282 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xvi 



if his youthful University friends were spoken of as ' raw 

 curates and unlearned country squires." 



When David Hume's housemaid was wroth because some- 

 body chalked up " St. David's " on his house, the philosopher is 

 said to have remarked, " Never mind, lassie, better men than 

 I have been made saints of before now." And, perhaps, if I had 

 recollected that " better men than I have been made texts of 

 before now," a slight flavour of wrath which may be perceptible 

 would have vanished from my first letter. If Dr. Abbott has 

 found any phrase of mine too strong, I beg him to set it against 

 " out and out pessimists " and " Heine's dragoon," and let us cry 

 quits. He is the last person with whom I should wish to quarrel. 



Two interesting criticisms of books follow ; one The 

 First Three Gospels, by the Rev. Estlin Carpenter ; the other 

 on Use and Disuse, directed against the doctrine of use- 

 inheritance, by Mr. Platt Ball, who not only sent the book 

 but appealed to him for advice as to his future course in 

 undertaking a larger work on the evolution of man. 



GRAND HOTEL, EASTBOURNE, Oct. n, 1890. 



MY DEAR MR. CARPENTER Accept my best thanks for The 

 First Three Gospels, which strikes me as an admirable exposi- 

 tion of the case, full, clear, and calm. Indeed the latter quality 

 gives it here and there a touch of humour. You say the most 

 damaging things in a way so gentle that the orthodox reader 

 must feel like the eels who were skinned by the fair Molly lost 

 between pain and admiration. 



I am certainly glad to see that the book has reached a second 

 edition ; it will do yeoman's service to the cause of right reason. 



A quondam friend of mine was in the habit of sending me 

 his proofs, and I sometimes wrote on them " no objection except 

 to the whole " ; and I am afraid that you will think what I am 

 about to say comes to pretty much the same thing at least if 

 I am right in the supposition that a passage in your first preface 

 (p. vii.) states your fundamental position, and that you conceive 

 that when criticism has done its uttermost there still remains 

 evidence that the personality of Jesus was the leading cause 

 the conditio sine qua non of the evolution of Christianity from 

 Judaism. 



I long thought so, and having a strong dislike to belittle the 

 heroic figures of history, I held by the notion as long as I could, 

 but I find it melting away. 



