So with regard to the other great Christian dogmas, the immortality of the soul, and the future state of rewards and punishments, what possible objection a priori can I--who am compelled perforce to believe in the immortality of what we call Matter and Force and in a very unmistakable PRESENT state of rewards and punishments for all our deeds--have to these doctrines? Give me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them. But read Butler, and see to what drivel even his great mind descends when he has to talk about the immortality of the soul! I have never seen an argument on that subject which from a scientific point of view is worth the paper it is written upon. All resolve themselves into this formula:--The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is very pleasant and very useful, therefore it is true. All the grand language about "human aspiration," "consistency with the divine justice," etc., etc., collapses into this at last--Better the misery of the "Vale! in aeternum vale!" ten times over than the opium of such empty sophisms--I have drunk of that cup to the bottom. I am called away and must close my letter. Don't trouble to answer it unless you are so minded. Ever yours faithfully, T.H. Huxley. Jermyn Street, May 22, 1863. My dear Kingsley, Pray excuse my delay in replying to your letter. I have been very much pressed for time for these two or three days. First touching the action of the spermatozoon. The best information you can find on the subject is, I think, in Newport's papers in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1851, 1853, and 1854, especially the 1853 paper. Newport treats only of the Frog, but the information he gives is very full and definite. Allen Thomson's very accurate and learned article "Ovum" in Todd's "Cyclopaedia" is also well worth looking through, though unfortunately it is least full just where you want most information. In French there is Coste's "Developpement des Corps organises" and the volume on "Development" by Bischoff in the French translation of the last edition of Soemmering's "Anatomy." So much for your inquiries as to the matters of fact. Next, as to questions of speculation. If any expression of ignorance on my part will bring us nearer we are likely to come into absolute contact, for the possibilities of "may be" are, to me, infinite. I know nothing of Necessity, abominate the word Law (except as meaning that we know nothing to the contrary), and am quite ready to admit that there may be some place, "other side of nowhere," par exemple, where 2 + 2 = 5, and all bodies naturally repel one another instead of gravitating together.