Page 85.  “Inferiority of senses of Europeans” is, I believe, a pure delusion.  Professor Marsh told me of feats of American trappers equal to any savage doings.  It is a question of attention.  Consider wool-sorters, tea-tasters, shepherds who know every sheep personally, etc. etc.

Page 85.  I do not understand about the infant’s sole; since all men become bipeds, all must exert pressure on sole.  There is no disuse.

Page 88.  Has not “muscardine” been substituted for “pebrine”?  I have always considered this a very striking case.  Here is apparent inheritance of a diseased state through the mother only, quite inexplicable till Pasteur discovered the rationale.

Page 155.  Have you considered that State Socialism (for which I have little enough love) may be a product of Natural Selection?  The societies of Bees and Ants exhibit socialism in excelsis.

The unlucky substitution of “survival of fittest” for “natural selection” has done much harm in consequence of the ambiguity of “fittest”—­which many take to mean “best” or “highest”—­whereas natural selection may work towards degradation:  vide epizoa.

You do not refer to the male mamma—­which becomes functional once in many million cases, see the curious records of Gynaecomasty.  Here practical disuse in the male ever since the origin of the mammalia has not abolished the mamma or destroyed its functional potentiality in extremely rare cases.

I absolutely disbelieve in use-inheritance as the evidence stands.  Spencer is bound to it a priori—­his psychology goes to pieces without it.

Now as to the letter.  I am no pessimist—­but also no optimist.  The world might be much worse, and it might be much better.  Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature.  That is an article of exclusively human manufacture—­and very much to our credit.

If you will accept the results of the experience of an old man who has had a very chequered existence—­and has nothing to hope for except a few years of quiet downhill—­there is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections), nothing that satisfies quiet reflection—­except the sense of having worked according to one’s capacity and light, to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts.  That was the lesson I learned from Carlyle’s books when I was a boy, and it has stuck by me all my life.

Therefore, my advice to you is go ahead.  You may make more of failing to get money, and of succeeding in getting abuse—­until such time in your life as (if you are teachable) you have ceased to care much about either.  The job you propose to undertake is a big one, and will tax all your energies and all your patience.

But, if it were my case, I should take my chance of failing in a worthy task rather than of succeeding in lower things.

And if at any time I can be of use to you (even to the answering of letters) let me know.  But in truth I am getting rusty in science—­from disuse.