Dear Mr Darwin

It is very kind of you to write to me about my little book— I expressly said that I did not want any acknowledgment of it but I am none the less grateful for your letter.¹ I am in hopes that my brother artists will not read the work in question   if they did my character amongst them would be gone for ever and I should be classed (most unjustly) as a scientific person—² Fortunately they seldom read at all and being wise men in their way least of all do they read anything about Art—

The question why certain forms & colours are pleasing and others not will I am sure be satisfactorily explained some day but it is quite obvious that that day has not come yet— The utmost one can do is to point out the two directions in which the explanation is to be sought— 1 association 2 moderate & healthy stimulation of nervous activity.

I should imagine that these are the two sources of the pleasure derived from harmony of colour & form & as far as I can see the only two but then the same thing can be said of every other pleasure so it is obvious that to be of any use our explanation must go a great deal further than this— I await with as much patience as may be the investigations of psychologists & physiologists on this difficult point and in the mean time point out in my primer that really nothing is known about it & therefore the less we talk about it the better—setting myself a commendable example on this point by dismissing the whole subject in a few words—

I wish you would tackle Mr Huxley on the subject of automatism³   There must be something wrong in a theory which nobody really believes in with regard to himself except in some strained & unnatural sense— Would my actions be the same without my consciousness? Of course I can’t prove that they wouldn’t but I don’t believe it for an instant. There is rather a striking argument of Spencers about the reality of the external world— He contrasts the roundabout arguments with which philosophers have been led to doubt this reality with the immediate deliverance of consciousness which tells us as a fact that this reality exists   a fact which is just as valid as any of the other facts on which all our arguments have to be based—⁴

In the same way the immediate deliverance of our consciousness tells us as plainly as it tells us any thing that our thoughts & feelings can influence the external world— Of course our consciousness can be mistaken but then so can our arguments and anyhow our arguments have to rest upon our consciousness to begin with—

Forgive this long and I am afraid badly expressed scrawl— You paid me the compliment of writing to me and I am afraid I have badly requited it— but whether you forgive it or not I beg you will not think of answering it— In fact I put off answering your letter for some time for fear you should say “Confound the fellow, he wants to drag me into a correspondence!.”

yours very sincerely | John Collier