,868.] PANGENESIS. 265 



C. Darwin to IV. Ogle* 



Down, March 6 [1868]. 



Dear Sir,— I thank you most sincerely for your letter, 

 which is very interesting to me. I wish I had known of these 

 views of Hippocrates before I had published, for they seem 

 almost identical with mine— merely a change of terms — and 

 an application of them to classes of facts necessarily unknown 

 to the old philosopher. The whole case is a good illustration 

 of how rarely anything is new. 



Hippocrates has taken the wind out of my sails, but I 

 care very little about being forestalled. I advance the views 

 merely as a provisional hypothesis, but with the secret expec- 

 tation that sooner or later some such view will have to be 

 admitted. 



... I do not expect the reviewers will be so learned as 

 you: otherwise, no doubt, I shall be accused of wilfully 

 stealing Pangenesis from Hippocrates, — for this is the spirit 

 some reviewers delight to show. 



C. Darwin to Victor Cams. 



Down, March 21 [1868]. 

 ... I am very much obliged to you for sending me so 

 frankly your opinion on Pangenesis, and I am sorry it is un- 

 favourable, but I cannot quite understand your remark on 

 pangenesis, selection, and the struggle for life not being more 

 methodical. I am not at all surprised at your unfavourable 

 verdict ; I know many, probably most, will come to the same 

 conclusion. One English Review says it is much too com- 

 plicated. . . . Some of my friends are enthusiastic on the 

 hypothesis. . . . Sir C. Lyell says to every one, " You may 

 not believe in ' Pangenesis,' but if you once understand it, you 

 will never get it out of your mind." And with this criticism 



* Dr. William Ogle, now the Superintendent of Statistics to the 

 Registrar-General. 

 36 



