[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sir,—In the review of " The Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley" in the Spectator of November 10th occurs this startling passage :—" He passes from the vertebra:, to the School Board, from the crayfish to Parnellism, from glaciers to original sin,--which he believed in." Now, as Professor Huxley laboured in season and out of season to free the mind of his fellow-man from the myths of Genesis, and as the unqualified expression " original sin " must still convey to the casual reader the doctrine which has been deduced from the story of the Fall, such an assertion stamps Professor Huxley as, to say the least of it, strangely inconsistent. If, however, the assertion is based upon his letter to Charles Kingsley at p. 276, Vol. I., in which he humorously says that " no doubt crib-biting, nurse-biting, and original sin in general, are all strictly deducible from Darwinian prin- ciples," and if it is supposed to be further supported by the passage : " The doctrines of predestination, of original sin, of the innate depravity of man, and the evil fate of the greater part of the race, of the primacy of Satan in this world, of the essential vileness of matter, of a malevolent Demiurgus subordinate to a benevolent Almighty who has only lately revealed himself, faulty as they are, appear to be vastly nearer the truth than the liberal' popular illusions that babies are all born good and that the example of a corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so,"—then Professor Huxley must be held to believe in predestination, the primacy of Satan, a malevolent Demiurgus, and a benevolent Almighty, while at the same time pronouncing these doctrines to be faulty, and notwithstanding that your reviewer says " his rigid agnosticism would not admit the idea of any God to whom Christ's word Father' might apply for he thought the whole Bible broke down as against criticism." Surely all this is incompatible with belief in the Biblical view of original sin, and such a mode of reasoning is but a repetition of the methods of theological argument against which his life was one long protest. —I am, Sir, &c., N. ALCOCK, Lieut.-Col. Army Medical Staff. Bellevue, Ballybrack, Co. Dublin.
[In our review we neither said nor implied that Professor Huxley believed in "the Biblical view of original sin." There is a broad difference between believing that evil is transmitted, becoming thus " original " in each person, and in believing the account of the origin of evil as given in Genesis.—En. Spectator.]
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