known your work when I published
my last volumes.

I am surprised and pleased to hear that science is not quite forgotten
under the present exciting state of affairs. Every one whom I know in
England is an enthusiastic wisher for the full and complete success of
Germany.

P.S. I will give one of my two copies of your work to some public
scientific library in London.

LETTER 240. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "PALL MALL GAZETTE." Down, March 24th
[1871].

Mr. Darwin presents his compliments to the Editor, and would be greatly
obliged if he would address and post the enclosed letter to the author
of the two admirable reviews of the "Descent of Man." (240/1. The
notices of the "Descent of Man," published in the "Pall Mall Gazette" of
March 20th and 21st, 1871, were by Mr. John Morley. We are indebted to
the Editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette" for kindly allowing us to consult
his file of the journal.)

LETTER 241. TO JOHN MORLEY. Down, March 24th, 1871.

From the spirit of your review in the "Pall Mall Gazette" of my last
book, which has given me great pleasure, I have thought that you would
perhaps inform me on one point, withholding, if you please, your name.

You say that my phraseology on beauty is "loose scientifically, and
philosophically most misleading." (241/1. "Mr. Darwin's work is one of
those rare and capital achievements of intellect which effect a grave
modification throughout all the highest departments of the realm of
opinion...There is throughout the description and examination of Sexual
Selection a way of speaking of beauty, which seems to us to be highly
unphilosophical, because it assumes a certain theory of beauty, which
the most competent modern thinkers are too far from accepting, to allow
its assumption to be quite judicious...Why should we only find the
aesthetic quality in birds wonderful, when it happens to coincide with
our own? In other words, why attribute to them conscious aesthetic
qualities at all? There is no more positive reason for attributing
aesthetic consciousness to the Argus pheasant than there is for
attributing to bees geometric consciousness of the hexagonal prisms and
rhombic plates of the hive which they so marvellously construct. Hence
the phraseology which Mr. Darwin employs in this part of the subject,
though not affecting the degree of probability which may belong to this
theory, seems to us to be very loose scientifically, and philosophically
most misleading."--"Pall Ma