I am heartily glad that you mean to go on preparing your
Journal.--Believe me yours very sincerely,
CH. DARWIN.
* * * * *
_Hurstpierpoint, Sussex. July 2, 1866._
My dear Darwin,--I have been so repeatedly struck by the utter inability
of numbers of intelligent persons to see clearly, or at all, the
self-acting and necessary effects of Natural Selection, that I am led to
conclude that the term itself, and your mode of illustrating it, however
clear and beautiful to many of us, are yet not the best adapted to
impress it on the general naturalist public. The two last cases of this
misunderstanding are (1) the article on "Darwin and his Teachings" in
the last _Quarterly Journal of Science_, which, though very well written
and on the whole appreciative, yet concludes with a charge of something
like blindness, in your not seeing that Natural Selection requires the
constant watching of an intelligent "chooser," like man's selection to
which you so often compare it; and (2) in Janet's recent work on the
"Materialism of the Present Day," reviewed in last Saturday's _Reader_,
by an extract from which I see that he considers your weak point to be
that you do not see that "thought and direction are essential to the
action of Natural Selection.
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