iS67 LETTER TO HAECKEL 309 



in a flanking movement ; the other when a man of great 

 public reputation had come forward to champion an un- 

 tenable position of the older orthodoxy, and a blow dealt 

 to his pretensions to historical and scientific accuracy would 

 not only bring the question home to many who neglected 

 it in an impersonal form, but would also react upon the 

 value of the historical arguments with which he sought to 

 stir public opinion in other spheres. The other letter 

 touches on the influence, at once calming and invigorating, 

 as he had known it to the full for the last twelve years, 

 which a wife can bring in the midst of outward struggles 

 to the inner life of the home. 



Jermyn Street, London, May 20, 1867. 



My dear Haeckel — Your letter, though dated the 12th, has 

 but just reached me. I mention this lest you should think me 

 remiss, my sin in not writing to you already being sufficiently 

 great. But your book did not reach me until November, and I 

 have been hard at work lecturing, with scarcely an intermission 

 ever since. 



Now I need hardly say that the Morphologie is not exactly 

 a novel to be taken up and read in the intervals of business. On 

 the contrary, though profoundly interesting, it is an uncom- 

 monly hard book, and one wants to read every sentence of 

 it over. 



I went through it within a fortnight of its coming into my 

 hands, so as to get at your general drift and purpose, but up 

 to this time I have not been able to read it as I feel I ought to 

 read it before venturing upon criticism. You cannot imagine 

 how my time is frittered away in these accursed lectures and 

 examinations. 



There can be but one opinion, however, as to the knowledge 

 and intellectual grasp displayed in the book ; and, to me, the 

 attempt to systematise biology as a whole is especially interest- 

 ing and valuable. 



I shall go over this part of your work with great care by 

 and by, but I am afraid you must expect that the number of 

 biologists who will do so, will remain exceedingly small. Our 

 comrades are not strong in logic and philosophy. 



With respect to the polemic excursus, of course, I chuckle 

 over them most sympathetically, and then say how naughty they 

 are ! I have done too much of the same sort of thing not to 



