248 'VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION.' [1867. 



P.S. — I am grieved that my views should incidentally have 

 caused trouble to your mind, but I thank you for your judg- 

 ment, and honour you for it, that theology and science should 

 each run its own course, and that in the present case I am 

 not responsible if their meeting-point should still be far off. 



[The next letter discusses the * Reign of Law,' referred 

 to a few pages back :] . 



C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



Down, June i [1867]. 



... I am at present reading the Duke, and am very 7nuch 

 interested by him ; yet I cannot but think, clever as the whole 

 is, that parts are weak, as when he doubts whether each curva- 

 ture of the beak of humming-birds is of service to each spe- 

 cies. He admits, perhaps too fully, that I have shown the 

 use of each little ridge and shape of each petal in orchids, 

 and how strange he does not extend the view to humming- 

 birds. Still odder, it seems to me, all that he says on beauty, 

 which I should have thought a nonentity, except in the mind 

 of some sentient being. He might have as well said that love 

 existed during the secondary or Palaeozoic periods. I hope 

 you are getting on with your book better than I am with 

 mine, which kills me with the labour of correcting, and is 

 intolerably dull, though I did not think so when I was writ- 

 ing it. A naturalist's life would be a happy one if he had 

 only to observe, and never to write. 



We shall be in London for a week in about a fortnight's 

 time, and I shall enjoy having a breakfast talk with you. 



Yours affectionately, 



C. Darwin. 



[The following letter refers to the new and improved 

 translation of the * Origin,' undertaken by Professor Carus :] 



