Dear Sir,

I beg to thank you for your most courteous and encouraging letter.¹

I shall devote particular attention to the points you raise, which are most important, though extremely difficult to deal with.

There is a little book, I do not know whether you have seen it,—“Laws and Customs of Marriage” by R. Harte (Truelove 256 High Holborn) which to my mind deals in a very scientific spirit with much of the ethical part of sexual relationships, and I cannot help agreeing with much that the author says.²

The very strength of the popular fear lest these new checks should lead to immorality, gives me some confidence that the human mind, so long trained in favour of that which tends to social order, will be able to withstand the greater license of new conditions, without relapse.

Social change being evolutional is gradual: such disorder as may be prompted must therefore arise in detail, while social order obtains through the mass: disorder is disorganization,—is destruction of itself: I cannot conceive of the present order not being able to withstand the small corroding tendencies of disorder met in detail:— surely it will outlive them.

The “arrioi” societies are societies for death not life,— they are social suicides.³ The libertine and selfish natures, in furthering their own ends, will, I trust, further their own destruction, and so be eliminated from society, while order survives.

If I could conceive disorder to arise at one time from numerous centres, and grow in corrosive power until the combination of order should be destroyed by it; then would I fear the extinction of the human race: but disorder is of fitful growth and crumbles as it grows.

Without, I hope, overlooking the importance of colonization, there is much, I think, in what M^r. R. Greg says in his essay on “The Obligations of the Soil”.⁴ Colonization if slower, would have one advantage,—that it would be less painful. There is something about colonization at present, which reminds me of a panic in an assembly within a building, where the people get jammed in the doorway. Subsistence is so difficult, that is, food is so dear, that emigrants may often view the fertile land they cannot cultivate for want of capital, or a year’s provisions, and so be forced to turn away and starve. High pressure sometimes defeats its own ends.

There is certainly one great danger in lessened fertility of some races,—that the pressure of other races upon them might extinguish them. The lessened fertility commences in the races which are stronger socially,— I trust they will endure. The nations, guided by reason, could not long submit to having their standard of comfort lowered, or their means lessened, by the influx of an inferior race. I trust little to legislation, which usually steps in when the desirable object is already gained, but there are some points of danger which it is usually quick at perceiving; as shown in regard to the recent Chinese exodus; and its most useful action may some day be to preserve a civilized nation against the social encroachments of an uncivilized.⁵

The social change going on in parts of America at the present time is of great interest.

I am seeking for an answer to the question whether the following estimate is or is not a true one:—that the prudent and good, as a rule, love children more than either the pampered and frivolous or the low and vicious. If this estimate is a true one, then under the new conditions, survival will tend as we should desire. It was only that I could not find that what I call the law of sympathetic selection was formulated, that I ventured to draw attention to it. It is, as you point out, alluded to in your writings and I am glad of the confirmation you give me.⁶

The sympathetic are protective of their kind: the unsocial are left less protected. The law, which might be called the Survival of the Sympathetic (the fittest socially), is a law of protection and survival, conducing to the compactness of the social organism, and therefore to existence. Natural Selection is a law of destruction and survival.

I do not remember to have seen the observation, you refer to, by F. Galton.⁷ There is a curious pamphlet by J. H. Noyes, the Bible Communist, on what he calls “stirpsiculture”, which is in favour of the birth of the fittest.⁸

I do not know that there is anything original in what I have said, except, perhaps, it be my insistence on distinct laws of evolution.

There is a topic I think deserves more attention than has hitherto been given to it,—viz—the origin and growth of sexual shame; and there are some sexual peculiarities in man which may, I think, in some way be accounted for by sexual selection &c. I am hopeful that dispassionate study may help us to the resolution of several important questions.

What I submit to you, I submit with much diffidence. I beg you will not let any feeling of courtesy lead you to reply to this letter; I should be sorry to seem to give you this trouble and much regret the state of your health.

I beg to remain, dear Sir, | Yours truly | G. A. Gaskell

Charles Darwin Esq^re.