i86o.] THE 'EDINBURGH REVIEW.' 



view, defending Huxley, but not Hooker ; and the latter, I 

 think, [the ' Edinburgh ' reviewer] treats most ungenerously.* 

 But surely you will get sick unto death of me and my reviewers. 

 With respect to the theological view of the question. This 

 is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no inten- 

 tion to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as 

 plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of 

 design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to 

 me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself 

 that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly 

 created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their 

 feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat 

 should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity 

 in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the 

 other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this won- 

 derful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to con- 

 clude that everything is the result of brute force. I am in- 

 clined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, 

 with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out 

 of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all j 

 satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too j 

 profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well 

 speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and 

 believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my 

 views are not at all necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills 

 a man, whether a good one or bad one, owing to the exces- 

 sively complex action of natural laws. A child (who may 

 turn out an idiot) is born by the action of even more complex 

 laws, and I can see no reason why a man, or other animal, 

 may not have been aboriginally produced by other laws, and 

 that all these laws may have been expressly designed by an 



* In a letter to Mr. Huxley my father wrote : " Have you seen the last 

 Saturday Review ? I am very glad of the defence of you and of myself. 

 I wish the reviewer had noticed Hooker. The reviewer, whoever he is, is 

 a jolly good fellow, as this review and the last on me showed. He writes 

 capitally, and understands well his subject. I wish he had slapped [the 

 ' Edinburgh ' reviewer] a little bit harder." 



