I suppose that Nebuchadnezzar was quite happy so long as he grazed and kept clear of Babylon; if so, I can hold him for my Scripture parallel.

I wish I could accept your moral Number 2, but there is amazingly little evidence of “reverential care for unoffending creation” in the arrangements of nature, that I can discover.  If our ears were sharp enough to hear all the cries of pain that are uttered in the earth by men and beasts, we should be deafened by one continuous scream!

And yet the wealth of superfluous loveliness in the world condemns pessimism.  It is a hopeless riddle.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

Please remember me to Mrs. Skelton.

[The election of a new Headmaster (Dr. Warre) at Eton, where he was a member of the Governing Body, was a matter of no small concern to him at this moment.  Some parts of the existing system seemed impossible to alter, though a reform in the actual scheme and scope of teaching seemed to him both possible and necessary for the future well-being of the school.  He writes to his eldest son on July 6, 1886:—­]

The whole system of paying the Eton masters by the profits of the boarding-houses they keep is detestable to my mind, but any attempt to alter it would be fatal.

...I look to the new appointment with great anxiety.  It will make or mar Eton.  If the new Headmaster has the capacity to grasp the fact that the world has altered a good deal since the Eton system was invented, and if he has the sense to adapt Eton to the new state of things, without letting go that which was good in the old system, Eton may become the finest public school in the country.

If on the contrary he is merely a vigorous representative of the old system pure and simple, the school will go to the dogs.

I think it is not unlikely that there may be a battle in the Governing Body over the business, and that I shall be on the losing side.  But I am used to that, and shall do what I think right nevertheless.

[The same letter contains his reply to a suggestion that he should join a society whose object was to prevent a railway from being run right through the Lake district.]

I am not much inclined to join the “Lake District Defence Society.”  I value natural beauty as much as most people—­indeed I value it so much, and think so highly of its influence that I would make beautiful scenery accessible to all the world, if I could.  If any engineering or mining work is projected which will really destroy the beauty of the Lakes, I will certainly oppose it, but I am not disposed, as Goschen said, to “give a blank cheque” to a Defence Society, the force of which is pretty certain to be wielded by the most irrational fanatics amongst its members.

Only the other day I walked the whole length of Bassenthwaite from Keswick and back, and I cannot say that the little line of rails which runs along the lake, now coming into view and now disappearing, interfered with my keen enjoyment of the beauty of the lake any more than the macadamised road did.  And if it had not been for that railway I should not have been able to make Keswick my headquarters, and I should have lost my day’s delight.