CHAPTER 2.II. -- THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES' (continued).

1860.

[I extract a few entries from my father's Diary:--

"January 7th. The second edition, 3000 copies, of 'Origin' was

published."

"May 22nd. The first edition of 'Origin' in the United States was 2500

copies."

My father has here noted down the sums received for the 'Origin.'

First Edition......180 pounds Second Edition.....636 pounds 13 shillings

4 pence

Total..............816 pounds 13 shillings 4 pence.

After the publication of the second edition he began at once, on January

9th, looking over his materials for the 'Variation of Animals and

Plants;' the only other work of the year was on Drosera.

He was at Down during the whole of this year, except for a visit to

Dr. Lane's Water-cure Establishment at Sudbrooke, and in June, and

for visits to Miss Elizabeth Wedgwood's house at Hartfield, in Sussex

(July), and to Eastbourne, September 22 to November 16.]

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 3rd [1860].

My dear Hooker,

I have finished your Essay. ('Australian Flora.') As probably you would

like to hear my opinion, though a non-botanist, I will give it without

any exaggeration. To my judgment it is by far the grandest and most

interesting essay, on subjects of the nature discussed, I have ever

read. You know how I admired your former essays, but this seems to me

far grander. I like all the part after page xxvi better than the first

part, probably because newer to me. I dare say you will demur to this,

for I think every author likes the most speculative parts of his own

productions. How superior your essay is to the famous one of Brown

(here will be sneer 1st from you). You have made all your conclusions so

admirably clear, that it would be no use at all to be a botanist (sneer

No. 2). By Jove, it would do harm to affix any idea to the long names of

outlandish orders. One can look at your conclusions with the philosophic

abstraction with which a mathematician looks at his a times x + the

square root of z squared, etc. etc. I hardly know which parts have

interested me most; for over and over again I exclaimed, "this beats

all." The general comparison of the Flora of Australia with the rest

of the world, strikes me (as before) as extremely original, good, and

suggestive of many reflections.

... The invading Indian Flora is very interesting, but I think the fact

you mention towards the close of the essay--that the Indian vegetation,

in contradistinction to the Malayan vegetation, is found in low and

level parts of the Malay Islands, GREATLY lessens the difficulty which

at first (page 1) seemed so great. There is nothing like one's own

hobby-horse. I suspect it is the same case as of glacial migration,

and of naturalised production--of production of greater area conquering

those of lesser; of course the Indian forms would have a greater

difficulty in seizing on the cool parts of Australia. I demur to your

remarks (page 1), as not "conceiving anything in soil, climate, or

vegetation of India," which could stop the introduction of Australian

plants. Towards the close of the essay (page civ), you have

admirable remarks on our profound ignorance of the cause of possible

naturalisation or introduction; I would answer page 1, by a later page,

viz. page civ.

Your contrast of the south-west and south-east corners is one of the

most wonderful cases I ever heard of... You show the case with wonderful

force. Your discussion on mixed invaders of the south-east corner (and

of New Zealand) is as curious and intricate a problem as of the races

of men in Britain. Your remark on mixed invading Flora keeping down or

destroying an original Flora, which was richer in number of species,

strikes me as EMINENTLY NEW AND IMPORTANT. I am not sure whether to me

the discussion on the New Zealand Flora is not even more instructive. I

cannot too much admire both. But it will require a long time to suck in

all the facts. Your case of the largest Australian orders having none,

or very few, species in New Zealand, is truly marvellous. Anyhow, you

have now DEMONSTRATED (together with no mammals in New Zealand) (bitter

sneer No. 3), that New Zealand has never been continuously, or even

nearly continuously, united by land to Australia!! At page lxxxix, is

the only sentence (on this subject) in the whole essay at which I am

much inclined to quarrel, viz. that no theory of trans-oceanic migration

can explain, etc. etc. Now I maintain against all the world, that no man

knows anything about the power of trans-oceanic migration. You do not

know whether or not the absent orders have seeds which are killed by

sea-water, like almost all Leguminosae, and like another order which

I forget. Birds do not migrate from Australia to New Zealand, and

therefore floatation SEEMS the only possible means; but yet I maintain

that we do not know enough to argue on the question, especially as we do

not know the main fact whether the seeds of Australian orders are killed

by sea-water.

The discussion on European Genera is profoundly interesting; but here

alone I earnestly beg for more information, viz. to know which of

these genera are absent in the Tropics of the world, i.e. confined to

temperate regions. I excessively wish to know, ON THE NOTION OF GLACIAL

MIGRATION, how much modification has taken place in Australia. I had

better explain when we meet, and get you to go over and mark the list.

... The list of naturalised plants is extremely interesting, but why at

the end, in the name of all that is good and bad, do you not sum up and

comment on your facts? Come, I will have a sneer at you in return for

the many which you will have launched at this letter. Should you have

remarked on the number of plants naturalised in Australia and the United

States UNDER EXTREMELY DIFFERENT CLIMATES, as showing that climate is

so important, and [on] the considerable sprinkling of plants from

India, North America, and South Africa, as showing that the frequent

introduction of seeds is so important? With respect to "abundance of

unoccupied ground in Australia," do you believe that European plants

introduced by man now grow on spots in Australia which were absolutely

bare? But I am an impudent dog, one must defend one's own fancy theories

against such cruel men as you. I dare say this letter will appear

very conceited, but one must form an opinion on what one reads with

attention, and in simple truth, I cannot find words strong enough to

express my admiration of your essay.

My dear old friend, yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I differ about the "Saturday Review". ("Saturday Review", December

24, 1859. The hostile arguments of the reviewer are geological, and he

deals especially with the denudation of the Weald. The reviewer remarks

that, "if a million of centuries, more or less, is needed for any

part of his argument, he feels no scruple in taking them to suit

his purpose.") One cannot expect fairness in a reviewer, so I do not

complain of all the other arguments besides the 'Geological Record'

being omitted. Some of the remarks about the lapse of years are

very good, and the reviewer gives me some good and well-deserved

raps--confound it. I am sorry to confess the truth: but it does not at

all concern the main argument. That was a nice notice in the "Gardeners'

Chronicle". I hope and imagine that Lindley is almost a convert. Do not

forget to tell me if Bentham gets all the more staggered.

With respect to tropical plants during the Glacial period, I throw

in your teeth your own facts, at the base of the Himalaya, on the

possibility of the co-existence of at least forms of the tropical and

temperate regions. I can give a parallel case for animals in Mexico. Oh!

my dearly beloved puny child, how cruel men are to you! I am very glad

you approve of the Geographical chapters...

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, [January 4th, 1860].

My dear L.

"Gardeners' Chronicle" returned safe. Thanks for note. I am beyond

measure glad that you get more and more roused on the subject of

species, for, as I have always said, I am well convinced that your

opinions and writings will do far more to convince the world than mine.

You will make a grand discussion on man. You are very bold in this,

and I honour you. I have been, like you, quite surprised at the want

of originality in opposed arguments and in favour too. Gwyn Jeffreys

attacks me justly in his letter about strictly littoral shells not being

often embedded at least in Tertiary deposits. I was in a muddle, for I

was thinking of Secondary, yet Chthamalus applied to Tertiary...

Possibly you might like to see the enclosed note (Dr. Whewell wrote

(January 2, 1860): "... I cannot, yet at least, become a convert. But

there is so much of thought and of fact in what you have written that

it is not to be contradicted without careful selection of the ground and

manner of the dissent." Dr. Whewell dissented in a practical manner for

some years, by refusing to allow a copy of the 'Origin of Species' to

be placed in the Library of Trinity College.) from Whewell, merely as

showing that he is not horrified with us. You can return it whenever you

have occasion to write, so as not to waste your time.

C.D.

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, [January 4th? 1860].

... I have had a brief note from Keyserling (Joint author with Murchison

of the 'Geology of Russia,' 1845.), but not worth sending you. He

believes in change of species, grants that natural selection explains

well adaptation of form, but thinks species change too regularly, as

if by some chemical law, for natural selection to be the sole cause of

change. I can hardly understand his brief note, but this is I think the

upshot.

... I will send A. Murray's paper whenever published. (The late Andrew

Murray wrote two papers on the 'Origin' in the Proc. R. Soc. Edin. 1860.

The one referred to here is dated January 16, 1860. The following is

quoted from page 6 of the separate copy: "But the second, and, as it

appears to me, by much the most important phase of reversion to type

(and which is practically, if not altogether ignored by Mr. Darwin),

is the instinctive inclination which induces individuals of the same

species by preference to intercross with those possessing the qualities

which they themselves want, so as to preserve the purity or equilibrium

of the breed... It is trite to a proverb, that tall men marry little

women... a man of genius marries a fool... and we are told that this is

the result of the charm of contrast, or of qualities admired in others

because we do not possess them. I do not so explain it. I imagine it is

the effort of nature to preserve the typical medium of the race.")

It includes speculations (which he perhaps will modify) so rash, and

without a single fact in support, that had I advanced them he or other

reviewers would have hit me very hard. I am sorry to say that I have

no "consolatory view" on the dignity of man. I am content that man will

probably advance, and care not much whether we are looked at as mere

savages in a remotely distant future. Many thanks for your last note.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

I have received, in a Manchester newspaper, rather a good squib, showing

that I have proved "might is right," and therefore that Napoleon is

right, and every cheating tradesman is also right.

CHARLES DARWIN TO W.B. CARPENTER. Down, January 6th [1860]?

My dear Carpenter,

I have just read your excellent article in the 'National.' It will do

great good; especially if it becomes known as your production. It seems

to me to give an excellently clear account of Mr. Wallace's and my

views. How capitally you turn the flanks of the theological opposers by

opposing to them such men as Bentham and the more philosophical of the

systematists! I thank you sincerely for the EXTREMELY honourable

manner in which you mention me. I should have liked to have seen some

criticisms or remarks on embryology, on which subject you are so well

instructed. I do not think any candid person can read your article

without being much impressed with it. The old doctrine of immutability

of specific forms will surely but slowly die away. It is a shame to

give you trouble, but I should be very much obliged if you could tell me

where differently coloured eggs in individuals of the cuckoo have been

described, and their laying in twent-seven kinds of nests. Also do you

know from your own observation that the limbs of sheep imported into

the West Indies change colour? I have had detailed information about the

loss of wool; but my accounts made the change slower than you describe.

With most cordial thanks and respect, believe me, my dear Carpenter,

yours very sincerely, CH. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO L. JENYNS. (Rev. L. Blomefield.) Down, January 7th,

1860.

My dear Jenyns,

I am very much obliged for your letter. It is of great use and interest

to me to know what impression my book produces on philosophical and

instructed minds. I thank you for the kind things which you say; and you

go with me much further than I expected. You will think it presumptuous,

but I am convinced, IF CIRCUMSTANCES LEAD YOU TO KEEP THE SUBJECT

IN MIND, that you will go further. No one has yet cast doubts on my

explanation of the subordination of group to group, on homologies,

embryology, and rudimentary organs; and if my explanation of these

classes of facts be at all right, whole classes of organic beings must

be included in one line of descent.

The imperfection of the Geological Record is one of the greatest

difficulties... During the earliest period the record would be most

imperfect, and this seems to me sufficient to account for our not

finding intermediate forms between the classes in the same great

kingdoms. It was certainly rash in me putting in my belief of the

probability of all beings having descended from ONE primordial form;

but as this seems yet to me probable, I am not willing to strike it out.

Huxley alone supports me in this, and something could be said in its

favour. With respect to man, I am very far from wishing to obtrude

my belief; but I thought it dishonest to quite conceal my opinion.

Of course it is open to every one to believe that man appeared by

a separate miracle, though I do not myself see the necessity or

probability.

Pray accept my sincere thanks for your kind note. Your going some way

with me gives me great confidence that I am not very wrong. For a very

long time I halted half way; but I do not believe that any enquiring

mind will rest half-way. People will have to reject all or admit all; by

ALL I mean only the members of each great kingdom.

My dear Jenyns, yours most sincerely, C. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, January 10th [1860].

... It is perfectly true that I owe nearly all the corrections (The

second edition of 3000 copies of the 'Origin' was published on January

7th.) to you, and several verbal ones to you and others; I am heartily

glad you approve of them, as yet only two things have annoyed me;

those confounded millions (This refers to the passage in the 'Origin of

Species' (2nd edition, page 285), in which the lapse of time implied by

the denudation of the Weald is discussed. The discussion closes with the

sentence: "So that it is not improbable that a longer period than

300 million years has elapsed since the latter part of the Secondary

period." This passage is omitted in the later editions of the 'Origin,'

against the advice of some of his friends, as appears from the pencil

notes in my father's copy of the second edition.) of years (not that

I think it is probably wrong), and my not having (by inadvertance)

mentioned Wallace towards the close of the book in the summary, not that

any one has noticed this to me. I have now put in Wallace's name at page

484 in a conspicuous place. I cannot refer you to tables of mortality

of children, etc. etc. I have notes somewhere, but I have not the LEAST

idea where to hunt, and my notes would now be old. I shall be truly

glad to read carefully any MS. on man, and give my opinion. You used to

caution me to be cautious about man. I suspect I shall have to return

the caution a hundred fold! Yours will, no doubt, be a grand discussion;

but it will horrify the world at first more than my whole volume;

although by the sentence (page 489, new edition (First edition, page

488.)) I show that I believe man is in the same predicament with other

animals. It is, in fact, impossible to doubt it. I have thought (only

vaguely) on man. With respect to the races, one of my best chances of

truth has broken down from the impossibility of getting facts. I have

one good speculative line, but a man must have entire credence in

Natural Selection before he will even listen to it. Psychologically, I

have done scarcely anything. Unless, indeed, expression of countenance

can be included, and on that subject I have collected a good many facts,

and speculated, but I do not suppose I shall ever publish, but it is an

uncommonly curious subject. By the way, I sent off a lot of questions

the day before yesterday to Tierra del Fuego on expression! I suspect

(for I have never read it) that Spencer's 'Psychology' has a bearing on

Psychology as we should look at it. By all means read the Preface, in

about 20 pages, of Hensleigh Wedgwood's new Dictionary on the first

origin of Language; Erasmus would lend it. I agree about Carpenter,

a very good article, but with not much original... Andrew Murray has

criticised, in an address to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, the

notice in the 'Linnean Journal,' and "has disposed of" the whole theory

by an ingenious difficulty, which I was very stupid not to have thought

of; for I express surprise at more and analogous cases not being known.

The difficulty is, that amongst the blind insects of the caves in

distant parts of the world there are some of the same genus, and yet the

genus is not found out of the caves or living in the free world. I have

little doubt that, like the fish Amblyopsis, and like Proteus in Europe,

these insects are "wrecks of ancient life," or "living fossils," saved

from competition and extermination. But that formerly SEEING insects

of the same genus roamed over the whole area in which the cases are

included.

Farewell, yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--OUR ancestor was an animal which breathed water, had a swim

bladder, a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull, and undoubtedly was

an hermaphrodite!

Here is a pleasant genealogy for mankind.

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, January 14th [1860].

... I shall be much interested in reading your man discussion, and will

give my opinion carefully, whatever that may be worth; but I have so

long looked at you as the type of cautious scientific judgment (to my

mind one of the highest and most useful qualities), that I suspect my

opinion will be superfluous. It makes me laugh to think what a joke

it will be if I have to caution you, after your cautions on the same

subject to me!

I will order Owen's book ('Classification of the Mammalia,' 1859.); I am

very glad to hear Huxley's opinion on his classification of man; without

having due knowledge, it seemed to me from the very first absurd; all

classifications founded on single characters I believe have failed.

... What a grand, immense benefit you conferred on me by getting Murray

to publish my book. I never till to-day realised that it was getting

widely distributed; for in a letter from a lady to-day to E., she says

she heard a man enquiring for it at the RAILWAY STATION!!! at Waterloo

Bridge; and the bookseller said that he had none till the new edition

was out. The bookseller said he had not read it, but had heard it was a

very remarkable book!!!...

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 14th [January, 1860].

... I heard from Lyell this morning, and he tells me a piece of news. You

are a good-for-nothing man; here you are slaving yourself to death with

hardly a minute to spare, and you must write a review of my book! I

thought it ('Gardeners' Chronicle', 1860. Referred to above. Sir J.D.

Hooker took the line of complete impartiality, so as not to commit

Lindley.) a very good one, and was so much struck with it that I sent it

to Lyell. But I assumed, as a matter of course, that it was Lindley's.

Now that I know it is yours, I have re-read it, and, my kind and good

friend, it has warmed my heart with all the honourable and noble things

you say of me and it. I was a good deal surprised at Lindley hitting on

some of the remarks, but I never dreamed of you. I admired it chiefly

as so well adapted to tell on the readers of the 'Gardeners' Chronicle';

but now I admired it in another spirit. Farewell, with hearty

thanks... Lyell is going at man with an audacity that frightens me. It is

a good joke; he used always to caution me to slip over man.

[In the "Gardeners' Chronicle", January 21, 1860, appeared a short

letter from my father which was called forth by Mr. Westwood's

communication to the previous number of the journal, in which certain

phenomena of cros-breeding are discussed in relation to the 'Origin of

Species.' Mr. Westwood wrote in reply (February 11) and adduced further

evidence against the doctrine of descent, such as the identity of the

figures of ostriches on the ancient "Egyptian records," with the bird as

we now know it. The correspondence is hardly worth mentioning, except as

one of the very few cases in which my father was enticed into anything

resembling a controversy.]

ASA GRAY TO J.D. HOOKER. Cambridge, Mass., January 5th, 1860.

My dear Hooker,

Your last letter, which reached me just before Christmas, has got

mislaid during the upturnings in my study which take place at that

season, and has not yet been discovered. I should be very sorry to lose

it, for there were in it some botanical mems. which I had not secured...

The principal part of your letter was high laudation of Darwin's book.

Well, the book has reached me, and I finished its careful perusal four

days ago; and I freely say that your laudation is not out of place.

It is done in a MASTERLY MANNER. It might well have taken twenty years

to produce it. It is crammed full of most interesting matter--thoroughly

digested--well expressed--close, cogent, and taken as a system it makes

out a better case than I had supposed possible...

Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of it. He says it is

POOR--VERY POOR!! (entre nous). The fact [is] he is very much annoyed by

it,... and I do not wonder at it. To bring all IDEAL systems within the

domain of science, and give good physical or natural explanations of

all his capital points, is as bad as to have Forbes take the glacier

materials... and give scientific explanation of all the phenomena.

Tell Darwin all this. I will write to him when I get a chance. As I have

promised, he and you shall have fair-play here... I must myself write

a review of Darwin's book for 'Silliman's Journal' (the more so that I

suspect Agassiz means to come out upon it) for the next (March) No., and

I am now setting about it (when I ought to be every moment working the

Expl[oring] Expedition Compositae, which I know far more about). And

really it is no easy job, as you may well imagine.

I doubt if I shall please you altogether. I know I shall not please

Agassiz at all. I hear another reprint is in the Press, and the book

will excite much attention here, and some controversy...

CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. Down, January 28th [1860].

My dear Gray,

Hooker has forwarded to me your letter to him; and I cannot express how

deeply it has gratified me. To receive the approval of a man whom one

has long sincerely respected. And whose judgment and knowledge are most

universally admitted, is the highest reward an author can possibly wish

for; and I thank you heartily for your most kind expressions.

I have been absent from home for a few days, and so could not earlier

answer your letter to me of the 10th of January. You have been extremely

kind to take so much trouble and interest about the edition. It has been

a mistake of my publisher not thinking of sending over the sheets. I

had entirely and utterly forgotten your offer of receiving the sheets

as printed off. But I must not blame my publisher, for had I remembered

your most kind offer I feel pretty sure I should not have taken

advantage of it; for I never dreamed of my book being so successful with

general readers; I believe I should have laughed at the idea of sending

the sheets to America. (In a letter to Mr. Murray, 1860, my father

wrote:--"I am amused by Asa Gray's account of the excitement my book has

made amongst naturalists in the United States. Agassiz has denounced

it in a newspaper, but yet in such terms that it is in fact a fine

advertisement!" This seems to refer to a lecture given before the

Mercantile Library Association.)

After much consideration, and on the strong advice of Lyell and others,

I have resolved to leave the present book as it is (excepting correcting

errors, or here and there inserting short sentences) and to use all my

strength, WHICH IS BUT LITTLE, to bring out the first part (forming a

separate volume with index, etc.) of the three volumes which will make

my bigger work; so that I am very unwilling to take up time in

making corrections for an American edition. I enclose a list of a few

corrections in the second reprint, which you will have received by this

time complete, and I could send four or five corrections or additions of

equally small importance, or rather of equal brevity. I also intend to

write a SHORT preface with a brief history of the subject. These I will

set about, as they must some day be done, and I will send them to you

in a short time--the few corrections first, and the preface afterwards,

unless I hear that you have given up all idea of a separate edition. You

will then be able to judge whether it is worth having the new edition

with YOUR REVIEW PREFIXED. Whatever be the nature of your review,

I assure you I should feel it a GREAT honour to have my book thus

preceded...

ASA GRAY TO CHARLES DARWIN. Cambridge, January 23rd, 1860.

My dear Darwin,

You have my hurried letter telling you of the arrival of the remainder

of the sheets of the reprint, and of the stir I had made for a reprint

in Boston. Well, all looked pretty well, when, lo, we found that a

second New York publishing house had announced a reprint also! I wrote

then to both New York publishers, asking them to give way to the AUTHOR

and his reprint of a revised edition. I got an answer from the Harpers

that they withdraw --from the Appletons that they had got the book OUT

(and the next day I saw a copy); but that, "if the work should have

any considerable sale, we certainly shall be disposed to pay the author

reasonably and liberally."

The Appletons being thus out with their reprint, the Boston house

declined to go on. So I wrote to the Appletons taking them at their

word, offering to aid their reprint, to give them the use of the

alterations in the London reprint, as soon as I find out what they are,

etc. etc. And I sent them the first leaf, and asked them to insert in

their future issue the additional matter from Butler (A quotation from

Butler's 'Analogy,' on the use of the word natural, which in the second

edition is placed with the passages from Whewell and Bacon on page ii,

opposite the title-page.), which tells just right. So there the matter

stands. If you furnish any matter in advance of the London third

edition, I will make them pay for it.

I may get something for you. All got is clear gain; but it will not be

very much, I suppose.

Such little notices in the papers here as have yet appeared are quite

handsome and considerate.

I hope next week to get printed sheets of my review from New Haven, and

send [them] to you, and will ask you to pass them on to Dr. Hooker.

To fulfil your request, I ought to tell you what I think the weakest,

and what the best, part of your book. But this is not easy, nor to be

done in a word or two. The BEST PART, I think, is the WHOLE, i.e.,

its PLAN and TREATMENT, the vast amount of facts and acute inferences

handled as if you had a perfect mastery of them. I do not think twenty

years too much time to produce such a book in.

Style clear and good, but now and then wants revision for little matters

(page 97, self-fertilises ITSELF, etc.).

Then your candour is worth everything to your cause. It is refreshing

to find a person with a new theory who frankly confesses that he finds

difficulties, insurmountable, at least for the present. I know some

people who never have any difficulties to speak of.

The moment I understood your premisses, I felt sure you had a real

foundation to hold on. Well, if one admits your premisses, I do not see

how he is to stop short of your conclusions, as a probable hypothesis at

least.

It naturally happens that my review of your book does not exhibit

anything like the full force of the impression the book has made upon

me. Under the circumstances I suppose I do your theory more good

here, by bespeaking for it a fair and favourable consideration, and by

standing non-committed as to its full conclusions, than I should if I

announced myself a convert; nor could I say the latter, with truth.

Well, what seems to me the weakest point in the book is the attempt

to account for the formation of organs, the making of eyes, etc., by

natural selection. Some of this reads quite Lamarckian.

The chapter on HYBRIDISM is not a WEAK, but a STRONG chapter. You have

done wonders there. But still you have not accounted, as you may be held

to account, for divergence up to a certain extent producing increased

fertility of the crosses, but carried one short almost imperceptible

step more, giving rise to sterility, or reversing the tendency. Very

likely you are on the right track; but you have something to do yet in

that department.

Enough for the present.

... I am not insensible to your compliments, the very high compliment

which you pay me in valuing my opinion. You evidently think more of it

than I do, though from the way I write [to] you, and especially [to]

Hooker, this might not be inferred from the reading of my letters.

I am free to say that I never learnt so much from one book as I have

from yours, there remain a thousand things I long to say about it.

Ever yours, ASA GRAY.

CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. [February? 1860].

... Now I will just run through some points in your letter. What you say

about my book gratifies me most deeply, and I wish I could feel all was

deserved by me. I quite think a review from a man, who is not an entire

convert, if fair and moderately favourable, is in all respects the best

kind of review. About the weak points I agree. The eye to this day gives

me a cold shudder, but when I think of the fine known gradations, my

reason tells me I ought to conquer the cold shudder.

Pray kindly remember and tell Prof. Wyman how very grateful I should be

for any hints, information, or criticisms. I have the highest respect

for his opinion. I am so sorry about Dana's health. I have already asked

him to pay me a visit.

Farewell, you have laid me under a load of obligation--not that I feel

it a load. It is the highest possible gratification to me to think that

you have found my book worth reading and reflection; for you and three

others I put down in my own mind as the judges whose opinions I should

value most of all.

My dear Gray, yours most sincerely, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I feel pretty sure, from my own experience, that if you are led

by your studies to keep the subject of the origin of species before your

mind, you will go further and further in your belief. It took me long

years, and I assure you I am astonished at the impression my book has

made on many minds. I fear twenty years ago, I should not have been half

as candid and open to conviction.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, [January 31st, 1860].

My dear Hooker,

I have resolved to publish a little sketch of the progress of opinion on

the change of species. Will you or Mrs. Hooker do me the favour to copy

ONE sentence out of Naudin's paper in the 'Revue Horticole,' 1852, page

103, namely, that on his principle of Finalite. Can you let me have it

soon, with those confounded dashes over the vowels put in carefully? Asa

Gray, I believe, is going to get a second edition of my book, and I want

to send this little preface over to him soon. I did not think of the

necessity of having Naudin's sentence on finality, otherwise I would

have copied it.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I shall end by just alluding to your Australian Flora

Introduction. What was the date of publication: December 1859, or

January 1860? Please answer this.

My preface will also do for the French edition, which I BELIEVE, is

agreed on.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. February [1860].

... As the 'Origin' now stands, Harvey's (William Henry Harvey was

descended from a Quaker family of Youghal, and was born in February,

1811, at Summerville, a country house on the banks of the Shannon. He

died at Torquay in 1866. In 1835, Harvey went to Africa (Table Bay) to

pursue his botanical studies, the results of which were given in his

'Genera of South African Plants.' In 1838, ill-health compelled him to

obtain leave of absence, and return to England for a time; in 1840 he

returned to Cape Town, to be again compelled by illness to leave. In

1843 he obtained the appointment of Botanical Professor at Trinity

College, Dublin. In 1854, 1855, and 1856 he visited Australia, New

Zealand, the Friendly and Fiji Islands. In 1857 Dr. Harvey reached home,

and was appointed the successor of Professor Allman to the Chair of

Botany in Dublin University. He was author of several botanical works,

principally on Algae.--(From a Memoir published in 1869.)) is a good

hit against my talking so much of the insensibly fine gradations; and

certainly it has astonished me that I should be pelted with the fact,

that I had not allowed abrupt and great enough variations under nature.

It would take a good deal more evidence to make me admit that forms have

often changed by saltum.

Have you seen Wollaston's attack in the 'Annals'? ('Annals and Magazine

of Natural History,' 1860.) The stones are beginning to fly. But

Theology has more to do with these two attacks than Science...

[In the above letter a paper by Harvey in the "Gardeners' Chronicle",

February 18, 1860, is alluded to. He describes a case of monstrosity

in Begonia frigida, in which the "sport" differed so much from a normal

Begonia that it might have served as the type of a distinct natural

order. Harvey goes on to argue that such a case is hostile to the theory

of natural selection, according to which changes are not supposed to

take place per saltum, and adds that "a few such cases would overthrow

it [Mr. Darwin's hypothesis] altogether." In the following number of

the "Gardeners' Chronicle" Sir J.D. Hooker showed that Dr. Harvey had

misconceived the bearing of the Begonia case, which he further showed

to be by no means calculated to shake the validity of the doctrine

of modification by means of natural selection. My father mentions the

Begonia case in a letter to Lyell (February 18, 1860):--

"I send by this post an attack in the "Gardeners' Chronicle", by Harvey

(a first-rate Botanist, as you probably know). It seems to me rather

strange; he assumes the permanence of monsters, whereas, monsters are

generally sterile, and not often inheritable. But grant his case, it

comes that I have been too cautious in not admitting great and sudden

variations. Here again comes in the mischief of my ABSTRACT. In the

fuller MS. I have discussed a parallel case of a normal fish like the

monstrous gold-fish."

With reference to Sir J.D. Hooker's reply, my father wrote:]

Down, [February 26th, 1860].

My dear Hooker,

Your answer to Harvey seems to me ADMIRABLY good. You would have made a

gigantic fortune as a barrister. What an omission of Harvey's about the

graduated state of the flowers! But what strikes me most is that surely

I ought to know my own book best, yet, by Jove, you have brought forward

ever so many arguments which I did not think of! Your reference to

classification (viz. I presume to such cases as Aspicarpa) is EXCELLENT,

for the monstrous Begonia no doubt in all details would be Begonia. I

did not think of this, nor of the RETROGRADE step from separated sexes

to an hermaphrodite state; nor of the lessened fertility of the monster.

Proh pudor to me.

The world would say what a lawyer has been lost in a MERE botanist!

Farewell, my dear master in my own subject,

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

I am so heartily pleased to see that you approve of the chapter on

Classification.

I wonder what Harvey will say. But no one hardly, I think, is able at

first to see when he is beaten in an argument.

[The following letters refer to the first translation (1860) of the

'Origin of Species' into German, which was superintended by H.G. Bronn,

a good zoologist and palaeontologist, who was at the time at Freiburg,

but afterwards Professor at Heidelberg. I have been told that the

translation was not a success, it remained an obvious translation, and

was correspondingly unpleasant to read. Bronn added to the translation

an appendix of the difficulties that occurred to him. For instance,

how can natural selection account for differences between species, when

these differences appear to be of no service to their possessors; e.g.,

the length of the ears and tail, or the folds in the enamel of the teeth

of various species of rodents? Krause, in his book, 'Charles Darwin,'

page 91, criticises Bronn's conduct in this manner, but it will be seen

that my father actually suggested the addition of Bronn's remarks. A

more serious charge against Bronn made by Krause (op. cit. page 87) is

that he left out passages of which he did not approve, as, for instance,

the passage ('Origin,' first edition, page 488) "Light will be thrown on

the origin of man and his history." I have no evidence as to whether my

father did or did not know of these alterations.]

CHARLES DARWIN TO H.G. BRONN. Down, February 4 [1860].

Dear and much honoured Sir,

I thank you sincerely for your most kind letter; I feared that you would

much disapprove of the 'Origin,' and I sent it to you merely as a mark

of my sincere respect. I shall read with much interest your work on the

productions of Islands whenever I receive it. I thank you cordially for

the notice in the 'Neues Jahrbuch fur Mineralogie,' and still more for

speaking to Schweitzerbart about a translation; for I am most anxious

that the great and intellectual German people should know something

about my book.

I have told my publisher to send immediately a copy of the NEW

(Second edition.) edition to Schweitzerbart, and I have written to

Schweitzerbart that I gave up all right to profit for myself, so that I

hope a translation will appear. I fear that the book will be difficult

to translate, and if you could advise Schweitzerbart about a GOOD

translator, it would be of very great service. Still more, if you would

run your eye over the more difficult parts of the translation; but this

is too great a favour to expect. I feel sure that it will be difficult

to translate, from being so much condensed.

Again I thank you for your noble and generous sympathy, and I remain,

with entire respect,

Yours, truly obliged, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--The new edition has some few corrections, and I will send in

MS. some additional corrections, and a short historical preface, to

Schweitzerbart.

How interesting you could make the work by EDITING (I do not

mean translating) the work, and appending notes of REFUTATION or

confirmation. The book has sold so very largely in England, that an

editor would, I think, make profit by the translation.

CHARLES DARWIN TO H.G. BRONN. Down, February 14 [1860].

My dear and much honoured Sir,

I thank you cordially for your extreme kindness in superintending the

translation. I have mentioned this to some eminent scientific men, and

they all agree that you have done a noble and generous service. If I am

proved quite wrong, yet I comfort myself in thinking that my book may

do some good, as truth can only be known by rising victorious from every

attack. I thank you also much for the review, and for the kind manner

in which you speak of me. I send with this letter some corrections and

additions to M. Schweitzerbart, and a short historical preface. I am

not much acquainted with German authors, as I read German very slowly;

therefore I do not know whether any Germans have advocated similar

views with mine; if they have, would you do me the favour to insert a

foot-note to the preface? M. Schweitzerbart has now the reprint ready

for a translator to begin. Several scientific men have thought the term

"Natural Selection" good, because its meaning is NOT obvious, and each

man could not put on it his own interpretation, and because it at

once connects variation under domestication and nature. Is there any

analogous term used by German breeders of animals? "Adelung," ennobling,

would, perhaps, be too metaphysical. It is folly in me, but I cannot

help doubting whether "Wahl der Lebensweise" expresses my notion. It

leaves the impression on my mind of the Lamarckian doctrine (which I

reject) of habits of life being al-important. Man has altered, and

thus improved the English race-horse by SELECTING successive fleeter

individuals; and I believe, owing to the struggle for existence, that

similar SLIGHT variations in a wild horse, IF ADVANTAGEOUS TO IT, would

be SELECTED or PRESERVED by nature; hence Natural Selection. But I

apologise for troubling you with these remarks on the importance of

choosing good German terms for "Natural Selection." With my heartfelt

thanks, and with sincere respect,

I remain, dear Sir, yours very sincerely, CHARLES DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO H.G. BRONN. Down, July 14 [1860].

Dear and honoured Sir,

On my return home, after an absence of some time, I found the

translation of the third part (The German translation was published in

three pamphle-like numbers.) of the 'Origin,' and I have been delighted

to see a final chapter of criticisms by yourself. I have read the first

few paragraphs and final paragraph, and am perfectly contented, indeed

more than contented, with the generous and candid spirit with which you

have considered my views. You speak with too much praise of my work.

I shall, of course, carefully read the whole chapter; but though I can

read descriptive books like Gaertner's pretty easily, when any reasoning

comes in, I find German excessively difficult to understand. At some

FUTURE time I should very much like to hear how my book has been

received in Germany, and I most sincerely hope M. Schweitzerbart

will not lose money by the publication. Most of the reviews have been

bitterly opposed to me in England, yet I have made some converts, and

SEVERAL naturalists who would not believe in a word of it, are now

coming slightly round, and admit that natural selection may have done

something. This gives me hope that more will ultimately come round to a

certain extent to my views.

I shall ever consider myself deeply indebted to you for the immense

service and honour which you have conferred on me in making the

excellent translation of my book. Pray believe me, with most sincere

respect,

Dear Sir, yours gratefully, CHARLES DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, [February 12th, 1860].

... I think it was a great pity that Huxley wasted so much time in the

lecture on the preliminary remarks;... but his lecture seemed to me very

fine and very bold. I have remonstrated (and he agrees) against the

impression that he would leave, that sterility was a universal and

infallible criterion of species.

You will, I am sure, make a grand discussion on man. I am so glad to

hear that you and Lady Lyell will come here. Pray fix your own time; and

if it did not suit us we would say so. We could then discuss man well...

How much I owe to you and Hooker! I do not suppose I should hardly ever

have published had it not been for you.

[The lecture referred to in the last letter was given at the Royal

Institution, February 10, 1860. The following letter was written

in reply to Mr. Huxley's request for information about breeding,

hybridisation, etc. It is of interest as giving a vivid retrospect of

the writer's experience on the subject.]

CHARLES DARWIN TO T.H. HUXLEY. Ilkley, Yorks, November 27 [1859].

My dear Huxley,

Gartner grand, Kolreuter grand, but papers scattered through many

volumes and very lengthy. I had to make an abstract of the whole.

Herbert's volume on Amaryllidaceae very good, and two excellent papers

in the 'Horticultural Journal.' For animals, no resume to be trusted at

all; facts are to be collected from all original sources. (This caution

is exemplified in the following extract from an earlier letter to

Professor Huxley:--"The inaccuracy of the blessed gang (of which I

am one) of compilers passes all bounds. MONSTERS have frequently been

described as hybrids without a tittle of evidence. I must give one other

case to show how we jolly fellows work. A Belgian Baron (I forget his

name at this moment) crossed two distinct geese and got SEVEN hybrids,

which he proved subsequently to be quite sterile; well, compiler

the first, Chevreul, says that the hybrids were propagated for SEVEN

generations inter se. Compiler second (Morton) mistakes the French name,

and gives Latin names for two more distinct geese, and says CHEVREUL

himself propagated them inter se for seven generations; and the latter

statement is copied from book to book.") I fear my MS. for the bigger

book (twice or thrice as long as in present book), with all references,

would be illegible, but it would save you infinite labour; of course I

would gladly lend it, but I have no copy, so care would have to be taken

of it. But my accursed handwriting would be fatal, I fear.

About breeding, I know of no one book. I did not think well of Lowe,

but I can name none better. Youatt I look at as a far better and MORE

PRACTICAL authority; but then his views and facts are scattered through

three or four thick volumes. I have picked up most by reading really

numberless special treatises and ALL agricultural and horticultural

journals; but it is a work of long years. THE DIFFICULTY IS TO KNOW WHAT

TO TRUST. No one or two statements are worth a farthing; the facts are

so complicated. I hope and think I have been really cautious in what I

state on this subject, although all that I have given, as yet, is FAR

too briefly. I have found it very important associating with fanciers

and breeders. For instance, I sat one evening in a gin palace in the

Borough amongst a set of pigeon fanciers, when it was hinted that Mr.

Bull had crossed his Pouters with Runts to gain size; and if you had

seen the solemn, the mysterious, and awful shakes of the head which

all the fanciers gave at this scandalous proceeding, you would have

recognised how little crossing has had to do with improving breeds,

and how dangerous for endless generations the process was. All this was

brought home far more vividly than by pages of mere statements, etc.

But I am scribbling foolishly. I really do not know how to advise about

getting up facts on breeding and improving breeds. Go to Shows is one

way. Read ALL treatises on any ONE domestic animal, and believe nothing

without largely confirmed. For your lectures I can give you a few

amusing anecdotes and sentences, if you want to make the audience laugh.

I thank you particularly for telling me what naturalists think. If we

can once make a compact set of believers we shall in time conquer. I

am EMINENTLY glad Ramsey is on our side, for he is, in my opinion, a

firs-rate geologist. I sent him a copy. I hope he got it. I shall be

very curious to hear whether any effect has been produced on Prestwich;

I sent him a copy, not as a friend, but owing to a sentence or two in

some paper, which made me suspect he was doubting.

Rev. C. Kingsley has a mind to come round. Quatrefages writes that he

goes some long way with me; says he exhibited diagrams like mine. With

most hearty thanks,

Yours very tired, C. DARWIN.

[I give the conclusion of Professor Huxley's lecture, as being one of

the earliest, as well as one of the most eloquent of his utterances in

support of the 'Origin of Species']:

"I have said that the man of science is the sworn interpreter of nature

in the high court of reason. But of what avail is his honest speech, if

ignorance is the assessor of the judge, and prejudice the foreman of the

jury? I hardly know of a great physical truth, whose universal reception

has not been preceded by an epoch in which most estimable persons have

maintained that the phenomena investigated were directly dependent on

the Divine Will, and that the attempt to investigate them was not only

futile, but blasphemous. And there is a wonderful tenacity of life about

this sort of opposition to physical science. Crushed and maimed in every

battle, it yet seems never to be slain; and after a hundred defeats it

is at this day as rampant, though happily not so mischievous, as in the

time of Galileo.

"But to those whose life is spent, to use Newton's noble words, in

picking up here a pebble and there a pebble on the shores of the great

ocean of truth--who watch, day by day, the slow but sure advance of that

mighty tide, bearing on its bosom the thousand treasures wherewith man

ennobles and beautifies his life--it would be laughable, if it were not

so sad, to see the little Canutes of the hour enthroned in solemn state,

bidding that great wave to stay, and threatening to check its beneficent

progress. The wave rises and they fly; but, unlike the brave old Dane,

they learn no lesson of humility: the throne is pitched at what seems a

safe distance, and the folly is repeated.

"Surely it is the duty of the public to discourage anything of this

kind, to discredit these foolish meddlers who think they do the Almighty

a service by preventing a thorough study of His works.

"The Origin of Species is not the first, and it will not be the last, of

the great questions born of science, which will demand settlement from

this generation. The general mind is seething strangely, and to those

who watch the signs of the times, it seems plain that this nineteenth

century will see revolutions of thought and practice as great as those

which the sixteenth witnessed. Through what trials and sore contests the

civilised world will have to pass in the course of this new reformation,

who can tell?

"But I verily believe that come what will, the part which England may

play in the battle is a grand and a noble one. She may prove to the

world that, for one people, at any rate, despotism and demagogy are not

the necessary alternatives of government; that freedom and order are

not incompatible; that reverence is the handmaid of knowledge; that free

discussion is the life of truth, and of true unity in a nation.

"Will England play this part? That depends upon how you, the public,

deal with science. Cherish her, venerate her, follow her methods

faithfully and implicitly in their application to all branches of human

thought, and the future of this people will be greater than the past.

"Listen to those who would silence and crush her, and I fear our

children will see the glory of England vanishing like Arthur in the

mist; they will cry too late the woful cry of Guinever:--

'It was my duty to have loved the highest;

It surely was my profit had I known;

It would have been my pleasure had I seen.'"]

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down [February 15th, 1860].

... I am perfectly convinced (having read this morning) that the review

in the 'Annals' (Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist. third series, vol. 5,

page 132. My father has obviously taken the expression "pestilent" from

the following passage (page 138): "But who is this Nature, we have a

right to ask, who has such tremendous power, and to whose efficiency

such marvellous performances are ascribed? What are her image and

attributes, when dragged from her wordy lurking-place? Is she aught

but a pestilent abstraction, like dust cast in our eyes to obscure the

workings of an Intelligent First Cause of all?" The reviewer pays a

tribute to my father's candour, "so manly and outspoken as almost to

'cover a multitude of sins.'" The parentheses (to which allusion is made

above) are so frequent as to give a characteristic appearance to Mr.

Wollaston's pages.) is by Wollaston; no one else in the world would have

used so many parentheses. I have written to him, and told him that the

"pestilent" fellow thanks him for his kind manner of speaking about him.

I have also told him that he would be pleased to hear that the Bishop of

Oxford says it is the most unphilosophical (Another version of the words

is given by Lyell, to whom they were spoken, viz. "the most illogical

book ever written."--'Life,' volume ii. page 358.) work he ever read.

The review seems to me clever, and only misinterprets me in a few

places. Like all hostile men, he passes over the explanation given of

Classification, Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs, etc. I

read Wallace's paper in MS. ("On the Zoological Geography of the Malay

Archipelago."--Linn. Soc. Journ. 1860.), and thought it admirably

good; he does not know that he has been anticipated about the depth of

intervening sea determining distribution... The most curious point in

the paper seems to me that about the African character of the Celebes

productions, but I should require further confirmation...

Henslow is staying here; I have had some talk with him; he is in much

the same state as Bunbury (The late Sir Charles Bunbury, well-known as a

Palaeo-botanist.), and will go a very little way with us, but brings up

no real argument against going further. He also shudders at the eye!

It is really curious (and perhaps is an argument in our favour) how

differently different opposers view the subject. Henslow used to rest

his opposition on the imperfection of the Geological Record, but he now

thinks nothing of this, and says I have got well out of it; I wish I

could quite agree with him. Baden Powell says he never read anything so

conclusive as my statement about the eye!! A stranger writes to me about

sexual selection, and regrets that I boggle about such a trifle as the

brush of hair on the male turkey, and so on. As L. Jenyns has a really

philosophical mind, and as you say you like to see everything, I send an

old letter of his. In a later letter to Henslow, which I have seen, he

is more candid than any opposer I have heard of, for he says, though he

CANNOT go so far as I do, yet he can give no good reason why he should

not. It is funny how each man draws his own imaginary line at which to

halt. It reminds me so vividly what I was told (By Professor Henslow.)

about you when I first commenced geology--to believe a LITTLE, but on no

account to believe all.

Ever yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. Down, February 18th [1860].

My dear Gray,

I received about a week ago two sheets of your Review (The 'American

Journal of Science and Arts,' March, 1860. Reprinted in 'Darwiniana,'

1876.); read them, and sent them to Hooker; they are now returned and

r-read with care, and to-morrow I send them to Lyell. Your Review seems

to me ADMIRABLE; by far the best which I have read. I thank you from

my heart both for myself, but far more for the subject's sake. Your

contrast between the views of Agassiz and such as mine is very curious

and instructive. (The contrast is briefly summed up thus: "The theory

of Agassiz regards the origin of species and their present general

distribution over the world as equally primordial, equally supernatural;

that of Darwin as equally derivative, equally natural."--'Darwiniana,'

page 14.) By the way, if Agassiz writes anything on the subject, I hope

you will tell me. I am charmed with your metaphor of the streamlet never

running against the force of gravitation. Your distinction between an

hypothesis and theory seems to me very ingenious; but I do not think

it is ever followed. Every one now speaks of the undulatory THEORY of

light; yet the ether is itself hypothetical, and the undulations are

inferred only from explaining the phenomena of light. Even in the THEORY

of gravitation is the attractive power in any way known, except by

explaining the fall of the apple, and the movements of the Planets?

It seems to me that an hypothesis is DEVELOPED into a theory solely by

explaining an ample lot of facts. Again and again I thank you for your

generous aid in discussing a view, about which you very properly hold

yourself unbiassed.

My dear Gray, yours most sincerely, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--Several clergymen go far with me. Rev. L. Jenyns, a very good

naturalist. Henslow will go a very little way with me, and is not

shocked with me. He has just been visiting me.

[With regard to the attitude of the more liberal representatives of the

Church, the following letter (already referred to) from Charles Kingsley

is of interest:]

C. KINGSLEY TO CHARLES DARWIN. Eversley Rectory, Winchfield, November

18th, 1859.

Dear Sir,

I have to thank you for the unexpected honour of your book. That the

Naturalist whom, of all naturalists living, I most wish to know and to

learn from, should have sent a scientist like me his book, encourages me

at least to observe more carefully, and perhaps more slowly.

I am so poorly (in brain), that I fear I cannot read your book just now

as I ought. All I have seen of it AWES me; both with the heap of facts

and the prestige of your name, and also with the clear intuition, that

if you be right, I must give up much that I have believed and written.

In that I care little. Let God be true, and every man a liar! Let us

know what IS, and, as old Socrates has it, epesthai to logo--follow up

the villainous shifty fox of an argument, into whatsoever unexpected

bogs and brakes he may lead us, if we do but run into him at last.

From two common superstitions, at least, I shall be free while judging

of your books:--

1. I have long since, from watching the crossing of domesticated animals

and plants, learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species.

2. I have gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception

of Deity, to believe that he created primal forms capable of self

development into all forms needful pro tempore and pro loco, as to

believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the

lacunas which He Himself had made. I question whether the former be not

the loftier thought.

Be it as it may, I shall prize your book, both for itself, and as a

proof that you are aware of the existence of such a person as

Your faithful servant, C. KINGSLEY.

[My father's old friend, the Rev. J. Brodie Innes, of Milton Brodie, who

was for many years Vicar of Down, writes in the same spirit:

"We never attacked each other. Before I knew Mr. Darwin I had adopted,

and publicly expressed, the principle that the study of natural history,

geology, and science in general, should be pursued without reference

to the Bible. That the Book of Nature and Scripture came from the same

Divine source, ran in parallel lines, and when properly understood would

never cross...

"His views on this subject were very much to the same effect from his

side. Of course any conversations we may have had on purely religious

subjects are as sacredly private now as in his life; but the quaint

conclusion of one may be given. We had been speaking of the apparent

contradiction of some supposed discoveries with the Book of Genesis; he

said, 'you are (it would have been more correct to say you ought to be)

a theologian, I am a naturalist, the lines are separate. I endeavour to

discover facts without considering what is said in the Book of Genesis.

I do not attack Moses, and I think Moses can take care of himself.' To

the same effect he wrote more recently, 'I cannot remember that I ever

published a word directly against religion or the clergy; but if you

were to read a little pamphlet which I received a couple of days ago

by a clergyman, you would laugh, and admit that I had some excuse

for bitterness. After abusing me for two or three pages, in language

sufficiently plain and emphatic to have satisfied any reasonable man,

he sums up by saying that he has vainly searched the English language

to find terms to express his contempt for me and all Darwinians.' In

another letter, after I had left Down, he writes, 'We often differed,

but you are one of those rare mortals from whom one can differ and yet

feel no shade of animosity, and that is a thing [of] which I should feel

very proud, if any one could say [it] of me.'

"On my last visit to Down, Mr. Darwin said, at his dinner-table, 'Brodie

Innes and I have been fast friends for thirty years, and we never

thoroughly agreed on any subject but once, and then we stared hard at

each other, and thought one of us must be very ill.'"]

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, February 23rd [1860].

My dear Lyell,

That is a splendid answer of the father of Judge Crompton. How curious

that the Judge should have hit on exactly the same points as yourself.

It shows me what a capital lawyer you would have made, how many unjust

acts you would have made appear just! But how much grander a field has

science been than the law, though the latter might have made you Lord

Kinnordy. I will, if there be another edition, enlarge on gradation in

the eye, and on all forms coming from one prototype, so as to try and

make both less glaringly improbable...

With respect to Bronn's objection that it cannot be shown how life

arises, and likewise to a certain extent Asa Gray's remark that

natural selection is not a vera causa, I was much interested by finding

accidentally in Brewster's 'Life of Newton,' that Leibnitz objected to

the law of gravity because Newton could not show what gravity itself

is. As it has chanced, I have used in letters this very same argument,

little knowing that any one had really thus objected to the law of

gravity. Newton answers by saying that it is philosophy to make out the

movements of a clock, though you do not know why the weight descends

to the ground. Leibnitz further objected that the law of gravity was

opposed to Natural Religion! Is this not curious? I really think I shall

use the facts for some introductory remarks for my bigger book.

... You ask (I see) why we do not have monstrosities in higher animals;

but when they live they are almost always sterile (even giants and

dwarfs are GENERALLY sterile), and we do not know that Harvey's monster

would have bred. There is I believe only one case on record of a peloric

flower being fertile, and I cannot remember whether this reproduced

itself.

To recur to the eye. I really think it would have been dishonest, not to

have faced the difficulty; and worse (as Talleyrand would have said), it

would have been impolitic I think, for it would have been thrown in my

teeth, as H. Holland threw the bones of the ear, till Huxley shut him up

by showing what a fine gradation occurred amongst living creatures.

I thank you much for your most pleasant letter.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I send a letter by Herbert Spencer, which you can read or not

as you think fit. He puts, to my mind, the philosophy of the argument

better than almost any one, at the close of the letter. I could make

nothing of Dana's idealistic notions about species; but then, as

Wollaston says, I have not a metaphysical head.

By the way, I have thrown at Wollaston's head, a paper by Alexander

Jordan, who demonstrates metaphysically that all our cultivated races

are Go-created species.

Wollaston misrepresents accidentally, to a wonderful extent, some

passages in my book. He reviewed, without relooking at certain passages.

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, February 25th [1860].

... I cannot help wondering at your zeal about my book. I declare to

heaven you seem to care as much about my book as I do myself. You have

no right to be so eminently unselfish! I have taken off my spit [i.e.

file] a letter of Ramsay's, as every geologist convert I think very

important. By the way, I saw some time ago a letter from H.D. Rogers

(Professor of Geology in the University of Glasgow. Born in the United

States 1809, died 1866.) to Huxley, in which he goes very far with us...

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, Saturday, March 3rd, [1860].

My dear Hooker,

What a day's work you had on that Thursday! I was not able to go to

London till Monday, and then I was a fool for going, for, on Tuesday

night, I had an attack of fever (with a touch of pleurisy), which came

on like a lion, but went off as a lamb, but has shattered me a good bit.

I was much interested by your last note... I think you expect too much in

regard to change of opinion on the subject of Species. One large class

of men, more especially I suspect of naturalists, never will care about

ANY general question, of which old Gray, of the British Museum, may

be taken as a type; and secondly, nearly all men past a moderate age,

either in actual years or in mind, are, I am fully convinced, incapable

of looking at facts under a new point of view. Seriously, I am

astonished and rejoiced at the progress which the subject has made; look

at the enclosed memorandum. (See table of names below.) -- says my book

will be forgotten in ten years, perhaps so; but, with such a list, I

feel convinced the subject will not. The outsiders, as you say, are

strong.

You say that you think that Bentham is touched, "but, like a wise

man, holds his tongue." Perhaps you only mean that he cannot decide,

otherwise I should think such silence the reverse of magnanimity; for

if others behaved the same way, how would opinion ever progress? It is

a dereliction of actual duty. (In a subsequent letter to Sir J.D. Hooker

(March 12th, 1860), my father wrote, "I now quite understand Bentham's

silence.")

I am so glad to hear about Thwaites. (Dr. G.J.K. Thwaites, who was

born in 1811, established a reputation in this country as an expert

microscopist, and an acute observer, working especially at cryptogamic

botany. On his appointment as Director of the Botanic Gardens at

Peradenyia, Ceylon, Dr. Thwaites devoted himself to the flora of Ceylon.

As a result of this he has left numerous and valuable collections, a

description of which he embodied in his 'Enumeratio Plantarum Zeylaniae'

(1864). Dr. Thwaites was a fellow of the Linnean Society, but beyond the

above facts little seems to have been recorded of his life. His death

occurred in Ceylon on September 11th, 1882, in his seventy-second year.

"Athenaeum", October 14th, 1882, page 500.)... I have had an astounding

letter from Dr. Boott (The letter is enthusiastically laudatory, and

obviously full of genuine feeling.); it might be turned into ridicule

against him and me, so I will not send it to any one. He writes in a

noble spirit of love of truth.

I wonder what Lindley thinks; probably too busy to read or think on the

question.

I am vexed about Bentham's reticence, for it would have been of real

value to know what parts appeared weakest to a man of his powers of

observation.

Farewell, my dear Hooker, yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--Is not Harvey in the class of men who do not at all care for

generalities? I remember your saying you could not get him to write on

Distribution. I have found his works very unfruitful in every respect.

[Here follows the memorandum referred to:]

Geologists. Zoologists and Physiologists. Botanists.

Palaeontologists.

Lyell. Huxley. Carpenter. Hooker.

Ramsay.* J. Lubbock. Sir H. Holland H.C. Watson.

(to large extent).

Jukes.* L. Jenyns Asa Gray

(to large extent). (to some extent).

H.D. Rogers. Searles Wood.* Dr. Boott

(to large extent).

Thwaites.

(*Andrew Ramsay, late Director-General of the Geological Survey.

Joseph Beete Jukes, M.A., F.R.S., 1811-1869. He was educated at

Cambridge, and from 1842 to 1846 he acted as naturalist to H.M.S.

"Fly", on an exploring expedition in Australia and New Guinea. He was

afterwards appointed Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland. He

was the author of many papers, and of more than one good hand-book of

geology.

Searles Valentine Wood, February 14, 1798-1880. Chiefly known for his

work on the Mollusca of the 'Crag.')

[The following letter is of interest in connection with the mention of

Mr. Bentham in the last letter:]

G. BENTHAM TO FRANCIS DARWIN. 25 Wilton Place, S.W., May 30th, 1882.

My dear Sir,

In compliance with your note which I received last night, I send

herewith the letters I have from your father. I should have done so on

seeing the general request published in the papers, but that I did not

think there were any among them which could be of any use to you. Highly

flattered as I was by the kind and friendly notice with which Mr. Darwin

occasionally honoured me, I was never admitted into his intimacy, and he

therefore never made any communications to me in relation to his views

and labours. I have been throughout one of his most sincere admirers,

and fully adopted his theories and conclusions, notwithstanding the

severe pain and disappointment they at first occasioned me. On the day

that his celebrated paper was read at the Linnean Society, July 1st,

1858, a long paper of mine had been set down for reading, in which,

in commenting on the British Flora, I had collected a number of

observations and facts illustrating what I then believed to be a fixity

in species, however difficult it might be to assign their limits,

and showing a tendency of abnormal forms produced by cultivation

or otherwise, to withdraw within those original limits when left to

themselves. Most fortunately my paper had to give way to Mr.

Darwin's and when once that was read, I felt bound to defer mine for

reconsideration; I began to entertain doubts on the subject, and on

the appearance of the 'Origin of Species,' I was forced, however

reluctantly, to give up my long-cherished convictions, the results of

much labour and study, and I cancelled all that part of my paper which

urged original fixity, and published only portions of the remainder

in another form, chiefly in the 'Natural History Review.' I have since

acknowledged on various occasions my full adoption of Mr. Darwin's

views, and chiefly in my Presidential Address of 1863, and in my

thirteenth and last address, issued in the form of a report to the

British Association at its meeting at Belfast in 1874.

I prize so highly the letters that I have of Mr. Darwin's, that I should

feel obliged by your returning them to me when you have done with them.

Unfortunately I have not kept the envelopes, and Mr. Darwin usually only

dated them by the month not by the year, so that they are not in any

chronological order.

Yours very sincerely, GEORGE BENTHAM.

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down [March] 12th [1860].

My dear Lyell,

Thinking over what we talked about, the high state of intellectual

development of the old Grecians with the little or no subsequent

improvement, being an apparent difficulty, it has just occurred to me

that in fact the case harmonises perfectly with our views. The case

would be a decided difficulty on the Lamarckian or Vestigian doctrine

of necessary progression, but on the view which I hold of progression

depending on the conditions, it is no objection at all, and harmonises

with the other facts of progression in the corporeal structure of other

animals. For in a state of anarchy, or despotism, or bad government,

or after irruption of barbarians, force, strength, or ferocity, and not

intellect, would be apt to gain the day.

We have so enjoyed your and Lady Lyell's visit.

Good-night. C. DARWIN.

P.S.--By an odd chance (for I had not alluded even to the subject)

the ladies attacked me this evening, and threw the high state of old

Grecians into my teeth, as an unanswerable difficulty, but by good

chance I had my answer all pat, and silenced them. Hence I have thought

it worth scribbling to you...

CHARLES DARWIN TO J. PRESTWICH. (Now Professor of Geology in the

University of Oxford.) Down, March 12th [1860].

... At some future time, when you have a little leisure, and when you

have read my 'Origin of Species,' I should esteem it a SINGULAR

favour if you would send me any general criticisms. I do not mean of

unreasonable length, but such as you could include in a letter. I have

always admired your various memoirs so much that I should be eminently

glad to receive your opinion, which might be of real service to me.

Pray do not suppose that I expect to CONVERT or PERVERT you; if I could

stagger you in ever so slight a degree I should be satisfied; nor fear

to annoy me by severe criticisms, for I have had some hearty kicks from

some of my best friends. If it would not be disagreeable to you to send

me your opinion, I certainly should be truly obliged...

CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. Down, April 3rd [1860].

... I remember well the time when the thought of the eye made me cold

all over, but I have got over this stage of the complaint, and now small

trifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable. The

sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me

sick!...

You may like to hear about reviews on my book. Sedgwick (as I and

Lyell feel CERTAIN from internal evidence) has reviewed me savagely

and unfairly in the "Spectator". (See the quotations which follow the

present letter.) The notice includes much abuse, and is hardly fair in

several respects. He would actually lead any one, who was ignorant

of geology, to suppose that I had invented the great gaps between

successive geological formations, instead of its being an almost

universally admitted dogma. But my dear old friend Sedgwick, with his

noble heart, is old, and is rabid with indignation. It is hard to please

every one; you may remember that in my last letter I asked you to leave

out about the Weald denudation: I told Jukes this (who is head man of

the Irish geological survey), and he blamed me much, for he believed

every word of it, and thought it not at all exaggerated! In fact,

geologists have no means of gauging the infinitude of past time. There

has been one prodigy of a review, namely, an OPPOSED one (by Pictet

(Francois Jules Pictet, in the 'Archives des Sciences de la Bibliotheque

Universelle,' Mars 1860. The article is written in a courteous and

considerate tone, and concludes by saying that the 'Origin' will be of

real value to naturalists, especially if they are not led away by

its seductive arguments to believe in the dangerous doctrine of

modification. A passage which seems to have struck my father as being

valuable, and opposite which he has made double pencil marks and written

the word "good," is worth quoting: "La theorie de M. Darwin s'accorde

mal avec l'histoire des types a formes bien tranchees et definies qui

paraissent n'avoir vecu que pendant un temps limite. On en pourrait

citer des centaines d'exemples, tel que les reptiles volants, les

ichthyosaures, les belemnites, les ammonites, etc." Pictet was born in

1809, died 1872; he was Professor of Anatomy and Zoology at Geneva.),

the palaeontologist, in the Bib. Universelle of Geneva) which is

PERFECTLY fair and just, and I agree to every word he says; our only

difference being that he attaches less weight to arguments in favour,

and more to arguments opposed, than I do. Of all the opposed reviews,

I think this the only quite fair one, and I never expected to see one.

Please observe that I do not class your review by any means as opposed,

though you think so yourself! It has done me MUCH too good service ever

to appear in that rank in my eyes. But I fear I shall weary you with so

much about my book. I should rather think there was a good chance of

my becoming the most egotistical man in all Europe! What a proud

pre-eminence! Well, you have helped to make me so and therefore you must

forgive me if you can.

My dear Gray, ever yours most gratefully, C. DARWIN.

[In a letter to Sir Charles Lyell reference is made to Sedgwick's review

in the "Spectator", March 24:

"I now feel certain that Sedgwick is the author of the article in

the "Spectator". No one else could use such abusive terms. And what a

misrepresentation of my notions! Any ignoramus would suppose that I

had FIRST broached the doctrine, that the breaks between successive

formations marked long intervals of time. It is very unfair. But

poor dear old Sedgwick seems rabid on the question. "Demoralised

understanding!" If ever I talk with him I will tell him that I never

could believe that an inquisitor could be a good man: but now I know

that a man may roast another, and yet have as kind and noble a heart as

Sedgwick's."

The following passages are taken from the review:

"I need hardly go on any further with these objections. But I cannot

conclude without expressing my detestation of the theory, because of its

unflinching materialism;--because it has deserted the inductive track,

the only track that leads to physical truth;--because it utterly

repudiates final causes, and thereby indicates a demoralised

understanding on the part of its advocates."

"Not that I believe that Darwin is an atheist; though I cannot but

regard his materialism as atheistical. I think it untrue, because

opposed to the obvious course of nature, and the very opposite of

inductive truth. And I think it intensely mischievous."

"Each series of facts is laced together by a series of assumptions, and

repetitions of the one false principle. You cannot make a good rope out

of a string of air bubbles."

"But any startling and (supposed) novel paradox, maintained very boldly

and with something of imposing plausibility, produces in some minds a

kind of pleasing excitement which predisposes them in its favour; and

if they are unused to careful reflection, and averse to the labour of

accurate investigation, they will be likely to conclude that what is

(apparently) ORIGINAL, must be a production of original GENIUS, and

that anything very much opposed to prevailing notions must be a grand

DISCOVERY,--in short, that whatever comes from the 'bottom of a well'

must be the 'truth' supposed to be hidden there."

In a review in the December number of 'Macmillan's Magazine,' 1860,

Fawcett vigorously defended my father from the charge of employing a

false method of reasoning; a charge which occurs in Sedgwick's review,

and was made at the time ad nauseam, in such phrases as: "This is not

the true Baconian method." Fawcett repeated his defence at the meeting

of the British Association in 1861. (See an interesting letter from my

father in Mr. Stephen's 'Life of Henry Fawcett,' 1886, page 101.)]

CHARLES DARWIN TO W.B CARPENTER. Down, April 6th [1860].

My dear Carpenter,

I have this minute finished your review in the 'Med. Chirurg. Review.'

(April 1860.) You must let me express my admiration at this most able

essay, and I hope to God it will be largely read, for it must produce a

great effect. I ought not, however, to express such warm admiration, for

you give my book, I fear, far too much praise. But you have gratified me

extremely; and though I hope I do not care very much for the approbation

of the non-scientific readers, I cannot say that this is at all so with

respect to such few men as yourself. I have not a criticism to make, for

I object to not a word; and I admire all, so that I cannot pick out

one part as better than the rest. It is all so well balanced. But it is

impossible not to be struck with your extent of knowledge in geology,

botany, and zoology. The extracts which you give from Hooker seem to me

EXCELLENTLY chosen, and most forcible. I am so much pleased in what

you say also about Lyell. In fact I am in a fit of enthusiasm, and had

better write no more. With cordial thanks,

Yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, April 10th [1860].

My dear Lyell,

Thank you much for your note of the 4th; I am very glad to hear that you

are at Torquay. I should have amused myself earlier by writing to you,

but I have had Hooker and Huxley staying here, and they have fully

occupied my time, as a little of anything is a full dose for me... There

has been a plethora of reviews, and I am really quite sick of myself.

There is a very long review by Carpenter in the 'Medical and Chirurg.

Review,' very good and well balanced, but not brilliant. He discusses

Hooker's books at as great length as mine, and makes excellent extracts;

but I could not get Hooker to feel the least interest in being praised.

Carpenter speaks of you in thoroughly proper terms. There is a BRILLIANT

review by Huxley ('Westminster Review,' April 1860.), with capital hits,

but I do not know that he much advances the subject. I THINK I have

convinced him that he has hardly allowed weight enough to the case of

varieties of plants being in some degrees sterile.

To diverge from reviews: Asa Gray sends me from Wyman (who will write),

a good case of all the pigs being black in the Everglades of Virginia.

On asking about the cause, it seems (I have got capital analogous cases)

that when the BLACK pigs eat a certain nut their bones become red, and

they suffer to a certain extent, but that the WHITE pigs lose their

hoofs and perish, "and we aid by SELECTION, for we kill most of the

young white pigs." This was said by men who could hardly read. By the

way, it is a great blow to me that you cannot admit the potency of

natural selection. The more I think of it, the less I doubt its

power for great and small changes. I have just read the 'Edinburgh'

('Edinburgh Review,' April 1860.), which without doubt is by --. It is

extremely malignant, clever, and I fear will be very damaging. He is

atrociously severe on Huxley's lecture, and very bitter against Hooker.

So we three ENJOYED it together. Not that I really enjoyed it, for

it made me uncomfortable for one night; but I have got quite over it

to-day. It requires much study to appreciate all the bitter spite of

many of the remarks against me; indeed I did not discover all myself.

It scandalously misrepresents many parts. He misquotes some passages,

altering words within inverted commas...

It is painful to be hated in the intense degree with which -- hates me.

Now for a curious thing about my book, and then I have done. In last

Saturday's "Gardeners' Chronicle" (April 7th, 1860.), a Mr. Patrick

Matthew publishes a long extract from his work on 'Naval Timber and

Arboriculture,' published in 1831, in which he briefly but completely

anticipates the theory of Natural Selection. I have ordered the book,

as some few passages are rather obscure, but it is certainly, I think, a

complete but not developed anticipation! Erasmus always said that surely

this would be shown to be the case some day. Anyhow, one may be excused

in not having discovered the fact in a work on Naval Timber.

I heartily hope that your Torquay work may be successful. Give my

kindest remembrances to Falconer, and I hope he is pretty well. Hooker

and Huxley (with Mrs. Huxley) were extremely pleasant. But poor dear

Hooker is tired to death of my book, and it is a marvel and a prodigy if

you are not worse tired--if that be possible. Farewell, my dear Lyell,

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, [April 13th, 1860].

My dear Hooker,

Questions of priority so often lead to odious quarrels, that I should

esteem it a great favour if you would read the enclosed. ((My father

wrote ("Gardeners' Chronicle", 1860, page 362, April 21st): "I have been

much interested by Mr. Patrick Matthew's communication in the number of

your paper dated April 7th. I freely acknowledge that Mr. Matthew has

anticipated by many years the explanation which I have offered of the

origin of species, under the name of natural selection. I think that

no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other

naturalist, had heard of Mr. Matthew's views, considering how briefly

they are given, and that they appeared in the appendix to a work on

Naval Timber and Arboriculture. I can do no more than offer my apologies

to Mr. Matthew for my entire ignorance of this publication. If any

other edition of my work is called for, I will insert to the foregoing

effect." In spite of my father's recognition of his claims, Mr. Matthew

remained unsatisfied, and complained that an article in the 'Saturday

Analyst and Leader' was "scarcely fair in alluding to Mr. Darwin as the

parent of the origin of species, seeing that I published the whole

that Mr. Darwin attempts to prove, more than twenty-nine years

ago."--"Saturday Analyst and Leader", November 24, 1860.) If you think

it proper that I should send it (and of this there can hardly be any

question), and if you think it full and ample enough, please alter the

date to the day on which you post it, and let that be soon. The case in

the "Gardeners' Chronicle" seems a LITTLE stronger than in Mr. Matthew's

book, for the passages are therein scattered in three places; but it

would be mere hair-splitting to notice that. If you object to my letter,

please return it; but I do not expect that you will, but I thought that

you would not object to run your eye over it. My dear Hooker, it is a

great thing for me to have so good, true, and old a friend as you. I owe

much for science to my friends.

Many thanks for Huxley's lecture. The latter part seemed to be grandly

eloquent.

... I have gone over [the 'Edinburgh'] review again, and compared

passages, and I am astonished at the misrepresentations. But I am glad

I resolved not to answer. Perhaps it is selfish, but to answer and think

more on the subject is too unpleasant. I am so sorry that Huxley by my

means has been thus atrociously attacked. I do not suppose you much care

about the gratuitous attack on you.

Lyell in his letter remarked that you seemed to him as if you were

overworked. Do, pray, be cautious, and remember how many and many a man

has done this--who thought it absurd till too late. I have often thought

the same. You know that you were bad enough before your Indian journey.

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, April [1860].

My dear Lyell,

I was very glad to get your nice long letter from Torquay. A press of

letters prevented me writing to Wells. I was particularly glad to hear

what you thought about not noticing [the 'Edinburgh'] review. Hooker and

Huxley thought it a sort of duty to point out the alteration of quoted

citations, and there is truth in this remark; but I so hated the thought

that I resolved not to do so. I shall come up to London on Saturday the

14th, for Sir B. Brodie's party, as I have an accumulation of things to

do in London, and will (if I do not hear to the contrary) call about a

quarter before ten on Sunday morning, and sit with you at breakfast, but

will not sit long, and so take up much of your time. I must say one more

word about our quasi-theological controversy about natural selection,

and let me have your opinion when we meet in London. Do you consider

that the successive variations in the size of the crop of the Pouter

Pigeon, which man has accumulated to please his caprice, have been due

to "the creative and sustaining powers of Brahma?" In the sense that

an omnipotent and omniscient Deity must order and know everything, this

must be admitted; yet, in honest truth, I can hardly admit it. It seems

preposterous that a maker of a universe should care about the crop of a

pigeon solely to please man's silly fancies. But if you agree with me in

thinking such an interposition of the Deity uncalled for, I can see

no reason whatever for believing in such interpositions in the case of

natural beings, in which strange and admirable peculiarities have been

naturally selected for the creature's own benefit. Imagine a Pouter in

a state of nature wading into the water and then, being buoyed up by

its inflated crop, sailing about in search of food. What admiration this

would have excited--adaptation to the laws of hydrostatic pressure, etc.

etc. For the life of me I cannot see any difficulty in natural selection

producing the most exquisite structure, IF SUCH STRUCTURE CAN BE ARRIVED

AT BY GRADATION, and I know from experience how hard it is to name any

structure towards which at least some gradations are not known.

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--The conclusion at which I have come, as I have told Asa Gray, is

that such a question, as is touched on in this note, is beyond the human

intellect, like "predestination and free will," or the "origin of evil."

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, [April 18th, 1860].

My dear Hooker,

I return --'s letter... Some of my relations say it cannot POSSIBLY be

--'s article (The 'Edinburgh Review.'), because the reviewer speaks

so very highly of --. Poor dear simple folk! My clever neighbour, Mr.

Norman, says the article is so badly written, with no definite object,

that no one will read it. Asa Gray has sent me an article ('North

American Review,' April, 1860. "By Professor Bowen," is written on my

father's copy. The passage referred to occurs at page 488, where

the author says that we ought to find "an infinite number of other

varieties--gross, rude, and purposeless--the unmeaning creations of an

unconscious cause.") from the United States, clever, and dead against

me. But one argument is funny. The reviewer says, that if the doctrine

were true, geological strata would be full of monsters which have

failed! A very clear view this writer had of the struggle for existence!

... I am glad you like Adam Bede so much. I was charmed with it...

We think you must by mistake have taken with your own numbers of the

'National Review' my precious number. (This no doubt refers to the

January number, containing Dr. Carpenter's review of the 'Origin.') I

wish you would look.

CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. Down, April 25th [1860].

My dear Gray,