THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN'S WORKS
In two essays 'On the Coming of Age of the Origin of Species[134],' and
'On the Reception of the Origin of Species[135],' published in 1880 and
1887 respectively, Huxley has discussed the course of events following
the publication of Darwin's great work, he having the advantage of being
one of the chief actors in those events. There is a striking parallelism
between the manner that the _Principles of Geology_ had been received
thirty years earlier, and the way that the _Origin of Species_ was met,
both by Darwin's scientific contemporaries and the reading public.
At the outset, as we have already intimated, Lyell and Darwin were
equally fortunate, in that each found a critic, in one of the chief
organs of public opinion, who was at the same time both competent and
sympathetic. The story of the lucky accident by which this came about in
Darwin's case has been told by Huxley himself[136].
'The _Origin_ was sent to Mr Lucas, one of the staff of the
_Times_ writers at that time, in what was I suppose the
ordinary course of business. Mr Lucas, though an excellent
journalist, ... was as innocent of any knowledge of science as a
babe, and bewailed himself to an acquaintance on having to deal
with such a book. Whereupon, he was recommended to ask me to get
him out of the difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly,
explaining, however, that it would be necessary for him formally
to adopt anything I might be disposed to write, by prefacing it
with two or three paragraphs of his own.'
'I was too anxious to seize upon the opportunity thus offered of
giving the book a fair chance with the multitudinous readers of
the _Times_, to make any difficulty about conditions; and being
then very full of the subject, I wrote the article faster, I
think, than I ever wrote anything in my life, and sent it to Mr
Lucas who duly prefixed his opening sentences[137].'
Many journalists, however, were less conscientious than Mr Lucas, and
most of the other early notices of the book were pretty equally divided
between undiscriminating praise of it as a novelty and foolish
reprobations of its 'wickedness.'
It was fortunate that Darwin followed the strong advice given to him by
Lyell, and did not attempt to reply to the adverse criticisms; for the
only effect of these was to arouse curiosity and thus to increase the
circulation of the book.
Although Darwin had wisely avoided the danger of exciting prejudice
against his work by definitely applying the theory of Natural Selection
to the case of man--simply remarking, in order to avoid the charge of
concealing his views, that 'light would be thrown on the origin of man
and his history'--yet friends and foes alike at once drew what was the
necessary corollary from the theory. It is as amusing, as it is
surprising at the present day, to recall the storm of prejudice which
was excited. At the British Association Meeting at Oxford in 1860, after
an American professor had indignantly asked the question, 'Are we a
fortuitous concourse of atoms?' as a comment on Darwin's views, Dr
Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, ended a clever but flippant
attack on the _Origin_ by enquiring of Huxley, who was present as
Darwin's champion, if it 'was through his grandfather or his grandmother
that he claimed his descent from a monkey?'
Huxley made the famous and well-deserved retort:--
'I asserted--and I repeat--that a man has no reason to be
ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an
ancestor whom I should feel ashamed in recalling, it would
rather be a _man_--a man of restless and versatile
intellect--who not content with 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[138].'
The violent attack on Darwin's views by the once-famous Bishop of Oxford
was outdone, a few years later, by an even more absurd outburst on the
part of Benjamin Disraeli, who--after stigmatising Darwinism as the
question 'Is man an ape or an angel?'--declared magniloquently to the
episcopal chairman, 'My Lord, I am on the side of the angels!'
But in spite of attacks like these and numerous bitter pasquinades and
comic cartoons--perhaps to some extent in consequence of them--Darwin's
views became widely known and eagerly discussed, so that the circulation
of the _Origin of Species_ went up by leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, as
Huxley said, 'years had to pass away before misrepresentation, ridicule
and denunciation, ceased to be the most notable constituents of the
multitudinous criticisms of his work which poured from the press.'
Among his contemporary men of science Darwin could at first count few
converts. Hooker, whose candid and valuable criticisms of his friend's
work had been continued up to the very end during its composition, did
an eminent service to the cause of Evolution by publishing, almost
simultaneously with the _Origin of Species_, his splendid memoir on _The
Flora of Australia, its Origin, Affinities, and Distribution_, in which
similar views were, not obscurely, indicated. Of Lyell, Darwin's other
friend and counsellor, Huxley justly says:
'Lyell, up to that time a pillar of the antitransmutationists
(who regarded him, ever afterwards, as Pallas Athene may have
looked at Dian, after the Endymion affair), declared himself a
Darwinian, though not without putting in a serious _caveat_.
Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength and his courageous
stand for truth as against consistency, did him infinite
honour[139].'
Huxley himself accepted the theory of Natural Selection--but not without
some important reservations--these, however, did not prevent him from
becoming its most ardent and successful champion. Darwin used to
acknowledge Huxley's great service to him in undertaking the defence of
the theory--a defence which his own hatred of controversy and the state
of his health made him unwilling to undertake--by laughingly calling him
'my general agent!' while Huxley himself in replying to the critics,
declared that he was 'Darwin's bulldog.'
Although, at first, Darwin was able to enumerate less than a dozen
naturalists who were prepared to accept his views, while influential
leaders of thought in science--like Richard Owen in this country and
Louis Agassiz in America--were bitterly opposed to them, the theory
gradually obtained supporters especially among the younger cultivators
of botany, zoology and geology.
It is evident that Darwin for some time regarded his 'abstract,' as he
called the _Origin of Species_, as only a temporary expedient--one to be
superseded by the publication of the much more extended work, designed
and commenced long before. Although the _Origin_ was only published late
in November 1859, and he was called upon immediately to prepare a
second edition, we find that on January 1st, 1860, Darwin began to
arrange his materials for dealing with the first great division of his
subject, 'the variation of animals and plants under domestication.' So
numerous and important were his notes and records of experiments,
however, that he soon found that to expand the whole of the 'abstract,'
on the same scale, would be an impossible task for any one man, however
able and diligent. Unwilling that the results of some of his special
researches should be lost, he wisely determined to issue them as
separate books. The first of these to appear was that on the
_Fertilisation of Orchids_, a beautiful illustration of the relation of
insects to flowers in producing crossing. He had been more than twenty
years working and experimenting on this subject, his interest in it
having been quickened by having read an almost forgotten book of the
botanist Sprengel. Almost at the same time, and in following years, he
wrote papers for the Linnean Society on dimorphic and trimorphic forms
of flowers, and their bearing on the question of cross-fertilisation.
These papers were the foundation of his well-known work, _The Different
Forms of Flowers on Plants of the same Species_. In the same way, a
paper read in 1864 to the Linnean Society was subsequently expanded into
_The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants_.
Owing to delays caused by the preparation and publication of these books
and frequent interruptions from sickness, the work on variation did not
appear till 1868. It was a very extensive piece of work in two volumes,
and, at its end, Darwin tentatively propounded a hypothesis to account
for the facts of Heredity and Variation to which he gave the name of
'pangenesis.'
Charles Darwin had reached the age of fifty, when he wrote the _Origin
of Species_. At a very early period in his career, he had resolved that
he would never start a new theory or revise an old one after he was
sixty; as he used laughingly to say, 'I have seen too many of my friends
make fools of themselves by doing that.' But as he approached this
'fatal age,' one more subject of a theoretical and highly controversial
nature remained to be dealt with, namely, the question of the
application of the theory of natural selection to man, both as regards
his physical structure and his intellectual and moral characteristics.
Darwin tells us that in 1837 or '38, as soon as he had become 'convinced
that species were mutable productions,' he 'could not avoid the belief
that man must come under the same law[140].' From that time, he began
collecting facts bearing on the question. As each of his children was
born, he examined closely the signs of dawning intelligence, and made
notes of the manner in which new sensations and passions were exhibited
by them. His dog and other animals, for whom he always showed the
greatest fondness, were closely watched with the object of noting
correspondences between their mental and moral processes and their modes
of exhibiting them and our own; while visits were made by him to the
Zoological Gardens with the same object. By reading and correspondence
also, an enormous mass of notes was collected, and on February 4th,
1868, having seen his great work on Variation under Domestication
published, Darwin was able to make the entry in his diary, 'Began work
on Man.'
As was usual with most of his works, Darwin underestimated the time
required to complete it. Through all the years 1867--'68, '69 and '70 we
find the entries in his diary 'working at _Descent of Man_,' and only
early in the year 1871 was the book finished. His original plan of
compressing his notes on the expression of the Emotions into a chapter
at the end of the book proved to be impracticable, and the material was
reserved for a new work. This work, _The Expression of the Emotions in
Man and Animals_, was commenced directly the _Descent of Man_ was out of
hand, a rough copy was finished by April 27th, 1871, but the last proofs
were not corrected till August 23rd, 1873.
In dealing with the question of the origin of the human race, Darwin
was led to propound his views concerning Sexual selection, the results
of the preferences shown by males and females, respectively, not only
among mankind, but in various other animals. It was with respect to some
of the conclusions contained in this work that Wallace found himself
unable to follow Darwin. Wallace maintained that while man's body could
have been developed by Natural Selection, his intellectual and moral
nature must have had a different origin. He also declined to adopt the
theory of sexual selection, so far as it depends on preferences
exhibited by females for beauty in the males. Wallace, however, in some
respects has always been disposed to attach more importance to Natural
Selection, as the greatest, if not the only factor in evolution, than
Darwin himself.
It will be seen that although Darwin had in all probability thought out
all his important theoretical conclusions before 1869, when he reached
the 'fatal age,' yet, owing to various delays, the books, in which he
embodied his views, had not all appeared till more than four years
later.
Lyell, who was a convinced evolutionist before the publication of the
_Principles of Geology_, as is shown by his letters,--and the fact is
strongly insisted on both by Huxley and Haeckel[141],--was slow in
coming into _complete_ agreement with Darwin concerning the theory of
Natural Selection. While he followed his friend's investigations with
the deepest interest, his less sanguine nature led him often to despair
of the possibility of solving 'the mystery of mysteries.' As Darwin
wrote only a year before his own death, Lyell 'would advance all
_possible_ objections to my suggestions, and _even after these were
exhausted_ would long _remain dubious_[142].' It is evident from the
correspondence that Darwin was at times tempted to become impatient with
the friend, for whose advocacy of his views he so deeply longed.
Fourteen years after the publication of the _Origin of Species_,
however, Lyell, in his _Antiquity of Man_, gave in his adhesion to
Darwin's theory but, even then, not in the unqualified manner that the
latter desired. Yet I have reason to know that some years before his
death, Lyell was able to assure his friend of his _complete_ agreement,
and Darwin, six years after the loss of his friend, wrote, 'His candour
was highly remarkable. He exhibited this by becoming a convert to the
Descent theory, though he had gained much fame by opposing Lamarck's
views, _and this after he had grown old_.' Darwin adds that Lyell,
referring to the '_fatal_ age' of sixty, said 'he hoped that now he
might be allowed to live[143]!'
When I first came into personal relations with Darwin, after the death
of Lyell in 1875, he was in the habit of deprecating any idea of his
writing on theoretical questions. He used to talk of 'playing with
plants and such things,' and undoubtedly derived the greatest pleasure
from his ingenious experimental researches. The result of this 'play' in
which Darwin took such delight is seen in his books on the _Power of
Movement in Plants_ and _Insectivorous Plants_; full of the records of
ingenious experiments and patient observation.
It was a great relief to Darwin that his friend Wallace was able in 1871
to undertake the preparation of a work on _The Geographical Distribution
of Animals_, for, on many points, the views held by Wallace on this
subject were more in accordance with Darwin's own, than were those of
Lyell and Hooker. Nevertheless, on all questions connected with the
geographical distribution of plants, and the causes by which they were
brought about, Darwin always expressed the fullest confidence in
Hooker's judgment, and the greatest satisfaction with his results.
With regard to another great division of his work, that dealing with the
imperfection, but yet great value, of the geological record, Darwin was
always anxious, when I met him, to learn of any new discoveries. But he
felt that he had done all that was possible in his outline of the
subject in the _Origin_, and that he must leave to palaeontologists all
over the world the filling in of these outlines. So great was the
delight with which he used to hear of new discoveries in palaeontology,
that I often recall our conversations in these later days, when so many
interesting forms of extinct animal and vegetable life--veritable
'missing links'--are being discovered in all parts of the globe, and
wish that he could have known of them. They are indeed 'Facts for
Darwin.'
Very happy indeed was Charles Darwin in the last years of his useful
life, in returning to his oldest 'love'--geology. In studying the action
of earthworms he found a geological study in which his rare powers of
ingenious experimentation could be employed with profit. His earliest
published memoir had dealt with the question, and for more than forty
years with dogged perseverance, he had laboured at it from time to time.
It was delightful to watch his pleasure as he examined what was going on
in the flower-pots full of mould in his study, and when his book was
published and favourably received, he rejoiced in it as 'the child of
his old age[144].'
Charles Darwin's death took place rather more than twenty-two years
after the publication of the _Origin of Species_. Before he passed away,
he had the satisfaction of knowing that the doctrine of evolution had
come to be--mainly through his own great efforts--the accepted creed of
all naturalists and that even for the world at large it had lost its
imaginary terrors. As Huxley wrote a few days after our sad loss, 'None
have fought better, and none have been more fortunate, than Charles
Darwin. He found a great truth trodden underfoot, reviled by bigots, and
ridiculed by all the world; he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by
his own efforts, irrefragably established in science, inseparably
incorporated with the common thoughts of men, and only hated and feared
by those who would revile, but dare not. What shall a man desire more
than this[145]?'
More than a quarter of a century has passed since these words were
written. How during that period the influence of Darwin's writings on
human thought has grown, in an accelerated ratio, will be seen by anyone
who will turn the pages of the memorial volume--_Darwin and Modern
Science_--published fifty years after the _Origin of Species_. Therein,
not only zoologists, botanists and geologists, but physicists, chemists,
anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, philologists,
historians--and even politicians and theologians--are found testifying
to the important part which Darwin's great work has played, in
revolutionising ideas and moulding thought in connexion with all
branches of knowledge and speculation.