The origin of misconception
Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 17 October) tells us that 'on a famous occasion' Darwin 'politely but firmly refused Marx's invitation to strike a Faustian bargain'. Pre- sumably this is a reference to the legend that Darwin refused an offer from Marx to dedi- cate a volume of Capital to him.
In fact, no such offer was ever made. The Darwin letter which gave rise to this false story about the proposed dedication is dated 13 October 1880 and must have been addressed not to Marx but to his future coin- mon-law son-in-law Edward Aveling, and to have been referring not to Capital but to The Student's Darwin, published in 1881. The whole affair was sorted out in a definitive article by Lewis Feuer, 'The Case of the "Darwin-Marx" Letter', in Encounter in October 1978. One final twist in the tale is that it would probably never have got start- ed at all had the leading Soviet Marx schol- ar, the former Menshevik Ryazanov, not fallen victim to the Great Terror.
Antony Flew
26 Alexandra Road, Reading, Berkshire
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