However, this between ourselves, I am seriously anxious to use what little stuff remains to me well, and I am not sure that I can do better service anywhere than in this line, though I don’t mean to have any more controversy if I can help it.

(Don’t laugh and repeat Darwin’s wickedness.)

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[However, this] “contribution to the next round” [seemed to the editor rather too pungent in tone.  Accordingly Huxley revised it, the letters which follow describing the process:—­]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., January 15, 1886.

My dear Knowles,

I will be with you at 1.30.  I spent three mortal hours this morning taming my wild cat.  He is now castrated; his teeth are filed, his claws are cut, he is taught to swear like a “mieu”; and to spit like a cough; and when he is turned out of the bag you won’t know him from a tame rabbit.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., January 20, 1886.

My dear Knowles,

Here is the debonnaire animal finally titivated, and I quite agree, much improved, though I mourn the loss of some of the spice.  But it is an awful smash as it stands—­worse than the first, I think.

I shall send you the manuscript of the “Evolution of Theology” to-day or to-morrow.  It will not do to divide it, as I want the reader to have an apercu of the whole process from Samuel of Israel to Sammy of Oxford.

I am afraid it will make thirty or thirty-five pages, but it is really very interesting, though I say it as shouldn’t.

Please have it set up in slip, though, as it is written after the manner of a judge’s charge, the corrections will not be so extensive, nor the strength of language so well calculated to make a judicious editor’s hair stand on end, as was the case with the enclosed (in its unregenerate state).

Ever yours very truly,

T.H.  Huxley.

[Some time later, on September 14, 1890, writing to Mr. Hyde Clarke, the philologist, who was ten years his senior, he remarks on his object in undertaking this controversy:—­]

I am glad to see that you are as active-minded as ever.  I have no doubt there is a great deal in what you say about the origin of the myths in Genesis.  But my sole point is to get the people who persist in regarding them as statements of fact to understand that they are fools.

The process is laborious, and not yet very fruitful of the desired conviction.

To Sir Joseph Prestwich.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., January 16, 1886.

My dear Prestwich,

Accept my best thanks for the volume of your Geology, which has just reached me.

I envy the vigour which has led you to tackle such a task, and I have no doubt that when I turn to your book for information I shall find reason for more envy in the thoroughness with which the task is done.