CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. GRAY 



" I wanted to say something on the last two pages, but 

 as I have nothing in particular to except to, and much to 

 approve, and as it is late bedtime, I spare you further 

 comments. 



" I set out to find flaws, as likely to be more suggestive 

 and therefore far more useful to you than any amount of 

 praise, with which I could fill page after page." 



ASA GRAY TO DANA 



"June 22, 1872. 



" I fancy you have got hold of a good topic for your 

 handling, and have a promising inquiry before you, in 

 co-ordinating cephalization and natural selection as 

 operative on the nervous system of animals. I expect 

 you to get something interesting out of it. 



" But every now and then something you write makes 

 me doubt if you quite get hold just right of Darwinian 

 natural selection. What you still say about struggle not 

 applicable to plants makes me think so. 



" Suppose the term be a personification, as, no doubt, 

 strictly it is. One so fond as you are of personification 

 and good general expressions ought not to object to what 

 seems to me a happy term. 



" Speaking from general memory, I should say that the 

 term as used to express what we mean, was introduced 

 by the elder De Candolle, and applied in what I thought 

 a happy way to the vegetable kingdom. I cannot drop 

 it because you say there is no struggle where there is no 

 will; perhaps you mean without consciousness, and then 

 the field of struggle will be much limited. But call the 

 action what you please, competition (that is open to the 

 same objections), collision, or what not, it is just what 

 I should think Darwin was driving at. Read Origin (4th 

 ed.), pp. 72, 73, and so on, through the chapter, especially 

 pp. 81-86. 



' This is enough to show you that when you speak of 

 Darwinian * struggle ' as occurring only ' when the facul- 

 ties of an animal are called into requisition/ you take 

 too limited a view of what Darwin means. 



" For my part, I should say that the faculties of the 

 lowest animals and the faculties of plants were equally 



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