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Take warning by me, and do not work too hard. For God's sake, think of
this.
It is dreadfully uphill work with me getting my confounded volume
finished.
I wish you well through all your labours. Adios.
LETTER 79. TO ASA GRAY. Down, November 29th [1859].
This shall be such an extraordinary note as you have never received from
me, for it shall not contain one single question or request. I thank you
for your impression on my views. Every criticism from a good man is of
value to me. What you hint at generally is very, very true: that my work
will be grievously hypothetical, and large parts by no means worthy of
being called induction, my commonest error being probably induction from
too few facts. I had not thought of your objection of my using the term
"natural selection" as an agent. I use it much as a geologist does the
word denudation--for an agent, expressing the result of several combined
actions. I will take care to explain, not merely by inference, what I
mean by the term; for I must use it, otherwise I should incessantly have
to expand it into some such (here miserably expressed) formula as
the following: "The tendency to the preservation (owing to the severe
struggle for life to which all organic beings at some time or generation
are exposed) of any, the slightest, variation in any part, which is of
the slightest use or favourable to the life of the individual which
has thus varied; together with the tendency to its inheritance." Any
variation, which was of no use whatever to the individual, would not be
preserved by this process of "natural selection." But I will not weary
you by going on, as I do not suppose I could make my meaning clearer
without large expansion. I will only add one other sentence: several
varieties of sheep have been turned out together on the Cumberland
mountains, and one particular breed is found to succeed so much better
than all the others that it fairly starves the others to death. I should
here say that natural selection picks out this breed, and would tend to
improve it, or aboriginally to have formed it...
You speak of species not having any material base to rest on, but is
this any greater hardship than deciding what deserves to be called a
variety, and be designated by a Greek letter? When I was at systematic
work, I know I longed to have no other difficulty (great enough) than
deciding whether the form was distinct enough to deserve a name, and not
to be haunted with undefined and unanswerable questions whether it was a
true species. What a jump it is from a well-marked variety, produced by
natural cause, to a species produced by the separate act of the hand
of God! But I am running on foolishly. By the way, I met the other day
Phillips, the palaeontologist, and he asked me, "How do you define a
species?" I answered, "I cannot." Whereupon he said, "at last I have
found out the only true definition,--any form which has ever had a
specific name!"...
LETTER 80. TO C. LYELL. Ilkley, October 31st [1859].
That you may not misunderstand how far I go with Pallas and his many
disciples I should like to add that, though I believe that our domestic
dogs have descended from several wild forms, and though I must think
that the sterility, which they would probably have evinced, if crossed
before being domesticated, has been eliminated, yet I go but a very
little way with Pallas & Co. in their belief in the importance of
the crossing and blending of the aboriginal stocks. (80/1. "With our
domesticated animals, the various races when crossed together are quite
fertile; yet in many cases they are descended from two or more wild
species. From this fact we must conclude either that the aboriginal
parent-species at first produced perfectly fertile hybrids, or that the
hybrids subsequently reared under domestication became quite fertile.
This latter alternative, which was first propounded by Pallas, seems by
far the most probable, and can, indeed, hardly be doubted" ("Origin of
Species," Edition VI., page 240).) You will see this briefly put in the
first chapter. Generally, with respect to crossing, the effects may be
diametrically opposite. If you cross two very distinct races, you may
make (not that I believe such has often been made) a third and new
intermediate race; but if you cross two exceedingly close races, or two
slightly different individuals of the same race, then in fact you annul
and obliterate the difference. In this latter way I believe crossing is
all-important, and now for twenty years I have been working at flowers
and insects under this point of view. I do not like Hooker's terms,
centripetal and centrifugal (80/2. Hooker's "Introductory Essay to the
Flora of Tasmania," pages viii. and ix.): they remind me of Forbes' bad
term of Polarity. (80/3. Forbes, "On the Manifestation of Polarity in
the Distribution of Organised Beings in Time."--"R. Institution Proc."
I., 1851-54.)
I daresay selection by man would generally work quicker than Natural
Selection; but the important distinction between them is, that man can
scarcely select except external and visible characters, and secondly, he
selects for his own good; whereas under nature, characters of all kinds
are selected exclusively for each creature's own good, and are well
exercised; but you will find all this in Chapter IV.
Although the hound, greyhound, and bull-dog may possibly have descended
from three distinct stocks, I am convinced that their present great
amount of difference is mainly due to the same causes which have made
the breeds of pigeons so different from each other, though these breeds
of pigeons have all descended from one wild stock; so that the Pallasian
doctrine I look at as but of quite secondary importance.
In my bigger book I have explained my meaning fully; whether I have in
the Abstract I cannot remember.
LETTER 81. TO C. LYELL. [December 5th, 1859.]
I forget whether you take in the "Times;" for the chance of your not
doing so, I send the enclosed rich letter. (81/1. See the "Times,"
December 1st and December 5th, 1859: two letters signed "Senex," dealing
with "Works of Art in the Drift.") It is, I am sure, by Fitz-Roy...It
is a pity he did not add his theory of the extinction of Mastodon, etc.,
from the door of the Ark being made too small. (81/2. A postscript to
this letter, here omitted, is published in the "Life and Letters," II.,
page 240.)
LETTER 82. FRANCIS GALTON TO CHARLES DARWIN. 42, Rutland Gate, London,
S.W., December 9th, 1859.
Pray let me add a word of congratulation on the completion of your
wonderful volume, to those which I am sure you will have received from
every side. I have laid it down in the full enjoyment of a feeling that
one rarely experiences after boyish days, of having been initiated into
an entirely new province of knowledge, which, nevertheless, connects
itself with other things in a thousand ways. I hear you are engaged on a
second edition. There is a trivial error in page 68, about rhinoceroses
(82/1. Down ( |