84 TIIE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [1860, 



little knowing that any one had really thus objected to the 

 law of gravity Newton answers by saying that it is philoso- 

 phy to make out the movements of a clock, though you do 

 not know why the weight descends to the ground. Leibnitz 

 further objected that the law of gravity was opposed to Natu- 

 ral Religion ! Is this not curious ? I really think I shall use 

 the facts for some introductory remarks for my bigger book, 



. . . You ask (I see) why we do not have monstrosities in 

 higher animals ; but when they live they are almost always 

 sterile (even giants and dwarfs are generally sterile), and we 

 do not know that Harvey's monster would have bred. There 

 is I believe only one case on record of a peloric flower be- 

 ing fertile, and I cannot remember whether this reproduced 

 itself. 



To recur to the eye. I really think it would have been 

 dishonest, not to have faced the difficulty ; and worse (as 

 Talleyrand would have said), it would have been impolitic I 

 think, for it would have been thrown in my teeth, as H. Hol- 

 land threw the bones of the ear, till Huxley shut him up by 

 showing what a fine gradation occurred amongst living crea- 

 tures. 



I thank you much for your most pleasant letter. 



Yours affectionately, 



C. DARWIN. 



P.S. I send a letter by Herbert Spencer, which you can 

 read or not as you think fit. He puts, to my mind, the phi- 

 losophy of the argument better than almost any one, at the 

 close of the letter. J could make nothing of Dana's idealistic 

 notions about species; but then, as Wollaston says, I have 

 not a metaphysical head. 



By the way, I have thrown at Wollaston's head, a paper 

 by Alexander Jordan, who demonstrates metaphysically that 

 all our cultivated races are God-created species. 



Wollaston misrepresents accidentally, to a wonderful ex- 

 tent, some passages in my book. He reviewed, without relook- 

 ing at certain passages. 



