I859-] SEDGWICK. 43 



a meeting of my brother Fellows to discuss the final proposi- 

 tions of the Parliamentary Commissioners ; 3rdly, in lecturing ; 

 4thly, in hearing the conclusion of the discussion and the 

 College reply, whereby, in conformity with my own wishes, 

 we accepted the scheme of the Commissioners ; 5thly, in 

 dining with an old friend at Clare College ; 6thly, in ad- 

 journing to the weekly meeting of the Ray Club, from which 

 I returned at 10 p. m., dog-tired, and hardly able to climb my 

 staircase. Lastly, in looking through the Times to see what 

 was going on in the busy world. 



I do not state this to fill space (though I believe that 

 Nature does abhor a vacuum), but to prove that my reply 

 and my thanks are sent to you by the earliest leisure I have, 

 though that is but a very contracted opportunity. If I did 

 not think you a good-tempered and truth-loving man, I 

 should not tell you that (spite of the great knowledge, store 

 of facts, capital views of the correlation of the various parts 

 of organic nature, admirable hints about the diffusion, 

 through wide regions, of many related organic beings, &c, 

 &c.) I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. 

 Parts of it I admired greatly, parts I laughed at till my sides 

 were almost sore ; other parts I read with absolute sorrow, 

 because I think them utterly false and grievously mischiev- 

 ous. You have deserted — after a start in that tram-road of 

 all solid physical truth — the true method of induction, and 

 started us in machinery as wild, I think, as Bishop Wilkins's 

 locomotive that was to sail with us to the moon. Many of 

 your wide conclusions are based upon assumptions which can 

 neither be proved nor disproved, why then express them in 

 the language and arrangement of philosophical induction ? 

 As to your grand principle — natural selection — what is it but 

 a secondary consequence of supposed, or known, primary 

 facts ! Development is a better word, because more close to 

 the cause of the fact ? For you do not deny causation. I 

 call (in the abstract) causation the will of God ; and I can 

 prove that He acts for the good of His creatures. He also 

 acts by laws which we can study and comprehend. Acting 



