From Chauncey Wright   21 June 1871

Cambridge

June 21, 1871

Dear Mr. Darwin

I send in the same mail with this, revised proofs of an article which will be published in the July number of the North American Review; sending it in the hope that it will interest, or even be of greater value to you.1 Mr. Mivart’s book of which this article is substantially a review seems to me a very good background from which to present the considerations which I have endeavored to set forth in the article in defense and illustration of the theory of Natural Selection.2 My special purpose has been to contribute to the theory by placing i⁠⟨⁠t⁠⟩⁠ in its proper relations to philosophical inquiries in general. I omitted on account of the length of the article and the crowded space of the Review a topic which I thought worth printing and which I therefore venture to add in the short manuscript which I append.3

I regret that I am unable to send well-printed advanced sheets instead of this proof, but the publishers of our Review are inexorably hostile to the weakness of authors for extra-copies.

With great respect | Very truly yours | Chauncey Wright

1
The proof copy that Wright sent of his essay review of Mivart 1871a (Wright 1871a) has not been found.
2
Wright refers to St George Jackson Mivart and his On the genesis of species (Mivart 1871a).
3
The manuscript referred to has not been found, but an expanded version of Wright’s article (Wright 1871b) was published with CD’s assistance; the additional material was put in an appendix. See letter to Chauncey Wright, 17 July [1871]. Although Wright cited the Macmillan (London and New York) edition of Mivart 1871 at the head of his review, the page numbers he gave suggest that he was using the Appleton (New York) edition.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7829,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7829