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Darwin Correspondence Project

To T. H. Huxley   18 January 1879

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Jan 18th 1879

My dear Huxley

I have just finished your present of the life of Hume, & must thank you for the great pleasure which it has given me.—1 Your discussions are, as it seems to me, clear to a quite marvellous degree, & many of the little interspersed flashes of wit are delightful. I particularly enjoyed the pithy judgment in about 5 words on Comte.—2 Notwithstanding the clearness of every sentence, the subjects are in part so difficult, that I found them stiff reading. I fear, therefore, that it will be too stiff for the general public; but I heartily hope that this will prove to be a mistake, & in this case the intelligence of the public will be greatly exalted in my eyes.

The writing of this book must have been awfully hard work, I should think.

My dear Huxley | Ever yours | Ch. Darwin

George has paid a visit to Mr Rich & liked the old gentleman much. They talked incessantly for about 24 hours— Mr R. seems to have enjoyed your visit hugely.—3

Footnotes

CD’s copy of Huxley’s biography and discussion of the philosophy of David Hume is in the Darwin Library–Down (T. H. Huxley 1879).
In T. H. Huxley 1879, Huxley had written that positivists (followers of Auguste Comte) believed that observation of the mind was inherently impossible, and that psychology was ‘a phantasm generated by the fermentation of the dregs of theology’. He added:

if M. Comte had been asked what he meant by “physiologie cérébrale,” except that which other people call “psychology;” and how he knew anything about the functions of the brain, except by that very “observation intérieure,” which he declares to be an absurdity—it seems probable that he would have found it hard to escape the admission, that, in vilipending psychology, he had been propounding solemn nonsense.

For some of George Howard Darwin’s comments on his visit on 8 and 9 January to Anthony Rich, who had decided to leave his property to CD, see the letter to W. E. Darwin, 10 January [1879], n. 2. Huxley had visited Rich at the end of December 1878 (Correspondence vol. 26, letter from T. H. Huxley, 28 December 1878).

Bibliography

Huxley, Thomas Henry. 1879. Hume. London: Macmillan and Co.

Summary

Has read Hume with great pleasure, but found parts very stiff reading.

George Darwin has visited Anthony Rich.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-11834
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Thomas Henry Huxley
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine Archives (Huxley 5: 333)
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11834,” accessed on 30 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11834.xml

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