I hear that Wace is to have another innings, and I am very glad of it, as it will give me the opportunity of putting the case once more as a connected argument.

It is Baur’s great merit to have seen that the key to the problem of Christianity lies in the Epistle to the Galatians.  No doubt he and his followers rather overdid the thing, but that is always the way with those who take up a new idea.

I have had for some time the notion of dealing with the “Three great myths”—­1.  Creation; 2.  Fall; 3.  Deluge; but I suspect I am getting to the end of my tether physically, and shall have to start for the Engadine in another month’s time.

Many thanks for your congratulations about my daughter’s marriage.  No two people could be better suited for one another, and there is a charming little grand-daughter of the first marriage to be cared for.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[One more piece of writing dates from this time.  He writes to his wife on March 2:—­]

A man who is bringing out a series of portraits of celebrities, with a sketch of their career attached, has bothered me out of my life for something to go with my portrait, and to escape the abominable bad taste of some of the notices, I have done that.  I shall show it you before it goes back to Engel in proof.

This sketch of his life is the brief autobiography which is printed at the beginning of volume 1 of the “Collected Essays”.  He was often pressed, both by friends and by strangers, to give them some more autobiography; but moved either by dislike of any approach to egotism, or by the knowledge that if biography is liable to give a false impression, autobiography may leave one still more false, he constantly refused to do so, especially so long as he had capacity for useful work.  I found, however, among his papers, an entirely different sketch of his early life, half-a-dozen sheets describing the time he spent in the East end, with an almost Carlylean sense of the horrible disproportions of life.  I cannot tell whether this was a first draft for the present autobiography, or the beginnings of a larger undertaking.

Several letters of miscellaneous interest were written before the move to the Engadine took place.  They touch on such points as the excessive growth of scientific clubs, the use of alcohol for brain workers, advice to one who was not likely to “suffer fools gladly” about applying for the assistant secretaryship of the British Association, and the question of the effects of the destruction of immature fish, besides personal matters.]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, March 22, 1889.

My dear Hooker,

I suppose the question of amalgamation with the Royal is to be discussed at the Phil.  Club.  The sooner something of the kind takes place the better.  There is really no raison d’etre left for the Phil.  Club, and considering the hard work of scientific men in these days, clubs are like hypotheses, not to be multiplied beyond necessity.