My dear Sir

I had intended writing to you before I received your obliging note this morning.² I have been struck with admiration at your clear & forcible exposition of my views; & I beg leave to thank you cordially for all your kind & generous expression towards me, & likewise for the sake of the subject.— I have been much pleased with your metaphor or rather simile of Mont Blanc; & as I am now preparing a corrected Edition, I shall give this simile as suggested by you.³ Many parts of the Article have interested me much.— I am indebted to you for having recalled to my recollection M^r Hopkins passage about Denudation. He is mistaken in supposing that I ever meant to say that when a formation has once been fairly upraised that it has been wholly denuded away. I referred exclusively to matter recently deposited, & not consolidated being denuded during its first elevation.⁴ But as the subject has been broached by him, I will touch on it, & ask how he understands the presence of thousands of square miles (as in N.E., S. America, described by Humboldt) of naked metamorphic schists & plutonic rocks. Will anyone believe that these have been metamorphosed in their present uncovered state? on the contrary we must admit that they were once covered & that subsequently all the sedimentary strata have in such cases been denuded away over whole regions.—⁵

Nothing has pleased me so much personally as your remarks (with the quotation from Mills) on the proper spirit & method of scientific research.⁶ I never could see that I was wrong, however much the inductive system was hurled at my head, & now I feel sure I was not.⁷ As you seem so kindly interested in my work, I may mention that I believe that the key of my work was gained by an unusually inductive line of research. For when I began to suspect from geographical distribution &c &c &c, that new species have been formed by descent, I determined to work at domestic productions with not one single idea in my head; & no one can know the years of blind labour I had, before I clearly saw that Selection was man’s chief means. When I had got thus far I strongly suspected that this was the key to nature’s work; but it was some time before I could conceive how it could be applicable,—not indeed until I chanced to read Malthus’s noble work—⁸ I may just add, simple as it may now appear, that it took me many years thought before I saw the absolute necessity of (& manner of understanding) the principle as I have called it of divergence; which no one seems to perceive is new. Oh the work I had in tabulating the plants of differently sized areas, & puzzling why everywhere there was so much diversity of forms!— But I really ought to beg your pardon, occupied as you now are with exciting political concerns, for troubling you with these personal details, which I have not mentioned to others.—

I truly sympathise with you in your great calamity of loss of eyesight: The admiration of every right-minded man at your noble & courageous zeal to play a fitting part in life, must be some, though a poor, consolation to you.—⁹

With very sincere thanks, I beg leave to remain | My dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | Charles Darwin