科学世家赫胥黎（上）

Culture

文化板块

Book review: Scientific dynasties

书评：科学世家

Circles of life

人生的轮回

The Huxleys. By Alison Bashford.

《赫胥黎》艾莉森·巴什福德著

In 1958 Julian Huxley fell in love with a gorilla.

1958年，朱利安·赫胥黎爱上了一只大猩猩。

Then in his early 70s, he had long been a household name in Britain.

在他70岁出头的时候，他早就是英国家喻户晓的人物了。

As Alison Bashford describes in her new double biography, Julian had inherited the role of evolution’s frontman from his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, a Victorian scientist writer.

正如艾莉森·巴什福德在她的新双重传记中所描述的那样，朱利安从他的祖父——维多利亚时代的科学家作家托马斯·亨利·赫胥黎那里，继承了进化论代表的角色。

Yet on meeting Guy the Gorilla at London Zoo, Julian found himself undone.

然而，当朱利安在伦敦动物园遇到大猩猩盖伊时，他发现自己完蛋了。

“Magnificent in his reserve and silent sense,” he wrote of their first encounter, “he gives you a look of sombre dignity that makes you feel in some real sense his inferior.”

“他太沉默寡言了，”他这样描述他们的第一次相遇，“他看过来的眼神中有着阴郁的庄严，让你在某种真正意义上感觉到了他的自卑。”

This fellow-feeling for animals, Ms Bashford notes, was a reversion to Huxley type.

巴什福德指出，这种对动物的同情心，是隔代遗传了老赫胥黎。

Thomas had started on the road to agnosticism—a term he coined—in 1860, after his son died in childhood and a tone-deaf curate presiding over the funeral quoted Paul’s epistles: “If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

托马斯在1860年开始走上不可知论（他自创的术语）的道路，当时他的儿子在孩提时代就已经去世了，主持葬礼的一位音盲牧师引用了保罗的书信：“若死人不复活，我们就吃吃喝喝吧，因为明天就要死了。”

Ridiculous, Thomas thought: as a zoologist who had observed primates’ treatment of the dead, he doubted that they believed in resurrection.

托马斯认为这很荒谬：作为一名观察过灵长类动物对待死者方式的动物学家，他怀疑它们是否相信复活这一说。

Nor were they inclined to gluttony.

它们也不喜欢暴饮暴食。

Why should people be any different?

那人类又为什么会有所不同呢？

The sea-tide that would pull him away from religion and towards secular science was tugging at his heels.

此时，那股后来把他从宗教拉向世俗科学的浪潮正紧随其后。

It would sweep him to notoriety as “Darwin’s Bulldog”, arch-debunker of “natural theology” and champion of the descent of man.

它使他声名狼藉，成为了“达尔文的斗牛犬”、“自然神学”的主要批判者和人类起源论的捍卫者。

The same currents bore his grandson from an abortive academic career to national and eventually global fame as a broadcaster and popular-science writer.

而同样的潮流却把他的孙子从失败的学术生涯中拯救了出来，使其成为了一名在全国乃至全球享有盛誉的广播员和科普作家。

“A man now cannot be a universal expert,” a colleague told the young Julian, as a warning against imitating his illustrious grandfather.

一位同事对年轻的朱利安说：“现在的人不可能成为全能专家”，以此警告他不要效仿他杰出的祖父。

The younger Huxley took that as a challenge.

小赫胥黎把这当成了一个挑战。

Appropriately for acolytes of Darwinism, Thomas and Julian shared what may have been heritable traits: scientific genius, an appetite for culture (both were keen poets), and a tragic tint of mental instability.

作为达尔文主义的追随者，托马斯和朱利安有着共同的特征，这些特征或许是可以遗传的：科学天赋，对文化的渴望(两人都是狂热的诗人)，以及精神不稳定的悲剧色彩。

Thomas was wracked by depression.

托马斯深受抑郁症的折磨。

Julian’s tempestuous ego troubled his marriage and tried his friends; his brother committed suicide.

朱利安狂暴的自我让他的婚姻出现问题，也使他的朋友忍无可忍；他的兄弟还自杀了。