The distributional facts, when you work them in connection with morphology, are lovely. We put up with Donnelly on our way here. He has taken a cottage at Felday, eleven miles from hence, in lovely country—on lease. I shall have to set up a country residence some day, but as all my friends declare their own locality best, I find a decision hard. And it is a bore to be tied to one place.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
4 Marlborough Place, October 20, 1886.
My dear Hooker,
I wish you would not mind the trouble of looking through the enclosed chapter which I have written at F. Darwin's request, and tell me what you think of it. F.D. thinks I am hard upon the "Quarterly Article," but I read it a fresh and it is absolutely scandalous. The anonymous vilifiers of the present day will be none the worse for being reminded that they may yet hang in chains…
It occurs to me that it might be well to add a paragraph or two about the two chief objections made formerly and now to Darwin, the one, that it is introducing "chance" as a factor in nature, and the other that it is atheistic.
Both assertions are utter bosh. None but parsons believe in "chance"; and the philosophical difficulties of Theism now are neither greater nor less than they have been ever since theism was invented.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.