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[date added later:] Oct 27 73

My dear George

I have read over your article twice with interest.

I think the account of the different phases of mind through which a man passes on his way from belief to scepticism very true & interesting. I think, however, that it does not coalesce

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with the main subject of your essay & in fact as the essay stands it appears to me to be two essays bound up in one.

Your appreciation of Father's theory of the origin of morals to Matt Arnolds sanction for morality is by far the best part of the essay & seems to me the only really original part.

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I think this treated at greater length might make an interesting book – but it would take a good bit of work I expect. My idea would be to take M. Arnold as an instance only of that kind of religion which makes mind consciousness the ultimate test of what is true & right but to treat the subject more in the broad – but of course

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this would take a great deal of reading to have a rough idea of what people have said & thought on this subject & then to show by a comparison of all nations & all times how conscience has practically worked. The origin of the different points of morality & how the different conscientious feelings have survived by inheritance beyond the time

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when they were the fittest.

This is a serious work I am suggesting but I am inclined to think treated more lightly & suggestions of something of the essay kind might be made of it – I think the subject is well worth working out by somebody.

With regard to your essay as it stands my first impression was that it might not be published

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& after thinking about it I still hold to that opinion.

There is one point of view that may not have occurred to you.

Everything that you say will be held by the outer world to be an echo of Father's opinion.

This may be a mistake on the world's part in any particular instance – but I think upon the whole the world is right. It is impossible for our minds

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not to be most deeply biased by living all these years with a mind & character far greater & broader than our own.

At least I feel it most deeply. More so, naturally, than you boys. However this is beside the point. Rightly or wrongly all you boys have the honour of the Darwin name to uphold.

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You ought to feel, how will such a publication affect the Evolution Theory as represented by my Father?

Publishing such an essay is a very important step however much you stood alone – but I think your particular circumstances make it enormously more important.

I quite agree with what you have said in your letter

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to Father about the evils of concealment about religion & the cowardness of much that is written upon scientific religion.

But I don't think, since one sentence in the Origin which I have groaned over in Spirit, Father has ever practiced anything but what, I consider, the wise reticence of a man who does not care to give his opinions to the world upon a subject which he has not

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mastered. It appears to me, too, that saying what you think upon religion stands upon a different basis to writing upon science, literature etc. I don't mean at all for fear of wounding people's feelings. But in this particular subject it seems to me a fair & reasonable thing that you should be recognised to show that you are fit to deal

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with it. […]

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some of your essay […]

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it backs by a 1/2d – […]

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a right to give my opinion. […]

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Father is enjoying the Huxley talk who (H) seem wonderfully better as to spirits tho' he looks ill enough.

Ever yours H.E.L.