I see Mr. Gladstone has been trying to wrest your scripture to his own purposes, but it is no good.  Neither the fourfold nor the fivefold nor the sixfold order will wash.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

To Professor Poulton [Hope Professor of Zoology at Oxford.].

4 Marlborough Place, February 19, 1886.

Dear Mr. Poulton,

I return herewith the number of the “Expositor” with many thanks.  Canon Driver’s article contains as clear and candid a statement as I could wish of the position of the Pentateuchal cosmogony from his point of view.  If he more thoroughly understood the actual nature of paleontological succession—­I mean the species by species replacement of old forms by new,—­and if he more fully appreciated the great gulf fixed between the ideas of “creation” and of “evolution,” I think he would see (1) that the Pentateuch and science are more hopelessly at variance than even he imagines, and (2) that the Pentateuchal cosmogony does not come so near the facts of the case as some other ancient cosmogonies, notably those of the old Greek philosophers.

Practically, Canon Driver, as a theologian and Hebrew scholar, gives up the physical truth of the Pentateuchal cosmogony altogether.  All the more wonderful to me, therefore, is the way in which he holds on to it as embodying theological truth.  So far as this question is concerned, on all points which can be tested, the Pentateuchal writer states that which is not true.  What, therefore, is his authority on the matter—­creation by a Deity—­which cannot be tested?  What sort of “inspiration” is that which leads to the promulgation of a fable as divine truth, which forces those who believe in that inspiration to hold on, like grim death, to the literal truth of the fable, which demoralises them in seeking for all sorts of sophistical shifts to bolster up the fable, and which finally is discredited and repudiated when the fable is finally proved to be a fable?  If Satan had wished to devise the best means of discrediting “Revelation” he could not have done better.

Have you not forgotten to mention the leg of Archaeopteryx as a characteristically bird-like structure?  It is so, and it is to be recollected that at present we know nothing of the greater part of the skeletons of the older Mesozoic mammals—­only teeth and jaws.  What the shoulder-girdle of Stereognathus might be like is uncertain.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The following letters have a curious interest as showing what, in the eyes of a supporter of educational progress, might and might not be done at Oxford to help on scientific education:—­]

To the Master of Balliol.

4 Marlborough Place, December 21, 1885.

My dear Master [This is from the first draft of the letter.  Huxley’s letters to Jowett were destroyed by Jowett’s orders, together with the rest of his correspondence.],