i87o— 1SS2] MIVART 333 



I am glad to hear about Huxley. You never read such Letter 245 

 strong letters Mivart wrote to me about respect towards me, 

 begging that I would call on him, etc., etc. ; yet in the 

 Q. Revieiv x he shows the greatest scorn and animosity towards 

 me, and with uncommon cleverness says all that is most 

 disagreeable. He makes me the most arrogant, odious beast 

 that ever lived. I cannot understand him ; I suppose that 

 accursed religious bigotry is at the root of it. Of course he 

 is quite at liberty to scorn and hate me, but why take such 

 trouble to express something more than friendship? It has 

 mortified me a good deal. 



To J. D. Hooker. Letter 246 



Down, Oct. 4th [1S71]. 

 I am quite delighted that you think so highly of Huxley's 

 article. 2 I was afraid of saying all I thought about it, as 

 nothing is so likely as to make anything appear flat. I thought 

 of, and quite agreed with, your former saying that Huxley 

 makes one feel quite infantile in intellect. He always thus acts 

 on me. I exactly agree with what you say on the several 

 points in the article, and I piled climax on climax of admira- 

 tion in my letter to him. I am not so good a Christian as 

 you think me, for I did enjoy my revenge on Mivart. He 

 {i.e. Mivart) has just written to me as cool as a cucumber, 

 hoping my health is better, etc. My head, by the way, 

 plagues me terribly, and I have it light and rocking half the 

 day. Farewell, dear old friend — my best of friends. 



To John Fiske. Lelt « 247 



Mr. Fiske, who is perhaps best known in England as the author of 

 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, had sent to Mr. Darwin some reports of 

 the lectures given at Harvard University. The point referred to in the 

 postscript in Mr. Darwin's letter is explained by the following extract from 

 Mr. Fiske's work : " I have endeavoured to show that the transition from 

 animality (or bestiality, stripping the word of its bad connotations) to 

 humanity must have been mainly determined by the prolongation of 

 infancy or immaturity which is consequent upon a high development 



1 See Quarterly Review, July 1871 ; also Life and Letters, III., 

 p. 147. 



- A review of Wallace's Natural Selection, of Mivart's Genesis of 

 Species, and of the Quarterly Review article on the Descent of Man (July, 

 1871), published in the Contetnporary Review (1S71), and in Huxley's 

 Collected Essays, II., p. 120. 



