International Association for the Advancement of Science, Arts and Education.
GLASGOW INTERNATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
University Hall
Edinburgh
27/10/1901
Dear Professor Haeckel
It is a great pleasure to receive your very interesting & valuable volume, for which let me heartily thank you. My wife & I had both read it with great pleasure in summer on its appearance, as I got a copy for my students, but this one will be for my friends & children also, who are being brought up as I trust you would approve, without the theological scheme of things & with such contact with nature & natural scheme, act, and good Xxx, and also with real work as far as possible. || I am sure we have your sympathies – who are the minority in this disgraceful and calamitous war. The „jingoes” are no longer what they were & the reaction is improper, but, alas, not in time for the Boers and their children! – I fear all our hopes of speedy improvement through science &c are put back – & that at best we must fall back upon the slower process of extinction of Ganoids, & ironclads, megalosaurus & Kitcheners, vultures and Chamberlains, jackels & Jamesons are not in the line of evolution – yet the consolation of this is a too remote for their prey and further unwilling accomplices, as we so far as their tax-payers & „subjects” cannot help being.
Herewith sample of what I have been doing lately. I hope to write some day again also: I have been thinking and observing a good deal, but have only notes as yet: when I have any papers published I shall certainly send you them.
With renewed thanks & good wishes,
Yours very truly P. Geddes
a gestr.: but
