Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 31

We have had a bad evening. Clifford has been here, and he is extremely ill--in fact I fear the worst for him. [See below.]

It is a thousand pities, for he has a fine nature all round, and time would have ripened him into something very considerable. We are all very fond of him.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

July 6, 1878.

My dear Morley,

Very many thanks for Diderot. I have made a plunge into the first volume and found it very interesting. I wish you had put a portrait of him as a frontispiece. I have seen one--a wonderful face, something like Goethe's.

I am picking at Hume at odd times. It seems to me that I had better make an a.n.a.lysis and criticism of the "Inquiry," the backbone of the essay--as it touches all the problems which interest us most just now.

I have already sketched out a chapter on Miracles, which will, I hope, be very edifying in consequence of its entire agreement with the orthodox arguments against Hume's a priori reasonings against miracles.

Hume wasn't half a sceptic after all. And so long as he got deep enough to worry Orthodoxy, he did not care to go to the bottom of things.

He failed to see the importance of suggestions already made both by Locke and Berkeley.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

September 30, 1878.

My dear Morley,

Praise me! I have been hard at work at Hume at Penmaenmawr, and I have got the hard part of the business--the account of his philosophy--blocked out in the bodily shape of about 180 pages foolscap ma.n.u.script.

But I find the job as tough as it is interesting. Hume's diamonds, before the public can see them properly, want a proper setting in a methodical and consistent shape--and that implies writing a small psychological treatise of one's own, and then cutting it down into as un.o.btrusive a form as possible.

So I am working away at my draft--from the point of view of an aesthetic jeweller.

As soon as I get it into such a condition as will need only verbal tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, I should like to have it set up in type. For it is a defect of mine that I can never judge properly of any composition of my own in ma.n.u.script.

Moreover (don't swear at this wish) I should very much like to send it to you in that shape for criticism.

The Life will be an easy business. I should like to get the book out of hand before Christmas, and will do so if possible. But my lectures begin on Tuesday, and I cannot promise.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

October 21, 1878.

My dear Morley,

I have received slips up to chapter 9 of Hume, and so far I do not think (saving your critical presence) that there will be much need of much modification or interpolation.

I have made all my citations from a 4-volume edition of Hume, published by Black and Tait in 1826, which has long been in my possession.

Do you think I ought to quote Green and Grose's edition? It will be a great bother, and I really don't think that the understanding of Hume is improved by going back to eighteenth-century spelling.

I am at work upon the Life, which should not take long. But I wish that I had polished that off at Penmaenmawr as well. What with lecturing five days a week, and toiling at two anatomical monographs, it is hard to find time.

As soon as I have gone through all the eleven chapters about the Philosophy--I will send them to you and get you to come and dine some day--after you have looked at them--and go into it.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Science Schools, South Kensington, October 29, 1878.

My dear Morley,

Your letter has given me great pleasure. For though I have thoroughly enjoyed the work, and seemed to myself to have got at the heart of Hume's way of thinking, I could not tell how it would appear to others, still less could I pretend to judge of the literary form of what I had written. And as I was quite prepared to accept your judgment if it had been unfavourable, so being what it is, I hug myself proportionately and begin to give myself airs as a man of letters.

I am through all the interesting part of Hume's life--that is, the struggling part of it--and David the successful and the feted begins rather to bore me, as I am sorry to say most successful people do. I hope to send the first chapter to press in another week.

Might it not be better, by the way, to divide the little book into two parts?

Part 1.--Life, Literary and Political work, Part 2.--Philosophy,

subdividing the latter into chapters or sections? please tell me what you think.

I have not received the last chapter from the printer yet. When I do I will finish revising, and then ask you to come and have a symposium over it.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

P.S.--Macmillan has a lien on "The Hand." I gave part of the lecture in another shape at Glasgow two years ago and M. had it reported for his magazine. If he is good and patient he will get it in some shape some day!

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., November 5, 1878.

My dear Morley,

"Davie's" philosophy is now all in print, and all but a few final pages of his biography.

So I think the time has come when that little critical symposium may take place.

Can you come and dine on Tuesday next (12) at 7? Or if any day except Wednesday 15th, next week, will suit you better, it will do just as well for me. There will be n.o.body but my wife and daughters, so don't dress.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

P.S.--Will you be disgusted if in imitation of the "English Men of Letters" I set agoing an "English Men of Science." Few people have any conception of the part Englishmen have played in science, and I think it would be both useful and interesting to bring the truth home to the English mind.