[Full of interest in this theme, he made it the subject of his popular lectures in the spring of 1861.

Thus from February to May he lectured weekly to working men on "The Relation of Man to the rest of the Animal Kingdom," and on March 22 writes to his wife:—]

My working men stick by me wonderfully, the house being fuller than ever last night. By next Friday evening they will all be convinced that they are monkeys...Said lecture, let me inform you, was very good. Lyell came and was rather astonished at the magnitude and attentiveness of the audience.

[These lectures to working men were published in the "Natural History Review," as was a Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution (February 8) on "The Nature of the Earliest Stages of Development of Animals."

Meanwhile the publication of these researches led to another pitched battle, in which public interest was profoundly engaged. The controversy which raged had some resemblance to a duel over a point of honour and credit. Scientific technicalities became the catchwords of society, and the echoes of the great Hippocampus question linger in the delightful pages of the "Water-Babies." Of this fight Huxley writes to Sir J. Hooker on April 18, 1861:—]

A controversy between Owen and myself, which I can only call absurd (as there is no doubt whatever about the facts), has been going on in the "Athenaeum," and I wound it up in disgust last week.

[And again on April 27:—]

Owen occupied an entirely untenable position—but I am nevertheless surprised he did not try "abusing plaintiff's attorney." The fact is he made a prodigious blunder in commencing the attack, and now his only chance is to be silent and let people forget the exposure. I do not believe that in the whole history of science there is a case of any man of reputation getting himself into such a contemptible position. He will be the laughing-stock of all the continental anatomists.

Rolleston has a great deal of Oxford slough to shed, but on that very ground his testimony has been of most especial service. Fancy that man — telling Maskelyne that Rolleston's observations were entirely confirmatory of Owen.

[About the same time he writes to his wife:—]

April 16.

People are talking a good deal about the "Man and the Apes" question, and I hear that somebody, I suspect Monckton-Milnes, has set afloat a poetical squib on the subject...

[The squib in question, dated "the Zoological Gardens," and signed "Gorilla," appeared in "Punch" for May 15, 1861, under a picture of that animal, bearing the sign, "Am I a Man and a Brother?"

The concluding verses run as follows:

Next HUXLEY replies That OWEN he lies And garbles his Latin quotation; That his facts are not new, His mistakes not a few, Detrimental to his reputation.

"To twice slay the slain" By dint of the Brain (Thus Huxley concludes his review), Is but labour in vain, Unproductive of gain, And so I shall bid you "Adieu!"]

Some think my winding-up too strong, but I trust the day will never come when I shall abstain from expressing my contempt for those who prostitute Science to the Service of Error. At any rate I am not old enough for that yet. Darwin came in just now. I get no scoldings for pitching into the common enemy now!!

I would give you fifty guesses [he writes to Hooker on April 30], and you should not find out the author of the "Punch" poem. I saw it in MS. three weeks ago, and was told the author was a friend of mine. But I remained hopelessly in the dark till yesterday. What do you say to Sir Philip Egerton coming out in that line? I am told he is the author, and the fact speaks volumes for Owen's perfect success in damning himself.

[In the midst of the fight came a surprising invitation. On April 10 he writes to his wife:—]

They have written to me from the Philosophical Institute of Edinburgh to ask me to give two lectures on the "Relation of Man to the Lower Animals" next session. I have replied that if they can give me January 3 and 7 for lecture days I will do it—if not, not. Fancy unco guid Edinburgh requiring illumination on the subject! They know my views, so if they did not like what I have to tell them, it is their own fault.

[These lectures were eventually delivered on January 4 and 7, 1862, and were well reported in the Edinburgh papers. The substance of them appears as Part 2 in "Man's Place in Nature," the first lecture describing the general nature of the process of development among vertebrate animals, and the modifications of the skeleton in the mammalia; the second dealing with the crucial points of comparison between the higher apes and man, namely the hand, foot, and brain. He showed that the differences between man and the higher apes were no greater than those between the higher and lower apes. If the Darwinian hypothesis explained the common ancestry of the latter, the anatomist would have no difficulty with the origin of man, so far as regards the gap between him and the higher apes.

Yet, though convinced that] "that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions," [he steadfastly refused to be an advocate of the theory,] "if by an advocate is meant one whose business it is to smooth over real difficulties, and to persuade when he cannot convince."

[In common fairness he warned his audience of the one missing link in the chain of evidence—the fact that selective breeding has not yet produced species sterile to one another. But it is to be adopted as a working hypothesis like other scientific generalisations,] "subject to the production of proof that physiological species may be produced by selective breeding; just as a physical philosopher may accept the undulatory theory of light, subject to the proof of the existence of the hypothetical ether; or as the chemist adopts the atomic theory, subject to the proof of the existence of atoms; and for exactly the same reasons, namely, that it has an immense amount of prima facie probability; that it is the only means at present within reach of reducing the chaos of observed facts to order; and lastly, that it is the most powerful instrument of investigation which has been presented to naturalists since the invention of the natural system of classification, and the commencement of the systematic study of embryology."

[As for the repugnance of most men to admitting kinship with the apes,] "thoughtful men," [he says,] once escaped from the blinding influences of traditional prejudices, will find in the lowly stock whence man has sprung the best evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will discern, in his long progress through the past, a reasonable ground of faith in his attainment of a nobler future."

[A simile, with which he enforced this elevating point of view, which has since eased the passage of many minds to the acceptance of evolution, seems to have been much appreciated by his audience. It was a comparison of man to the Alps, which turn out to be] "of one substance with the dullest clay, but raised by inward forces to that place of proud and seemingly inaccessible glory."

[The lectures were met at first with astonishing quiet, but it was not long before the stones began to fly. The "Witness" of January 11 lashed itself into a fury over the fact that the audience applauded this "anti-scriptural and most debasing theory...standing in blasphemous contradiction to biblical narrative and doctrine," instead of expressing their resentment at this "foul outrage committed upon them individually, and upon the whole species as 'made in the likeness of God,'" by deserting the hall in a body, or using some more emphatic form of protest against the corruption of youth by "the vilest and beastliest paradox ever vented in ancient or modern times amongst Pagans or Christians." In his finest vein of sarcasm, the writer expresses his surprise that the meeting did not instantly resolve itself into a "Gorilla Emancipation Society," or propose to hear a lecture from an apostle of Mormonism; "even this would be a less offensive, mischievous, and inexcusable exhibition than was made in the recent two lectures by Professor Huxley," etc.]

Jermyn Street, January 13, 1862.

My dear Darwin,

In the first place a new year's greeting to you and yours. In the next, I enclose this slip (please return it when you have read it) to show you what I have been doing in the north.

Everybody prophesied I should be stoned and cast out of the city gate, but, on the contrary, I met with unmitigated applause!! Three cheers for the progress of liberal opinion!!

The report is as good as any, but they have not put quite rightly what I said about your views, respecting which I took my old line about the infertility difficulty.

Furthermore, they have not reported my statement that whether you were right or wrong, some form of the progressive development theory is certainly true. Nor have they reported here my distinct statement that I believe man and the apes to have come from one stock.

Having got thus far, I find the lecture better reported in the "Courant," so I send you that instead.

I mean to publish the lecture in full by and by (about the time the orchids come out).

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

I deserved the greatest credit for not having made an onslaught on Brewster for his foolish impertinence about your views in "Good Words," but declined to stir nationality, which you know (in him) is rather more than his Bible.

Jermyn Street, January 16, 1862.

My dear Hooker,

I wonder if we are ever to meet again in this world! At any rate I send to the remote province of Kew, Greeting, and my best wishes for the new year to you and yours. I also inclose a slip from an Edinburgh paper containing a report of my lecture on the "Relation of Man," etc. As you will see, I went in for the entire animal more strongly, in fact, than they have reported me. I told them in so many words that I entertained no doubt of the origin of man from the same stock as the apes.

And to my great delight, in saintly Edinburgh itself the announcement met with nothing but applause. For myself I can't say that the praise or blame of my audience was much matter, but it is a grand indication of the general disintegration of old prejudices which is going on.

I shall see if I cannot make something more of the lectures by delivering them again in London, and then I shall publish them.

The report does not put nearly strongly enough what I said in favour of Darwin's views. I affirmed it to be the only scientific hypothesis of the origin of species in existence, and expressed my belief that one gap in the evidence would be filled up, as I always do.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Jermyn Street, January 20, 1862.

My dear Darwin,

The inclosed article, which has been followed up by another more violent, more scurrilously personal, and more foolish, will prove to you that my labour has not been in vain, and that your views and mine are likely to be better ventilated in Scotland than they have been.

I was quite uneasy at getting no attack from the "Witness," thinking I must have overestimated the impression that I had made, and the favourableness of the reception of what I said. But the raving of the "Witness" is clear testimony that my notion was correct.

I shall send a short reply to the "Scotsman" for the purpose of further advertising the question.

With regard to what are especially your doctrines, I spoke much more favourably than I am reported to have done. I expressed no doubt as to their ultimate establishment, but as I particularly wished not to be misrepresented as an advocate trying to soften or explain away real difficulties, I did not in speaking enter into the details of what is to be said in diminishing the weight of the hybrid difficulty. All this will be put fully when I print the Lecture.

The arguments put in your letter are those which I have urged to other people—of the opposite side—over and over again. I have told my students that I entertain no doubt that twenty years' experiments on pigeons conducted by a skilled physiologist, instead of by a mere breeder, would give us physiological species sterile inter se, from a common stock (and in this, if I mistake not, I go further than you do yourself), and I have told them that when these experiments have been performed I shall consider your views to have a complete physical basis, and to stand on as firm ground as any physiological theory whatever.

It was impossible for me, in the time I had, to lay all this down to my Edinburgh audience, and in default of full explanation it was far better to seem to do scanty justice to you. I am constitutionally slow of adopting any theory that I must needs stick by when I have gone in for it; but for these two years I have been gravitating towards your doctrines, and since the publication of your primula paper with accelerated velocity. By about this time next year I expect to have shot past you, and to find you pitching into me for being more Darwinian than yourself. However, you have set me going, and must just take the consequences, for I warn you I will stop at no point so long as clear reasoning will carry me further.

My wife and I were very grieved to hear you had had such a sick house, but I hope the change in the weather has done you all good. Anything is better than the damp warmth we had.

I will take great care of the three "Barriers." [A pamphlet called "The Three Barriers" by G.R., being notes on Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species" 1861, 8vo." Habitat, structure, and procreative power are given as these three barriers to Darwinism, against which natural theology takes its stand on Final Causes.] I wanted to cut it up in the "Saturday," but how I am to fulfil my benevolent intentions—with five lectures a week—a lecture at the Royal Institution and heaps of other things on my hands, I don't know.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

I am very glad to hear about Brown Sequard; he is a thoroughly good man, and told me it was worth while to come all the way to Oxford to hear the Bishop pummelled.

[In the above-mentioned letter to the "Scotsman" of January 24 he expresses his unfeigned satisfaction at the fulfilment of the three objects of his address, namely, to state fully and fairly his conclusions, to avoid giving unnecessary offence, and thirdly,] "while feeling assured of the just and reasonable dealing of the respectable part of the Scottish press, I naturally hoped for noisy injustice and unreason from the rest, seeing, as I did, the best security for the dissemination of my views through regions which they might not otherwise reach, in the certainty of a violent attack by [the 'Witness'."

The applause of the audience, he says, afforded him genuine satisfaction,] "because it bids me continue in the faith on which I acted, that a man who speaks out honestly and fearlessly that which he knows, and that which he believes, will always enlist the good-will and the respect, however much he may fail in winning the assent, of his fellow-men."

[About this time a new field of interest was opened out to him, closely connected with, indeed, and completing, the ape question. Sir Charles Lyell was engaged in writing his "Antiquity of Man," and asked Huxley to supply him with various anatomical data touching the ape question, and later to draw him a diagram illustrating the peculiarities of the newly discovered Neanderthal skull as compared with other skulls. He points out in his letters to Lyell that the range of cranial capacity between the highest and the lowest German—"one of the mediatised princes, I suppose" [The minor princes of Germany, whose territories were annexed to larger states, and who thus exchanged a direct for a mediate share in the imperial government.—or the Himalayan or Peruvian, is almost 100 per cent; in absolute amount twice as much as the difference between that of the largest simian and the smallest human capacity, so that in seeking an ordinal difference between man and the apes, "it would certainly be well to let go the head, though I am afraid it does not mend matters much to lay hold of the foot."

And on January 25, 1862:—]

I have been skull-measuring all day at the College of Surgeons. The NEANDERTHAL SKULL may be described as a slightly exaggerated modification of one of the two types (and the lower) of Australian skulls.

After the fashion of accounting for the elephant of old, I suppose it will be said that it was imported. But luckily the differences, though only of degree, are rather too marked for this hypothesis.

I only wish I had a clear six months to work at the subject. Little did I dream what the undertaking to arrange your three woodcuts would lead to. It will come in the long-run, I believe, to a new ethnological method, new modes of measurement, a new datum line, and new methods of registration.

If one had but two heads and neither required sleep!

[One immediate result of his investigations, which appeared in a lecture at the Royal Institution (February 7, 1862), "On the Fossil Remains of Man," was incorporated in "Man's Place in Nature." But a more important consequence of this impulse was that he went seriously into the study of Ethnology. Of his work in this branch of natural science, Professor Virchow, speaking at the dinner given him by the English medical profession on October 5, 1898, declared that in the eyes of German savants it alone would suffice to secure immortal reverence for his name.

The concluding stage in the long controversy raised first at Oxford, was the British Association meeting at Cambridge in 1862. It was here that Professor (afterwards Sir W.H.) Flower made his public demonstration of the existence in apes of the cerebral characters said to be peculiar to man.

From the 1st to the 9th of October Huxley stayed at Cambridge as the guest of Professor Fawcett at Trinity Hall, running over to Felixstow on the 5th to see his wife, whose health did not allow her to accompany him.

As President of Section D he had a good deal to do, and he describes the course of events in a letter to Darwin:—]

26 Abbey Place, October 9, 1862.

My dear Darwin,

It is a source of sincere pleasure to me to learn that anything I can say or do is a pleasure to you, and I was therefore very glad to get your letter at that whirligig of an association meeting the other day. We all missed you, but I think it was as well you did not come, for though I am pretty tough, as you know, I found the pace rather killing. Nothing could exceed the hospitality and kindness of the University people—and that, together with a great deal of speaking on the top of a very bad cold, which I contrived to catch just before going down, has somewhat used me up.

Owen came down with the obvious intention of attacking me on all points. Each of his papers was an attack, and he went so far as to offer stupid and unnecessary opposition to proposals of mine in my own committee. However, he got himself sold at all points...The Polypterus paper and the Aye-Aye paper fell flat. The latter was meant to raise a discussion on your views, but it was all a stale hash, and I only made some half sarcastic remarks which stopped any further attempts at discussion...

I took my book to Scotland but did nothing. I shall ask leave to send you a bit or two as I get on.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

A "Society for the propagation of common honesty in all parts of the world" was established at Cambridge. I want you to belong to it, but I will say more about it by and by.

[This admirable society, which was also to "search for scientific truth, especially in biology," seems to have been but short lived. At all events, I can find only two references to subsequent meetings, on October 7 and December 19 in this year.

A few days later a final blow was struck in the battle over the ape question. He writes on October 15 how he has written a letter to the "Medical Times"—his last word on the subject, summing up in most emphatic terms:—]

I have written the letter with the greatest care, and there is nothing coarse or violent in it. But it shall put an end to all the humbug that has been going on...Rolleston will come out with his letter in the same number, and the smash will be awful, but most thoroughly merited.

[These several pieces of work, struck out at different times in response to various impulses, were now combined and re-shaped into "Man's Place in Nature," the first book which was published by him. Thus he writes to Sir Charles Lyell on May 5, 1862:—]

Of course I shall be delighted to discuss anything with you [Referring to the address on "Geological Contemporaneity" delivered in 1862 at the Geological Society.], and the more so as I mean to put the whole question before the world in another shape in my little book, whose title is announced as "Evidences as to Man's Place in Nature." I have written the first two essays, the second containing the substance of my Edinburgh Lecture. I recollect you once asked me for something to quote on the Man question, so if you want anything in that way the MS. is at your service.

[Lyell looked over the proofs, and the following letters are in reply to his criticisms:—]

Ardrishaig, Loch Fyne, August 17, 1862.

My dear Sir Charles,

I take advantage of my first quiet day to reply to your letter of the 9th; and in the first place let me thank you very much for your critical remarks, as I shall find them of great service.

With regard to such matters as verbal mistakes, you must recollect that the greater part of the proof was wholly uncorrected. But the reader might certainly do his work better. I do not think you will find room to complain of any want of distinctness in my definition of Owen's position touching the Hippocampus question. I mean to give the whole history of the business in a note, so that the paraphrase of Sir Philip Egerton's line "To which Huxley replies that Owen he lies," shall be unmistakable.

I will take care about the Cheiroptera, and I will look at Lamarck again. But I doubt if I shall improve my estimate of the latter. The notion of common descent was not his—still less that of modification by variation—and he was as far as De Maillet from seeing his way to any vera causa by which varieties might be intensified into species.

If Darwin is right about natural selection—the discovery of this vera causa sets him to my mind in a different region altogether from all his predecessors—and I should no more call his doctrine a modification of Lamarck's than I should call the Newtonian theory of the celestial motions a modification of the Ptolemaic system. Ptolemy imagined a mode of explaining those motions. Newton proved their necessity from the laws and a force demonstrably in operation. If he is only right Darwin will, I think, take his place with such men as Harvey, and even if he is wrong his sobriety and accuracy of thought will put him on a far different level from Lamarck. I want to make this clear to people.

I am disposed to agree with you about the "emasculate" and "uncircumcised"-partly for your reasons, partly because I believe it is an excellent rule always to erase anything that strikes one as particularly smart when writing it. But it is a great piece of self-denial to abstain from expressing my peculiar antipathy to the people indicated, and I hope I shall be rewarded for the virtue.

As to the secondary causes I only wished to guard myself from being understood to imply that I had any comprehension of the meaning of the term. If my phrase looks naughty I will alter it. What I want is to be read, and therefore to give no unnecessary handle to the enemy. There will be row enough whatever I do.

Our Commission here [The Fishery Commission] implicates us in an inquiry of some difficulty, and which involves the interests of a great many poor people. I am afraid it will not leave me very much leisure. But we are in the midst of a charming country, and the work is not unpleasant or uninteresting. If the sun would only shine more than once a week it would be perfect.

With kind remembrances to Lady Lyell, believe me, faithfully yours,

T.H. Huxley.

We shall be here for the next ten days at least. But my wife will always know my whereabouts.

Jermyn Street, March 23, 1863.

My dear Sir Charles,

I suspect that the passage to which you refer must have been taken from my unrevised proofs, for it corresponds very nearly with what is written at page 97 of my book.

Flower has recently discovered that the Siamang's brain affords an even more curious exception to the general rule than that of Mycetes, as the cerebral hemispheres leave part not only of the sides but of the hinder end of the cerebellum uncovered.

As it is one of the Anthropoid apes and yet differs in this respect far more widely from the gorilla than the gorilla differs from man, it offers a charming example of the value of cerebral characters.

Flower publishes a paper on the subject in the forthcoming number of the "N. H. Review."

Might it not be well to allude to the fact that the existence of the posterior lobe, posterior cornu, and hippocampus in the Orang has been publicly demonstrated to an audience of experts at the College of Surgeons?

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The success of "Man's Place" was immediate, despite such criticisms as that of the "Athenaeum" that "Lyell's object is to make man old, Huxley's to degrade him." By the middle of February it reached its second thousand; in July it is heard of as republished in America; at the same time L. Buchner writes that he wished to translate it into German, but finds himself forestalled by Victor Carus. From another aspect, Lord Enniskillen, thanking him for the book, says (March 3), "I believe you are already excommunicated by book, bell, and candle," while in an undated note, Bollaert writes, "The Bishop of Oxford the other day spoke about 'the church having been in danger of late, by such books as Colenso's, but that it (the church) was now restored.' And this at a time, he might have added, when the works of Darwin, Lyell, and Huxley are torn from the hands of Mudie's shopmen, as if they were novels—(see "Daily Telegraph," April 10)."

At the same time, the impression left by his work upon the minds of the leading men of science may be judged from a few words of Sir Charles Lyell, who writes to a friend on March 15, 1863 ("Life and Letters" 2 366):—

Huxley's second thousand is going off well. If he had leisure like you and me, and the vigour and logic of the lectures, and his address to the Geological Society, and half a dozen other recent works (letters to the "Times" on Darwin, etc.), had been all in one book, what a position he would occupy! I entreated him not to undertake the "Natural History Review" before it began. The responsibility all falls on the man of chief energy and talent; it is a quarterly mischief, and will end in knocking him up.

A similar estimate appears from an earlier letter of March 11, 1859 ("Life and Letters" 2 321), when he quotes Huxley's opinion of Mansel's Bampton Lectures on the "Limits of Religious Thought":—

A friend of mine, Huxley, who will soon take rank as one of the first naturalists we have ever produced, begged me to read these sermons as first rate,] "although, regarding the author as a churchman, you will probably compare him, as I did, to the drunken fellow in Hogarth's contested election, who is sawing through the signpost at the other party's public-house, forgetting he is sitting at the other end of it. But read them as a piece of clear and unanswerable reasoning."

[In the 1894 preface to the re-issue of "Man's Place" in the Collected Essays, Huxley speaks as follows of the warnings he received against publishing on so dangerous a topic, of the storm which broke upon his head, and the small result which, in the long run, it produced (In September 1887 he wrote to Mr. Edward Clodd—]"All the propositions laid down in the wicked book, which was so well anathematised a quarter of a century ago, are now taught in the text-books. What a droll world it is!"):—

Magna est veritas et praevalebit! Truth is great, certainly, but considering her greatness, it is curious what a long time she is apt to take about prevailing. When, towards the end of 1862, I had finished writing "Man's Place in Nature," I could say with a good conscience that my conclusions "had not been formed hastily or enunciated crudely." I thought I had earned the right to publish them, and even fancied I might be thanked rather than reproved for doing so. However, in my anxiety to publish nothing erroneous, I asked a highly competent anatomist and very good friend of mine to look through my proofs, and, if he could, point out any errors of fact. I was well pleased when he returned them without criticism on that score; but my satisfaction was speedily dashed by the very earnest warning as to the consequences of publication, which my friend's interest in my welfare led him to give. But, as I have confessed elsewhere, when I was a young man, there was just a little—a mere soupcon—in my composition of that tenacity of purpose which has another name; and I felt sure that all the evil things prophesied would not be so painful to me as the giving up that which I had resolved to do, upon grounds which I conceived to be right. [(As to this advice not to publish "Man's Place" for fear of misrepresentation on the score of morals, he said, in criticising an attack of this sort made upon Darwin in the "Quarterly" for July 1876:—] "It seemed to me, however, that a man of science has no raison d'etre at all, unless he is willing to face much greater risks than these for the sake of that which he believes to be true; and further, that to a man of science such risks do not count for much—that they are by no means so serious as they are to a man of letters, for example.") So the book came out; and I must do my friend the justice to say that his forecast was completely justified. The Boreas of criticism blew his hardest blasts of misrepresentation and ridicule for some years, and I was even as one of the wicked. Indeed, it surprises me at times to think how anyone who had sunk so low could since have emerged into, at any rate, relative respectability. Personally, like the non-corvine personages in the Ingoldsby legend, I did not feel "one penny the worse." Translated into several languages, the book reached a wider public than I had ever hoped for; being largely helped, I imagine, by the Ernulphine advertisements to which I referred. It has had the honour of being freely utilised without acknowledgment by writers of repute; and finally it achieved the fate, which is the euthanasia of a scientific work, of being inclosed among the rubble of the foundations of later knowledge, and forgotten.

To my observation, human nature has not sensibly changed during the last thirty years. I doubt not that there are truths as plainly obvious and as generally denied as those contained in "Man's Place in Nature," now awaiting enunciation. If there is a young man of the present generation who has taken as much trouble as I did to assure himself that they are truths, let him come out with them, without troubling his head about the barking of the dogs of St. Ernulphus. Veritas praevalebit—some day; and even if she does not prevail in his time, he himself will be all the better and wiser for having tried to help her. And let him recollect that such great reward is full payment for all his labour and pains.

[The following letter refers to the newly published "Man's Place in Nature." Miss H. Darwin had suggested a couple of corrections:—]

Jermyn Street, February 25, 1863.

My dear Darwin,

Please to say to Miss Henrietta Minos Rhadamanthus Darwin that I plead guilty to the justice of both criticisms, and throw myself on the mercy of the court.

As extenuating circumstances with respect to indictment Number 1, see prefatory notice. Extenuating circumstance Number 2—that I picked up "Atavism" in Pritchard years ago, and as it is a much more convenient word than "Hereditary transmission of variations," it slipped into equivalence in my mind, and I forgot all about the original limitation.

But if these excuses should in your judgment tend to aggravate my offences, suppress 'em like a friend. One may always hope more from a lady's tender-heartedness than from her sense of justice.

Publisher has just sent to say that I must give him any corrections for second thousand of my booklet immediately.

Why did not Miss Etty send any critical remarks on that subject by the same post? I should be most immensely obliged for them.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[During this period of special work at the anthropological side of the Evolution theory, Huxley made two important contributions to the general question.

As secretary of the Geological Society, the duty of delivering the anniversary address in 1862 fell to him in the absence of the president, Leonard Horner, who had been driven by ill-health to winter in Italy.

The object at which he aimed appears from the postscript of a brief note of February 19, 1862, to Hooker:—]

I am writing the body of the address, and I am going to criticise Paleontological doctrines in general in a way that will flutter their nerves considerable.

Darwin is met everywhere with—Oh this is opposed to paleontology, or that is opposed to paleontology—and I mean to turn round and ask, "Now, messieurs les Paleontologues, what the devil DO you really know?"

I have not changed sex, although the postscript is longer than the letter.

[The delivery of the address itself on February 21 (On "Geological Contemporaneity" ("Collected Essays" 8 292).) is thus described by Sir Charles Lyell (To a note of whose, proposing a talk over the subject, Huxley replies on May 5], "I am very glad you find something to think about in my address. That is the best of all praise.") [("Life and Letters" 2 356):—

Huxley delivered a brilliant critical discourse on what paleontology has and has not done, and proved the value of negative evidence, how much the progressive development system has been pushed too far, how little can be said in favour of Owen's more generalised types when we go back to the vertebrata and in vertebrata of remote ages, the persistency of many forms high and low throughout time, how little we know of the beginning of life upon the earth, how often events called contemporaneous in Geology are applied to things which, instead of coinciding in time, may have happened ten millions of years apart, etc.; and a masterly sketch comparing the past and present in almost every class in zoology, and sometimes of botany cited from Hooker, which he said he had done because it was useful to look into the cellars and see how much gold there was there, and whether the quantity of bullion justified such an enormous circulation of paper. I never remember an address listened to with such applause, though there were many private protests against some of his bold opinions.

The dinner at Willis's was well attended; I should think eighty or more present...and late in the evening Huxley made them merry by a sort of mock-modest speech.]

Jermyn Street, May 6, 1862.

My dear Darwin,

I was very glad to get your note about my address. I profess to be a great stoic, you know, but there are some people from whom I am glad to get a pat on the back. Still I am not quite content with that, and I want to know what you think of the argument—whether you agree with what I say about contemporaneity or not, and whether you are prepared to admit—as I think your views compel you to do—that the whole Geological Record is only the skimmings of the pot of life.

Furthermore, I want you to chuckle with me over the notion I find a great many people entertain—that the address is dead against your views. The fact being, as they will by and by wake up [to] see that yours is the only hypothesis which is not negatived by the facts,—one of its great merits being that it allows not only of indefinite standing still, but of indefinite retrogression.

I am going to try to work the whole argument into an intelligible form for the general public as a chapter in my forthcoming "Evidence" (one half of which I am happy to say is now written) ["Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature."], so I shall be very glad of any criticisms or hints.

Since I saw you—indeed, from the following Tuesday onwards—I have amused myself by spending ten days or so in bed. I had an unaccountable prostration of strength which they called influenza, but which, I believe, was nothing but some obstruction in the liver.

Of course I can't persuade people of this, and they will have it that it is overwork. I have come to the conviction, however, that steady work hurts nobody, the real destroyer of hardworking men being not their work, but dinners, late hours, and the universal humbug and excitement of society.

I mean to get out of all that and keep out of it.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The other contribution to the general question was his Working Men's Lectures for 1862. As he writes to Darwin on October 10—] "I can't find anything to talk to the working men about this year but your book. I mean to give them a commentary a la Coke upon Lyttleton."

[The lectures to working men here referred to, six in number, were duly delivered once a week from November 10 onwards, and published in the form of as many little pamphlets. Appearing under the general title, "On our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature," they wound up with a critical examination of the portion of Mr. Darwin's work "On the Origin of Species," in relation to the complete theory of the causes of organic nature.

Jermyn Street, December 2, 1862.

My dear Darwin,

I send you by this post three of my working men's lectures now in course of delivery. As you will see by the prefatory notice, I was asked to allow them to be taken down in shorthand for the use of the audience, but I have no interest in them, and do not desire or intend that they should be widely circulated.

Sometime hence, may be, I may revise and illustrate them, and make them into a book as a sort of popular exposition of your views, or at any rate of my version of your views.

There really is nothing new in them nor anything worth your attention, but if in glancing over them at any time you should see anything to object to, I should like to know.

I am very hard worked just now—six lectures a week, and no end of other things—but as vigorous as a three-year old. Somebody told me you had been ill, but I hope it was fiction, and that you and Mrs. Darwin and all your belongings are flourishing.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[In reply, Darwin writes on December 10:—

I agree entirely with all your reservations about accepting the doctrine, and you might have gone further with perfect safety and truth...

Touching the "Natural History Review," "Do inaugurate a great improvement, and have pages cut, like the Yankees do; I will heap blessings on your head."

And again, December 18:—

I have read Numbers 4 and 5. They are simply perfect. They ought to be largely advertised; but it is very good in me to say so, for I threw down Number 4 with this reflection, "What is the good of my writing a thundering big book, when everything is in this green little book so despicable for its size?" In the name of all that is good and bad I may as well shut up shop altogether.

These lectures met with an annoying amount of success. They were not cast into permanent form, for he grudged the time necessary to prepare them for the press. However, he gave a Mr. Hardwicke permission to take them down in shorthand as delivered for the use of the audience. But no sooner were they printed, than they had a large sale. Writing to Sir J.D. Hooker early in the following month, he says:]

I fully meant to have sent you all the successive lectures as they came out, and I forward a set with all manner of apologies for my delinquency. I am such a 'umble-minded party that I never imagined the lectures as delivered would be worth bringing out at all, and I knew I had no time to work them out. Now, I lament I did not publish them myself and turn an honest penny by them as I suspect Hardwicke is doing. He is advertising them everywhere, confound him.

I wish when you have read them you would tell me whether you think it would be worthwhile for me to re-edit, enlarge, and illustrate them by and by.

[And on January 28 Sir Charles Lyell writes to him:—

I do grudge Hardwicke very much having not only the publisher's but the author's profits. It so often happens that popular lectures designed for a class and inspired by an attentive audience's sympathy are better than any writing in the closet for the purpose of educating the many as readers, and of remunerating the publisher and author. I would lose no time in considering well what steps to take to rescue the copyright of the third thousand.

As for the value of the work thus done in support of Darwin's theory, it is worth while quoting the words of Lord Kelvin, when, as President of the Royal Society in 1894, it fell to him to award Huxley the Darwin Medal:—

To the world at large, perhaps, Mr. Huxley's share in moulding the thesis of NATURAL SELECTION is less well-known than is his bold unwearied exposition and defence of it after it had been made public. And, indeed, a speculative trifler, revelling in the problems of the "might have been," would find a congenial theme in the inquiry how soon what we now call "Darwinism" would have met with the acceptance with which it has met, and gained the power which it has gained, had it not been for the brilliant advocacy with which in its early days it was expounded to all classes of men.

That advocacy had one striking mark: while it made or strove to make clear how deep the new view went down, and how far it reached, it never shrank from trying to make equally clear the limit beyond which it could not go.]

CHAPTER 1.16.

1860-1861.

[The letters given in the following chapters illustrate the occupations and interests of the years 1860 to 1863, apart from the struggle over the species question.

One of the most important and most engrossing was the launching of a scientific quarterly to do more systematically and thoroughly what had been done since 1858 in the fortnightly scientific column of the "Saturday Review." Its genesis is explained in the following letter:—]

July 17, 1860.

My dear Hooker,

Some time ago Dr. Wright of Dublin talked to me about the "Natural History Review," which I believe to a great extent belongs to him, and wanted me to join in the editorship, provided certain alterations were made. I promised to consider the matter, and yesterday he and Greene dined with me, and I learned that Haughton and Galbraith were out of the review—that Harvey was likely to go—that a new series was to begin in January, with Williams and Norgate for publishers over here—that it was to become an English and not a Hibernian concern in fact—and finally, that if I chose to join as one of the editors, the effectual control would be pretty much in my own hands. Now, considering the state of the times, and the low condition of natural history journalisation (always excepting quarterly "Mic. Journal") in this country this seems to me to be a fine opening for a plastically minded young man, and I am decidedly inclined to close with the offer, though I shall get nothing but extra work by it.

To limit the amount of this extra work, however, I must get co-editors, and I have written to Lubbock and to Rolleston (also plastically minded young men) to see if they will join. Now up to this point you have been in a horrid state of disgust, because you thought I was going to ask you next. But I am not, for rejoiced as I should be to have you, I know you have heaps of better work to do, and hate journalism.

But can you tell me of any plastic young botanist who would come in all there glory and no pay, though I think pay may be got if the concern is properly worked. How about Oliver?

And though you can't and won't be an editor yourself, won't you help us and pat us on the back?

The tone of the "Review" will be mildly episcopophagous, and you and Darwin and Lyell will have a fine opportunity if you wish it of slaying your adversaries.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Several of his elder friends tried to dissuade him from an undertaking which would inevitably distract him from his proper work. Sir Charles Lyell prophesied that all the work would drift to the most energetic member of the staff, and Huxley writes to Hooker, August 2, 1860:—]

Darwin wrote me a very kind expostulation about it, telling me I ought not to waste myself on other than original work. In reply, however, I assured him that I MUST waste myself willy-nilly, and that the "Review" was only a save-all.

The more I think of it the more it seems to me it ought to answer if properly conducted, and it ought to be of great use.

[The first number appeared in January 1861. Writing on the 6th, Huxley says:—]

It is pleasant to get such expressions of opinion as I have had from Lyell and Darwin about the Review. They make me quite hopeful about its prosperity, as I am sure we shall be able to do better than our first number.

[It was not long, however, before Lyell's prophecy began to come true. In June Huxley writes:—]

It is no use letting other people look after the journal. I find unless I revise every page of it, it goes wrong.

[But in July 1863 he definitely ceased to contribute:—]

I did not foresee all this crush of work [he writes], when the "Review" was first started, or I should not have pledged myself to any share in supplying it. [Moreover, with the appointment of paid editors that year, it seemed to him] that the working editors with the credit and pay must take the responsibility of all the commissariat of the "Review" upon their shoulders.

Two years later, in 1865, the "Review" came to an end. As Mr. Murray, the publisher, remarked, quarterlies did not pay; and this quarterly became still more financially unsound after the over-worked volunteers, who both edited and contributed, gave place to paid editors.

But Huxley was not satisfied with one defeat. The quarterly scheme had failed; he now tried if he could not serve science better by returning to a more frequent and more popular form of periodical. From 1863 to 1866 he was concerned with the "Reader," a weekly issue (The committee also included Professor Cairns, F. Galton, W.F. Pollock, and J. Tyndall.); but this also was too heavy a burden to be borne in addition to his other work. However, the labour expended in these ventures was not wholly thrown away. The experience thus gained at last enabled the present Sir Norman Lockyer, who acted as science editor for the "Reader," to realise what had so long been aimed at by the establishment of "Nature" in 1869.

Apart from his contributions to the species question and the foundation of a scientific review, Huxley published in 1860 only two special monographs ("On Jacare and Caiman," and "On the Mouth and Pharynx of the Scorpion," already mentioned as read in the previous year), but he read "Further Observations on Pyrosoma" at the Linnean Society, and was busy with paleontological work, the results of which appeared in three papers the following year, the most important of which was the Memoir called a "Preliminary Essay on the Arrangement of the Devonian Fishes," in the report of the Geological Survey, "which," says Sir M. Foster, "though entitled a Preliminary Essay, threw an entirely new light on the affinities of these creatures, and, with the continuation published later, in 1866, still remains a standard work."

The question of the admission of ladies to the learned societies was already being mooted, and a letter to Sir Charles Lyell gives his ideas thus early not only on this point, but on the general question of women's education.]

March 17, 1860.

My dear Sir Charles,

To use the only forcible expression, I "twig" your meaning perfectly, but I venture to think the parable does not apply. For the Geological Society is not, to my mind, a place of education for students, but a place of discussion for adepts; and the more it is applied to the former purpose the less competent it must become to fulfil the latter—its primary and most important object.

I am far from wishing to place any obstacle in the way of the intellectual advancement and development of women. On the contrary, I don't see how we are to make any permanent advancement while one-half of the race is sunk, as nine-tenths of women are, in mere ignorant parsonese superstitions; and to show you that my ideas are practical I have fully made up my mind, if I can carry out my own plans, to give my daughters the same training in physical science as their brother will get, so long as he is a boy. They, at any rate, shall not be got up as man-traps for the matrimonial market. If other people would do the like the next generation would see women fit to be the companions of men in all their pursuits—though I don't think that men have anything to fear from their competition. But you know as well as I do that other people won't do the like, and five-sixths of women will stop in the doll stage of evolution to be the stronghold of parsondom, the drag on civilisation, the degradation of every important pursuit with which they mix themselves—"intrigues" in politics, and "friponnes" in science.

If my claws and beak are good for anything they shall be kept from hindering the progress of any science I have to do with.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Three letters to Mr. Spencer show that he had been reading and criticising the proofs of the "First Principles." With regard to the second letter, which gives reasons for rejecting Mr. Spencer's remarks about the power of inflation in birds during flight, it is curious to note Mr. Spencer's reply:—

How oddly the antagonism comes out even when you are not conscious of it! My authority was Owen! I heard him assign this cause for the falling of wounded birds in one of his lectures at the College of Surgeons.]

14 Waverley Place, September 3, 1860.

My dear Spencer,

I return your proofs by this post. To my mind nothing can be better than their contents, whether in matter or in manner, and as my wife arrived, independently, at the same opinion, I think my judgment is not one-sided.

There is something calm and dignified about the tone of the whole—which eminently befits a philosophical work which means to live—and nothing can be more clear and forcible than the argument.

I rejoice that you have made a beginning, and such a beginning—for the more I think about it the more important it seems to me that somebody should think out into a connected system the loose notions that are floating about more or less distinctly in all the best minds.

It seems as if all the thoughts in what you have written were my own, and yet I am conscious of the enormous difference your presentation of them makes in my intellectual state. One is thought in the state of hemp yarn, and the other in the state of rope. Work away, then, excellent rope-maker, and make us more ropes to hold on against the devil and the parsons.

For myself I am absorbed in dogs—gone to the dogs in fact—having been occupied in dissecting them for the last fortnight. You do not say how your health is.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

September 19, 1860.

My dear Spencer,

You will forgive the delay which has occurred in forwarding your proof when I tell you that we have lost our poor little son, our pet and hope. You who knew him well, and know how his mother's heart and mine were wrapped up in him, will understand how great is our affliction. He was attacked with a bad form of scarlet fever on Thursday night, and on Saturday night effusion on the brain set in suddenly and carried him off in a couple of hours. Jessie was taken ill on Friday, but has had the disease quite lightly, and is doing well. The baby has escaped. So end many hopes and plans—sadly enough, and yet not altogether bitterly. For as the little fellow was our greatest joy so is the recollection of him an enduring consolation. It is a heavy payment, but I would buy the four years of him again at the same price. My wife bears up bravely.

I have read your proofs at intervals, and you must not suppose they have troubled me. On the contrary they were at times the only things I could attend to. I agree in the spirit of the whole perfectly. On some matters of detail I had doubts which I am not at present clear-headed enough to think out.

The only thing I object to in toto is the illustration which I have marked at page 24. It is physically impossible that a bird's air-cells should be DISTENDED with air during flight, unless the structure of the parts is in reality different from anything which anatomists at present know. Blowing into the trachea is not to the point. A bird cannot blow into its own trachea, and it has no mechanism for performing a corresponding action.

A bird's chest is essentially a pair of bellows in which the sternum during rest and the back during flight act as movable wall. The air cells may all be represented as soft-walled bags opening freely into the bellows—there being, so far as anatomists yet know, no valves or corresponding contrivances anywhere except at the glottis, which corresponds with the nozzle and air valve both, of our bellows. But the glottis is always opened when the chest is dilated at each inspiration. How then can the air in any air-cell be kept at a higher tension than the surrounding atmosphere?

Hunter experimented on the uses of the air sacs, I know, but I have not his work at hand. It may be that opening one of the air-cells interferes with flight, but I hold it very difficult to conceive that the interference can take place in the way you suppose. How on earth is a lark to sing for ten minutes together if the air-cells are to be kept distended all the while he is up in the air?

At any rate twenty other illustrations will answer your purpose as well, so I would not select one which may be assailed by a carping fellow like

Yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

October 10, 1860.

My dear Spencer [This was written at the time when Mr. Spencer had issued a notice of discontinuance, and when measures were being taken to prevent it.],

"A wilful man must have his way," and if you won't let me contribute towards the material guarantees for the success of your book, I must be content to add twelve shillings' worth of moral influence to that I already meant to exert per annum in its favour.

I shall be most glad henceforth, as ever, to help your great undertaking in any way I can. The more I contemplate its issues the more important does it seem to me to be, and I assure you that I look upon its success as the business of all of us. So that if it were not a pleasure I should feel it a duty to "push behind" as hard as I can.

Have you seen this quarter's "Westminster?" The opening article on "Neo-Christianity" is one of the most remarkable essays in its way I have ever read. I suppose it must be Newman's. The "Review" is terribly unequal, some of the other articles being absolutely ungrammatically written. What a pity it is it cannot be thoroughly organised.

My wife is a little better, but she is terribly shattered. By the time you come back we shall, I hope, have reverted from our present hospital condition to our normal arrangements, but in any case we shall be glad to see you.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The following is, I think, the first reference to his fastidiousness in the literary expression and artistic completeness of his work. As he said in an after-dinner speech at a meeting in aid of the Literary Fund, "Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing." Anything that was to be published he subjected to repeated revision. And thus, apologising to Hooker for his absence, he writes (August 2, 1860):—]

I was sorry to have to send an excuse by Tyndall the other day, but I found I must finish the Pyrosoma paper, and all last Tuesday was devoted to it, and I fear the next after will have the like fate.

It constantly becomes more and more difficult to me to FINISH things satisfactorily.

[To Hooker also he writes a few days later:—]

I hope your ear is better; take care of yourself, there's a good fellow. I can't do without you these twenty years. We have a devil of a lot to do in the way of smiting the Amalekites.

[Between two men who seldom spoke of their feelings, but let constant intercourse attest them, these words show more than the practical side of their friendship, their community of aims and interests. Quick, strong-willed, and determined as they both were, the fact that they could work together for over forty years without the shadow of a misunderstanding, presupposes an unusually strong friendship firmly based upon mutual trust and respect as well as liking, the beginning of which Sir J. Hooker thus describes:—

My first meeting your father was in 1851, shortly after his return from the "Rattlesnake" voyage with Captain Stanley. Hearing that I had paid some attention to marine zoology during the voyage of the Antarctic Expedition, he was desirous of showing me the results of his studies of the Oceanic Hydrozoa, and he sought me out in consequence. This and the fact that we had both embarked in the Naval service in the same capacity as medical officers and with the same object of scientific research, naturally led to an intimacy which was undisturbed by a shadow of a misunderstanding for nearly forty-five following years. Curiously enough, our intercourse might have dated from an earlier period by nearly six years had I accepted an appointment to the "Rattlesnake" offered me by Captain Stanley, which, but for my having arranged for a journey to India, might have been accepted.

Returning to the purpose of our interview, the researches Mr. Huxley laid before me were chiefly those on the Salpae, a much misunderstood group of marine Hydrozoa. Of these I had amused myself with making drawings during the long and often weary months passed at sea on board the "Erebus," but having other subjects to attend to, I had made no further study of them than as consumers of the vegetable life (Diatoms) of the Antarctic Ocean. Hence his observations on their life-history, habits, and affinities were on almost all points a revelation to me, and I could not fail to recognise in their author all the qualities possessed by a naturalist of commanding ability, industry, and power of exposition. Our interviews, thus commenced, soon ripened into a friendship, which led to an arrangement for a monthly meeting, and in the informal establishment of a club of nine, the other members of which were, Mr. Busk, Dr. Frankland, Mr. Hirst, Sir J. Lubbock, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Dr. Tyndall, and Mr. Spottiswoode.

Just a month after this letter to his friend, the same year which had first brought Huxley public recognition outside his special sphere brought him also the greatest sorrow perhaps of his whole life. I have already spoken of the sudden death of the little son in whom so much of his own and his wife's happiness was centred. The suddenness of the blow made it all the more crushing, and the mental strain, intensified by the sight of his wife's inconsolable grief, brought him perilously near a complete breakdown. But the birth of another son, on December 11, gave the mother some comfort; and as the result of a friendly conspiracy between her and Dr. Tyndall, Huxley himself was carried off for a week's climbing in Wales between Christmas and the New Year.

His reply to a long letter of sympathy in which Charles Kingsley set forth the grounds of his own philosophy as to the ends of life and the hope of immortality, affords insight into the very depths of his nature. It is a rare outburst at a moment of intense feeling, in which, more completely than in almost any other writing of his, intellectual clearness and moral fire are to be seen uniting in a veritable passion for truth:—]

14, Waverley Place, September 23, 1860.

My dear Kingsley,

I cannot sufficiently thank you, both on my wife's account and my own, for your long and frank letter, and for all the hearty sympathy which it exhibits—and Mrs. Kingsley will, I hope, believe that we are no less sensible of her kind thought of us. To myself your letter was especially valuable, as it touched upon what I thought even more than upon what I said in my letter to you. My convictions, positive and negative, on all the matters of which you speak, are of long and slow growth and are firmly rooted. But the great blow which fell upon me seemed to stir them to their foundation, and had I lived a couple of centuries earlier I could have fancied a devil scoffing at me and them—and asking me what profit it was to have stripped myself of the hopes and consolations of the mass of mankind? To which my only reply was and is—Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.

And now I feel that it is due to you to speak as frankly as you have done to me. An old and worthy friend of mine tried some three or four years ago to bring us together—because, as he said, you were the only man who would do me any good. Your letter leads me to think he was right, though not perhaps in the sense he attached to his own words.

To begin with the great doctrine you discuss. I neither deny nor affirm the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing in it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it.

Pray understand that I have no a priori objections to the doctrine. No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble himself about a priori difficulties. Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing anything else, and I will believe that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force, or the indestructibility of matter. Whoso clearly appreciates all that is implied in the falling of a stone can have no difficulty about any doctrine simply on account of its marvellousness. But the longer I live, the more obvious it is to me that the most sacred act of a man's life is to say and to feel, "I believe such and such to be true." All the greatest rewards and all the heaviest penalties of existence cling about that act. The universe is one and the same throughout; and if the condition of my success in unravelling some little difficulty of anatomy or physiology is that I shall rigorously refuse to put faith in that which does not rest on sufficient evidence, I cannot believe that the great mysteries of existence will be laid open to me on other terms. It is no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions. I dare not if I would.

Measured by this standard, what becomes of the doctrine of immortality?

You rest in your strong conviction of your personal existence, and in the instinct of the persistence of that existence which is so strong in you as in most men.

To me this is as nothing. That my personality is the surest thing I know—may be true. But the attempt to conceive what it is leads me into mere verbal subtleties. I have champed up all that chaff about the ego and the non-ego, about noumena and phenomena, and all the rest of it, too often not to know that in attempting even to think of these questions, the human intellect flounders at once out of its depth.

It must be twenty years since, a boy, I read Hamilton's essay on the unconditioned, and from that time to this, ontological speculation has been a folly to me. When Mansel took up Hamilton's argument on the side of orthodoxy (!) I said he reminded me of nothing so much as the man who is sawing off the sign on which he is sitting, in Hogarth's picture. But this by the way.

I cannot conceive of my personality as a thing apart from the phenomena of my life. When I try to form such a conception I discover that, as Coleridge would have said, I only hypostatise a word, and it alters nothing if, with Fichte, I suppose the universe to be nothing but a manifestation of my personality. I am neither more nor less eternal than I was before.

Nor does the infinite difference between myself and the animals alter the case. I do not know whether the animals persist after they disappear or not. I do not even know whether the infinite difference between us and them may not be compensated by THEIR persistence and MY cessation after apparent death, just as the humble bulb of an annual lives, while the glorious flowers it has put forth die away.

Surely it must be plain that an ingenious man could speculate without end on both sides, and find analogies for all his dreams. Nor does it help me to tell me that the aspirations of mankind—that my own highest aspirations even—lead me towards the doctrine of immortality. I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.

Science has taught to me the opposite lesson. She warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile.

My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations.

Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

There are, however, other arguments commonly brought forward in favour of the immortality of man, which are to my mind not only delusive but mischievous. The one is the notion that the moral government of the world is imperfect without a system of future rewards and punishments. The other is: that such a system is indispensable to practical morality. I believe that both these dogmas are very mischievous lies.

With respect to the first, I am no optimist, but I have the firmest belief that the Divine Government (if we may use such a phrase to express the sum of the "customs of matter") is wholly just. The more I know intimately of the lives of other men (to say nothing of my own), the more obvious it is to me that the wicked does NOT flourish nor is the righteous punished. But for this to be clear we must bear in mind what almost all forget, that the rewards of life are contingent upon obedience to the WHOLE law—physical as well as moral—and that moral obedience will not atone for physical sin, or vice versa.

The ledger of the Almighty is strictly kept, and every one of us has the balance of his operations paid over to him at the end of every minute of his existence.

Life cannot exist without a certain conformity to the surrounding universe—that conformity involves a certain amount of happiness in excess of pain. In short, as we live we are paid for living.

And it is to be recollected in view of the apparent discrepancy between men's acts and their rewards that Nature is juster than we. She takes into account what a man brings with him into the world, which human justice cannot do. If I, born a bloodthirsty and savage brute, inheriting these qualities from others, kill you, my fellow-men will very justly hang me, but I shall not be visited with the horrible remorse which would be my real punishment if, my nature being higher, I had done the same thing.

The absolute justice of the system of things is as clear to me as any scientific fact. The gravitation of sin to sorrow is as certain as that of the earth to the sun, and more so—for experimental proof of the fact is within reach of us all—nay, is before us all in our own lives, if we had but the eyes to see it.

Not only, then, do I disbelieve in the need for compensation, but I believe that the seeking for rewards and punishments out of this life leads men to a ruinous ignorance of the fact that their inevitable rewards and punishments are here.

If the expectation of hell hereafter can keep me from evil-doing, surely a fortiori the certainty of hell now will do so? If a man could be firmly impressed with the belief that stealing damaged him as much as swallowing arsenic would do (and it does), would not the dissuasive force of that belief be greater than that of any based on mere future expectations?

And this leads me to my other point.

As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, "If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alternative involved a blasphemy against all that was best and noblest in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What! because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge.

Kicked into the world a boy without guide or training, or with worse than none, I confess to my shame that few men have drunk deeper of all kinds of sin than I. Happily, my course was arrested in time—before I had earned absolute destruction—and for long years I have been slowly and painfully climbing, with many a fall, towards better things. And when I look back, what do I find to have been the agents of my redemption? The hope of immortality or of future reward? I can honestly say that for these fourteen years such a consideration has not entered my head. No, I can tell you exactly what has been at work. "Sartor Resartus" led me to know that a deep sense of religion was compatible with the entire absence of theology. Secondly, science and her methods gave me a resting-place independent of authority and tradition. Thirdly, love opened up to me a view of the sanctity of human nature, and impressed me with a deep sense of responsibility.

If at this moment I am not a worn-out, debauched, useless carcass of a man, if it has been or will be my fate to advance the cause of science, if I feel that I have a shadow of a claim on the love of those about me, if in the supreme moment when I looked down into my boy's grave my sorrow was full of submission and without bitterness, it is because these agencies have worked upon me, and not because I have ever cared whether my poor personality shall remain distinct for ever from the All from whence it came and whither it goes.

And thus, my dear Kingsley, you will understand what my position is. I may be quite wrong, and in that case I know I shall have to pay the penalty for being wrong. But I can only say with Luther, "Gott helfe mir, Ich kann nichts anders."

I know right well that 99 out of 100 of my fellows would call me atheist, infidel, and all the other usual hard names. As our laws stand, if the lowest thief steals my coat, my evidence (my opinions being known) would not be received against him. [The law with respect to oaths was reformed in 1869.]

But I cannot help it. One thing people shall not call me with justice and that is—a liar. As you say of yourself, I too feel that I lack courage; but if ever the occasion arises when I am bound to speak, I will not shame my boy.

I have spoken more openly and distinctly to you than I ever have to any human being except my wife.

If you can show me that I err in premises or conclusion, I am ready to give up these as I would any other theories. But at any rate you will do me the justice to believe that I have not reached my conclusions without the care befitting the momentous nature of the problems involved.

And I write this the more readily to you, because it is clear to me that if that great and powerful instrument for good or evil, the Church of England, is to be saved from being shivered into fragments by the advancing tide of science—an event I should be very sorry to witness, but which will infallibly occur if men like Samuel of Oxford are to have the guidance of her destinies—it must be by the efforts of men who, like yourself, see your way to the combination of the practice of the Church with the spirit of science. Understand that all the younger men of science whom I know intimately are ESSENTIALLY of my way of thinking. (I know not a scoffer or an irreligious or an immoral man among them, but they all regard orthodoxy as you do Brahmanism.) Understand that this new school of the prophets is the only one that can work miracles, the only one that can constantly appeal to nature for evidence that it is right, and you will comprehend that it is of no use to try to barricade us with shovel hats and aprons, or to talk about our doctrines being "shocking."

I don't profess to understand the logic of yourself, Maurice, and the rest of your school, but I have always said I would swear by your truthfulness and sincerity, and that good must come of your efforts. The more plain this was to me, however, the more obvious the necessity to let you see where the men of science are driving, and it has often been in my mind to write to you before.

If I have spoken too plainly anywhere, or too abruptly, pardon me, and do the like to me.

My wife thanks you very much for your volume of sermons.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[A letter written in reply to the suggestion that he should carry out Hooker's own good resolutions of keeping out of the turmoil of life, and devoting himself to pure science, seems to indicate in its tone something of the stress of the time when it was written:—]

Jermyn Street, December 19, 1860.

My dear Hooker,

What with one thing and another, I have almost forgotten to answer your note—and first, as to the business matter...Next as to my own private affairs, the youngster is "a swelling wisibly," and my wife is getting on better than I hoped, though not quite so well as I could have wished. The boy's advent is a great blessing to her in all ways. For myself I hardly know yet whether it is pleasure or pain. The ground has gone from under my feet once, and I hardly know how to rest on anything again. Irrational, you will say, but nevertheless natural. And finally as to your resolutions, my holy pilgrim, they will be kept about as long as the resolutions of other anchorites who are thrown into the busy world, or I won't say that, for assuredly you will take the world "as coolly as you can," and so shall I. But that coolness amounts to the red heat of properly constructed mortals.

It is no use having any false modesty about the matter. You and I, if we last ten years longer, and you by a long while first, will be the representatives of our respective lines in this country. In that capacity we shall have certain duties to perform to ourselves, to the outside world, and to science. We shall have to swallow praise which is no great pleasure, and to stand multitudinous basting and irritations, which will involve a good deal of unquestionable pain. Don't flatter yourself that there is any moral chloroform by which either you or I can render ourselves insensible or acquire the habit of doing things coolly. It is assuredly of no great use to tear one's self to pieces before one is fifty. But the alternative, for men constructed on the high pressure tubular boiler principle, like ourselves, is to lie still and let the devil have his own way. And I will be torn to pieces before I am forty sooner than see that.

I have been privately trading on my misfortunes in order to get a little peace and quietness for a few months. If I can help it I don't mean to do any dining out this winter, and I have cut down Societies to the minimum of the Geological, from which I cannot get away.

But it won't do to keep this up too long. By and by one must drift into the stream again, and then there is nothing for it but to pull like mad unless we want to be run down by every collier.

I am going to do one sensible thing, however, viz. to rush down to Llanberis with Busk between Christmas Day and New Year's Day and get my lungs full of hill-air for the coming session.

I was at Down on Saturday and saw Darwin. He seems fairly well, and his daughter was up and looks better than I expected to see her.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Meanwhile, he took the opportunity to make the child's birth a new link with his old friend, and wrote as follows :—]

14 Waverley Place, January 3, 1861.

My dear Hooker,

If I had nothing else to write about I must wish you a Happy New Year and many on 'em; but, in fact, my wife and I have a great favour to ask of you, which is neither more nor less than to stand godfather for our little son. You know my opinions on these matters, and I would not ask you to do anything I would not do myself, so if you consent, the clerk shall tell all the lies for you, and you shall be asked to do nothing else than to help devour the christening feed, and be as good a friend to the boy as you have been to his father.

My wife will have the youngster christened, although I am always in a bad temper from the time it is talked about until the ceremony is over. The only way of turning the farce into a reality is by making it an extra bond with one's friends. On the other hand, if you have any objection to say, "all this I steadfastly believe," even by deputy, I know you will have no hesitation in saying so, and in giving me as frank a refusal as my request. [As against his dislike of consenting to a rite, to him meaningless, he was moved by a feeling which in part corresponded to Descartes' morale par provision,—in part was an acknowledgment of the possibilities of individual development, making it only fair to a child to give it a connection with the official spiritual organisation of its country, which it could either ignore or continue on reaching intellectual maturity.]

Let me know if you have any fault to find with the new "Review." I think you will see it would have been a dreadful business to translate all the German titles in the bibliography. I returned from a ramble about Snowdon with Busk and Tyndall on the 31st, all the better. My wife is decidedly improved, though she mends but slowly.

Our best wishes to you and all yours.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Any fragments from the rich man's table for the next Number of "N.H.R.?"

14 Waverley Place, January 6, 1861.

My dear Hooker,

My wife and I were very pleased to get your hearty and kind acceptance of Godfathership. We shall not call upon you for some time, I fancy, as the mistress doesn't get strong very fast. However, I am only glad she is well as she is. She came down yesterday for the first time.

It is very pleasant to get such expressions of opinion as I have had from you, Lyell, and Darwin about the "Review." They make me quite hopeful about its prosperity, as I am sure we shall be able to do better than our first number.

I am glad you liked what I said in the opening of my article. [(In the "Natural History Review" 1861 page 67—]"The proof of his claim to independent parentage will not change the brutishness of man's lower nature; nor, except in those valet souls who cannot see greatness in their fellow because his father was a cobbler, will the demonstration of a pithecoid pedigree one whit diminish man's divine right of kingship over nature; nor lower the great and princely dignity of perfect manhood, which is an order of nobility not inherited, but to be won by each of us, so far as he consciously seeks good and avoids evil, and puts the faculties with which he is endowed to their fittest use.") I wish not to be in any way confounded with the cynics who delight in degrading man, or with the common run of materialists, who think mind is any the lower for being a function of matter. I dislike them even more than I do the pietists.

Some of these days I shall look up the ape question again, and go over the rest of the organisation in the same way. But in order to get a thorough grip of the question, I must examine into a good many points for myself. The results, when they do come out, will, I foresee, astonish the natives.

I am cold-proof, and all the better for the Welsh trip. To say truth, I was just on the edge of breaking down when I went. Did I ever send you a letter of mine on the teaching of Natural History? It was published while you were away, and I forget whether I sent it or not. However, a copy accompanies this note...

Of course there will be room for your review and welcome. I have put it down and reckon on it.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Huxley returned from the trip to Wales in time to be with his wife for the New Year. The plot she had made with Dr. Tyndall had been entirely successful. The threatened breakdown was averted. Wales in winter was as good as Switzerland. Of the ascent of Snowdon he writes on December 28:] "Both Tyndall and I voted it under present circumstances as good as most things Alpine."