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C. E. Ayres's reliance on T. H. Huxley: did Darwin's bulldog bite?
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Oct, 1995 by Lamar B. Jones
If Ayres could seem more than just a little pugilistic at times, so could Huxley, who has been depicted as "bellicose, brash, and a good hater. . ." (Desmond and Morris, 432). Certainly both men never minded a bit of "parson bashing" when they felt it was needed. Huxley detested Roman Catholicism because of its penchant for the supernatural, while Ayres could become quite annoyed with fundamentalist Protestant dogmatists. Both men despised intellectual tyranny and authoritarianism in any form. In all this, and in so many other ways, Huxley and Ayres at times seem almost one personality. In spite of fulminations against existing orders of science and, for Ayres, economics, neither moved outside the political mainstream of their day. Each avoided embracing socialism, each accepted, pragmatically, the institution of private property, and each had little use for laissez faire economics. Both men were materialists; both were drawn to the engineering mind and the consequent technologies that would flow from it, and both men were excellent writers. G. K. Chesterton referred to Huxley as a "journalist-scientist" who had a ". . . live taste and talent for the English tongue. . ." (Chesterton, 127). Tullock notes that Ayres was an excellent writer and ". . . a brilliant social critic" [Tullock, 127].
Tullock, recognizing Ayres's and Huxley's similarities, focuses on their common mastery of controversial technique, the fact that neither invented the system they proselytized for, and that each had the special talents needed for advancing his position. However, Tullock argues that Ayres failed in his efforts, while Huxley succeeded in his, an outcome caused by the quality of the respective ideas each sought to promulgate (Tullock 1976, 135-6). This is, however, somewhat of an errant view, for in truth both men failed, and for essentially the same reasons. Ayres, arguably, never really grasped the true significance of Darwinism, while Huxley, arguably, never really believed in it.
II
Ayres and Evolutionary Biology
Ayres's misunderstanding is evident in passages he developed in Huxley. For example, he wrote that "all of Darwin's particular views have gone down wind: variation, survival of the fittest, natural selection, and all the rest. Darwin is nearly, if not quite as outmoded today as Lamarck." While this is simply nonsense; Ayres was driven by a motive which led him to see Darwin in a different way, specifically: "The Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion" (Ayres 1932, 95-6). Ayres is, in a sense, correct in the latter view, for the Darwinian message does offer the potential for such perspectives to occur, though as yet this has not been so, or at least not dominantly so. Ayres's attraction for Darwin rested on the fact that "The Origin of Species challenged Genesis, that is to say, the cultural foundation of Christendom." There is," he writes, "a "world of difference between the morals, politics, and religion of God's chosen people and a species of super-apes." Very importantly, Ayres thought this message ". . . was Huxley's issue, not Darwin's." Moreover, he believed that it was Huxley's book Man' Place in Nature, that was the true vehicle of the Darwinian message. Ayres writes that "The Origin of Species is a quaint, out-moded classic" (1932, 96).
