252 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. X 



July 6, 1878. 



MY DEAR MORLEY Very many thanks for Diderot. 

 I have made a plunge into the first volume and found it 

 very interesting. I wish you had put a portrait of him 

 as a frontispiece. I have seen one a wonderful face, 

 something like Goethe's. 



I am picking at Hume at odd times. It seems to me 

 that I had better make an analysis and criticism of the 

 " Inquiry," the backbone of the essay as it touches all 

 the problems which interest us most just now. I have 

 already sketched out a chapter on Miracles, which will, I 

 hope, be very edifying in consequence of its entire agree- 

 ment with the orthodox arguments against Hume's a 

 priori reasonings against miracles. 



Hume wasn't half a sceptic after all. And so long as 

 he got deep enough to worry Orthodoxy, he did not care 

 to go to the bottom of things. 



He failed to see the importance of suggestions already 

 made both by Locke and Berkeley. Ever yours very 

 faithfully, T. H. HUXLEY. 



Sept. 30, 1878. 



MY DEAR MORLEY Praise me ! I have been hard at 

 work at Hume at Penmaenmawr, and I have got the 

 hard part of the business the account of his philosophy 

 blocked out in the bodily shape of about 180 pages 

 foolscap MS. 



But I find the job as tough as it is interesting. 

 Hume's diamonds, before the public can see them properly, 

 want a proper setting in a methodical and consistent 

 shape and that implies writing a small psychological 

 treatise of one's own, and then cutting it down into as 

 unobtrusive a form as possible. 



So I am working away at my draught from the 

 point of view of an aesthetic jeweller. 



As soon as I get it into such a condition as will need 



