122 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, via 



Natural History Sciences.* This, when it came out later as 

 a pamphlet, he sent to his Tenby friend Dr. Dyster (of 

 whom hereafter), to whose criticism on one passage he re- 

 plied on October lo : — 



. . . — I am rejoiced you liked my speechment. It was 

 written hastily and is, like its speaker, I fear, more forcible 

 than eloquent, but it can lay claim to the merit of being sin- 

 cere. 



My intention on p. 28 was by no means to express any satis- 

 faction at the worms being as badly off as ourselves, but to show 

 that pain being everywhere is inevitable, and therefore like all 

 other inevitable things to be borne. The rest of it is the product 

 of my scientific Calvinism, which fell like a shell at your feet 

 when we were talking over the fire. 



I doubt, or at least I have no confidence in, the doctrine of 

 ultimate happiness, and I am more inclined to look the opposite 

 possibility fully in the face, and if that also be inevitable, make 

 up my mind to bear it also. 



You will tell me there are better consolations than Stoicism ; 

 that may be, but I do not possess them, and I have found my 

 " grin and bear it " philosophy stand me in such good stead in 

 my course through oceans of disgust and chagrin, that I should 

 be loth to give it up. 



The summer of 1854 was spent in company with the 

 Busks at Tenby, amid plenty of open-air work and in great 

 peace of mind, varied with a short visit to Liverpool in order 

 to talk business with his friend Forbes, who was eager that 

 Huxley should join him in Edinburgh. 



* The subsequent reference is to the words, "I cannot but think 

 that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably 

 woven up in the life of the very worms will bear his own share with 

 more courage and submission ; and will, at any rate, view with sus- 

 picion those weakly amiable theories of the divine government, which 

 would have us believe pain to be an oversight and a mistake, to be 

 corrected by and by." {Collected Essays, iii. p. 62.) This essay contains 

 the definition of science as "trained and organised common sense," 

 and the reference to a new " Peter Bell" which suggested Miss May 

 Kendall's spirited parody of Wordsworth :— 



Primroses by the river's brim 

 Dicotyledons were to him, 

 And they were nothing more. 



