The risk is great and the 300 pounds a year is not worth it.  Foster knows all about the place; ask him if I am not right.

Many thanks for the suggestion about Spirula.  But the matter is in a state in which no one can be of any use but myself.  At present I am at the end of my tether and I mean to be off to the Engadine a fortnight hence—­most likely not to return before October.

Not even the sweet voice of —­ will lure me from my retirement.  The Academy dinner knocked me up for three days, though I drank no wine, ate very little, and vanished after the Prince of Wales’ speech.  The truth is I have very little margin of strength to go upon even now, though I am marvellously better than I was.

I am very glad that you see the importance of doing battle with the clericals.  I am astounded at the narrowness of view of many of our colleagues on this point.  They shut their eyes to the obstacles which clericalism raises in every direction against scientific ways of thinking, which are even more important than scientific discoveries.

I desire that the next generation may be less fettered by the gross and stupid superstitions of orthodoxy than mine has been.  And I shall be well satisfied if I can succeed to however small an extent in bringing about that result.

I am, yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, May 25, 1889.

My dear Lankester,

I cannot attend the Council meeting on the 29th.  I have a meeting of the Trustees of the British Museum to-day, and to be examined by a Committee on Monday, and as the sudden heat half kills me I shall be fit for nothing but to slink off to Eastbourne again.

However, I do hope the Council will be very careful what they say or do about the immature fish question.  The thing has been discussed over and over again ad nauseam, and I doubt if there is anything to be added to the evidence in the blue-books.

The idee fixe of the British public, fishermen, M.P.’s and ignorant persons generally is that all small fish, if you do not catch them, grow up into big fish.  They cannot be got to understand that the wholesale destruction of the immature is the necessary part of the general order of things, from codfish to men.

You seem to have some very interesting things to talk about at the Royal Institution.

Do you see any chance of educating the white corpuscles of the human race to destroy the theological bacteria which are bred in parsons?

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, May 19, 1889.

My dear Donnelly,

The Vice-President’s letter has brought home to me one thing very clearly, and that is, that I had no business to sign the Report.  Of course he has a right to hold me responsible for a document to which my name is attached, and I should look more like a fool than I ever wish to do, if I had to tell him that I had taken the thing entirely on trust.  I have always objected to the sleeping partnership in the Examination; and unless it can be made quite clear that I am nothing but a “consulting doctor,” I really must get out of it entirely.