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I think we may now congratulate you on having made a valuable convert, whose opinions on the subject, coming so late and being evidently so well considered, will have much weight. I am going to Norwich on Tuesday to hear Dr. Hooker, who I hope will boldly promulgate "Darwinianism" in his address. Shall we have the pleasure of seeing you there? I am engaged in negotiations about my book.
Altruism was exposed at length for the thing it was, an error in the last degree unscientific and uneconomic. The rickety arithmetic of Malthusianism was used against the revolutionary hope, exactly as a travestied version of Darwinianism was used in our own day against Socialism. Godwin preserved his dignity in this controversy and made concessions to his critics with a rare candour.
Darwin and all your circle, believe me, dear Darwin, yours very faithfully, It is written by the Rev. Geo. Buckle, of Tiverton Vicarage, Bath, whom I met at Norwich and found a thoroughly scientific and liberal parson. Really, what with the Tories passing Radical Reform Bills and the Church periodicals advocating Darwinianism, the millennium must be at hand.
This is no discovery of the nineteenth century. Linnæus lived in the eighteenth century and Aristotle somewhat earlier. I see that the Standard Dictionary already makes a distinction between Darwinism and Darwinianism, between the views of Darwin and those of the Darwinians, and we clearly see that in some of the most essential points these two tendencies are diametrically opposed to each other.
Yet this idea, "right," thus excluding, as it does, all reference to utility or pleasure, has nevertheless to be constructed and evolved from utility and pleasure, and ultimately from pleasurable sensations, if we are to accept pure Darwinianism: if we are to accept, that is, the evolution of man's psychical nature and highest powers, by the exclusive action of "Natural Selection," from such faculties as are possessed by brutes; in other words, if we are to believe that the conceptions of the highest human morality arose through minute and fortuitous variations of brutal desires and appetites in all conceivable directions.
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