and in no case will the main lines of my argument as to the antagonism
between modern science and the Pentateuch be affected. The statements I
have made are public property. If you think they are in any way
erroneous I must ask you to take upon yourself the same amount of
responsibility as I have done, and submit your objections to the same
ordeal.

There is nothing like this test for reducing things to their true
proportions, and if you try it, you will probably discover, not without
some discomfort, that you really had no reason to ascribe wilful
blindness to those who do not agree with you.

[He was now preparing to complete his campaign of the spring on
technical education by delivering an address to the Technical Education
Association at Manchester on November 29, and looked forward to
attending the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society on his way home
next day, and seeing the Copley medal conferred upon his old friend,
Sir J. Hooker. However, unexpected trouble befell him. First he was
much alarmed about his wife, who had been ill more or less ever since
leaving Arolla. Happily it turned out that there was nothing worse than
could be set right by a slight operation. But nothing had been done
when news came of the sudden death of his second daughter on November
19.] "I have no heart for anything just now," [he writes; nevertheless,
he forced himself to fulfil this important engagement at Manchester,
and in the end the necessity of bracing himself for the undertaking
acted on him as a tonic.

It is a trifle, perhaps, but a trifle significant of the disturbance of
mind that could override so firmly fixed a habit, that the two first
letters he wrote after receiving the news are undated; almost the only