CHAPTER VII.

At this period, Chauncey, although far from well, was hard at work in the ineffectual endeavor to bring up arrears in his work upon the Almanac. Of his manner of life at this time, his interest in philosophical discussion, his happiness in the society of some of the ablest of the younger men at Cambridge, and his adherence to his old, dangerous habits of work, we may see something from a letter which a friend Mr. J. J. Myers, a graduate at Cambridge in the class of 1869. ⁵³ has kindly sent me: —

“During the year 1869-70, I sat at the same table with Mr. Wright, Professor Cutler, Elbridge Jefferson Cutler, Assistant Professor of Modern Languages at Cambridge, from 1865 to 1870. He had been made a full Professor just before his death, in 1870. Mr. Cutler had been a friend of Wright’s ever since they were together in College; they were also members of the same Club. Professor Cutler had already become known outside of the College by his poems, which gave promise of an excellent future; within the College, his loss was deplored as that of one of the most brilliant and successful of its younger teachers. — Ed. ⁵⁴ and Mr. Salter. See p. 191. ⁵⁵ The two last-mentioned gentlemen talked much and very cleverly, and Mr. Wright was often drawn into the conversation, much to the delight and instruction of several of us younger men who were listeners. Often after dinner Mr. Cutler would invite Mr. Wright to his room; and there, with two or three young men for an audience, the conversation between them would be kept up well into the evening. When once fairly started, Mr.

Wright did much the greater part of the talking. He saw a great deal of Mr. Salter at this time, and they often took long walks together to discuss certain questions in which Mr. Salter was especially interested, which had troubled him much, and had even caused him to leave his profession, the ministry. He told me that his conversations with Mr. Wright were very instructive. Two or three times during that same winter Mr. Wright asked one or two of us around to his room to hear him read articles which he was at work upon, or had finished. If he found we understood them, he would leave them as they were; but, if we did not, he would sometimes rewrite or change them.

“His work on the ‘Nautical Almanac,’ which he was still carrying on at this time, was, I always thought, a great weight upon him. He would postpone it until the very latest moment, and then work upon it night and day until it was finished. I remember calling on him one morning, and finding that he had been up all night at his work, and had only rested for an hour or two the night before. In answer to my question why he worked in that way, he replied that he preferred to do this kind of work so. ‘ It is about as much work,’ he said, ‘to get my mind running in this regular, machine-like way, as it is to do the thing itself when I am once fairly started.’”

To Miss Grace Norton.

Oct. 16, 1870.

... I shall not launch forth, then, into any sea of philosophic disquisition, more especially as you have given me no commission for such an errand, and as I now have opportunities to decide and dogmatize on disputed questions and doubtful matters twice a week, orally. The long-meditated lectures have begun. I have talked mental science for five hours to a class of which the smallest attendance has been

eight, the greatest twelve! — not a crowd, you see, but respectable, as our University lectures go, and considering the unattractive character of my subject. I do not aspire yet to rival Mr. Emerson or Mr. Lowell in drawing audiences. These five meetings have been in great measure experimental with me, since they are the first entire hours I have ever attempted to fill with undisputed talk; and for one of them I tried the experiment of reading from a prepared manuscript. Talking succeeds better. What I write usually contemplates an imaginary company of sages or experts, and requires to be read deliberately, and sometimes twice. Writing is, of course, talking to an imaginary audience; but the absent mediocre mind does not inspire in me any desire of communication. One of my class, a former pupil of mine, says that I have not yet given him any occasion to ask questions. There are, however, in my subject, as it is developed, temptation and room enough for questions; and I look forward to livelier times, especially when we get better acquainted. But, meantime, I am somewhat surprised at the ease with which the hour is consumed with continuous talk. All notes and manuscripts are a hindrance. With my mind full of the themes of discourse, the order and even the illustrations develop themselves, and in a manner apparently better suited to hold the listener’s attention than any reading could be, — at any rate, any reading of what I could write.

This is in accordance with my original plan, — if it can be called a plan, — and my preparation was only keeping on the alert in reading and meditations, for whatever might be of service to the lectures. I did not even take notes, feeling sure that I should remember, and could refer to memory with more ease and profit than to a heap of manuscripts for whatever was really worth retaining. Writing and artificial memory are often, I think, in the way of a better sort of memory which holds what is worth retaining by more real ties. I did indeed

take a few notes, but I doubt whether I shall find them of any service. They seemed at the time of more importance than they do now. Perhaps I attach the same exaggerated importance to what occurs to me to say now, and it is rather early to pass judgment on my preparation; five lectures are only one-eighth part of the course. I call the lectures “Expositions of the Principles of Psychology, from the Text of Bain.”

To make this letter as egotistical as possible, or as a letter should be, I must tell you of what you may find in the current number of the “North American Review,” an article on the “Limits of Natural Selection.” Philosophical Discussions, p. 97. ⁵⁶ I read last summer, for my own pleasure and edification, a little book on this subject by Mr. Alfred Wallace; and in one of those moments of easy good-nature which, by the mere pleasure of their gracious majesties, see fit to impose burdens on other and less fortunate moments of our lives, I promised to the editor a notice of the book. I have broken such promises before: the other moments have rebelled, and insisted on their inalienable rights; but this time that great spirit, the sense of duty, which ought to rule over all, brought my leisure into subjection, established the divine right of the lazy promise, and put the pen into my hand, and, lo! what was conceived in the sense of punctilious duty and contracted obligation as a modest book-notice, expanded into the majestic proportions of a body-article, nigh thirty pages long, and was accepted as such, and will appear with all its damning heresies over my signature, without even the cloak of anonymousness to shield me from the indignation of outraged orthodoxy.

I forgot to say about my lectures that ---- came to the first two. He has not come since: it may be on account of my explanation in the second lecture that psychology is more closely

allied to the physical sciences than to metaphysics in its methods and motives; and my claiming for this science the right to take up heretical positions as hypotheses or questions of scientific inquiry, which are illegitimately held in philosophy or metaphysics as finalities, — though so long as scientific investigations are incomplete, as they always may be, these positions are practically finalities, but held in a wholly different spirit from a metaphysical dogma. I disclaimed taking sides in any other sense than as the side presents real problems, and suggests proofs of a scientific character. There is really a difference of method between the scientific adoption of an heretical position and the philosophical adoption or rejection of it. Philosophy passes like a judge upon its questions, as if, in practical matters, decision were quite as important as truth. Science takes them up as matters of curiosity or of possible future utility, and looks, at its leisure, into them. It acknowledges no burden of proof in its judgments, and is content to wait. But, as it happens usually that the heretic holds a possibly verifiable position, or one the evidence of which has not yet been completely explored, science comes to look with favor upon it, and this favorable view appears to the dogmatists of both sides as a really favorable decision. This attitude of science is very unsatisfactory to that hunger for knowledge, or rather for assurance, which is rather a ravening appetite than a discriminating instinct for proof, and is content to feed on fallacies, or will carry conviction by violence. Science contemns this. The rest it seeks is the remainder of knowledge, even principles which we do not yet know; and it holds what we do know as subject to our present ignorance (not a hopeless ignorance), and is hostile to the dogmatic attitude of either side, and to any finality in the present state of our knowledge on philosophical questions.

Don’t suppose that I talked in this way to my class, or even exactly to the same effect. Imagine rather, in place of

rhetoric, a painstaking, expository, much plainer style. I imagine that one great interest in Mr. Bain’s system, on the part of some at least of the class, is in the issue that Mr. Martineau tries to make with him; but the subordinate, almost incidental value that some traditional metaphysical issues (like the ultimate nature of the connection of mind and matter and of cause and effect, and the dependence of life on matter) have in the view of the scientific psychologist, is with difficulty comprehended by those who approach the subject from a religious point of view. Dr. Lionel Beale, in his article in the present number of the “Fortnightly,” on “the Mystery of Life,”—uniting a large culture and great acuteness with an interest in the question that is really metaphysical or theological, — accuses the scientific position that life or the properties of living matter are really subject to material laws, which, if known, would be a higher sort of chemistry, — he accuses this of being a dogmatic position; and probably it is so in the minds of many that hold it. They have the same weakness that the Doctor has. They transcend experience in trying to assimilate the regulative agencies of life and mind to the forces of matter, just as he does in trying to make them appear as different as possible. All his ingenuity cannot make it appear that the view he takes is not dogmatic, and even hopelessly so. His orthodoxy, his belief that life is not a possible chemistry, is unmitigated assumption in fact, however modestly put forward. As being essentially a finality, it leads to no further knowledge, and virtually denies the possibility of further knowledge. The heretical position, on the other hand, that life is, in some at least of its essential phases, a higher form of chemistry, when held with a confidence limited to scientific evidence, is only a following out of those suggestions and guidances of experience which propound the theory, and has, at least, what orthodox faith has not, the character of a working scientific hypothesis. The real animus of both sides is unscientific. The one, from reverence (perhaps a misplaced one), taboos the grounds where the other, from want of reverence, wanders in the dark. The one protests against regarding life as only a higher form of chemistry, as if this theory in some way degraded it, rendered it less worthy of our reverence and regard. In such a protest is seen the real motive to the dogmatism, essentially unscientific, and, at bottom, irrational, that so perverts even an acute mind as to make it charge its own vices upon its opponents. It is this mixing up of two really distinct orders of ideas, ideas of moral dignity and ideas of causal dependence, running through the best thought of all times, that presents the greatest obstacle to scientific progress, not only in what relates to life and mind, but in every branch of science; for all was related to life and mind in the earliest conceptions of them. With what religious horror the ancient orthodox protested against the doctrine that the stars are not gods, but only earth and stones!

Dr. Beale claims that his prejudice does not prevent him from doing good service to science; but this is because there are problems enough outside of his sacred precinct. Science is not finished yet up to that line; but this does not prevent the invasions of hardier pioneers. We have just seen the monkey prejudice invaded in the Darwinian controversy. That men, being what they are, are descended from gods, is supposed to be a nobler conception of human nature than that, being the same creatures, they have struggled up from — well, even I don’t like to say “monkeys” (partly because it isn’t strictly true or probable), but I will say — the monkey’s ancestors. This love of pedigrees and the attribution of moral dignity to them come from a just and useful sentiment when confined to rational limits. There would be a solid ground of assurance of a better future in the fact of a better past. We should have in it a type of the hope and faith in man’s destiny.

A lady, . . . who I afterwards learned was strictly Calvinistic, assured me, the other day, that to believe in Darwinism would destroy all her hope for humanity. But I thought, and said, that there was some encouragement to be had in the progress men have made, according to this theory. Moral constructiveness, our æsthetico-moral nature, turns all history into mythology, and all science into mythic cosmology. It is the very heart of orthodoxy. The theory that there is a correspondence between moral ranks, or spiritual hierarchies, and the dependence of natural causes; that the first in the order of creation is first in order of moral worth; that history is a record of degeneracy; that lifeless matter is essential evil, — a theory received, it is supposed, by Plato from the East, — has, no doubt, been very serviceable by making men regard the past with reverence; and the absence of the sentiments to which it appeals, from the heart of the heretic, is perhaps, quite as often as any better cause, the origin of his heresy. Reverence, or the want of it, has quite as much influence on men’s beliefs, or professions of belief, as proofs and disproofs have. It is only with the latter that science has any thing to do, except in that useful instrument of research, hypothesis, through which it sometimes presses hard on inveterate prejudice, as, I think, it does in Dr. Beale’s case.

How badly I have kept my promise not to write a long or philosophical letter! But I have, at any rate, broken it spontaneously. This talk is not one of my lectures, and is not any part of my article, and was no part of my thought when I set out, — was not, at least, on the surface of my thought. Yet of what else should I talk, since you have all the news on your side of the water. The bits of private news about the great struggle which you sent me were very interesting. I imagine there must be an immense amount of diplomacy going on at the present moment, — a manufacture of opinion quite unscientific.

To Miss Jane Norton.

Nov. 20, 1870.

I have been much interested of late in my lectures, probably much more than my audience, though they show no lack of interest, and ought not to be expected to go beyond their teacher in zeal for knowledge. Still, my lack of experience and want of sympathy with the common or corporate spirit of an audience made me anticipate more than now seems rational from the spontaneity of the creature. An audience has a very passive consciousness. Doubts and questions are a private undercurrent in it, if they stir at all, — and it is difficult to bring them to the surface, the best minds have such awe of the inferior collective one. Still, I have had a number of interesting discussions with members of my class, in which the others seemed to be interested. On Friday, for instance, I was talking of sound and hearing, and questions about the significance of music forced themselves to the surface; and, for the time, we had the best sort of talk, — that of three or four independent minds, only too severely sensible. Our god, the collective animus, does not approve of any otherwise; and it is impossible to avoid the consciousness of his mute presence. He is so like an ox or crocodile, which, so far as it is active, acts on the lowest impulses, either lazy acquiescence or brutal excitement.

Absorbed in ideas, fascinated by them, we may imagine that this animus sympathizes with us. What it sympathizes with is our fascination, our interest. It gazes at what we gaze at. Whether it sees what we see, depends. Don’t apply this, in a feminine way, to my audience in particular, but to the extreme difference of audiences in general from that wisest animus, the independent, individual interlocutor, — a difference which my audience merely suggests to me in contrast with their individualities.

I have ten very regular, attentive listeners, though I must confess that my consciousness of their number and individualities does not grow, but rather diminishes. I feared at the outset that I could not fill forty hours with what I had to say; but more than a third of the course has hardly begun to approach the heart of the subject.

My preparation for the lectures consists, I find, in all that I have ever read or thought about their subject. I depended, not unwisely, as I think, on what my memory could furnish, under the guidance of my text-book; but I was unwise in thinking that this repository would be available in preparation for extempore expositions.

So, latterly, after getting a vivid idea of what was required to meet the intelligence of my audience (whether an adequate one or not, the god only knows), I have written out my lectures. I have now a larger and more varied audience in my imagination than I used to write for, though its number is only ten. I expect to gain from it more than I give in exchange, as in every fair bargain. A disinterestedness that does not do this for us is uninterestedness, and deadens our powers, — our usefulness as well as our selfish enjoyments. I don’t believe the stupid sentimentalist who demands effort without compensation, who thinks that disinterested actions are motiveless. Fascination, no doubt, allures us to heights beyond those to which selfish interest could impel us; but fascination leads us also into quagmires of misery. To be happy, then, one should distinguish rationally and, as I may say, selfishly between fascinating devils and fascinating angels. A bad idea, like that of throwing one’s self over a precipice, or of suicide in any other way, may be as disinterested a fascination as the most fascinating virtue: but the one is to the rational mind that death or stupidity which has no power, and that no power can lead; while the other is rationally the selfish happiness, if I may so say, of the supremely blessed. To

be led or drawn to happiness to which we are not impelled by antecedent motives is the freedom of our wills, or our freedom from selfishness.

This divides our higher from our lower natures. Beasts that perish may be fascinated to their ruin, as moths by a flame; but this capacity for being led beyond what pleasure or pain impels us to do is the characteristic irrationality of human beings, through which we may be led to ruin or to bliss. Ideas are the spirits that thus have the man in charge, and make him act out their wills, even against his own, and take possession of him, even though unwelcome guests. . . .

Though it is very true, as you say, that the tranquillity of old age often comes from a torpor in the nerves, yet it is generally dependent also on the growing supremacy of ideas in our lives. These have a different sort of influence on our wills from that of our sensibilities, and seem to be independent of the contrast of pleasures and pains, but can overwhelm them as modern armies with discipline and gunpowder could the old giants and heroes, or as mythic enchantments did in their time. It has always seemed to me a very wise observation of old Paley’s that the child is never happy when not absorbed in pleasures; but that old age may be happy when free from pain. The brain has a longer lease of life than the senses, and finally comes to live in a remote past, even among the things of its childhood. Much of the happiness, the tranquillity of old age or of intellect, depends, of course, on the quality of our philosophy and experience, and, as you say, on unlearning much. The child thinks of heaven as a show or a refectory. Angels afterward people it, first strong and beautiful, then gracious and wise ones. To unite all these heavens in middle life, to keep the zests of childhood in harmony with the happiness that vigor and beauty and sympathy give to maturity, and to join to them the serenity of intellect, is to be truly happy in fortunate circumstances, if not to be great. Greatness

is, however, too often any thing but happiness, though not a dull, depressing misery. It is often a tumult in which the heavens are at war with each other.

Our lives, though outwardly and apparently without such metamorphoses as insects, have them still internally. With the insect, the transition, though hidden and apparently abrupt, is yet really continued between the larva and the pupa, and from the pupa to the imago. And so the mind grows from feeding on the impressions and the pleasures of sense to a life of inward activity and refined enjoyment, and finally to the pleasures of thought and memory. Your human ideal — “a soul of perfect sensibility and perfect repose”— is not, then, to be met with once in a lifetime, but possibly in the stages of a whole lifetime. It takes a whole life to make a character; and happiness is not the result. Happiness is not a thing to be attained; but it may lie all along the way. This is what the old philosophers meant when they said that happiness is not a real or rational end, and that virtue only could be a real attainment, which, with circumstances beyond our control, might make the fortunate truly happy. Religion promises these fit circumstances, supposing, in its idealistic philosophy, that every hook must have its eye. But there are many unmeet meetings in the natural order of things, and no remedy for them; and neither happiness nor misery is anybody’s desert, except so far as they are everybody’s rational incentives. The human capacity for being led without these incentives is, therefore, the promise of improvement in the race, though not of heaven to the individual. Nevertheless, the two elements combined in your ideal of character are really combined in every source of refined pleasure. Ease and excitement, peace and passion, grace and vivacity, are synonymes of them, and include all pleasures or ends. By their combination, pleasures are refined as in music and in all the fine arts. Richness in musical tones and lustre in beautiful objects come from such combinations

in the senses; and in this they resemble still more refined effects. But I have wandered through all these pages to come to the point where you finished your beginning, and bade me good-night.

I read last summer a part of the article by Mr. Morrison on “Subjective Synthesis;” but I never finished it, for the “Review” was removed from the reading-room before I came round to it again. What I read interested me, though I do not quite agree with it, —or I did not; and now I remember so little, or I have so imperfect an idea of the article as a whole, that I could not fairly criticise it. I shall look for it again, however, and give it a fairer reading. The news, also, in these exciting times, draws my attention away from abstract subjects. The news has just come by telegraph of England’s excitement on the Eastern question, and announces Mr. Mill’s protest in the “Times.” If England really goes to war with Russia, will not the end of the world come next?

I never read Littré’s “Life of Comte,” and I doubt whether I should sympathize with his interest in the subject enough to enjoy it. I have more sympathy with what must be every patriotic French liberal’s feeling about the present state of their country. I suppose that they must all share Thiers’ illusions on this subject, which, I imagine, are not very different from what appeared to be ours, to European eyes, in the gloomiest period of our war. At the same time, the integrity of the French nation, or at any rate of its territory, does not appear to my perhaps prejudiced eyes as quite so important as did our national union. This question of territory is not separable from military glory. It is about changing a line of fortification and defence, instead of abolishing or avoiding one, as in our case.

Chauncey’s University lectures seem to have been only partially successful. In commenting upon the general subject of education, or in answering particular questions, he was very instructive; as, for example, in his article on “The Conflict of Studies,” North American Review, July, 1875; Philosophical Discussions, p. 267. ⁵⁷ and in one of his letters to Miss Howard. Ante, p. 119. ⁵⁸ In dealing also with a single pupil in his own study, he was in many ways an admirable instructor, — original, stimulating, fruitful. But for the systematic work of lecturing, and of handling an audience, he had marked defects, both mental and physical. Professor Gurney, who, as Dean of the College, had special opportunities of knowledge, has said something on this subject in a letter which is printed later on. In another letter, he says: —

. . . “You will have had a reminder, doubtless, that Chauncey delivered a course of University lectures, some years ago, on Psychology, based on Bain’s smaller work, in one volume, on the subject. I did not hear any of them, for they came during my office hours. I suppose, however, from his talks at the time, and from the little I heard from auditors, that they were developments of what seemed to him fruitful topics in the text, and that they were not very successful, — as was, indeed, the case with most of those lectures. The year before his death, you will remember also that he took up in the middle of the year a course in Theoretical Physics, —based on the text-book of Sir William Thomson and Tait,—which had been begun by another, but had to be abandoned by him from finding his work too heavy. He had some ten clever Sophomores in the course; but his heavy artillery was mostly directed over their heads. They complained much to me (as Dean) of their inability to follow him; but Chauncey, with the best intentions, found it almost impossible to accommodate his pace to their

short stride. His examination-papers, by the way, in this course, I remember as models of what such papers should be. Chauncey had as sound views on the subject of education, as fresh and original, and as little biassed by his own peculiar training and deficiencies of sympathy, as those of anybody I ever listened to, but he had no adaptability in practice.”

It will, perhaps, also be interesting to read the account which a listener at Chauncey’s lectures has given of them. A friend Mr. J. B. Warner, a graduate at Cambridge in the class of 1869. ⁵⁹ writes: —

. . . “The audience at his lectures was very small,—not more than half a dozen regular attendants, and very few casuals. . . . They made a class of beginners in philosophy. The lectures were delivered in a monotonous way, without emphasis, and they failed to arouse interest.

“I think the explanation of this is to be found in the elementary character which he was obliged to give them, in order to adapt them to his class. In looking over the notes which I took at the time, I find that he began at the very beginning, and ventured to expect no philosophical training, and hardly even a knowledge of philosophical terms, in his hearers. In this sort of work, he had had, I suppose, no experience. A poorer man might have done it better. The class did not aid him much by discussion, — a thing for which he expressed much regret to me in private. But his monotonous fluency seemed, to those of the class who did not know him, to forbid interruption. He showed the utmost patience; but I do not think that he quite knew how to approach the class. . . . He did not talk over our heads; but he failed to interest us. You may think it strange, for you have undoubtedly seen him, as I often have, interest and instruct children and persons entirely without special training. But what he could do in conversation, stimulated by questions, and himself interested in the effect of his teaching or talking, he could not (or at least

did not) do in these lectures, where he had not one point to expound, but a system to cover, and that to a knot of persons who made little response but devout scribbling in their notebooks.

. . . The picture which is vividly before me is of his face rather a blank, his eyes fastened on the desk below him and therefore appearing shut, his frame almost motionless, and his voice even, to a monotonous degree.”

To show, on the other hand, the nature of Chauncey’s influence over his private pupils, and something of his methods, I will quote a few passages from a letter of one who was under him, both in his public and private instruction: Mr. Henry W. Holland, of Cambridge. ⁶⁰—

“My acquaintance with Mr. Wright began in 1863, when I was in the Lawrence Scientific School. The course there, being adapted merely to the needs of a special calling, seemed too narrow for the objects I had in view; and, having heard of Mr. Wright as an able and learned man, I went to him, and at once decided to take lessons of him in physical and mental science. It was one of the most important and fortunate events of my life. He was an extraordinary teacher for any one who really wanted to study, — always ready with explanations and illustrations of difficult points, always patient and interested. Very soon my hours with him ceased to be mere recitation, and our time was spent more in discussing the points that the lesson raised than in repeating the words of the text-book. Before long I took up Logic, but I did not get a firm grasp of it, and at his suggestion soon took Hamilton’s Metaphysics in its stead (following it with Mill’s Logic), which we discussed very fully. I was exceedingly interested at once. The change was a wonderful one to me; and, with Mr. Wright’s guidance, Hamilton became the great feature of that part of my mental growth. . . . The study

aroused and stimulated my mind as nothing had done before. Mr. Wright was so fair and full in his judgment; and his mental power so far exceeded that of any man that I have ever had the good fortune to know, that he might easily have kept me a mere listener; but his modesty and openness were such that he always treated my suggestions and criticisms as cordially as his own. . . . My lessons lasted only two years or so, but our relation as student and teacher continued to some extent during the dozen years of friendship that followed, for I never ceased to feel the power of his wonderful mind. He used to bring me his writings, or read them to me in his room, particularly of late years, welcoming any suggestion or criticism. . . .

“When he delivered his lectures on Psychology in the University course, they were not all fully written out beforehand; indeed, some were not written at all. He had quite as large an audience as could have been expected, considering the slight attention that the other University lectures received where any work was required from the hearers, — some fifteen or twenty, in his case, I think, rather unequal in philosophical skill, but all attentive and well in hand. . . .

“He had little society talk; but he could converse brilliantly at a dinner table or over the later cigar. He was, however, at his best in his own study, — with his gray dressing-gown on, and with his regularly filled pipe. There many men sought him, as I did, for information or suggestion; and those who came once seldom failed to come again.”

To Mrs. Lesley.

Cambridge, May 7, 1871.

. . . After I finished my lectures, most of which I wrote after I had begun to give them (finding this the safest way), my pen suffered a great drought, and would shed no more ink

except in the way of work, — until I began to think that I had lost all power of spontaneous effort. Three charming letters from my friends abroad, received during the winter, still remain unanswered.

Why is it that such an accumulation of short-comings is thought of as an excuse? I suppose it is that we prefer to be thought of as acting on principle though a bad one, and as generally weak rather than particularly wicked. But sickness is a plea I hate almost as much as selfishness, and, indeed, I haven’t it to fall back upon solidly; for I have not been ill at all to speak of, — only glum, you know, or with an ailment spread out over many months, which consolidated into a week might have needed a doctor’s care. . . . With me the spring is still medicinal, which shows that some of the gemmules of youth are in my constitution. I have for a week past resolutely performed a daily “constitutional” of ten miles, with great profit to my sleeping capacities. . . . What you say about your plans for Mary’s instruction seems to me admirable, and I can conceive nothing that appears better than your proposal to have her taught topographical drawing; for the arts of the hand have so many uses that I have often thought that the training of it, even without reference to any special accomplishment or proficiency, ought to be a part of liberal education. And now-a-days, when so many arts of this sort are finding their way into the curriculum, like chemical manipulation and the use of philosophical instruments generally, there need be no fear of sacrificing general culture to any narrow utility by such a training. Besides, though men are, as Stuart Mill admits, superior to women in patient plodding of the brain, and certainly in the coarser use of their muscles, as in the stout bearings of burdens, — yet in delicacy, both of muscle and thought, women are doubtless equal, if not superior. Still, it should not be overlooked that the greater part even of genius, or at least of its success, lies

in strength and patience, — for many geniuses have told us that their power was “a prolonged patience and it is very gratifying and the happiest augury, that Mary has grown to be so strong and ambitious.

I doubt a little, however, about this concurrent testimony of geniuses j for on this point they are not the best judges. They are generally too modest to like, more than other sensible men, to be thought singular; and, finding their work appreciated, they have imagined that others have the same delicacy of perception that they have. They forget that the judgments of criticism and unobstructed afterthought are much easier than those of invention and forethought; and wishing to correct the opinion of dullards, that the triumphs of genius are born without labor, they have exaggerated the importance of strength and effort as compared to skill. I once admired Dr. Johnson’s definition of genius as large natural ability accidentally directed; but I am now convinced that directive skill, or delicacy of action and perception, is an essential part of it.

I may seem to you to have run quite off the track, since I was talking about Mary and not about Sir Isaac Newton. Still, I am not so far off as may seem, for I do not admit so wide a distinction between talent and genius as would-be geniuses assert in justification of their laziness. The widest difference is mainly this: that genius is led by its skill to apply its efforts successfully to the most difficult, and talent only to the least difficult, work. The first captures a fortress or carries a fortified position: the other makes long and laborious but little obstructed marches.

... I, had not half told the news before these impertiuent abstractions interposed themselves, “which require most plodding and long hammering at single thoughts.” I was going on to say that I have a pretty definite (for me) plan of going abroad this summer for a visit, at least to England, and

that I have dreamed that I may go in July. This is very far from the concrete engagement of a passage, and, judged by my projects generally, is very far from any sort of realization. Even now I hesitate in making the prediction, lest I abridge my future freedom by a quasi promise; since friends hold one another to virtuous courses, or to what they judge for one another the best, by insisting on consistency and by basing their respect for one another on what may be counted on, even to the fulfilling of intentions as well as the keeping of promises. The great majority of my friends and acquaintances in this community have been abroad or are going soon, so that the very obscurity that I love, the shade I instinctively seek from the glare of conspicuous singularity, ought to draw me abroad. '

The Gurneys will not go this summer, for they have just moved into their new home, a very attractive house which they have lately built on the heights near Mr. Lowell’s. The Norton house is let for two years and a half more to Alexander Agassiz. This looks as if their stay abroad would be lengthened out rather than shortened. ... They passed the winter in the neighborhood of Florence, in a villa which was at one time, according to a tablet commemorative of the fact, the residence of Galileo, and may have been the place where the great philosopher was visited by Milton. What charm there must be in touching and seeing these material mementoes of great spiritual facts, — to watch the same moon rising over the same city of Florence, from the same point of view, where great thoughts were meditated! This, more than any other motive, makes me wish to visit England, from whose history I am chiefly descended. I grow more and more conscious every year that my most cherished thoughts and interests are of English origin. My blood, though English too, is nothing to them but their accidental road. All American interests and charms are in the future,

or in a short past development prophetic of this future. They are not new powers or principles, but better opportunities for the old to work themselves out. They are not the struggle for the victory, but the realization of its fruits. For five hundred years, from the time when old William Occam asserted common sense and experience against the devoted and enthusiastic subtilties of continental and Celtic schoolmen, England has taken the lead in every great revolution in thought and practice, even down to Darwinism. Other nations have done much in carrying out and even in discovering in detail the principles of practice and science; but wherever a great victory had to be won for progress, and principles had to be established not only in experience but against authority, English genius has done it. If this be attributed to English freedom, it comes to the same thing; for English freedom was the product of English genius or common sense, aided, no doubt, by an insular position. Here progress has been substantial. They have kept old forms and names, but changed the things, while their unlucky neighbors, the French, have changed often the names of old abuses and absurdities, but kept the things, — fighting, they think, for progress, but really warring only against fetishes. Therefore, though eight generations removed from English soil, I am still an Englishman, and hope to touch the old ground of these battles again.

To find myself so near the end of a second sheet gives me renewed confidence in my pen, and faith in its rejuvenescence. I hope it may give you as much satisfaction. I shall try next a letter to Charles Norton; and then I shall put in ink and prepare for the print of the “North American Review” some rods I have in pickle for Mr. St. George Mivart, the English naturalist, whose book on “The Genesis of Species” I have nearly finished reading. ... I never sent you or told you about my criticism of Mr. Wallace’s book in the last October

number, and as the “Review” has a rather limited circulation perhaps you have never seen it. After what some small critics said of it, I had little disposition to claim credit for it; but now that Mr. Darwin, in his last work, “The Descent of Man,” has recognized its merits, Descent of Man, Vol. II. c. xix. p. 319, note (Appleton’s ed., N. Y., 1871). The article is referred to in this book more than once. ⁶¹ I have grown quite proud of it.

To Mr. Norton.

Cambridge, May 8, 1871.

. . . Hard work with the pen for several months, since I took to writing out my lectures as a precaution against accidental depths of depression, destroyed whatever resources of entertainment that instrument had in reserve for me; and I felt after the lectures were over that I should never make any spontaneous effort again in the way of writing. Time, however, and the reviving influences of spring, give play to slowly uplifting as well as degrading forces, and persistent devotion to “constitutionals” has overcome the long drouth of ink and animal spirits, and I am young and writing again. . . . What times ours are! Late events in France have frequently reminded me of your prophecy before the war, on the disturbances the socialistic element of modern society would produce in the future politics of Europe. The solidity of English genius seems to be the only hope of mankind, — even American mankind. The constant example of English good sense and substantial progress will keep England where she has been for five hundred years, — ahead in all that requires courage and good sense combined. The French accuse her of never fighting for an idea. What she never fought for is the outward sign, the word, — the fetish of an idea. She keeps old names and forms, but changes the things. The

French keep the old abusive things, but change their names. English judges still sit on what they still call woolsacks, — monuments, says the French economist Say, of old financial folly. This folly she has no longer, only the name of it; while the communists of Paris are preparing to pull down the great fetish in the Place Vendôme. English conservatism is the only effective religion or guard against radicalism and empirical folly that remains in the world, — except, of course, gun-worship.

Whether the latter will save France this time remains to be seen; but there is hope of it, since the Germans have shown that gunpowder, spite of Teufelsdröckh, does not make all men equally tall, morally. The God of battles is not on the side of material advantages, except so far as moral superiority has secured them; else moral superiority would never have established any religion in the world, whether it be the Latin races’ respect for forms, or the German races’ respect for uses. This contrast in religious spirit of the formal and utilitarian faiths, of the fetish worshipping and the tool-using animal, is not, I imagine, so much due to original differences of race in Europe as to accidental relations of races to the current of civilization. Just as one savage will improve on another if he picks up or captures the other savage’s fetish, thinking he can turn it to some rational use, or because it pleases his fancy, and having no other respect for it, or no such respect as to paralyze his energies, so Roman civilization improved in barbaric hands; not because of fresh blood, but under a fresh freedom. The torch of civilization has passed from race to race, —from the Aryans to the historic Persians, from the Persians and the Semitics and Egyptians to the Greeks, from these to the Latin races, and thence to the Germans; not simply because the older races have successively become effete or deficient in animal vigor (though this may have much to do with it, since the

wealthy and cultured are seldom so prolific as the poor, and civilization doubtless tends to sap energy by perpetuating weakness), but also because the inquisitive, irreverent spirit with which barbarians approach civilization from without — their utilitarianism — has conquered in the long run the spirit of reverence, especially where reverence has rusted into Pharisaism or formal conservatism. The short-lived Arabic and Moorish supremacy was indeed the result of religious movements. But it was a new religion, and not the effete product of civilization; a proselyting spirit which brought these Semitic peoples into the same contact with civilization, and with the same freedom as inquisitiveness gave to the northern barbarians. When we contrast the Semitics and Aryans, race-differences become identical with the spiritual differences which in Europe proper were due to the accidents of history. No proper Semitic race ever maintained long a supremacy over Aryan neighbors. They are constitutionally too reverential, and have always been worshippers of fetishes, and have made the greatest advance in this direction, being the most persistent of word-worshippers, while the Aryans have respected tools and uses. We ought to be thankful, then, and confident that history has no necessary cycles, — since Utilitarianism has become the religion of England and Germany; and we should pity the poor French that they have no religion left but fear of hated symbols, or distrust of their own superstitions.

In this we see Natural Selection at work, the theory of which is the consummate doctrine of Utilitarianism. Spiritually, the Aryans and Semitics are distinct races, as men physically are distinct from apes. The German hates the Jew next to monkeys. But as, physically, men differ from and contend with one another (in skill of hand and brain, for instance) on the very same grounds that have given them supremacy over the apes, so, spiritually, Aryans differ and contend on the

ground of difference which distinguishes them most widely from the Semitics.

Of course, I am speaking not of that narrow utilitarianism or epicurean doctrine which opposes, but of that which includes and utilizes all other devotions. Men can still climb trees awkwardly, when they have occasion, though they are no longer arboreal in their habits. The modern utilitarian English Aryan can still play for the uses of Church and State on the harp of David, though inharmoniously; can build temples and even burn incense, but he is no longer predominantly reverential. The reverential spirit in the true Englishman no longer takes possession of all thoughtful, meditative moments, like a conscience or supreme practical reason, either to elate or torture him into poetical fervors, as it did David. He uses his feet chiefly for walking; and utilitarian considerations stick in his thoughts and share with reverence his conscience. His reverence must harmonize with inquisitive common-sense and rational considerations of consequences. If it does so, there is no necessary bound to strength of conviction or even to heat of feeling, except in temperament. In Mr. Mill this is capable of great fervors. That Mill should be practically a sentimentalist, and at the same time the greatest prophet of utilitarianism, puzzles many, as I have lately seen in Mr. Mivart’s book, — who commends his intemperate sentiments, but condemns his theories, — and as I have heard in conversation with persons who sympathize with his philosophy, but think his expressions of feeling either inconsistent or insincere.

Both the epicurean sensualist and the intuitional sentimentalist so far misunderstand Utilitarianism as to imagine that strong spiritual feelings cannot be moved by or in obedience to so weak a principle as utility; but really the practical strength of this principle depends on how much we regard or prize the ultimate standard, not on the fact that there is an

ulterior standard for most rules of conduct, beyond the fact that we feel them to be right. So the actual practical strength of utilitarian morality comes to depend on how steadily we can think under strong feeling, or on how strongly we can feel with clear thoughts; and Mr. Mill exemplifies it in a high degree by what appears to his epicurean and to his transcendental opponents as an inconsistency. That he reverences the nature of women or his ideal of womanhood there can be no doubt, and little doubt that this comes in part from his inability to measure or clearly understand a type of mind so different from his own,—the intuitional. It would be only when he saw reason to doubt the guidance of feminine tact that this reverence would receive a shock, but the reverence and tact of the women from whom he has drawn his type avoid this; and as his own clear reason has unconsciously, as you suggest, furnished the guidance that he reverently follows, he worships unreservedly. But we all make our own gods, and then worship them, — no longer indeed out of wood or brass, yet still in our fancy; or, as Voltaire wickedly said, “God created man in his own image, and men have returned the compliment.” Still, it is something not to worship another man’s god slavishly; better still, not to worship, as Mill passionately refuses to do, a no-man’s god, a nondescript block of the Absolute; best of all, to worship what we know to be real, though we overlook its defects.

. . . My dreadful negligence of Miss Grace’s and Miss Jane’s welcome letters would weigh heavily on my conscience, if I ever permitted such faults to come under its jurisdiction; but now that my inclinations are no longer the sullen rebels they were, I shall write conscientiously without fear of doing it perfunctorily. First, however, I must fulfil an engagement I have made, to deal with Mr. Mivart’s book on the “Genesis of Species” for the next “North American Review.” Since Mr. Darwin has recognized my last effort, I am encouraged,

and defy Mr. Dennett and the “Nation,” but only in the hope that I have improved my style a little. Mr. Dennett, one of the editors of the “Nation,” and also at that time the Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard College, had made certain shrewd criticisms on Chauncey’s style in the “Nation,” of November 10, 1870 (Vol. XI. p. 315). I give a part of it below: — “Mrs. John Farrar speaks of a ride which she once took with her husband and Mr. Bailey, the Astronomer-Royal, in the course of which the two scientific men amazed her by talking for an hour together perfectly good English, of which she understood not a syllable. ‘The effect was very curious,’ she says, ‘of hearing people converse in English without being able to comprehend what they said.’ We suspect a majority of the readers of the present number of the ‘North American’ will, once in a while, have much the same feeling in reading Mr. Chauncey Wright’s review of Wallace’s ‘Theory of Natural Selection.’ The subject, too, is one more interesting to the general reader than any other in the whole range of science; and the dabbler in science may properly be condoled with on the difficulties which Mr. Wright’s style interposes between the amateur student of Darwin and what even an amateur student easily perceives to be a very acute and able discussion of Mr. Wallace’s arguments. That the style is evidently a good one, if the reader were only master of the writer’s vocabulary, and that the essay is in many places intelligible even to the uninstructed, will increase, rather than diminish, our supposed reader’s regrets and aggravate his botheration of mind. ... It is fair again, inasmuch as we have said what we have about Mr. Wright’s style holding his reader off from his subject-matter, to admit freely the difficulty, while suggesting the propriety, of an observance, whenever possible, of Joubert’s precept for metaphysicians, that they should not, as too many of them have done, put common thoughts into metaphysical language, but should study, as almost none of them have done, to put their metaphysical thought into the language of common people. The day will be a good one for thought, literature, and instruction, when — decency being saved — the very last is seen of the practice, once prevalent and avowed, of writing for special classes and schools and coteries. By which general remark, we certainly mean no impertinence to authors like Mr. Wright.” ⁶²

To Miss Grace Notion.

June 6, 1871.

... I have finished, in the mean time, an article of nearly forty pages for the “North American Review,” against Mr. Mivart’s book, and in the defence and illustration of the theory of Natural Selection. The Genesis of Species: North American Review, July, 1871; Philosophical Discussions, p. 126. ⁶³

I might give you as a foretaste a few of the plums of the meditations which have so lately filled my mind; but I have too much respect for the individuality of a letter and for its true source in one’s present imagination, however shallow, to fill it from the memory of past inspirations, however profound. If such had not been my pride, what epistles I might have copied and sent out to you last winter! I will say, however, that among the boldest positions I have taken against Mr. Mivart’s theological science are the theses that the doctrine of Final Causes in natural science is not Christian, but Platonic; and that the principle of the theory of Natural Selection is taught in the discourse of Jesus with Nicodemus the Pharisee. Don’t imagine, however, that I have given much space to such considerations. Most of the article is devoted to a discussion of the proper evidences of the theory.

. . . What public events, too, have altered the face of the world! I wish we could hope that the bloody peace just conquered in Paris would last; or that there were cunning enough in the supporters of the present order of things in Europe to forestall such revolutions by a wise as well as strong conduct of public affairs. But I don’t despair of the millennium, or doubt absolutely that the human race may yet find out the secret of peaceful progress, and finally lose the character through which it has risen from animality by

greater powers of destruction than belong to any other race. We cannot hope that any such change will come by the decay of evil passions, or through the influence of good sentiments, until a field for such a culture is prepared through the permanent conquest of strength by wisdom, — that is, by cunning: so that the king shall need no longer to depend on his dukes, or send them before him in bloody battles, and the statesmen have no more need of generals in governing, than men now have of their eye-teeth in securing food or captives. Till then, men cannot be made sufficiently Christian to keep the peace. It may be, or doubtless is, true that Paris has brought destruction on itself, because it was not Christian; but this is as little pertinent to a practical view of the matter as is the fact that its palaces were burnt because they were not fireproof. If it were a question whether the barbarism of to day in Europe were best subdued by priests or schoolmasters, by preaching or teaching, such a fact as the irreligious character of the communists would be important to the statesman. But their ignorance is really the more important fact, since priests cannot reach them now, but schoolmasters may. Priests were themselves the schoolmasters, the teachers of the best learning, in their best and truly effective days. And the question is not so much between religious and secular instruction as between the effete and the effective; or what needs support from society, and what gives support to it. The latter, doubtless, still includes, and must always include, a more or less special culture ; that is, a culture of feelings and habits, especially the social and practical.

But one of the chief difficulties with otherwise clear-sighted thinkers, on this theme, is that they are anxious about a substitute for the effete religion, which shall still be, as the old has been, a culture separated out from all the other enlightening and refining influences of civilization. They are searchers for a new religion,—for a new set of propped-up

and protected institutes of culture, — for a new church; recognizing, as the old Romans did, by what was doubtless an early compromise in the formation of the state, two sources of authority in law, and two sets of laws, the divine and human. But new churches are essentially schismatic, and none can be catholic; and these thinkers, though earnest and liberal, are not utilitarian. Utilitarianism is indeed their natural enemy, as they instinctively know, though they have their attention distracted from its true position, which is that there is one source of culture and refinement, — namely, the best that civilization affords; and one source of authority in laws and customs, — namely, the needs of human security, progress, and happiness; and one priesthood, — namely, of the educated and refined, those who feel and understand most deeply the needs and conditions of human or social happiness.

I almost forgot to tell you that I was invited by the Committee of the Free Religious Association to address them in the anniversary week, just past, on “The Attitude of Science toward Religion,” — or rather to follow the Rev. John Weiss, who was to make the chief remarks on this theme. They wanted one scientific man to speak, who was not a minister. I must not forget to add that I did not hesitate to decline the honor.

In declining, however, I felt bound to give a reason beside what modesty suggested, or at least a sentiment; and I said in effect, while disclaiming any special knowledge or other than a very subordinate interest in this subject, that I believed no necessary conflict existed between inquisitiveness and proper reverence, and that whatever free inquiry might effect towards destroying our respect for old doctrines of science or philosophy, which have received the sanction and support of religious authorities, there will yet be room enough for human improvement in directions in which reverence will still lead and teach,—at least the practical nature of man. But I

preferred rather to subscribe to this article of faith than to expound or defend it.

Your picture of the view from the spot where, as you imagine, Galileo, seeing the same old moon rising over the same old city, thought his great heresy over, — is a sketch of one of the attitudes of science towards religion, which I might have expatiated on, if I had had the skill or courage to do it, though the theme is far from new. Few things could be more instructive concerning the present position of biological science than the series of such independent attitudes that the history of science presents. I have drawn a parallel, in my article, between Darwinism and Newtonism in their relations to the methods and demands of “experimental philosophy.” This seems to me to be, on the whole, the better way,—better than the invidious reproach of religious authority for its series of blind oppositions and failures, or the glorification of science for its successes; since such a simple induction, or series of instances in the “chemical method,” is apt to be fallacious when applied to such questions. For the latest claim against authority, in the name of science, is not more apt to be true on account of such arguments, — to which, indeed, charlatans are generally more ready to appeal than the true philosophers. The same sort of argument is easily invented by the other side. Thus, Darwinism might be put down similarly by showing how often the same heresy has previously undergone miserable condemnation, even at the hands of scientific authority. The only way is to analyze the instances, and, accounting for the success of some and the failure of others, to try the new by the principle of philosophizing thus established. “Sentimental relations with poor, dear Galileo” are, therefore, of little avail for the defence of new heresy. Many a village Galileo or Kepler has doubtless thought himself a martyr (and been one too) at the hands of village hierarchs and schoolmasters, who knew no better than

he how foolish his ideas were, but only how obstinate and schismatic he was.

... It was pleasant to see Mr. Myers back again, so fresh and full of the most agreeable recollections of his journeys and visits. I have met him several times, and a few evenings ago had a very bright and pleasant call from him.

Of the article on “The Genesis of Species,” Chauncey sent proof-sheets to Mr. Darwin; and in a letter to him, dated June 21, 1871, he wrote: —

“I send, in the same mail with this, revised proofs of an article which will be published in the July number of the ‘North American Review,’ sending it in the hope that it will interest or even be of greater value to you. Mr. Mivart’s book, of which this article is substantially a review, seems to me a very good background from which to present the considerations which I have endeavored to set forth in the article, in defence and illustration of the theory of Natural Selection. My special purpose has been to contribute to the theory by placing it in its proper relations to philosophical inquiries in general.”

This was the beginning of a correspondence with Mr. Darwin which continued up to the last year of Chauncey’s life, and gave him much pleasure. Mr. Darwin replied to this letter, on July 14, with great cordiality, and asked leave to reprint the article in the form of a pamphlet. “I have hardly ever in my life,” he writes, “received an article which has given me so much satisfaction as the review which you have been so kind as to send me. I agree to almost every thing which you say. Your memory must be wonderfully accurate, for you know my works as well as I do myself, and your power of grasping other men’s thoughts is something quite surprising; and this, as far as my experience goes, is a very rare quality. As I read on, I perceived how you have acquired

this power; namely, by thoroughly analyzing each word. . . . Now I am going to beg a favor. Will you provisionally give me permission to reprint your article as a pamphlet? I ask it only provisionally, as I have not yet had time to reflect on the subject.”

On July 17, Mr. Darwin again wrote: “I have been looking over your review again; and it seems to me and others so excellent that, if I receive your permission, with a title, I will republish it, notwithstanding that I am afraid pamphlets on literary or scientific subjects never will sell in England.”

To Mr. Darwin.

Cambridge, Aug. 1, 1871.

. . . My own ambition, my private interest in the fate of my article, is quite fully met and satisfied by your good opinion and kind expressions respecting it. I did not hope to have many readers, even here, who would have any genuine interest in the subject of the article, and not so many in England, where our “Review” has a very small circulation. If I had known beforehand what the article would come to on being written out, I should have determined to send it for publication to some English review, through which it would doubtless have met with a larger number of interested readers. But I undertook the work on rather short notice at the request of the editor of our “Review,” and meant it at the start only as a book-notice. Somehow, it grew into the proportions and dignity of a body-article, and was accepted as such. I am only too well pleased that it should be regarded by you as worthy of republication and a larger circulation, and doubtless the editors and publishers of the “Review” will also be. I give permission, of course; but, as to the title, I am a little at fault. I do not well enough know the public scent. Titles of English books are generally more “sensational” than ours;

and, from what you say as to the cold scent the English public have for pamphlets, I suppose that nothing short of a somewhat sensational title will satisfy an English publisher. So I propose something like this: “Darwinism, being an Examination of St. George Mivart’s Work ‘ On the Genesis of Species.’”...

I hope soon to publish a paper on the utility of the phyllotaxis, as you suggest. Mr. Darwin, in his first letter, had expressed much interest in Wright’s remarks on phyllotaxis in the article sent him. He stated also certain difficulties in the subject that had embarrassed him from his want of familiarity with mathematics, and expressed the hope that Wright would publish something more on the subject. ⁶⁴ I have already printed two papers on this subject, — one in 1856, in Gould’s “Astronomical Journal,” No. 99; and the second, in 1859, in the “Mathematical Monthly.” A copy of the last was sent you by Professor Gray. In my new paper, I shall avoid as much as possible all abstruse mathematics, which I see has so obscured my thesis that it is only known to mathematicians.

The specialty of the phyllotactic fractions is not that they represent complete systems, so that, after a time, some leaf will come over the first one and be connected with the same vessels in the stem; this property would belong to any exact fractional interval; an exact proper fraction, after the number of steps represented by its denominator, and the number of revolutions represented by its numerator, would make a complete system, or bring the next succeeding leaf over the first, The peculiarity of the phyllotactic fractions is that the distribution is most rapid and complete within each set or system; that is, it is much more perfect than for other exact fractions. The incommensurate interval of the ratio of the extreme and mean proportion gives the best distribution of all; but here the system is infinite, —that is, no leaf ever comes exactly over an older one.

I have found among old papers a proof of my first article on this subject; and, for the sake of the diagram of this arrangement, I send enclosed a page of the article. The exact fractional intervals of the phyllotaxis have the distributive character of this most perfect arrangement to this extent; namely, that they determine, as no other intervals do, that every leaf shall fall in the middle third (or not beyond it) of the space between two older ones in which it falls. In all other exact intervals, there is crowding. Take, for instance, 4/9, which does not occur in nature. Why should it not? The second leaf in this system would be placed very nearly opposite the first, or very near the middle of the space, and the arrangement is so far well enough; but the third falls at eight-ninths, 8/9; that is, within 1/9 of the first leaf, crowding up against it yet not near enough to get any advantage from connection with the vessels or sources of supplies which the first leaf has grown from. The fraction 3/9, or the one-third system, would be better; for though the first and second leaves divide the circumference into one and two parts (the extremest ratio in the phyllotaxis), yet the third falls exactly into the middle of the larger interval, and the fourth is directly connected with the vessels from which the first leaf has grown.

Take the interval 3/7 for another instance, which does not occur in nature. The second leaf falls, it is true, near the middle; but the third, at the interval 6/7, is within 1/7 of the first, crowding it unnecessarily, and has three times as wide a space on one side as on the other. In the phyllotactic intervals, the space on one side of a leaf is never more than twice as great as on the other. In all other cases, greater disproportions would occur in the distributions.

On September 12, Mr. Darwin wrote that the pamphlet was nearly ready, and that he would soon be able to send copies to Wright. “I have sent your article,” he adds, “to

some friends, and all have been much struck with it; but they say, and I agree, that several passages are rather obscure. Even if only a few scientific men will read it, I shall think myself well repaid for printing it; and I thank you very sincerely for your permission. ... I am glad to hear that you are coming to England; Wright had referred to this in his last letter as a possibility. ⁶⁵ and I shall be delighted to see you at Down.”

To the Same.

Cambridge, Oct. 11, 1871.

I have for some time past been so absorbed in the preparation of a memoir on the uses and origin of the arrangements of leaves in plants, that almost every other interest has been put aside; and I have delayed longer than I should, to acknowledge the receipt of the pamphlets you were so kind as to send me. The title-page is much more eye-catching than I anticipated; and altogether the pamphlet appears in a very taking dress. The printer’s art may make up in part for defects in the style of the essay, which certainly is not of a pamphleteering sort.

... I presented to our Academy last evening my memoir on Phyllotaxy and other points in the structure of plants, The Uses and Origin of the Arrangements of Leaves in Plants: Philosophical Discussions, p. 296. ⁶⁶— which has become a much more elaborate essay than I expected. It is quite as long as the pamphlet, though the length is partly due to details and considerable repetitions, by which I have tried to give it a popular character. It was well received, and will soon be printed, when I will send you copies. The structure of plants has for a long time seemed to me as likely to afford one of the easiest, though by no means an absolutely easy, example of the use of the theory of Natural

Selection as a working hypothesis; but I was not well qualified for working it out. I have not, for example, seen the Essay on Plants by Nägeli, to which you refer, and may not be aware of many of the difficulties of the problem; but I have not ignored any that I knew, and on points in physiology I have consulted Professor Gray. I have arrived at very different conclusions from those of that essay (if I can judge from your reference to it), in respect to the range of adaptive characters in plants.

With the resources of hypothesis afforded by the mathematical, mechanical, and physiological principles known to me, I have attempted the explanation of the special features of Phyllotaxy as present adaptations; also explanations of two genetic characters in plants, the general spiral and the whorl arrangements, as past adaptations; and have proposed to reduce the distinction of adaptive and genetic characters in general to a merely relative one. Regarding the latter as inherited features of past and outgrown adaptations, and conjecturing what some of these could have been, I have built an hypothesis across the chasm between the higher plants and sea-weeds. This sounds venturesome and paradoxical enough, much more so, I hope, than it will appear in the essay, where I feel the way along with at least some appearance of caution. . . .

On October 23, Mr. Darwin wrote: “It pleases me that you are satisfied with the appearance of your pamphlet. I am sure that it will do our cause good service; and this same opinion Huxley has expressed to me. . . . Your letter arrived just one day after the return of my two sons from America. They enjoyed their tour exceedingly, and, I think, Cambridge more than all the rest. I am sure I feel grateful for the extraordinary kindness with which they were treated.”

And again, on April 6, 1872, he acknowledges the receipt

of the paper on Phyllotaxis: “I have read your paper with great interest, both the philosophical and special parts. I have not been able to understand all the mathematical reasoning; for irrational angles produce a corresponding effect on my mind. Nevertheless, I have been able to follow the general arguments; and I am delighted to have a cloud of darkness largely removed. It is a great thing to be able to assign reasons why certain angles do not occur, or occur rarely. I have felt the difficulty of the case for some dozen years. Your memoir must have been a laborious undertaking; and I congratulate you on its completion. The illustration taken from leaves of genetic and adaptive characters seems to me excellent, as indeed are many points in your paper. ... I sent you some time ago a copy of my new edition of the ‘Origin,’ which I hope you have received.”

To Miss Grace Norton.

May 24, 1872.

It was only a short time after my last letter that my father met with the serious accident from a fall, which, on account of his greatly enfeebled health, soon ended fatally. On returning to Cambridge, I was informed of the sad loss which had befallen you all. The death of Mrs. Charles Eliot Norton in Europe, in February, 1872. ⁶⁷ . . . The impulse I felt to respond to the short note I received from Miss Jane seemed to me intrusive, rude, unfeeling. This instinct to regard language as a sort of lying device (dating back, perhaps, of its very invention— driving us back, as it were, to the dumb, inarticulate stage of our existence, when nothing but gestures and cries could utter our emotions) is, after all, a false instinct in a rational being, — to be yielded to only so long as it can master the more refined and genuine feelings which reflection

and speech really serve to express,—which they were not invented to conceal.

Much of the sting of mere animal and inarticulate grief is removed by the form the sorrow takes under the influence of reflection and the calmer, more cheerful emotions which grow up with it. Pure love and true respect, which make their objects as enduring and deathless as they themselves are, take much of the pain away from grief. Their objects are always invisible, whether in the living or the dead, and they suffer no shock except from deceit, or the discovered unreality of these objects, or from spiritual death. The painful shock which we must, nevertheless, feel when a dearly loved friend is cut off in the course of a useful, responsible, or honorable career,—which we do not experience when the work of a life is finished before the life itself ends, — this comes, I am convinced, from an association of the instinctive aversion we have for death, with the sympathies we feel for the purposes, the ambitions, the aspirations of a true and devoted life. It is difficult to imagine that such a breach in nature can be reconciled with faith in benevolent providence. We cannot, at such a time, believe that any thing can replace at all adequately the lost mother’s love and care. But time and reflection dissolve this false association; not by that animal oblivion which still fears and shrinks from death, but by the survival and immortality of the real objects of pure affection, — in their past influences, in their essential worth, and in a reverent memory.

I have been a long time detained in Cambridge, but propose to go to Northampton to-morrow for a short visit to my brother. I was quite absorbed a few weeks ago in writing a rejoinder, so to speak, to Mr. Mivart’s reply to my criticisms of his book. It is now m print, and will be published in the July number of the “North American Review.” Evolution by Natural Selection: Philosophical Discussions, p. 168. ⁶⁸ I have sent a proof of it to

Mr. Darwin. It is not properly a rejoinder, but a new article, repeating and expounding some of the points of my pamphlet, and answering some of Mr. Mivart’s replies incidentally. I made haste, after concluding to write the article, to finish it and get it off my hands, so that I might be unimpeded in my preparations for the trip to England, — which is now fixed for the 2d of July.