“I am rather ashamed of the whole affair, but not converted to a no-belief.... It is all rubbish to speculate as I have done; yet, if I ever have strength to publish my next book, I fear I shall not resist ‘Pangenesis,’ but I assure you I will put it humbly enough. The ordinary course of development of beings, such as the Echinodermata, in which new organs are formed at quite remote spots from the analogous previous parts, seems to me extremely difficult to reconcile on any view except the free diffusion in the parent of the germs or gemmules of each separate new organ: and so in cases of alternate generation.”
To Lyell, August 22nd, 1867.
“I have been particularly pleased that you have noticed Pangenesis. I do not know whether you ever had the feeling of having thought so much over a subject that you had lost all power of judging it. This is my case with Pangenesis (which is 26 or 27 years old), but I am inclined to think that if it be admitted as a probable hypothesis it will be a somewhat important step in Biology.”
To Asa Gray, October 16th, 1867.
“The chapter on what I call Pangenesis will be called a mad dream, and I shall be pretty well satisfied if you think it a dream worth publishing; but at the bottom of my own mind I think it contains a great truth.”
To Hooker, November 17th [1867].
“I shall be intensely anxious to hear what you think about Pangenesis; though I can see how fearfully imperfect, even in mere conjectural conclusions, it is; yet it has been an infinite satisfaction to me somehow to connect the various large groups of facts, which I have long considered, by an intelligible thread.”
To Fritz Müller, January 30th [1868].
“... I should very much like to hear what you think of ‘Pangenesis,’ though I fear it will appear to every one far too speculative.”
To Hooker, February 23rd [1868].