You “wish to heaven the North did not hate us so.” We equally wish the English did not hate us so. Perhaps we exaggerate the ill will in England against us. You certainly over-estimate that of the United States against England, which an influential part of your press exaggerates and incites for the worst purposes. But, after all, after the first flurry, we think and say very little about you, and shall live in peace with you, if you will let us. There should have been, and might have been, the most thorough good will between us. I do not think it is all our fault that it is not so.
In reply to your question:—
If oak and beech had large, colored corolla, etc., I know of no reason why it would be reckoned a low form, but the contrary, quite. But we have no basis for high or low in any class, say, dicotyledons, except perfection of development or the contrary in the floral organs, and even the envelopes; and as we know these may be reduced to any degree in any order or group, we have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a commonwealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view.
I have just read De Candolle’s paper on oaks and species, and origin. Well, he has got on about as far towards you as I have. It is clear enough that, as I thought at first, derivation of species is to be the word, and natural selection admitted. The only question is, whether this is enough.
Ever your attached friend,
A. Gray.
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
Cambridge, February 16, 1863.
I am disposed to join issue with you on the question of Linnæus’ definition of species. I have long pondered your discussion of the subject in “Géographie Botanique,” and still think, on the supposition of the fixity of species (which Linnæus of course had in view), that between “community of descent” and “likeness,” the former and not the latter is the fundamental conception in the idea of species. We may test this by inquiring whether of the two can be derived from the other. The likeness, I suppose, is the consequence of the community of descent. But, then, as the likeness is a thing of degrees, and, according to present probabilities, species may have only a relative and temporary fixity, your view will after all have the advantage; and the question of species will come to be metaphysical or logical, rather than natural-historical. The worst of all is that there will remain no objective basis or standard; and species will be what each naturalist thinks best so to consider!
I am pleased to know that the view of my article on the “Memoirs”[53] is well received by you. Readable articles are very needful, when they can be had, for a journal which, like Silliman’s, cannot exist without popular support. I promised an article of sixteen pages of this character; but I intended to enlarge more at the close upon the genius and influence of your father, and cite your parallel with Linnæus as portrayed by Fabricius. But I found that my pages were filled before I was aware of it, and I had to cut short, much too curtly. It left me with a somehow dissatisfied feeling. All your remarks about the difference between the profound and the prolific botanists, I agree to; and I think that both Linnæus and De Candolle had as much genius as Robert Brown....
Well, as to origin of species, you have now gone just about as far as I have, in Darwinian direction, and both of us have been led step by step by the facts and probabilities, and have not jumped at conclusions.