34 PUBLICATION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [1859. 



truth." He was evidently deeply pleased by Mr. Huxley's 

 words, and wrote : 



" I must thank you for your extremely kind notice of my 

 book in ' Macmillan.' No one could receive a more de- 

 lightful and honourable compliment. I had not heard of your 

 Lecture, owing to my retired life. You attribute much too 

 much to me from our mutual friendship. You have explained 

 my leading idea with admirable clearness. What a gift you 

 have of writing (or more properly) thinking clearly."] 



C. Darwin to W. B. Carpenter. 



Ilkley, Yorkshire, 



December 3rd [1859]. 



My dear Carpenter, — I am perfectly delighted at your 

 letter. It is a great thing to have got a great physiologist on 

 our side. I say " our " for we are now a good and compact 

 body of really good men, and mostly not old men. In the 

 long run we shall conquer. I do not like being abused, but 

 I feel that I can now bear it ; and, as I told Lyell, I am well 

 convinced that it is the first offender who reaps the rich 

 harvest of abuse. You have done an essential kindness in 

 checking the odium theologicum in the E. R.* It much 

 pains all one's female relations and injures the cause. 



I look at it as immaterial whether we go quite the same 

 lengths ; and I suspect, judging from myself, that you will 

 go further, by thinking of a population of forms like Orni- 

 thorhyncus, and by thinking of the common homological and 

 embryological structure of the several vertebrate orders. But 

 this is immaterial. I quite agree that the principle is every- 

 thing. In my fuller MS. I have discussed a good many 

 instincts ; but there will surely be more unfilled gaps here 

 than with corporeal structure, for we have no fossil instincts, 



* This must refer to Carpenter's critique which would now have been 

 ready to appear in the January number of the Edinburgh Review, i860, 

 and in which the oditim theologictim is referred to. 



