Medical philosophy draws a most useful and necessary distinction between “exciting” and “predisposing” causes—­and nowhere is it more needful to keep this distinction in mind than in history—­and especially in estimating the action of individuals on the course of human affairs.  Platonic and Stoical philosophy—­prophetic liberalism—­the strong democratic socialism of the Jewish political system—­the existence of innumerable sodalities for religious and social purposes—­had thrown the ancient world into a state of unstable equilibrium.  With such predisposing causes at work, the exciting cause of enormous changes might be relatively insignificant.  The powder was there—­a child might throw the match which should blow up the whole concern.

I do not want to seem irreverent, still less depreciatory, of noble men, but it strikes me that in the present case the Nazarenes were the match and Paul the child.

An ingrained habit of trying to explain the unknown by the known leads me to find the key to Nazarenism in Quakerism.  It is impossible to read the early history of the Friends without seeing that George Fox was a person who exerted extraordinary influence over the men with whom he came in contact; and it is equally impossible (at least for me) to discover in his copious remains an original thought.

Yet what with the corruption of the Stuarts, the Phariseeism of the Puritans, and the Sadduceeism of the Church, England was in such a state, that before his death he had gathered about him a vast body of devoted followers, whose patient endurance of persecution is a marvel.  Moreover, the Quakers have exercised a prodigious influence on later English life.

But I have scribbled a great deal too much already.  You will see what I mean.

To Mr. W. Platt Ball.

Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, October 27, 1890.

Dear Sir,

I have been through your book, which has greatly interested me, at a hand-gallop; and I have by no means given it the attention it deserves.  But the day after to-morrow I shall be going into a new house here, and it may be some time before I settle down to work in it—­so that I prefer to seem hasty, rather than indifferent to your book and still more to your letter.

As to the book, in the first place.  The only criticism I have to offer—­in the ordinary depreciatory sense of the word—­is that pages 128 to 137 seem to me to require reconsideration, partly from a substantial and partly from a tactical point of view.  There is much that is disputable on the one hand, and not necessary to your argument on the other.

Otherwise it seems to me that the case could hardly be better stated.  Here are a few notes and queries that have occurred to me.

Page 41.  Extinction of Tasmanians—­rather due to the British colonist, who was the main agent of their extirpation, I fancy.

Page 67.  Birds’ sternums are a great deal more than surfaces of origin for the pectoral muscles—­e.g. movable lid of respiratory bellows.  This not taken into account by Darwin.