Last Years. 379 







get confirmed for lack of explicit contradiction and expos- 

 ure. The truth of the case will no doubt come out sooner 

 or later, but sooner in proportion to the facilities for cor- 

 recting the false view.* I am very glad of what you say in 

 regard to the article supplementary to that upon music, and 

 I hope you will be able to bring it about in the course of 

 the coming year. 



Beecher has been lecturing this summer with great ac- 

 ceptance and to large audiences on the religious bearings 

 of evolution ; but his work is very crude, being of the same 

 sort as his address at the dinner. It is no doubt better than 

 that, and Beecher is rapidly improving ; but he has taken 

 up the subject very late in life, and has not had the time, as 

 he never had the proper preparation, for mastering the 

 philosophy. 



Could I have found a decent excuse for printing in the 

 Monthly the address I prepared for the dinner I should 

 have been satisfied, f I wanted the views there stated to 

 go on record in the line of contributions I have published, 

 and which form a distinctive feature of the periodical. I am 

 not among the fortunate mortals who do work that is to 

 survive. Yet The Popular Science Monthly is bound up in 

 all the American public libraries, and it will hold its place 

 there by sheer force of its bulk it will hold over at least 



* I have set forth the relations of Spencer's work to Darwin's in a way 

 that is entirely satisfactory to Mr. Spencer (as he assures me) in an essay 

 on The Doctrine of Evolution : Its Scope and Influence, published in The 

 Popular Science Monthly, September, 1891, and republished by the Apple- 

 tons in a volume of essays by various writers, entitled, Evolution in Phi- 

 losophy, Science, and Art. I may add that the same view of the case, as 

 I set it forth in my Cosmic Philosophy in 1874, was equally satisfactory 

 to Mr. Darwin. 



f It is contained in the little volume, Herbert Spencer in America, 

 published by the Appletons in 1883. It is not reprinted in the present 

 volume, because the same points are given more fully in the essay re- 

 printed below, pp. 502-551. 



