432 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXII 



based upon molecular changes in this life -stuff. 

 Materialism ! gross and brutal materialism ! was the 

 mildest comment he expected in some quarters ; and 

 he took the opportunity to explain how he held 

 " this union of materialistic terminology with the 

 repudiation of materialistic philosophy," considering 

 the latter " to involve grave philosophic error." 



His expectations were fully justified ; in fact, he 

 writes that some persons seemed to imagine that he 

 had invented protoplasm for the purposes of the 

 lecture. 



Here, too, in the course of a reply to Archbishop 

 Thomson's confusion of the spirit of modern thought 

 with the system of M. Comte, he launched his well- 

 known definition of Comtism as Catholicism minus 

 Christianity, which involved him in a short con- 

 troversy with Mr. Congreve (see "The Scientific 

 Aspects of Positivism," Lay Sermons, p. 162), and 

 with another leading Positivist, who sent him a 

 letter through Mr. Darwin. Huxley replied : 



JEEMYN STREET, March 11, 1869. 



MY DEAR DARWIN I know quite enough of Mr. 



to have paid every attention to what he has to say, 



even if you had not been his ambassador. 



I glanced over his letter when I returned home last 

 night very tired with my two nights' chairmanship at the 

 Ethnological and the Geological Societies. 



Most of it is fair enough, though I must say not help- 

 ing me to any novel considerations. 



Two paragraphs, however, contained opinions which 



Mr. is at perfect liberty to entertain, but not, I 



think, to express to me. 



