From Grant Allen   21 February [1879]¹

Dear Sir,

I have to thank you very much for both your kind letters. Thanks, too, for your offer of any of your books, to all of which however, I have easy access.²

I am much obliged to you for your criticisms and notes, of which I shall gladly avail myself if (as is very unlikely) my book should ever reach a second edition.³ With regard to the theory of pleasure and pain, I am afraid I must have expressed my meaning badly, for I quite agree with what you say.⁴ For example, I shd. allow that the lack of any decided pleasure accompanying the action of the tactual nerves in the tongue was due to the fact that all substances, hurtful or desirable, would equally stimulate them: while the pleasure attached to the taste of sugar I believe to be due to its general character as a test for edible substances. I quite accept, also, your remark about the lips and the generative organs. All I meant to say was this—that when an action, voluntarily performed, was decidedly desirable for any species it would result in the development of a correspondingly large nervous organ capable of pleasurable stimulation. Clearly, some nervous centres are more capable of pleasure and pain than others: but I have tried to explain the reason, as it presents itself to me, in my Physiological Aesthetics.⁵

I am glad to learn that something the same ideas with regard to birds and butterflies, in the question of sexual selection, had already occured to F. Müller and yourself.⁶ It forms some confirmation of my view. At the same time, I think the main thing to insist upon is this—that no taste can be purely arbitrary. The love for sweets or meats, for colours or musical sounds, must, I think, ultimately depend upon ancestral habits. Hence, the birds of the Galapagos and Patagonia may perhaps have never acquired the taste for beautiful colours, rather than have had it “destroyed”, as you suggest, by “the sombre aspect of nature.” In short, it seems to me that we have rather to account for the presence of the taste in any case than for its absence in a few instances. This is the humble task which I have set myself to do, as my small contribution to the scheme of evolution.

I am only too aware how imperfect my work must necessarily be, with the small means at my disposal for ascertaining facts at first hand,⁷ and I ought to apologise for addressing you at all: but I know your interest in scientific truth is so great that you will be willing to forgive even the bungling guesses of a learner, especially when, as in psychology, there is little else to be had as yet. This must be my excuse for troubling you once more with a letter.

Yours very faithfully, | Grant Allen.