He wrote me one of the most interesting letters I ever
received.
He had bought the book, and had read it. But the
important content of the letter was the confession of his own
faith. I have purposely excluded all correspondence from
these Memoirs, but had it not been that a forgotten collector
of autographs had captured it, I should have been tempted to
make an exception in its favour. The tone was agnostic; but
timidly agnostic. He had never freed himself from the
shackles of early prepossessions. He had not the necessary
daring to clear up his doubts. Sometimes I fancy that it was
this difference in the two men that lay at the bottom of the
unfortunate antagonism between Owen and Huxley. There is in
Owen's writing, where he is not purely scientific, a touch of
the apologist. He cannot quite make up his mind to follow
evolution to its logical conclusions. Where he is forced to
do so, it is to him like signing the death warrant of his
dearest friend. It must not be forgotten that Owen was born
more than twenty years before Huxley; and great as was the
offence of free-thinking in Huxley's youth, it was nothing
short of anathema in Owen's. When I met him at Holkham, the
'Origin of Species' had not been published; and Napier and I
did all we could to get Owen to express some opinion on
Lamarck's theory, for he and I used to talk confidentially on
this fearful heresy even then.
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