So, from your own point of view, suppose a mind-stuff—­logos—–­a noumenal cosmic light such as is shadowed in the fourth gospel.  The brain of a dog will convert it into one set of phenomenal pictures, and the brain of a man into another.  But in both cases the result is the consequence of the way in which the respective brains perform their “functions.”

Yet one point.

The actions we call sinful are as much the consequence of the order of nature as those we call virtuous.  They are part and parcel of the struggle for existence through which all living things have passed, and they have become sins because man alone seeks a higher life in voluntary association.

Therefore the instrument has never been marred; on the contrary, we are trying to get music out of harps, sacbuts, and psalteries, which never were in tune and seemingly never will be.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[Few years passed without some utterance from Huxley on the subject of education, especially scientific education.  This year we have a letter to Professor Ray Lankester touching the science teaching at Oxford.]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, January 28, 1891.

Dear Lankester,

I met Foster at the Athenaeum when I was in town last week, and we had some talk about your “very gentle” stirring of the Oxford pudding.  I asked him to let you know when occasion offered, that (as I had already said to Burdon Sanderson) I drew a clear line apud biology between the medical student and the science student.

With respect to the former, I consider it ought to be kept within strict limits, and made simply a Vorschule to human anatomy and physiology.

On the other hand, the man who is going out in natural science ought to have a much larger dose, especially in the direction of morphology.  However, from what I understood from Foster, there seems a doubt about the “going out” in “Natural Science”, so I had better confine myself to the medicos.  Their burden is already so heavy that I do not want to see it increased by a needless weight even of elementary biology.

Very many thanks for the “Zoological articles” just arrived.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

Don’t write to the “Times” about anything; look at the trouble that comes upon a harmless man for two months, in consequence.

[The following letter, which I quote from the “Yorkshire Herald” of April 11, 1891, was written in answer to some inquiries from Mr. J. Harrison, who read a paper on Technical Education as applied to Agriculture, before the Easingwold Agricultural Club.]