356 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII 



that he should write an article on Prayer, belongs 

 probably to the autumn of 1863 : 



I should like very much to write such an article as 

 you suggest, but I am very doubtful about undertaking it 

 for Fraser. Anything I could say would go to the root of 

 praying altogether, for inasmuch as the whole universe is 

 governed, so far as I can see, in the same way, and the 

 moral world is as much governed by laws as the physical 

 whatever militates against asking for one sort of bless- 

 ing seems to me to tell with the same force against asking 

 for any other. 



Not that I mean for a moment to say that prayer is 

 illogical, for if the whole universe is ruled by fixed laws 

 it is just as logically absurd for me to ask you to answer 

 this letter as to ask the Almighty to alter the weather. 

 The whole argument is an " old foe with a new face," the 

 freedom and necessity question over again. 



If I were to write about the question I should have to 

 develop all this side of the problem, and then having 

 shown that logic, as always happens when it is carried to 

 extremes, leaves us bomMnantes in vacuo, I should appeal to 

 experience to show that prayers of this sort are not 

 answered, and to science to prove that if they were they 

 would do a great deal of harm. 



But you know this would never do for the atmosphere 

 of Fraser. It would be much better suited for an article 

 in my favourite organ, the wicked Westminster. 



However, to say truth, I do not see how I am to 

 undertake anything fresh just at present. I have pro- 

 mised an article for Macmillan ages ago ; and Masson 

 scowls at me whenever we meet. I am afraid to go 

 through the Albany lest Cook 1 should demand certain 

 reviews of books which have been long in my hands. I 



1 John Douglas Cook, 1808-1868, editor of the Saturday 

 Review from 1858. 



