Decline
By 1880, the members of the X Club had prominent positions within the scientific community, and the club was highly regarded, but it was beginning to fall apart. In 1883, Spottiswoode died of typhoid and at the same time, according to Spencer, only two of the remaining eight members of the X club were in good health. Attendance at meetings began to dwindle and by 1885, Frankland and Lubbock urged for the election of new members. There was a difference of opinion on the matter and it was eventually dropped. In 1889, a rift emerged in the group when Huxley and Spencer had an argument over land nationalisation policies and refused to talk with one another.
The members of the club were growing old and during the late 1880s and early 1890s, a few of the members moved out of London. When attendance began to severely dwindle, talks of ending the club emerged. The last meeting was held unceremoniously in March 1893, and only Frankland and Hooker attended.
Read more about this topic: X Club
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“My opposition [to interviews] lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)