GE to Herbert Spencer, Witley, 27 June 1879
Title
GE to Herbert Spencer, Witley, 27 June 1879
Title
GE to Herbert Spencer, Witley, 27 June 1879
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Herbert Spencer
Date(s)
- 1879-06-27
Place
Witley
Letter Content
GE to Herbert Spencer, Witley, 27 June 1879
Text: David Duncan, The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, London, Methuen, [1908], p. 199.
June, 1879.
I rejoice not in the cause, but in the fact of your having broken the contemplated order of your series for the sake of securing this portion of your Ethics, 283 and if I did not believe it to be an impertinence to tell an author what one would wish him to do, I should say a little more of the value that many would attach to a continuation of this weft as something more needed than even the completion of the Sociological portion. 284 Of course, as you predict, you will be partly misunderstood and misrepresented. That is destiny unshunnable. All one must care about is that some grains of corrective knowledge or useful stimulus will be here and there swallowed and digested.
I have an evil pleasure in observing that you have as good a crop of little misprints as I should have left myself.
Text: David Duncan, The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, London, Methuen, [1908], p. 199.
June, 1879.
I rejoice not in the cause, but in the fact of your having broken the contemplated order of your series for the sake of securing this portion of your Ethics, 283 and if I did not believe it to be an impertinence to tell an author what one would wish him to do, I should say a little more of the value that many would attach to a continuation of this weft as something more needed than even the completion of the Sociological portion. 284 Of course, as you predict, you will be partly misunderstood and misrepresented. That is destiny unshunnable. All one must care about is that some grains of corrective knowledge or useful stimulus will be here and there swallowed and digested.
I have an evil pleasure in observing that you have as good a crop of little misprints as I should have left myself.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Herbert Spencer, Witley, 27 June 1879, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/92532