I hope to God there will be nothing disagreeable to you in Vol.  II., and that I have spoken fairly of your views.  I feel the more fearful on this head, because I have just read (but not with sufficient care) Mivart’s book,[83] and I feel absolutely certain that he meant to be fair (but he was stimulated by theological fervour); yet I do not think he has been quite fair:  he gives in one place only half of one of my sentences, ignores in many places all that I have said on effects of use, speaks of my dogmatic assertion, “of false belief,” whereas the end of paragraph seems to me to render the sentence by no means dogmatic or arrogant; etc. etc.  I have since its publication received some quite charming letters from him.

What an ardent (and most justly) admirer he is of you.  His work, I do not doubt, will have a most potent influence versus Natural Selection.  The pendulum will now swing against us.  The part which, I think, will have most influence is when he gives whole series of cases, like that of whalebone, in which we cannot explain the gradational steps; but such cases have no weight on my mind—­if a few fish were extinct, who on earth would have ventured even to conjecture that lung had originated in swim-bladder?  In such a case as Thylacines, I think he was bound to say that the resemblance of the jaw to that of the dog is superficial; the number and correspondence and development of teeth being widely different.  I think, again, when speaking of the necessity of altering a number of characters together, he ought to have thought of man having power by selection to modify simultaneously or almost simultaneously many points, as in making a greyhound or racehorse—­as enlarged upon in my “Domestic Animals.”

Mivart is savage or contemptuous about my “moral sense,” and so probably will you be.  I am extremely pleased that he agrees with my position, as far as animal nature is concerned, of man in the series; or, if anything, thinks I have erred in making him too distinct.

Forgive me for scribbling at such length.

You have put me quite in good spirits, I did so dread having been unintentionally unfair towards your views.  I hope earnestly the second volume will escape as well.  I care now very little what others say.  As for our not quite agreeing, really in such complex subjects it is almost impossible for two men who arrive independently at their conclusions to agree fully—­it would be unnatural for them to do so.—­Yours ever very sincerely,

CH.  DARWIN.

* * * * *

Holly House, Barking, E. March 11, 1871.