240 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, x 



innumerables and infinites I have replaced by counted 

 numbers and estimated quantities ; how many assump- 

 tions, important to the argument in hand, I have with- 

 drawn because I found on more consideration that the 

 fact might be explained otherwise ; and how many 

 effective epithets I have discarded when I found that I 

 could not fully verify them ; you would think it no less 

 than just that I should claim for myself and concede to 

 others the right of being judged by the last edition rather 

 than the first. That a persistent endeavour to free 

 myself from what you regard as Bacon's characteristic 

 vice should have been the fruit of a desire to follow his 

 example, will seem strange to you, but it is fact. Perhaps 

 you will think it not less strange, but it is my real 

 belief, that if your own writings had been in existence 

 and come in my way at the same critical stage of my 

 moral and mental development, they would have taught 

 me the same lesson and inspired me with the same 

 ambition ; for in that particular (if I may say it without 

 offence) I look upon you both as eminent examples of the 

 same virtue. 



To the lecture he refers once more in a letter to 

 Mr. John Morley. The political situation touched 

 on in this and the next letter is that of the end of 

 the Russo- Turkish war and the beginning of the 

 Afghan war. 



SCIENCE SCHOOLS, SOUTH KENSINGTON, 

 Feb. 7, 1878. 



MY DEAE MORLEY Many thanks for the cheque, 

 and still more for your good word for the article. 1 I 

 knew it would " draw " Hutton, and his ingenuity has as 

 usual made the best of the possibilities of attack. I am 



1 On Harvey. 



