166 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII 



to the Tivies a letter which throws light both upon 

 his early days and his later opinions : — 



The article on "Illusions" in the Times of to-day 

 induces me to notice the remarkable exemplification of 

 them to which you have drawn public attention. The 

 Rev. Dr. Abbott has pointed the moral of his discourse 

 by a reference to a living man, the delicacy of which will 

 be widely and justly appreciated. I have reason to believe 

 that I am acquainted with this person, somewhat inti- 

 mately, though I can by no means call myself his best 

 friend — far from it. 



If I am right, I can affirm that this poor fellow did 

 not escape from the "narrow school in which he was 

 brought up " at nineteen, but more than two years later ; 

 and, as he pursued his studies in London, perhaps he had 

 as many opportunities for " fruitful converse with friends 

 and equals," to say nothing of superiors, as he would have 

 enjoyed elsewhera 



Moreover, whether the naval officers with whom he 

 consorted were book-learned or not, they were emphatic- 

 ally men, trained to face realities and to have a whole- 

 some contempt for mere talkers. Any one of them was 

 worth a wilderness of phrase - crammed undergraduates. 

 Indeed, I have heard my misguided acquaintance declare 

 that he regards his four years' training under the hard 

 conditions and the sharp discipline of his cruise as an 

 education of inestimable value. 



As to being a "keen-witted pessimist out and out," 

 the Rev. Dr. Abbott's " horrid example " has shown me 

 the following sentence : — " Pessimism is as little consonant 

 with the facts of sentient existence as optimism." He 

 says he published it in 1888, in an article on "Industrial 

 Development," to be seen in the Nineteenth Century. 

 But no doubt this is another illusion. No superior 

 person, brought up " in the Universities," to boot, could 

 possibly have invented a myth so circumstantial. 



