The two other friends with whom in former time she had been a fellow-worker were Arthur Clough and her Aunt, Mrs. Smith. Miss Nightingale's other Essays led to much correspondence with Mr. Jowett, but as they failed to come up to his standard they were laid aside. Many of her letters to him were themselves almost Essays. Extracts from one or two consecutive letters will show the kind of discussions into which Miss Nightingale loved to involve her Oxford friend, and upon which he was nothing loath to enter:-- (_Benjamin Jowett to Miss Nightingale._) TORQUAY, _Sept._ 29 [1871].... I must answer your letter by driblets. When you admit that a part of the witness of the character of God is to be sought for in nature, how do you distinguish between the true and false witness of nature? For we cannot deny that physical good is sometimes at variance with moral--_e.g._ in marriage the sole or chief principle ought to be health and strength in the parents whether with or without a marriage ceremony--in other words Plato's Republic: I mean on physical principles. Or again the laws of physical improvement would require that we should get rid of sickly and deformed infants. And if, as Huxley would say, you reconstruct the world on a physical basis, you have to go to war with received principles of morality. I suppose that the answer is you must take man as a whole, and make morality and the mind the limit of physical improvement. But it is not easy to see what this limit is, because men's conceptions of morality vary, and although we may form ideals we have to descend from them in practice. Therefore I do not agree with you in thinking that there are no difficulties, although the old difficulties, about origin of evil &c., are generally a hocus of Theologians.