To Herbert Spencer 13 November 1875
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.
Nov. 13th— 75
Dear Spencer
I have not yet read Bridge’s article, but have looked at the final passages. I see your drift, & if you can make out a fairly good case for men of science it is a most just defence which you intend making.1 I cannot remember whether I was nominally on the Committee of the Jamaica affair.— I generally refuse out of principle to be a member of a committee, on which from ill-health I cannot attend, but I sometimes break my rule.— I see by my accounts that I subscribed 10£.—2 Lyell was a very likely man to have been on the Committee & certain to have subscribed.3
If you will apply to W. Shaen 15 Upper Phillimore Garden solicitor for the prosecution (& whom you probably know better than I do) he would almost certainly be able to lend you a list of the Committee & subscribers. Considering how few men of science there are, I expect & hope that you may make out a good case.—4
How curious & amusing it is to see to what an extent the Positivists hate all men of science: I fancy they are dimly conscious what laugable & gigantic blunders their prophet made in predicting the course of science.5
Good fortune to you— | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Bridges, John Henry. 1875. Is our cause in China just? Fortnightly Review 18: 642–63.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Eisen, Sydney. 2000. Herbert Spencer and the spectre of Comte. In Herbert Spencer: critical assessments, edited by John Offer. London: Routledge.
Kent, Christopher. 1978. Brains and numbers: elitism, Comtism, and democracy in mid-Victorian England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Origin 5th ed.: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. 5th edition, with additions and corrections. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1869.
Spencer, Herbert. 1864–7. The principles of biology. 2 vols. London: Williams & Norgate.
Wright, Terence R. 1986. The religion of humanity: the impact of Comtean positivism on Victorian Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Summary
CD cannot remember whether he was on the committee of the Jamaica affair [for prosecution of Governor Eyre in 1866] but he subscribed £10.
It is curious and amusing how positivists hate all men of science, possibly because their prophet [Comte] made laughable and gigantic blunders in predicting the course of science.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10258
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Herbert Spencer
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- University of London, Senate House Library (MS.791/111)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10258,” accessed on 18 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10258.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23