Letter 3215A
Darwin, C. R. to Fawcett, Henry
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"You could not possibly have told me anything which would have given me more satisfaction than what you say about Mr. Mill's opinion." [See 2868.]
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Transcription
You could not possibly have told me anything which would have given me more satisfaction than what you say about Mr. Mill's opinion. Until your review appeared I began to think that perhaps I did not understand at all how to reason scientifically.
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- f1 3215a.f1
Fawcett had told CD about a conversation he had had with John Stuart Mill in which Mill endorsed the logic of CD's reasoning in Origin. See letter from Henry Fawcett, 16 July [1861] and n. 3. - +
- f2 3215a.f2
Both Adam Sedgwick and Samuel Wilberforce in their reviews of Origin had criticised CD's method of reasoning ([A. Sedgwick] 1860 and [Wilberforce] 1860). Fawcett's review published in Macmillan's Magazine (Fawcett 1860) countered these criticisms.