T.H. Huxley.
As Mr. G. Darwin wrote of the seance, "it has given me a lesson with respect to the worthlessness of evidence which I shall always remember, and besides will make me very diffident in trusting myself. Unless I had seen it, I could not have believed in the evidence of any one with such perfect bona fides as Mr. Y being so worthless."
[On receiving this report Mr. Darwin wrote ("Life" 2 page 188):—
Though the seance did tire you so much, it was, I think, really worth the exertion, as the same sort of things are done at all the seances…and now to my mind an enormous weight of evidence would be requisite to make me believe in anything beyond mere trickery.
The following letter to Mr. Morley, then editor of the "Fortnightly
Review," shows that my father was already thinking of writing upon
Hume, though he did not carry out this intention till 1878.
The article referred to in the second letter is that on Animals as
Automata.]
4 Marlborough Place, N.W., June 4, 1874.
My dear Mr. Morley,
I assure you that it was a great disappointment to me not to be able to visit you, but we had an engagement of some standing for Oxford.
Hume is frightfully tempting—I thought so only the other day when I saw the new edition advertised—and now I would gladly write about him in the "Fortnightly" if I were only sure of being able to keep any engagement to that effect I might make.