WCP3206

[1]

95 Mt Vernon st

Boston, Mass.

13 Nov 01

Dear Mr. Wallace

I can overcome my remorse for having bothered you with a question which I ought to have found the answer to myself, only by the gratification I feel in having had so pleasant [2] a letter¹ from you. Inferring from your having addressed me in care of my earlier publishers that you have not seem my book on New Zealand. I am taking the liberty of sending you a copy of "Newest England".²

I wish some one would write a book on [3] "Social Selection" showing how the institutional variations of society have been produced, and giving a scientific sanction to the process of reform, and revolution, and a scientific place to the idealising faculty. The first effects of Darwinism on social effort have I [4] think been depressing and destructive. Huxley³ and Spencer⁴ have misused its doctrines and terminology shamefully and made science the spokesman of reaction. Nothing it seems to me would so send this old world of ours booming into a better order as an authoritative supposition of social forces giving the same scientific aspect to the struggles, rebellions, agitations which were — and are — at work on the origins of society as to those concerned in the origins of species. You have done much in this direction [5]⁵ I almost wish you would now make this your only work.

with great admiration, | Faithfully yours | H. D. Lloyd⁶ [signature]