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"the plan," "for uniting the Societies which occupy themselves with man ."

My dear Darwin,

It is hard to resist an invitation of yours--but I dine out on Saturday; and next week three evenings are abolished by Societies of one kind or another. And there is that horrid Geological address looming in the future!

I am afraid I must deny myself at present.

I am glad you liked the sermon. Did you see the "Devonshire man's" attack in the "Pall Mall?"

I have been wasting my time in polishing that worthy off. I would not have troubled myself about him, if it were not for the political bearing of the Celt question just now.

My wife sends her love to all you.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

"A Devonshire Man" is good enough to say of me that "cutting up monkeys is his forte, and cutting up men is his foible." With your permission, I propose to cut up "A Devonshire Man"; but I leave it to the public to judge whether, when so employed, my occupation is to be referred to the former or to the latter category.

My dear Dohrn,

In one sense I deserve all the hard things you may have said and thought about me, for it is really scandalous and indefensible that I have not written to you. But in another sense, I do not, for I have very often thought about you and your doings, and as I have told you once before, your memory always remains green in the "happy family."

But what between the incessant pressure of work and an inborn aversion to letter-writing, I become a worse and worse correspondent the longer I live, and unless I can find one or two friends who will content to bear with my infirmities and believe that however long before we meet, I shall be ready to take them up again exactly where I left off, I shall be a friendless old man.

But to return to your affairs instead of my own. I received your volume on the "Arthropods" the other day, but I shall not be able to look at it for the next three weeks, as I am in the midst of my lectures, and have an annual address to deliver to the Geological Society on the 18th February, when, I am happy to say, my tenure of office as President expires.

After that I shall be only too glad to plunge into your doings and, as always, I shall follow your work with the heartiest interest. But I wish you would not take it into your head that Darwin or I, or any one else thinks otherwise than highly of you, or that you need "re-establishing" in any one's eyes. But I hope you will not have finished your work before the autumn, as they have made me President of the British Association this year, and I shall be very busy with my address in the summer. The meeting is to take place in Liverpool on the 14th September, and I live in hope that you will be able to come over. Let me know if you can, that I may secure you good quarters.

I shall ask the wife to fill up the next half-sheet. But for Heaven's sake don't be angry with me in English again. It's far worse than a scolding in Deutsch, and I have as little forgotten my German as I have my German friends.

If the expectation raised by the splints of horses that, in some ancestor of the horses, these splints would be found to be complete digits, has been verified, we are furnished with very strong reasons for looking for a no less complete verification of the expectation that the three-toed Plagiolophus-like "avus" of the horse must have been a five-toed "atavus" at some early period.

"by what methods the dwellers therein try to distinguish truth from falsehood, in regard to some of the deepest and most difficult problems that beset humanity, "in order to be clear about their actions, and to walk sure-footedly in this life," as Descartes says. For Descartes had laid the foundation of his own guiding principle of "active scepticism, which strives to conquer itself."

"introduction of Calvinism into science."

I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer. The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me.

My dear Arnold,

Many thanks for your book which I have been diving into at odd times as leisure served, and picking up many good things.

One of the best is what you say near the end about science gradually conquering the materialism of popular religion.

It will startle the Puritans who always coolly put the matter the other way; but it is profoundly true.

These people are for the most part mere idolaters with a Bible-fetish, who urgently stand in need of conversion by Extra-christian Missionaries.

It takes all one's practical experience of the importance of Puritan ways of thinking to overcome one's feeling of the unreality of their beliefs. I had pretty well forgotten how real to them "the man in the next street" is, till your citation of their horribly absurd dogmas reminded me of it. If you can persuade them that Paul is fairly interpretable in your sense, it may be the beginning of better things, but I have my doubts if Paul would own you, if he could return to expound his own epistles.

I am glad you like my Descartes article. My business with my scientific friends is something like yours with the Puritans, nature being OUR Paul.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Geological Survey of England and Wales, April 6, 1870.

My dear Tyndall,

DAMN the L e c t u r e s.

T.H.H.

That's a practical application of electricity for you.

I hear a curious rumour , that Froude and I have been proposed for D.C.L.'s at Commemoration, and that the proposition has been bitterly and strongly opposed by Pusey. They say there has been a regular row in Oxford about it. I suppose this is at the bottom of Jowett's not writing to me. But I hope that he won't fancy that I should be disgusted at the opposition and object to come . On the contrary, the more complete Pusey's success, the more desirable it is that I should show my face there. Altogether it is an awkward position, as I am supposed to know nothing of what is going on.

Jermyn Street, June 22, 1870.

My dear Darwin,

I sent the books to Queen Anne St. this morning. Pray keep them as long as you like, as I am not using them.

I am greatly disgusted that you are coming up to London this week, as we shall be out of town next Sunday. It is the rarest thing in the world for us to be away, and you have pitched upon the one day. Cannot we arrange some other day?

I wish you could have gone to Oxford, not for your sake, but for theirs. There seems to have been a tremendous shindy in the Hebdomadal board about certain persons who were proposed; and I am told that Pusey came to London to ascertain from a trustworthy friend who were the blackest heretics out of the list proposed, and that he was glad to assent to your being doctored, when he got back, in order to keep out seven devils worse than that first!

Ever, oh Coryphaeus diabolicus, your faithful follower,

T.H. Huxley.

"has lain chiefly in a land flowing with the abominable, and peopled with mere grubs and mouldiness," led him to carry on a series of investigations lasting over two years, which took shape in a paper upon "Penicillium, Torula, and Bacterium", first read in Section D at the British Association, 1870 ; and in his article on "Yeast" in the "Contemporary Review" for December 1871. He laboriously repeated Pasteur's experiments, and for years a quantity of flasks and cultures used in this work remained at South Kensington, until they were destroyed in the eighties. Of this work Sir J. Hooker writes to him:--

You have made an immense leap in the association of forms, and I cannot but suppose you approach the final solution...

I have always fancied that it was rather brains and boldness, than eyes or microscopes that the mycologists wanted, and that there was more brains in Berkeley's crude discoveries than in the very best of the French and German microscopic verifications of them, who filch away the credit of them from under Berkeley's nose, and pooh-pooh his reasoning, but for which we should be, as we were.

Jermyn Street, April 30, 1870.

My dear Whirlwind,

I have received your two letters; and I was just revolving in my mind how best to meet your wishes in regard to the very important project mentioned in the first, when the second arrived and put me at rest.

I hope I need not say how heartily I enter into all your views, and how glad I shall be to see your plan for "Stations" carried into effect. Nothing could have a greater influence upon the progress of zoology.

A plan was set afoot here some time ago to establish a great marine Aquarium at Brighton by means of a company. They asked me to be their President, but I declined, on the ground that I did not desire to become connected with any commercial undertaking. What has become of the scheme I do not know, but I doubt whether it would be of any use to you, even if any connection could be established.

As soon as you have any statement of your project ready, send it to me and I will take care that it is brought prominently before the British public so as to stir up their minds. And then we will have a regular field-day about it in Section D at Liverpool.

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