i86o THE STANDARD OF BELIEF 233 



of the sudden death of the little son in whom so much of 

 his own and his wife's happiness was centred. The sudden- 

 ness of the blow made it all the more crushing, and the 

 mental strain, intensified by the sight of his wife's incon- 

 solable grief, brought him perilously near a complete break- 

 down. But the birth of another son, on December 11, gave 

 the mother some comfort ; and as the result of a friendly 

 conspiracy between her and Dr. Tyndall, Huxley himself 

 was carried ofif for a week's climbing in Wales between 

 Christmas and the New Year. 



His reply to a long letter of sympathy in which Charles 

 Kingsley set forth the grounds of his own philosophy as to 

 the ends of life and the hope of immortality, affords insight 

 into the very depths of his nature. It is a rare outburst at 

 a moment of intense feeling, in which, more completely than 

 in almost any other writing of his, intellectual clearness and 

 moral fire are to be seen uniting in a veritable passion for 

 truth :— 



14. Waverley Place, Sept. 23, i860. 



My dear Kingsley — I cannot sufficiently thank you, both on 

 my wife's account and my own, for your long and frank letter, 

 and for all the hearty sympathy which it exhibits — and Mrs. 

 Kingsley will, I hope, believe that we are no less sensible of 

 her kind thought of us. To myself your letter was especially 

 valuable, as it touched upon what I thought even more than 

 upon what I said in my letter to you. My convictions, positive 

 and negative, on all the matters of which you speak, are of long 

 and slow growth and are firmly rooted. But the great blow 

 which fell upon me seemed to stir them to their foundation, 

 and had I lived a couple of centuries earlier I could have fancied 

 a devil scoffing at me and them — and asking me what profit it 

 was to have stripped myself of the hopes and consolations of 

 the mass of mankind? To which my only reply was and is 

 — Oh devil ! truth is better than much profit. I have searched 

 over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name 

 and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the 

 penalty, still I will not lie. 



And now I feel that it is due to' you to speak as frankly as 

 you have done to me. An old and worthy friend of mine tried 

 some three or four years ago to bring us together — because, as 

 he said, you were the only man who would do me any good. 



