A COINCIDENCE.
[To THE EDITOR OF TUE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your review of the Life of Huxley in the Spectator of November 10th you quote from a letter to Mr. John Morley : —" It is a curious thing that I find my dislike to the thought of extinction increasing as I get older and nearer the goal. It flashes across me at all sorts of times with a sort of horror that in 1900 I shall probably know no more of what is going on than I did in 1800. I had sooner be in hell a good deal,— at any rate in one of the upper circles where the climate and company are not too trying." I find in the " Biographie de M. de Genoude" (Paris, 1846), p. 7, a like avowal of the horror of annihilation, even when inclined to suicide. " J'ai eprouve les tourments de l'enfer, j'ai sente ce que vent dire le mot de tenebres visibles, l'horreur du desespoir. Personae ne savait la cause de mes angoisses je me disais, quelquefois, que je prefererais une souffrance eternelle iI l'aneantissement." It is singular to find such similar expressions of horror at annihila- tion in the case of men of such opposite temperament as were M. de Genoude and Professor Huxley.—I am, Sir, &c.,
W. W.
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