190 



LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xi 



is against the revised version, I will carefully consider how far 

 the needful alterations may affect the substance of the one pas- 

 sage in my reply to Mr. Gladstone which is affected by it. 



At present I am by no means clear that it will make much 

 difference, and in no case will the main lines of my argument 

 as to the antagonism between modern science and the Pentateuch 

 be affected. The statements I have made are public property. 

 If you think they are in any way erroneous I must ask you to 

 take upon yourself the same amount of responsibility as I have 

 done, and submit your objection to the same ordeal. 



There is nothing like this test for reducing things to their 

 true proportions, and if you try it, you will probably discover, 

 not without some discomfort, that you really had no reason to 

 ascribe wilful blindness to those who do not agree with you. 



He was now preparing to complete his campaign of the 

 spring on technical education by delivering an address to 

 the Technical Education Association at Manchester on 

 November 29, and looked forward to attending the anni- 

 versary meeting of the Royal Society on his way home next 

 day, and seeing the Copley medal conferred upon his old 

 friend, Sir J. Hooker. However, unexpected trouble befell 

 him. First he was .much alarmed about his wife, who had 

 been ill more or less ever since leaving Arolla. Happily it 

 turifed out that there was nothing worse than could be set 

 right by a slight operation. But nothing had been done 

 when news came of the sudden death of his second daughter 

 on November 19. " I have no heart for anything just now," 

 he writes ; nevertheless, he forced himself to fulfil this im- 

 portant engagement at Manchester, and in the end the 

 necessity of bracing himself for the undertaking acted on 

 him as a tonic. 



It is a trifle, perhaps, but a trifle significant of the dis- 

 turbance of mind that could override so firmly fixed a 

 habit, that the two first letters he wrote after receiving the 

 news are undated; almost the only omission of the sort I 

 have found in all his letters of the last twenty-five years of 

 his life. 



His daughter's long illness had left him without hope 

 for months past, but this, as he confessed, did not mend 

 matters much. In his letters to his two most intimate 



