88 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, vi 



with no excitement and no occupation for the higher powers of 

 the intellect, with its great aspirations stifled and all the great 

 problems of existence set hopelessly in the background, offers to 

 me a prospect that would be utterly intolerable but for your 

 love. . . . Sometimes I am half mad with the notion of bring- 

 ing all my powers in a surer struggle for a livelihood. Some- 

 times I am equally wild at thinking of the long weary while that 

 has passed since we met. There are times when I cannot bear 

 to think of leaving my present pursuits, when I feel I should be 

 guilty of a piece of cowardly desertion from my duty in doing 

 it, and there come intervals when I would give truth and sci- 

 ence and all hopes to be folded in your arms. ... I know which 

 course is right, but I never know which I may follow; help 

 me . . . for there is only one course in which there is either 

 hope or peace for me. 



These repeated disappointments deepened the fits of de- 

 pression which constantly assailed him. He was torn by 

 two opposing thoughts. Was it just, was it right, to demand 

 so great a sacrifice from the woman who had entrusted her 

 future to the uncertain chances of his fortunes? Could he 

 ask her to go on offering up the best years of her life to 

 aspirations of his which were possibly chimerical, or per- 

 haps merely selfishness in disguise, which ought to yield to 

 more imperative duties? Why not clip the wings of Peg- 

 asus, and descend to the sober, everyday jog-trot after 

 plain bread and cheese like other plain people ? Time after 

 time he almost made up his mind to throw science to the 

 winds; to emigrate and establish a practice in Sydney; to 

 try even squatting or storekeeping. And yet he knew only 

 too well that with his temperament no life would bring him 

 the remotest approach to lasting happiness and satisfaction 

 except one that gave scope to his intellectual passion. To 

 yield to the immediate pressure of circumstances was per- 

 haps ignoble, was even more probably a surer road to the 

 loss of happiness for himself and for his wife than the 

 repeated and painful sacrifices of the present. With all 

 this, however, and the more when assured of her entire 

 confidence in his judgment, he could not but feel a sense 

 of remorse that she willingly accepted the sacrifice, and 

 feared that she might have done so rather to gratify his 



