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By Gamaliel Bradford
DARWIN. Illustrated. A NATURALIST OF SOULS. THE SOUL OF SAMUEL
PEPYS. Illustrated. DAMAGED SOULS. Illustrated. AMERICAN PORTRAITS.
Illustrated. A PROPHET OF JOY. PORTRAITS OF AMERICAN WOMEN.
Illustrated. PORTRAITS OF WOMEN. Illustrated. UNION PORTRAITS.
Illustrated. CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS. Illustrated. LEE THE AMERICAN.
Illustrated.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
DARWIN
[Illustration: _Ch. Darwin_ (signature)]
DARWIN
BY
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration: Decoration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1926
COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY GAMALIEL BRADFORD
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
TO
MARSHALL LIVINGSTON PERRIN
WHO TAUGHT ME TO WRITE
AND TO THINK
_On se lasse de tout sauf de comprendre_ SAINTE-BEUVE (from Virgil?)
CONTENTS
I. THE OBSERVER 3
II. THE THINKER 44
III. THE DISCOVERER 83
IV. THE LOSER 128
V. THE LOVER 168
VI. THE DESTROYER 208
VII. THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 248
INDEX 307
ILLUSTRATIONS
CHARLES DARWIN _Frontispiece_
Photograph taken in 1881 by Elliott & Fry, London, reproduced in
_More Letters of Charles Darwin_
CHARLES DARWIN AS A CHILD WITH HIS SISTER CATHERINE 4
From a chalk drawing reproduced in _Emma Darwin: A Century of Family
Letters_
THE BEAGLE LAID ASHORE FOR REPAIRS AT RIVER SANTA CRUZ, PATAGONIA 14
From _Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_
DOWN HOUSE FROM THE GARDEN 44
From a woodcut in _The Century Magazine_ reproduced in _Life and
Letters_
FACSIMILE OF A PAGE FROM A NOTEBOOK OF 1837 88
From _Life and Letters_
THE STUDY AT DOWN 128
From a woodcut in _The Century Magazine_ reproduced in _Life and
Letters_
EMMA DARWIN AT THIRTY-ONE 190
From the portrait painted by George Richmond, R.A., reproduced in
_Emma Darwin_
CHARLES DARWIN ABOUT 1854 248
Photograph by Maull & Fox, reproduced in _More Letters_
DARWIN
CHRONOLOGY
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
Born, Shrewsbury, February 12, 1809.
At Edinburgh University, 1826.
At Cambridge, 1827-1831.
Absent with the Beagle, 1831-1836.
Married Emma Wedgwood, January 29, 1839.
Settled at Down, in Kent, 1842.
‘The Origin of Species’ published, November 24, 1859.
‘The Descent of Man’ published, February 24, 1871.
Died, Down, April 19, 1882.
DARWIN
CHAPTER I
THE OBSERVER
I
Any formal life of Darwin should be written by a thoroughly trained
and equipped scientist, and indeed no such life could be better than
that written by Darwin’s son forty years ago. But one who, without
special scientific qualifications, is profoundly interested in the
characters and souls of men, all men, may perhaps be justified in
making an intimate study of a man whose influence upon other men, for
good and evil both, has been enormous, and who was himself one of the
simplest, purest, noblest, most candid, most lovable, most Christian
souls that ever lived.
By an extraordinary coincidence Charles Robert Darwin was born in
Shrewsbury, England, on the same day, February 12, 1809, on which
Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin County, Kentucky. Darwin belonged
to an excellent old English family on his father’s side and his
mother was one of the Wedgwoods, of ceramic fame. His paternal
grandfather, Erasmus, was a physician, a poet, and a scientist.
Darwin’s father was an able and successful physician. He would have
liked his son to be the same, but the son had not the taste for it.
Failing medicine, the church was considered, but seemed equally
unpromising. Education at Edinburgh and at Cambridge did not yield
very much. In those days the classics were the basis and this boy had
little interest in the classics. He liked field sports and outdoor
life. Above all, he liked animals and plants, liked to observe and to
describe them, and to record his observations, and this interest grew
more and more absorbing.
[Illustration: CHARLES DARWIN AS A CHILD
With his sister Catherine]
In 1831, at the age of twenty-two, Darwin obtained the position of
naturalist on the government ship, Beagle, and for five years he was
absent from England, exploring the southern hemisphere and carefully
recording his observations on every sort of scientific subject, which
were later published in his printed journal. Soon after his return
home, he married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, a noble and charming
woman, and a little later, in 1842, he settled at the small village
of Down, in the county of Kent, and made his home there until his
death in 1882. He inherited a considerable property, which was
later increased from his books. He had a large family of sons and
daughters, ten in all, and his life was half chronic invalidism and
half intense devotion to scientific study and thought, or rather, the
two elements were inextricably intertwined.
As a result of his observations on the Beagle, Darwin became
possessed with the idea, which of course had occurred to various
thinkers before him, from the Greeks to Lamarck, that life had not
been created in distinct manifold forms, but had developed in all
its variety, including even man, from a few forms, or even from one.
To entertain the idea in the abstract was comparatively simple; but
to explain the process of development was the puzzle, until Darwin
hit upon what seemed to him the clue in what he called ‘natural
selection,’ or, as Spencer termed it, ‘the survival of the fittest.’
For twenty years Darwin patiently worked out experimental proof of
this theory, and then in 1859 he published ‘The Origin of Species,’ a
book which is generally admitted to be one of the most important in
the whole history of science. During the remaining twenty years of
his life he devoted himself to endless further experiment, and the
results were embodied in numerous volumes, chief among which was ‘The
Descent of Man.’ His views were from the first the subject of fierce
controversy, and in many details they are still so, and will continue
to be. But it may safely be said that in the scientific world the
evolution of life, or more technically, modification by descent,
which is so inseparably associated with Darwin’s name, is an accepted
principle, and Darwin himself had the great and satisfying triumph
of living until this acceptance was perceived to be general, if not
universal. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to the last
resting-place of Newton.
The basis, or at any rate one of the most fundamental elements of
Darwin’s character, was the instinct and habit of observing the
external world, and we can best approach him by considering this
habit in others and in him. It is astonishing how little most of us
see. We live in a world of shadows and dream outlines, piecing out
reality by convenient abstractions, which pass in memory like worn
current counters, with little resemblance to actual fact. A tree to
us is vaguely a tree: the structure of its bark, the shape of its
leaves do not enter our world. A man and a woman are simply—a man
and a woman. Unless we are specially called upon to do so we do not
note details of feature or gesture or garment. This vagueness, this
abstraction of vision, is what Théophile Gautier referred to in his
celebrated phrase, ‘I am a man for whom the visible world exists.’[1]
And he amplified his idea by saying that of twenty-five persons who
come into a room, twenty-four will go out and not be able to tell you
the color of the wall-paper, whereas he could tell that and pretty
much everything else. To such an observing temperament life is a
matter of visual detail, of sensuous detail of every kind.
There are people who look out and people who look in, and of course
there are all sorts of degrees between the two extremes. Some people
are wholly preoccupied with their own inner life, their thoughts,
their emotions, their experiences. It is only by the pressure of
necessity that they force themselves into connection with the world
about them, and then it is under protest, and their thoughts leap
back, as by a spring, to internal matters, as soon as the pressure is
removed. Others live in the swift, diverting movement of the external
world and lose their own destiny and almost their identity in the
play of it. ‘Let me alone to observe till I turn myself into nothing
but observation,’ says the old poet.[2] The observation may be for
a serious scientific purpose. It may be for endless entertainment
and pure, inexhaustible delight. As Sterne has it: ‘What a large
volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life
by him who interests his heart in everything and who, having eyes to
see what time and chance are perpetually holding out to him as he
journeyeth on his way, misses nothing he can _fairly_ lay his hands
on.’[3]
As there are some persons who naturally observe, so there are some
who observe certain things, and not others. Women are apt to be more
acute observers than men: their senses are more keen and their minds
less preoccupied. But their vision is usually limited to the things
that interest them. A woman will go into a friend’s house and tell
you every detail of furnishing, will describe the friend’s dress with
finished minuteness. But she may take a walk through the fields and
not be able to remember a single flower or insect. On the other hand,
very great scientists will not miss a spider in the grass, but the
color of a ribbon may escape them.
From another point of view observation may be deliberately exclusive.
A trained observer may find that general vision distracts him, and
that to follow up his special object it is necessary to put all other
sights and sounds out of consideration entirely. Bradford Torrey used
to say, and no doubt it is the experience of all naturalists, that
if he went to look for a special flower, he saw flowers only, and was
quite oblivious to birds, while on bird days a rare blossom might be
passed unnoticed.
Naturally the most common matter of observation, the one which is
more or less forced upon the attention of all of us, is humanity.
We may be indifferent to trees and stones, but our pleasure, our
labor, our existence depend upon a more or less constant study of
the human beings whose existence interlocks at every point with
ours. Therefore, from the earliest times of record there have been
profound observers of humanity, persons who have examined the human
aspect and the human heart, as read through that aspect, with the
most persistent zeal and the most unwearying delight. In the vivid
phrase of one of the most acute of these, ‘I glutted myself with
observation.’ And even those of less gormandizing tendency find the
analysis of the human subject one of the most inexhaustible pleasures
that this world affords. All through the study of Darwin I shall
have occasion to refer to one of Darwin’s contemporaries who in a
different line of research was an equally brilliant and significant
exemplification of the scientific spirit, Sainte-Beuve. As Darwin
devoted years upon years to patient investigation of the secrets of
the natural world, so Sainte-Beuve with the same patience, the same
labor, the same infinite and ever-varied curiosity, probed human
hearts, all sorts of human hearts, and portrayed them with unfailing
accuracy and sympathy. He said of himself, using the strictly
scientific expression: ‘I analyze, I herborize, I am a naturalist of
souls.’[4]
But in dealing with Darwin we are in the main concerned with the
field of so-called natural science, with the varying aspects of the
material world, which we are apt to sum up under the term, nature.
General observation of this world is, of course, also as old as man.
Greek, Hebrew, Egyptian, all ancient records, contain scientific
facts of importance and interest to-day. Sophocles and Vergil had an
exquisite sense of the exact beauty of birds and flowers. The vision
of Chaucer and Shakespeare was as acute as that of Gautier, so far
as they chose to employ it. At the same time we must recognize that
with the middle of the eighteenth century a new interest in nature
arose. The literature of Rousseau and Cowper, of Keats and George
Sand, reflected the external world in a far different fashion from
anything before imagined, and Linnæus, Cuvier, and many others laid
the foundations of modern scientific study, which the nineteenth
century developed until it overshadowed every branch of learning both
for theoretical abundance and for practical utility.
It must of course be recognized that in many cases the observation of
nature is not practiced for the pure pleasure of it, but serves some
ulterior object or interest. There is first the obvious practical
gain from such observation. Agriculture has undergone a complete
revolution in the last hundred years, and this revolution has been
brought about by the various developments of scientific research.
Darwin’s vast investigations showed the intimate connection between
the theories of the scientist and the practical experiments of the
breeder.
On the other side there is the observation of the artist. Ruskin
pointed out long ago, how fine, how subtle, how delicate was the
vision of the great painters, how perfect their skill in rendering
the exact sense impression of natural objects. In the same way, it is
not often considered what wealth of accurate record we have in the
poets and novelists. Gautier, for whom the visible world existed, was
a poet. He saw shapes and contours and colors, saw them to render
them in words that interpreted as perfectly as words can. The great
French novelists who followed Gautier and learned from him were
in the same way admirable observers and recorders. Darwin himself
did not scorn to use the observation of the English novelist Mrs.
Oliphant and he refers to her as ‘an excellent observer.’[5]
But there is such a thing as observation for the pure love of it,
which is used neither to improve the breed of chickens or tomatoes,
nor to make effective and salable copy, nor even to generate and
sustain theories about the organization of the cosmos. There is a
pure, inexhaustible delight in just living with the insects and
the birds, in merging one’s own existence, one’s own soul in the
mysterious abundance and ecstasy of the universal life, without
thought of any ulterior object to be achieved in any way whatsoever.
White of Selborne felt nature in this fashion. So did Richard
Jefferies. So did the French naturalist and observer, Fabre. I know
few works that have more of the charm of personal delight than
Bates’s ‘Naturalist on the Amazons,’ a book which I have read and
re-read and shall read again. Bates was interested in the Darwinian
theories and worked at them. But his passion for the forest life
was quite independent of any theories and it is expressed with an
engaging, absolute simplicity, without the slightest pretence at
literary ornament or effect.
Our supreme American example of this life in nature, and perhaps
the supreme example anywhere, is Henry Thoreau. Thoreau had his
speculations, and some persons relish them. But it seems as if
no other human being had ever left the record of such complete
self-abnegation in the external world as Thoreau’s. His soul not
only turns to that of the birds and flowers, it is that of the birds
and flowers, and he is never, never making observations to serve a
purpose. He is simply existing in the universal existence for the
joy of it: ‘I have given myself up to nature; I have lived so many
springs and summers and autumns and winters as if I had nothing else
to do but _live_ them, and imbibe whatever nutriment they had for
me; I have spent a couple of years, for instance, with the flowers
chiefly, having none other so binding engagement as to observe when
they opened; I could have afforded to spend a whole fall observing
the changing tints of the foliage. Ah, how I have thriven on solitude
and poverty!’[6]
II
Of the numerous records of simple natural observation and experience
few are more charming than Darwin’s ‘Journal of the Voyage of the
Beagle,’ in which he notes what he saw and heard by land and sea
during those years of adventure in the southern hemisphere. All
through this book, as indeed in all his books, it is evident that
the instinct and habit of observing were inborn and constant, and
all those who write about Darwin make this instinct at least the
foundation of his scientific eminence.
[Illustration: THE BEAGLE LAID ASHORE FOR REPAIRS AT RIVER SANTA
CRUZ, PATAGONIA]
Asa Gray, who had given his life to botany, writes: ‘What a skill
and genius you have for these researches! Even for the structure of
the flower of the Ophyrideæ I have to-night learned more than I ever
knew before.’[7] Professor Osborn says, more generally: ‘Rare as
were his reasoning powers, his powers of observation were of a still
more distinct order. He persistently and doggedly followed every
clue; he noticed little things which escaped others; he always noted
exceptions and at once jotted down facts opposed to his theories.’[8]
And the editors of Darwin’s letters put the whole matter with concise
effectiveness in speaking of ‘that supreme power of seeing and
thinking what the rest of the world had overlooked, which was one
of his most striking characteristics.’[9]
Darwin’s own comments on observation are frequent and most
interesting. Little inclined as he was to self-praise, in the
charming autobiographical sketch which begins the ‘Life,’ he frankly
states his merits in this regard: ‘I think that I am superior to the
common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention,
and in observing them carefully. My industry has been nearly as
great as it could have been in the observation and collection of
facts.’[10] Exact, systematic, patient study of what is actually
seen seems to him the basis of all great scientific work, and he
repeatedly emphasizes the importance of it. ‘It is well to remember
that Naturalists value observations far more than reasoning.’[11]
Again, ‘I have come not to care at all for general beliefs without
the special facts. I have suffered too often from this.’[12] And
observation is not only a duty, it is a delight. The arrangement
of facts, the deduction of theories from them, thought, reasoning,
argument, these are labor and pain. But to watch the insects and the
flowers, by long and careful attention to make them yield all their
secrets, this is no labor, but an exquisite diversion, which never
fails: ‘A naturalist’s life would be a happy one if he had only to
observe, and never to write.’[13]
It is evident, further, that Darwin’s observation was by no means
confined to natural science, but was quick, acute, and constant in
all the different phases and interests of life. Naturally his books
deal with little besides his scientific work, but the record of the
Beagle shows interest and appreciation of many things outside of
this work altogether. An eye so carefully trained could not fail to
distinguish and perceive all sorts of minute points that others would
pass over. His readiness to note other things besides those he was
looking for shows in the piquant comment on wide experimenting: ‘It
may turn out a mare’s nest, but I have often incidentally observed
curious facts when making what I call “a fool’s experiment.”’[14]
It is especially curious to note Darwin’s observation of himself.
To be sure, he disclaims any philosophical study in this regard: ‘I
have never tried looking into my own mind.’[15] Nevertheless, whether
he tried or not, he was curiously alive to what went on there, and
he records what he finds with the singular candor which appears in
his treatment of his own affairs as well as of others. The very
hesitation with which he speaks of self-analysis increases the value
of his results: ‘If I can analyze my own feelings (a very doubtful
process).’[16] And when he does make a statement, it is all the
more reliable and all the more far-reaching from the moderation and
reserve with which it is advanced.
In one field quite remote from what is usually considered natural
science, that of physiognomy and expression, Darwin’s observation
is especially interesting, though of course he connected this line
of research, as so many others, with his general scientific theory.
His book on ‘The Expression of the Emotions’ is one of the most
entertaining and profitable of all for the general reader, and it is
instructive to note, how early, how persistently, and how faithfully
he collected memoranda on this comparatively collateral issue. The
use of what was immediately about him, of his own personal experience
in daily living, is especially significant in this regard. For the
study of expression he felt that unconsciousness in the subject was
a prime requisite. Hence the study of infants, who were perfectly
indifferent to your investigations, was peculiarly profitable,
and almost from the moment his children were born, Darwin began
to make notes on their expressions of pain and pleasure, all the
little subtle indications of desire and need, which mothers use
instinctively but which fathers are not commonly apt to register as
scientific data. The curious paper, published in _Mind_, called ‘The
Biography of a Child,’ gives many of Darwin’s notes on this subject,
and repeated references in ‘The Expression of the Emotions’ show what
fruitful use he made of those notes at a later period. The minuteness
with which he observed and reflected is well shown in this passage
on childrens’ crying: ‘I ought to have thought of crying children
rubbing their eyes with their knuckles, but I did not think of it,
and cannot explain it. As far as my memory serves, they do not do so
whilst roaring, in which case compression would be of no use.... I
wish I knew more about the knuckles and crying.’[17]
The observation not only records the larger and more violent
manifestations of passion, but is constantly on the watch for those
trifling signs of feeling which appear and flit away in trivial
social intercourse. Take this account of an animated conversation:
‘Another young lady and a youth, both in the highest spirits, were
eagerly talking together with extraordinary rapidity; and I noticed
that, as often as the young lady was beaten, and could not get out
her words fast enough, her eyebrows went obliquely upwards, and
rectangular furrows were formed on her forehead. She thus each time
hoisted a flag of distress; and this she did half-a-dozen times in
the course of a few minutes.’[18]
Nor is he content with his own observations, but in this, as in wider
researches, he perpetually appeals to his friends for assistance,
opens their eyes and sharpens their wits, to see and record matters
which they would assuredly never have thought of for themselves. Note
the care and tact with which he makes his requests: ‘I beg you, _in
relation to a new point for observation_, to imagine as well as you
can that you suddenly come across some dreadful object, and act with
a sudden little start, _a shudder of horror_; please do this once or
twice, and observe yourself as well as you can, and _afterwards_ read
the rest of this note, which I have consequently pinned down.’[19]
It is, however, in the regions of natural science more particularly
so-called that Darwin’s observation is inexhaustibly rich, varied,
exciting, and suggestive. He himself puts it very simply and
effectively, when he says, ‘I was born a naturalist.’[20] At the
age of ten his curiosity was intensely stimulated by the varying
aspects of insects and he considered the desirability of collecting
them. In one of his letters, Darwin gives an amusing illustration of
this youthful enthusiasm for collecting. One day he had caught two
most interesting beetles and was holding one in each hand, when he
discovered a third, ‘a sacred _Panagæus crux-major_!’ ‘I could not
bear to give up either of my _Carabi_, and to lose _Panagæus_ was
out of the question; so that in despair I gently seized one of the
_Carabi_ between my teeth, when to my unspeakable disgust and pain
the little inconsiderate beast squirted his acid down my throat, and
I lost both _Carabi_ and _Panagæus_.’[21]
The delight of observation, which began in childhood, continued to
old age, and increased instead of weakening. When he was fatigued
and worn with writing and theorizing, when illness tormented him
and weakness rendered more concentrated effort impossible, it was a
relief to turn to the simple contemplation of facts, and the budding
and fading of flowers and the varied activity of insects offered
at all times diversion and contentment. Sometimes he dwells upon
the larger aspects of such contemplation, the joy of discovery, the
excitement of finding what has never been found before. Again and
again in his southern voyages this excitement appears: ‘In these wild
countries it gives much delight to gain the summit of any mountain.
There is an indefinite expectation of seeing something very strange,
which, however often it may be balked, never failed with me to recur
on each successive attempt.’[22] Or the pleasure may come in what
seem the humblest, smallest things, in what is to ordinary persons
negligible, or even repulsive. One of Darwin’s most attractive books,
perhaps with ‘The Expression of the Emotions,’ the most attractive
from the casual reader’s standpoint, is that in which he gathers
together the results of his study of earthworms, a study which had
continued through years of patient and thoughtful investigation of a
subject which, even from the naturalist’s point of view, would not
seem one of the most fruitful or engaging.
The fundamental principal of all scientific observation is accuracy,
and no one knew this better than Darwin. No one understood better
than he the subtle, treacherous influences that are always at work,
distracting, impairing, and distorting exact and lucid vision. There
is the danger of seeing what we are accustomed to see and therefore
think we see. There is the danger of seeing what others have seen and
described before us. There is the supreme danger of seeing what we
wish to see, what accords with some preconceived theory or dogma.
Against all these dangers Darwin tried to be ever on his guard,
and he is constantly warning others of them and emphasizing the
importance of pure accuracy and the enormous difficulty of it. ‘Good
heavens, how difficult accuracy is!’[23] Among all the merits of the
scientist he values accuracy highest, the instinct and the ability
to record facts correctly: ‘I value praise for accurate observation
far higher than for any other quality.’[24] And especially in one
admirable passage he stresses and reiterates both the difficulty
and the value: ‘Accuracy is the soul of Natural History. It is hard
to become accurate; he who modifies a hair’s breadth will never be
accurate.... Absolute accuracy is the hardest merit to attain, and
the highest merit.’[25]
Among the various elements of accuracy, that of statement, as well
as of observation, is of course of the utmost importance, yet is too
apt to be overlooked. Even those who are careful in their actual
observing, may in their report of their observations be much less so.
Words are misleading and inadequate things, and the tricks they have
played with scientific accuracy have been deplorable. There is the
strange ease of mere misstatement. There is the natural tendency to
overstate. There is the tendency to clarify verbally what in fact is
more or less confused or the opposite difficulty of making verbally
clear what the senses may perceive with singular lucidity.
Here again Darwin is constantly on the watch. Memory is misleading
and accounts based upon it are apt to be untrustworthy: ‘I foolishly
trusted to my memory, and was much annoyed to find how hasty and
inaccurate many of my remarks were.’[26] Words are inadequate,
blundering, they will not render the finer, more delicate shades: ‘A
difference may be clearly perceived, and yet it may be impossible,
at least I have found it so, to state in what the difference
consists.’[27] One cannot be too careful, too scrupulous, about
one’s statements, or too anxious to correct them, when one has made
a mistake. And Darwin gets up in the middle of the night and arouses
a slumbering friend to explain that, after all, he felt the sense of
the sublime more fully in the forests of Brazil than on the top of
the Cordilleras.[28]
When one is so mistrustful of one’s own records one cannot always
accept implicitly the narratives of others. Darwin is eager to get
the accounts of other observers, and is singularly deferential
to their opinions. At the same time he is gently and watchfully
critical, and knows well how to estimate the ability of those with
whom he deals. One of the most interesting remarks upon the skill
of his methods in obtaining information, and one that every one who
reads him carefully will confirm, is Sir William Turner’s comment
upon ‘his care in avoiding leading questions.’[29]
And if Darwin was insistent upon accuracy in records, he was also
extraordinarily thorough and exact in mathematical matters and
measurement. He speaks of abstract mathematics as having been one of
the neglected elements of his education,[30] but he shunned no amount
of pains and toil in calculating, wherever he felt it necessary to
work out his results. In his books which record the investigation
of detail there is an almost incredible amount of slow and careful
research involving exact counting and weighing and measuring. ‘I
was compelled to count under the microscope above 20,000 seeds of
_Lythrum salicaria_,’ he says casually in one instance,[31] and there
are innumerable others of the same kind. In all these calculations
the possibility of error haunts him and he does his best to eliminate
it, yet still the possibility is there: ‘Although I always am
endeavoring to be cautious and to mistrust myself, yet I know well
how apt I am to make blunders.’[32] If he blundered, what shall be
said of some of us? Most interesting and characteristic is the trait,
pointed out by his son, that he assumed with singular naïveté the
absolute accuracy of the instruments that came to him: ‘He had great
faith in instruments, and I do not think it naturally occurred to
him to doubt the accuracy of a scale or measuring glass.’[33] Yet
further, ‘it was characteristic of him that he took scrupulous pains
in making measurements with his somewhat rough scales.’[34]
As he was exact and particular in calculation and measurement,
so he shrank from no amount of detail, did not hesitate to carry
his investigations to the last point of minuteness, whenever the
full and solid breadth of result demanded it. Apparently nothing
escaped him. It was not only what he was looking for, but he noted
and seized oddities and exceptions for their larger bearing and
for future profit. As his son says, ‘A point apparently slight and
unconnected with his present work is passed over by many a man almost
unconsciously with some half-considered explanation, which is in fact
no explanation. It was just these things that he seized on to make
a start from.’[35] Thus, on any subject that came up, his memory or
his notes could almost always be appealed to. As Sir Thomas Farrer
puts it, ‘What interested me was to see that on this as on almost
any other point of detailed observation, Mr. Darwin could always
say, “Yes, but at one time I made some observations myself on this
particular point; and I think you will find, etc., etc.”’[36]
To appreciate this minuteness and thoroughness, it is necessary to
examine the less known and less popular books, such as the ‘Cross
and Self Fertilization’ and the ‘Different Forms of Flowers.’ In
these one is overwhelmed with Darwin’s persistence in examining and
noting trivial details. And perhaps most impressive of all is to turn
over the pages of the two immensely solid volumes on Cirripedes. For
many years Darwin devoted himself to the study of these unexciting
barnacles, sometimes wearying, sometimes rebelling, but always
keeping at his task until he had completed it. He himself sometimes
wondered whether such prolonged toil at mere description was wholly
worth while; but Huxley believed that the mental discipline was
of the greatest possible profit to Darwin’s later work. In any
case the exhaustive thoroughness of it is indeed exemplary. How
far this goes may be suggested by one quotation out of many: ‘I
cannot too strongly impress on any one intending to study this
class, not to trust to external characters; he must separate and
clean and carefully examine the internal structure and form of the
compartments and more especially of the opercular valves.’[37] And
the examination, in Darwin’s case, applied to hundreds of specimens
of minute barnacles gathered and sent to him from all parts of the
world.
It is hardly necessary to emphasize the enormous amount of labor
implied and involved in all these self-imposed tasks of Darwin.
Although circumstances compelled him to give a large part of his life
to repose, he was by nature a worker. It is true that he sometimes
speaks jokingly of his idleness: ‘I have been of late shamefully
idle, _i.e._, observing instead of writing, and how much better fun
observing is than writing.’[38] But as Huxley well points out, Darwin
generally means by idleness ‘working hard at something he likes when
he ought to be occupied with a less attractive subject.’[39] And
Darwin’s own more serious comment is, ‘I am a pretty man to preach,
for I cannot be idle, much as I wish it, and am never comfortable
except when at work.’[40] He complains of fatigue, he forces himself
to seek recreation, relaxation; but even when his body is at rest,
his mind tends to work, refuses to stop working, finds its only real
relief in change of occupation and thought.
And as the labor is impressive, so is the patience. The man was
naturally nervous, restless, eager. He wanted results, like the rest
of us. Yet after he had conceived a theory which he thought destined
to subvert the whole realm of science, he waited twenty years for the
thorough observation and testing necessary to put the theory into
even tentative form. Of all the great scientific qualities perhaps
patience is the most essential and the most difficult, and surely
patience never had a more supreme exemplar than Charles Darwin.
Sometimes even his enduring persistence is temporarily shaken: ‘My
cirripedial task is an eternal one; I make no perceptible progress.
I am sure that they belong to the hour-hand, and I groan under my
task.’[41] But though he may groan, he never yields. As his son
admirably says of him: ‘He used almost to apologize for his patience,
saying that he could not bear to be beaten, as if this were rather
a sign of weakness on his part.... Perseverance seems hardly to
express his almost fierce desire to force the truth to reveal itself.
He often said that it was important that a man should know the
right point at which to give up an inquiry. And I think it was his
tendency to pass this point that inclined him to apologize for his
perseverance, and gave the air of doggedness to his work.’[42] The
intensity of such patience is best appreciated by those who all their
lives have scamped and hurried and slighted and touched a thousand
things without ever going to the bottom of a single one.
III
Nothing illustrates better the patience of Darwin, and of course
also of hundreds of other scientists who are working as he worked
in unknown laboratories all over the world, than the process of
simple waiting so often necessary to obtain results. Nature demands
time, often enormous time, and the brevity of human life and the
evanescence of human opportunity mean nothing to her. The careful
working out of scientific investigation requires the study of
successive generations, sometimes of many, the sowing of the seed and
the gathering of the blossom, the close observation of the individual
from conception to death, which can be carried on only through long
periods of time. The observer must keep a dozen lines of study in
his mind, must maintain them side by side, and must be always
ready to turn from one to the other, as some new development arises
that demands his attention. It was in this phase of long, renewed,
continued, enduring watchfulness that Darwin was preëminent. As well
appears in his son’s record: ‘I think it was all due to the vitality
and persistence of his mind—a quality I have heard him speak of as
if he felt that he was strongly gifted in that respect. Not that he
used any such phrases as these about himself, but he would say that
he had the power of keeping a subject or question more or less before
him for a great many years.’[43] Very little examination of Darwin’s
books is required to show how amply and constantly this power was
exercised.
And to give such patience and taste for continuity their full effect
there is needed almost a passion for system, for orderly arrangement,
and the habit of putting not only things but thoughts in their proper
places, so that they can be called upon at the right moment in the
right way. Darwin himself describes his elaborate method of indexing
the books that he read and the notes that he made, so that whenever
he wished to deal with any special subject, he could turn at once to
material bearing upon it: ‘Before beginning on any subject I look to
all the short indexes and make a general and classified index, and by
taking the one or more proper portfolios I have all the information
collected during my life ready for use.’[44]
Such systematic habits of working both demand and imply an orderly
and economical use of time. Owing to his limitations of health,
Darwin’s working time was extremely limited, but he made the most
of it. Every usable hour was allotted, and the utmost profit and
result were extracted from it. No doubt such sense of pressure is
in itself not very beneficial to health, but it means an immense
amount of work accomplished. The time was employed thriftily as well
as intelligently: ‘He saved a great deal of time through not having
to do things twice.’[45] And everywhere there is the feeling of the
value of minutes which is indicated in Dante’s saying,
Chè’l perder tempo, a chi più sa, più spiace.[46]
Or as Darwin himself expresses it: ‘A man who dares to waste one hour
of time has not discovered the value of life.’[47]
Still another element of observation richly illustrated in Darwin,
and closely connected with the patience and the continuity, is the
element of comparison. Observation by itself, the mere accumulation
of curious detail, does not get us very far. Observations must
be bound together, one with another, they must be connected and
related, intertwined into results and conclusions, often remote and
far-reaching, or they do not begin to attain all their possible
significance. In Darwin’s own phrase: ‘As you say, there is an
extraordinary pleasure in pure observation; not but what I suspect
the pleasure in this case is rather derived from comparisons forming
in one’s mind from allied structures.’[48] This more elaborate
process of comparison, however, leads us at once to the methods of
deliberate experiment for a special purpose, and will therefore be
more fully and naturally considered in the next chapter.
As to the more practical side of observation, one is largely
impressed with all the difficulties and drawbacks of it, when pursued
on any considerable scale, and certainly Darwin’s life affords
abundant illustration of these, some peculiar to himself and some of
a more general nature which beset most naturalists more or less.
There are the difficulties that always attend extensive field and
outdoor work. In a voyage such as that of the Beagle, in a small
sailing ship a hundred years ago, there were the elements of actual
danger. Darwin was the last person to enlarge upon his courage in
meeting these or in disregarding them. Of his childhood he says: ‘I
remember how very much I was afraid of meeting the dogs in Barker
Street, and how at school I could not get up my courage to fight:
I was very timid by nature.’[49] But repeated experiences during
the voyage of the Beagle make it evident that the timidity was
overcome by a calm and intelligent comprehension of conditions and
necessities. Perhaps the most interesting illustration is Darwin’s
attitude toward an earthquake in South America: ‘I have had ill luck,
however, in only one little earthquake having happened. I was lying
in bed when there was a party at dinner in the house; on a sudden I
heard such a hubbub in the dining-room; without a word being spoken,
it was devil take the hindmost and who should get out first; at the
same moment I felt my bed _slightly_ vibrate in a lateral direction.
The party were old stagers, and heard the noise which always precedes
a shock; and no old stager looks at an earthquake with philosophical
eyes.’[50]
Worse perhaps than the specific, exceptional dangers were the
constant annoyances and discomforts. Food was often insufficient,
ill-prepared, and indigestible. Cold was wearing and heat was
wearing. There was exposure to all sorts of weather, there was the
torment of insects, there was endless, inescapable fatigue, which
could not be remedied or avoided, but just had to be borne and
forgotten in the excitement of great or even little objects to be
attained. Glimpses here and there, never unduly emphasized, show what
these trials were and how they were met: ‘The road, from some recent
rain, was full of little puddles of clear water, yet not a drop was
drinkable. I had scarcely been twenty hours without water, and only
part of the time under a hot sun, yet the thirst rendered me very
weak. How people survive two or three days under such circumstances,
I cannot imagine.’[51] To put up with discomforts during a camping
trip of a few weeks or months is one thing. To endure them constantly
for five years implies a very pretty enthusiasm for the cause of
science.
Besides these external drawbacks to observation, there are others
more subjective and personal. A minor aspect of these has interested
me, because it shows such a delightful mixture of human feeling
and scientific curiosity. As we shall have occasion to amplify
later, Darwin was remarkable for tenderness, for sympathy, for
affectionate and kindly interest, not only in humanity generally and
in animals, but especially in those directly connected with him.
Yet his investigations of expression led him, forced him, to a calm
and cold-blooded analysis of situations and emotions which at the
same time made the strongest appeal to his sympathies. All through
his children’s infancy he pursued the practice of making notes on
them, yet it is most curious to trace the play of personal emotion
in combination with the abstract research, and the working of this
well appears in his son’s remark: ‘It was characteristic of him that
(as I have heard him tell), although he was so anxious to observe the
expression of a crying child, his sympathy with the grief spoiled his
observation.’[52] A more impersonal example is his careful record
as to a woman whom he studied in a railway carriage, watching with
minute attention the movement of her _depressores anguli oris_, which
appeared to indicate extreme distress: ‘As her countenance remained
as placid as ever, I reflected how meaningless was this contraction,
and how easily one might be deceived. The thought had hardly occurred
to me when I saw that her eyes suddenly became suffused with tears
almost to overflowing and her whole countenance fell. There could
now be no doubt that some painful recollection, perhaps that of a
long-lost child, was passing through her mind.’[53] And so instances
of intense individual suffering became generalized into typical cases
of scientific record.
Far more important, however, in Darwin’s career, as a drawback to
scientific observation, than any intrusions of subjective sympathy,
were the bitter, persistent limitations of physical illness and
weakness. During a very large part of his life he was tormented
by nervous indigestion, manifesting itself, under any strain, in
persistent nausea. This first appeared in the ever-returning and
unconquerable sea-sickness which made all his southern voyages a
misery. When the ocean was at all boisterous the malady prostrated
him, and those who know how absolutely prostrating sea-sickness is
will appreciate the positive heroism which enabled him to prosecute
his journey and his researches with such a handicap.
After his return to England the trouble continued to hound and haunt
him through all his later years. He never could work for more than
a small portion of the day. The excitement of visitors always upset
him. There were long periods when any work was impossible and often
an absorbing investigation had to be laid aside altogether just at
the most critical point, laid aside so completely that not only
actual labor but even thought was prohibited. The idleness which he
detested was forced upon him for a very large part of his days and
hours and the spirit framed for such constant and intense activity
was obliged to discipline itself to the most irksome and profitless
repose.
It made no difference in the intensity or the persistence of his
scientific preoccupations. Perhaps if he had abandoned his pursuits
altogether and had contented himself with an indolent and externally
diversified existence, he might have enjoyed reasonable health. But
he would not yield for a moment. His whole soul was in the studies,
the pursuits, the investigations that enthralled and inspired him,
and life without them would have been inconceivable. ‘We have come
here for rest for me, which I have much needed; and shall remain here
for about ten days more, and then home to work, which is my sole
pleasure in life.’[54] That is the constant note. In the midst of his
travels he wrote home: ‘My mind has been since leaving England, in
a perfect _hurricane_ of delight and astonishment, and to this hour
scarcely a minute has passed in idleness.’[55] The body might lag
and drag and harass and torment, but the spirit lived in just such a
hurricane of excitement and enthusiasm always.
IV
It must be recognized that even in the pure habit of observation for
itself, whether in the natural world or otherwise, there is a charm
for those who are born for it. Curiosity is a natural instinct with
most of us, and there is inexhaustible entertainment in letting the
spirit lie fallow within, while the external world plays upon it with
an endless succession of picturesque incidents and highly colored
circumstance. At the same time, and especially in the realm of
nature, it is astonishing what a difference even a little knowledge
makes. Most of us walk through the fields and woods like blind men,
utterly oblivious of all the fascinating secrets which await our
eyes and ears if we were only alive to them. As one who has always
delighted in solitary wood walks merely for their associative beauty,
I at least can bewail the deplorable ignorance as to plants and birds
and insects which makes it impossible for me even to interrogate
them intelligently. Lack of time or natural indolence have prevented
my accumulating the knowledge which would put all these things in
their proper relations and make them tell a story which the trained
and expert observer instantly and instinctively reads in them. It is
comforting to find even Darwin complaining of the same ignorance
and the same blindness, when he gets into surroundings that are
strange to him. Thus in his earlier voyaging, he notes: ‘One great
source of perplexity to me is an utter ignorance whether I note
the right facts, and whether they are of sufficient importance to
interest others.’[56] And again even more vividly: ‘It is positively
distressing to walk in the glorious forest amidst such treasures and
feel they are all thrown away upon one.’[57]
Then with the coming of a little knowledge the observation is
enriched, transfigured, glorified. Hear what Thoreau says of even the
apparently dry and profitless acquisition of nomenclature: ‘With the
knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge
of the thing. That shore is now more describable and poetic even. My
knowledge was cramped and confined before, and grew rusty because not
used—for it could not be used. My knowledge now becomes communicable
and grows by communication.’[58] Knowledge in one branch amplifies
and steadies observation in that branch. Knowledge of many branches
connects them and makes each one throw light on all the others.
Record of others’ observations or of your own through several years
give each new year double significance and fruitfulness. As Thoreau
again puts it: ‘I soon found myself observing when plants first
blossomed and leafed, and I followed it up early and late, far and
near, several years in succession, running to different sides of the
town and into the neighboring towns, often between twenty and thirty
miles in a day.’[59] If your attention gets fixed upon some special
point to be elucidated, every walk you take, and almost every step
brings out some development which you did not consider or imagine
before. In short the enrichment of knowledge doubles, triples,
quintuples your vision, since it teaches you what to look for, and
even while it sometimes betrays, teaches you what to see.
But if mere general scientific knowledge is so stimulating and so
enlarging in the realm of observation, how infinitely more fruitful
is the Darwinian view of the interrelated development of all life
including that of man. Whatever may be said, whatever we may have
to say later, of the injurious action of this view upon the status
of man himself, there can be no question as to the transforming,
magical effect of it upon the study of the natural world. Before
the evolutionary attitude, the observation of plants and animals
was at best a mere gratification of curiosity. The proper study of
mankind was man, and the investigation of birds and insects was only
distraction and diversion. But the instant it appeared that all the
threads of life were intertwined and that in disentangling even the
slightest of them you might be getting the clue to the riddle of the
whole, all was changed. When it comes to be felt that the history of
man, of his instincts, of his passions, of his powers, of his future,
of his fate, is written in his past, and that past is to be studied,
if at all, in the history of the humblest creatures who are animated
by the same mysterious impulse of life that moulds and governs him,
the interest of natural observation is increased a thousandfold. It
is not exaggerating to say that the study of natural history is an
entirely different pursuit since Darwin from what it was before.
It is evident that Darwin himself was constantly and immensely
impressed by the profound significance thus added to scientific
research. A passage in his earlier note-books shows how the idea was
beginning to take hold of him: ‘If we choose to let conjecture run
wild, then animals, our fellow brethren in pain, disease, death,
suffering and famine—our slaves in the most laborious works, our
companions in our amusements—they may partake of our origin in one
common ancestor—we may be all melted together.’[60]
A striking concrete illustration of the community of life, even in
the humblest forms, appears in the book on earthworms and suggests
Emerson’s poetical version of the same idea,
‘And striving to be man the worm Mounts through all the spires of
form:’
‘It may be well to remember how perfect the sense of touch becomes in
a man when born blind and deaf, as are worms. If worms have the power
of acquiring some notion, however rude, of the shape of an object and
of their burrows, as seems to be the case, they deserve to be called
intelligent; for they then act in nearly the same manner as would a
man under similar circumstances.’[61] While a celebrated passage in
‘The Origin of Species’ develops the idea abstractly, by implication
at least placing man at the apex of the whole: ‘As buds give rise by
growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop
on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it
has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and
broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with
its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.’[62]
Wallace said of his great friend and competitor, ‘Again, both Darwin
and myself had what he terms “the mere passion of collecting”....
I should describe it rather as an intense interest in the mere
_variety_ of living things.’[63] The simple observer is carried
away, absorbed, ravished by the delight and the fascinating play
of this variety of living things, but how far more absorbing and
inexhaustible does the delight become when we feel that in studying
this universal play of life we are every moment probing the depths of
our own souls.