Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 2Darwin, Charles
Science
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 2
Darwin, Charles
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Correspondence
I have told my publisher to send immediately a copy of the NEW
(Second edition.) edition to Schweitzerbart, and I have written to
Schweitzerbart that I gave up all right to profit for myself, so that I
hope a translation will appear. I fear that the book will be difficult
to translate, and if you could advise Schweitzerbart about a GOOD
translator, it would be of very great service. Still more, if you would
run your eye over the more difficult parts of the translation; but this
is too great a favour to expect. I feel sure that it will be difficult
to translate, from being so much condensed.
Again I thank you for your noble and generous sympathy, and I remain,
with entire respect,
Yours, truly obliged, C. DARWIN.
P.S.--The new edition has some few corrections, and I will send in
MS. some additional corrections, and a short historical preface, to
Schweitzerbart.
How interesting you could make the work by EDITING (I do not
mean translating) the work, and appending notes of REFUTATION or
confirmation. The book has sold so very largely in England, that an
editor would, I think, make profit by the translation.
CHARLES DARWIN TO H.G. BRONN. Down, February 14 [1860].
My dear and much honoured Sir,
I thank you cordially for your extreme kindness in superintending the
translation. I have mentioned this to some eminent scientific men, and
they all agree that you have done a noble and generous service. If I am
proved quite wrong, yet I comfort myself in thinking that my book may
do some good, as truth can only be known by rising victorious from every
attack. I thank you also much for the review, and for the kind manner
in which you speak of me. I send with this letter some corrections and
additions to M. Schweitzerbart, and a short historical preface. I am
not much acquainted with German authors, as I read German very slowly;
therefore I do not know whether any Germans have advocated similar
views with mine; if they have, would you do me the favour to insert a
foot-note to the preface? M. Schweitzerbart has now the reprint ready
for a translator to begin. Several scientific men have thought the term
"Natural Selection" good, because its meaning is NOT obvious, and each
man could not put on it his own interpretation, and because it at
once connects variation under domestication and nature. Is there any
analogous term used by German breeders of animals? "Adelung," ennobling,
would, perhaps, be too metaphysical. It is folly in me, but I cannot
help doubting whether "Wahl der Lebensweise" expresses my notion. It
leaves the impression on my mind of the Lamarckian doctrine (which I
reject) of habits of life being al-important. Man has altered, and
thus improved the English race-horse by SELECTING successive fleeter
individuals; and I believe, owing to the struggle for existence, that
similar SLIGHT variations in a wild horse, IF ADVANTAGEOUS TO IT, would
be SELECTED or PRESERVED by nature; hence Natural Selection. But I
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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