
Lysenko replaced him as director of the
Institute of Genetics. In 1941, Vavilov was
tried, found guilty of 'sabotage' and
sentenced to death. Reprieved, he died in
jail of malnutrition in 1943. Lysenko's
machinations were the cause of his arrest.
Worse still, Lysenkoism not only denied
proven genetic facts, it stopped the artificial
selection of crops on Darwinian principles.
This may have contributed to the regular
shortage of food from the Soviet agricultural
system (Soviet famines). Huxley, who had
twice visited the Soviet Union, was
originally not anti-communist, but the
ruthless adoption of Lysenkoism by Joseph
Stalin ended his tolerant
attitude.[19] Lysenko ended his days in a
Soviet mental hospital, and Vavilov's
reputation was posthumously restored in
1955.
In the 1950s Huxley played a role in
bringing to the English-speaking public the
work of the French Jesuit-
palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
who he believed had been unfairly treated
by the Catholic and Jesuit hierarchy. Both
men believed in evolution, but differed in its
interpretation as de Chardin was a
Christian, whilst Huxley was anunbeliever.
Huxley wrote the foreword to The
Phenomenon of Man (1959) and was
bitterly attacked by his rationalist friends for
doing so.[20]
On Huxley's death at 87 in 1975, John
Owen (Director of National Parks
for Tanganyika) wrote "Julian Huxley was
one of the world's great men… he played a
seminal role in wild life conservation in
[East] Africa in the early days… [and in] the
far-reaching influence he exerted [on] the
international community".[21]
In addition to his international and humanist
concerns, his research interests covered
evolution in all its
aspects, ethology, embryology, genetics, an
thropology and to some extent the infant
field of cell biology. Julian's eminence as an
advocate for evolution, and especially his
contribution to the modern evolutionary
synthesis, led to his awards of theDarwin
Medal of the Royal Society in 1956,[1] and
the Darwin–Wallace Medal of the Linnaean
Society in 1958. 1958 was the centenary
anniversary of the joint presentation On the
tendency of species to form varieties; and
the perpetuation of varieties and species by
natural means of selection by Darwin and
Wallace.[22]
Huxley was a friend and mentor of the
biologists and Nobel laureates Konrad
Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen,[23] and taught
and encouraged many others. In general,
he was more of an all-round naturalist than
his famous grandfather,[24] and contributed
much to the acceptance of natural
selection. His outlook was international, and
somewhat idealistic: his interest in progress
and evolutionary humanism runs through
much of his published work.[25] He was one
of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.[26]
Special themes[edit]
Evolution[edit]
Huxley and biologist August
Weismann insisted on natural selection as
the primary agent in evolution. Huxley was
a major player in the mid-twentieth
century modern evolutionary synthesis. He
was a
prominent populariser of biological science
to the public, with a focus on three aspects
in particular.
Personal influence[edit]
 In the early 20th century he was one of
the minority of biologists[27] who believed
that natural selection was the main driving
force of evolution, and that evolution
occurred by small steps and not
by saltation (jumps). These opinions are
now standard.[28]
Though his time as an academic was
quite brief, he taught and encouraged a
number of evolutionary biologists at the
University of Oxford in the 1920s. Charles
Elton(ecology), Alister Hardy (marine
biology) and John Baker (cytology) all
became highly successful, and Baker
eventually wrote Huxley's Royal Society
obituary memoir.[1][29]
Perhaps the most significant was Edmund
Brisco Ford, who founded a field of
research called ecological genetics, which
played a role in the evolutionary
synthesis. Another important disciple
was Gavin de Beer, who wrote
on evolution and development, and
became Director of the Natural History
Museum. Both these fine scholars had
attended Huxley's lectures on genetics,
experimental zoology (including embryolo
gy) and ethology. Later, they became his
 collaborators, and then leaders in their
own right.
 In an era when scientists did not travel so
frequently as today, Huxley was an
exception, for he travelled widely in
Europe, Africa and the United States. He
was therefore able to learn from and
influence other scientists, naturalists and
administrators. In the US he was able to
meet other evolutionists at a critical time
in the reassessment of natural selection.
In Africa he was able to influence colonial
administrators about education and wild-
life conservation. In Europe,
through UNESCO, he was at the centre of
the post-World War II revival of education.
In Russia, however, his experiences were
mixed. His initially favourable view was
changed by his growing awareness of
Stalin's murderous repression, and
the Lysenko affair.[30] There seems little
evidence that he had any effect on
the Soviet Union, and the same could be
 said for some other Western scientists.
"Marxist-Leninism had become a
dogmatic religion… and like all dogmatic
religions, it had turned from reform to
persecution."[31]
Evolutionary synthesis[edit]
 Huxley was one of the main architects of
the modern evolutionary synthesis which
took place around the time of World War
II. The synthesis of genetic and
population ideas produced a consensus
which reigned in biology from about 1940,
and which is still broadly tenable.
"The most informative episode in the
history of evolutionary biology was the
establishment of the 'neo-Darwinian
synthesis'." Berry and Bradshaw,
1992.[32] The synthesis was brought
about "not by one side being proved
right and the others wrong, but by the
exchange of the most viable
 components of the previously competing
research strategies". Ernst Mayr,
1980.[33]
 Huxley's first 'trial run' was the treatment
of evolution in the Science of
Life (1929–30), and in 1936 he
published a long and significant paper
for the British Association.[34] In 1938
came three lengthy reviews on major
evolutionary topics.[35][36][37] Two of these
papers were on the subject of sexual
selection, an idea of Darwin's whose
standing has been revived in recent
times.[38][39] Huxley thought that sexual
selection was "…merely an aspect of
natural selection which… is concerned
with characters which subserve mating,
and are usually sex-limited". This rather
grudging acceptance of sexual selection
was influenced by his studies on the
courtship of the great crested
grebe (and other birds that pair for life):
 the courtship takes place
mostly after mate selection, not before.
 Now it was time for Huxley to tackle the
subject of evolution at full length, in
what became the defining work of his
life. His role was that of a synthesiser,
and it helped that he had met many of
the other participants. His
book Evolution: The Modern
Synthesis was written whilst he was
secretary to the Zoological Society, and
made use of his remarkable collection of
reprints covering the first part of the
century. It was published in 1942.
Reviews of the book in learned journals
were little short of ecstatic; the
American Naturalist called it "The
outstanding evolutionary treatise of the
decade, perhaps of the century. The
approach is thoroughly scientific; the
command of basic information
amazing".[40][41]
 Huxley's main co-respondents in
the modern evolutionary synthesis are
usually listed as Ernst Mayr, Theodosius
Dobzhansky, George Gaylord
Simpson, Bernhard Rensch,Ledyard
Stebbins and the population
geneticists J. B. S. Haldane, Ronald
Fisher and Sewall Wright.
However, at the time of Huxley's book
several of these had yet to make their
distinctive contribution. Certainly, for
Huxley, E. B. Ford and his co-workers
in ecological geneticswere at least as
important; and Cyril Darlington, the
chromosome expert, was a notable
source of facts and ideas.
An analysis of the 'authorities cited'
index of Evolution the modern
synthesis shows indirectly those whom
Huxley regarded as the most important
contributors to the synthesis up to 1941
(the book was published in 1942, and
references go up to 1941). The
authorities cited 20 or more times are:
Darlington, Darwin, Dobzhansky, Fisher,
Ford, Goldschmidt, Haldane, J. S.
Huxley, Muller, Rensch, Turrill, Wright.
This list contains a few surprises.
Goldschmidt was an influential
geneticist who advocated evolution by
saltation, and was sometimes
mentioned in disagreement. Turrill
provided Huxley with botanical
information. The list omits three key
members of the synthesis who are listed
above: Mayr, Stebbins the botanist
and Simpson the palaeontologist. Mayr
gets 16 citations and more in the two
later editions; all three published
outstanding and relevant books some
years later, and their contribution to the
synthesis is unquestionable. Their
lesser weight in Huxley's citations was
caused by the early publication date of
his book. Huxley's book is not strong in
palaeontology, which illustrates perfectly
 why Simpson's later works were such
an important contribution.
 It was Huxley who coined the terms the
new synthesis and evolutionary
synthesis;[42] he also invented the
term cline in 1938 to refer to species
whose members fall into a series of sub-
species with continuous change in
characters over a geographical
area.[43][44] The classic example of a
cline is the circle of subspecies of the
gull Larus round the Arctic zone. This
cline is an example of a ring species.
Some of Huxley's last contributions to
the evolutionary synthesis were on the
subject of ecological genetics. He noted
how surprisingly
widespread polymorphism is in nature,
with visible morphism much more
prevalent in some groups than others.
The immense diversity of colour and
pattern in small bivalve molluscs,
brittlestars, sea-anemones, tubicular
 polychaetes and various grasshoppers
is perhaps maintained by making
recognition by predators more
difficult.[45][46][47]
Evolutionary progress[edit]
 He always believed that on a broad view
evolution led to advances in
organisation. Progress without a
goal was one of his phrases, to
distinguish his point of view from
classical Aristotelian teleology. "The
ordinary man, or at least the ordinary
poet, philosopher and theologian,
always was anxious to find purpose in
the evolutionary process. I believe this
reasoning to be totally false."[48]
The idea of evolutionary progress was
subjected to some fierce criticism in the
latter part of the twentieth
century. Cladists, for example, were
(and are) strongly against any
suggestion that a group could be
scientifically described as 'advanced'
and others as 'primitive.' For them, and
especially for the radical group
of transformed cladists, there is no such
thing as an advanced group, they are
derived or apomorphic. Primitive groups
are plesiomorphic. Ironically, it was
Huxley who invented the
terms clade andgrades.[49][50][51]
However, to take a rather extreme case,
it would seem strange to say that when
man is compared to bacteria, that
mankind is not a vastly more complex
and advanced form of life; or that the
invasion of the land by plants and
animals was not a great advance in the
history of life on this planet. On this
issue Julian was at the opposite end of
the spectrum from his grandfather, who
was, at least for the first half of his
career, a propagandist for 'persistent
types', getting close to denying any
advances at all.[52][53]
 Huxley argued his case many times,
even in his most important works. In the
final chapter of his Evolution the modern
synthesis he defines evolutionary
progress as "a raising of the upper level
of biological efficiency, this being
defined as increased control over and
independence of the environment,"[54]
Evolution in action discusses
evolutionary progress at length: "Natural
selection plus time produces biological
improvement… 'Improvement' is not yet
a recognised technical term in biology
… however, living things are improved
during evolution… Darwin was not
afraid to use the word for the results of
natural selection in general… I believe
that improvement can become one of
the key concepts in evolutionary
biology."
"Can it be scientifically defined?
Improvements in biological machinery…
the limbs and teeth of grazing horses…
 the increase in brain-power… The eyes
of a dragon-fly, which can see all round
[it] in every direction, are an
improvement over the mere microscopic
eye-spots of early forms of life."[55]
"[Over] the whole range of evolutionary
time we see general advance—
improvement in all the main properties
of life, including its general organization.
'Advance' is thus a useful term for long-
term improvement in some general
property of life. [But] improvement is not
universal. Lower forms manage to
survive alongside higher".[56]
These excerpts are much abbreviated,
but give some idea of his way of
thinking. He addresses the topic of
'persistent types' (living fossils) later in
the same book (pp 126–28).
 The question of evolutionary
advancement has quite a history. Of
course, pre-Darwin, it was believed
without question that Man stood at the
head of a pyramid (scala naturae). The
matter is not so simple with evolution by
natural selection; Darwin's own opinion
varied from time to time. In the Origin he
wrote "And as natural selection works
by and for the good of each being, all
corporeal and mental endowments will
tend to progress towards
perfection".[57] This was much too
strong; as Sober remarks, there is
nothing in the theory of natural selection
which demands that selection must
produce an increase in complexity or
any other measure of advancement. It is
merely compatible with the theory that
this might happen.[58] Elsewhere Darwin
admits that "naturalists have not yet
defined to each other's satisfaction what
is meant by high and low forms"
(p. 336); nor have they now – this is one
of the problems. Other evolutionary
biologists have had similar thoughts to
Huxley: G. Ledyard
 Stebbins[59] and Bernhard Rensch,[60] for
example. The term for progressive
evolution is anagenesis, though this
does not necessarily include the idea of
improvement.
The objective description of complexity
was one of the issues addressed
by cybernetics in the 1950s. The idea
that advanced machines (including
living beings) could exert more control
over their environments and operate in
a wider range of situations perhaps
serves as a basis for making the terms
such as 'advanced' amenable to more
exact definition.[61][62] This is a debate
that continues today.
For a modern survey of the idea of
progress in evolution see Nitecki[63] and
Dawkins.[64]
Secular humanism[edit]
Huxley's humanism[65] came from his
appreciation that mankind was in charge
of its own destiny (at least in principle),
and this raised the need for a sense of
direction and a system of ethics. His
grandfather T. H. Huxley, when faced with
similar problems, had promoted
agnosticism, but Julian chose humanism
as being more directed to supplying a
basis for ethics. Julian's thinking went
along these lines: "The critical point in the
evolution of man… was when he acquired
the use of [language]… Man's
development is potentially open… He has
developed a new method of evolution: the
transmission of organized experience by
way of tradition, which… largely overrides
the automatic process of natural selection
as the agent of change".[66] Both Huxley
and his grandfather gave Romanes
Lectures on the possible connection
between evolution and
ethics.[67] (seeevolutionary ethics)
Huxley had a close association with the
British rationalist and secular
humanist movements. He was an
Honorary Associate of the Rationalist
Press Association from 1927 until his
death, and on the formation of the British
Humanist Association in 1963 became its
first President, to be succeeded by AJ
Ayer in 1965. He was also closely
involved with theInternational Humanist
and Ethical Union. Many of Huxley's
books address humanist themes. In 1962
Huxley accepted the American Humanist
Association's annual "Humanist of the
Year" award.
Huxley also presided over the founding
Congress of the International Humanist
and Ethical Union and served with John
Dewey, Albert Einstein and Thomas
Mann on the founding advisory board of
the First Humanist Society of New York.
Religious naturalism[edit]
Huxley wrote that "There is no separate
supernatural realm: all phenomena are
part of one natural process of evolution.
There is no basic cleavage between
science and religion;… I believe that [a]
drastic reorganization of our pattern of
religious thought is now becoming
necessary, from a god-centered to an
evolutionary-centered pattern".[68]Some
believe the appropriate label for these
views is religious naturalism.[69]
Many people assert that this
abandonment of the god hypothesis
means the abandonment of all religion
and all moral sanctions. This is simply not
true. But it does mean, once our relief at
jettisoning an outdated piece of
ideological furniture is over, that we must
construct something to take its place.[68]
Eugenics and race[edit]
Huxley was a prominent member of
the British Eugenics Society,[70] and was
Vice-President (1937–1944) and
President (1959–1962). He thought
eugenics was important for removing
undesirable variants from the human
gene pool; though after World War II he
believed race was a meaningless concept
in biology, and its application to humans
was highly inconsistent.[71]
Huxley was an outspoken critic of the
most extreme eugenicism in the 1920s
and 1930s (the stimulus for which was the
greater fertility of the 'feckless' poor
compared to the 'responsible' prosperous
classes). He was, nevertheless, a leading
figure in the eugenics movement (see, for
example, Eugenics manifesto). He gave
the Galton memorial lecture twice, in 1936
and 1962. In his writing he used this
argument several times: no-one doubts
the wisdom of managing the germ-plasm
of agricultural stocks, so why not apply
the same concept to human stocks? "The
agricultural analogy appears over and
over again as it did in the writings of many
American eugenicists."[72]
Huxley was one of many intellectuals at
the time who believed that the lowest
class in society was genetically
inferior.[citation needed] In this passage, from
1941, he investigates a hypothetical
scenario where social darwinism,
capitalism, nationalism and the class
society is taken for granted:
If so, then we must plan our eugenic
policy along some such lines as the
following:... The lowest strata, allegedly
less well-endowed genetically, are
reproducing relatively too fast. Therefore
birth-control methods must be taught
them; they must not have too easy access
to relief or hospital treatment lest the
removal of the last check on natural
selection should make it too easy for
children to be produced or to survive; long
unemployment should be a ground for
sterilization, or at least relief should be
contingent upon no further children being
brought into the world; and so on. That is
to say, much of our eugenic programme
will be curative and remedial merely,
instead of preventive and constructive.[73]
Here, he does not demean the working
class in general, but aims for "the virtual
elimination of the few lowest and most
degenerate types".[74] The sentiment is
not at all atypical of the time, and similar
views were held by many geneticists
(William E. Castle, C.B. Davenport, H. J.
Muller are examples), and by other
prominent intellectuals.
However, Huxley advocated a completely
different alternative, in which the lower
classes are ensured a nutritious diet,
education and facilities for recreation:
We must therefore concentrate on
producing a single equalized
environment; and this clearly should be
one as favourable as possible to the
expression of the genetic qualities that we
think desirable. Equally clearly, this
should include the following items. A
marked raising of the standard of diet for
the great majority of the population, until
all should be provided both with adequate
calories and adequate accessory factors;
provision of facilities for healthy exercise
and recreation; and upward equalization
of educational opportunity. ... we know
from various sources that raising the
standard of life among the poorest
classes almost invariably results in a
lowering of their fertility. In so far,
therefore, as differential class-fertility
exists, raising the environmental level will
reduce any dysgenic effects which it may
now have.[75]
Concerning a public health and racial
policy in general, Huxley wrote that
"…unless [civilised societies] invent and
enforce adequate measures for regulating
human reproduction, for controlling the
quantity of population, and at least
preventing the deterioration of quality of
racial stock, they are doomed to decay
…"[76] and remarked how biology should
be the chief tool for rendering social
politics scientific.
In the opinion of Duvall, "His views fell
well within the spectrum of opinion
acceptable to the English liberal
intellectual elite. He shared Nature's
enthusiasm for birth control, and
'voluntary' sterilization."[77] However, the
word 'English' in this passage is
unnecessary: such views were
widespread.[78] Duvall comments that
Huxley's enthusiasm for
centralised social and economic
planning and anti-industrial values was
common to leftist ideologists during the
inter-war years. Towards the end of his
life, Huxley himself must have recognised
how unpopular these views became after
the end of World War II. In the two
volumes of his autobiography, there is no
mention of eugenics in the index, nor is
Galton mentioned; and the subject has
also been omitted from many of the
obituaries and biographies. An exception
is the proceedings of a conference
organised by the British Eugenics
Society.[79]
In response to the rise of European
fascism in the 1930s, he was asked to
write We Europeans with the
ethnologist A. C. Haddon, the
zoologist Alexander Carr-Saunders and
the historian of science Charles Singer.
Huxley suggested the word 'race' be
replaced with ethnic group. After
the Second World War, he was
instrumental in producing
theUNESCO statement The Race
Question,[80] which asserted that:
A race, from the biological standpoint,
may therefore be defined as one of the
group of populations constituting the
species Homo sapiens"… "National,
religious, geographic, linguistic and cult
groups do not necessary coincide with
racial groups: the cultural traits of such
groups have no demonstrated genetic
connexion with racial traits. Because
serious errors of this kind are habitually
committed when the term 'race' is used in
popular parlance, it would be better when
speaking of human races to drop the term
'race' altogether and speak of ethnic
groups"… "Now what has the scientist to
say about the groups of mankind which
may be recognized at the present time?
Human races can be and have been
differently classified by different
anthropologists, but at the present time
most anthropologists agree on classifying
the greater part of present-day mankind
into three major divisions, as follows: The
Mongoloid Division; The Negroid Division;
The Caucasoid Division." … "Catholics,
Protestants, Moslems and Jews are not
races … The biological fact of race and
the myth of 'race' should be distinguished.
For all practical social purposes 'race' is
not so much a biological phenomenon as
a social myth. The myth 'race' has created
an enormous amount of human and social
damage. In recent years it has taken a
heavy toll in human lives and caused
untold suffering. It still prevents the
normal development of millions of human
beings and deprives civilization of the
effective co-operation of productive
minds. The biological differences between
ethnic groups should be disregarded from
the standpoint of social acceptance and
social action. The unity of mankind from
both the biological and social viewpoint is
the main thing. To recognize this and to
act accordingly is the first requirement of
modern man …
Huxley won the second Anisfield-Wolf
Book Award for We Europeans in 1937.
In 1957, Huxley coined the term
"transhumanism" for the view that
humans should better themselves through
science and technology, possibly
including eugenics, but also, importantly,
the improvement of the social
environment.
Public life and popularisation[edit]
Huxley was always able to write well, and
was ever willing to address the public on
scientific topics. Well over half his books
are addressed to an educated general
audience, and he wrote often in
periodicals and newspapers. The most
extensive bibliography of Huxley lists
some of these ephemeral articles, though
there are others unrecorded.[81]
These articles, some reissued as Essays
of a biologist (1923), probably led to the
invitation from H. G. Wells to help write a
comprehensive work on biology for a
general readership, The Science of
Life.[18] This work was published in stages
in 1929–30,[82] and in one volume in 1931.
Of this Robert Olby said "Book IV The
essence of the controversies about
evolution offers perhaps the clearest,
most readable, succinct and informative
popular account of the subject ever
penned. It was here that he first
expounded his own version of what later
developed into the evolutionary
synthesis".[83][84] In his memoirs, Huxley
says that he made almost £10,000 from
the book.[85]
In 1934 Huxley collaborated with the
naturalist Ronald Lockley to create
for Alexander Korda the world's first
natural history documentary The Private
Life of the Gannets. For the film, shot with
the support of the Royal Navy around
Grassholm off the Pembrokeshire coast,
they won an Oscar for best
documentary.[86]
Huxley had given talks on the radio since
the 1920s, followed by written versions
in The Listener. In later life, he became
known to an even wider audience through
television. In 1939 the BBC asked him to
be a regular panelist on a Home
Service general knowledge show, The
Brains Trust, in which he and other
panelists were asked to discuss questions
submitted by listeners. The show was
commissioned to keep up war time
morale, by preventing the war from
"disrupting the normal discussion of
interesting ideas". The audience was not
large for this somewhat elite programme;
however, listener research ranked Huxley
the most popular member of the Brains
Trust from 1941 to 1944.[87][88]
Later, he was a regular panelist on one of
the BBC's first quiz shows (1955) Animal,
Vegetable, Mineral? in which participants
were asked to talk about objects chosen
from museum and university collections.
In 1937 Huxley was invited to deliver
the Royal Institution Christmas
Lecture on Rare Animals and the
Disappearance of Wild Life.
In his essay The Crowded World Huxley
was openly critical of Communist
and Catholic attitudes to birth
control, population
control and overpopulation. Based on
variable rates of compound interest,
Huxley predicted a probable world
population of 6 billion by 2000. The United
Nations Population Fund marked 12
October 1999 as The Day of Six
Billion.[89][90]
Terms coined[edit]
 Clade (1957): a monophyletic taxon; a
single species and its descendants
 Cline (1938): a gradient of gene
frequencies in a population, along a
given transect
 Ethnic group (1936): as opposed to race
 Evolutionary grade (1959): a level of
evolutionary advance, in contrast to a
clade
 Mentifact (1955): objects which consist
of ideas in people's minds
 Morph (1942): as more correct and

simpler than polymorph

 Ritualization (1914): formalised activities

in bird behaviour, caused by inherited

behaviour chains
 Sociofact (1955): objects which consist

of interactions between members of a

social group
 Transhumanism (1957): the

improvement of human beings

Titles and phrases[edit]
 Religion Without Revelation (1927,
1957)
 The New Systematics (1940)
 The Uniqueness of Man (1941)
 Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (1942)
 Evolutionary Ethics (1943)
 Evolution as a Process (1954)
 Essays of a Humanist (1964)
 The Future of Man (1966)
Works[edit]
 The individual in the animal
kingdom (1911)
 The courtship habits of the Great
crested grebe (1914) [a landmark
in ethology]
 Essays of a Biologist (1923)
 Essays in Popular Science (1926)
 The stream of life (1926)
 Animal biology (with J. B. S. Haldane,
1927)
 Religion without revelation (1927,
revised edition 1957)
 The tissue-culture king (1927) [science
fiction]
 Ants (1929)
 The science of life: a summary of
contemporary knowledge about life and
its possibilities (with HG & G. P. Wells,
1929–30). First issued in 31 fortnightly
parts published by Amalgamated Press,
1929–31, bound up in three volumes as
 publication proceeded. First issued in
one volume by Cassell in 1931,
reprinted 1934, 1937, popular edition,
fully revised, 1938. Published as
separate volumes by Cassell 1934–37:
I The living body. II Patterns of
life (1934). III Evolution—fact and
theory. IV Reproduction, heredity and
the development of sex. V The history
and adventure of life. VI The drama of
life. VII How animals behave (1937).
VIII Man's mind and behaviour.
IX Biology and the human race.
Published in New York by Doubleday,
Doran & Co. 1931, 1934, 1939; and by
The Literary Guild 1934. Three of the
Cassell spin-off books were also
published by Doubleday in
1932: Evolution, fact and theory; The
human mind and the behavior of
Man; Reproduction, genetics and the
development of sex.
 Bird-watching and bird behaviour (1930)
 An introduction to science (with Edward
Andrade, 1931–34)
 What dare I think?: the challenge of
modern science to human action and
belief. Chatto & Windus, London;
Harper, N.Y. (1931)
 Africa view (1931)
 The captive shrew and other
poems (1932)
 Problems of relative growth (1932)
 A scientist among the Soviets (1932)
 If I were Dictator. Methuen, London;
Harper, N.Y. (1934)
 Scientific research and social
needs (1934)
 Elements of
experimental embryology (with Gavin de
Beer, 1934)
 Thomas Huxley's diary of the voyage
of HMS Rattlesnake (1935)
 We Europeans (with A.C. Haddon,
1936)
 Animal language (photographs by Ylla,
includes recordings of animal calls:
1938, reprinted 1964)
 The present standing of the theory
of sexual selection. In Gavin de
Beer (ed) Evolution: Essays on aspects
of evolutionary biology (pp 11–42).
Oxford: Clarendon Press (1938)
 The living thoughts of Darwin (1939)
 The new systematics. Oxford. (1940)
[this multi-author volume, edited by
Huxley, is one of the foundation stones
of the 'Modern evolutionary synthesis',
with essays
ontaxonomy, evolution, natural
selection, Mendelian
genetics and population genetics]
 Democracy marches. Chatto & Windus,
London; Harper N.Y. (1941)
 The uniqueness of man. Chatto &
Windus, London. (1941; reprint 1943).
U.S. as Man stands alone. Harper, N.Y.
1941.
 On living in a revolution. Harper, N,Y.
(1944)
 Evolution: the modern synthesis. Allen &
Unwin, London. (1942, reprinted 1943,
1944, 1945, 1948, 1955; 2nd ed, with
new introduction and bibliography by
the author, 1963; 3rd ed, with new
introduction and bibliography by nine
contributors, 1974). U.S. first edition by
Harper, 1943. [this summarises
research on all topics relevant to
evolution up to the Second World War].
New edition by MIT Press in 2010 with
Foreword by Massimo Pigliucci and
Gerd B. Müller.
 Evolutionary ethics (1943)
 TVA: Adventure in planning (1944)
 Evolution and ethics 1893–1943. Pilot,
London. In the US as Touchstone for
ethics Harper, N.Y. (1947) [includes text
from both T. H. Huxley and Julian
Huxley]
 Man in the modern world (1947) eBook,
essays selected from The uniqueness of
man (1941) and On living in a
revolution (1944)
 Soviet genetics and World
science: Lysenko and the meaning of
heredity. Chatto & Windus, London. In
the US as Heredity, East and
West. Schuman, N.Y. (1949).
 Evolution in action (1953)
 Evolution as a process (with Hardy A.
C. and Ford E. B. eds.) Allen & Unwin,
London. (1954)
 From an antique land: ancient and
modern in the Middle East. Parrish,
London (1954, revised 1966)
 Kingdom of the beasts (with W.
Suschitzky, 1956)
 Biological aspects of cancer (1957)
 New bottles for new wine Chatto &
Windus, London; Harper N.Y. (1957);
repr as Knowledge, morality, destiny.
N.Y. (1960)
 The treasure house of wild life 13
Nov, More meat from game than
cattle 13 Nov, Cropping the wild
protein 20 Nov, Wild life as a World
Asset, second page 27 Nov; The
Observer newspaper articles that led to
the setting up of the World Wildlife
Fund (1960)
 The humanist frame (as editor, 1961)
 The coming new religion
of humanism (1962)
 Essays of a humanist (1964) reprinted
1966, 1969, 1992: ISBN 0-87975-778-7
 The human crisis (1964)
 Darwin and his world (with Bernard
Kettlewell, 1965)
 Aldous Huxley 1894–1963: a memorial
volume. (as editor, 1965)
 The future of man: evolutionary aspects.
(1966)
 The wonderful world of evolution (1969)
 Memories (2 vols 1970 & 1973) [his
autobiography]
 The Mitchell Beazley Atlas of World
Wildlife. Mitchell Beazley, London; also
published as The Atlas of World Wildlife.
Purnell, Cape Town. (1973)
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73. Jump up^ Huxley J.S. 1947. Man
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74. Jump up^ Hubback D. "Julian
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76. Jump up^ Huxley, Julian.
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77. Jump up^ Duvall C. 1992. From a
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Waters C. K. and Van Helden A.
 (eds) Julian Huxley: Biologist and
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Press, Houston. p. 24
78. Jump up^ Kevles D. J. 1995. In
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79. Jump up^ Keynes, Milo and
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1989. Evolutionary Studies: A
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80. Jump up^ The Race question;
UNESCO and its programme; Vol.:3;
1950
81. Jump up^ Baker J. R. and Green
J.-P. 1978. Julian Huxley: Man of
science and citizen of the world 1887–
1975. UNESCO, bibliography,
especially pp 107–174.
82. Jump up^ Andrew Huxley (in
Keynes M. and Harrison G. A. eds
1989. Evolutionary studies: a
centenary celebration of the life of
Julian Huxley. Macmillan, London. p.
19) says it was originally published in
31 fortnightly parts in 1929–30; others
(Waters C. K. & Van Helden A. eds
1993. Julian Huxley: biologist and
statesman of science. Houston.
bibliography) say it was published in
three volumes 1929–30. Both may be
correct: see publishing history ofThe
Science of Life in Works section.
83. Jump up^ Olby R. in Waters, C.
Kenneth and Van Helden, Albert (eds)
1993. Julian Huxley: biologist and
statesman of science. Rice University
Press, Houston.
84. Jump up^ Olby R. 2004. Huxley,
Sir Julian Sorell (1887–1975). Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography.
85. Jump up^ Huxley J.
1970. Memories. George Allen &
Unwin, London, p. 156.
86. Jump up^ Academy Award for
Live Action Short Film 1937 (One-
Reel) Skibo Productions – The Private
Life of the Gannets.
87. Jump up^ Briggs, Asa. 1970. The
history of broadcasting in the UK, vol
3 The war of words. Oxford. pp. 581–2
88. Jump up^ Thomas H.
1944. Britain's Brains Trust. Chapman
& Hall, London.
89. Jump up^ Huxley, Thomas and
Julian, and Osborn, F.R. 1958. Three
essays on population. Mentor.
90. Jump up^ Huxley, Julian 1950.
Population and human
destiny. Harpers, September 1950.
Biographies[edit]
 Baker John R. 1978. Julian Huxley,
scientist and world citizen, 1887–1975.
UNESCO, Paris.
 Clark, Ronald W. 1960. Sir Julian
Huxley. Phoenix, London.
 Clark, Ronald W. 1968. The Huxleys.
Heinemann, London.
 Dronamraju, Krishna R. 1993. If I am to
be remembered: the life & work of Julian
Huxley, with selected correspondence.
World Scientific, Singapore.
 Green, Jens-Peter 1981. Krise und
Hoffnung, der Evolutionshumanismus
Julian Huxleys. Carl Winter
Universitatsverlag.
 Huxley, Julian. 1970,
1973. Memories and Memories II.
George Allen & Unwin, London.
 Huxley, Juliette 1986. Leaves of the tulip
tree. Murray, London [her autobiography
includes much about Julian]
 Keynes, Milo and Harrison, G.
Ainsworth (eds) 1989. Evolutionary
studies: a centenary celebration of the
life of Julian Huxley. Proceeding of the
24th annual symposium of the Eugenics
Society, London 1987. Macmillan,
London.
 Olby, Robert 2004. Huxley, Sir Julian
Sorell (1887–1975). In Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography. (2680 words)
 Waters, C. Kenneth and Van Helden,
Albert (eds) 1993. Julian Huxley:
biologist and statesman of science. Rice
University Press, Houston. [scholarly
articles by historians of science on
Huxley's work and ideas]
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 Short biography.
 Julian Huxley’s philosophy. By John
Toye and Richard Toye. In 60 Years of
Science at UNESCO 1945–2005,
UNESCO, 2006.
 One World, Two Cultures? Alfred
Zimmern, Julian Huxley and the
Ideological Origins of UNESCO. By
John Toye and Richard Toye.History,
95, 319: 308–331, 2010
 "Guide to the Julian Sorell Huxley
Papers, 1899–1980" (Woodson
Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice
 University, Houston, TX, USA)—"Julian
Huxley papers documenting his career
as a biologist and a leading intellectual.
180 boxes of materials ranging in date
from 1899–1980." Extent: 91 linear feet.
 "Transhumanism" in New Bottles for
New Wine. London: Chatto & Windus,
1957.
 "The New Divination" in Essays of a
Humanist. London: Chatto & Windus,
1964.
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

KEATS’S ODES
John Keats
←
Ode on a Grecian Urn
→
page 1 of 2

Summary
In the first stanza, the speaker stands
before an ancient Grecian urn and
addresses it. He is preoccupied with its
depiction of pictures frozen in time. It is the
“still unravish’d bride of quietness,” the
“foster-child of silence and slow time.” He
also describes the urn as a “historian” that
can tell a story. He wonders about the
figures on the side of the urn and asks what
legend they depict and from where they
come. He looks at a picture that seems to
depict a group of men pursuing a group of
women and wonders what their story could
be: “What mad pursuit? What struggle to
escape? / What pipes and timbrels? What
wild ecstasy?”
In the second stanza, the speaker looks at
another picture on the urn, this time of a
young man playing a pipe, lying with his
lover beneath a glade of trees. The speaker
says that the piper’s “unheard” melodies
are sweeter than mortal melodies because
they are unaffected by time. He tells the
youth that, though he can never kiss his
lover because he is frozen in time, he
should not grieve, because her beauty will
never fade. In the third stanza, he looks at
the trees surrounding the lovers and feels
happy that they will never shed their leaves.
He is happy for the piper because his songs
will be “for ever new,” and happy that the
love of the boy and the girl will last forever,
unlike mortal love, which lapses into
“breathing human passion” and eventually
vanishes, leaving behind only a “burning
forehead, and a parching tongue.”
In the fourth stanza, the speaker examines
another picture on the urn, this one of a
group of villagers leading a heifer to be
sacrificed. He wonders where they are
going (“To what green altar, O mysterious
priest...”) and from where they have come.
He imagines their little town, empty of all its
citizens, and tells it that its streets will “for
evermore” be silent, for those who have left
it, frozen on the urn, will never return. In the
final stanza, the speaker again addresses
the urn itself, saying that it, like Eternity,
“doth tease us out of thought.” He thinks
that when his generation is long dead, the
urn will remain, telling future generations its
enigmatic lesson: “Beauty is truth, truth
beauty.” The speaker says that that is the
only thing the urn knows and the only thing
it needs to know.
Form
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” follows the same
ode-stanza structure as the “Ode on
Melancholy,” though it varies more the
rhyme scheme of the last three lines of
each stanza. Each of the five stanzas in
“Grecian Urn” is ten lines long, metered in a
relatively precise iambic pentameter, and
divided into a two part rhyme scheme, the
last three lines of which are variable. The
first seven lines of each stanza follow an
ABABCDE rhyme scheme, but the second
occurrences of the CDE sounds do not
follow the same order. In stanza one, lines
seven through ten are rhymed DCE; in
stanza two, CED; in stanzas three and four,
CDE; and in stanza five, DCE, just as in
stanza one. As in other odes (especially
“Autumn” and “Melancholy”), the two-part
rhyme scheme (the first part made of AB
rhymes, the second of CDE rhymes)
creates the sense of a two-part thematic
structure as well. The first four lines of each
stanza roughly define the subject of the
stanza, and the last six roughly explicate or
develop it. (As in other odes, this is only a
general rule, true of some stanzas more
than others; stanzas such as the fifth do not
connect rhyme scheme and thematic
structure closely at all.)
Themes
If the “Ode to a Nightingale” portrays
Keats’s speaker’s engagement with the
fluid expressiveness of music, the “Ode on
a Grecian Urn” portrays his attempt to
engage with the static immobility of
sculpture. The Grecian urn, passed down
through countless centuries to the time of
the speaker’s viewing, exists outside of time
in the human sense—it does not age, it
does not die, and indeed it is alien to all
such concepts. In the speaker’s meditation,
this creates an intriguing paradox for the
human figures carved into the side of the
urn: They are free from time, but they are
simultaneously frozen in time. They do not
have to confront aging and death (their love
is “for ever young”), but neither can they
have experience (the youth can never kiss
the maiden; the figures in the procession
can never return to their homes).
The speaker attempts three times to
engage with scenes carved into the urn;
each time he asks different questions of it.
In the first stanza, he examines the picture
of the “mad pursuit” and wonders what
actual story lies behind the picture: “What
men or gods are these? What maidens
loth?” Of course, the urn can never tell him
the whos, whats, whens, and wheres of the
stories it depicts, and the speaker is forced
to abandon this line of questionin
KEATS’S ODES
John Keats
←
Ode on a Grecian Urn (page 2)
→
page 2 of 2
In the second and third stanzas, he
examines the picture of the piper playing to
his lover beneath the trees. Here, the
speaker tries to imagine what the
experience of the figures on the urn must
be like; he tries to identify with them. He is
tempted by their escape from temporality
and attracted to the eternal newness of the
piper’s unheard song and the eternally
unchanging beauty of his lover. He thinks
that their love is “far above” all transient
human passion, which, in its sexual
expression, inevitably leads to an
abatement of intensity—when passion is
satisfied, all that remains is a wearied
physicality: a sorrowful heart, a “burning
forehead,” and a “parching tongue.” His
recollection of these conditions seems to
remind the speaker that he is inescapably
subject to them, and he abandons his
attempt to identify with the figures on the
urn.
In the fourth stanza, the speaker attempts
to think about the figures on the urn as
though they wereexperiencing human time,
imagining that their procession has an
origin (the “little town”) and a destination
(the “green altar”). But all he can think is
that the town will forever be deserted: If
these people have left their origin, they will
never return to it. In this sense he confronts
head-on the limits of static art; if it is
impossible to learn from the urn the whos
and wheres of the “real story” in the first
stanza, it is impossible ever to know the
origin and the destination of the figures on
the urn in the fourth.
It is true that the speaker shows a certain
kind of progress in his successive attempts
to engage with the urn. His idle curiosity in
the first attempt gives way to a more deeply
felt identification in the second, and in the
third, the speaker leaves his own concerns
behind and thinks of the processional
purely on its own terms, thinking of the “little
town” with a real and generous feeling. But
each attempt ultimately ends in failure. The
third attempt fails simply because there is
nothing more to say—once the speaker
confronts the silence and eternal emptiness
of the little town, he has reached the limit of
static art; on this subject, at least, there is
nothing more the urn can tell him.
In the final stanza, the speaker presents the
conclusions drawn from his three attempts
to engage with the urn. He is overwhelmed
by its existence outside of temporal change,
with its ability to “tease” him “out of thought
/ As doth eternity.” If human life is a
succession of “hungry generations,” as the
speaker suggests in “Nightingale,” the urn
is a separate and self-contained world. It
can be a “friend to man,” as the speaker
says, but it cannot be mortal; the kind of
aesthetic connection the speaker
experiences with the urn is ultimately
insufficient to human life.
The final two lines, in which the speaker
imagines the urn speaking its message to
mankind—”Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”
have proved among the most difficult to
interpret in the Keats canon. After the urn
utters the enigmatic phrase “Beauty is truth,
truth beauty,” no one can say for sure who
“speaks” the conclusion, “that is all / Ye
know on earth, and all ye need to know.” It
could be the speaker addressing the urn,
and it could be the urn addressing mankind.
If it is the speaker addressing the urn, then
it would seem to indicate his awareness of
its limitations: The urn may not need to
know anything beyond the equation of
beauty and truth, but the complications of
human life make it impossible for such a
simple and self-contained phrase to
express sufficiently anything about
necessary human knowledge. If it is the urn
addressing mankind, then the phrase has
rather the weight of an important lesson, as
though beyond all the complications of
human life, all human beings need to know
on earth is that beauty and truth are one
and the same. It is largely a matter of
personal interpretation which reading to
accept