Be it as it may, I shall prize your book, both for itself, and as a proof that you are aware of the existence of such a person as
Your faithful servant,
C. Kingsley.
My father's old friend, the Rev. J. Brodie Innes, of Milton Brodie, who was for many years Vicar of Down, in some reminiscences of my father which he was so good as to give me, writes in the same spirit:
"We never attacked each other. Before I knew Mr. Darwin I had adopted, and publicly expressed, the principle that the study of natural history, geology, and science in general, should be pursued without reference to the Bible. That the Book of Nature and Scripture came from the same Divine source, ran in parallel lines, and when properly understood would never cross....
"In [a] letter, after I had left Down, he [Darwin] writes, 'We often differed, but you are one of those rare mortals from whom one can differ and yet feel no shade of animosity, and that is a thing [of] which I should feel very proud if any one could say [it] of me.'
"On my last visit to Down, Mr. Darwin said, at his dinner-table, 'Innes and I have been fast friends for thirty years, and we never thoroughly agreed on any subject but once, and then we stared hard at each other, and thought one of us must be very ill.'"
The following extract from a letter to Lyell, Feb. 23, 1860, has a certain bearing on the points just touched on:
"With respect to Bronn's[195] objection that it cannot be shown how life arises, and likewise to a certain extent Asa Gray's remark that natural selection is not a vera causa, I was much interested by finding accidentally in Brewster's Life of Newton, that Leibnitz objected to the law of gravity because Newton could not show what gravity itself is. As it has chanced, I have used in letters this very same argument, little knowing that any one had really thus objected to the law of gravity. Newton answers by saying that it is philosophy to make out the movements of a clock, though you do not know why the weight descends to the ground. Leibnitz further objected that the law of gravity was opposed to Natural Religion! Is this not curious? I really think I shall use the facts for some introductory remarks for my bigger book."
C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Down, March 3rd [1860].