626 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



reprint, as soon as I find out what they are, etc., etc." This was on 

 the 23d of January, 18G0. On the 22d of May of the same year, Mr. 

 Darwin wrote acknowledging "a very pleasant remittance of £22" 

 (§110), and adding, "If you have any further communication to the 

 Appletons, pray express my acknowledgments for their generosity ; 

 for it is generosity, in my opinion." While Darwin and Gray were 

 corresponding concerning the interests of the book and the reviews of 

 it — favorable and adverse — in American periodicals, our civil war 

 broke out ; and we have, on the 5th of June, 1861, the expression : 



"I never knew the newspapers so profoundly interesting. North 

 America does not do England justice ; I have not seen or heard of a 

 soul who is not with the North. Some few, and I am one of them, 

 even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the 

 North would proclaim a crusade against slavery. In the long run, a 

 million horrid deaths would be amply repaid in the cause of humanity. 

 What wonderful times we live in ! Massachusetts seems to show 

 noble enthusiasm. Great God ! how I should like to see the greatest 

 curse on earth — slavery — abolished ! " In September Darwin said, 

 " If abolition does follow with your victory, the whole world will look 

 brighter in my eyes, and in many eyes." 



Professor John Fiske, whose "Cosmic Philosophy," and Professor 

 Morse, whose address on " What American Scientists have done for 

 Evolution," he read with interest ; and Professor Marsh, whose 

 "Odontornithes" he regarded as having " afforded the best support 

 to the theory of evolution which has appeared within the lact twenty 

 years," were other American scientific correspondents. 



Mr. Darwin was not inclined to make public statements respecting 

 Lis religious views, because he felt that a man's religion is an essen- 

 tially private matter concerning himself alone, and because he thought 

 that a man ought not to publish on a subject to which he had not given 

 special and continuous thought. 



In his twentieth year he had determined to become a clergyman, 

 with full acceptance in his mind of the doctrines of the Church of 

 England. Vv^'hile on the Beagle his faith in the literal interpretation 

 of the Scriptures was regarded as something remarkable ; but it was 

 gradually surrendered in the face of his critical reflections, though very 

 unwillingly, and disbelief creeping over his mind at a rate so slow as 

 to give no distress, became at last complete. At a later period he was 

 doubtful respecting the existence of a personal God ; but, as he wrote 

 in 1879, he was never an atheist in the sense of denying such existence, 

 but considered that the term agnostic would be the more correct desig- 

 nation of his Ktate of mind. He acknowledged to Miss Julia Wedg- 

 wood that the result of his reflections respecting design in Nature had 

 been a maze, and that " where one would most expect design — viz., in 

 the structure of a sentient being — the more I think on the subject, the 

 less I see proof of design." He wrote to Mrs. Boole in 1866, "It has 



