114 DAEWINIAN INTERESTS 



now I think unreservedly, acknowledged himself a convert 

 to Darwinism ! this, I quite expected, would be the case 

 with many : a few will still hold back and flaunt the ' rag 

 of protection ' till your next part appears, holding that 

 cultivation is no argument, when, the said rag being worn 

 back to the rope and no longer visible, they will gracefully 

 haul it down. 



... I have finished the Reign of Law [by the Duke of 

 Argyll] with utter disgust and uncontrollable indignation [for] 

 his suppressed sneers at you. ... I like a man to sneer at 

 me out of malice and envy, but cannot stand a man's sneering 

 at me from atop of a high horse. The preliminary reasoning 

 on the principles of flight appears to me radically unsound. 

 The idea of God being compelled to dab on rudimentary 

 organs to keep up appearances I as it were, is very droll. He 

 . writes extremely well and expresses himself with admir- 

 able facility in fact he has a fatal facility for handling 

 things he does not fully understand, and which he has 

 not the time, and probably not the power to grasp the 

 principles of. 



I am used up and have nothing more to say. I feel my 

 barrenness of scientific matter to communicate creeping over 

 me every day now, and the tide of scientific literature is 

 already up to my knees. The time was when I had now and 

 then something to communicate that you cared to know- 

 that is all changed now, and I feel very low at times about it. 

 I begin to despair of doing anything, even at Insular Floras 

 again, wherein I see that I could still do much. Perhaps 

 when this Norwich meeting is over I shall feel more at ease. 

 I would give 100 guineas that it were over, even with a failure, 

 a fiasco, or worse. The address is nowhere yet, and I look 

 on its prospects with a loathing that cannot be uttered. 

 To-morrow I go to see Fergusson to encourage him about his 

 prospective Lecture at the Meeting ! God pity us both 

 the blind leading the blind. I shall have to play the hypocrite 

 with a vengeance. 



These letters reveal how greatly his mind was taken up 

 with the progress of Darwinism, while he was still casting about 

 for a good subject for the Norwich address. He had already 

 written to Darwin on April 7 : 



