My dear Morley,
Very many thanks for Diderot. I have made a plunge into the first volume and found it very interesting. I wish you had put a portrait of him as a frontispiece. I have seen one—a wonderful face, something like Goethe's.
I am picking at Hume at odd times. It seems to me that I had better make an analysis and criticism of the "Inquiry," the backbone of the essay—as it touches all the problems which interest us most just now. I have already sketched out a chapter on Miracles, which will, I hope, be very edifying in consequence of its entire agreement with the orthodox arguments against Hume's a priori reasonings against miracles.
Hume wasn't half a sceptic after all. And so long as he got deep enough to worry Orthodoxy, he did not care to go to the bottom of things.
He failed to see the importance of suggestions already made both by
Locke and Berkeley.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
September 30, 1878.
My dear Morley,
Praise me! I have been hard at work at Hume at Penmaenmawr, and I have got the hard part of the business—the account of his philosophy—blocked out in the bodily shape of about 180 pages foolscap manuscript.