WCP2277

[1]

5 York Gate

NW

15 Nov [18]71¹

My dear Sir

Your letter² has given me more pleasure than any other criticism which my little book has called forth.³

Men of science, aware of the immense difficulty of their subjects, are naturally, like artists, averse from any 'amateur' or 'lay' attempts, even so slight as mine & I hence felt it to be some rashness, in addition to the inherent perplexities [2] of all dealing with the sphere which limit & lie beyond pure natural fact & its laws, to touch such themes at all. I shall now please myself with hoping that I have not been presumptuous.

Certainly not I only but every one would be curious to know what men like those whom you name hold on such topics. Darwin³ I know only through his books, & H[erbert]. Spencer³ only to 'speak to'; [3] but I have heard Huxley⁴ profess a serious doctrine of 'agnosticism', as he called it, on God & the human soul which I suppose to be his normal thought on all these matters. His high natural moral tone, making him 'a law to himself', I have sometimes fancied, rendered him satisfied in this agnostic acquiescence: although I hope he may see some day that a true science cannot exclude these regions — whatever conclusions [4] he may reach therein. But on all^such points, without ^{side of} his own lines, his fervour & his (too great) love of polemics seem to me to make him very fluctuating & contradictory — although with an air of dogmatic certainty at each turn. Might he not be much more than he is? If so, his friends should persuade him, wha as Virgil advised Dante 'lascia dir le genti' [Italian: Let the people talk]⁵ (curates included) & calmly practice his ^{and science's} own lofty way.

Ever truly yours | F. T. Palgrave [signature]