I859-] ENCOURAGEMENT. 52 1 



tory to me, and I thank you for myself, and even more for 

 the subject's sake, as I know well that the sentence will make 

 many fairly consider the subject, instead of ridiculing it. 

 Although your previously felt doubts on the immutability of 

 species, may have more influence in converting you (if you 

 be converted) than my book ; yet as I regard your verdict 

 as far more important in my own eyes, and I believe in the 

 eyes of the world than of any other dozen men, I am naturally 

 very anxious about it. Therefore let me beg you to keep 

 your mind open till you receive (in perhaps a fortnight's time) 

 my latter chapters, which are the most important of all on 

 the favourable side. The last chapter, which sums up and 

 balances in a mass all the arguments contra and pro, will, I 

 think, be useful to you. I cannot too strongly express my 

 conviction of the general truth of my doctrines, and God 

 knows I have never shirked a difficulty. I am foolishly anxious 

 for your verdict, not that I shall be disappointed if you are 

 not converted ; for I remember the long years it took me to 

 come round ; but I shall be most deeply delighted if you do 

 come round, especially if I have a fair share in the conver- 

 sion, I shall then feel that my career is run, and care little 

 whether I ever am good for anything again in this life. 



Thank you much for allowing me to put in the sentence 

 about your grave doubt.* So much and too much about 

 myself. 



occurs in the address : " On this difficult and mysterious subject a work 

 will very shortly appear by Mr. Charles Darwin, the result of twenty years 

 of observations and experiments in Zoology, Botany, and Geology, by 

 which he had been led to the conclusion that those powers of nature which 

 give rise to races and permanent varieties in animals and plants, are the 

 same as those which in much longer pei-iods produce species, and in a still 

 longer series of ages give rise to differences of generic rank. He appears 

 to me to have succeeded by his investigations and reasonings in throwing 

 a flood of light on many classes of phenomena connected with the affini- 

 ties, geographical distribution, and geological succession of organic beings, 

 for which no other hypothesis has been able, or has even attempted to 

 account." 



* As to the immutability of species, ' Origin,' Ed. i., p. 310. 



