LETTER 417. TO G.J. ROMANES.
[Barlaston], August 20th, 1878.

(417/1. Part of this letter (here omitted) is published in "Life and
Letters," III., page 225, and the whole in the "Life and Letters of G.J.
Romanes," page 74. The lecture referred to was on animal intelligence, and
was given at the Dublin meeting of the British Association.)

...The sole fault which I find with your lecture is that it is too short,
and this is a rare fault. It strikes me as admirably clear and
interesting. I meant to have remonstrated that you had not discussed
sufficiently the necessity of signs for the formation of abstract ideas of
any complexity, and then I came on the discussion on deaf mutes. This
latter seems to me one of the richest of all the mines, and is worth
working carefully for years, and very deeply. I should like to read whole
chapters on this one head, and others on the minds of the higher idiots.
Nothing can be better, as it seems to me, than your several lines or
sources of evidence, and the manner in which you have arranged the whole
subject. Your book will assuredly be worth years of hard labour; and stick
to your subject. By the way, I was pleased at your discussing the
selection of varying instincts or mental tendencies; for I have often been
disappointed by no one having ever noticed this notion.

I have just finished "La Psychologie, son Present et son Avenir," 1876, by
Delboeuf (a mathematician and physicist of Belgium) in about a hundred
pages. It has interested me a good deal, but why I hardly know; it is
rather like Herbert Spencer. If you do not know it, and would care to see
it, send me a postcard.