With best wishes to Mrs. Skelton and yourself, ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[With the article in the February number of the “Nineteenth Century,” he concluded his tilt with Mr. Gladstone upon the interpretation of Genesis.  His supposed] “unjaded appetite” [for controversy was already satiated; and he begged leave to retire from] “that ’atmosphere of contention’ in which Mr. Gladstone has been able to live, alert and vigorous beyond the common race of men, as if it were purest mountain air,” [for the] “Elysium” of scientific debate, which “suits my less robust constitution better.” [A vain hope.  Little as he liked controversy at bottom, in spite of the skill—­it must be allowed, at times, a pleasurable skill—­in using the weapons of debate, he was not to avoid it any more than he was to avoid the east wind when he went to Bournemouth from early in February till the end of March, of which he writes on February 23:—­]

The “English Naples” is rather Florentine so far as a bitter cold east wind rather below than above 0 degrees C. goes, but from all I hear it is a deal better than London, and I am picking up in spite of it.  I wish I were a Holothuria, and could get on without my viscera.  I should do splendidly then.

[Here he wrote a long article on the “Evolution of Theology” ("Collected Essays” 4 287) which appeared in the March and April numbers of the “Nineteenth Century.”  It was a positive statement of the views he had arrived at, which underlay the very partial—­and therefore misleading—­exposition of them possible in controversy.  He dealt with the subject, not with reference to the truth or falsehood of the notions under review, but purely as a question of anthropology,] “a department of biology to which I have at various times given a good deal of attention.” [Starting with the familiar ground of the Hebrew Scriptures, he thus explains the paleontological method he proposes to adopt:—­]

In the venerable record of ancient life, miscalled a book, when it is really a library comparable to a selection of works from English literature between the times of Beda and those of Milton, we have the stratified deposits (often confused and even with their natural order inverted) left by the stream of the intellectual and moral life of Israel during many centuries.  And, embedded in these strata, there are numerous remains of forms of thought which once lived, and which, though often unfortunately mere fragments, are of priceless value to the anthropologist.  Our task is to rescue these from their relatively unimportant surroundings, and by careful comparison with existing forms of theology to make the dead world which they record live again.

[A subsequent letter to Professor Lewis Campbell bears upon this essay.  It was written in answer to an inquiry prompted by the comparison here drawn between the primitive spiritual theories of the books of Judges and Samuel, and the very similar development of ideas among the Tongans, as described by Mariner, who lived many years among the natives.]