Ɛpsilon

From W. W. Reade   10 January 1871

11 Saint Mary Abbot’s Terrace, | Kensington. W.

Jan. 10. ’71.

My dear Sir

I think it scarcely possible that you have not noticed the selection of Lycurgus as applied to the breeding of men— However I send a passage from Mitford i. 282.

“All children presented after birth were examined by public officers appointed for the purpose: the well-formed & vigorous only were preserved; those in whom any defect either of shape or constitution appeared were exposed without mercy to perish in the wilds of Mount Taygetus”—1 The baby of the African exposed to all weathers, vertical sun, and night wind is likely enough to be rejected & slain by Nature if it has any defect in shape or constitution—2

Yours very truly | Winwood Reade

Comte Traité de Legislation liv iii, ch IV. has collected many instances of ideas of beauty as existing among various peoples. Referred to in Lecky’s Morals i. 82 Lecky takes your view3

1
CD cited Mitford 1829, 1: 282, in Descent 2d ed., p. 29 and n. 13. Mitford wrote ‘presently’, not ‘presented’. Lycurgus was the traditional founder of the customs of classical Sparta (Oxford classical dictionary).
2
See also Correspondence vol. 18, letters from W. W. Reade, 4 June 1870 and 9 November 1870.
3
Reade refers to Charles Comte, Comte 1837 (book 3, chapter 4), William Edward Hartpole Lecky, and Lecky 1869. In Lecky 1869, 1: 82, Lecky commented, ‘the conceptions of beauty formed by a nation of negroes will be different from those formed by a nation of whites’, and cited Comte for a collection of such instances.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7435,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7435