r work was to be translated, and I heard it with
pleasure; but I can take no share of credit, for I am not an active,
only an honorary member of the Society. Since writing I have finished
with extreme interest to the end your admirable work on metamorphosis.
(174/1. Probably "Metamorphoses of Man and the Lower Animals."
Translated by H. Lawson, 1864.) How well you are acquainted with the
works of English naturalists, and how generously you bestow honour on
them! Mr. Lubbock is my neighbour, and I have known him since he was a
little boy; he is in every way a thoroughly good man; as is my friend
Huxley. It gave me real pleasure to see you notice their works as you
have done.

LETTER 175. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, April 11th [1864].

I am very much obliged for your present of your "Comp. Anatomy." (175/1.
"Lectures on the Elements of Comparative Anatomy," 1864.) When strong
enough I am sure I shall read it with greatest interest. I could not
resist the last chapter, of which I have read a part, and have been much
interested about the "inspired idiot." (175/2. In reference to Oken
(op. cit., page 282) Huxley says: "I must confess I never read his works
without thinking of the epithet of 'inspired idiot' applied to our own
Goldsmith.") If Owen wrote the article "Oken" (175/3. The article on
Oken in the eighth edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is signed
"R.O.": Huxley wrote to Darwin (April 18th, 1864), "There is not the
smallest question that Owen wrote both the article 'Oken' and the
'Archetype' Book" (Huxley's "Life," I., page 250). Mr. Huxley's
statements amount to this: (1) Prof. Owen accuses Goethe of having in
1820 appropriated Oken's theory of the skull, and of having given an
apocryphal account of how the idea occurred to himself in 1790. (2) in
the same article, page 502, Owen stated it to be questionable whether
the discoverer of the true theory of the segmental constitution of
the skull (i.e. himself) was excited to his labours, or "in any way
influenced by the a priori guesses of Oken." On this Huxley writes, page
288: "But if he himself had not been in any way influenced by Oken, and
if the 'Programm' [of Oken] is a mere mass of 'a priori guesses,' how
comes it that only three years before Mr. Owen could write thus? 'Oken,
ce genie profond et penetrant, fut le premier qui entrevit la verite,
guide par l'heureuse idee de l'arrangement des os craniens en segments,
comme ceux du rachis, appeles vertebres...