1886 OCCUPATIONS OF THE AUTUMN 



I49 



And if you wish me to have a personal memento of our 

 friend, send me a pipe that belonged to him. I am greatly de- 

 voted to tobacco, and will put it in a place of honour in my 

 battery of pipes. 



The bracing effects of Arolla enabled him to stay two 

 months in town before again retiring to Ilkley to be 

 " screwed up." He had on the stocks his Gentian Paper 

 and the chapter for the Darwin Life, besides the chapter 

 on the Progress of Science for the Reign of Victoria, all 

 of which he finished off this autumn ; he was busy with 

 Technical Education, and the Egyptian borings which were 

 being carried out under the superintendence of the Royal 

 Society. Finally he was induced by a " diabolical plot " 

 on the part of Mr. Spencer to read, and in consequence to 

 answer, an article in the Fortnightly for November by Mr. 

 Lilly on " Materialism and Morality." These are the chief 

 points with which the following correspondence is con- 

 cerned. 



4 Marlborough Place, Sept. 16, 1886. 



My dear Foster — I enclose the Report * and have nothing 

 to suggest except a quibble at p. 4. If you take a stick in your 

 hand you may feel lots of things and determine their form, etc., 

 with the other end of it, but surely the stick is properly said to 

 be insensible. D°. with the teeth. I feel very well with mine 

 (which are paid for) but they are surely not sensible? Old 

 Tomes once published the opinion that the contents of the 

 dentine tubules were sensory nerves, on the ground of our feel- 

 ing so distinctly through our teeth. He forgot the blind man's 

 stick. Indeed the reference of sensation to the end of a stick 

 is one of the most interesting of psychological facts. 



It is extraordinary how those dogs of examinees return to 

 their vomit. Almost all the obstinate fictions you mention are 

 of a quarter of a century date. Only then they were dominant 

 and epidemic — now they are sporadic. 



I wish Pasteur or somebody would find some microbe 

 with which the rising generation could be protected against 

 them. 



* The Annual Report of the Examiners in Physiology under the 

 Science and Art Department, which, being still an Examiner, he had 

 to sign. 



