328 'DESCENT OF MAN '—EXPRESSION. [1871. 



Wright to publish at my expense his article, which seems 

 to me very clever, though ill- written. He has not knowledge 

 enough to grapple with Mivart in detail. I. think there can 

 be no shadow of doubt that he is the author of the article in 

 the * Quarterly Review ' . . . I am preparing a new edition 

 of the 'Origin,' and shall introduce a new chapter in answer 

 to miscellaneous objections, and shall give up the greater part 

 to answer Mivart's cases of difficulty of incipient structures 

 being of no use : and I find it can be done easily. He never 

 states his case fairly, and makes wonderful blunders. . . . 

 The pendulum is now swinging against our side, but I feel 

 positive it will soon swing the other way ; and no mortal man 

 will do half as much as you in giving it a start in the right 

 direction, as you did at the first commencement. God for- 

 give me for writing so long and egotistical a letter ; but it 

 is your fault, for you have so delighted me ; I never dreamed 

 that you would have time to say a word in defence of the 

 cause which you have so often defended. It will be a long 

 battle, after we are dead and gone. . . . Great is the power 

 of misrepresentation. . . . 



C. Darwin to T. H. Huxley. 



Down, September 30 [1871]. 

 My dear Huxley, — It was very good of you to send the 

 proof-sheets, for I was very anxious to read your article. I 

 have been delighted with it. How you do smash Mivart's 

 theology : it is almost equal to your article versus Comte, — * 

 that never can be transcended. . . . But I have been pre- 

 eminently glad to read your discussion on [the * Quarterly' 

 reviewer's] metaphysics, especially about reason and his de- 

 finition of it. I felt sure he was wrong, but having only 



* ' Fortnightly Review,' 1869. With regard to the relations of Posi- 

 tivism to Science my father wrote to Mr. Spencer in 1875 : ** How curi- 

 ous and amusing it is to see to what an extent the Positivists hate all men 

 of science ; I fancy they are dimly conscious what laughable and gigantic 

 blunders their prophet made in predicting the course of science." 



