Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1Huxley, Thomas Henry
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Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895; Naturalists -- England -- Biography
This, when it came out later as a pamphlet, he sent to his Tenby friend
Dr. Dyster (of whom hereafter), to whose criticism on one passage he
replied on October 10:--]
...I am rejoiced you liked my speechment. It was written hastily and is,
like its speaker, I fear, more forcible than eloquent, but it can lay
claim to the merit of being sincere.
My intention on page 28 was by no means to express any satisfaction at
the worms being as badly off as ourselves, but to show that pain being
everywhere is inevitable, and therefore like all other inevitable things
to be borne. The rest of it is the product of my scientific Calvinism,
which fell like a shell at your feet when we were talking over the fire.
I doubt, or at least I have no confidence in, the doctrine of ultimate
happiness, and I am more inclined to look the opposite possibility fully
in the face, and if that also be inevitable, make up my mind to bear it
also.
You will tell me there are better consolations than Stoicism; that may
be, but I do not possess them, and I have found my "grin and bear it"
philosophy stand me in such good stead in my course through oceans of
disgust and chagrin, that I should be loth to give it up.
[The summer of 1854 was spent in company with the Busks at Tenby, amid
plenty of open-air work and in great peace of mind, varied with a short
visit to Liverpool in order to talk business with his friend Forbes, who
was eager that Huxley should join him in Edinburgh.]
Tenby, South Wales, September 3, 1854.
I have been here since the middle of August, getting rid of my yellow
face and putting on a brown one, banishing dyspepsias and hypochondrias
and all such other town afflictions to the four winds, and rejoicing
exceedingly that I am out of the way of that pest, the cholera, which is
raging just at present in London.
After I had arranged to come here to do a lot of work of my own which
can only be done by the seaside, our Director, Sir Henry de la Beche,
gave me a special mission of his own whereby I have the comfort of
having my expenses paid, but at the same time get it taken out of me in
additional labour, so my recreation is anything but leisure.
October 14.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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