iSSg ESSAYS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 2 6l 



Did you ever read Henry George's book " Progress and 

 Poverty " ? It is more damneder nonsense than poor Rousseau's 

 blether. And to think of the popularity of the book! But I 

 ought to be grateful, as I can cut and come again at this wonder- 

 ful dish. 



The mischief of it is I do not see how I am to finish the 

 introduction to my Essays, unless I put off sending you a second 

 dose until March. 



I will send back the revise as quickly as possible. Ever 

 yours very truly, T. H. HUXLEY. 



You do not tell me that there is anything to which Spencer 

 can object, so I suppose there is nothing. 



And in an undated letter to Sir J. Hooker, he says : 



I am glad you think well of the " Human Inequality " paper. 

 My wife has persuaded me to follow it up with a view to mak- 

 ing a sort of " Primer of Politics " for the masses by and by. 

 " There's no telling what you may come to, my boy," said the 

 Bishop who reproved his son for staring at John Kemble, and I 

 may be a pamphleteer yet ! But really it is time that somebody 

 should treat the people to common sense. 



However, immediately after the appearance of this first 

 article on Human Inequality, he changed his mind about 

 the Letters to Working Men, and resolved to continue what 

 he had to say in the form of essays in the Nineteenth 

 Century. 



He then judged it not unprofitable to call public at- 

 tention to the fallacies which first found their way into 

 practical politics through the disciples of Rousseau ; one 

 of those speculators of whom he remarks (i. 312) that 

 ' busied with deduction from their ideal ' ought to be,' they 

 overlooked the ' what has been/ the ' what is,' and the 

 ' what can be.' " Many a long year ago," he says in 

 Natural Rights and Political Rights (i. 336), " I fondly im- 

 agined that Hume and Kant and Hamilton having slain 

 the ' Absolute,' the thing must, in decency, decease. Yet, 

 at the present time, the same hypostatised negation, some- 

 times thinly disguised under a new name, goes about in 

 broad daylight, in company with the dogmas of absolute 

 ethics, political and other, and seems to be as lively as 



