From Lawson Tait 7 September [1875]1
7, Great Charles St. | Birmingham.
Sep 7
My Dear Sir,
I am engaged in working out a curious speculation as to the origin of the peculiarities of our moral nature, tracing them from the common origin of parental assistance to the young in the struggle for existence I purpose making it the subject of my introductory lecture to my biology class next month.2
Do you know of any earlier instances of parental protection than that of the stickleback?
Spiders don’t?
Nor ants?
Anything above vertebrata?
Yours ever, | Lawson Tait
I dont think it so “hopeless to speculate” on this as you seemed to be when you wrote Chap III of “Descent of Man”.3 I think I see my way into the mist at least a short distance. My difficulty is to unlearn enough!
Footnotes
Bibliography
Descent: The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1871.
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.
Summary
RLT speculates on the "moral nature" of parental protection shown by humans and traces it back to its first occurrence in the animal world.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10153
- From
- Robert Lawson (Lawson) Tait
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Birmingham
- Source of text
- DAR 178: 18
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10153,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10153.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23
