From E. B. Tylor   29 September 1871

My dear Sir

Your most kind and encouraging letter has been sent on to me here, allow me to thank you very warmly for it, all the more that since the book came out I have been impressed with a sense of its having fallen rather heavily, as too massive & full of detail to have much direct effect on public opinion.¹ It has been suggested more than once that I should abridge the Animism part into a small popular volume.² May I ask whether you think this would be wise. With three or four exceptions, the reviews have been as yet mere laudatory or damnatory notices, but not attempts to discuss the subject on its evidence. As to the ethnography of morals, which in too flattering terms you suggest to me as a subject, I have thought a good deal of it, with the effect so far of an added sense of its extreme difficulty.³ Of course I should gladly give time and labour to contribute even a little to so vitally important a subject, but it is an enormous work. When I am in town a few weeks hence, if it would not be troublesome to you I should be very glad to come down for the benefit of half an hour’s conversation with you about the matter. As M^r Stebbing lives here I am thinking of calling to make acquaintance with him.⁴ Torquay seems so afraid of him that he must be interesting. Not that people are necessarily incapable of difficult ideas, for transubstantiation is extremely popular, but evolution is too natural for the public taste, which wants stronger stimulant.

Again thanking you for praise which merited or not comes at an opportune moment; believe me my dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | Edward B. Tylor

Chas. Darwin Esq