If I may make another criticism it is that, to my mind, atheism is, on purely philosophical grounds, untenable.  That there is no evidence of the existence of such a being as the God of the theologians is true enough; but strictly scientific reasoning can take us no further.  Where we know nothing we can neither affirm nor deny with propriety.

[The other is in answer to the Bishop of Ripon, enclosing a few lines on the principal representatives of modern science, which he had asked for.]

4 Marlborough Place, June 16, 1887.

My dear Bishop of Ripon,

I shall be very glad if I can be of any use to you now and always.  But it is not an easy task to put into half-a-dozen sentences, up to the level of your vigorous English, a statement that shall be unassailable from the point of view of a scientific fault-finder—­which shall be intelligible to the general public and yet accurate.

I have made several attempts and enclose the final result.  I think the substance is all right, and though the form might certainly be improved, I leave that to you.  When I get to a certain point of tinkering my phrases I have to put them aside for a day or two.

Will you allow me to suggest that it might be better not to name any living man?  The temple of modern science has been the work of many labourers not only in our own but in other countries.  Some have been more busy in shaping and laying the stones, some in keeping off the Sanballats, some prophetwise in indicating the course of the science of the future.  It would be hard to say who has done best service.  As regards Dr. Joule, for example, no doubt he did more than any one to give the doctrine of the conservation of energy precise expression, but Mayer and others run him hard.

Of deceased Englishmen who belong to the first half of the Victorian epoch, I should say that Faraday, Lyell, and Darwin had exerted the greatest influence, and all three were models of the highest and best class of physical philosophers.

As for me, in part from force of circumstance and in part from a conviction I could be of most use in that way, I have played the part of something between maid-of-all-work and gladiator-general for Science, and deserve no such prominence as your kindness has assigned to me.

With our united kind regards to Mrs. Carpenter and yourself, ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[A brief note, also, to Lady Welby, dated July 25, is characteristic of his attitude towards unverified speculation.]

I have looked through the paper you have sent me, but I cannot undertake to give any judgment upon it.  Speculations such as you deal with are quite out of my way.  I get lost the moment I lose touch of valid fact and incontrovertible demonstration and find myself wandering among large propositions, which may be quite true but which would involve me in months of work if I were to set myself seriously to find out whether, and in what sense, they are true.  Moreover, at present, what little energy I possess is mortgaged to quite other occupations.