READINGS FROM HUXLEY 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY' 



And when I consider, in one view, the many things . . . 

 which I have upon my hands, I fed the burlesque of being em- 

 ployed in this manner at my time of fife. But, in another view, 



and taking in all 4 iii'imxfanfr^ fhggp rtiingj^ as I rifling as they 



may appear, no less than things of greater importance, stem to 

 be put upon me to do. Bishop Butler* to the Duchess of 



Somerset. 



THE "many things" to which the Duchess's corre- 

 spondent here refers are the repairs and improvements 

 of the episcopal seat at Auckland. I doubt if the great 

 apologist, greater in nothing than in the simple dignity 

 of his character, would have considered the writing an 

 account of himself as a thing which could be put upon 

 him to do whatever circumstances might be tak<*n in_ 

 But the good bishop lived in an age when a man might 

 write books and yet be permitted to keep his private 



* The Autobiography was first published in a scries of bio- 

 graphical sketches by C. Engel, 1800. Huxky wrote to his wife 

 about it March 2, 1889: "A man who is bringing out a series of 

 portraits of celebrities, with a sketch of their career attached, 

 has bothered me out of my fife for something to go with my 

 portrait, and to escape the abominable bad taste of some of the 

 notices, I have done that. I shall show it you before it goes 

 back to Engel in proof ." Life and Letters, 11:24$. 



2 Joseph Butler (1602-1752) was bishop of Durham, and author 

 of The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Consti- 

 tution and Course of Nature, 1736, an important defense of 

 Christian theology. Huxley said he befieved the "great prin- 

 ciple of the 'Analogy'," but he preferred his own statement of 

 it: Tnere is no absurdity in theology so great that you cannot 

 parallel it by a greater absurdity of Nature." Life and Letters, 

 1:259- 



