Dear Darwin

I am half ashamed to write to you— I have behaved so badly—after all the kindness I received from your father & brother’s hands not to say your own— I assure you I feel a beast for not having endeavoured to draw you in some way long ago— but partly I have been in the wars some time—and—at any rate I have left undone things that I ought to have done &c—&c.—¹

However—I am bringing out a little book to appear before Xmas.² As mad mad mad as a book can be—utterly disclaiming the smallest pretence to scientific value, but at the same time trying if I can to steal a little science more or less all over the book.

I have a passage in it in which I laugh at a passage of your father’s very gently—& I shd hope genially—still it is distinctly poking fun at the passages (there are two)— shall I or rather may I send you the M.S of this bit, and of the bit wh: leads up to it, and I will cut the whole thing out immediately if you think he w^d mind— the passages are “No doubt in every case there must have been some exciting cause”. (Pl. & An. and. domⁿ. Vol II. p. 275 ed. 1875) and again six or seven pages later “No doubt each slight variation must have its efficient cause—”— I am pretending that it is to people’s unconscious perceptions & utterances that we must turn for their deeper beliefs and having given one or two passages in which I imagine I have caught theologians napping I say “on the other hand it rather shocks me to find M^r Darwin writing “&c &c—” The repetition within so short a space of this expression of confidence in the impossibility of causeless effect w^d suggest that M^r Darwin’s mind at the time of writing was unconsciously to himself in a state of more or less uneasiness as to whether effects might not sometimes come about of themselves without cause of any sort—that he may have been standing in fact for a short time upon the brink of a denial of the indestructibility of force & matter”.³

Do you think your father will mind?

Also I have read the Pangenesis three times with great care and think I understand the drift of it— I want in my new book to summarise it and make it as clear and easy as I possibly can—& I want so far as I can make sure of my own meaning to add to it because I feel the want of something to “boss” the whole embryological process to “run” the concern and settle what is the “due order,” & “next in succession” &c. &c. and also I cannot stand the dormancy of the gemmula & their transmission through many generations & propose a simpler (as it seems to me) way—and one too which explains why the development of any animal should cease soon after puberty— which I do not remember to have seen in your father’s book—and otherwise to come in handy generally—⁴

I shall be yet I shd think another three weeks before I go to press & have not yet begun to put my notes on Pangenesis together— but if you wd like to see them when I have done them, or any part of what I have done already— by all means propose either a meeting I mean come & see me when you are next in town—for I am very hard at work just now, or when they are ready I wd send you the part of the M.S. which I think wd interest you—⁵

With kind regards to your people | believe me y^r. very truly | S. Butler—