236 ORIGIN OF SPECIES. [Oh. XIII 



reviewer] treats most ungenerously.* But surely you will 

 get sick unto death of me and my reviewers. 



With respect to the theological view of the question. This 

 is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no inten- 

 tion to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as 

 plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of 

 design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me 

 too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that 

 a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created 

 the Ichneumonidffl with the express intention of their feeding 

 within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should 

 play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the 

 belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand, 

 I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, 

 and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that every- 

 thing is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at 

 everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, 

 whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may 

 call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel 

 most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the 

 human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind 

 of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. 

 Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all 

 necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills a man, whether a 

 good one or bad one, owing to the excessively complex action of 

 natural laws. A child (who may turn out an idiot) is born by 

 the action of even more complex laws, and I can see no reason 

 why a man, or other animal, may not have been aboriginally 

 produced by other laws, and that all these laws may have been 

 expressly designed by an omniscient Creator, who foresaw every 

 future event and consequence. But the more I think the more 

 bewildered I become ; as indeed I have probably shown by 

 this letter. 



Most deeply do I feel your generous kindness and interest. 

 Yours sincerely and cordially. 



The meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1860 

 is famous for two pitched battles over the Origin of Species. 

 Both of them originated in unimportant papers. On Thursday, 



* In a letter to Mr. Huxley my father wrote : — " Have you seen the 

 last Saturday Review ? I am very glad of the defence of you and of 

 myself. I wish the reviewer had noticed Hooker. The reviewer, 

 whoever he is, is a jolly good fellow, as this review and the last on me 

 showed. He writes capitally, and understands well his subject. I wish 

 he had slapped [the Edinburgh reviewer] a little bit harder." 



