'MR. DARWISOME FIGHT 131 



and adding that he was reading u^l all the quiet contempt 

 Fathers and found that Mivart eitheid Parsons is extra- 

 understood him, and he (H.) proposed » 

 Catholic Fathers ! What an irony his life is bee J am very 

 call him a ' Polemician.' ' ^ Vs 



n 

 To T. H. Huxley 



Kew : September 17, 1871. 



Dear H. — There is an irony in your going in for Suarez 

 in Scotland — were not his works burnt in public by James I ? 

 I have just glanced again at Mivart 's last chapter ; it is 

 curious for the illustrations it introduces pro and con his 

 views, which seem to have been sought with zeal and pro- 

 duced without discretion. The pages on the attributes of 

 an Almighty God are hopelessly vague and commonplace, 

 and I never had much respect for the God who originates — 

 derivatively. His ' God inscrutable ' is no better or worse for 

 me than Spencer's ' God unknowable ' whom he won't have ! 

 Given a God who can be in two places at once — and it 

 is mighty little odds whether you call him inscrutable or 

 unknowable in reference either to his disposal of events, or 

 to our consideration of him or his attributes ! 



The whole scheme of ' Derivative Creation ' in its religious 

 aspect always seemed to me a poor makeshift — a sweet to 

 the physic of evolution ; and I should indeed be astonished 

 if the Jesuit Fathers' conceptions of creation squared with 

 this. All they contended for, I assume, was that God made 

 beasts and birds, &c. out of solids, and not out of vacuum. 



I see that as far as possible Mivart gives Providence a wide 

 berth — well for him. If I understand him aright, he believes 

 in an original creation of Soul in every man (not a derivative 

 one) — it is a pity that he had not expounded that idea ; he 

 could scarce have escaped the pitfall of Heredity in reference 

 to the attributes of the Soul, i.e. of all we know of what we 

 call Soul — which I take it is simply a mixed idea. 



I shall be most curious to read your paper. 



To Charles Darwin 



Kew : Monday (November ? 1871). 



Dear Darwin, — I return Huxley's article [.' Mr. Darwin's 

 Critics ' : Contemporary Review, Nov. 17] which I have read 



