382 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xxi 



pope, or something of the sort? I congratulate the poor more 

 than I do you, for it must be a weary business trying to mend 

 the irremediable. (No, I am not glancing at the whitewashing 

 of Mary.) 



Here may be added two later letters bearing in part 

 upon the same subject : 



HODESLEA, EASTBOURNE, March 23, 1894. 



DEAR SIR I ought to have thanked you before now for your 

 letter about Nietzsche's works, but I have not much working 

 time, and I find letter-writing a burden, which I am always 

 trying to shirk. 



I will look up Nietzsche's, though I must confess that the 

 profit I obtain from German authors on speculative questions 

 is not usually great. 



As men of research in positive science they are magnificently 

 laborious and accurate. But most of them have no notion of 

 style, and seem to compose their books with a pitchfork. 



There are two very different questions which people fail to 

 discriminate. One is whether evolution accounts for morality, 

 the other whether the principle of evolution in general can be 

 adopted as an ethical principle. 



The first, of course, I advocate, and have constantly insisted 

 upon. The second I deny, and reject all so-called evolutional 

 ethics based upon it. I am yours faithfully, 



T. H. HUXLEY. 



Thomas Common, Esq. 



HODESLEA, August 31, 1894. 



DEAR PROFESSOR SETH I have come to a stop in the issue of 

 my essays for the present, and I venture to ask your acceptance 

 of the set which I have desired my publishers to send you. 



I hope that at present you are away somewhere, .read- 

 ing novels or otherwise idling, in whatever may be your pet 

 fashion. 



But some day I want you to read the " Prolegomena " to the 

 reprinted Romanes Lecture. 



Lately I have been re-reading Spinoza (much read and little 

 understood in my youth). 



But that noblest of Jews must have planted no end of germs 

 in my brains, for I see that what I have to say is in principle 

 what he had to say, in modern language. Ever yours very faith- 

 fully, T. H. HUXLEY. 



