22nd. April.
My dear Huxley
I take it for granted that you have received the enclosed,2 it reached me on Saturday and I wrote to say that I was not prepared to undertake the examination.
On looking into my journal this morning the following case of homology3 struck me: it is quoted from Henry Moore,4 who himself is quoting from ‘Chymists’5 whom he considers as ‘more or less palpably mad’.6
‘The pure blood in man answers to the element of fire in the great world, his heart to the earth, his mouth to the Arctic pole, and the opposite orifice to the Antarctic pole!’7
Ever Yours John Tyndall | Kind regards to Mrs Huxley.8
RI MS JT/1/TYP/9/3157
IC HP 8:282a
Typed Transcript Only
[1857]: the year is given by the reference to letter 1375.
the enclosed: letter 1375, in which Tyndall is asked to continue being an examiner for commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich for less pay.
homology: sameness of relation; correspondence (OED).
Henry Moore: Henry More (1614–87), an English philosopher who wrote many works, especially on religious topics.
‘Chymists’: More was referring to Paracelsus and alchemists or iatrochemists generally.
‘more or less palpably mad’: H. More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus: Or, a Discourse of the Nature, Causes, Kinds and Cure of Enthusiasme (Flesher, 1656), on p. 41, ‘But I have observed generally of Chymists and Theosophists, as of severall other men more palpably mad, that their thoughts are carried much to Astrology’.
‘The pure blood in man… to the Antarctic pole!’: More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, p. 43. In the original passage, the words Arctic and Antarctic are spelled as Arctick and Antarctick.
Mrs Huxley: Henrietta Huxley.
Please cite as “Tyndall1381,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on