3/0 EVOLUTION [CHAP. V 



Letter 281 To G. J. Romanes. 1 



Down, Saturday Night [1877]. 



I have just finished your lecture 2 ; it is an admirable 

 scientific argument, and most powerful. I wish that it could 

 be sown broadcast throughout the land. Your courage is 

 marvellous, and I wonder that you were not stoned on 

 the spot and in Scotland ! Do please tell me how it was 

 received in the Lecture Hall. About man being made like a 

 monkey (p. 37 3 ) is quite new to me, and the argument in an 

 earlier place (p. 8 4 ) on the law of parsimony admirably put. 

 Yes, p. 2 1 5 is new to me. All strike me as very clear, 

 and, considering small space, you have chosen your lines of 

 reasoning excellently. 



The few last pages are awfully powerful, in my opinion. 



Sunday Morning. The above was written last night in 

 the enthusiasm of the moment, and now this dark, dismal 

 Sunday morning I fully agree with what I said. 



I am very sorry to hear about the failures in the graft 

 experiments, and not from your own fault or ill-luck. Trollope 

 in one of his novels gives as a maxim of constant use by a 

 brickmaker "It is dogged as does it" 6 and I have often 



1 Published in the Life and Letters of Romanes, p. 66. 



2 The Scientific Evidence of Organic Evolution : a Discourse (de- 

 livered before the Philosophical Society of Ross-shire), Inverness, 1877. 

 It was reprinted in the Fortnightly Review, and was afterwards worked 

 up into a book under the above title. 



3 " And if you reject the natural explanation of hereditary descent, 

 you can only suppose that the Deity, in creating man, took the most 

 scrupulous pains to make him in the image of the ape " (Discourse, 



P- 37)- 



4 At p. 8 of the Discourse the speaker referred to the law " which Sir 



William Hamilton called the Law of Parsimony or the law which forbids 

 us to assume the operation of higher causes when lower ones are found 

 sufficient to explain the desired effects," as constituting the " only logical 

 barrier between Science and Superstition." 



5 Discourse, p. 21. If we accept the doctrines of individual creations 

 and ideal types, we must believe that the Deity acted " with no other 

 apparent motive than to suggest to us, by every one of the observable 

 facts, that the ideal types are nothing other than the bonds of a lineal 

 descent." 



6 "Tell 'ee what, Master Crawley ; and yer reverence mustn't think 

 as I means to be preaching ; there ain't nowt a man can't bear if he '11 



