i860 letters to HOOKER 23Q 



science are driving, and it has often been in my mind to write 

 to you before. 



If I have spoken too plainly anywhere, or too abruptly, 

 pardon me, and do the Hke to me. 



My wife thanks you very much for your volume of sermons. 

 — Ever yours very faithfully, 



T. H. Huxley. 



A letter written in reply to the suggestion that he 

 should carry out Hooker's own good resolutions of keep- 

 ing out of the turmoil of life, and devoting himself to 

 pure science, seems to indicate in its tone something of 

 the stress of the time when it was written — 



Jkrmyn Street, Dec. ig, i860. 



My dear Hooker — What with one thing and another, I have 

 almost forgotten to answer your note — and first, as to the busi- 

 ness matter. . . . Next as to my own private affairs, the young- 

 ster is " a swelling wisibly," and my wife is getting on better 

 than I hoped, though not quite so well as I could have wished. 

 The boy's advent is a great blessing to her in all ways. For 

 myself I hardly know yet whether it is pleasure or pain. The 

 ground has gone from under my feet once, and I hardly know 

 how to rest on anything again. Irrational, you will say, but 

 nevertheless natural. And finally as to your resolutions, my 

 holy pilgrim, they will be kept about as long as the resolutions 

 of other anchorites who are thrown into the busy world, or I 

 won't say that, for assuredly you will take the world " as coolly 

 as you can," and so shall I. But that coolness amounts to the 

 red heat of properly constructed mortals. 



It is no use having any false modesty about the matter. You 

 and I, if we last ten years longer, and you by a long while first, 

 will be the representatives of our respective lines in this country. 

 In that capacity we shall have certain duties to perform to our- 

 selves, to the outside world, and to science. We shall have to 

 swallow praise which is no great pleasure, and to stand multi- 

 tudinous basting and irritations, which will involve a good deal 

 of unquestionable pain. Don't flatter yourself that there is any 

 moral chloroform by which either you or I can render ourselves 

 insensible or acquire the habit of doing things coolly. It is 

 assuredly of no great use to tear one's self to pieces before one 

 is fifty. But the alternative, for men constructed on the high 

 pressure tubular boiler principle, like ourselves, is to lie still 



