To John Phillips   11 November [1859]

Down Brom⁠⟨⁠ley Kent⁠⟩⁠ [Ilkley]

Nov 11th.

My dear Phillips

I have directed Murray to send you a copy of my book on the Origin of Species, which as yet is only an abstract.— I fear that you will be inclined to fulminate awful anathemas against it.1 I assure you that it is the result of far more labour, than is apparent in its present highly condensed state.—

If you have time to read it, let me beg you to read it all straight through, as otherwise it will be unintelligible. Try not to condemn it utterly, till you have finished it & reflected on the recapitulation. Not that I am so foolish as to expect to convert anyone, who has long viewed the subject from an opposite point of view. I remember too well how many long years my own conversion took. The utmost which I hope, is that you may see that more can be said on the side of the mutability of specific forms, than is at first apparent. If indeed your own observations have made you at all sceptical on this subject, then my Book may produce some effect.2 Hooker, whose studies make him, I think, one of the most competent judges in Europe, has completely given up species as immutable creations.

Pray forgive me for troubling you with this note, which does not require any answer & pray believe me | Dear Phillips | Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin

1
Phillips was president of the Geological Society in 1859 and had been instrumental earlier in the year in the society’s award of the Wollaston Medal to CD (see letters to John Phillips, 21 January [1859] and 8 February [1859]). He was the senior geologist at Oxford University following William Buckland’s death in 1856.
2
Phillips’s acknowledgment of CD’s letter has not been found, but CD described his response to Origin as ‘cautious but decidedly, I fear, hostile’ (see the second letter to T. H. Huxley, 25 November [1859]). See also letter to John Phillips, 26 November [1859]. Phillips discussed Origin in his anniversary address to the Geological Society in 1860 (Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 16 (1860): xxxvi).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.1 as] before omitted point

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2521,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2521