95 Mt Vernon St
Boston, Mass.
13 Nov[ember] [19]01
Dear Mr. Wallace
I can over come 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 letter 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".
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. Huxley1 and Spencer2 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 [?]position 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]3I almost wish you would now make this your only work.
With great admiration, | Faithfully yours | H. D. Lloyd [signature]4
Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP3206.3174)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Please cite as “WCP3206,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 3 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3206