310 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xii 



Origin of Species," that "the paleontological dis- 

 coveries of the last decade are so completely in 

 accordance with the requirements of this hypothesis 

 that, if it had not existed, the paleontologist would 

 have had to invent it." 



In February died Thomas Carlyle. Mention has 

 already been made of the influence of his writings 

 upon Huxley in strengthening and fixing once for all, 

 at the very outset of his career, that hatred of shams 

 and love of veracity, which were to be the chief 

 principle of his whole life. It was an obligation he 

 never forgot, and for this, if for nothing else, he was 

 ready to join in a memorial to the man. In reply to 

 a request for his support in so doing, he wrote to 

 Lord Stanley of Alderley on March 9 : 



Anything I can do to help in raising a memorial to 

 Carlyle shall be most willingly done. Few men can have 

 dissented more strongly from his way of looking at things 

 than I ; but I should not yield to the most devoted of 

 his followers in gratitude for the bracing wholesome 

 influence of his writings when, as a very young man, I 

 was essaying without rudder or compass to strike out a 

 course for myself. 



Mention has already been made (p. 302) of his ill- 

 health at the end of the year, which was perhaps a 

 premonition of the breakdown of 1883. An indica- 

 tion of the same kind may be found in the following 

 letter to Mrs. Tyndall, who had forwarded a 

 document which Dr. Tyndall had meant to send 

 himself with an explanatory note. 



