Before leaving London to begin his work at Tenby as Naturalist to the Survey, he delivered at St. Martin’s Hall, on July 22, an address on the “Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences. (The subsequent reference is to the words, “I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms will bear his own share with more courage and submission; and will, at any rate, view with suspicion those weakly amiable theories of the divine government, which would have us believe pain to be an oversight and a mistake, to be corrected by and by.” ("Collected Essays” 3 page 62.) This essay contains the definition of science as “trained and organised common sense,” and the reference to a new “Peter Bell” which suggested Miss May Kendall’s spirited parody of Wordsworth:—­

  Primroses by the river’s brim
  Dicotyledons were to him,
  And they were nothing more.)

This, when it came out later as a pamphlet, he sent to his Tenby friend Dr. Dyster (of whom hereafter), to whose criticism on one passage he replied on October 10:—­]

...I am rejoiced you liked my speechment.  It was written hastily and is, like its speaker, I fear, more forcible than eloquent, but it can lay claim to the merit of being sincere.

My intention on page 28 was by no means to express any satisfaction at the worms being as badly off as ourselves, but to show that pain being everywhere is inevitable, and therefore like all other inevitable things to be borne.  The rest of it is the product of my scientific Calvinism, which fell like a shell at your feet when we were talking over the fire.

I doubt, or at least I have no confidence in, the doctrine of ultimate happiness, and I am more inclined to look the opposite possibility fully in the face, and if that also be inevitable, make up my mind to bear it also.

You will tell me there are better consolations than Stoicism; that may be, but I do not possess them, and I have found my “grin and bear it” philosophy stand me in such good stead in my course through oceans of disgust and chagrin, that I should be loth to give it up.

[The summer of 1854 was spent in company with the Busks at Tenby, amid plenty of open-air work and in great peace of mind, varied with a short visit to Liverpool in order to talk business with his friend Forbes, who was eager that Huxley should join him in Edinburgh.]

Tenby, South Wales, September 3, 1854.

I have been here since the middle of August, getting rid of my yellow face and putting on a brown one, banishing dyspepsias and hypochondrias and all such other town afflictions to the four winds, and rejoicing exceedingly that I am out of the way of that pest, the cholera, which is raging just at present in London.

After I had arranged to come here to do a lot of work of my own which can only be done by the seaside, our Director, Sir Henry de la Beche, gave me a special mission of his own whereby I have the comfort of having my expenses paid, but at the same time get it taken out of me in additional labour, so my recreation is anything but leisure.