for while they had disagreements, "How nicely things would go if other folk were like Darwin and Brodie Innes." In a letter to a correspondent at the University of Utrecht in 1873, Darwin expressed agnosticism: Caution about publication, spiritualism In 1873 Darwin's son George wrote an essay which boldly dismissed prayer, divine morals and "future rewards & punishments". Darwin wrote "I would urge you not to publish it for some months, at the soonest, & then consider whether you think it new & important enough to counterbalance the evils; remembering the cart-loads which have been published on this subject. – The evils on giving pain to others, & injuring your own power & usefulness ... It is an old doctrine of mine that it is of foremost importance for a young author to publish ... only what is very good & new ... remember that an enemy might ask who is this man ... that he should give to the world his opinions on the deepest subjects? ... but my advice is to pause, pause, pause." During the public interest in Modern Spiritualism, Darwin attended a séance at Erasmus's house in January 1874, but as the room grew stuffy Darwin went upstairs to lie down, missing the show, with sparks, sounds and the table rising above their heads. While Francis Galton thought it a "good séance", Darwin later wrote "The Lord have mercy on us all, if we have to believe such rubbish" and told Emma that it was "all imposture" and "it would take an enormous weight of evidence" to convince him otherwise. At a second séance Huxley and George found that the medium was nothing but a cheat, to Darwin's relief. In 1876 Darwin wrote the following regarding his publicly stated position of agnosticism: "Formerly I was led ... to the firm conviction of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind. I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now, the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind." In November 1878 when George Romanes