Can you tell me of any good and SPECULATIVE foreigners to whom it would be worth while to send copies of my book, on the 'Origin of Species'? I doubt whether it is worth sending to Siebold. I should like to send a few copies about, but how many I can afford I know not yet till I hear what price Murray affixes.
I need not say that I will send, of course, one to you, in the first week of November. I hope to send copies abroad immediately. I shall be INTENSELY curious to hear what effect the book produces on you. I know that there will be much in it which you will object to, and I do not doubt many errors. I am very far from expecting to convert you to many of my heresies; but if, on the whole, you and two or three others think I am on the right road, I shall not care what the mob of naturalists think. The penultimate chapter (Chapter XIII. is on Classification, Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs.), though I believe it includes the truth, will, I much fear, make you savage. Do not act and say, like Macleay versus Fleming, "I write with aqua fortis to bite into brass."
Ever yours, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Ilkley, Yorkshire, October 20th [1859].
My dear Lyell,
I have been reading over all your letters consecutively, and I do not feel that I have thanked you half enough for the extreme pleasure which they have given me, and for their utility. I see in them evidence of fluctuation in the degree of credence you give to the theory; nor am I at all surprised at this, for many and many fluctuations I have undergone.