Vi LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY 



First Principles, and two other fragments amounting 

 to thirty-two pages. With characteristic accuracy, 

 moreover, Mr. Spencer tells me that comparison of 

 the proofs of the three latter with the published 

 works shows the precise number of the "brilliant 

 speculations choked in an embryonic state" therein 

 by his "devil's advocacy" (ii. 18) t6 be four. But 

 the period assigned for this " devil's advocacy," going 

 back "thirty odd years," from 1884 to the beginning 

 of my father's acquaintance with Mr. Spencer, indi- 

 cates that the playful allusion must be as much to 

 the informal dialectics of conversation as to serious 

 written work, for the reading of proofs referred to 

 above, only began with the Synthetic Philosophy in 

 1860. 



L. H. 

 November 1902. 



