Ɛpsilon

To W. R. Browne   18 December 1880

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.)

December 18th 1880

Sir

The state of my health will not allow me to attend the meeting at Lambeth Palace, though I should feel it an honour to meet there so many distinguished men.1 It would, however, not be sincere on my part to assign want of strength as the sole reason for not attending, in as much as I can see no prospect of any benefit arising from the proposed conference.2

I beg leave to remain, Sir, | Your obedient servant | Charles Darwin

LS (photocopy)

1
See letter from W. R. Browne, 16 December 1880. The aim of the meeting, which was to be held in January 1881, was to challenge the assumption that science and religion were irreconcilable.
2
In a draft of this letter in DAR 202: 17, in place of the clause that begins ‘in as much’, CD had written ‘for many [interl] parts of the Bible [above del ‘Old Testament’] seem to me quite irreconcilable, with what *(according to my judgement)[interl] is presently [interl] known of the history of the organic & inorganic world’.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.) parentheses added

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12919,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12919