Many thanks for your book which I have been diving into at odd times as leisure served, and picking up many good things.
One of the best is what you say near the end about science gradually conquering the materialism of popular religion.
It will startle the Puritans who always coolly put the matter the other way; but it is profoundly true.
These people are for the most part mere idolaters with a Bible-fetish, who urgently stand in need of conversion by Extra-christian Missionaries.
It takes all one's practical experience of the importance of Puritan ways of thinking to overcome one's feeling of the unreality of their beliefs. I had pretty well forgotten how real to them "the man in the next street" is, till your citation of their horribly absurd dogmas reminded me of it. If you can persuade them that Paul is fairly interpretable in your sense, it may be the beginning of better things, but I have my doubts if Paul would own you, if he could return to expound his own epistles.
I am glad you like my Descartes article. My business with my scientific friends is something like yours with the Puritans, nature being OUR Paul.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
26 Abbey Place, May 10, 1870.
[From the 14th to the 24th of April Huxley, accompanied by his friend Hooker, made a trip to the Eifel country. His sketch-book is full of rapid sketches of the country, many of them geological; one day indeed there are eight, another nine such.