i863 THE ADVANCE OF MANKIND 259 



it should have been. I am quite agreed with the general tenor 

 of your argument; and indeed I have often argued against those 

 who maintain the intellectual gulf between man and the lower 

 animals to be an impassable one, by pointing to the immense 

 intellectual chasm as compared to the structural differences 

 between two species of bees or between sheep and goat or dog 

 and wolf. So again your remarks upon the argument drawn 

 from the apparent absence of progression in animals seem to 

 me to be quite just. You might strengthen them much by refer- 

 ence to the absence of progression in many races of men. The 

 West African savage, as the old voyagers show, was in just the 

 same condition two hundred years ago as now — and I suspect 

 that the modern Patagonian is as nearly as possible the unim- 

 proved representative of the makers of the flint implements of 

 Abbeville. 



Lyell's phrase is very good, but it is a simple application of 

 Darwin's views to human history. The advance of mankind 

 has everywhere depended on the production of men of genius ; 

 and that production is a case of " spontaneous variation " be- 

 coming hereditary, not by physical propagation, but by the help 

 of language, letters and the printing press. Newton was to all 

 intents and purposes a " sport " of a dull agricultural stock, and 

 his intellectual powers are to a certain extent propagated by the 

 grafting of the " Principia," his brain-shoot, on us. 



Many thanks for your letter. It is a great pleasure to me to 

 be able to speak out to any one who, like yourself, is striving to 

 get at truth through a region of intellectual and moral influences 

 so entirely distinct from those to which I am exposed. 



I am not much given to open my heart to anybody, and on 

 looking back I am often astonished at the way in which I threw 

 myself and my troubles at your head, in those bitter days when 

 my poor boy died. But the way in which you received my 

 heathen letters set up a freemasonry between us, at any rate on 

 my side ; and if they make you a bishop I advise you not to let 

 your private secretary open any letters with my name in the 

 corner, for they are as likely as not to contain matters which 

 will make the clerical hair stand on end. 



I am too much a believer in Butler and in the great principle 

 of the " Analogy " that " there is no absurdity in theology so 

 great that you cannot parallel it by a greater absurdity of 

 Nature" (it is not commonly stated in this way), to have any 

 difficulties about miracles. I have never had the least sympathy 

 with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by 



