346 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII 



kept longer than it should have been. I am quite agreed 

 with the general tenor of your argument ; and indeed I 

 have often argued against those who maintain the intel- 

 lectual gulf between man and the lower animals to be an 

 impassable one, by pointing to the immense intellectual 

 chasm as compared to the structural differences between 

 two species of bees or between sheep and goat or dog and 

 wolf. So again your remarks upon the argument drawn 

 from the apparent absence of progression in animals seem 

 to me to be quite just You might strengthen them 

 much by reference to the absence of progression in many 

 races of men. The West African savage, as the old 

 voyagers show, was in just the same condition two 

 hundred years ago as now and I suspect that the 

 modern Patagonian is as nearly as possible the un- 

 improved representative of the makers of the flint 

 implements of Abbeville. 



Lyell's phrase is very good, but it is a simple applica- 

 tion of Darwin's views to human history. The advance 

 of mankind has everywhere depended on the production 

 of men of genius ; and that production is a case of 

 "spontaneous variation" becoming hereditary, not by 

 physical propagation, but by the help of language, letters 

 and the printing press. Newton was to all intents and 

 purposes a " sport " of a dull agricultural stock, and his 

 intellectual powers are to a certain extent propagated by 

 the grafting of the " Principia," his brain-shoot, on us. 



Many thanks for your letter. It is a great pleasure 

 to me to be able to speak out to any one who, like your- 

 self, is striving to get at truth through a region of intel- 

 lectual and moral influences so entirely distinct from 

 those to which I am exposed. 



I am not much given to open my heart to anybody, 

 and on looking back I am often astonished at the way in 

 which I threw myself and my troubles at your head, in 

 those bitter days when my poor boy died. But the way 

 in which you received my heathen letters set up a free- 



