258 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xvii 



expect an acknowledgment of a book — it is one of the greatest 

 nuisances in the world to have that to do, and I never do it — 

 but as you mentioned the Lectures and not the other, I thought 

 it might not have reached you. If it has not, pray let me know 

 and a copy shall be forwarded, as I want you very much to 

 read Essay No. 2. 



I have a great respect for all the old bottles, and if the new 

 wine can be got to go into them and not burst them I shall be 

 very glad — I confess I do not see my way to it; on the con- 

 trary, the longer I live and the more I learn the more hopeless 

 to my mind becomes the contradiction between the theory of the 

 universe as understood and expounded by Jewish and Christian 

 theologians, and the theory of the universe which is every day 

 and every year growing out of the application of scientific 

 methods to its phenomena. 



Whether astronomy and geology can or cannot be made to 

 agree with the statements as to the matters of fact laid down 

 in Genesis — whether the Gospels are historically true or not 

 — are matters of comparatively small moment in the face of the 

 impassable gulf between the anthropomorphism (however re- 

 fined) of theology and the passionless impersonality of the un- 

 known and unknowable which science shows everywhere under- 

 lying the thin veil of phenomena. 



Here seems to me to be the great gulf fixed between science 

 and theology — beside which all Colenso controversies, reconcile- 

 ments of Scripture a la Pye Smith, etc., cut a very small figure. 



You must have thought over all this long ago ; but steeped 

 as I am in scientific thought from morning till night, the con- 

 trast has perhaps a greater vividness to me. I go into society, 

 and except among two or three of my scientific colleagues I 

 find myself alone on these subjects, and as hopelessly at variance 

 with the majority of my fellow-men as they would be with their 

 neighbours if they were set down among the Ashantees. I don't 

 like this state of things for myself — least of all do I see how 

 it will work out for my children. But as my mind is constituted, 

 there is no way out of it, and I can only envy you if you can 

 see things differently. — Ever yours very faithfully, 



T. H. Huxley. 



Jermyn Street, May 5, 1863. 

 My dear Kingsley- — My wife and children are away at 

 Felixstow on the Suffolk coast, and as I run down on Saturday 

 and come back on Monday your MS. has been kept longer than 



