# Darwin's monkey and Graham's reply

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH03.P008](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH03.P008/#char=738,795): "They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?"

A close Victorian parallel occurs in Darwin's letter to William Graham of 3 July 1881. Discussing Graham's *The Creed of Science* (1881), Darwin doubted that natural laws imply purpose, admitted his limited practice in abstract reasoning, and then questioned the trustworthiness of convictions produced by a mind descended from animals. His monkey comparison follows an admission that he inwardly believes the universe is not the result of chance. Its immediate setting is therefore confidence in a large metaphysical conviction, rather than a demonstrated failure of observation or deduction. [Darwin's letter](https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/view/letters/DCP-LETT-13230) supplies a comparison, not proof that Chesterton borrowed it.

Graham's surviving reply makes the distinction sharper. He accepted that intuitions might face objections, but denied that their evolutionary origin adds force to those objections: reasoning faculties also develop from, and are shared with, animals. His answer contests precisely the move from animal ancestry to cognitive disqualification. The [reply](https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/view/letters/DCP-LETT-13268) survives as an incomplete copyist's extract, dated editorially before 5 August 1881, not as Graham's recovered original letter.

## Sources

- [Darwin to William Graham, 3 July 1881](https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/view/letters/DCP-LETT-13230), Darwin Correspondence Project, letter 13230; transcript, paragraph beginning 'I hope'; source DAR 144:345, copy, 3 pages
- [William Graham to Darwin, [before 5 August 1881]](https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/view/letters/DCP-LETT-13268), Darwin Correspondence Project, letter 13268; complete surviving extract and editorial footnotes 1–2; source DAR 165:86

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