so far from seeing in it a confirmation of Darwinian hypotheses, he was
careful to warn his readers] "to keep the questions of fact and the
questions of interpretation well apart." "That which interested me in
the matter," he says, "was the apparent analogy of Bathybius with other
well-known forms of lower life,"..."if Bathybius were brought up alive
from the bottom of the Atlantic to-morrow, the fact would not have the
slightest bearing, that I can discern, upon Mr. Darwin's speculations,
or upon any of the disputed problems of biology." [And as for his]
"eating the leek" [afterwards, his ironical account of it is an
instance of how the adoption of a plain, straightforward course can be
described without egotism.]

The most considerable difference I note among men [he concludes] is not
in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to
acknowledge these inevitable lapses.

[As the Duke in a subsequent article did not unequivocally withdraw his
statements, Huxley declined to continue public controversy with him.

Three years later, writing (October 10, 1890) to Sir J. Donnelly
apropos of an article by Mr. Mallock in the "Nineteenth Century," which
made use of the "Bathybius myth," he says:--]

Bathybius is far too convenient a stick to beat this dog with to be
ever given up, however many lies may be needful to make the weapon
effectual.

I told the whole story in my reply to the Duke of Argyll, but of course
the pack give tongue just as loudly as ever. Clerically-minded people
cannot be accurate, even the liberals.