236 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xiv 



I have amended wonderfully in the course of the last six 

 weeks, and my doctor tells me I am going to be completely 

 patched up seams caulked and made seaworthy, so the old hulk 

 may make another cruise. 



We shall see. At any rate I have been able and willing to 

 write lately, and that is more than I can say for myself for the 

 first three-quarters of the year. 



... I was so pleased to see you were in trouble about your 

 house. Good for you to have a taste of it for yourself. 



To this controversy he contributed four articles ; three 

 directly in defence of Agnosticism, the fourth on the value 

 of the underlying question of testimony to the miracu- 

 lous. 



The first article, " Agnosticism," appeared in the Febru- 

 ary number of the Nineteenth Century, No sooner was this 

 finished than he began a fresh piece of work, " which," he 

 writes, " is all about miracles, and will be rather amusing." 

 This, on the " Value of Testimony to the Miraculous," ap- 

 peared in the following number of the Nineteenth Century. 

 It did not form part of the controversy on hand, though 

 it bore indirectly upon the first principles of agnosticism. 

 The question at issue, he urges, is not the possibility of 

 miracles, but the evidence to their occurrence, and if from 

 preconceptions or ignorance the evidence be worthless the 

 historical reality of the facts attested vanishes. The cardinal 

 point, then, " is completely, as the author of Robert Elsmere 

 says, the value of testimony." 



The March number also contained replies from Dr. Wace 

 and Bishop Magee on the main question, and an article by 

 Mrs. Humphry Ward on a kindred subject to his own, 

 " The New Reformation." Of these he writes on Febru- 

 ary 27 : 



The Bishop and Wace are hammering away in the Nine- 

 teenth. Mrs. Ward's article very good, and practically an an- 

 swer to Wace. Won't I stir them up by and by ! 



And a few days later: 



Mrs. Ward's service consists in her very clear and clever 

 exposition of critical results and methods. 



