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...'" Later on Owen wrote: "Cela servira pour exemple d'une examen scrupuleux des faits, d'une appreciation philosophique de leurs relations et analogies, etc." (From "Principes d'Osteologie comparee, ou Recherches sur l'Archetype," etc., pages 155, 1855).

(3) Finally Huxley says, page 289, plainly: "The fact is that, so far from not having been 'in any way influenced' by Oken, Prof.Owen's own contributions to this question are the merest Okenism, remanie.") and the French work on the Archetype (points you do not put quite clearly), he never did a baser act...You are so good a Christian that you will hardly understand how I chuckle over this bit of baseness.
I hope you keep well and hearty; I honour your wisdom at giving up at present Society for Science.

But, on the other hand, I feel it in myself possible to get to care too much for Natural Science and too little for other things.

I am getting better, I almost dare to hope permanently; for my sickness is decidedly less--for twenty-seven days consecutively I was sick many times daily, and lately I was five days free.