Critiques and Addresses. - 1873

London: Macmillan and Co.,, 1873. First edition of the author's collection of essays, with liberal pencil annotations from an unimpressed 20th-century reader. This reader is particularly exercised by Huxley's defence of Darwinian evolution, but they also fill up several margins with criticisms of the immaterialism of George Berkeley, which Huxley discusses in the collection's final article. Discussing Huxley's contention that a greyhound, on sighting a hare, receives only the visual stimulation from the hare, the reader observes that "Prof. Huxley ignores altogether the effect of the mind of man in disciplining the Greyhounds... in making them automatons to carry out his wishes" (pp. 279-280). The essays and addresses in this collection attest to Huxley's wide range of interests: education ("The School Boards: What they can do, and what they may do"), geology ("On the Formation of Coal"), and Darwinian evolution ("Palaeontology and the Doctrine of Evolution, Darwin's Critics"), among much else. Octavo. Original red cloth, spine lettered, ruled, and with publisher's device in gilt, covers with concentric panels in blind, dark green coated endpapers. With 25 leaves of publisher's advertisements at rear. Inscription of one "A. Neilson 14 June 1873" on initial blank. Light rubbing and bumping to extremities, slight cockling to spine, minor foxing to endpapers and contents: a very good copy.