Ɛpsilon

From Herbert Spencer   12 June 1872

37 Queen’s Gardens, | Bayswater, W.

12 June 1872.

Dear Darwin,

Though you interdict a rejoinder to your letter, yet as you have been at the trouble of writing to express your satisfaction with the articles you name, I cannot consent to let your letter pass without saying how much gratified I am by your approval.1 I should very well have liked, had time permitted, to deal somewhat more fully with the metaphysical part of Mr. Martineau’s argument. If, as I expect him to do, he makes some reply, it will probably furnish the occasion, after an interval, for a fuller exposition; by which I hope to make clear to quite ordinary apprehensions, the absolute emptiness of all such propositions as that with which Mr. Martineau deludes himself & his readers.

I am glad to hear you have got through your book on “Expression”, & that (as I gathered from Mr. Tylor at the Athenæum the other day) you are in good condition notwithstanding your work.2

My own lucubrations on the same topic are also finished, & will appear in the forthcoming number of the Psychology, which you will probably find waiting for you when you get back to Down.3

very sincerely yours | Herbert Spencer

1
See letter to Herbert Spencer, 10 June [1872]. CD had written praising Spencer’s rejoinder to an article in which James Martineau criticised the theory of natural selection and argued for the existence of a divine creator (J. Martineau 1871; Spencer 1872).
2
The manuscript of Expression was sent to the printers at the beginning of June (see letter to Herbert Spencer, 10 June 1872 and n. 4). Edward Burnett Tylor became a member of the Athenaeum Club in 1872 (Waugh [1888], p. 139); he visited Down on 6 June 1872 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)).
3
The second edition of The principles of psychology was published in parts between 1870 and 1872, with the penultimate part, including a section on ‘Language of the emotions’, issued in June 1872 (Spencer 1870–2, 1: v–vi, and 2: 539–57); CD’s annotated copy of Spencer 1870–2 is in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 773).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8384,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8384