WCP5346

[1]¹

Kew

Monday

[2 Oct. 1871]²

Dear Darwin

I return Huxley's³ article which I have read with all the admiration I can express.⁴ What a wonderful Essayist he is & incomparable critic & ^{defender of the faithful.} Well, I think you are avenged of your Enemy, — but ^are not the happier for that — though you must be for the spirit & body which the avenger has given to the subject, & above all for the grand use he has made of your [2] ^own argument for confuting your enemy. What you must feel, & always feel, is, that peculiar & quite unreasonable bitter sorrowing which a man excites who praises you to your face & abuses you behind your back. — Why should this excite any thing but contempt at worst, or pity at best? & yet ^{there is} no man with generous emotions but feels more sad & sorry over such an enemy ^treatment than either angry or vindictive.

[3] The Psychological pages ^passages seem to me to be wonderfully clear & good, how tight he grasps ^clothes a difficult idea with in language. I was particularly struck with the paragraphs on Neurosis & Psychosis. — consciousness & it's [sic] physical basis — but really it is difficult to single out either passages or subjects, all is so good & there is so much power & acumen in the treatment of every branch of his subject. — you may call it an essay, a critique — an exposition — or discussion — an enquiry — or what else you will — you may read for one & all of these aims.

The Exposition of Mivart's⁵ presumptuous ignorance in citing the Catholic fathers [4] is delicious — that's the last pitfall the poor devil expected to be snared into.

The tumbling[?] over Wallace is however if not an equal feat, a far far greater service to Science.⁶

The appeal to conscience in the matter of the clergy & the 6 days is very powerful, & must make many a poor Devil wince in the pulpit. And the undisguised ^quiet contempt with which he treats the Squires & Parsons is extraordinarily humorous in it's [sic] manner.

Well, the article has been a God-send to me, for I am very very low — & cannot get my spirits up — about my poor Mother's⁷ state. I have just returned from Torquay. I am also in the most detestable position that a scientific [5] man, or an officer, or a gentleman, can be with my Lord & Master Ayrton⁸, who I have officially denounced to the 1^st. Lord of the Treasury⁹ for his conduct to me & to Kew: & I need not say that our lives are not the happiest after such an Explosion!¹⁰. How it will all end God knows, I began the battle with heart & spirit — & gloried in it — but my Mother's [1 illeg. word deleted] ^condition has poisoned the whole, & I also left my sister¹¹ very ill, even for her — so I am in the state of utter disquiet: not caring a farthing what the Treasury or Ayrton do — What a poor lot we men are — a woman would be twice as rational as I am, under twice the hard lines.

God Bless you dear old friend | Y[ou]rs affect[ionately] | J D Hooker [signature]