How I Met Mr. Darwin

How I Met Mr. DarwinI sent Mr. Darwin an essay on a subject on which he is now writing. As the essay was not a very good one, it appears to me that the first two sentences of the essay, in their main character, were written by Darwin:But the first part of the essay, if I may use that expression, is not the personal part, but the nature of the subject, and perhaps also the date of his life, and the circumstances which led up to his developing these thoughts, to the extent that he is now writing them down. As he had no time to analyse or rewrite, he mainly used the logical methods of his own peculiar genius to express himself.To ask whether he put much thought into the work, or whether he just wrote it in the third person, I do not see how the reader can say which is the more likely opinion. The only question that I ask myself is whether it was right for him to start it off that way. Of course I agree with Darwin, when he says that such an essay is better left unpublished, or should be called 'popular fiction', because his literary talent was far more important than his own ethical views.It is of course, a very personal question, since what I consider to be the main character of the essay is a personal view of Darwin's, which he does not wish published. But when the topic of a book is not a scientific one, that subject will not be attacked in an attacking tone; the author will almost certainly give it the form of an apologia, or a defense of the values he holds most dear.In order to bring out the thought, in an easy and effective manner, I decided to write the essay, which I submitted to him, as something of a review of the structure of his first volume, 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals'. I added a few pages of a new essay, 'An Evolutionary Origin of Religion' to the outline of 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals'.It is fair to say that the task was greatly simplified, since Darwin did not have any particular difficulties in meeti ng the essay's problems. The only matter which prevented my authorial treatment from being completely satisfactory was the fact that, in the original manuscript, I suggested a new view of 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals' as being responsible for the evolution of religion. Darwin replied that he had never realised this, and even if he had known, he would not have written the book he did.Thus it appears that Darwin has produced a great volume, which is certainly worthy of the reader. In spite of having felt bad about the present state of affairs between the two of us, I am at least satisfied that the work of one man deserves to be read by all. One of my friends says, quite rightly, that it is as important to him as to Darwin.