222 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV 



Since I saw you — indeed, from the following Tuesday on- 

 wards—I have amused myself by spending ten days or so in bed. 

 I had an unaccountable prostration of strength which they called 

 influenza, but which, I beheve, was nothing but some obstruction 

 in the liver. 



Of course I can't persuade people of this, and they will have 

 it that it is overwork. I have come to the conviction, however, 

 that steady work hurts nobody, the real destroyer of hardwork- 

 ing men being not their work, but dinners, late hours, and the 

 universal humbug and excitement of society. 



I mean to get out of all that and keep out of it. — Ever yours 

 faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



The other contribution to the general question was his 

 Working Men's Lectures for 1862. As he writes to Dar- 

 win on October 10 — " I can't find anything to talk to the 

 working men about this year but your book. I mean to 

 give them a commentary a la Coke upon Lyttleton." 



The lectures to working men here referred to, six in 

 number, were duly delivered once a week from November 

 10 onwards, and published in the form of as many little 

 pamphlets. Appearing under the general title, " On our 

 Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic 

 Nature," they wound up with a critical examination of the 

 portion of Mr. Darwin's work On the Origin of Species, in 

 relation to the complete theory of the causes of organic 

 nature. 



Jermyn Street, Dec. 2, 1862. 



My dear Darwin — I send you by this post three of my 

 working men's lectures now in course of delivery. As you will 

 see by the prefatory notice, I was asked to allow them to be 

 taken down in shorthand for the use of the audience, but IJiave 

 no interest in them, and do not desire or intend that they 

 should be widely circulated. 



Some time hence, may be, I may revise and illustrate them, 

 and make them into a book as a sort of popular exposition of 

 your views, or at any rate of my version of your viev^s. 



There really is nothing new in them nor anything worth 

 your attention, but if in glancing over them at any time you 

 should see anything to object to, I should like to know. 



I am very hard worked just now — six lectures a week, and 

 no end of other things — but as vigorous as a three-year old. 



