To my observation, human nature has not sensibly changed during the last thirty years.  I doubt not that there are truths as plainly obvious and as generally denied as those contained in “Man’s Place in Nature,” now awaiting enunciation.  If there is a young man of the present generation who has taken as much trouble as I did to assure himself that they are truths, let him come out with them, without troubling his head about the barking of the dogs of St. Ernulphus.  Veritas praevalebit—­some day; and even if she does not prevail in his time, he himself will be all the better and wiser for having tried to help her.  And let him recollect that such great reward is full payment for all his labour and pains.

[The following letter refers to the newly published “Man’s Place in Nature.”  Miss H. Darwin had suggested a couple of corrections:—­]

Jermyn Street, February 25, 1863.

My dear Darwin,

Please to say to Miss Henrietta Minos Rhadamanthus Darwin that I plead guilty to the justice of both criticisms, and throw myself on the mercy of the court.

As extenuating circumstances with respect to indictment Number 1, see prefatory notice.  Extenuating circumstance Number 2—­that I picked up “Atavism” in Pritchard years ago, and as it is a much more convenient word than “Hereditary transmission of variations,” it slipped into equivalence in my mind, and I forgot all about the original limitation.

But if these excuses should in your judgment tend to aggravate my offences, suppress ’em like a friend.  One may always hope more from a lady’s tender-heartedness than from her sense of justice.

Publisher has just sent to say that I must give him any corrections for second thousand of my booklet immediately.

Why did not Miss Etty send any critical remarks on that subject by the same post?  I should be most immensely obliged for them.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[During this period of special work at the anthropological side of the Evolution theory, Huxley made two important contributions to the general question.

As secretary of the Geological Society, the duty of delivering the anniversary address in 1862 fell to him in the absence of the president, Leonard Horner, who had been driven by ill-health to winter in Italy.

The object at which he aimed appears from the postscript of a brief note of February 19, 1862, to Hooker:—­]

I am writing the body of the address, and I am going to criticise Paleontological doctrines in general in a way that will flutter their nerves considerable.

Darwin is met everywhere with—­Oh this is opposed to paleontology, or that is opposed to paleontology—­and I mean to turn round and ask, “Now, messieurs les Paleontologues, what the devil do you really know?”

I have not changed sex, although the postscript is longer than the letter.