WCP6582

[1]

Old Orchard,

Broadstone,

Dorset.

Jany 24th. 1913

Dear Mr. Marchant

Your wire today first puzzled and then astounded me. I understood that you had arranged with the publisher to have my little book issued in two forms, after as much extension of it as I could conveniently and promptly make. After carefully considering the question I came to the conclusion that the general reader and press writers know nothing at first [2] hand of the Darwinian Theory, as almost universally accepted by Biologists; whence the absurd misrepresentations of it continually appearing. I am sure therefore that, as my book now stands in the proofs, it will be subject to such ignorant but plausible criticisms, and I decided that it would ^be best to leave it nearly as it is, but to add to two or perhaps three new chapters — one giving a clear and untechnical statement of what "Natural Selection" is in the vegetable and animal kingdoms & [3] another, showing how and why it has a different mode of action in Mankind; and perhaps a third showing how, under a just system of "Social Economy", a special form of pure and elevated sexual selection in marriage will come into play, which will itself correct and destroy all those vices which are commonly termed "social evils", and at the same ^time render all the suggested methods of "Eugenics" quite unnecessary, as things are sure to be hurtful. This mode of the "selection" will also have the incidental effect of so delaying the [4] average age of marriage and also of diminishing the average fertility, as to offer a complete and natural safeguard against that supposed rapid increase of population under improved social conditions, which is one of the most common and dangerous bugbears of many good people, who are therebyfore afraid of even attempting to make people healthier and happier or to diminish to [sic.] horrible infant massacre that now goes on.

I have given all my spare time to this subject since you were here. I have written a good deal of the first of these new chapters, and now, I understand you ask me to throw all that work & thought away. Why?

Yours very truly | A.R.Wallace [signature]