WCP6803

[1]¹

S^t Aldate's,

Oxford.

Xmas day, 1890

Dear Mr. Gulick,

This week there will appear what I hope may prove my final answer to Mr. Wallace. I suppose you will have seen the previous part of our correspondence before this letter reaches you; and I write to express a hope that you will not have thought it wrong in me to bring ^bring in your name or will not deem my allusions to your views ^{your views} as other than strictly accurate.

I should not have mentioned you ^{mentioned you} at all on such an occasion ^{on such an occasion} but for my knowledge that you had yourself published the statement that [2] in your opinion (as in my own) Mr Wallace had "adopted" the theory of physiological selection; and but for your having already given me permission to use the words which you sent me in MS. I also quoted from your much earlier letter to the same effect in case it should appear that your views of the matter were other than independent of my own.

I confess to not understanding the position which our arch-critic has now take up or, rather, how he can be so illogical as to suppose that the position is tenable. [3] But I am glad that he has risen to the bait which I thought it expedient to offer in the Monist, before I finally dealt with his "Darwinism" in my forthcoming book. Now I will write an Appendix, setting forth for in historical order the process of evolution which his opinions have undergone. Any suggestions from you in this connexion will therefore be welcome.

For a long time past I have been meditating upon the possibility of putting to you a question which I have feared you might deem unpardonably impertinent, and this in both senses of the word. But [4] on this Christmas day I cannot avoid the "cumulative" temptation. My only excuse excuse is is the two-fold statement, that the question is not put from any merely idle curiosity, and that it is put on account of the very great value which I attach to the extraordinarily analytical powers of your thought.

The question which — for my own benefit alone — I want to ask is How How is it that you have retained your Christian belief? Looking to your life, I know that you must have done so conscientiously; and looking to your logic, I equally know that you cannot have done so without due consideration. On what lines of evidence, therefore, do you mainly rely? Years ago my own belief was shattered — and all the worth of life destroyed — by what has ever since appeared to me overpowering assaults from the side of rationality; and yours is the only mind I have met which which, while greatly superior to mine in the latter respect, appears to have reached an opposite conclusion. Therefore I should like to learn in a general way how you view the matter as a whole; but if you think the question is one that I ought not to have asked, I hope you will neither trouble to answer it, nor refuse to accept in advance my apology for putting it.

Geo. J. Romanes. [signature]