TRIBUTE TO HIMALAYAN WORK 125 



that the order of evolution is preordained, though he believes 

 that you would admit this. I told him that I did not think 

 this was any business of yours — that you did not pretend 

 to go into the origin of life, only into its phenomena. I 

 could not, before his wife and children especially, go into this 

 matter, and avow my own (and I suppose yours) belief that 

 all speculations on preordination are utterly idle in the 

 absence of better materials than theologies and cosmogonies 

 supply us with — that in fact the whole subject is beyond 

 the range of our conceptions. 



March 26, 1871. 



The success of your book [' The Descent of Man '] delights 

 me to hear of — 5500 copies ! it is tremendous. I hear that 

 ladies think it delightful reading, but that it does not do to 

 talk about it, which no doubt promotes the sale — the only 

 way to get it being to order it on the sly ! I dined out three 

 days last week, and at every table heard evolution talked of 

 as an accepted fact, and the descent of man with calmness. 

 I take it to read in P. and 0. in intervals of sea-sickness. 1 



A man called yesterday who had been up to my most 

 distant passes in the Himalaya — the first man to do it 

 since 1848 ! — a Mr. Elwes, 2 formerly I believe a Guardsman, 

 who has taken enthusiastically to Ornithology — one of the 

 Blanfords accompanied him. I must be vain enough to 

 tell you that he found my book a * miracle of accuracy,' and 

 that he could find nothing I had not taken note of. I dare 

 say that Blanford 3 will tell a different story ! ' Sufficient 

 for the day is the Kudos thereof.' 



I fear for Huxley, who (his wife tells me) is running a 

 fearful rig of work. . . . 



What I most dislike is, this unsettlement for any 

 future scientific or self-sustaining work : his love of exer- 

 cising his marvellous intellectual power over men is leading 

 him on — and on — and on — God knows to where — here he is 



1 I.e. on the forthcoming voyage to Marocco. 



2 See i. 271. 



3 Henry Francis Blanford (1834-93) studied' as a geologist and from 1855- 

 62 was on the Geological Survey of India. From 1862-72 he held a professor- 

 ship at the Presidency College, Calcutta. Then, having devoted himself to 

 meteorology, he was appointed meteorological reporter first to Bengal, and 

 later to the Government of India till he retired in 1888. He became F.R.S. 

 1880, President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 1884-5. 





