To T. H. Huxley 25 December [1859]1
Down Bromley Kent
Dec. 25th
My dear Huxley
One part of your note has pleased me so much that I must thank you for it. Not only Sir H. H. but several others have attacked me about analogy leading to belief in one primordial created form.2 (By which I mean only that we know nothing as yet how life originates). I thought I was universally condemned on this head.— But I answered, that though perhaps it would have been more prudent not to have put it in, I would not strike it out, as it seemed to me probable & I give it on no other grounds.— You will see in your mind the kind of arguments which made me think it probable; & no one fact had so great an effect on me, as your most curious remarks on the apparent homologies of the heads of Vertebrata & Articulata.—3
You have done a real good turn in the Agency business (I never before heard of a hard-working unpaid agent besides yourself) in talking with Sir H. H; for he will have great influence over many. He floored me from my ignorance about bones of Ear,4 &I made a mental note to ask you what the facts were.—
With hearty thanks & real admiration for your generous zeal for the subject.— | Yours most truly | C. Darwin
You may smile about the care & precautions I have taken about my ugly M.S.5 It is not so much the value I set on them; but the remembrance of the intolerable labour, for instance in tracing the History of the Breeds of Pigeons.—
Footnotes
Bibliography
Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.
Summary
Henry Holland and others have attacked his reasoning from analogy to one primordial created form – by which CD means only that we know nothing of how life originated. The reasoning seems probable to him, so he has kept it in.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-2603
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Thomas Henry Huxley
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine Archives (Huxley 5: 90)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2603,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2603.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7