128 DAKWINIAN. INTERESTS 



The letters that follow^ I can express. What a wonderful 



on Darwin by Mr. St. G uicomparable critic and defender of the 



Species ' and anon- j. think you are avenged of your enemy — but 



ably, in th .~ T sappier for that — though you must be for the 



in tV ^c and body which the avenger has given to the subject, 



Er ad above all for the grand use he has made of your owd 



arguments for confuting your enemy. What you must feel, 



and always feel, is, that peculiar and quite unreasonable 



bitter sorrowing which a man excites who praises you to 



your face and abuses you behind your back. Why should 



this excite anything but contempt at worst, or pity at best ? 



And yet there is no man with generous emotions but feels 



more sad and sorry over such treatment than either angry 



or vindictive. 



The Psychological passages seem to me to be wonder- 

 fully clear and good — how tight he clothes a difficult idea in 

 language. I was particularly struck with the paragraphs 

 on Neurosis and Psychosis — consciousness and its physical 

 basis — but really it is difficult to single out either passages 

 or subjects, all is so good and there is so much power and 

 acumen in the treatment of every branch of his subject — you 

 may call it an Essay, a critique, an exposition, a discussion, 

 an enquiry, or what else you wish — you may read for ont 

 and all of these aims. 



The exposition of Mivart's presumptuous ignorance ir 

 citing the Catholic Fathers is delicious — that's the last 

 pitfall the poor devil expected to be snared into. The 

 tumbling over Wallace is, however, if not an equal feat, r 

 far, far greater service to Science. 1 



The appeal to conscience in the matter of the clergj 

 and the 6 days is very powerful, and must v make many £ 



1 Wallace in his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, 1870, p. 359 

 urged that Natural Selection accounted for the evolution of man's bodily fram< 

 from the simian stock, but that from this point on some extraneous power ha( 

 inspired him with his mentality, and with a future purpose in view had providec 

 the mere savage with a brain disproportionate to his requirements, whethe : 

 compared with civilised man or with the brutes. Thereafter the struggL 

 for existence among men had operated mainly through their mental abilities 

 with the consequence that the human body retained comparative fixity of type 



Against the argument adduced Huxley quoted Wallace's own words ii 

 Instinct in Men and Animals, describing the vast calls upon the intelligenc 

 even in a savage's life, and pointed out that by parity of reasoning wolves like 

 wise had brains too large for their requirements, and must therefore have bee: i 

 supernaturally bred up to prepare them to become dogs. 



