Thomas Huxley's "innermost thoughts", 1879

"Huxley's theistic yearnings were rarely displayed to the public who read his essays and heard him speak. But to friends he was more willing to open up and speak from the depths of his soul. In 1879 [John] Fiske dropped by the Huxleys to say good-bye before he left England to return to America. Huxley took Fiske up to his study where they sipped a glass of toddy and puffed on cigars. 'Then Huxley and I got into a solemn talk about God and the soul,' Fiske remembered, 'and he unburdened himself to me of some of his innermost thoughts -- poor creatures both of us, striving to compass thoughts too great for the human mind.'"

-- The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge,

Bernard V. Lightman, 1987, p. 139.