Ɛpsilon

To James Grant   11 March 1878

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

March 11. 1878

Private

Dear Sir

I shd. have been very glad to have aided you in any degree, if it had been in my power.—1 But to answer your question, would require an essay, & for this I have not strength being much out of health. Nor indeed could I have answered it distinctly & satisfactorily with any amount of strength.

The strongest argument for the existence of God, as it seems to me, is the instinct or intuition which we all (as I suppose) feel that there must have been an intelligent designer of the Universe; but then comes the doubt & difficulty whether such intuitions are trustworthy.—

I have touched on one point of difficulty in the two last pages of my “Variation of Animals & Plants under Domestication”, but I am forced to leave the problem insoluble.—2

No man who does his duty has anything to fear, & may hope for whatever he earnestly desires.—

Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

Your letter dated March 6th was received only this morning.—

2
In Variation 2: 431–2, CD addressed the problem of reconciling belief in an omnipotent and omniscient God with the theory of descent by natural selection; he criticised the view proposed by Asa Gray that variations had been preordained and guided along beneficial lines by the Creator. See also A. Gray 1861 and Correspondence vol. 16, letter to Asa Gray, 8 May [1868] and n. 5.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 Down, | Beckenham, Kent.] above del ‘Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11416,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11416