DARWIN: THE DISCOVERER
I
The word ‘evolution’ is so popularly accepted and so generally
employed in connection with Darwin’s theories that it will never
be displaced; but it is not wholly satisfactory, because it always
suggests progress from a lower to a higher and hence involves a
difficult and invidious definition of terms. Some such phrase as
‘descent with modification’ would probably be more exact. But
whatever the term used, to associate it as a scientific theory or
discovery exclusively with Darwin or any other one man would be
absurd. The natural hypothesis of earlier thinkers was that divine
creative power, in whatever shape, had established the different
forms of life on the earth pretty much as they exist to-day. But
those who looked more deeply, were inclined to surmise, in view of
the close and evident bonds of kinship between all living things,
that variety had developed from comparative unity and that the
vital impulse, having first appeared in elementary forms, became
gradually elaborated into more and more complicated organisms. The
vast pains that Darwin took to substantiate this view, together
with his particular explanation of how the process came about, have
forever bound up the idea of evolution with his name, but he did not
originate it nor did he claim to have done so.
The various hints and manifestations of earlier evolutionary theory
are admirably elucidated in Professor Osborn’s ‘From the Greeks to
Darwin.’ The vast curiosity and reflection of Aristotle anticipated
here, as everywhere, and some of his sentences have a striking
evolutionary bearing: ‘Variety in animal life may be produced by
variety of locality.’[389] ‘Locality will differentiate habits also;
for instance, rugged highlands will not produce the same results as
the soft lowlands.’[390] And Empedocles suggests Darwin’s views even
more directly. Under the régime of Biblical and Christian tradition
evolutionary thought naturally made little progress. But with the
greater freedom of the eighteenth century, notions of modification
by descent again appeared. In England Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus,
the botanical poet, speculated curiously on the subject, and there
were various other intimations, notably in Chambers’s ‘Vestiges of
Creation,’ while Darwin himself felt that he was much influenced
by the geological theories of Lyell. In Germany Goethe became
profoundly interested in the metamorphoses of life. Especially in
France Buffon and St.-Hilaire led up to the ‘Philosophie Zoologique’
of Lamarck, which propounded the theory of modification in a very
definite form, and suggested the mode in which the modification was
accomplished. Lamarck’s idea was that plants and animals, by an
inborn, vital impulse, adapted themselves to their environment, and
that these adaptations were transmitted by inheritance. Thus wading
birds acquired webbed feet and the neck of the giraffe was elongated
in its effort to obtain its food from the branches of the trees. The
great stumbling-block of this theory has always been the difficulty
of proving that acquired adaptations are inherited.[A]
[A] Investigators have of course worked constantly and persistently
upon this point and I find Professor William McDougall quoted in a
Boston _Herald_ editorial of August 16, 1926, as saying: ‘Species may
change and undergo evolution through the efforts of the individual
parents to adapt themselves to conditions.’
What is of interest to us, however, is Darwin’s attitude toward his
more immediate predecessors, Buffon, Lamarck, Chambers, etc. This
attitude has been a matter of much comment by Samuel Butler and
others and it is not perfectly easy to understand. That Darwin in his
earlier thinking as well as in his later was influenced by previous
investigators is evident enough, for instance in touches like that
in the ‘Voyage of the Beagle’: ‘Nature by making habit omnipotent,
and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate
and productions of his miserable country.’[391] Also, his frequent
comments show that he knew what had been written before him and had
profited by it, and in the later editions of the ‘Origin’ he took
some pains to acknowledge the obligation. Yet his tone in his letters
is by no means respectful and of Lamarck especially, who had done the
most, it is difficult for him to speak without a sneer. Thus, in 1844
he writes: ‘Heaven forefend me from Lamarck nonsense of a “tendency
to progression,” “adaptations from the slow willing of animals,”
etc.! But the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from
his; though the means of change are wholly so.’[392] Again, a little
later: ‘With respect to books on this subject, I do not know any
systematical ones, except Lamarck’s which is veritable rubbish.’[393]
And later still, in 1859, he writes to Lyell: ‘You often allude
to Lamarck’s work; I do not know what you think about it, but it
appeared to me extremely poor; I got not a fact or idea from it.’[394]
Various explanations of Darwin’s treatment of Lamarck have
been offered. One at least, that of a disposition to run down a
predecessor from jealousy, we may exclude as absolutely as is
possible with poor human nature. Everything we know of Darwin in
other connections justifies us in doing this. Professor Osborn,
after referring to ‘the disdainful allusions to him [Lamarck] by
Charles Darwin (the only writer of whom Darwin ever spoke in this
tone)’[395] observes that ‘it is very evident from all Darwin’s
criticisms of Lamarck, that he had never studied him carefully in
the original.’[396] But against this view we have to set Darwin’s
own comment (italics mine): ‘What I consider, after _two deliberate
readings_, as a wretched book, and one from which (I well remember
my surprise) I gained nothing.’[397] It is true that Darwin, as
in the quotation above as to ‘adaptations from the slow willing
of animals,’ apparently misinterpreted Lamarck’s view of the
self-adaptation of the individual to its environment into the absurd
assumption that animals and even plants deliberately willed their own
evolutionary progress; but on the other hand Darwin all his life and
especially in his later period wavered toward Lamarck’s adaptation
theories. It has been suggested that in Darwin’s university years
French thought and French scientists were distinctly in disfavor
and that Darwin imbibed an enduring dislike of them.[398] Darwin
himself hints that he may have been influenced by a prejudice in
favor of his grandfather as Lamarck’s predecessor. But it seems
more probable that he disliked Lamarck because he regarded him
as a theorist and speculator who did not found his argument on a
sufficiently broad basis of fact, whereas Darwin toiled for years
at observation and experiment before he gave his theory to the
world at all. This explanation is indicated in Darwin’s remark to
Lyell: ‘As for Lamarck, as you have such a man as Grove with you,
you are triumphant; not that I can alter my opinion that to me it
was an absolutely useless book. Perhaps this was owing to my always
searching books for facts.’[399] In any case one cannot help wishing
that Darwin had spoken of a man so prominent and so highly esteemed
as Lamarck a little differently.
II
Darwin first began to be interested in the idea of modification by
descent during his voyage on the Beagle and in the year 1837.[400]
In his earlier years he had been satisfied with the conventionally
orthodox theological and scientific conception of the creation of
distinct species, and all his youthful work had been on the basis of
this view. Such phrases as the note, written in 1834, in Valparaiso:
‘It seems not a very improbable conjecture that the want of animals
may be owing to none having been created since this country was
raised from the sea,’[401] are obviously significant of the earlier
attitude. But as he observed more widely and became more and more
impressed with the infinite diversity of forms and the delicacy of
shading with which they pass into each other, the conviction grew
that the possibilities of development were unlimited, and that
individual differences might pass into varieties and these again
into species, making the origin of varied life far simpler and more
unified than had ever been imagined. And such an evolutionary process
seemed much more in accord with general natural laws than the abrupt
appearance of fixed, highly organized forms in sudden sufficiency. As
he says, ‘the subject haunted me,’ and from a very early period he
began making notes and memoranda of all observations that might bear
for—or against—the gradual modification of species.
[Illustration: A PAGE FROM A NOTEBOOK OF 1837]
The difficulty was to imagine just how the process of modification
was brought about, and until he could get some light on this point,
his enthusiasm for the general idea was chilled and baffled. As
we have seen, Lamarck’s view, that living beings directly adapted
themselves to their surroundings and then transmitted these
adaptations to their descendants, seemed at least inadequate, and
Darwin felt that the theory must have some more solid basis, if
it was to prevail at all. He set his mind to work for months and
months, and he applied the intellectual method which he himself has
so admirably defined in a letter to his young son: ‘I have been
speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered
things; and a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very
clever—much cleverer than the discoverers—never originate anything.
As far as I can conjecture, the art consists in habitually searching
for the causes and meaning of everything which occurs.’[402]
Searching for the cause and meaning of everything which occurred, he
at last achieved the discovery he was looking for, and so knew what
is assuredly one of the greatest of spiritual delights. Largely by
watching and studying the results of deliberate human selection with
plants and animals, he was led to his great principle of natural
selection, that is, assuming the tendency in all living beings to
vary individually, that in the intense struggle for existence
those variations which are beneficial and help the organism to
live and prosper will be preserved and transmitted. The causes
of variation, whether spontaneous or to be found in environment,
Darwin never pretended entirely to explain. Of the principle of
natural selection, or as Spencer phrased it in a form which Darwin
admitted to be in some respects more satisfactory, ‘the survival of
the fittest,’ perhaps its discoverer has given no better statement
than the sentences in the second volume of the great work on ‘Plants
and Animals under Domestication’: ‘To consider the subject under
this point of view is enough to strike one dumb with amazement.
But our amazement ought to be lessened when we reflect that beings
almost infinite in number, during an almost infinite lapse of time,
have often had their whole organization rendered in some degree
plastic, and that each slight modification of structure which was
in any way beneficial under excessively complex conditions of life
has been preserved, whilst each which was in any way injurious has
been rigorously destroyed. And the long-continued accumulation of
beneficial variations will infallibly have led to structures as
diversified, as beautifully adapted for various purposes, and as
excellently coördinated, as we see in the animals around us. Hence
I have spoken of selection as the paramount power, whether applied
by man to the formation of domestic breeds, or by nature to the
production of species.’[403]
It is not to be supposed that the first grasp of evolution through
variation and natural selection could have carried with it the full
foresight of the enormous changes, mental, moral, and spiritual,
that such a theory was likely to produce. Still, a mind so keen
and active as Darwin’s was bound to catch some suggestion of those
changes. For instance, the astonishing and deadly ease with which the
old workings of Providential adaptation and design slipped under the
new light into mere operations of mechanical law could not fail to
foreshadow the philosophical and theological upheaval that was sure
to follow. A spirit trained in the conventional atmosphere of the
early English nineteenth century must necessarily have regarded such
an upheaval with a certain amount of question, awe, and even dismay;
and Darwin indisputably had something of these feelings mingled with
the triumphant joy of discovery.
It is profoundly characteristic of the man that he did not hasten to
fling the discovery to the world, to get the immediate excitement
and glory, leaving discussion and substantiation to come afterwards.
He was so hesitant, so doubtful of his own methods and his own
powers, that he delayed even to commit his conjectures to writing in
his note-books, lest they should become hardened and distorted by the
prejudice of statement and so misleading. His one idea was to get
confirmation, by every line of study and experiment, and for twenty
years he toiled with deliberate patience before he was willing to
make the attempt to put his results into publishable shape.
And all the time there was the chance, perfectly present to his mind,
that death might prevent him from ever making the discovery known.
And all the time there was the chance that in the world of scientific
thought that was seething about him some one else might anticipate
him and propagate the idea, perhaps in a form less convincing and
less substantial than he would be able to give it. Just as he was
getting to the stage of preparation which he had aimed at, exactly
this thing seemed likely to happen. In June 1858, Alfred Russel
Wallace, a scientist of standing and ability, with whom Darwin had
corresponded, sent him a paper largely anticipating Darwin’s ideas on
natural selection, so largely that Darwin wrote of it to Lyell: ‘I
never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my MS. sketch
written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short abstract;
... so all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be
smashed.’[404] And he even doubted whether he should make his views
public at all, for fear of depriving Wallace of credit: ‘I would
far rather burn my whole book, than that he or any other man should
think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit.’[405] The difficulty
was adjusted, however, by friends, and a joint paper by Darwin and
Wallace both, was read at the meeting of the Linnæan Society on July
1, 1858, giving the world the first inkling of what natural selection
was to mean. Sir Joseph Hooker wrote prophetically of this meeting:
‘The interest excited was intense, but the subject was too novel and
too ominous for the old school to enter the lists, before armoring.
After the meeting it was talked over with bated breath.’[406]
The relation between Darwin and Wallace in regard to priority of
discovery is one of the finest things in the whole history of
science. There was no jealousy, no bitterness, no acrimony, but
instead a full recognition of each others’ achievements, and a
sympathetic understanding which ripened into a helpful and unbroken
friendship. Wallace’s statement of the matter long after Darwin’s
death, is as noble in its unselfishness as words can make it: ‘But
what is often forgotten by the press and the public is that the idea
occurred to Darwin in 1838 ... nearly twenty years earlier than to
myself, and that during the whole twenty years he had been laboring
collecting evidence from the vast mass of literature of biology, of
horticulture, and of agriculture.... Such being the facts of the
case, I should have had no cause for complaint if the respective
shares of Darwin and myself ... had been henceforth estimated as
being roughly proportioned to the time we had each bestowed upon
it ... that is to say, as twenty years to one week.’[407] Darwin’s
summary, more general, is equally worthy of both: ‘I hope it is a
satisfaction to you to reflect—and very few things in my life have
been more satisfactory to me—that we have never felt any jealousy
towards each other, though in one sense rivals. I believe that I can
say this of myself with truth, and I am absolutely sure that it is
true of you.’[408]
The first promulgation of the Darwinian ideas, with those of Wallace,
was therefore made in July, 1858. In the following year, November,
1859, ‘The Origin of Species’ was published. Darwin himself regarded
this book as a mere preliminary sketch, requiring to be supported
and buttressed by confirmatory evidence of all sorts. But it at
once overwhelmed the world, and has always been looked upon since
as the cardinal statement of the theory. As Huxley said of it, ‘It
is doubtful if any single book, except the “Principia,” ever worked
so great and so rapid a revolution in science, or made so deep an
impression on the general mind.’[409] And innumerable quotations
could be drawn from other sources to the same effect.
III
The study of the complication of motives that prompts a man like
Darwin, and many others, to reveal and establish a great scientific
discovery in spite of violent opposition is profoundly curious and
profitable. It seems to me that a main element in these motives,
with the scientist, as with the artist and the politician and the
actor and the preacher and the athlete alike, is ambition. As Darwin
himself expresses it: ‘The action of unconscious selection, as far
as pigeons are concerned, depends on a universal principle in human
nature, namely on our rivalry, and desire to outdo our neighbors.
We see this in every fleeting fashion, even in our dress.’[410]
And again: ‘Man is the rival of other men; he delights in
competition, and this leads to ambition which passes too easily into
selfishness.’[411] The concrete essence of ambition is the desire
for fame, to have one’s efforts, one’s powers, one’s achievement,
one’s ego, recognized, appraised, established by the applause and
commendation of one’s fellow-men. And surely this desire in itself
is a natural and even a laudable one, leading, as it does, to most
useful and enduring accomplishment. The drawback is that the thirst
for glory is so enticing, so overmastering, that it seduces men into
strange and dubious methods of obtaining it. Glory, or notoriety,
is got so often by base means, the trickster and the charlatan can
so often snatch its rewards and laurels from honest labor and even
from genius divinely endowed, that sincere and earnest spirits are
impelled to disclaim the pursuit altogether, and to insist, perhaps
with genuine self-deception, that fame as a motive hardly enters
into their struggle at all. This contention is maintained the more
easily, since it is evident that other motives, and those most
powerful, do enter in. There is the restless, ever active disposition
of human nature to be doing something, almost no matter what. To
work, to create, to achieve, is to live. Nothing else can properly
be called life. To have done great things, to be doing them, makes
you feel that you exist, and why should you vex yourself with what
other men think of them? Then for the scientist there is the sheer
delight of adding one grain of truth to the slow accumulation of the
centuries, as for the artist there is the splendid sense of having
created something beautiful. You know it, you feel it: what do the
others matter? And there is further the rich reward of believing, or
hoping, that you are doing even a little to help or to enlighten your
fellow-men, whether they are ever aware of it or not. Few things are
more soothing or cheering to the soul than that. So that there have
been thinkers and there have been artists who have said, and perhaps
sincerely thought: ‘I care not if some other man gets the credit of
my work altogether. So the work is done, and I have done it, and know
that I have done it, and it endures, and is worthy to endure, what
does the name or the glory of it matter?’ There are many who have
said this, there may be some who have meant it; but surely there are
few who have tried to do great things, and have not longed for the
human recognition of them; and why should they not?
It is peculiarly interesting to trace the play of these motives in
Darwin, because here, as everywhere, he has such an extraordinary,
intimate frankness of revelation. The love of fame was strong in
him, and he knew it. He tells us of his childhood: ‘Some other
recollections are those of vanity—namely, thinking that people
were admiring me, in one instance for perseverance and another for
boldness in climbing a low tree, and what is odder, a consciousness,
as if instinctive, that I was vain, and contempt of myself.’[412] Of
his earlier scientific years he writes: ‘I was also ambitious to take
a fair place among scientific men ... whether more ambitious or less
so than most of my fellow-workers, I can form no opinion.’[413] At
a much later period he still recognizes the same stimulus: ‘Without
you have a very much greater soul than I have (and I believe that
you have), you will find the medal a pleasant little stimulus; when
work goes badly, and one ruminates that all is vanity, it is pleasant
to have some tangible proof, that others have thought something of
one’s labors.’[414] And how charming is the frank admission that
he hates to have glory snatched away from him: ‘I always thought
it very possible that I might be forestalled, but I fancied that I
had a grand enough soul not to care; but I found myself mistaken
and punished.’[415] Certainly in him the tranquil appreciation that
there was a something of inborn power can hardly be set down to
the inferiority complex, and inborn power does yearn for outward
applause: ‘Looking back, I infer that there must have been something
in me a little superior to the common run of youths, otherwise the
above-mentioned men, so much older than me and higher in academical
position, would never have allowed me to associate with them.’[416]
Yet with the passage of years and the growing sense of the futility
and injustice of popular reputation, Darwin was more and more
disposed to disclaim all interest in it. The desire for glory, he
admits, is a universal human motive, and a natural one; but there
are others of as much, if not more account: ‘You do me injustice
when you think that I work for fame; I value it to a certain extent;
but, if I know myself, I work from a sort of instinct to try to make
out truth.’[417] To the very end it is clear that the sale of his
books and the public discussion of his ideas are pleasant to him,
perhaps more pleasant than he recognizes. But assuredly no man can
be said to be unduly hungry for the laudation of the mob who waits
patiently for twenty years before making public his claims to it.
And it is certain that never under any circumstances would Darwin
have descended to court it by base means or false pretences. As he
himself sums up the whole matter, speaking of his youth: ‘All this
shows how ambitious I was; but I think I can say with truth that in
after years, though I cared in the highest degree for the approbation
of such men as Lyell and Hooker, who were my friends, I did not care
much about the general public. I do not mean to say that a favorable
review or a large sale of my books did not please me greatly, but the
pleasure was a fleeting one, and I am sure that I have never turned
one inch out of my course to gain fame.’[418] We certainly have here
no extreme or morbid case of notoriety-seeking.
IV
Thus, in 1859, ‘The Origin of Species’ startled the world with
the theory of evolution through natural selection, a theory
which immediately raised a storm that in some of its aspects is
still raging. It is occasionally urged that Darwin’s reputation
and success had an element of good fortune in them, that, as
with so many discoveries, he simply happened to express and as
it were crystallize general ideas that were vaguely present to
many and needed only a vigorous expositor to give them universal
acceptance. Doubtless there is a measure of truth in this view.
Yet it must not be forgotten how much Darwin’s character, his tact
and reasonableness, his persistent energetic logic, above all the
enormous industry and fidelity of his research entered into his final
triumph. His own comment on this matter of the timeliness of his
theories is exceedingly interesting: ‘It has sometimes been said that
the success of the “Origin” proved “that the subject was in the air,”
or “that men’s minds were prepared for it.” I do not think that this
is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists,
and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt
about the permanence of species.... I tried once or twice to explain
to able men what I meant by Natural Selection, but signally failed.
What I believe was strictly true is that innumerable well-observed
facts were stored in the minds of naturalists ready to take their
proper places as soon as any theory which would receive them was
sufficiently explained.’[419]
In any case, the evolutionary theory, when first propagated, was
bitterly attacked, both by scientists and by others. Darwin’s
personal friends, and some of the younger men, who were less
hardened in conservatism, supported him, though with more or less
hesitation and reserve. But scientists of the older school, trained
in established traditions, were generally most unfavorable. Some of
them brought up the innumerable difficulties of which Darwin himself
was only too well aware. Others resorted to the usual weapons of
abuse and sarcasm. Owen in England and Agassiz in America represented
perhaps the strongest conservative views. To them the Darwinian
system was merely a passing heresy, which could not stand for a
moment against the array of facts and arguments which they could
bring from their vast experience and observation of the natural world.
The hostility of religious circles, aroused by the ‘Origin’ and
increased by the later books, especially ‘The Descent of Man,’
was fiercer and less discriminating than that of the scientists.
Perhaps the acme of it was reached in the savage interchange in
which the Bishop of Oxford asked Huxley whether he ‘was related
by his grandfather’s or grandmother’s side to an ape’ and Huxley
retorted that a man had no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for
a grandfather, but if he were to feel shame, it would be for an
ancestor ‘who not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere
of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has
no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric,
and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at
issue by eloquent digressions, and skilled appeals to religious
prejudice.’[420]
This sort of thing was by no means agreeable to Darwin, and he
repeatedly refers to the pain and distress it caused him. For
example: ‘I have just read the “Edinburgh,” which without doubt is
by ——. It is extremely malignant, clever, and I fear will be very
damaging. He is atrociously severe on Huxley’s lecture, and very
bitter against Hooker. So we three _enjoyed_ it together. Not that I
really enjoyed it, for it made me uncomfortable for one night; but I
have got quite over it to-day. It requires much study to appreciate
all the bitter spite of many of the remarks against me; indeed I did
not discover all myself.... It is painful to be hated in the intense
degree with which —— hates me.’[421]
What interests us is the attitude of Darwin in all the aspects of
the struggle, and we find everywhere manifested and illustrated the
mental and spiritual qualities which we have analyzed generally in
the preceding chapters. Long and cruel as the controversy was, that
large, tranquil disposition could not be warped or embittered, or
substantially shaken in its kindly serenity.
And first there is the candor, the readiness to admit mistakes and
errors, and to recognize the force and significance of an opponent’s
view and arguments. Darwin himself complains humorously of a weakness
in this regard: ‘My God, is not the case difficult enough, without
its being, as I must think, falsely made more difficult? I believe
it is my own fault—, my d——d candor.’[422] But, damned or not, it
is a quality worth admiration. As Professor Osborn excellently
puts it: ‘If he were living, ... he would be in the front line of
inquiry, armed with matchless assemblage of fact, with experiment
verification, and not least with incomparable candor and good-will.
This bequest of a noble method is hardly less precious than the
immortal content of “The Origin of Species” itself.’[423]
This is the language of an admirer. But it is curious to see how with
critics and opponents
‘To some kind of men Their graces serve them but as enemies.’
Thus, even Alexander Agassiz, who was much more favorably disposed
to evolution and to Darwin than was his father, remarks on this
point of candor: ‘I was somewhat surprised in Darwin’s Life to see
the element of wishing his cause to succeed as a cause brought out
so prominently. The one thing always claimed by Darwin’s friends
had been his absolute impartiality to his own case. Certainly
his correspondence with Hooker, Huxley, and Gray shows no such
thing.’[424] And others, distinctly more hostile, are much more
severe, declaring that Darwin’s passionate eagerness to prove his
point was quite incompatible with any real fairness or breadth. But
surely there is misunderstanding here. Any one can be impartial who
is perfectly indifferent, and when you care not which side triumphs,
there is no merit in seeing the justice of both. The charm and the
interest of Darwin are precisely that he was devoted to his own
theory, that it was the effort of his life to prove it, and yet that
at the same time he could and did look for all the facts against it
and even go to excess in allowing weight to the objections that could
be opposed to him.
And as the candor was all the more notable because of the enthusiasm,
so it was notable because it did not spring from a cold temperament,
or an incapacity for natural human anger and indignation. Darwin
enlarges, perhaps unduly, on his heat of temper in youth; and in age,
though his control and his patience got the better of this, still
the sparks would fly when unjust and unreasonable attack annoyed and
irritated him. Thus, he cries out in regard to Owen: ‘You would laugh
if you could see how indignant all Owen’s mean conduct about _E.
Columbi_ made me. I did not get to sleep till past 3 o’clock.’[425]
And again, ‘If Owen wrote the article “Oken” and the French work on
the Archetype ..., he never did a baser act.... You are so good a
Christian that you will hardly understand how I chuckle over this
bit of baseness.’[426] When an adversary, not content with rational
argument, resorted to personal attack: ‘I care not for his dull,
unvarying abuse of me, and singular misrepresentation. But at p. 244
he in fact doubts my deliberate word, and that is the act of a man
who has not the soul of a gentleman in him.’[427]
But, however at moments indignation might get the better of him,
Darwin, as we have already seen, rarely allowed himself to be
drawn into anything approaching controversy. Intelligent argument
with those who had reasonable objections might be profitable, but
where was the use of contending with those whose object was not
to convince but to prevail? ‘I do so hate controversy,’ he cries,
‘and feel I shall do it so badly.’[428] And elsewhere he writes,
more generally: ‘All that I think is that you will excite anger, and
that anger so completely blinds every one, that your arguments would
have no chance of influencing those who are already opposed to our
views.’[349]
With this general attitude, it is interesting to find Darwin, in one
of his few temptations to sharp retort, checked and repressed by the
great fighter Huxley. Darwin submits the draft of a crisp letter,
asking Huxley to criticize, and the latter suggests omissions:
‘Though Thomson deserved it and more, I thought it would be better to
refrain. If I say a savage thing, it is only “Pretty Fanny’s way”;
but if you do, it is not likely to be forgotten.’[350] Huxley and
other friends also restrained Darwin in perhaps the most annoying
of his controversial affairs, that with Samuel Butler over the
translation of Krause’s Life of Erasmus Darwin. It is not necessary
for us to attempt to unthread the complicated tangle of this dispute,
since we may start with the confident assumption that both men were
perfectly sincere in their good intentions. The curious may read the
whole story in the Life of Butler by Henry Festing Jones, and it is
pleasant to find that the biographers of Butler and of Darwin were
able to come together and by comparing unprinted documents straighten
out the difficulty to their mutual satisfaction.
With his fellow-workers, those who were following the same lines of
research from the same general point of view, Darwin’s relations were
most cordial and sympathetic. There was no jealousy, no rivalry, no
undue sensitiveness. We have indeed seen that in his treatment of his
predecessors, notably Lamarck, there was a suggestion of what in any
one else might be taken for a jealous attitude. But all the dealings
with Wallace nobly refute the possibility of any such suggestion.
And at all times and under all circumstances Darwin was ready to
recognize and to proclaim the merits and achievements of those who
were laboring beside him. When there was any question of priority in
an idea or a discovery, he refused to assert himself unduly: ‘I have
always had a strong feeling that no one had better defend his own
priority. I cannot say that I am as indifferent to the subject as I
ought to be, but one can avoid doing anything in consequence.’[351]
When a scientist, whether known or unknown, applied to him for
assistance or suggestion, he was always ready to supply it, so far as
was in his power. Above all, he was appreciative, almost to excess,
of any assistance that was rendered to him, and his gratitude to his
friends for supporting and sustaining him and forwarding his views is
touching in its naïve earnestness. To Huxley, to Hooker, to Lyell,
to Gray, to Häckel, to a dozen others, he speaks with enthusiastic
acknowledgment of their efforts and their contributions, and, as
Huxley points out, he was ready to bestow almost the same gratitude
for services that in themselves appeared to be absurdly insignificant.
For he had a singular humility, most notable and appealing in a man
of such distinguished power and achievement. ‘A mind conspicuous
for its powerful humility and strong gentleness,’ is Huxley’s vivid
characterization.[278] Again and again he expresses distrust of his
powers, sense of inadequacy and incompetence, keen consciousness of
limitation. Such phrases as the following from the book on Orchids,
are constantly recurring: ‘To any one with more knowledge than I
possess, it would be an interesting subject to trace the gradations
between the several species and groups of species in this great and
closely-connected order.’[279] Sometimes the expression of humility
is direct. ‘Any one with ordinary faculties, if he had _patience_
enough and plenty of time could have written my book.’[280]
Sometimes there is a humorous assertion of the contrary which is
quite as significant: ‘I should rather think there was a good chance
of my becoming the most egotistical man in Europe. What a proud
preëminence!’[281] Occasionally the profession of humility is so
extreme, as in the sentence in regard to Owen, ‘The Londoners say
he is mad with envy because my book has been talked about; what a
strange man to be envious of a naturalist like myself, immeasurably
his inferior!’[282] that critics disposed to find fault have
discerned something of affectation in it. It is of the nature of the
deepest humility always to expose itself to such accusations as this;
but surely no one can study Darwin carefully, can be familiar with
his work in all its aspects, and not set him down as one of the most
sincerely humble spirits that ever lived.
V
This humility and feeling of his own incompetence made Darwin keenly
alive to the difficulties connected with his great undertaking and
gave him such a clear sense of them that at times he felt incapable
of solving them at all. As he says in the sixth chapter of the
‘Origin’: ‘Long before the reader has arrived at this part of my
work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to him. Some of them
are so serious that to this day I can hardly reflect on them without
being in some degree staggered.’[283]
Take one of the most striking, if not the most crucial difficulties,
one which puzzled and perplexed Darwin from the first and was made
a fruitful text for criticism by his adversaries, the development
of the eye. Was it to be supposed that so delicate, so complex, and
so highly adapted an organ could be produced by mere accidental
variation working through inheritance and the gradual survival of
the fittest? And Darwin investigated and compared and reflected,
until he was ready to state his position thus: ‘Reason tells me,
that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one
complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful
to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further the eye ever
varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the
case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under
changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a
perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though
insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered subversive
of the theory.’[284]
Sometimes the difficulties appear in themselves insignificant,
yet their bearing is such as to make them of extreme importance.
For example, how the useful institution of neuter insects could
be developed by inheritance was a terrible problem. It ‘at first
appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to the whole
theory.’[285] Study and observation wear it away; yet it is disposed
of with the candid remark: ‘I must confess, that, with all my faith
in natural selection, I should never have anticipated that this
principle could have been efficient in so high a degree, had not
the case of these neuter insects led me to this conclusion.’[286]
Or there is the coloring of the peacock’s tail, which has to be
explained by extreme wrestlings of logical ingenuity. And again, as
compared with these seemingly petty obstacles, there are the great
questions involved in the essential tissue of the theory itself.
There are the gaps, the breaks, the missing links, not only between
man and his simian ancestors, but completing all the gradations
between all the existing forms of development. Many and many an
hour, and one may say, many a year of anxious thought did Darwin
bestow on this point. He could meet it only with such eager comment
as he makes after his prolonged study of the orchids: ‘In the
comparatively few orchids described in this volume, so many and such
plainly-marked gradations in the structure of the rostellum have been
described, ... that we may well believe, if we could see every orchid
which has ever existed throughout the world, we should find all
the gaps in the existing chain, and every gap in many lost chains,
filled up by a series of easy transitions.’[287] And there were such
vast problems as sexual selection and pangenesis, which we discussed
in a previous chapter, and there was even the central element of
natural selection itself, which in darker moments seemed but a weak
agency for sustaining the whole world: ‘If I think continuously on
some half-dozen structures of which we can at present see no use, I
can persuade myself that natural selection is of quite subordinate
importance.’[288]
The interesting aspect of this matter of difficulty, as with other
things, is Darwin’s way of meeting and facing it. There was an
excitement, a stimulus, undoubtedly, a joy in attacking tough
problems and conquering them. But there was also a pervading
consciousness of what the difficulties were, and some have even
thought an almost too pervading disposition to go out of one’s way
to deal with them. As Huxley puts it: One ‘who desires to attack Mr.
Darwin has only to read his works with a desire to observe not their
merits but their defects, and he will find ready to hand more adverse
suggestions than are likely ever to have suggested themselves to his
own sharpness, without Mr. Darwin’s self-denying aid.’[289]
And there is always the appreciation, in handling the difficulties,
of the danger in over-ingenuity, of the subtle possibilities of
betrayal by reason ever toiling with intense ardor to arrive at its
preconceived ends. ‘God knows I have never shirked a difficulty,’
said Darwin.[290] But the danger lies not only in shirking, but in
the dissolving, transforming power of prejudice and enthusiasm. Here
again Darwin tried to be ever on his guard: ‘I am fairly rabid on
the question, and therefore, if not wrong already, am pretty sure to
become so.’[291] He would not be misled, or fooled, or betrayed: ‘As
I read on, I felt not a little dumbfounded, and thought to myself
that whenever I came to this subject I should have to be savage
against myself.’[292]
But you can never be sure that you have been savage enough, and
there are moments when unexpected obstacles make you mistrust your
theory, mistrust your method, mistrust your reasoning power. ‘If it
could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species
had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would
annihilate my theory.’[293] And who knows that it cannot be proved?
After months of study, a clear statement of opposing facts seems for
the moment to demolish everything. ‘You give all the facts so clearly
and fully, that it is impossible to help speculating on the subject;
but it drives me to despair, for I cannot gulp down your continent;
and not to be able to do so gives, in my eyes, the multiple
creationists an awful triumph.’[294] And with his extraordinary gift
of direct self-revelation, Darwin sums up the state of mind in one
vivid sentence: ‘Your letter actually turned me sick with panic.’[295]
Thus there are times of discouragement and disgust. One gets to feel
that one has utterly overestimated one’s work and one’s powers. One
concocts ‘pleasant little stinging remarks for reviews, such as
“Mr. Darwin’s head seems to have been turned by a certain degree
of success, and he thinks that the most trifling observations are
worth publication.”’[296] One concludes that all the years of vast
labor have been given to no valid result and that one had better
have cultivated one’s cabbages with health and quietness: ‘At
present I feel sick of everything, and if I could occupy my time
and forget my daily discomforts, or rather miseries, I would never
publish another word.’[297] Such periods of depression in Darwin are
peculiarly interesting, because he was by no means of a melancholy
temperament, nor, in spite of his nervous weakness, was he inclined
to a fretful or morbid pessimism. Yet, even with all his courage and
all his patience, with all his past labor and all his victory, there
were moments toward the end when the grave seemed inviting for its
mere vastness of repose, without any definite prospect of anything
further: ‘I am rather despondent about myself, and my troubles are of
an exactly opposite nature to yours, for idleness is downright misery
to me, as I find here, as I cannot forget my discomfort for an hour.
I have not the heart or strength at my age to begin any investigation
lasting years, which is the only thing which I enjoy; and I have no
little jobs which I can do. So I must look forward to Down graveyard
as the sweetest place on earth.’[372]
VI
The recognition and the accumulation of difficulties naturally
involved modification of views. Indeed any really vital theory is
bound to develop and modify itself with the vitality of the man who
holds it. And Darwin was as vital as any man, and his theories as
vital as any ever were. No man ever recognized more fully than he
the desirability, the necessity of modification: ‘I look at it as
absolutely certain that very much in the _Origin_ will be proved
rubbish; but I expect and hope that the framework will stand.’[373]
He groans over the burden and difficulty of perpetual correcting: ‘I
am grieved to hear that you think I must work in the notes in the
text; but you are so much better a judge that I will obey.’[374]
Again: ‘It is only about two years since last edition of _Origin_,
and I am disgusted to find how much I have to modify, and how much
I ought to add.’[375] Nevertheless, as the successive editions of
the ‘Origin’ and the other books show, he continued to add and to
alter and to correct, to the very end. The minute, thoughtful,
and far-reaching character of these alterations shows well in the
concluding sentence of the eleventh chapter of the ‘Origin,’ which
in the first edition read, ‘old forms having been supplanted by new
and improved forms of life produced by the laws of variation still
acting round us and preserved by natural selection,’ and later, ‘old
forms having been supplanted by new and improved forms of life, the
products of Variation and the Survival of the Fittest.’
Besides revision in detail, there was of course always a tendency
to larger modifications of the general theory. Ingenious and
far-reaching as natural selection was, the difficulties connected
with it were so immense, that the loyalty of even its discoverer
at times necessarily wavered, or perhaps we should say better, his
enthusiasm heated and cooled. Moreover, natural selection depended
upon variation, and variation to Darwin was always an inexplicable
puzzle, for which no solution or too many might be found. Disinclined
as he was to accept or even to respect his predecessors, Buffon
and Lamarck, Darwin in later years, when the pressure on natural
selection became fiercer, seemed to turn more to the adaptive
solutions of these predecessors. As Professor Morgan puts it:
‘Despite the contempt with which Darwin referred to Lamarck’s
theory, he himself, as we have seen, often made use of the principle
of the inheritance of acquired characters, and even employed the
same illustrations cited by Lamarck.’[376] And Professor Osborn
indicates admirably the gradual process of the change which took
place in Darwin’s attitude: ‘Starting with some leaning towards the
theories of modification of Buffon and Lamarck, he reached an almost
exclusive belief in his own theory, and then gradually inclined to
adopt Buffon’s and then Lamarck’s theories as well, until in his
maturest writings he embraced a threefold causation in the origin
of species.’[377] The drift towards Lamarck is well shown in a
passage of a letter to Galton, written in 1875: ‘If this implies
that many parts are not modified by use and disuse during the life
of the individual, I differ widely from you, as every year I come
to attribute more and more to such agency.’[378] At the same time,
to the very end natural selection remained in Darwin’s mind not
only the quintessence of his theorizing, but the prime agent by
which modification had been accomplished. In ‘The Descent of Man’
he explains and in a manner excuses any earlier undue insistence
upon it, but also reiterates his firm faith in its great, if not
omnipotent efficacy: ‘If I have erred in giving to natural selection
great power, which I am very far from admitting, or in having
exaggerated its power, which is in itself probable, I have at least,
as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of
separate creations.’[379]
VII
So through the sixties and seventies the battle for evolution went
merrily on, and before Darwin’s death in 1881 it was evident that
the scientific world was largely converted and still more evident
that the theory had taken solid hold upon the popular mind. Even
in the sixties Charles Kingsley could write to F. D. Maurice: ‘The
state of the scientific mind is most curious; Darwin is conquering
everywhere, and rushing in like a flood, by the mere force of truth
and fact.’[380] Darwin himself was no aggressive fighter, though
perhaps his quiet, persistent, logical statement of facts went
further than fighting. But he had fighting followers, and they pushed
his cause with an energy and dogmatism which he himself could hardly
have manifested. In England Spencer gave the theory the metaphysical
and philosophical sanction and support which Darwin was not equipped
to render, and the brilliant, ardent eloquence of Huxley paralyzed
opponents with incisive argument and stinging ridicule. In America
Asa Gray, the great botanist, was a convert from the beginning and a
most helpful disciple, and his aid was peculiarly welcome to Darwin,
because Gray’s eager orthodoxy was useful in conciliating many whose
prejudices would naturally have been most adverse. Darwin repeatedly
spoke of Gray as understanding his ideas better and expounding them
more effectively than almost any one. John Fiske was also a valuable
champion from the more philosophical side. In Germany Weisman and
Häckel were the most prominent apostles, and immensely effective,
though, with thorough-going Teutonic logic, they were ready to push
conclusions to lengths that were not always acceptable to Darwin
himself.
The amount of popular interest is probably best shown in the
extensive sale of Darwin’s books. ‘The Origin of Species’ was
successful at once. It went through edition after edition, in
Darwin’s lifetime six in all, and was translated into numerous
foreign languages. The later books, even those of a more technical
character, sold like popular fiction, and the last one, on the
apparently uninviting subject of earthworms, found many readers
everywhere.
Darwin was of course quite conscious of his growing triumph.
Even hostility, animosity, execration, painful as they might be,
afforded evidence of power and achievement. And he would not have
been human, had he not relished the varied testimony of respect
and admiration which came to him from every quarter. His natural
distrust of himself was so great that it was hard for him to believe
in success, even when it came, and before it came, he deprecated
any attempt to discount it: ‘Please do not say to any one that I
thought my book on Species would be fairly popular, and have a fairly
remunerative sale (which was the height of my ambition), for if it
prove a dead failure, it would make me the more ridiculous.’[381]
Yet, however one might shrink and distrust oneself, to enter a great
scientific meeting and have every one present rise to do one honor
was undeniably agreeable. And, with his unfailing frankness, Darwin
admits that praise was pleasant, and one could not have too much of
it, provided one felt that it was in a measure deserved: ‘You pay me
a superb compliment, and as I have just said to my wife, I think my
friends must perceive that I like praise, they give me such hearty
doses.’[382] Also, with equal frankness, he makes it plain in his
autobiographical sketch that he realizes how great the success was
and that it implied a certain prospect of permanence: ‘My books have
sold largely in England, have been translated into many languages,
and passed through several editions in foreign countries. I have
heard it said that the success of a work abroad is the best test of
its enduring value. I doubt whether this is at all trustworthy; but
judged by this standard my name ought to last for a few years.’[383]
When he died, he was unquestionably rated as one of the very first,
if not the first, among the scientific men of his time.
And it is equally unquestionable that his reputation has rather
increased than diminished ever since. ‘“Before and after Darwin” will
always be the _ante et post urbem conditam_ of biological history,’
says Professor Osborn.[384] Naturally Darwin’s theories have been
criticized and attacked and largely modified by later investigations
and discoveries. To Darwin himself variation, as the basis of natural
selection, was the difficult, inexplicable point, and the experiments
of Mendel, the mutation theory of De Vries, and many other lines of
research have put the subject of variation in a new light. Natural
Selection has been and will be the subject of controversy, both as to
its working and as to the extent of its efficacy. Darwin’s inimitable
caution left the way open for all these investigations, as is so
well indicated in the excellent sentence of Professor Whitehead:
‘Darwin’s own writings are for all time a model of refusal to go
beyond the direct evidence and of careful retention of every possible
hypothesis.’[385]
Yet, after fifty years of discussion and argument, Darwin’s main
positions hold their own with extraordinary tenacity. In the very
latest word on the subject Professor Parker says: ‘It is to the
credit of Charles Darwin and his body of able supporters that the
scientific world was finally brought to accept the principle of
descent with modification and natural selection as the means whereby
it was accomplished.’[386] Professor Conklin affirms that: ‘The only
scientific explanation of such adjustment or fitness is Darwin’s
principle of natural selection of the fit and elimination of the
unfit, and it is eloquent testimony to the greatness of Darwin
that more and more this great principle is being recognized as the
only mechanistic explanation of adaptation.’[387] And Professor
Osborn is equally emphatic: ‘In my opinion natural selection is
the only cause of evolution which has thus far been discovered and
demonstrated.’[388] While from a more abstractly philosophical point
of view the emphatic recently written words of Professor Ralph Barton
Perry, give ample support to the general Darwinian position: ‘In
truth there is no gulf between man and the animal. We cannot deny to
the latter sensibility, memory, and intelligence. The facts which
prove it would fill volumes.... The animal has feelings of mother
love, attachment, and devotion. It differs from us in degree only;
its “soul” is to ours what the bud is to the flower and fruit.’[234]
But, independent of all agreement or disagreement with Darwin’s
theories, the striking thing is the consensus of scientists in praise
of the man, and the recognition of his effort and method and life
as a model for all scientific workers. It is rare that praise is
so unalloyed, so persistent, and so complete. In this connection
it is interesting to compare the nature of the glory of the poet,
Shakespeare, for example, with that of the scientific writer.
Shakespeare is not only remembered, he is read. Every successive
generation takes up his plays for themselves, reads into them its own
passions and experiences, and thus makes them a perennial possession
of humanity, quite independent of their author. The works of Darwin,
or of any other scientist, have no such enduring value for actual
perusal. The curious study them for historical record. But for the
mass of mankind and even of scientists, a large part of them has
entered into universal knowledge and may be read in any textbook,
and the remainder has become obsolete and of no value except for what
it meant in an earlier day. The scientist’s name becomes detached
from the work, even though he remains great because he did it. Yet
the name, in spite of being thus detached, perhaps all the more
because it is detached, shines like a star through century after
century.