between her and Dr. Tyndall, Huxley himself was carried off for a week's
climbing in Wales between Christmas and the New Year.

His reply to a long letter of sympathy in which Charles Kingsley set
forth the grounds of his own philosophy as to the ends of life and the
hope of immortality, affords insight into the very depths of his nature.
It is a rare outburst at a moment of intense feeling, in which, more
completely than in almost any other writing of his, intellectual
clearness and moral fire are to be seen uniting in a veritable passion
for truth:--]

14, Waverley Place, September 23, 1860.

My dear Kingsley,

I cannot sufficiently thank you, both on my wife's account and my own,
for your long and frank letter, and for all the hearty sympathy which it
exhibits--and Mrs. Kingsley will, I hope, believe that we are no less
sensible of her kind thought of us. To myself your letter was especially
valuable, as it touched upon what I thought even more than upon what I
said in my letter to you. My convictions, positive and negative, on all
the matters of which you speak, are of long and slow growth and are
firmly rooted. But the great blow which fell upon me seemed to stir them
to their foundation, and had I lived a couple of centuries earlier I
could have fancied a devil scoffing at me and them--and asking me what
profit it was to have stripped myself of the hopes and consolations of
the mass of mankind? To which my only reply was and is--Oh devil! truth
is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my
belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to
me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.