The Life and Letters-2 [126]
and for your very obliging letter. I am delighted to hear that you intend to consider the relations of fossil animals in connection with their genealogy; it will afford you a fine field for the exercise of your extensive knowledge and powers of reasoning. Your belief will I suppose, at present, lower you in the estimation of your countrymen; but judging from the rapid spread in all parts of Europe, excepting France, of the belief in the common descent of allied species, I must think that this belief will before long become universal. How strange it is that the country which gave birth to Buffon, the elder Geoffroy, and especially to Lamarck, should now cling so pertinaciously to the belief that species are immutable creations.
My work on Variation, etc., under domestication, will appear in a French translation in a few months' time, and I will do myself the pleasure and honour of directing the publisher to send a copy to you to the same address as this letter.
With sincere respect, I remain, dear sir, Yours very faithfully, CHARLES DARWIN.
[The next letter is of especial interest, as showing how high a value my father placed on the support of the younger German naturalists:]
CHARLES DARWIN TO W. PREYER. (Now Professor of Physiology at Jena.) March 31, 1868.
...I am delighted to hear that you uphold the doctrine of the Modification of Species, and defend my views. The support which I receive from Germany is my chief ground for hoping that our views will ultimately prevail. To the present day I am continually abused or treated with contempt by writers of my own country; but the younger naturalists are almost all on my side, and sooner or later the public must follow those who make the subject their special study. The abuse and contempt of ignorant writers hurts me very little...
CHAPTER 2.VI.
WORK ON 'MAN.'
1864-1870.
[In the autobiographical chapter in Volume I., my father gives the circumstances which led to his writing the 'Descent of Man.' He states that his collection of facts, begun in 1837 or 1838, was continued for many years without any definite idea of publishing on the subject. The following letter to Mr. Wallace shows that in the period of ill-health and depression about 1864 he despaired of ever being able to do so:]
CHARLES DARWIN TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, [May?] 28 [1864].
Dear Wallace,
I am so much better that I have just finished a paper for Linnean Society (On the three forms, etc., of Lythrum.); but I am not yet at all strong, I felt much disinclination to write, and therefore you must forgive me for not having sooner thanked you for your paper on 'Man' ('Anthropological Review,' March 1864.), received on the 11th. But first let me say that I have hardly ever in my life been more struck by any paper than that on 'Variation,' etc. etc., in the "Reader". ('"Reader", April 16, 1864. "On the Phenomena of Variation," etc. Abstract of a paper read before the Linnean Society, March 17, 1864.) I feel sure that such papers will do more for the spreading of our views on the modification of species than any separate Treatises on the simple subject itself. It is really admirable; but you ought not in the Man paper to speak of the theory as mine; it is just as much yours as mine. One correspondent has already noticed to me your "high-minded" conduct on this head. But now for your Man paper, about which I should like to write more than I can. The great leading idea is quite new to me, viz. that during late ages, the mind will have been modified more than the body; yet I had got as far as to see with you that the struggle between the races of man depended entirely on intellectual and MORAL qualities. The latter part of the paper I can designate only as grand and most eloquently done. I have shown your paper to two or three persons who have been here, and they have been equally struck with it. I am not sure that I go with you on all minor points: when reading Sir G. Grey's account of the constant battles of Australian savages, I remember thinking that natural
My work on Variation, etc., under domestication, will appear in a French translation in a few months' time, and I will do myself the pleasure and honour of directing the publisher to send a copy to you to the same address as this letter.
With sincere respect, I remain, dear sir, Yours very faithfully, CHARLES DARWIN.
[The next letter is of especial interest, as showing how high a value my father placed on the support of the younger German naturalists:]
CHARLES DARWIN TO W. PREYER. (Now Professor of Physiology at Jena.) March 31, 1868.
...I am delighted to hear that you uphold the doctrine of the Modification of Species, and defend my views. The support which I receive from Germany is my chief ground for hoping that our views will ultimately prevail. To the present day I am continually abused or treated with contempt by writers of my own country; but the younger naturalists are almost all on my side, and sooner or later the public must follow those who make the subject their special study. The abuse and contempt of ignorant writers hurts me very little...
CHAPTER 2.VI.
WORK ON 'MAN.'
1864-1870.
[In the autobiographical chapter in Volume I., my father gives the circumstances which led to his writing the 'Descent of Man.' He states that his collection of facts, begun in 1837 or 1838, was continued for many years without any definite idea of publishing on the subject. The following letter to Mr. Wallace shows that in the period of ill-health and depression about 1864 he despaired of ever being able to do so:]
CHARLES DARWIN TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, [May?] 28 [1864].
Dear Wallace,
I am so much better that I have just finished a paper for Linnean Society (On the three forms, etc., of Lythrum.); but I am not yet at all strong, I felt much disinclination to write, and therefore you must forgive me for not having sooner thanked you for your paper on 'Man' ('Anthropological Review,' March 1864.), received on the 11th. But first let me say that I have hardly ever in my life been more struck by any paper than that on 'Variation,' etc. etc., in the "Reader". ('"Reader", April 16, 1864. "On the Phenomena of Variation," etc. Abstract of a paper read before the Linnean Society, March 17, 1864.) I feel sure that such papers will do more for the spreading of our views on the modification of species than any separate Treatises on the simple subject itself. It is really admirable; but you ought not in the Man paper to speak of the theory as mine; it is just as much yours as mine. One correspondent has already noticed to me your "high-minded" conduct on this head. But now for your Man paper, about which I should like to write more than I can. The great leading idea is quite new to me, viz. that during late ages, the mind will have been modified more than the body; yet I had got as far as to see with you that the struggle between the races of man depended entirely on intellectual and MORAL qualities. The latter part of the paper I can designate only as grand and most eloquently done. I have shown your paper to two or three persons who have been here, and they have been equally struck with it. I am not sure that I go with you on all minor points: when reading Sir G. Grey's account of the constant battles of Australian savages, I remember thinking that natural