well that none of your many wonderful facts in your several works,
perplexed me, for years, more than the migration having been mainly from
north to south, and not in the reverse direction. I have now at last
satisfied MYSELF (but that is very different from satisfying others) on
this head; but it would take a little volume to fully explain myself.
I did not for long see the bearing of a conclusion, at which I had
arrived, with respect to this subject. It is, that species inhabiting a
very large area, and therefore existing in large numbers, and which have
been subjected to the severest competition with many other forms, will
have arrived, through natural selection, at a higher stage of perfection
than the inhabitants of a small area. Thus I explain the fact of so many
anomalies, or what may be called "living fossils," inhabiting now only
fresh water, having been beaten out, and exterminated in the sea, by
more improved forms; thus all existing Ganoid fishes are fresh water,
as [are] Lepidosiren and Ornithorhynchus, etc. The plants of Europe and
Asia, as being the largest territory, I look at as the most "improved,"
and therefore as being able to withstand the less-perfected Australian
plants; [whilst] these could not resist the Indian. See how all the
productions of New Zealand yield to those of Europe. I dare say you will
think all this utter bosh, but I believe it to be solid truth.
You will, I think, admit that Australian plants, flourishing so in
India, is no argument that they could hold their own against the ten
thousand natural contingencies of other plants, insects, animals, etc.,
etc. With respect to South West Australia and the Cape, I am shut up,
and can only d--n the whole case.
...You say you should like to see my MS., but you did read and approve
of my long Glacial chapter, and I have not yet written my Abstract on
the whole of the Geographical Distribution, nor shall I begin it for two
or three weeks. But either Abstract or the old MS. I should be DELIGHTED
to send you, especially the Abstract chapter...
I have now written 330 folio pages of my abstract, and it will require
150-200 [more]; so that it will make a printed volume of 400 pages,
and must be printed separately, which I think will be better in many
respects. The subject really seems to me too large for discussion at any
Society, and I believe religion would be brought in by men whom I know.
I am thinking of a 12mo volume, like Lyell's fourth or fifth edition of
the 'Principles.'...
I have written you a scandalously long note. So now good-bye, my dear
Hooker,
Ever yours, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 20th, 1859.
My dear Hooker,
I should very much like to borrow Heer at some future time, for I want
to read nothing perplexing at present till my Abstract is done.
Your last very instructive letter shall make me very cautious on the
hyper-speculative points we have been discussing.
When you say you cannot master the train of thoughts, I know well enough
that they are too doubtful and obscure to be mastered. I have often
experienced what you call the humiliating feeling of getting more and
more involved in doubt the more one thinks of the facts and reasoning
on doubtful points. But I always comfort myself with thinking of the
future, and in the full belief that the problems which we are just
entering on, will some day be solved; and if we just break the ground we
shall have done some service, even if we reap no harvest.
I quite agree that we only differ in DEGREE about the means of
dispersal, and that I think a satisfactory amount of accordance. You put
in a very striking manner the mutation of our continents, and I quite
agree; I doubt only about our oceans.
I also agree (I am in a very agreeing frame of mind) with your
argumentum ad hominem, about the highness of the Australian Flora
from the number of species and genera; but here comes in a superlative
bothering element of doubt, viz., the effect of isolation.
The only point in which I PRESUMPTUOUSLY rather demur is about the
status of the naturalised plants in Australia. I think Muller speaks of
their having spread largely beyond cultivated ground; and I can hardly
believe that our European plants would occupy stations so barren that
the native plants could not live there. I should require much evidence
to make me believe this. I have written this note merely to thank you,
as you will see it requires no answer.
I have heard to my amazement this morning from Phillips that the
Geological Council have given me the Wollaston Medal!!!
Ever yours, CHARLES DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 23d, 1859.
...I enclose letters to you and me from Wallace. I admire extremely the
spirit in which they are written. I never felt very sure what he would
say. He must be an amiable man. Please return that to me, and Lyell
ought to be told how well satisfied he is. These letters have vividly
brought before me how much I owe to your and Lyell's most kind and
generous conduct in all this affair.
...How glad I shall be when the Abstract is finished, and I can rest!...
CHARLES DARWIN TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, January 25th [1859].
My dear Sir,
I was extremely much pleased at receiving three days ago your letter to
me and that to Dr. Hooker. Permit me to say how heartily I admire
the spirit in which they are written. Though I had absolutely nothing
whatever to do in leading Lyell and Hooker to what they thought a fair
course of action, yet I naturally could not but feel anxious to hear
what your impression would be. I owe indirectly much to you and them;
for I almost think that Lyell would have proved right, and I should
never have completed my larger work, for I have found my Abstract hard
enough with my poor health, but now, thank God, I am in my last chapter
but one. My Abstract will make a small volume of 400 or 500 pages.
Whenever published, I will, of course, send you a copy, and then you
will see what I mean about the part which I believe selection has played
with domestic productions. It is a very different part, as you suppose,
from that played by "Natural Selection." I sent off, by the same address
as this note, a copy of the 'Journal of the Linnean Society,' and
subsequently I have sent some half-dozen copies of the paper. I have
many other copies at your disposal...
I am glad to hear that you have been attending to birds' nests. I have
done so, though almost exclusively under one point of view, viz., to
show that instincts vary, so that selection could work on and improve
them. Few other instincts, so to speak, can be preserved in a Museum.
Many thanks for your offer to look after horses' stripes; If there
are any donkeys, pray add them. I am delighted to hear that you have
collected bees' combs...This is an especial hobby of mine, and I think
I can throw a light on the subject. If you can collect duplicates, at no
very great expense, I should be glad of some specimens for myself with
some bees of each kind. Young, growing, and irregular combs, and
those which have not had pupae, are most valuable for measurements and
examination. Their edges should be well protected against abrasion.
Every one whom I have seen has thought your paper very well written and
interesting. It puts my extracts (written in 1839, now just twenty years
ago!), which I must say in apology were never for an instant intended
for publication, into the shade.
You ask about Lyell's frame of mind. I think he is somewhat staggered,
but does not give in, and speaks with horror, often to me, of what a
thing it would be, and what a job it would be for the next edition of
'The Principles,' if he were "PERverted." But he is most candid and
honest, and I think will end by being PERverted. Dr. Hooker has become
almost as heterodox as you or I, and I look at Hooker as BY FAR the most
capable judge in Europe.
Most cordially do I wish you health and entire success in all your
pursuits, and, God knows, if admirable zeal and energy deserve success,
most amply do you deserve it. I look at my own career as nearly run out.
If I can publish my Abstract and perhaps my greater work on the same
subject, I shall look at my course as done.
Believe me, my dear sir, yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, March 2nd [1859].
My dear Hooker,
Here is an odd, though very little, fact. I think it would be hardly
possible to name a bird which apparently could have less to do with
distribution than a Petrel. Sir W. Milner, at St. Kilda, cut open some
young nestling Petrels, and he found large, curious nuts in their crops;
I suspect picked up by parent birds from the Gulf stream. He seems to
value these nuts excessively. I have asked him (but I doubt whether
he will) to send a nut to Sir William Hooker (I gave this address for
grandeur sake) to see if any of you can name it and its native country.
Will you PLEASE MENTION this to Sir William Hooker, and if the nut does
arrive, will you oblige me by returning it to "Sir W. Milner, Bart.,
Nunappleton, Tadcaster," in a registered letter, and I will repay you
postage. Enclose slip of paper with the name and country if you can, and
let me hereafter know. Forgive me asking you to take this much trouble;
for it is a funny little fact after my own heart.
Now for another subject. I have finished my Abstract of the chapter on
Geographical Distribution, as bearing on my subject. I should like you
much to read it; but I say this, believing that you will not do so, if,
as I believe to be the case, you are extra busy. On my honour, I shall
not be mortified, and I earnestly beg you not to do it, if it will
bother you. I want it, because I here feel especially unsafe, and errors
may have crept in. Also, I should much like to know what parts you will
MOST VEHEMENTLY object to. I know we do, and must, differ widely on
several heads. Lastly, I should like particularly to know whether I
have taken anything from you, which you would like to retain for first
publication; but I think I have chiefly taken from your published
works, and, though I have several times, in this chapter and elsewhere,
acknowledged your assistance, I am aware that it is not possible for
me in the Abstract to do it sufficiently. ("I never did pick any one's
pocket, but whilst writing my present chapter I keep on feeling (even
when differing most from you) just as if I were stealing from you, so
much do I owe to your writings and conversation, so much more than mere
acknowledgments show."--Letter to Sir J.D. Hooker, 1859.) But again
let me say that you must not offer to read it if very irksome. It is
long--about ninety pages, I expect, when fully copied out.
I hope you are all well. Moor Park has done me some good.
Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.
P.S.--Heaven forgive me, here is another question: How far am I right
in supposing that with plants, the most important characters for main
divisions are Embryological? The seed itself cannot be considered as
such, I suppose, nor the albumens, etc. But I suppose the Cotyledons and
their position, and the position of the plumule and the radicle, and the
position and form of the whole embryo in the seed are embryological, and
how far are these very important? I wish to instance plants as a case
of high importance of embryological characters in classification. In the
Animal Kingdom there is, of course, no doubt of this.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, March 5th [1859].
My dear Hooker,
Many thanks about the seed...it is curious. Petrels at St. Kilda
apparently being fed by seeds raised in the West Indies. It should be
noted whether it is a nut ever imported into England. I am VERY glad
you will read my Geographical MS.; it is now copying, and it will (I
presume) take ten days or so in being finished; it shall be sent as soon
as done...
I shall be very glad to see your embryological ideas on plants; by the
sentence which I sent you, you will see that I only want one sentence;
if facts are at all, as I suppose, and I shall see this from your note,
for sending which very many thanks.
I have been so poorly, the last three days, that I sometimes doubt
whether I shall ever get my little volume done, though so nearly
completed...
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, March 15th [1859].
My dear Hooker,
I am PLEASED at what you say of my chapter. You have not attacked it
nearly so much as I feared you would. You do not seem to have detected
MANY errors. It was nearly all written from memory, and hence I was
particularly fearful; it would have been better if the whole had first
been carefully written out, and abstracted afterwards. I look at it as
morally certain that it must include much error in some of its general
views. I will just run over a few points in your note, but do not
trouble yourself to reply without you have something important to say...
...I should like to know whether the case of Endemic bats in islands
struck you; it has me especially; perhaps too strongly.
With hearty thanks, ever yours, C. DARWIN.
P.S. You cannot tell what a relief it has been to me your looking over
this chapter, as I felt very shaky on it.
I shall to-morrow finish my last chapter (except a recapitulation) on
Affinities, Homologies, Embryology, etc., and the facts seem to me to
come out VERY strong for mutability of species.
I have been much interested in working out the chapter.
I shall now, thank God, begin looking over the old first chapters for
press.
But my health is now so very poor, that even this will take me long.
CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down [March] 24th [1859].
My dear Fox,
It was very good of you to write to me in the midst of all your
troubles, though you seem to have got over some of them, in the recovery
of your wife's and your own health. I had not heard lately of your
mother's health, and am sorry to hear so poor an account. But as she
does not suffer much, that is the great thing; for mere life I do not
think is much valued by the old. What a time you must have had of it,
when you had to go backwards and forwards.
We are all pretty well, and our eldest daughter is improving. I can see
daylight through my work, and am now finally correcting my chapters for
the press; and I hope in a month or six weeks to have proof-sheets. I am
weary of my work. It is a very odd thing that I have no sensation that
I overwork my brain; but facts compel me to conclude that my brain was
never formed for much thinking. We are resolved to go for two or three
months, when I have finished, to Ilkley, or some such place, to see if
I can anyhow give my health a good start, for it certainly has been
wretched of late, and has incapacitated me for everything. 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. How glad I should be if you could sometime come to Down;
especially when I get a little better, as I still hope to be. We have
set up a billiard table, and I find it does me a deal of good, and
drives the horrid species out of my head. Farewell, my dear old friend.
Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, March 28th [1859].
My dear Lyell,
If I keep decently well, I hope to be able to go to press with my volume
early in May. This being so, I want much to beg a little advice from
you. From an expression in Lady Lyell's note, I fancy that you have
spoken to Murray. Is it so? And is he willing to publish my Abstract?
If you will tell me whether anything, and what has passed, I will then
write to him. Does he know at all of the subject of the book? Secondly,
can you advise me, whether I had better state what terms of publication
I should prefer, or first ask him to propose terms? And what do you
think would be fair terms for an edition? Share profits, or what?
Lastly, will you be so very kind as to look at the enclosed title and
give me your opinion and any criticisms; you must remember that, if I
have health and it appears worth doing, I have a much larger and full
book on the same subject nearly ready.
My Abstract will be about five hundred pages of the size of your first
edition of the 'Elements of Geology.'
Pray forgive me troubling you with the above queries; and you shall have
no more trouble on the subject. I hope the world goes well with you, and
that you are getting on with your various works.
I am working very hard for me, and long to finish and be free and try to
recover some health.
My dear Lyell, ever yours, C. DARWIN.
Very sincere thanks to you for standing my proxy for the Wollaston
Medal.
P.S. Would you advise me to tell Murray that my book is not more
UN-orthodox than the subject makes inevitable. That I do not discuss the
origin of man. That I do not bring in any discussion about Genesis,
etc., etc., and only give facts, and such conclusions from them as seem
to me fair.
Or had I better say NOTHING to Murray, and assume that he cannot object
to this much unorthodoxy, which in fact is not more than any Geological
Treatise which runs slap counter to Genesis.
INCLOSURE.
AN ABSTRACT OF AN ESSAY
ON THE
ORIGIN
OF
SPECIES AND VARIETIES
THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION
BY
CHARLES DARWIN, M.A.
Fellow of the Royal Geological and Linnean Societies...
LONDON:
etc., etc., etc., etc.
1859.
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, March 30th [1859].
My dear Lyell,
You have been uncommonly kind in all you have done. You not only have
saved me much trouble and some anxiety, but have done all incomparably
better than I could have done it. I am much pleased at all you say about
Murray. I will write either to-day or to-morrow to him, and will send
shortly a large bundle of MS., but unfortunately I cannot for a week, as
the first three chapters are in the copyists' hands.
I am sorry about Murray objecting to the term Abstract, as I look at
it as the only possible apology for NOT giving references and facts in
full, but I will defer to him and you. I am also sorry about the term
"natural selection." I hope to retain it with explanation somewhat as
thus--
"Through natural selection, or the preservation of favoured Races."
Why I like the term is that it is constantly used in all works on
breeding, and I am surprised that it is not familiar to Murray; but I
have so long studied such works that I have ceased to be a competent
judge.
I again most truly and cordially thank you for your really valuable
assistance.
Yours most truly, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, April 2nd [1859].
...I wrote to him [Mr. Murray] and gave him the headings of the
chapters, and told him he could not have the MS. for ten days or so;
and this morning I received a letter, offering me handsome terms, and
agreeing to publish without seeing the MS.! So he is eager enough; I
think I should have been cautious, anyhow, but, owing to your letter,
I told him most EXPLICITLY that I accept his offer solely on condition
that, after he has seen part or all the MS., he has full power of
retracting. You will think me presumptuous, but I think my book will
be popular to a certain extent (enough to ensure [against] heavy loss)
amongst scientific and semi-scientific men; why I think so is, because
I have found in conversation so great and surprising an interest amongst
such men, and some o-scientific [non-scientific] men on this subject,
and all my chapters are not NEARLY so dry and dull as that which you
have read on geographical distribution. Anyhow, Murray ought to be the
best judge, and if he chooses to publish it, I think I may wash my hands
of all responsibility. I am sure my friends, i.e., Lyell and you, have
been EXTRAORDINARILY kind in troubling yourselves on the matter.
I shall be delighted to see you the day before Good Friday; there would
be one advantage for you in any other day--as I believe both my boys
come home on that day--and it would be almost impossible that I could
send the carriage for you. There will, I believe, be some relations in
the house--but I hope you will not care for that, as we shall easily get
as much talking as my IMBECILE STATE allows. I shall deeply enjoy seeing
you.
...I am tired, so no more.
My dear Hooker, your affectionate, C. DARWIN.
P.S.--Please to send, well TIED UP with strong string, my Geographical
MS., towards the latter half of next week--i.e., 7th or 8th--that I may
send it with more to Murray; and God help him if he tries to read it.
...I cannot help a little doubting whether Lyell would take much pains
to induce Murray to publish my book; this was not done at my request,
and it rather grates against my pride.
I know that Lyell has been INFINITELY kind about my affair, but your
dashed (i.e., underlined) "INDUCE" gives the idea that Lyell had
unfairly urged Murray.
CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. April 4th [1859].
...You ask to see my sheets as printed off; I assure you that it will be
the HIGHEST satisfaction to me to do so: I look at the request as a high
compliment. I shall not, you may depend, forget a request which I look
at as a favour. But (and it is a heavy "but" to me) it will be long
before I go to press; I can truly say I am NEVER idle; indeed, I work
too hard for my much weakened health; yet I can do only three hours of
work daily, and I cannot at all see when I shall have finished: I have
done eleven long chapters, but I have got some other very difficult
ones: as palaeontology, classifications, and embryology, etc., and I
have to correct and add largely to all those done. I find, alas! each
chapter takes me on an average three months, so slow I am. There is
no end to the necessary digressions. I have just finished a chapter on
Instinct, and here I found grappling with such a subject as bees'
cells, and comparing all my notes made during twenty years, took up a
despairing length of time.
But I am running on about myself in a most egotistical style. Yet I must
just say how useful I have again and again found your letters, which I
have lately been looking over and quoting! but you need not fear that I
shall quote anything you would dislike, for I try to be very cautious
on this head. I most heartily hope you may succeed in getting your
"incubus" of old work off your hands, and be in some degree a free
man...
Again let me say that I do indeed feel grateful to you...
CHARLES DARWIN TO J. MURRAY. Down, April 5th [1859].
My dear Sir,
I send by this post, the Title (with some remarks on a separate page),
and the first three chapters. If you have patience to read all Chapter
I., I honestly think you will have a fair notion of the interest of the
whole book. It may be conceit, but I believe the subject will interest
the public, and I am sure that the views are original. If you think
otherwise, I must repeat my request that you will freely reject my
work; and though I shall be a little disappointed, I shall be in no way
injured.
If you choose to read Chapters II. and III., you will have a dull and
rather abstruse chapter, and a plain and interesting one, in my opinion.
As soon as you have done with the MS., please to send it by CAREFUL
MESSENGER, AND PLAINLY DIRECTED, to Miss G. Tollett, 14, Queen Anne
Street, Cavendish Square.
This lady, being an excellent judge of style, is going to look out for
errors for me.
You must take your own time, but the sooner you finish, the sooner she
will, and the sooner I shall get to press, which I so earnestly wish.
I presume you will wish to see Chapter IV., the key-stone of my arch,
and Chapters X. and XI., but please to inform me on this head.
My dear Sir, yours sincerely, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, April 11th [1859].
...I write one line to say that I heard from Murray yesterday, and he
says he has read the first three chapters of one MS.(and this includes a
very dull one), and he abides by his offer. Hence he does not want more
MS., and you can send my Geographical chapter when it pleases you...
[Part of the MS. seems to have been lost on its way back to my father;
he wrote (April 14) to Sir J.D. Hooker:]
"I have the old MS., otherwise, the loss would have killed me! The worst
is now that it will cause delay in getting to press, and FAR WORST of
all, lose all advantage of your having looked over my chapter, except
the third part returned. I am very sorry Mrs. Hooker took the trouble of
copying the two pages."
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [April or May, 1859].
...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.
I enclose a criticism, a taste of the future--
REV. S. HAUGHTON'S ADDRESS TO THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, DUBLIN. (February
9, 1859.)
"This speculation of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace would not be worthy
of notice were it not for the weight of authority of the names (i.e.
Lyell's and yours), under whose auspices it has been brought forward. If
it means what it says, it is a truism; if it means anything more, it is
contrary to fact."
Q.E.D.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 11th [1859].
My dear Hooker,
Thank you for telling me about obscurity of style. But on my life no
nigger with lash over him could have worked harder at clearness than
I have done. But the very difficulty to me, of itself leads to the
probability that I fail. Yet one lady who has read all my MS. has found
only two or three obscure sentences, but Mrs. Hooker having so found
it, makes me tremble. I will do my best in proofs. You are a good man to
take the trouble to write about it.
With respect to our mutual muddle ("When I go over the chapter I will
see what I can do, but I hardly know how I am obscure, and I think we
are somehow in a mutual muddle with respect to each other, from starting
from some fundamentally different notions."--Letter of May 6, 1859.),
I never for a moment thought we could not make our ideas clear to each
other by talk, or if either of us had time to write in extenso.
I imagine from some expressions (but if you ask me what, I could not
answer) that you look at variability as some necessary contingency with
organisms, and further that there is some necessary tendency in the
variability to go on diverging in character or degree. IF YOU DO, I do
not agree. "Reversion" again (a form of inheritance), I look at as in no
way directly connected with Variation, though of course inheritance is
of fundamental importance to us, for if a variation be not inherited,
it is of no significance to us. It was on such points as these I FANCIED
that we perhaps started differently.
I fear that my book will not deserve at all the pleasant things you say
about it; and Good Lord, how I do long to have done with it!
Since the above was written, I have received and have been MUCH
INTERESTED by A. Gray. I am delighted at his note about my and Wallace's
paper. He will go round, for it is futile to give up very many species,
and stop at an arbitrary line at others. It is what my grandfather
called Unitarianism, "a feather bed to catch a falling Christian."...
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 18th [1859].
My dear Hooker,
My health has quite failed. I am off to-morrow for a week of Hydropathy.
I am very very sorry to say that I cannot look over any proofs (Of Sir
J. Hooker's Introduction to the 'Flora of Australia.') in the week,
as my object is to drive the subject out of my head. I shall return
to-morrow week. If it be worth while, which probably it is not, you
could keep back any proofs till my return home.
In haste, ever yours, C. DARWIN.
[Ten days later he wrote to Sir J.D. Hooker:
"...I write one word to say that I shall return on Saturday, and if you
have any proof-sheets to send, I shall be glad to do my best in any
criticisms. I had... great prostration of mind and body, but entire
rest, and the douche, and 'Adam Bede,' have together done me a world of
good."]
CHARLES DARWIN TO J. MURRAY. Down, June 14th [1859].
My dear Sir,
The diagram will do very well, and I will send it shortly to Mr. West to
have a few trifling corrections made.
I get on very slowly with proofs. I remember writing to you that I
thought there would not be much correction. I honestly wrote what I
thought, but was most grievously mistaken. I find the style incredibly
bad, and most difficult to make clear and smooth. I am extremely
sorry to say, on account of expense, and loss of time for me, that
the corrections are very heavy, as heavy as possible. But from casual
glances, I still hope that later chapters are not so badly written. How
I could have written so badly is quite inconceivable, but I suppose
it was owing to my whole attention being fixed on the general line of
argument, and not on details. All I can say is, that I am very sorry.
Yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.
P.S. I have been looking at the corrections, and considering them.
It seems to me that I shall put you to a quite unfair expense. If
you please I should like to enter into some such arrangement as the
following: when work completed, you to allow in the account a fairly
moderately heavy charge for corrections, and all excess over that to be
deducted from my profits, or paid by me individually.
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, June 21st [1859].
I am working very hard, but get on slowly, for I find that my
corrections are terrifically heavy, and the work most difficult to me. I
have corrected 130 pages, and the volume will be about 500. I have tried
my best to make it clear and striking, but very much fear that I have
failed--so many discussions are and must be very perplexing. I have done
my best. If you had all my materials, I am sure you would have made a
splendid book. I long to finish, for I am nearly worn out.
My dear Lyell, ever yours most truly, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 22nd [June, 1859].
My dear Hooker,
I did not answer your pleasant note, with a good deal of news to me,
of May 30th, as I have been expecting proofs from you. But now, having
nothing particular to do, I will fly a note, though I have nothing
particular to say or ask. Indeed, how can a man have anything to say,
who spends every day in correcting accursed proofs; and such proofs! I
have fairly to blacken them, and fasten slips of paper on, so miserable
have I found the style. You say that you dreamt that my book was
ENTERTAINING; that dream is pretty well over with me, and I begin to
fear that the public will find it intolerably dry and perplexing. But I
will never give up that a better man could have made a splendid book
out of the materials. I was glad to hear about Prestwich's paper. (Mr.
Prestwich wrote on the occurrence of flint instruments associated with
the remains of extinct animals in France.--(Proc. R. Soc., 1859.))
My doubt has been (and I see Wright has inserted the same in the
'Athenaeum') whether the pieces of flint are really tools; their
numbers make me doubt, and when I formerly looked at Boucher de Perthe's
drawings, I came to the conclusion that they were angular fragments
broken by ice action.
Did crossing the Acacia do any good? I am so hard worked, that I can
make no experiments. I have got only to 150 pages in first proof.
Adios, my dear Hooker, ever yours, CHARLES DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J. MURRAY. Down, July 25th [1859].
My dear Sir,
I write to say that five sheets are returned to the printers ready to
strike off, and two more sheets require only a revise; so that I presume
you will soon have to decide what number of copies to print off.
I am quite incapable of forming an opinion. I think I have got the style
FAIRLY good and clear, with infinite trouble. But whether the book will
be successful to a degree to satisfy you, I really cannot conjecture. I
heartily hope it may.
My dear Sir, yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, August 9th, 1859.
My dear Mr. Wallace,
I received your letter and memoir (This seems to refer to Mr. Wallace's
paper, "On the Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago," 'Linn.
Soc. Journ,' 1860.) on the 7th, and will forward it to-morrow to the
Linnean Society. But you will be aware that there is no meeting till
the beginning of November. Your paper seems to me ADMIRABLE in matter,
style, and reasoning; and I thank you for allowing me to read it. Had I
read it some months ago, I should have profited by it for my forthcoming
volume. But my two chapters on this subject are in type, and, though not
yet corrected, I am so wearied out and weak in health, that I am fully
resolved not to add one word, and merely improve the style. So you will
see that my views are nearly the same with yours, and you may rely on it
that not one word shall be altered owing to my having read your
ideas. Are you aware that Mr. W. Earl (Probably Mr. W. Earle's paper,
Geographical Soc. Journal, 1845.) published several years ago the view
of distribution of animals in the Malay Archipelago, in relation to the
depth of the sea between the islands? I was much struck with this,
and have been in the habit of noting all facts in distribution in
that archipelago, and elsewhere, in this relation. I have been led
to conclude that there has been a good deal of naturalisation in the
different Malay islands, and which I have thought, to a certain extent,
would account for anomalies. Timor has been my greatest puzzle. What do
you say to the peculiar Felis there? I wish that you had visited Timor;
it has been asserted that a fossil mastodon's or elephant's tooth (I
forget which) has been found there, which would be a grand fact. I was
aware that Celebes was very peculiar; but the relation to Africa is
quite new to me, and marvellous, and almost passes belief. It is as
anomalous as the relation of PLANTS in S.W. Australia to the Cape of
Good Hope. I differ WHOLLY from you on the colonisation of oceanic
islands, but you will have EVERY ONE else on your side. I quite agree
with respect to all islands not situated far in the ocean. I quite agree
on the little occasional intermigration between lands [islands?] when
once pretty well stocked with inhabitants, but think this does not apply
to rising and ill-stocked islands. Are you aware that ANNUALLY birds are
blown to Madeira, the Azores (and to Bermuda from America). I wish I had
given a fuller abstract of my reasons for not believing in Forbes' great
continental extensions; but it is too late, for I will alter nothing--I
am worn out, and must have rest. Owen, I do not doubt, will bitterly
oppose us...Hooker is publishing a grand introduction to the Flora of
Australia, and goes the whole length. I have seen proofs of about half.
With every good wish.
Believe me, yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, September 1st [1859].
...I am not surprised at your finding your Introduction very difficult.
But do not grudge the labour, and do not say you "have burnt your
fingers," and are "deep in the mud"; for I feel sure that the result
will be well worth the labour. Unless I am a fool, I must be a judge
to some extent of the value of such general essays, and I am fully
convinced that yours are the must valuable ever published.
I have corrected all but the last two chapters of my book, and hope to
have done revises and all in about three weeks, and then I (or we all)
shall start for some months' hydropathy; my health has been very bad,
and I am becoming as weak as a child, and incapable of doing anything
whatever, except my three hours daily work at proof-sheets. God knows
whether I shall ever be good at anything again, perhaps a long rest and
hydropathy may do something.
I have not had A. Gray's Essay, and should not feel up to criticise it,
even if I had the impertinence and courage. You will believe me that
I speak strictly the truth when I say that your Australian Essay is
EXTREMELY interesting to me, rather too much so. I enjoy reading it
over, and if you think my criticisms are worth anything to you, I beg
you to send the sheets (if you can give me time for good days); but
unless I can render you any little, however little assistance, I would
rather read the essay when published. Pray understand that I should be
TRULY vexed not to read them, if you wish it for your own sake.
I had a terribly long fit of sickness yesterday, which makes the world
rather extra gloomy to-day, and I have an insanely strong wish to finish
my accursed book, such corrections every page has required as I never
saw before. It is so weariful, killing the whole afternoon, after 12
o'clock doing nothing whatever. But I will grumble no more. So farewell,
we shall meet in the winter I trust.
Farewell, my dear Hooker, your affectionate friend, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, September 2nd [1859].
...I am very glad you wish to see my clean sheets: I should have offered
them, but did not know whether it would bore you; I wrote by this
morning's post to Murray to send them. Unfortunately I have not got to
the part which will interest you, I think most, and which tells most
in favour of the view, viz., Geological Succession, Geographical
Distribution, and especially Morphology, Embryology and Rudimentary
Organs. I will see that the remaining sheets, when printed off, are sent
to you. But would you like for me to send the last and perfect revises
of the sheets as I correct them? if so, send me your address in a blank
envelope. I hope that you will read all, whether dull (especially latter
part of Chapter II.) or not, for I am convinced there is not a sentence
which has not a bearing on the whole argument. You will find Chapter
IV. perplexing and unintelligible, without the aid of the enclosed queer
diagram (The diagram illustrates descent with divergence.), of which
I send an old and useless proof. I have, as Murray says, corrected so
heavily, as almost to have re-written it; but yet I fear it is poorly
written. Parts are intricate; and I do not think that even you could
make them quite clear. Do not, I beg, be in a hurry in committing
yourself (like so many naturalists) to go a certain length and no
further; for I am deeply convinced that it is absolutely necessary to
go the whole vast length, or stick to the creation of each separate
species; I argue this point briefly in the last chapter. Remember that
your verdict will probably have more influence than my book in deciding
whether such views as I hold will be admitted or rejected at present; in
the future I cannot doubt about their admittance, and our posterity will
marvel as much about the current belief as we do about fossils shells
having been thought to have been created as we now see them. But forgive
me for running on about my hobby-horse...
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, [September] 11th [1859].
My dear Hooker,
I corrected the last proof yesterday, and I have now my revises, index,
etc., which will take me near to the end of the month. So that the neck
of my work, thank God, is broken.
I write now to say that I am uneasy in my conscience about hesitating to
look over your proofs, but I was feeling miserably unwell and shattered
when I wrote. I do not suppose I could be of hardly any use, but if I
could, pray send me any proofs. I should be (and fear I was) the most
ungrateful man to hesitate to do anything for you after some fifteen or
more years' help from you.
As soon as ever I have fairly finished I shall be off to Ilkley, or some
other Hydropathic establishment. But I shall be some time yet, as my
proofs have been so utterly obscured with corrections, that I have to
correct heavily on revises.
Murray proposes to publish the first week in November. Oh, good heavens,
the relief to my head and body to banish the whole subject from my mind!
I hope to God, you do not think me a brute about your proof-sheets.
Farewell, yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, September 20th [1859].
My dear Lyell,
You once gave me intense pleasure, or rather delight, by the way you
were interested, in a manner I never expected, in my Coral Reef notions,
and now you have again given me similar pleasure by the manner you have
noticed my species work. (Sir Charles was President of the Geological
section at the meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen in 1859.
The following passage occurs in the address: "On this difficult and
mysterious subject a work will very shortly appear by Mr. Charles
Darwin, the result of twenty years of observations and experiments in
Zoology, Botany, and Geology, by which he had been led to the conclusion
that those powers of nature which give rise to races and permanent
varieties in animals and plants, are the same as those which in much
longer periods produce species, and in a still longer series of ages
give rise to differences of generic rank. He appears to me to have
succeeded by his investigations and reasonings in throwing a flood
of light on many classes of phenomena connected with the affinities,
geographical distribution, and geological succession of organic beings,
for which no other hypothesis has been able, or has even attempted to
account.") Nothing could be more satisfactory to me, and I thank you for
myself, and even more for the subject's sake, as I know well that
the sentence will make many fairly consider the subject, instead of
ridiculing it. Although your previously felt doubts on the immutability
of species, may have more influence in converting you (if you be
converted) than my book; yet as I regard your verdict as far more
important in my own eyes, and I believe in the eyes of the world than of
any other dozen men, I am naturally very anxious about it. Therefore
let me beg you to keep your mind open till you receive (in perhaps a
fortnight's time) my latter chapters, which are the most important of
all on the favourable side. The last chapter, which sums up and balances
in a mass all the arguments contra and pro, will, I think, be useful to
you. I cannot too strongly express my conviction of the general truth
of my doctrines, and God knows I have never shirked a difficulty. I am
foolishly anxious for your verdict, not that I shall be disappointed if
you are not converted; for I remember the long years it took me to
come round; but I shall be most deeply delighted if you do come round,
especially if I have a fair share in the conversion, I shall then
feel that my career is run, and care little whether I ever am good for
anything again in this life.
Thank you much for allowing me to put in the sentence about your grave
doubt. (As to the immutability of species, 'Origin,' Edition i., page
310.) So much and too much about myself.
I have read with extreme interest in the Aberdeen paper about the flint
tools; you have made the whole case far clearer to me; I suppose that
you did not think the evidence sufficient about the Glacial period.
With cordial thanks for your splendid notice of my book.
Believe me, my dear Lyell, your affectionate disciple, CHARLES DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, September 23rd [1859].
My dear Fox,
I was very glad to get your letter a few days ago. I was wishing to hear
about you, but have been in such an absorbed, slavish, overworked
state, that I had not heart without compulsion to write to any one or
do anything beyond my daily work. Though your account of yourself is
better, I cannot think it at all satisfactory, and I wish you would soon
go to Malvern again. My father used to believe largely in an old saying
that, if a man grew thinner between fifty and sixty years of age, his
chance of long life was poor, and that on the contrary it was a very
good sign if he grew fatter; so that your stoutness, I look at as a
very good omen. My health has been as bad as it well could be all this
summer; and I have kept on my legs, only by going at short intervals to
Moor Park; but I have been better lately, and, thank Heaven, I have at
last as good as done my book, having only the index and two or three
revises to do. It will be published in the first week in November, and a
copy shall be sent you. Remember it is only an Abstract (but has cost
me above thirteen months to write!!), and facts and authorities are far
from given in full. I shall be curious to hear what you think of it, but
I am not so silly as to expect to convert you. Lyell has read about
half of the volume in clean sheets, and gives me very great kudos. He
is wavering so much about the immutability of species, that I expect
he will come round. Hooker has come round, and will publish his belief
soon. So much for my abominable volume, which has cost me so much labour
that I almost hate it. On October 3rd I start for Ilkley, but shall
take three days for the journey! It is so late that we shall not take
a house; but I go there alone for three or four weeks, then return home
for a week and go to Moor Park for three or four weeks, and then I shall
get a moderate spell of hydropathy: and I intend, if I can keep to my
resolution, of being idle this winter. But I fear ennui will be as bad
as a bad stomach...
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, September 25th [1859].
My dear Lyell,
I send by this post four corrected sheets. I have altered the sentence
about the Eocene fauna being beaten by recent, thanks to your remark.
But I imagined that it would have been clear that I supposed the climate
to be nearly similar; you do not doubt, I imagine, that the climate of
the eocene and recent periods in DIFFERENT parts of the world could
be matched. Not that I think climate nearly so important as most
naturalists seem to think. In my opinion no error is more mischievous
than this.
I was very glad to find that Hooker, who read over, in MS., my
Geographical chapters, quite agreed in the view of the greater
importance of organic relations. I should like you to consider page 77
and reflect on the case of any organism in the midst of its range.
I shall be curious hereafter to hear what you think of distribution
during the glacial and preceding warmer periods. I am so glad you do
not think the Chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record
exaggerated; I was more fearful about this chapter than about any part.
Embryology in Chapter VIII. is one of my strongest points I think. But
I must not bore you by running on. My mind is so wearisomely full of the
subject.
I do thank you for your eulogy at Aberdeen. I have been so wearied and
exhausted of late that I have for months doubted whether I have not been
throwing away time and labour for nothing. But now I care not what the
universal world says; I have always found you right, and certainly on
this occasion I am not going to doubt for the first time. Whether you go
far, or but a very short way with me and others who believe as I do, I
am contented, for my work cannot be in vain. You would laugh if you knew
how often I have read your paragraph, and it has acted like a little
dram...
Farewell, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, September 30th [1859].
My dear Lyell,
I sent off this morning the last sheets, but without index, which is not
in type. I look at you as my Lord High Chancellor in Natural Science,
and therefore I request you, after you have finished, just to RERUN over
the heads in the Recapitulation-part of last chapter. I shall be deeply
anxious to hear what you decide (if you are able to decide) on the
balance of the pros and contras given in my volume, and of such other
pros and contras as may occur to you. I hope that you will think that I
have given the difficulties fairly. I feel an entire conviction that if
you are now staggered to any moderate extent, that you will come more
and more round, the longer you keep the subject at all before your mind.
I remember well how many long years it was before I could look into the
faces of some of the difficulties and not feel quite abashed. I fairly
struck my colours before the case of neuter insects.
I suppose that I am a very slow thinker, for you would be surprised at
the number of years it took me to see clearly what some of the problems
were which had to be solved, such as the necessity of the principle of
divergence of character, the extinction of intermediate varieties, on
a continuous area, with graduated conditions; the double problem of
sterile first crosses and sterile hybrids, etc., etc.
Looking back, I think it was more difficult to see what the problems
were than to solve them, so far as I have succeeded in doing, and this
seems to me rather curious. Well, good or bad, my work, thank God, is
over; and hard work, I can assure you, I have had, and much work which
has never borne fruit. You can see, by the way I am scribbling, that
I have an idle and rainy afternoon. I was not able to start for Ilkley
yesterday as I was too unwell; but I hope to get there on Tuesday or
Wednesday. Do, I beg you, when you have finished my book and thought a
little over it, let me hear from you. Never mind and pitch into me, if
you think it requisite; some future day, in London possibly, you may
give me a few criticisms in detail, that is, if you have scribbled any
remarks on the margin, for the chance of a second edition.
Murray has printed 1250 copies, which seems to me rather too large an
edition, but I hope he will not lose.
I make as much fuss about my book as if it were my first. Forgive me,
and believe me, my dear Lyell,
Yours most sincerely, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Ilkley, Yorkshire, October 15th [1859].
My dear Hooker,
Be a good man and screw out time enough to write me a note and tell me a
little about yourself, your doings, and belongings.
Is your Introduction fairly finished? I know you will abuse it, and I
know well how much I shall like it. I have been here nearly a fortnight,
and it has done me very much good, though I sprained my ankle last
Sunday, which has quite stopped walking. All my family come here on
Monday to stop three or four weeks, and then I shall go back to the
great establishment, and stay a fortnight; so that if I can keep my
spirits, I shall stay eight weeks here, and thus give hydropathy a
fair chance. Before starting here I was in an awful state of stomach,
strength, temper, and spirits. My book has been completely finished some
little time; as soon as copies are ready, of course one will be sent
you. I hope you will mark your copy with scores, so that I may profit
by any criticisms. I should like to hear your general impression. From
Lyell's letters, he thinks favourably of it, but seems staggered by
the lengths to which I go. But if you go any considerable length in the
admission of modification, I can see no possible means of drawing the
line, and saying here you must stop. Lyell is going to reread my book,
and I yet entertain hopes that he will be converted, or perverted, as he
calls it. Lyell has been EXTREMELY kind in writing me three volume-like
letters; but he says nothing about dispersal during the glacial period.
I should like to know what he thinks on this head. I have one question
to ask: Would it be any good to send a copy of my book to Decaisne?
and do you know any philosophical botanists on the Continent, who read
English and care for such subjects? if so, give their addresses. How
about Andersson in Sweden? You cannot think how refreshing it is to
idle away the whole day, and hardly ever think in the least about my
confounded book which half-killed me. I much wish I could hear of your
taking a real rest. I know how very strong you are, mentally, but I
never will believe you can go on working as you have worked of late with
impunity. You will some day stretch the string too tight. Farewell, my
good, and kind, and dear friend,
Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO T.H. HUXLEY. Ilkley, Otley, Yorkshire, October 15th
[1859].
My dear Huxley,
I am here hydropathising and coming to life again, after having finished
my accursed book, which would have been easy work to any one else, but
half-killed me. I have thought you would give me one bit of information,
and I know not to whom else to apply; viz., the addresses of Barrande,
Von Siebold, Keyserling (I dare say Sir Roderick would know the latter).
Can you tell me of any good and SPECULATIVE foreigners to whom it would
be worth while to send copies of my book, on the 'Origin of Species'?
I doubt whether it is worth sending to Siebold. I should like to send a
few copies about, but how many I can afford I know not yet till I hear
what price Murray affixes.
I need not say that I will send, of course, one to you, in the first
week of November. I hope to send copies abroad immediately. I shall be
INTENSELY curious to hear what effect the book produces on you. I know
that there will be much in it which you will object to, and I do not
doubt many errors. I am very far from expecting to convert you to many
of my heresies; but if, on the whole, you and two or three others think
I am on the right road, I shall not care what the mob of naturalists
think. The penultimate chapter (Chapter XIII. is on Classification,
Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs.), though I believe it
includes the truth, will, I much fear, make you savage. Do not act and
say, like Macleay versus Fleming, "I write with aqua fortis to bite into
brass."
Ever yours, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Ilkley, Yorkshire, October 20th [1859].
My dear Lyell,
I have been reading over all your letters consecutively, and I do not
feel that I have thanked you half enough for the extreme pleasure which
they have given me, and for their utility. I see in them evidence of
fluctuation in the degree of credence you give to the theory; nor am
I at all surprised at this, for many and many fluctuations I have
undergone.
There is one point in your letter which I did not notice, about the
animals (and many plants) naturalised in Australia, which you think
could not endure without man's aid. I cannot see how man does aid the
feral cattle. But, letting that pass, you seem to think, that because
they suffer prodigious destruction during droughts, that they would all
be destroyed. In the "gran secos" of La Plata, the indigenous animals,
such as the American deer, die by thousands, and suffer apparently as
much as the cattle. In parts of India, after a drought, it takes ten
or more years before the indigenous mammals get up to their full number
again. Your argument would, I think, apply to the aborigines as well as
to the feral.
An animal or plant which becomes feral in one small territory might be
destroyed by climate, but I can hardly believe so, when once feral over
several large territories. Again, I feel inclined to swear at climate:
do not think me impudent for attacking you about climate. You say you
doubt whether man could have existed under the Eocene climate, but man
can now withstand the climate of Esquimaux-land and West Equatorial
Africa; and surely you do not think the Eocene climate differed from the
present throughout all Europe, as much as the Arctic regions differ from
Equatorial Africa?
With respect to organisms being created on the American type in America,
it might, I think, be said that they were so created to prevent them
being too well created, so as to beat the aborigines; but this seems to
me, somehow, a monstrous doctrine.
I have reflected a good deal on what you say on the necessity of
continued intervention of creative power. I cannot see this necessity;
and its admission, I think, would make the theory of Natural Selection
valueless. Grant a simple Archetypal creature, like the Mud-fish or
Lepidosiren, with the five senses and some vestige of mind, and I
believe natural selection will account for the production of every
vertebrate animal.
Farewell; forgive me for indulging in this prose, and believe me, with
cordial thanks,
Your ever attached disciple, C. DARWIN.
P.S.--When, and if, you reread, I supplicate you to write on the margin
the word "expand," when too condensed, or "not clear." or "?." Such
marks would cost you little trouble, and I could copy them and reflect
on them, and their value would be infinite to me.
My larger book will have to be wholly re-written, and not merely the
present volume expanded; so that I want to waste as little time over
this volume as possible, if another edition be called for; but I fear
the subject will be too perplexing, as I have treated it, for general
public.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Ilkley, Yorkshire, Sunday [October 23rd,
1859].
My dear Hooker,
I congratulate you on your 'Introduction' ("Australian Flora".) being in
fact finished. I am sure from what I read of it (and deeply I shall be
interested in reading it straight through), that it must have cost you
a prodigious amount of labour and thought. I shall like very much to
see the sheet, which you wish me to look at. Now I am so completely a
gentleman, that I have sometimes a little difficulty to pass the day;
but it is astonishing how idle a three weeks I have passed. If it is any
comfort to you, pray delude yourself by saying that you intend "sticking
to humdrum science." But I believe it just as much as if a plant were
to say that, "I have been growing all my life, and, by Jove, I will stop
growing." You cannot help yourself; you are not clever enough for that.
You could not even remain idle, as I have done, for three weeks! What
you say about Lyell pleases me exceedingly; I had not at all inferred
from his letters that he had come so much round. I remember thinking,
above a year ago, that if ever I lived to see Lyell, yourself,
and Huxley come round, partly by my book, and partly by their own
reflections, I should feel that the subject is safe, and all the world
might rail, but that ultimately the theory of Natural Selection (though,
no doubt, imperfect in its present condition, and embracing many errors)
would prevail. Nothing will ever convince me that three such men, with
so much diversified knowledge, and so well accustomed to search for
truth, could err greatly. I have spoken of you here as a convert made
by me; but I know well how much larger the share has been of your own
self-thought. I am intensely curious to hear Huxley's opinion of my
book. I fear my long discussion on Classification will disgust him; for
it is much opposed to what he once said to me.
But, how I am running on. You see how idle I am; but I have so enjoyed
your letter that you must forgive me. With respect to migration during
the glacial period: I think Lyell quite comprehends, for he has given me
a supporting fact. But, perhaps, he unconsciously hates (do not say so
to him) the view as slightly staggering him on his favourite theory of
all changes of climate being due to changes in the relative position of
land and water.
I will send copies of my book to all the men specified by you;... you
would be so kind as to add title, as Doctor, or Professor, or Monsieur,
or Von, and initials (when wanted), and addresses to the names on the
enclosed list, and let me have it pretty SOON, as towards the close
of this week Murray says the copies to go abroad will be ready. I am
anxious to get my view generally known, and not, I hope and think, for
mere personal conceit...
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Ilkley, Yorkshire, October 25th [1859].
...Our difference on "principle of improvement" and "power of
adaptation" is too profound for discussion by letter. If I am wrong, I
am quite blind to my error. If I am right, our difference will be got
over only by your re-reading carefully and reflecting on my first four
chapters. I supplicate you to read these again carefully. The so-called
improvement of our Shorthorn cattle, pigeons, etc., does not presuppose
or require any aboriginal "power of adaptation," or "principle of
improvement;" it requires only diversified variability, and man to
select or take advantage of those modifications which are useful to him;
so under nature any slight modification which CHANCES to arise, and is
useful to any creature, is selected or preserved in the struggle for
life; any modification which is injurious is destroyed or rejected;
any which is neither useful nor injurious will be left a fluctuating
element. When you contrast natural selection and "improvement," you seem
always to overlook (for I do not see how you can deny) that every step
in the natural selection of each species implies improvement in that
species in relation to its conditions of life. No modification can be
selected without it be an improvement or advantage. Improvement implies,
I suppose, each form obtaining many parts or organs, all excellently
adapted for their functions. As each species is improved, and as the
number of forms will have increased, if we look to the whole course of
time, the organic condition of life for other forms will become more
complex, and there will be a necessity for other forms to become
improved, or they will be exterminated; and I can see no limit to this
process of improvement, without the intervention of any other and direct
principle of improvement. All this seems to me quite compatible with
certain forms fitted for simple conditions, remaining unaltered, or
being degraded.
If I have a second edition, I will reiterate "Natural Selection," and,
as a general consequence, "Natural Improvement."
As you go, as far as you do, I begin strongly to think, judging from
myself, that you will go much further. How slowly the older geologists
admitted your grand views on existing geological causes of change!
If at any time you think I can answer any question, it is a real
pleasure to me to write.
Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J. MURRAY. Ilkley, Yorkshire [1859].
My dear Sir,
I have received your kind note and the copy; I am infinitely pleased and
proud at the appearance of my child.
I quite agree to all you propose about price. But you are really too
generous about the, to me, scandalously heavy corrections. Are you not
acting unfairly towards yourself? Would it not be better at least to
share the 72 pounds 8 shillings? I shall be fully satisfied, for I had
no business to send, though quite unintentionally and unexpectedly, such
badly composed MS. to the printers.
Thank you for your kind offer to distribute the copies to my friends and
assistors as soon as possible. Do not trouble yourself much about the
foreigners, as Messrs. Williams and Norgate have most kindly offered
to do their best, and they are accustomed to send to all parts of the
world.
I will pay for my copies whenever you like. I am so glad that you were
so good as to undertake the publication of my book.
My dear Sir, yours very sincerely, CHARLES DARWIN.
P.S.--Please do not forget to let me hear about two days before the
copies are distributed.
I do not know when I shall leave this place, certainly not for several
weeks. Whenever I am in London I will call on you.
CHAPTER 1.XIV. -- BY PROFESSOR HUXLEY.
ON THE RECEPTION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.'
To the present generation, that is to say, the people a few years on
the hither and thither side of thirty, the name of Charles Darwin stands
alongside of those of Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday; and, like them,
calls up the grand ideal of a searcher after truth and interpreter of
Nature. They think of him who bore it as a rare combination of genius,
industry, and unswerving veracity, who earned his place among the most
famous men of the age by sheer native power, in the teeth of a gale of
popular prejudice, and uncheered by a sign of favour or appreciation
from the official fountains of honour; as one who in spite of an acute
sensitiveness to praise and blame, and notwithstanding provocations
which might have excused any outbreak, kept himself clear of all envy,
hatred, and malice, nor dealt otherwise than fairly and justly with the
unfairness and injustice which was showered upon him; while, to the end
of his days, he was ready to listen with patience and respect to the
most insignificant of reasonable objectors.
And with respect to that theory of the origin of the forms of life
peopling our globe, with which Darwin's name is bound up as closely
as that of Newton with the theory of gravitation, nothing seems to be
further from the mind of the present generation than any attempt to
smother it with ridicule or to crush it by vehemence of denunciation.
"The struggle for existence," and "Natural selection," have become
household words and every-day conceptions. The reality and the
importance of the natural processes on which Darwin founds his
deductions are no more doubted than those of growth and multiplication;
and, whether the full potency attributed to them is admitted or not,
no one doubts their vast and far-reaching significance. Wherever the
biological sciences are studied, the 'Origin of Species' lights the
paths of the investigator; wherever they are taught it permeates the
course of instruction. Nor has the influence of Darwinian ideas
been less profound, beyond the realms of Biology. The oldest of all
philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand and foot and cast into
utter darkness during the millennium of theological scholasticism. But
Darwin poured new life-blood into the ancient frame; the bonds burst,
and the revivified thought of ancient Greece has proved itself to be a
more adequate expression of the universal order of things than any of
the schemes which have been accepted by the credulity and welcomed by
the superstition of seventy later generations of men.
To any one who studies the signs of the times, the emergence of the
philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of claimant to the throne
of the world of thought, from the limbo of hated and, as many hoped,
forgotten things, is the most portentous event of the nineteenth
century. But the most effective weapons of the modern champions of
Evolution were fabricated by Darwin; and the 'Origin of Species' has
enlisted a formidable body of combatants, trained in the severe school
of Physical Science, whose ears might have long remained deaf to the
speculations of a priori philosophers.
I do not think any candid or instructed person will deny the truth
of that which has just been asserted. He may hate the very name of
Evolution, and may deny its pretensions as vehemently as a Jacobite
denied those of George the Second. But there it is--not only as
solidly seated as the Hanoverian dynasty, but happily independent of
Parliamentary sanction--and the dullest antagonists have come to see
that they have to deal with an adversary whose bones are to be broken by
no amount of bad words.
Even the theologians have almost ceased to pit the plain meaning of
Genesis against the no less plain meaning of Nature. Their more candid,
or more cautious, representatives have given up dealing with Evolution
as if it were a damnable heresy, and have taken refuge in one of two
courses. Either they deny that Genesis was meant to teach scientific
truth, and thus save the veracity of the record at the expense of
its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel
ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of
making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et
dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always
reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no
more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown origin,
claiming no scientific authority and possessing none.
As my pen finishes these passages, I can but be amused to think what
a terrible hubbub would have been made (in truth was made) about any
similar expressions of opinion a quarter of a century ago. In fact,
the contrast between the present condition of public opinion upon the
Darwinian question; between the estimation in which Darwin's views are
now held in the scientific world; between the acquiescence, or at least
quiescence, of the theologians of the self-respecting order at the
present day and the outburst of antagonism on all sides in 1858-9, when
the new theory respecting the origin of species first became known to
the older generation to which I belong, is so startling that, except
for documentary evidence, I should be sometimes inclined to think my
memories dreams. I have a great respect for the younger generation
myself (they can write our lives, and ravel out all our follies, if
they choose to take the trouble, by and by), and I should be glad to be
assured that the feeling is reciprocal; but I am afraid that the
story of our dealings with Darwin may prove a great hindrance to that
veneration for our wisdom which I should like them to display. We have
not even the excuse that, thirty years ago, Mr. Darwin was an obscure
novice, who had no claims on our attention. On the contrary, his
remarkable zoological and geological investigations had long given him
an assured position among the most eminent and original investigators of
the day; while his charming 'Voyage of a Naturalist' had justly earned
him a wide-spread reputation among the general public. I doubt if there
was any man then living who had a better right to expect that anything
he might choose to say on such a question as the Origin of Species would
be listened to with profound attention, and discussed with respect; and
there was certainly no man whose personal character should have afforded
a better safeguard against attacks, instinct with malignity and spiced
with shameless impertinences.
Yet such was the portion of one of the kindest and truest men that it
was ever my good fortune to know; and years had to pass away before
misrepresentation, ridicule, and denunciation, ceased to be the most
notable constituents of the majority of the multitudinous criticisms
of his work which poured from the press. I am loth to rake any of these
ancient scandals from their well-deserved oblivion; but I must make good
a statement which may seem overcharged to the present generation, and
there is no piece justificative more apt for the purpose, or more worthy
of such dishonour, than the article in the 'Quarterly Review' for July,
1860. (I was not aware when I wrote these passages that the authorship
of the article had been publicly acknowledged. Confession unaccompanied
by penitence, however, affords no ground for mitigation of judgment;
and the kindliness with which Mr. Darwin speaks of his assailant, Bishop
Wilberforce (vol. ii.), is so striking an exemplification of his singular
gentleness and modesty, that it rather increases one's indignation
against the presumption of his critic.) Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr.
Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow
pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which
one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most
candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as
a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric
of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is
reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this
high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr.
Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or
of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection
to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable
varieties of turnips are tending to become men;" who is so ignorant of
paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants
of the carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely
affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be "entirely
separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to
themselves;" of the rudiments of physiology, that he can ask, "what
advantage of life could alter the shape of the corpuscles into which
the blood can be evaporated?" Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour this
outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a little stimulation of the
odium theologicum. Some inkling of the history of the conflicts between
Astronomy, Geology, and Theology, leads him to keep a retreat open by
the proviso that he cannot "consent to test the truth of Natural Science
by the word of Revelation;" but, for all that, he devotes pages to the
exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory "contradicts the
revealed relation of the creation to its Creator," and is "inconsistent
with the fulness of his glory."
If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of Species'
to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do
not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the 'Quarterly
Review' article, unless, perhaps, the address of a Reverend Professor to
the Dublin Geological Society might enter into competition with it. But
a large proportion of Mr. Darwin's critics had a lamentable resemblance
to the 'Quarterly' reviewer, in so far as they lacked either the will,
or the wit, to make themselves masters of his doctrine; hardly any
possessed the knowledge required to follow him through the immense range
of biological and geological science which the 'Origin' covered; while,
too commonly, they had prejudiced the case on theological grounds, and,
as seems to be inevitable when this happens, eked out lack of reason by
superfluity of railing.
But it will be more pleasant and more profitable to consider those
criticisms, which were acknowledged by writers of scientific authority,
or which bore internal evidence of the greater or less competency and,
often, of the good faith, of their authors. Restricting my survey to a
twelvemonth, or thereabouts, after the publication of the 'Origin,'
I find among such critics Louis Agassiz ("The arguments presented by
Darwin in favor of a universal derivation from one primary form of all
the peculiarities existing now among living beings have not made the
slightest impression on my mind.")
"Until the facts of Nature are shown to have been mistaken by those who
have collected them, and that they have a different meaning from
that now generally assigned to them, I shall therefore consider the
transmutation theory as a scientific mistake, untrue in its
facts, unscientific in its method, and mischievous in its
tendency."--Silliman's 'Journal,' July, 1860, pages 143, 154. Extract
from the 3rd volume of 'Contributions to the Natural History of the
United States.'); Murray, an excellent entomologist; Harvey, a botanist
of considerable repute; and the author of an article in the 'Edinburgh
Review,' all strongly adverse to Darwin. Pictet, the distinguished and
widely learned paleontogist of Geneva, treats Mr. Darwin with a respect
which forms a grateful contrast to the tone of some of the preceding
writers, but consents to go with him only a very little way. ("I see no
serious objections to the formation of varieties by natural selection
in the existing world, and that, so far as earlier epochs are concerned,
this law may be assumed to explain the origin of closely allied species,
supposing for this purpose a very long period of time."
"With regard to simple varieties and closely allied species, I believe
that Mr. Darwin's theory may explain many things, and throw a great
light upon numerous questions."--'Sur l'Origine de l'Espece. Par Charles
Darwin.' ('Archives des Sc. de la Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve,'
pages 242, 243, Mars 1860.) On the other hand, Lyell, up to that time a
pillar of the anti-transmutationists (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. As
evolutionists, sans phrase, I do not call to mind among the biologists
more than Asa Gray, who fought the battle splendidly in the United
States; Hooker, who was no less vigorous here; the present Sir John
Lubbock and myself. Wallace was far away in the Malay Archipelago; but,
apart from his direct share in the promulgation of the theory of natural
selection, no enumeration of the influences at work, at the time I am
speaking of, would be complete without the mention of his powerful essay
'On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species,' which
was published in 1855. On reading it afresh, I have been astonished to
recollect how small was the impression it made.
In France, the influence of Elie de Beaumont and of Flourens--the
former of whom is said to have "damned himself to everlasting fame" by
inventing the nickname of "la science moussante" for Evolutionism
(One is reminded of the effect of another small academic epigram. The
so-called vertebral theory of the skull is said to have been nipped in
the bud in France by the whisper of an academician to his neighbour,
that, in that case, one's head was a "vertebre pensante."),--to say
nothing of the ill-will of other powerful members of the Institut,
produced for a long time the effect of a conspiracy of silence; and many
years passed before the Academy redeemed itself from the reproach that
the name of Darwin was not to be found on the list of its members.
However, an accomplished writer, out of the range of academical
influences, M. Laugel, gave an excellent and appreciative notice of the
'Origin' in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' Germany took time to consider;
Bronn produced a slightly Bowdlerized translation of the 'Origin'; and
'Kladderadatsch' cut his jokes upon the ape origin of man; but I do not
call to mind that any scientific notability declared himself publicly
in 1860. (However, the man who stands next to Darwin in his influence
on modern biologists, K.E. von Baer, wrote to me, in August 1860,
expressing his general assent to evolutionist views. His phrase, "J'ai
enonce les memes idees...que M. Darwin" (volume ii.) is shown by his
subsequent writings to mean no more than this.) None of us dreamed that,
in the course of a few years, the strength (and perhaps I may add
the weakness) of "Darwinismus" would have its most extensive and most
brilliant illustrations in the land of learning. If a foreigner may
presume to speculate on the cause of this curious interval of silence,
I fancy it was that one moiety of the German biologists were orthodox at
any price, and the other moiety as distinctly heterodox. The latter were
evolutionists, a priori, already, and they must have felt the disgust
natural to deductive philosophers at being offered an inductive and
experimental foundation for a conviction which they had reached by
a shorter cut. It is undoubtedly trying to learn that, though your
conclusions may be all right, your reasons for them are all wrong, or,
at any rate, insufficient.
On the whole, then, the supporters of Mr. Darwin's views in 1860 were
numerically extremely insignificant. There is not the slightest doubt
that, if a general council of the Church scientific had been held at
that time, we should have been condemned by an overwhelming majority.
And there is as little doubt that, if such a council gathered now, the
decree would be of an exactly contrary nature. It would indicate a
lack of sense, as well as of modesty, to ascribe to the men of that
generation less capacity or less honesty than their successors possess.
What, then, are the causes which led instructed and fair-judging men of
that day to arrive at a judgment so different from that which seems
just and fair to those who follow them? That is really one of the most
interesting of all questions connected with the history of science, and
I shall try to answer it. I am afraid that in order to do so I must run
the risk of appearing egotistical. However, if I tell my own story it is
only because I know it better than that of other people.
I think I must have read the 'Vestiges' before I left England in 1846;
but, if I did, the book made very little impression upon me, and I was
not brought into serious contact with the 'Species' question until after
1850. At that time, I had long done with the Pentateuchal cosmogony,
which had been impressed upon my childish understanding as Divine truth,
with all the authority of parents and instructors, and from which it
had cost me many a struggle to get free. But my mind was unbiassed in
respect of any doctrine which presented itself, if it professed to be
based on purely philosophical and scientific reasoning. It seemed to
me then (as it does now) that "creation," in the ordinary sense of the
word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in imagining that,
at some former period, this universe was not in existence; and that
it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is
preferred), in consequence of the volition of some pre-existent Being.
Then, as now, the so-called a priori arguments against Theism; and,
given a Deity, against the possibility of creative acts, appeared to me
to be devoid of reasonable foundation. I had not then, and I have not
now, the smallest a priori objection to raise to the account of the
creation of animals and plants given in 'Paradise Lost,' in which Milton
so vividly embodies the natural sense of Genesis. Far be it from me to
say that it is untrue because it is impossible. I confine myself to what
must be regarded as a modest and reasonable request for some particle of
evidence that the existing species of animals and plants did originate
in that way, as a condition of my belief in a statement which appears to
me to be highly improbable.
And, by way of being perfectly fair, I had exactly the same answer to
give to the evolutionists of 1851-8. Within the ranks of the biologists,
at that time, I met with nobody, except Dr. Grant, of University
College, who had a word to say for Evolution--and his advocacy was not
calculated to advance the cause. Outside these ranks, the only person
known to me whose knowledge and capacity compelled respect, and who
was, at the same time, a thorough-going evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert
Spencer, whose acquaintance I made, I think, in 1852, and then entered
into the bonds of a friendship which, I am happy to think, has known
no interruption. Many and prolonged were the battles we fought on this
topic. But even my friend's rare dialectic skill and copiousness of apt
illustration could not drive me from my agnostic position. I took my
stand upon two grounds: firstly, that up to that time, the evidence in
favour of transmutation was wholly insufficient; and secondly, that no
suggestion respecting the causes of the transmutation assumed, which
had been made, was in any way adequate to explain the phenomena. Looking
back at the state of knowledge at that time, I really do not see that
any other conclusion was justifiable.
In those days I had never even heard of Treviranus' 'Biologie.' However,
I had studied Lamarck attentively and I had read the 'Vestiges' with due
care; but neither of them afforded me any good ground for changing my
negative and critical attitude. As for the 'Vestiges,' I confess that
the book simply irritated me by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly
unscientific habit of mind manifested by the writer. If it had any
influence on me at all, it set me against Evolution; and the only
review I ever have qualms of conscience about, on the ground of needless
savagery, is one I wrote on the 'Vestiges' while under that influence.
With respect to the 'Philosophie Zoologique,' it is no reproach to
Lamarck to say that the discussion of the Species question in that work,
whatever might be said for it in 1809, was miserably below the level
of the knowledge of half a century later. In that interval of time the
elucidation of the structure of the lower animals and plants had
given rise to wholly new conceptions of their relations; histology and
embryology, in the modern sense, had been created; physiology had been
reconstituted; the facts of distribution, geological and geographical,
had been prodigiously multiplied and reduced to order. To any biologist
whose studies had carried him beyond mere species-mongering in 1850,
one-half of Lamarck's arguments were obsolete and the other half
erroneous, or defective, in virtue of omitting to deal with the various
classes of evidence which had been brought to light since his time.
Moreover his one suggestion as to the cause of the gradual modification
of species--effort excited by change of conditions--was, on the face of
it, inapplicable to the whole vegetable world. I do not think that any
impartial judge who reads the 'Philosophie Zoologique' now, and who
afterwards takes up Lyell's trenchant and effectual criticism (published
as far back as 1830), will be disposed to allot to Lamarck a much higher
place in the establishment of biological evolution than that which
Bacon assigns to himself in relation to physical science
generally,--buccinator tantum. (Erasmus Darwin first promulgated
Lamarck's fundamental conceptions, and, with greater logical
consistency, he had applied them to plants. But the advocates of his
claims have failed to show that he, in any respect, anticipated the
central idea of the 'Origin of Species.')
But, by a curious irony of fate, the same influence which led me to
put as little faith in modern speculations on this subject, as in the
venerable traditions recorded in the first two chapters of Genesis,
was perhaps more potent than any other in keeping alive a sort of
pious conviction that Evolution, after all, would turn out true. I have
recently read afresh the first edition of the 'Principles of Geology';
and when I consider that this remarkable book had been nearly thirty
years in everybody's hands, and that it brings home to any reader of
ordinary intelligence a great principle and a great fact--the principle,
that the past must be explained by the present, unless good cause be
shown to the contrary; and the fact, that, so far as our knowledge of
the past history of life on our globe goes, no such cause can be shown
(The same principle and the same fact guide the result from all sound
historical investigation. Grote's 'History of Greece' is a product of
the same intellectual movement as Lyell's 'Principles.')--I cannot but
believe that Lyell, for others, as for myself, was the chief agent
for smoothing the road for Darwin. For consistent uniformitarianism
postulates evolution as much in the organic as in the inorganic world.
The origin of a new species by other than ordinary agencies would be a
vastly greater "catastrophe" than any of those which Lyell successfully
eliminated from sober geological speculation.
In fact, no one was better aware of this than Lyell himself. (Lyell,
with perfect right, claims this position for himself. He speaks of
having "advocated a law of continuity even in the organic world, so far
as possible without adopting Lamarck's theory of transmutation"...)
"But while I taught that as often as certain forms of animals and plants
disappeared, for reasons quite intelligible to us, others took their
place by virtue of a causation which was beyond our comprehension; it
remained for Darwin to accumulate proof that there is no break between
the incoming and the outgoing species, that they are the work of
evolution, and not of special creation...
"I had certainly prepared the way in this country, in six editions of my
work before the 'Vestiges of Creation' appeared in 1842 [1844], for
the reception of Darwin's gradual and insensible evolution of
species."--('Life and Letters,' Letter to Haeckel, volume ii. page 436.
November 23, 1868.) If one reads any of the earlier editions of the
'Principles' carefully (especially by the light of the interesting
series of letters recently published by Sir Charles Lyell's biographer),
it is easy to see that, with all his energetic opposition to Lamarck, on
the one hand, and to the ideal quasi-progressionism of Agassiz, on the
other, Lyell, in his own mind, was strongly disposed to account for the
origination of all past and present species of living things by natural
causes. But he would have liked, at the same time, to keep the name of
creation for a natural process which he imagined to be incomprehensible.
In a letter addressed to Mantell (dated March 2, 1827), Lyell speaks
of having just read Lamarck; he expresses his delight at Lamarck's
theories, and his personal freedom from any objection based on
theological grounds. And though he is evidently alarmed at the pithecoid
origin of man involved in Lamarck's doctrine, he observes:--
"But, after all, what changes species may really undergo! How impossible
will it be to distinguish and lay down a line, beyond which some of the
so-called extinct species have never passed into recent ones."
Again, the following remarkable passage occurs in the postscript of a
letter addressed to Sir John Herschel in 1836:--
"In regard to the origination of new species, I am very glad to find
that you think it probable that it may be carried on through the
intervention of intermediate causes. I left this rather to be inferred,
not thinking it worth while to offend a certain class of persons by
embodying in words what would only be a speculation." (In the same
sense, see the letter to Whewell, March 7, 1837, volume ii., page 5):--
"In regard to this last subject [the changes from one set of animal and
vegetable species to another]...you remember what Herschel said in his
letter to me. If I had stated as plainly as he has done the possibility
of the introduction or origination of fresh species being a natural, in
contradistinction to a miraculous process, I should have raised a host
of prejudices against me, which are unfortunately opposed at every
step to any philosopher who attempts to address the public on these
mysterious subjects." See also letter to Sedgwick, January 12, 1838 ii.
page 35.) He goes on to refer to the criticisms which have been directed
against him on the ground that, by leaving species to be originated by
miracle, he is inconsistent with his own doctrine of uniformitarianism;
and he leaves it to be understood that he had not replied, on the ground
of his general objection to controversy.
Lyell's contemporaries were not without some inkling of his esoteric
doctrine. Whewell's 'History of the Inductive Sciences,' whatever its
philosophical value, is always worth reading and always interesting, if
under no other aspect than that of an evidence of the speculative limits
within which a highly-placed divine might, at that time, safely range
at will. In the course of his discussion of uniformitarianism, the
encyclopaedic Master of Trinity observes:--
"Mr. Lyell, indeed, has spoken of an hypothesis that 'the successive
creation of species may constitute a regular part of the economy of
nature,' but he has nowhere, I think, so described this process as
to make it appear in what department of science we are to place the
hypothesis. Are these new species created by the production, at long
intervals, of an offspring different in species from the parents? Or
are the species so created produced without parents? Are they gradually
evolved from some embryo substance? Or do they suddenly start from the
ground, as in the creation of the poet?...
"Some selection of one of these forms of the hypothesis, rather than the
others, with evidence for the selection, is requisite to entitle us to
place it among the known causes of change, which in this chapter we are
considering. The bare conviction that a creation of species has taken
place, whether once or many times, so long as it is unconnected with
our organical sciences, is a tenet of Natural Theology rather than of
Physical Philosophy." (Whewell's 'History,' volume iii. page 639-640
(Edition 2, 1847.))
The earlier part of this criticism appears perfectly just and
appropriate; but, from the concluding paragraph, Whewell evidently
imagines that by "creation" Lyell means a preternatural intervention of
the Deity; whereas the letter to Herschel shows that, in his own
mind, Lyell meant natural causation; and I see no reason to doubt (The
following passages in Lyell's letters appear to me decisive on this
point):--
To Darwin, October 3, 1859 (ii, 325), on first reading the 'Origin.'
"I have long seen most clearly that if any concession is made, all that
you claim in your concluding pages will follow.
"It is this which has made me so long hesitate, always feeling that the
case of Man and his Races, and of other animals, and that of plants, is
one and the same, and that if a vera causa be admitted for one instant,
[instead] of a purely unknown and imaginary one, such as the word
'creation,' all the consequences must follow."
To Darwin, March 15, 1863 (volume ii. page 365).
"I remember that it was the conclusion he [Lamarck] came to about man
that fortified me thirty years ago against the great impression which
his arguments at first made on my mind, all the greater because Constant
Prevost, a pupil of Cuvier's forty years ago, told me his conviction
'that Cuvier thought species not real, but that science could not
advance without assuming that they were so.'"
To Hooker, March 9, 1863 (volume ii. page 361), in reference to Darwin's
feeling about the 'Antiquity of Man.'
"He [Darwin] seems much disappointed that I do not go farther with him,
or do not speak out more. I can only say that I have spoken out to
the full extent of my present convictions, and even beyond my state of
FEELING as to man's unbroken descent from the brutes, and I find I am
half converting not a few who were in arms against Darwin, and are even
now against Huxley." He speaks of having had to abandon "old and long
cherished ideas, which constituted the charm to me of the theoretical
part of the science in my earlier day, when I believed with Pascal in
the theory, as Hallam terms it, of 'the arch-angel ruined.'"
See the same sentiment in the letter to Darwin, March 11, 1863, page
363:--
"I think the old 'creation' is almost as much required as ever, but
of course it takes a new form if Lamarck's views improved by yours
are adopted." that, if Sir Charles could have avoided the inevitable
corollary of the pithecoid origin of man--for which, to the end of his
life, he entertained a profound antipathy--he would have advocated the
efficiency of causes now in operation to bring about the condition
of the organic world, as stoutly as he championed that doctrine in
reference to inorganic nature.
The fact is, that a discerning eye might have seen that some form or
other of the doctrine of transmutation was inevitable, from the time
when the truth enunciated by William Smith that successive strata are
characterised by different kinds of fossil remains, became a firmly
established law of nature. No one has set forth the speculative
consequences of this generalisation better than the historian of the
'Inductive Sciences':--
"But the study of geology opens to us the spectacle of many groups of
species which have, in the course of the earth's history, succeeded
each other at vast intervals of time; one set of animals and plants
disappearing, as it would seem, from the face of our planet, and others,
which did not before exist, becoming the only occupants of the globe.
And the dilemma then presents itself to us anew:--either we must accept
the doctrine of the transmutation of species, and must suppose that the
organized species of one geological epoch were transmuted into those
of another by some long-continued agency of natural causes; or else,
we must believe in many successive acts of creation and extinction of
species, out of the common course of nature; acts which, therefore,
we may properly call miraculous." (Whewell's 'History of the Inductive
Sciences.' Edition ii., 1847, volume iii. pages 624-625. See for the
author's verdict, pages 638- 39.)
Dr. Whewell decides in favour of the latter conclusion. And if any one
had plied him with the four questions which he puts to Lyell in the
passage already cited, all that can be said now is that he would
certainly have rejected the first. But would he really have had the
courage to say that a Rhinoceros tichorhinus, for instance, "was
produced without parents;" or was "evolved from some embryo substance;"
or that it suddenly started from the ground like Milton's lion "pawing
to get free his hinder parts." I permit myself to doubt whether even
the Master of Trinity's well-tried courage--physical, intellectual,
and moral--would have been equal to this feat. No doubt the sudden
concurrence of half-a-ton of inorganic molecules into a live rhinoceros
is conceivable, and therefore may be possible. But does such an event
lie sufficiently within the bounds of probability to justify the
belief in its occurrence on the strength of any attainable, or, indeed,
imaginable, evidence?
In view of the assertion (often repeated in the early days of the
opposition to Darwin) that he had added nothing to Lamarck, it is very
interesting to observe that the possibility of a fifth alternative, in
addition to the four he has stated, has not dawned upon Dr. Whewell's
mind. The suggestion that new species may result from the selective
action of external conditions upon the variations from their specific
type which individuals present--and which we call "spontaneous,"
because we are ignorant of their causation--is as wholly unknown to the
historian of scientific ideas as it was to biological specialists
before 1858. But that suggestion is the central idea of the 'Origin of
Species,' and contains the quintessence of Darwinism.
Thus, looking back into the past, it seems to me that my own position
of critical expectancy was just and reasonable, and must have been taken
up, on the same grounds, by many other persons. If Agassiz told me that
the forms of life which had successively tenanted the globe were the
incarnations of successive thoughts of the Deity; and that he had wiped
out one set of these embodiments by an appalling geological catastrophe
as soon as His ideas took a more advanced shape, I found myself not
only unable to admit the accuracy of the deductions from the facts of
paleontology, upon which this astounding hypothesis was founded, but I
had to confess my want of any means of testing the correctness of his
explanation of them. And besides that, I could by no means see what the
explanation explained. Neither did it help me to be told by an eminent
anatomist that species had succeeded one another in time, in virtue of
"a continuously operative creational law." That seemed to me to be no
more than saying that species had succeeded one another, in the form of
a vote-catching resolution, with "law" to please the man of science,
and "creational" to draw the orthodox. So I took refuge in that "thatige
Skepsis" which Goethe has so well defined; and, reversing the apostolic
precept to be all things to all men, I usually defended the tenability
of the received doctrines, when I had to do with the transmutationists;
and stood up for the possibility of transmutation among the
orthodox--thereby, no doubt, increasing an already current, but quite
undeserved, reputation for needless combativeness.
I remember, in the course of my first interview with Mr. Darwin,
expressing my belief in the sharpness of the lines of demarcation
between natural groups and in the absence of transitional forms, with
all the confidence of youth and imperfect knowledge. I was not aware,
at that time, that he had then been many years brooding over the
species-question; and the humorous smile which accompanied his gentle
answer, that such was not altogether his view, long haunted and puzzled
me. But it would seem that four or five years' hard work had enabled me
to understand what it meant; for Lyell ('Life and Letters,' volume ii.
page 212.), writing to Sir Charles Bunbury (under date of April 30,
1856), says:--
"When Huxley, Hooker, and Wollaston were at Darwin's last week they (all
four of them) ran a tilt against species--further, I believe, than they
are prepared to go."
I recollect nothing of this beyond the fact of meeting Mr. Wollaston;
and except for Sir Charles' distinct assurance as to "all four," I
should have thought my "outrecuidance" was probably a counterblast to
Wollaston's conservatism. With regard to Hooker, he was already,
like Voltaire's Habbakuk, "capable du tout" in the way of advocating
Evolution.
As I have already said, I imagine that most of those of my
contemporaries who thought seriously about the matter, were very much
in my own state of mind--inclined to say to both Mosaists and
Evolutionists, "a plague on both your houses!" and disposed to turn
aside from an interminable and apparently fruitless discussion,
to labour in the fertile fields of ascertainable fact. And I may,
therefore, further suppose that the publication of the Darwin and
Wallace papers in 1858, and still more that of the 'Origin' in 1859, had
the effect upon them of the flash of light, which to a man who has lost
himself in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes
him straight home or not, certainly goes his way. That which we were
looking for, and could not find, was a hypothesis respecting the origin
of known organic forms, which assumed the operation of no causes but
such as could be proved to be actually at work. We wanted, not to pin
our faith to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and
definite conceptions which could be brought face to face with facts and
have their validity tested. The 'Origin' provided us with the working
hypothesis we sought. Moreover, it did the immense service of freeing us
for ever from the dilemma--refuse to accept the creation hypothesis, and
what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner?
In 1857, I had no answer ready, and I do not think that any one else
had. A year later, we reproached ourselves with dullness for being
perplexed by such an inquiry. My reflection, when I first made myself
master of the central idea of the 'Origin,' was, "How extremely stupid
not to have thought of that!" I suppose that Columbus' companions
said much the same when he made the egg stand on end. The facts of
variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions,
were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the
heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace
dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the 'Origin' guided the
benighted.
Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of evolution, as applied
to the organic world, took in Darwin's hands, would prove to be final or
not, was, to me, a matter of indifference. In my earliest criticisms
of the 'Origin' I ventured to point out that its logical foundation was
insecure so long as experiments in selective breeding had not produced
varieties which were more or less infertile; and that insecurity remains
up to the present time. But, with any and every critical doubt which
my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained
incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if we had
none of us been able to discern the paramount significance of some of
the most patent and notorious of natural facts, until they were, so
to speak, thrust under our noses, what force remained in the
dilemma--creation or nothing? It was obvious that, hereafter, the
probability would be immensely greater, that the links of natural
causation were hidden from our purblind eyes, than that natural
causation should be incompetent to produce all the phenomena of nature.
The only rational course for those who had no other object than the
attainment of truth, was to accept "Darwinism" as a working hypothesis,
and see what could be made of it. Either it would prove its capacity to
elucidate the facts of organic life, or it would break down under the
strain. This was surely the dictate of common sense; and, for once,
common sense carried the day. The result has been that complete
volte-face of the whole scientific world, which must seem so surprising
to the present generation. I do not mean to say that all the leaders of
biological science have avowed themselves Darwinians; but I do not think
that there is a single zoologist, or botanist, or palaeontologist, among
the multitude of active workers of this generation, who is other than an
evolutionist, profoundly influenced by Darwin's views. Whatever may
be the ultimate fate of the particular theory put forth by Darwin, I
venture to affirm that, so far as my knowledge goes, all the ingenuity
and all the learning of hostile critics have not enabled them to adduce
a solitary fact, of which it can be said, this is irreconcilable with
the Darwinian theory. In the prodigious variety and complexity of
organic nature, there are multitudes of phenomena which are not
deducible from any generalisations we have yet reached. But the same
may be said of every other class of natural objects. I believe that
astronomers cannot yet get the moon's motions into perfect accordance
with the theory of gravitation.
It would be inappropriate, even if it were possible, to discuss the
difficulties and unresolved problems which have hitherto met the
evolutionist, and which will probably continue to puzzle him for
generations to come, in the course of this brief history of the
reception of Mr. Darwin's great work. But there are two or three
objections of a more general character, based, or supposed to be based,
upon philosophical and theological foundations, which were loudly
expressed in the early days of the Darwinian controversy, and which,
though they have been answered over and over again, crop up now and then
to the present day.
The most singular of these, perhaps immortal, fallacies, which live on,
Tithonus-like, when sense and force have long deserted them, is that
which charges Mr. Darwin with having attempted to reinstate the old
pagan goddess, Chance. It is said that he supposes variations to come
about "by chance," and that the fittest survive the "chances" of
the struggle for existence, and thus "chance" is substituted for
providential design.
It is not a little wonderful that such an accusation as this should
be brought against a writer who has, over and over again, warned his
readers that when he uses the word "spontaneous," he merely means that
he is ignorant of the cause of that which is so termed; and whose whole
theory crumbles to pieces if the uniformity and regularity of natural
causation for illimitable past ages is denied. But probably the best
answer to those who talk of Darwinism meaning the reign of "chance," is
to ask them what they themselves understand by "chance"? Do they believe
that anything in this universe happens without reason or without a
cause? Do they really conceive that any event has no cause, and could
not have been predicted by any one who had a sufficient insight into
the order of Nature? If they do, it is they who are the inheritors of
antique superstition and ignorance, and whose minds have never been
illumined by a ray of scientific thought. The one act of faith in the
convert to science, is the confession of the universality of order and
of the absolute validity in all times and under all circumstances, of
the law of causation. This confession is an act of faith, because,
by the nature of the case, the truth of such propositions is not
susceptible of proof. But such faith is not blind, but reasonable;
because it is invariably confirmed by experience, and constitutes the
sole trustworthy foundation for all action.
If one of these people, in whom the chance-worship of our remoter
ancestors thus strangely survives, should be within reach of the sea
when a heavy gale is blowing, let him betake himself to the shore and
watch the scene. Let him note the infinite variety of form and size of
the tossing waves out at sea; or of the curves of their foam-crested
breakers, as they dash against the rocks; let him listen to the roar and
scream of the shingle as it is cast up and torn down the beach; or look
at the flakes of foam as they drive hither and thither before the wind;
or note the play of colours, which answers a gleam of sunshine as it
falls upon the myriad bubbles. Surely here, if anywhere, he will say
that chance is supreme, and bend the knee as one who has entered the
very penetralia of his divinity. But the man of science knows that here,
as everywhere, perfect order is manifested; that there is not a curve
of the waves, not a note in the howling chorus, not a rainbow-glint on
a bubble, which is other than a necessary consequence of the ascertained
laws of nature; and that with a sufficient knowledge of the conditions,
competent physico-mathematical skill could account for, and indeed
predict, every one of these "chance" events.
A second very common objection to Mr. Darwin's views was (and is), that
they abolish Teleology, and eviscerate the argument from design. It
is nearly twenty years since I ventured to offer some remarks on this
subject, and as my arguments have as yet received no refutation, I hope
I may be excused for reproducing them. I observed, "that the doctrine
of Evolution is the most formidable opponent of all the commoner and
coarser forms of Teleology. But perhaps the most remarkable service to
the Philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation
of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both,
which his views offer. The teleology which supposes that the eye, such
as we see it in man, or one of the higher vertebrata, was made with the
precise structure it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal
which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that there is a wider
teleology which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is
actually based upon the fundamental proposition of Evolution. This
proposition is that the whole world, living and not living, is the
result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the
forces (I should now like to substitute the word powers for "forces.")
possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the
universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that
the existing world lay potentially in the cosmic vapour, and that a
sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the
molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the fauna of
Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen
to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's day...
...The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not,
necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the more purely a
mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial
molecular arrangement of which all the phenomena of the universe are the
consequences, and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the
teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial
molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the
universe." (The "Genealogy of Animals" ('The Academy,' 1869), reprinted
in 'Critiques and Addresses.')
The acute champion of Teleology, Paley, saw no difficulty in admitting
that the "production of things" may be the result of trains of
mechanical dispositions fixed beforehand by intelligent appointment and
kept in action by a power at the centre ('Natural Theology,' chapter
xxiii.), that is to say, he proleptically accepted the modern doctrine
of Evolution; and his successors might do well to follow their leader,
or at any rate to attend to his weighty reasonings, before rushing into
an antagonism which has no reasonable foundation.
Having got rid of the belief in chance and the disbelief in design,
as in no sense appurtenances of Evolution, the third libel upon that
doctrine, that it is anti-theistic, might perhaps be left to shift for
itself. But the persistence with which many people refuse to draw the
plainest consequences from the propositions they profess to accept,
renders it advisable to remark that the doctrine of Evolution is neither
Anti-theistic nor Theistic. It simply has no more to do with Theism
than the first book of Euclid has. It is quite certain that a normal
fresh-laid egg contains neither cock nor hen; and it is also as certain
as any proposition in physics or morals, that if such an egg is kept
under proper conditions for three weeks, a cock or hen chicken will be
found in it. It is also quite certain that if the shell were transparent
we should be able to watch the formation of the young fowl, day by day,
by a process of evolution, from a microscopic cellular germ to its
full size and complication of structure. Therefore Evolution, in the
strictest sense, is actually going on in this and analogous millions and
millions of instances, wherever living creatures exist. Therefore,
to borrow an argument from Butler, as that which now happens must be
consistent with the attributes of the Deity, if such a Being exists,
Evolution must be consistent with those attributes. And, if so, the
evolution of the universe, which is neither more nor less explicable
than that of a chicken, must also be consistent with them. The doctrine
of Evolution, therefore, does not even come into contact with Theism,
considered as a philosophical doctrine. That with which it does collide,
and with which it is absolutely inconsistent, is the conception of
creation, which theological speculators have based upon the history
narrated in the opening of the book of Genesis.
There is a great deal of talk and not a little lamentation about the
so-called religious difficulties which physical science has created.
In theological science, as a matter of fact, it has created none. Not
a solitary problem presents itself to the philosophical Theist, at the
present day, which has not existed from the time that philosophers began
to think out the logical grounds and the logical consequences of Theism.
All the real or imaginary perplexities which flow from the conception
of the universe as a determinate mechanism, are equally involved in
the assumption of an Eternal, Omnipotent and Omniscient Deity. The
theological equivalent of the scientific conception of order is
Providence; and the doctrine of determinism follows as surely from
the attributes of foreknowledge assumed by the theologian, as from the
universality of natural causation assumed by the man of science. The
angels in 'Paradise Lost' would have found the task of enlightening Adam
upon the mysteries of "Fate, Foreknowledge, and Free-will," not a whit
more difficult, if their pupil had been educated in a "Real-schule" and
trained in every laboratory of a modern university. In respect of the
great problems of Philosophy, the post-Darwinian generation is, in one
sense, exactly where the prae-Darwinian generations were. They remain
insoluble. But the present generation has the advantage of being better
provided with the means of freeing itself from the tyranny of certain
sham solutions.
The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on
an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our
business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add
something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a
cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last
quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that
the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural
knowledge which has come into men's hands, since the publication of
Newton's 'Principia,' is Darwin's 'Origin of Species.'
It was badly received by the generation to which it was first addressed,
and the outpouring of angry nonsense to which it gave rise is sad to
think upon. But the present generation will probably behave just as
badly if another Darwin should arise, and inflict upon them that which
the generality of mankind most hate--the necessity of revising their
convictions. Let them, then, be charitable to us ancients; and if they
behave no better than the men of my day to some new benefactor, let them
recollect that, after all, our wrath did not come to much, and vented
itself chiefly in the bad language of sanctimonious scolds. Let them
as speedily perform a strategic right-about-face, and follow the truth
wherever it leads. The opponents of the new truth will discover, as
those of Darwin are doing, that, after all, theories do not alter facts,
and that the universe remains unaffected even though texts crumble. Or,
it may be, that, as history repeats itself, their happy ingenuity will
also discover that the new wine is exactly of the same vintage as
the old, and that (rightly viewed) the old bottles prove to have been
expressly made for holding it.