I meant to have written to you yesterday, but things put it out of my head.  If there is to be any fund raised at all, I am quite of your mind that it should be a scientific fund and not a mere naturalists’ fund.  Sectarianism in such matters is ridiculous, and besides that, in this particular case it is bad policy.  For the word “Naturalist” unfortunately includes a far lower order of men than chemist, physicist, or mathematician.  You don’t call a man a mathematician because he has spent his life in getting as far as quadratics; but every fool who can make bad species and worse genera is a “Naturalist"!—­save the mark!  Imagine the chemists petitioning the Crown for a Pension for P—­ if he wanted one! and yet he really is a philosopher compared to poor dear A—.

“Naturalists” therefore are far more likely to want help than any other class of scientific men, and they would be greatly damaging their own interests if they formed an exclusive fund for themselves.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

CHAPTER 1.13.

1859.

[In November 1859 the “Origin of Species” was published, and a new direction was given to Huxley’s activities.  Ever since Darwin and Wallace had made their joint communication to the Linnean Society in the preceding July, expectation had been rife as to the forthcoming book.  Huxley was one of the few privileged to learn Darwin’s argument before it was given to the world; but the greatness of the book, mere instalment as it was of the long accumulated mass of notes, almost took him by surprise.  Before this time, he had taken up a thoroughly agnostic attitude with regard to the species question, for he could not accept the creational theory, yet sought in vain among the transmutationists for any cause adequate to produce transmutation.  He had had many talks with Darwin, and though ready enough to accept the main point, maintained such a critical attitude on many others, that Darwin was not by any means certain of the effect the published book would produce upon him.  Indeed, in his 1857 notebook, I find jotted down under the head of his paper on Pygocephalus (read at the Geological Society),] “anti-progressive confession of faith.” [Darwin was the more anxious, as, when he first put pen to paper, he had fixed in his mind three judges, by whose decision he determined mentally to abide.  These three were Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley.  If these three came round, partly through the book, partly through their own reflections, he could feel that the subject was safe.  “No one,” writes Darwin on November 13, “has read it, except Lyell, with whom I have had much correspondence.  Hooker thinks him a complete convert, but he does not seem so in his letters to me; but is evidently deeply interested in the subject.”  And again:  “I think I told you before that Hooker is a complete convert.  If I can convert Huxley I shall be content.” ("Life” volume 2 page 221.)