42 SCIENTIFIC WOKK, 1860-1865 



I conceive to be a dominant law governing everything, and 

 I cannot see how either a Democracy or Republican form of 

 Govt. can resist the effects of Natural Selection. In short, 

 I regard a pure Democracy as visionary as a country peopled 

 by one invariable species. This with me is no question of 

 what is good or bad, but of what must ever be, and I do 

 hold that a Govt. must always eventually get into the hands 

 of an individual, or a family, or a class, or there is no truth 

 in Natural Selection. Q.E.D. as you say. 



To Charles Darwin 



January 6, 1863. 



I have finished De Tocqueville's Democracy in America 

 and cannot help thinking how differently he might have 

 written had he read the ' Origin ' and applied it ; all his fallacies 

 are attributable to ignorance of its principles, specially his 

 want of perception that the versatility and variety of re- 

 sources each Yankee possesses (to which he attributes all their 

 excellences more or less) is simply the result of want of com- 

 petition, and that when the land is filled with people this 

 superiority will vanish, each will be good at his speciality 

 only and the evil effects of Republicanism will burst out 

 all over the people and communities. I do not believe any 

 nation can last for ever, either under a Republic or Monarchy 

 (both being bad). . . . 



Then too all De Tocqueville's comparative vaticinations 

 are frustrated by the growth of England's colonies; which he 

 (Frenchman-like) utterly ignores: 



January 24, 1863. 



How dreadful the New York papers are ; we see them here 

 and I read and moralize over them by the hour. I believe 

 that a Republican is the worst form of Govt: that can 

 be given to a people, but perhaps the best they can make 

 for themselves ; the mistake is to suppose that the Americans 

 made it for themselves they never did so, they accepted 

 it from the hands of the few great men of that day, and so 

 long as there was no struggle for existence it was never put 

 to the test ; when the struggle came they found out that what 

 they accepted as a working theory had not taken root enough 

 in the hearts of the people to be upheld at any price. Really 

 there is no bright spot in this sad, sad world but in shops 



