to separate the substance of the theory from its accidents, and to show that a variety, not only of hostile comments, but of friendly would-be improvements lose their raison d’etre to the careful student...

It is not essential to Darwin’s theory that anything more should be assumed than the facts of heredity, variation, and unlimited multiplication; and the validity of the deductive reasoning as to the effect of the last (that is, of the struggle for existence which it involves) upon the varieties resulting from the operation of the former.  Nor is it essential that one should take up any particular position in regard to the mode of variation, whether, for example, it takes place per saltum or gradually; whether it is definite in character or indefinite.  Still less are those who accept the theory bound to any particular views as to the causes of heredity or of variation.

[The remaining letters of the year trace the gradual bettering of health, from the “no improvement” of October to the almost complete disappearance of bad symptoms in December.  He had renounced Brighton, which he detested, in favour of Eastbourne, where the keen air of the downs and the daily walk over Beachy Head acted as a tolerable substitute for the Alps.  Though he would not miss the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, when he was to receive the Copley medal, one more link binding him to his old friend Hooker, he did not venture to stay for the dinner in the evening.

This autumn also he resigned his place on the board of Governors of Eton College.] “I think it must be a year and a half,” [he writes,] “since I attended a meeting, and I am not likely to do better in the future.”

4 Marlborough Place, October 28, 1888.

My dear Hooker,

Best thanks for your suggestion about the cottage, namely “that before you decide on Brighton Mrs. Huxley should come down and look at the cottage below my house” at Sunningdale, but I do not see my way to adopting it.  A house, however small, involves servants and ties one to one place.  The conditions that suit me do not seem to be found anywhere but in the high Alps, and I can’t afford to keep a second house in the country and pass the summer in Switzerland as well.

We are going to Brighton (not because we love it, quite t’other) on account of the fine weather that is to be had there in November and December.  We shall be back for some weeks about Christmas, and then get away somewhere else—­Malvern possibly—­out of the east winds of February and March.

I do not like this nomadic life at all, but it appears to be Hobson’s choice between that and none.

I am sorry to hear you are troubled by your ears.  I am so deaf that I begin to fight shy of society.  It irritates me not to hear; it irritates me still more to be spoken to as if I were deaf, and the absurdity of being irritated on the last ground irritates me still more.