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To H. K. Rusden   [before 27 March 1875]1

Dear Sir.—

I am much obliged for your very kind letter, and for the present of your lecture and essay, which I have read with interest.2

* * * * *

I have long thought that habitual criminals ought to be confined for life, but did not lay stress enough until reading your essays on the advantages of thus extinguishing the breed.3 Lunacy seems to me a much more difficult point from its graduated nature: some time ago my son, Mr G. Darwin, advocated that lunacy should at least be a valid ground for divorce.4 I may just add that Mr Bagehot has insisted strongly that there is no general tendency to progress in civilisation, which comes to nearly the same thing as intermittance.5

With my renewed thanks, I remain, dear Sir, yours faithfully, | Ch. Darwin.

Incomplete

1
The date is established by the date this letter was published in the Ovens and Murray Advertiser.
2
According to the letter that Rusden wrote to introduce this letter, the lecture was Rusden’s ‘Selection, natural and artificial’ (Rusden 1874), and the essay was his ‘The treatment of criminals in relation to science’ (Rusden 1872).
3
Rusden argued in Rusden 1872 that convicted criminals should never be released, and that while incarcerated they should be used in medical experiments; he recapitulated his arguments in Rusden 1874.
4
In Rusden 1874, p. 15, Rusden wrote that lunatics, like criminals, ought to be prevented from reproducing. George Howard Darwin argued that lunacy should be grounds for divorce in G. H. Darwin 1873, p. 418.
5
In Rusden 1874, p. 7, Rusden argued that some prehistoric societies attained a higher degree of civilisation than some later ones, and that even in historic times the progress of civilisation had been ‘intermittent’. Walter Bagehot discussed the definition of progress and the frequent lack of it in human societies in the final chapter of his Physics and politics (Bagehot 1872).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9705F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9705F