The thoughtful and experienced naturalist does not get a wrong impression from all this, but the outsider almost certainly will.
A. G.
January 14, 1876.
Dear Mr. Wright,—Thanks for your line of the 8th.
By this week’s “Nation,”[99] you see that, long as the talk is, I have not yet touched the critical question, nor have I yet got an opportunity to apply myself to it. But I hope to do so soon.
Meanwhile, the number of the “Westminster Review,” which you called my attention to, has passed through my hands in our book club, and I shall soon have it in my hands again. It makes a very strong presentation, and the question is, how its points are to be met on purely scientific grounds. If I can meet them fairly, and reëstablish the evidence of design on the basis it ought to stand upon, I shall be satisfied and happy. Anyway, it is a help to me to have this able presentation brought before me....
May 21.
...I have here and there seen references to St. Augustine as maintaining views of indirect creation, such as now would be termed, or might be termed, evolutionary. Can you conveniently put me in the way of understanding his ideas? It is matter for you to work up in your article on Calvinism and Evolution....
December 20.
... Do you see No. 1 of the new agnostic weekly, “Evolution,” and its review of “Darwiniana”? It insists that such a world as ours is too full of imperfections to have had any intellectual originator....