With our kindest regards.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
More last words:—What little faculty I have has been bestowed on the obituary of Darwin for Royal Society lately. I have been trying to make it an account of his intellectual progress, and I hope it will have some interest. Among other things I have been trying to set out the argument of the "Origin of Species," and reading the book for the nth time for that purpose. It is one of the hardest books to understand thoroughly that I know of, and I suppose that is the reason why even people like Romanes get so hopelessly wrong.
If you don't mind, I should be glad if you would run your eye over the thing when I get as far as the proof stage—Lord knows when that will be.
[A few days later he wrote again on the same subject, after reading the obituary of Asa Gray, the first American supporter of Darwin's theory.]
March 23, 1888.
I suppose Dana has sent you his obituary of Asa Gray.
The most curious feature I note in it is that neither of them seems to have mastered the principles of Darwin's theory. See the bottom of page 19 and the top of page 20. As I understand Darwin there is nothing "Anti-Darwinian" in either of the two doctrines mentioned.
Darwin has left the causes of variation and the question whether it is limited or directed by external conditions perfectly open.