To St G. J. Mivart   8 January [1872]

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Jan 8th

Private

My dear Sir

I most fully agree with what you say about pursuing the truth at all costs.1 I will not enter on any details, as I am convinced that nothing which I could say would have any influence on you.— If I had not been personally known to you, I shd. not have been vexed at the spirit which seems to me & to some others to pervade all your articles in relation to me, notwithstanding general expressions to the contrary.— I can say this confidently, as I read the Month long before I knew that you were the author, & considered carefully all the arguments, without caring about the denunciation of atheism &c., as I had been well accustomed to covert sneers of all kinds & to denunciations of all kinds.—2 As it is your several articles have mortified me more than those of any other man, excepting Prof. Owen; & for the same reasons, as I was silly enough to think he felt friendly towards me.—3 I hope that you will now let this correspondence drop, as I want to drive the whole subject out of my mind; & I can protect myself for the future by not reading your controversial writings, only those devoted to ordinary science.— So you can pursue your course, & I can pursue mine for a little longer, without our interfering with each other.

My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Postmark: JA 8 72

2
Mivart had published books and articles critical of CD’s theory of natural selection, including one in the Catholic journal, the Month ([Mivart] 1869). He also published On the genesis of species (Mivart 1871a), and an anonymous review of Descent in Quarterly Review ([Mivart] 1871c), which CD correctly suspected was by him, and a riposte to Thomas Henry Huxley in Contemporary Review (Mivart 1872a).
3
CD had enjoyed apparently cordial relations with Richard Owen, who described fossil mammal specimens from the Beagle voyage, until Owen published a hostile review of Origin in the Edinburgh Review ([Owen] 1860; see Correspondence vol. 8 and ODNB s.v. Owen, Sir Richard).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.3 If I had] ‘I’ after del ‘ha’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8149,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8149