292 THE SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [ch. xit. 



points, and make the discussion readable. I shall make 

 only a selection. The worst of it is, that I cannot possibly 

 hunt through all my references for isolated points, it would 

 take me three weeks of intolerably hard work. I wish I 

 had your power of arguing clearly. At present I feel sick 

 of everything, and if I could occupy my time and forget my 

 daily discomforts, or rather miseries, I would never publish 

 another word. But I shall cheer up, I dare say, soon, hav- 

 ing only just got over a bad attack. Farewell ; God knows 

 why I bother you about myself. I can say nothing more 

 about missing-links than what I have said. I should rely 

 much on pre-silurian times ; but then comes Sir W. Thom- 

 son like an odious spectre.* Farewell. 



" . . . There is a most cutting review of me in the 

 [July] Quarterly ; I have only read a few pages. The skill 

 and style make me think of Mivart. I shall soon be 

 viewed as the most despicable of men. This Quarterly Re- 

 view tempts me to republish Ch. Wright,f even if not 

 read by any one, just to show some one will say a word 

 against Mivart, and that his (i. e. Mivart's) remarks ought 

 not to be swallowed without some reflection. . . . God knows 

 whether my strength and spirit will last out to write a 

 chapter versus Mivart and others ; I do so hate controversy 

 and feel I shall do it so badly." 



The Quarterly review was the subject of an article by 

 Mr. Huxley in the November number of the Contemporary 

 Review. Here, also, are discussed Mr. Wallace's Contribu- 

 tion to the Theory of Natural Selection, and the second edi- 

 tion of Mr. Mivart's Genesis of Species. What follows is 

 taken from Mr. Huxley's article. The Quarterly reviewer, 

 though to some extent an evolutionist, believes that Man 

 " differs more from an elephant or a gorilla, than do these 

 from the dust of the earth on which they tread." The re- 

 viewer also declares that Darwin has " with needless opposi- 

 tion, set at naught the first principles of both philosophy 

 and religion." Mr. Huxley passes from the Quarterly re- 

 viewer's further statement, that there is no necessary op- 

 position between evolution and religion, to the more definite 

 position taken by Mr. Mivart, that the orthodox authorities 

 of the Roman Catholic Church agree in distinctly asserting 



* My father, as an Evolutionist, felt that he required more time than Sir 

 W. Thomson's estimate of the age of the world allows. 



t Chauncey Wright's review was published as a pamphlet in the autumn 

 of 1871. 



