1860 LETTER TO KINGSLEY 313 



11, gave the mother some comfort; and as the result 

 of a friendly conspiracy between her and Dr. Tyndall, 

 Huxley himself was carried off for a week's climbing 

 in Wales between Christmas and the New Year. 



His reply to a long letter of sympathy in which 

 Charles Kingsley set forth the grounds of his own 

 philosophy as to the ends of life and the hope of 

 immortality, affords insight into the very depths of 

 his nature. It is a rare outburst at a moment of 

 intense feeling, in which, more completely than in 

 almost any other writing of his, intellectual clearness 

 and moral fire are to be seen uniting in a veritable 

 passion for truth : 



14 WAVERLEY PLACE, Sept. 23, 1860. 



MY DEAR KINGSLEY I cannot sufficiently thank you, 

 both on my wife's account and my own, for your long 

 and frank letter, and for all the hearty sympathy which 

 it exhibits and Mrs. Kingsley will, I hope, believe that 

 we are no less sensible of her kind thought of us. To 

 myself your letter was especially valuable, as it touched 

 upon what I thought even more than upon what I said 

 in my letter to you. My convictions, positive and 

 negative, on all the matters of which you speak, are of 

 long and slow growth and are firmly rooted. But the 

 great blow which fell upon me seemed to stir them to 

 their foundation, and had I lived a couple of centuries 

 earlier I could have fancied a devil scoffing at me and 

 them and asking me what profit it was to have stripped 

 myself of the hopes and consolations of the mass of man- 

 kind ? To wbich my only reply was and is Oh devil ! 

 truth is better than much profit I have searched over the 

 grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name 



