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Letters to the Editor.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY AND HIS CRITICS.

The Government School of Mines,

Jermyn Street, London,

January 21, 1862.

Sir,— In accepting the Invitation to lecture in Edinburgh with which the directors of the Philosophical Institution honoured me last year, I was fully aware of the unusual difficulty of the task I undertook. For my acquaintance with the conditions of the enterprise led me to see the necessity of striving towards the attainment of three very different objects—the first and the most important of these being the discharge of my obligation to the Directors and of my duty to myself, to state fully and fairly those conclusions at which I, as a man of science, had arrived, after no brief or hasty study of a great scientific question.

My second aim was, not only to avoid all unnecessary offence to persons whose views differed from my own, but to present the doctrines I espouse in such a manner as to win at least a fair and favourable consideration even from those who had been taught to regard them with disfavour.

And, in the last place, while feeling assured of the just and reasonable dealing of the respectable part of the Scottish press, I naturally hoped for noisy injustice and unreason from the rest, seeing, as I did, the best security for the dissemination of my views through regions which they might not otherwise reach, in the certainty of a violent attack by an Edinburgh paper for which the striking abilities of the lamented Hugh Miller once earned an honest fame, but which since his death has swiftly sunk to its now universally recognised position of a regenerate "Satirist" or Pharisaic "Age."

The fulfilment of these my aspirations has afforded me unfeigned satisfaction. For, much as I was obliged to condense my lectures, the accusation that their meaning or purport could be doubted has yet to be brought against me.

Nor has any report which I have seen affirmed that my audience listened with other than the kindest and most uninterrupted attention. And if I now recal with genuine pleasure the unmixed applause which fell upon my ears, it is not, I trust, because that recollection solaces a petty vanity, but because it bids me continue in the faith on which I acted—that a man who speaks out honestly and fearlessly that which he knows, and that which he believes, will always enlist the good-will and the respect, however much he may fail in winning the assent, of his fellow-men.

Thus, my first ends have assuredly been attained; and who that has read in the Witness the articles (exceptional, even in its columns, I trust) directed against my doctrines, my audience, the directors of the Philosophical Institution, and myself, can accuse me of having failed in reaching the third?

I do not trouble you with this letter, however, for the mere purpose of expressing my justifiable satisfaction at a success, whose sole importance consists in the conclusive evidence which it affords of the feebleness of the hold which the bigots really have over the minds of your countrymen; nor will you suspect me of any intention of replying directly or indirectly to the Witness. I should not even feel justified in asking permission to occupy your well-filled columns with a detailed reply to criticisms of such a totally different stamp, as those which are to be found in the pages of the Week of Friday last.

But I desire to be allowed to state that all such comments as these last are very welcome, and will receive my most earnest and respectful attention. I am not without hope that when my intention of publishing these well-abused lectures in full is carried into effect, the scope and weight of my argument will wear a different aspect to my candid, though hostile critic; but, in the meanwhile, let me thank my unknown adversary for his practical demonstration, that even the strongest dissent from, and opposition to, the views held by my revered friend Mr Darwin, and by myself (so largely, in these matters, a mere disciple of that great naturalist) are perfectly compatible with the courtesy of a gentleman, the language of a scholar, the knowledge of a man of science, and even (incredible as this may seem to the Witness) with the genuine piety of an orthodox Christian.— I am &c.

Thomas Henry Huxley, F.R.V.,

Professor of Natural History in the Government Schools of Mines.