[June 9th, 1885]
_Address by the President of the Royal Society, in the name of the
Memorial Committee, on handing over the statue of Darwin to H.R.H. the
Prince of Wales, as representative of the Trustees of the British
Museum_.
YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,--It is now three years since the announcement of the
death of our famous countryman, Charles Darwin, gave rise to a
manifestation of public feeling, not only in these realms, but throughout
the civilised world, which, if I mistake not, is without precedent in the
modest annals of scientific biography.
The causes of this deep and wide outburst of emotion are not far to seek.
We had lost one of these rare ministers and interpreters of Nature whose
names mark epochs in the advance of natural knowledge. For, whatever be the
ultimate verdict of posterity upon this or that opinion which Mr. Darwin
has propounded; whatever adumbrations or anticipations of his doctrines may
be found in the writings of his predecessors; the broad fact remains that,
since the publication and by reason of the publication, of "The Origin of
Species" the fundamental conceptions and the aims of the students of living
Nature have been completely changed. From that work has sprung a great
renewal, a true "instauratio magna" of the zoological and botanical
sciences.
But the impulse thus given to scientific thought rapidly spread beyond the
ordinarily recognised limits of biology. Psychology, Ethics, Cosmology were
stirred to their foundations, and the "Origin of Species" proved itself to
be the fixed point which the general doctrine of evolution needed in order
to move the world. "Darwinism," in one form or another, sometimes strangely
distorted and mutilated, became an everyday topic of men's speech, the
object of an abundance both of vituperation and of praise, more often than
of serious study.
It is curious now to remember how largely, at first, the objectors
predominated; but considering the usual fate of new views, it is still more
curious to consider for how short a time the phase of vehement opposition
lasted. Before twenty years had passed, not only had the importance of Mr.
Darwin's work been fully recognised, but the world had discerned the
simple, earnest, generous character of the man, that shone through every
page of his writings.
I imagine that reflections such as these swept through the minds alike of
loving friends and of honourable antagonists when Mr. Darwin died; and that
they were at one in the desire to honour the memory of the man who, without
fear and without reproach, had successfully fought the hardest intellectual
battle of these days.
It was in satisfaction of these just and generous impulses that our great
naturalist's remains were deposited in Westminster Abbey; and that,
immediately afterwards, a public meeting, presided over by my lamented
predecessor, Mr. Spottiswoode, was held in the rooms of the Royal Society,
for the purpose of considering what further step should be taken towards
the same end.
It was resolved to invite subscriptions, with the view of erecting a statue
of Mr. Darwin in some suitable locality; and to devote any surplus to the
advancement of the biological sciences.
Contributions at once flowed in from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark,
France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, the United States, and the British Colonies, no less than from
all parts of the three kingdoms; and they came from all classes of the
community. To mention one interesting case, Sweden sent in 2296
subscriptions "from all sorts of people," as the distinguished man of
science who transmitted them wrote, "from the bishop to the seamstress, and
in sums from five pounds to two pence."
The Executive Committee has thus been enabled to carry out the objects
proposed. A "Darwin Fund" has been created, which is to be held in trust by
the Royal Society, and is to be employed in the promotion of biological
research.
The execution of the statue was entrusted to Mr. Boehm; and I think that
those who had the good fortune to know Mr. Darwin personally will admire
the power of artistic divination which has enabled the sculptor to place
before us so very characteristic a likeness of one whom he had not seen.
It appeared to the Committee that, whether they regarded Mr. Darwin's
career or the requirements of a work of art, no site could be so
appropriate as this great hall, and they applied to the Trustees of the
British Museum for permission to erect it in its present position.
That permission was most cordially granted, and I am desired to tender the
best thanks of the Committee to the Trustees for their willingness to
accede to our wishes.
I also beg leave to offer the expression of our gratitude to your Royal
Highness for kindly consenting to represent the Trustees to-day. It only
remains for me, your Royal Highness, my Lords and Gentlemen, Trustees of
the British Museum, in the name of the Darwin Memorial Committee, to
request you to accept this statue of Charles Darwin.
We do not make this request for the mere sake of perpetuating a memory; for
so long as men occupy themselves with the pursuit of truth, the name of
Darwin runs no more risk of oblivion than does that of Copernicus, or that
of Harvey.
Nor, most assuredly, do we ask you to preserve the statue in its cynosural
position in this entrance-hall of our National Museum of Natural History as
evidence that Mr. Darwin's views have received your official sanction; for
science does not recognise such sanctions, and commits suicide when it
adopts a creed.
No; we beg you to cherish this Memorial as a symbol by which, as generation
after generation of students of Nature enter yonder door, they shall be
reminded of the ideal according to which they must shape their lives, if
they would turn to the best account the opportunities offered by the great
institution under your charge.
X
OBITUARY [Footnote: From the Obituary Notices of the _Proceedings of the
Royal Society_, vol. 44.]
[1888]
Charles Robert Darwin was the fifth child and second son of Robert Waring
Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood, and was born on the 12th February, 1809, at
Shrewsbury, where his father was a physician in large practice.
Mrs. Robert Darwin died when her son Charles was only eight years old, and
he hardly remembered her. A daughter of the famous Josiah Wedgwood, who
created a new branch of the potter's art, and established the great works
of Etruria, could hardly fail to transmit important mental and moral
qualities to her children; and there is a solitary record of her direct
influence in the story told by a schoolfellow, who remembers Charles Darwin
"bringing a flower to school, and saying that his mother had taught him
how, by looking at the inside of the blossom, the name of the plant could
be discovered." (I., p. 28. [Footnote: The references throughout this
notice are to the _Life and Letters_, unless the contrary is expressly
stated.])
The theory that men of genius derive their qualities from their mothers,
however, can hardly derive support from Charles Darwin's case, in the face
of the patent influence of his paternal forefathers. Dr. Darwin, indeed,
though a man of marked individuality of character, a quick and acute
observer, with much practical sagacity, is said not to have had a
scientific mind. But when his son adds that his father "formed a theory for
almost everything that occurred" (I., p. 20), he indicates a highly
probable source for that inability to refrain from forming an hypothesis on
every subject which he confesses to be one of the leading characteristics
of his own mind, some pages further on (I., p. 103). Dr. R. W. Darwin,
again, was the third son of Erasmus Darwin, also a physician of great
repute, who shared the intimacy of Watt and Priestley, and was widely known
as the author of "Zoonomia," and other voluminous poetical and prose works
which had a great vogue in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The
celebrity which they enjoyed was in part due to the attractive style (at
least according to the taste of that day) in which the author's extensive,
though not very profound, acquaintance with natural phenomena was set
forth; but in a still greater degree, probably, to the boldness of the
speculative views, always ingenious and sometimes fantastic, in which he
indulged. The conception of evolution set afoot by De Maillet and others,
in the early part of the century, not only found a vigorous champion in
Erasmus Darwin, but he propounded an hypothesis as to the manner in which
the species of animals and plants have acquired their characters, which is
identical in principle with that subsequently rendered famous by Lamarck.
That Charles Darwin's chief intellectual inheritance came to him from the
paternal side, then, is hardly doubtful. But there is nothing to show that
he was, to any sensible extent, directly influenced by his grandfather's
biological work. He tells us that a perusal of the "Zoonomia" in early life
produced no effect upon him, although he greatly admired it; and that, on
reading it again, ten or fifteen years afterwards, he was much
disappointed, "the proportion of speculation being so large to the facts
given." But with his usual anxious candour he adds, "Nevertheless, it is
probable that the hearing, rather early in life, such views maintained and
praised, may have favoured my upholding them, in a different form, in my
'Origin of Species.'" (I., p. 38.) Erasmus Darwin was in fact an
anticipator of Lamarck, and not of Charles Darwin; there is no trace in his
works of the conceptions by the addition of which his grandson
metamorphosed the theory of evolution as applied to living things and gave
it a new foundation.
Charles Darwin's childhood and youth afforded no intimation that he would
he, or do, anything out of the common run. In fact, the prognostications of
the educational authorities into whose hands he first fell were most
distinctly unfavourable; and they counted the only boy of original genius
who is known to have come under their hands as no better than a dunce. The
history of the educational experiments to which Darwin was subjected is
curious, and not without a moral for the present generation. There were
four of them, and three were failures. Yet it cannot be said that the
materials on which the pedagogic powers operated were other than good. In
his boyhood Darwin was strong, well-grown, and active, taking the keen
delight in field sports and in every description of hard physical exercise
which is natural to an English country-bred lad; and, in respect of things
of the mind, he was neither apathetic, nor idle, nor one-sided. The
"Autobiography" tells us that he "had much zeal for whatever interested"
him, and he was interested in many and very diverse topics. He could work
hard, and liked a complex subject better than an easy one. The "clear
geometrical proofs" of Euclid delighted him. His interest in practical
chemistry, carried out in an extemporised laboratory, in which he was
permitted to assist by his elder brother, kept him late at work, and earned
him the nickname of "gas" among his schoolfellows. And there could have
been no insensibility to literature in one who, as a boy, could sit for
hours reading Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, and Byron; who greatly admired
some of the Odes of Horace; and who, in later years, on board the "Beagle,"
when only one book could be carried on an expedition, chose a volume of
Milton for his companion.
Industry, intellectual interests, the capacity for taking pleasure in
deductive reasoning, in observation, in experiment, no less than in the
highest works of imagination: where these qualities are present any
rational system of education should surely be able to make something of
them. Unfortunately for Darwin, the Shrewsbury Grammar School, though good
of its kind, was an institution of a type universally prevalent in this
country half a century ago, and by no means extinct at the present day. The
education given was "strictly classical," "especial attention" being "paid
to verse-making," while all other subjects, except a little ancient
geography and history, were ignored. Whether, as in some famous English
schools at that date and much later, elementary arithmetic was also left
out of sight does not appear; but the instruction in Euclid which gave
Charles Darwin so much satisfaction was certainly supplied by a private
tutor. That a boy, even in his leisure hours, should permit himself to be
interested in any but book-learning seems to have been regarded as little
better than an outrage by the head master, who thought it his duty to
administer a public rebuke to young Darwin for wasting his time on such a
contemptible subject as chemistry. English composition and literature,
modern languages, modern history, modern geography, appear to have been
considered to be as despicable as chemistry.
For seven long years Darwin got through his appointed tasks; construed
without cribs, learned by rote whatever was demanded, and concocted his
verses in approved schoolboy fashion. And the result, as it appeared to his
mature judgment, was simply negative. "The school as a means of education
to me was simply a blank." (I. p. 32.) On the other hand, the extraneous
chemical exercises, which the head master treated so contumeliously, are
gratefully spoken of as the "best part" of his education while at school.
Such is the judgment of the scholar on the school; as might be expected, it
has its counterpart in the judgment of the school on the scholar. The
collective intelligence of the staff of Shrewsbury School could find
nothing but dull mediocrity in Charles Darwin. The mind that found
satisfaction in knowledge, but very little in mere learning; that could
appreciate literature, but had no particular aptitude for grammatical
exercises; appeared to the "strictly classical" pedagogue to be no mind at
all. As a matter of fact, Darwin's school education left him ignorant of
almost all the things which it would have been well for him to know, and
untrained in all the things it would have been useful for him to be able to
do, in after life. Drawing, practice in English composition, and
instruction in the elements of the physical sciences, would not only have
been infinitely valuable to him in reference to his future career, but
would have furnished the discipline suited to his faculties, whatever that
career might be. And a knowledge of French and German, especially the
latter, would have removed from his path obstacles which he never fully
overcame.
Thus, starved and stunted on the intellectual side, it is not surprising
that Charles Darwin's energies were directed towards athletic amusements
and sport, to such an extent, that even his kind and sagacious father could
be exasperated into telling him that "he cared for nothing but shooting,
dogs, and rat-catching." (I. p. 32.) It would be unfair to expect even the
wisest of fathers to have foreseen that the shooting and the rat-catching,
as training in the ways of quick observation and in physical endurance,
would prove more valuable than the construing and verse-making to his son,
whose attempt, at a later period of his Life, to persuade himself "that
shooting was almost an intellectual employment: it required so much skill
to judge where to find most game, and to hunt the dogs well" (I. p. 43),
was by no means so sophistical as he seems to have been ready to admit.
In 1825, Dr. Darwin came to the very just conclusion that his son Charles
would do no good by remaining at Shrewsbury School, and sent him to join
his elder brother Erasmus, who was studying medicine at Edinburgh, with the
intention that the younger son should also become a medical practitioner.
Both sons, however, were well aware that their inheritance would relieve
them from the urgency of the struggle for existence which most professional
men have to face; and they seemed to have allowed their tastes, rather than
the medical curriculum, to have guided their studies. Erasmus Darwin was
debarred by constant ill-health from seeking the public distinction which
his high intelligence and extensive knowledge would, under ordinary
circumstances, have insured. He took no great interest in biological
subjects, but his companionship must have had its influence on his brother.
Still more was exerted by friends like Coldstream and Grant, both
subsequently well-known zoologists (and the latter an enthusiastic
Lamarckian), by whom Darwin was induced to interest himself in marine
zoology. A notice of the ciliated germs of _Flustra_, communicated to
the Plinian Society in 1826, was the first fruits of Darwin's half century
of scientific work. Occasional attendance at the Wernerian Society brought
him into relation with that excellent ornithologist the elder Macgillivray,
and enabled him to see and hear Audubon. Moreover, he got lessons in
bird-stuffing from a negro, who had accompanied the eccentric traveller
Waterton in his wanderings, before settling in Edinburgh.
No doubt Darwin picked up a great deal of valuable knowledge during his two
years' residence in Scotland; but it is equally clear that next to none of
it came through the regular channels of academic education. Indeed, the
influence of the Edinburgh professoriate appears to have been mainly
negative, and in some cases deterrent; creating in his mind, not only a
very low estimate of the value of lectures, but an antipathy to the
subjects which had been the occasion of the boredom inflicted upon him by
their instrumentality. With the exception of Hope, the Professor of
Chemistry, Darwin found them all "intolerably dull." Forty years afterwards
he writes of the lectures of the Professor of Materia Medica that they were
"fearful to remember." The Professor of Anatomy made his lectures "as dull
as he was himself," and he must have been very dull to have wrung from his
victim the sharpest personal remark recorded as his. But the climax seems
to have been attained by the Professor of Geology and Zoology, whose
prælections were so "incredibly dull" that they produced in their hearer
the somewhat rash determination never "to read a book on geology or in any
way to study the science" so long as he lived. (I. p. 41.)
There is much reason to believe that the lectures in question were
eminently qualified to produce the impression which they made; and there
can be little doubt, that Darwin's conclusion that his time was better
employed in reading than in listening to such lectures was a sound one. But
it was particularly unfortunate that the personal and professorial dulness
of the Professor of Anatomy, combined with Darwin's sensitiveness to the
disagreeable concomitants of anatomical work, drove him away from the
dissecting room. In after life, he justly recognised that this was an
"irremediable evil" in reference to the pursuits he eventually adopted;
indeed, it is marvellous that he succeeded in making up for his lack of
anatomical discipline, so far as his work on the Cirripedes shows he did.
And the neglect of anatomy had the further unfortunate result that it
excluded him from the best opportunity of bringing himself into direct
contact with the facts of nature which the University had to offer. In
those days, almost the only practical scientific work accessible to
students was anatomical, and the only laboratory at their disposal the
dissecting room.
We may now console ourselves with the reflection that the partial evil was
the general good. Darwin had already shown an aptitude for practical
medicine (I. p. 37); and his subsequent career proved that he had the
making of an excellent anatomist. Thus, though his horror of operations
would probably have shut him off from surgery, there was nothing to prevent
him (any more than the same peculiarity prevented his father) from passing
successfully through the medical curriculum and becoming, like his father
and grandfather, a successful physician, in which case "The Origin of
Species" would not have been written. Darwin has jestingly alluded to the
fact that the shape of his nose (to which Captain Fitzroy objected), nearly
prevented his embarkation in the "Beagle"; it may be that the sensitiveness
of that organ secured him for science.
At the end of two years' residence in Edinburgh it hardly needed Dr.
Darwin's sagacity to conclude that a young man, who found nothing but
dulness in professorial lucubrations, could not bring himself to endure a
dissecting room, fled from operations, and did not need a profession as a
means of livelihood, was hardly likely to distinguish himself as a student
of medicine. He therefore made a new suggestion, proposing that his son
should enter an English University and qualify for the ministry of the
Church. Charles Darwin found the proposal agreeable, none the less,
probably, that a good deal of natural history and a little shooting were by
no means held, at that time, to be incompatible with the conscientious
performance of the duties of a country clergyman. But it is characteristic
of the man, that he asked time for consideration, in order that he might
satisfy himself that he could sign the Thirty-nine Articles with a clear
conscience. However, the study of "Pearson on the Creeds" and a few other
books of divinity soon assured him that his religious opinions left nothing
to be desired on the score of orthodoxy, and he acceded to his father's
proposition.
The English University selected was Cambridge; but an unexpected obstacle
arose from the fact that, within the two years which had elapsed, since the
young man who had enjoyed seven years of the benefit of a strictly
classical education had left school, he had forgotten almost everything he
had learned there, "even to some few of the Greek letters." (I. p. 46.)
Three months with a tutor, however, brought him back to the point of
translating Homer and the Greek Testament "with moderate facility," and
Charles Darwin commenced the third educational experiment of which he was
the subject, and was entered on the books of Christ's College in October
1827. So far as the direct results of the academic training thus received
are concerned, the English University was not more successful than the
Scottish. "During the three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was
wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned, as completely as
at Edinburgh and as at school." (I. p. 46.) And yet, as before, there is
ample evidence that this negative result cannot be put down to any native
defect on the part of the scholar. Idle and dull young men, or even young
men who being neither idle nor dull, are incapable of caring for anything
but some hobby, do not devote themselves to the thorough study of Paley's
"Moral Philosophy," and "Evidences of Christianity"; nor are their
reminiscences of this particular portion of their studies expressed in
terms such as the following: "The logic of this book [the 'Evidences'] and,
as I may add, of his 'Natural Theology' gave me as much delight as did
Euclid." (I. p. 47.)
The collector's instinct, strong in Darwin from his childhood, as is
usually the case in great naturalists, turned itself in the direction of
Insects during his residence at Cambridge. In childhood it had been damped
by the moral scruples of a sister, as to the propriety of catching and
killing insects for the mere sake of possessing them, but now it broke out
afresh, and Darwin became an enthusiastic beetle collector. Oddly enough he
took no scientific interest in beetles, not even troubling himself to make
out their names; his delight lay in the capture of a species which turned
out to be rare or new, and still more in finding his name, as captor,
recorded in print. Evidently, this beetle-hunting hobby had little to do
with science, but was mainly a new phase of the old and undiminished love
of sport. In the intervals of beetle-catching, when shooting and hunting
were not to be had, riding across country answered the purpose. These
tastes naturally threw the young undergraduate among a set of men who
preferred hard riding: to hard reading, and wasted the midnight oil upon
other pursuits than that of academic distinction. A superficial observer
might have had some grounds to fear that Dr. Darwin's wrathful prognosis
might yet be verified. But if the eminently social tendencies of a vigorous
and genial nature sought an outlet among a set of jovial sporting friends,
there were other and no less strong proclivities which brought him into
relation with associates of a very different stamp.
Though almost without ear and with a very defective memory for music,
Darwin was so strongly and pleasurably affected by it that he became a
member of a musical society; and an equal lack of natural capacity for
drawing did not prevent him from studying good works of art with much care.
An acquaintance with even the rudiments of physical science was no part of
the requirements for the ordinary Cambridge degree. But there were
professors both of Geology and of Botany whose lectures were accessible to
those who chose to attend them. The occupants of these chairs, in Darwin's
time, were eminent men and also admirable lecturers in their widely
different styles. The horror of geological lectures which Darwin had
acquired at Edinburgh, unfortunately prevented him from going within reach
of the fervid eloquence of Sedgwick; but he attended the botanical course,
and though he paid no serious attention to the subject, he took great
delight in the country excursions, which Henslow so well knew how to make
both pleasant and instructive. The Botanical Professor was, in fact, a man
of rare character and singularly extensive acquirements in all branches of
natural history. It was his greatest pleasure to place his stores of
knowledge at the disposal of the young men who gathered about him, and who
found in him, not merely an encyclopedic teacher but a wise counsellor,
and, in case of worthiness, a warm friend. Darwin's acquaintance with him
soon ripened into a friendship which was terminated only by Henslow's death
in 1861, when his quondam pupil gave touching expression to his sense of
what he owed to one whom he calls (in one of his letters) his "dear old
master in Natural History." (II. p. 217.) It was by Henslow's advice that
Darwin was led to break the vow he had registered against making an
acquaintance with geology; and it was through Henslow's good offices with
Sedgwick that he obtained the opportunity of accompanying the Geological
Professor on one of his excursions in Wales. He then received a certain
amount of practical instruction in Geology, the value of which he
subsequently warmly acknowledged. (I. p. 237.) In another direction,
Henslow did him an immense, though not altogether intentional service, by
recommending him to buy and study the recently published first volume of
Lyell's "Principles." As an orthodox geologist of the then dominant
catastrophic school, Henslow accompanied his recommendation with the
admonition on no account to adopt Lyell's general views. But the warning
fell on deaf ears, and it is hardly too much to say that Darwin's greatest
work is the outcome of the unflinching application to Biology of the
leading idea and the method applied in the "Principles" to geology.
[Footnote: "After my return to England it appeared to me that by following
the example of Lyell in Geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in
any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and
nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject [of the
origin of species]." (I. p. 83.) See also the dedication of the second
edition of the _Journal of a Naturalist_]. Finally, it was through
Henslow, and at his suggestion, that Darwin was offered the appointment to
the "Beagle" as naturalist.
During the latter part of Darwin's residence at Cambridge the prospect of
entering the Church, though the plan was never formally renounced, seems to
have grown very shadowy. Humboldt's "Personal Narrative," and Herschel's
"Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy," fell in his way and
revealed to him his real vocation. The impression made by the former work
was very strong. "My whole course of life," says Darwin in sending a
message to Humboldt, "is due to having read and re-read, as a youth, his
personal narrative." (I. p. 336.) The description of Teneriffe inspired
Darwin with such a strong desire to visit the island, that he took some
steps towards going there--inquiring about ships, and so on.
But, while this project was fermenting, Henslow, who had been asked to
recommend a naturalist for Captain Fitzroy's projected expedition, at once
thought of his pupil. In his letter of the 24th August, 1831, he says: "I
have stated that I consider you to be the best qualified person I know of
who is likely to undertake such a situation. I state this--not on the
supposition of your being a _finished_ naturalist, but as amply
qualified for collecting, observing, and noting anything worthy to be noted
in Natural History.... The voyage is to last two years, and if you take
plenty of books with you, anything you please may be done." (I. p. 193.)
The state of the case could not have been better put. Assuredly the young
naturalist's theoretical and practical scientific training had gone no
further than might suffice for the outfit of an intelligent collector and
note-taker. He was fully conscious of the fact, and his ambition hardly
rose above the hope that he should bring back materials for the scientific
"lions" at home of sufficient excellence to prevent them from turning and
rending him. (I. p. 248.)
But a fourth educational experiment was to be tried. This time Nature took
him in hand herself and showed him the way by which, to borrow Henslow's
prophetic phrase, "anything he pleased might be done."
The conditions of life presented by a ship-of-war of only 242 tons burthen,
would not, _primâ facie_, appear to be so favourable to intellectual
development as those offered by the cloistered retirement of Christ's
College. Darwin had not even a cabin to himself; while, in addition to the
hindrances and interruptions incidental to sea-life, which can be
appreciated only by those who have had experience of them, sea-sickness
came on whenever the little ship was "lively"; and, considering the
circumstances of the cruise, that must have been her normal state.
Nevertheless, Darwin found on board the "Beagle" that which neither the
pedagogues of Shrewsbury, nor the professoriate of Edinburgh, nor the
tutors of Cambridge had managed to give him. "I have always felt that I owe
to the voyage the first real training or education of my mind (I. p. 61);"
and in a letter written as he was leaving England, he calls the voyage on
which he was starting, with just insight, his "second life." (I. p. 214.)
Happily for Darwin's education, the school time of the "Beagle" lasted five
years instead of two; and the countries which the ship visited were
singularly well fitted to provide him with object-lessons, on the nature of
things, of the greatest value.
While at sea, he diligently collected, studied, and made copious notes upon
the surface Fauna. But with no previous training in dissection, hardly any
power of drawing, and next to no knowledge of comparative anatomy, his
occupation with work of this kind--notwithstanding all his zeal and
industry--resulted, for the most part, in a vast accumulation of useless
manuscript. Some acquaintance with the marine _Crustacea_,
observations on _Planariæ_ and on the ubiquitous _Sagitta_, seem
to have been the chief results of a great amount of labour in this
direction.
It was otherwise with the terrestrial phenomena which came under the
voyager's notice: and Geology very soon took her revenge for the scorn
which the much-bored Edinburgh student had poured upon her. Three weeks
after leaving England the ship touched land for the first time at St. Jago,
in the Cape de Verd Islands, and Darwin found his attention vividly engaged
by the volcanic phenomena and the signs of upheaval which the island
presented. His geological studies had already indicated the direction in
which a great deal might be done, beyond collecting; and it was while
sitting beneath a low lava cliff on the shore of this island, that a sense
of his real capability first dawned upon Darwin, and prompted the ambition
to write a book on the geology of the various countries visited. (I. p.
66.) Even at this early date, Darwin must have thought much on geological
topics, for he was already convinced of the superiority of Lyell's views to
those entertained by the catastrophists [Footnote: "I had brought with me
the first volume of Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, which I studied
attentively; and the book was of the highest service to me in many ways.
The very first place which I examined, namely, St. Jago, in the Cape de
Verd Islands, showed me clearly the wonderful superiority of Lyell's manner
of treating Geology, compared with that of any other author whose works I
had with me or ever afterwards read "-(I. p. 62.)]; and his subsequent
study of the tertiary deposits and of the terraced gravel beds of South
America was eminently fitted to strengthen that conviction. The letters
from South America contain little reference to any scientific topic except
geology; and even the theory of the formation of coral reefs was prompted
by the evidence of extensive and gradual changes of level afforded by the
geology of South America; "No other work of mine," he says, "was begun in
so deductive a spirit as this; for the whole theory was thought out on the
West Coast of South America, before I had seen a true coral reef. I had,
therefore, only to verify and extend my views by a careful examination of
living reefs." (I. p. 70.) In 1835, when starting from Lima for the
Galapagos, he recommends his friend, W. D. Fox, to take up geology:--"There
is so much larger a field for thought than in the other branches of Natural
History. I am become a zealous disciple of Mr. Lyell's views, as made known
in his admirable book. Geologising in South America, I am tempted to carry
parts to a greater extent even than he does. Geology is a capital science
to begin with, as it requires nothing but a little reading, thinking, and
hammering." (I. p. 263.) The truth of the last statement, when it was
written, is a curious mark of the subsequent progress of geology. Even so
late as 1836, Darwin speaks of being "much more inclined for geology than
the other branches of Natural History." (I. p. 275.)
At the end of the letter to Mr. Fox, however, a little doubt is expressed
whether zoological studies might not, after all, have been more profitable;
and an interesting passage in the "Autobiography" enables us to understand
the origin of this hesitation.
"During the voyage of the 'Beagle' I had been deeply impressed by
discovering in the Pampean formation great fossil animals covered with
armour like that on the existing armadillos; secondly, by the manner in
which closely-allied animals replace one another in proceeding southwards
over the continent; and, thirdly, by the South American character of most
of the productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, and, more especially, by
the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of the group; some
of the islands appearing to be very ancient in a geological sense.
"It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could
only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become
modified; and the subject haunted me. But it was equally evident that
neither the action of the surrounding conditions, nor the will of the
organisms (especially in the case of plants) could account for the
innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully adapted
to their habits of life; for instance, a woodpecker or a tree-frog to climb
trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes. I had always been much
struck by such adaptations, and until these could be explained it seemed to
me almost useless to endeavour to prove by indirect evidence that species
have been modified." (I. p. 82.)
The facts to which reference is here made were, without doubt, eminently
fitted to attract the attention of a philosophical thinker; but, until the
relations of the existing with the extinct species and of the species of
the different geographical areas with one another, were determined with
some exactness, they afforded but an unsafe foundation for speculation. It
was not possible that this determination should have been effected before
the return of the "Beagle" to England; and thus the date which Darwin
(writing in 1837) assigns to the dawn of the new light which was rising in
his mind becomes intelligible. [Footnote: I am indebted to Mr. F. Darwin
for the knowledge of a letter addressed by his father to Dr. Otto Zacharias
in 1877 which contains the following paragraph, confirmatory of the view
expressed above: "When I was on board the _Beagle_, I believed in the
permanence of species, but, as far as I can remember, vague doubts
occasionally flitted across my mind. On my return home in the autumn of
1836, I immediately began to prepare my journal for publication, and then
saw how many facts indicated the common descent of species, so that in
July, 1837, I opened a note-book to record any facts which might bear on
the question. But I did not become convinced that species were mutable
until, I think, two or three years had elapsed."]
"In July opened first note-book on Transmutation of Species. Had been
greatly struck from about the month of previous March on character of South
American fossils and species on Galapagos Archipelago. These facts
(especially latter) origin of all my views." (I. p. 276.)
From March, 1837, then, Darwin, not without many misgivings and
fluctuations of opinion, inclined towards transmutation as a provisional
hypothesis. Three months afterwards he is hard at work collecting facts for
the purpose of testing the hypothesis; and an almost apologetic passage in
a letter to Lyell shows that, already, the attractions of biology are
beginning to predominate over those of geology.
"I have lately been sadly tempted to be idle--[Footnote: Darwin generally
uses the word "idle" in a peculiar sense. He means by it working hard at
something he likes when he ought to be occupied with a less attractive
subject. Though it sounds paradoxical, there is a good deal to be said in
favour of this view of pleasant work.]that is, as far as pure Geology is
concerned--by the delightful number of new views which have been coming in
thickly and steadily--on the classification and affinities and instincts of
animals--bearing on the question of species. Note-book after note-book has
been filled with facts which begin to group themselves _clearly_ under
sub-laws." (I. p. 298.)
The problem which was to be Darwin's chief subject of occupation for the
rest of his life thus presented itself, at first, mainly under its
distributional aspect. Why do species present certain relations in space
and in time? Why are the animals and plants of the Galapagos Archipelago so
like those of South America and yet different from them? Why are those of
the several islets more or less different from one another? Why are the
animals of the latest geological epoch in South America similar in
_facies_ to those which exist in the same region at the present day,
and yet specifically or generically different?
The reply to these questions, which was almost universally received fifty
years ago, was that animals and plants were created such as they are; and
that their present distribution, at any rate so far as terrestrial
organisms are concerned, has been effected by the migration of their
ancestors from the region in which the ark stranded after the subsidence of
the deluge. It is true that the geologists had drawn attention to a good
many tolerably serious difficulties in the way of the diluvial part of this
hypothesis, no less than to the supposition that the work of creation had
occupied only a brief space of time. But even those, such as Lyell, who
most strenuously argued in favour of the sufficiency of natural causes for
the production of the phenomena of the inorganic world, held stoutly by the
hypothesis of creation in the case of those of the world of life.
For persons who were unable to feel satisfied with the fashionable
doctrine, there remained only two alternatives--the hypothesis of
spontaneous generation, and that of descent with modification. The former
was simply the creative hypothesis with the creator left out; the latter
had already been propounded by De Maillet and Erasmus Darwin, among others;
and, later, systematically expounded by Lamarck. But in the eyes of the
naturalist of the "Beagle" (and, probably, in those of most sober
thinkers), the advocates of transmutation had done the doctrine they
expounded more harm than good.
Darwin's opinion of the scientific value of the "Zoonomia" has already been
mentioned. His verdict on Lamarck is given in the following passage of a
letter to Lyell (March, 1863):--
"Lastly, you refer repeatedly to my view as a modification of Lamarck's
doctrine of development and progression. If this is your deliberate opinion
there is nothing to be said, but it does not seem so to me. Plato, Buffon,
my grandfather, before Lamarck and others, propounded the _obvious_
view that if species were not created separately they must have descended
from other species, and I can see nothing else in common between the
"Origin" and Lamarck. I believe this way of putting the case is very
injurious to its acceptance, as it implies necessary progression, and
closely connects Wallace's and my views with what I consider, after two
deliberate readings, as a wretched book, and one from which (I well
remember to my surprise) I gained nothing."
"But," adds Darwin with a little touch of banter, "I know you rank it
higher, which is curious, as it did not in the least shake your belief."
(III. p. 14; see also p. 16, "to me it was an absolutely useless book.")
Unable to find any satisfactory theory of the process of descent with
modification in the works of his predecessors, Darwin proceeded to lay the
foundations of his own views independently; and he naturally turned, in the
first place, to the only certainly known examples of descent with
modification, namely, those which are presented by domestic animals and
cultivated plants. He devoted himself to the study of these cases with a
thoroughness to which none of his predecessors even remotely approximated;
and he very soon had his reward in the discovery "that selection was the
keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants."
(I. p. 83.)
This was the first step in Darwin's progress, though its immediate result
was to bring him face to face with a great difficulty. "But how selection
could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some
time a mystery to me." (I. p. 83.)
The key to this mystery was furnished by the accidental perusal of the
famous essay of Malthus "On Population" in the autumn of 1838. The
necessary result of unrestricted multiplication is competition for the
means of existence. The success of one competitor involves the failure of
the rest, that is, their extinction; and this "selection" is dependent on
the better adaptation of the successful competitor to the conditions of the
competition. Variation occurs under natural, no less than under artificial,
conditions. Unrestricted multiplication implies the competition of
varieties and the selection of those which are relatively best adapted to
the conditions.
Neither Erasmus Darwin, nor Lamarck, had any inkling of the possibility of
this process of "natural selection"; and though it had been foreshadowed by
Wells in 1813, and more fully stated by Matthew in 1831, the speculations
of the latter writer remained unknown to naturalists until after the
publication of the "Origin of Species."
Darwin found in the doctrine of the selection of favourable variations by
natural causes, which thus presented itself to his mind, not merely a
probable theory of the origin of the diverse species of living forms, but
that explanation of the phenomena of adaptation, which previous
speculations had utterly failed to give. The process of natural selection
is, in fact, dependent on adaptation--it is all one, whether one says that
the competitor which survives is the "fittest" or the "best adapted." And
it was a perfectly fair deduction that even the most complicated
adaptations might result from the summation of a long series of simple
favourable variations.
Darwin notes as a serious defect in the first sketch of his theory that he
had omitted to consider one very important problem, the solution of which
did not occur to him till some time afterwards. "This problem is the
tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in
character as they become modified.... The solution, as I believe, is that
the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become
adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature."
(I. p. 84.)
It is curious that so much importance should be attached to this
supplementary idea. It seems obvious that the theory of the origin of
species by natural selection necessarily involves the divergence of the
forms selected. An individual which varies, _ipso facto_ diverges from
the type of its species; and its progeny, in which the variation becomes
intensified by selection, must diverge still more, not only from the parent
stock, but from any other race of that stock starting from, a variation of
a different character. The selective process could not take place unless
the selected variety was either better adapted to the conditions than the
original stock, or adapted to other conditions than the original stock. In
the first case, the original stock would be sooner or later extirpated; in
the second, the type, as represented by the original stock and the variety,
would occupy more diversified stations than it did before.
The theory, essentially such as it was published fourteen years later, was
written out in 1844, and Darwin was so fully convinced of the importance of
his work, as it then stood, that he made special arrangements for its
publication in case of his death. But it is a singular example of reticent
fortitude, that, although for the next fourteen years the subject never
left his mind, and during the latter half of that period he was constantly
engaged in amassing facts bearing upon it from wide reading, a colossal
correspondence, and a long series of experiments, only two or three friends
were cognisant of his views. To the outside world he seemed to have his
hands quite sufficiently full of other matters. In 1844, he published his
observations on the volcanic islands visited during the voyage of the
"Beagle." In 1845, a largely remodelled edition of his "Journal" made its
appearance, and immediately won, as it has ever since held, the favour of
both the scientific and the unscientific public. In 1846, the "Geological
Observations in South America" came out, and this book was no sooner
finished than Darwin set to work upon the Cirripedes. He was led to
undertake this long and heavy task, partly by his desire to make out the
relations of a very anomalous form which he had discovered on the coast of
Chili; and partly by a sense of "presumption in accumulating facts and
speculating on the subject of variation without having worked out my due
share of species." (II. p. 31.) The eight or nine years of labour, which
resulted in a monograph of first-rate importance in systematic zoology (to
say nothing of such novel points as the discovery of complemental males),
left Darwin no room to reproach himself on this score, and few will share
his "doubt whether the work was worth the consumption of so much time." (I.
p. 82.)
In science no man can safely speculate about the nature and relation of
things with which he is unacquainted at first hand, and the acquirement of
an intimate and practical knowledge of the process of species-making and of
all the uncertainties which underlie the boundaries between species and
varieties, drawn by even the most careful and conscientious systematists
[Footnote: "After describing a set of forms as distinct species, tearing up
my MS., and making them one species, tearing that up and making them
separate, and then making them one again (which has happened to me), I have
gnashed my teeth, cursed species, and asked what sin I had committed to be
so punished." (II. p. 40.) Is there any naturalist provided with a logical
sense and a large suite of specimens, who has not undergone pangs of the
sort described in this vigorous paragraph, which might, with advantage, be
printed on the title-page of every systematic monograph as a warning to the
uninitiated?] were of no less importance to the author of the "Origin of
Species" than was the bearing of the Cirripede work upon "the principles of
a natural classification." (I. p. 81.) No one, as Darwin justly observes,
has a "right to examine the question of species who has not minutely
described many." (II. p. 39.)
In September, 1854, the Cirripede work was finished, "ten thousand
barnacles" had been sent "out of the house, all over the world," and Darwin
had the satisfaction of being free to turn again to his "old notes on
species." In 1855, he began to breed pigeons, and to make observations on
the effects of use and disuse, experiments on seeds, and so on, while
resuming his industrious collection of facts, with a view "to see how far
they favour or are opposed to the notion that wild species are mutable or
immutable. I mean with my utmost power to give all arguments and facts on
both sides. I have a _number_ of people helping me every way, and
giving me most valuable assistance; but I often doubt whether the subject
will not quite overpower me." (II. p. 49.)
Early in 1856, on Lyell's advice, Darwin began to write out his views on
the origin of species on a scale three or four times as extensive as that
of the work published in 1859. In July of the same year he gave a brief
sketch of his theory in a letter to Asa Gray; and, in the year 1857, his
letters to his correspondents show him to be busily engaged on what he
calls his "big book." (II. pp. 85, 94.) In May, 1857, Darwin writes to
Wallace: "I am now preparing my work [on the question how and in what way
do species and varieties differ from each other] for publication, but I
find the subject so very large, that, though I have written many chapters,
I do not suppose I shall go to press for two years." (II. p. 95.) In
December, 1857, he writes, in the course of a long letter to the same
correspondent, "I am extremely glad to hear that you are attending to
distribution in accordance with theoretical ideas. I am a firm believer
that without speculation there is no good and original observation." (II.
p. 108.) [Footnote: The last remark contains a pregnant truth, but it must
be confessed it hardly squares with the declaration in the
_Autobiography_, (I. p. 83), that he worked on "true Baconian
principles."] In June, 1858, he received from Mr. Wallace, then in the
Malay Archipelago, an "Essay on the tendency of varieties to depart
indefinitely from the original type," of which Darwin says, "If Wallace had
my MS. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short
abstract! Even his terms stand now as heads of my chapters. Please return
me the MS., which he does not say he wishes me to publish, but I shall, of
course, at once write and offer to send it to any journal. So all my
originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed, though my book, if
ever it will have any value, will not be deteriorated; as all the labour
consists in the application of the theory." (II. p. 116.)
Thus, Darwin's first impulse was to publish Wallace's essay without note or
comment of his own. But, on consultation with Lyell and Hooker, the latter
of whom had read the sketch of 1844, they suggested, as an undoubtedly more
equitable course, that extracts from the MS. of 1844 and from the letter to
Dr. Asa Gray should be communicated to the Linnean Society along with
Wallace's essay. The joint communication was read on July 1, 1858, and
published under the title "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties;
and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of
Selection." This was followed, on Darwin's part, by the composition of a
summary account of the conclusions to which his twenty years' work on the
species question had led him. It occupied him for thirteen months, and
appeared in November, 1859, under the title "On the Origin of Species by
means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the
Struggle of Life."
It is doubtful if any single book, except the "Principia," ever worked so
great and so rapid a revolution in science, or made so deep an impression
on the general mind. It aroused a tempest of opposition and met with
equally vehement support, and it must be added that no book has been more
widely and persistently misunderstood by both friends and foes. In 1861,
Darwin remarks to a correspondent, "You understand my book perfectly, and
that I find a very rare event with my critics." (I. p. 313.) The immense
popularity which the "Origin" at once acquired was no doubt largely due to
its many points of contact with philosophical and theological questions in
which every intelligent man feels a profound interest; but a good deal must
be assigned to a somewhat delusive simplicity of style, which tends to
disguise the complexity and difficulty of the subject, and much to the
wealth of information on all sorts of curious problems of natural history,
which is made accessible to the most unlearned reader. But long occupation
with the work has led the present writer to believe that the "Origin of
Species" is one of the hardest of books to master; [Footnote: He is
comforted to find that probably the best qualified judge among all the
readers of the _Origin_ in 1859 was of the same opinion. Sir J. Hooker
writes, "It is the very hardest book to read, to full profit, that I ever
tried." (II. p. 242.)] and he is justified in this conviction by observing
that although the "Origin" has been close on thirty years before the world,
the strangest misconceptions of the essential nature of the theory therein
advocated are still put forth by serious writers.
Although, then, the present occasion is not suitable for any detailed
criticism of the theory, or of the objections which have been brought
against it, it may not be out of place to endeavour to separate the
substance of the theory from its accidents; and to show that a variety not
only of hostile comments, but of friendly would-be improvements lose their
_raison d'être_ to the careful student. Observation proves the
existence among all living beings of phenomena of three kinds, denoted by
the terms heredity, variation, and multiplication. Progeny tend to resemble
their parents; nevertheless all their organs and functions are susceptible
of departing more or less from the average parental character; and their
number is in excess of that of their parents. Severe competition for the
means of living, or the struggle for existence, is a necessary consequence
of unlimited multiplication; while selection, or the preservation of
favourable variations and the extinction of others, is a necessary
consequence of severe competition. "Favourable variations" are those which
are better adapted to surrounding conditions. It follows, therefore, that
every variety which is selected into a species is so favoured and preserved
in consequence of being, in some one or more respects, better adapted to
its surroundings than its rivals. In other words, every species which
exists, exists in virtue of adaptation, and whatever accounts for that
adaptation accounts for the existence of the species.
To say that Darwin has put forward a theory of the adaptation of species,
but not of their origin, is therefore to misunderstand the first principles
of the theory. For, as has been pointed out, it is a necessary consequence
of the theory of selection that every species must have some one or more
structural or functional peculiarities, in virtue of the advantage
conferred by which, it has fought through the crowd of its competitors and
achieved a certain duration. In this sense, it is true that every species
has been "originated" by selection.
There is another sense, however, in which it is equally true that selection
originates nothing. "Unless profitable variations ... occur natural
selection can do nothing" ("Origin," Ed. I. p. 82). "Nothing can be
effected unless favourable variations occur" (_ibid_., p. 108). "What
applies to one animal will apply throughout time to all animals--that is,
if they vary--for otherwise natural selection can do nothing. So it will be
with plants" (_ibid_., p. 113). Strictly speaking, therefore, the
origin of species in general lies in variation; while the origin of any
particular species lies, firstly, in the occurrence, and secondly, in the
selection and preservation of a particular variation. Clearness on this
head will relieve one from the necessity of attending to the fallacious
assertion that natural selection is a _deus ex machinâ_, or occult
agency.
Those, again, who confuse the operation of the natural causes which bring
about variation and selection with what they are pleased to call "chance"
can hardly have read the opening paragraph of the fifth chapter of the
"Origin" (Ed. I, p. 131): "I have sometimes spoken as if the variations ...
had been due to chance. This is of course a wholly incorrect expression,
but it seems to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the cause of each
particular variation."
Another point of great importance to the right comprehension of the theory,
is, that while every species must needs have some adaptive advantageous
characters to which it owes its preservation by selection, it may possess
any number of others which are neither advantageous nor disadvantageous,
but indifferent, or even slightly disadvantageous. (_Ibid_., p. 81.)
For variations take place, not merely in one organ or function at a time,
but in many; and thus an advantageous variation, which gives rise to the
selection of a new race or species, may be accompanied by others which are
indifferent, but which are just as strongly hereditary as the advantageous
variations. The advantageous structure is but one product of a modified
general constitution which may manifest itself by several other products;
and the selective process carries the general constitution along with the
advantageous special peculiarity. A given species of plant may owe its
existence to the selective adaptation of its flowers to insect fertilisers;
but the character of its leaves may be the result of variations of an
indifferent character. It is the origin of variations of this kind to which
Darwin refers in his frequent reference to what he calls "laws of
correlation of growth" or "correlated variation."
These considerations lead us further to see the inappropriateness of the
objections raised to Darwin's theory on the ground that natural selection
does not account for the first commencements of useful organs. But it does
not pretend to do so. The source of such commencements is necessarily to be
sought in different variations, which remain unaffected by selection until
they have taken such a form as to become utilisable in the struggle for
existence.
It is not essential to Darwin's theory that anything more should be assumed
than the facts of heredity, variation, and unlimited multiplication; and
the validity of the deductive reasoning as to the effect of the last (that
is, of the struggle for existence which it involves) upon the varieties
resulting from the operation of the former. Nor is it essential that one
should take up any particular position in regard to the mode of variation,
whether, for example, it takes place _per saltum_ or gradually;
whether it is definite in character or indefinite. Still less are those who
accept the theory bound to any particular views as to the causes of
heredity or of variation.
That Darwin held strong opinions on some or all of these points may be
quite true; but, so far as the theory is concerned, they must be regarded
as _obiter dicta_. With respect to the causes of variation, Darwin's
opinions are, from first to last, put forward altogether tentatively. In
the first edition of the "Origin," he attributes the strongest influence to
changes in the conditions of life of parental organisms, which he appears
to think act on the germ through the intermediation of the sexual organs.
He points out, over and over again, that habit, use, disuse, and the direct
influence of conditions have some effect, but he does not think it great,
and he draws attention to the difficulty of distinguishing between effects
of these agencies and those of selection. There is, however, one class of
variations which he withdraws from the direct influence of selection,
namely, the variations in the fertility of the sexual union of more or less
closely allied forms. He regards less fertility, or more or less complete
sterility, as "incidental to other acquired differences." (_Ibid_., p.
245.)
Considering the difficulties which surround the question of the causes of
variation, it is not to be wondered at, that Darwin should have inclined,
sometimes, rather more to one and, sometimes, rather more to another of the
possible alternatives. There is little difference between the last edition
of the "Origin" (1872) and the first on this head. In 1876, however, he
writes to Moritz Wagner, "In my opinion, the greatest error which I have
committed has been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of
the environments, i.e., food, climate, &c., independently of natural
selection. ...When I wrote the 'Origin,' and for some years afterwards, I
could find little good evidence of the direct action of the environment;
now there is a large body of evidence, and your case of the Saturnia is one
of the most remarkable of which I have heard." (III, p. 159.) But there is
really nothing to prevent the most tenacious adherent to the theory of
natural selection from taking any view he pleases as to the importance of
the direct influence of conditions and the hereditary transmissibility of
the modifications which they produce. In fact, there is a good deal to be
said for the view that the so-called direct influence of conditions is
itself a case of selection. Whether the hypothesis of Pangenesis be
accepted or rejected, it can hardly be doubted that the struggle for
existence goes on not merely between distinct organisms, but between the
physiological units of which each organism is composed, and that changes in
external conditions favour some and hinder others.
After a short stay in Cambridge, Darwin resided in London for the first
five years which followed his return to England; and for three years, he
held the post of Secretary to the Geological Society, though he shared to
the full his friend Lyell's objection to entanglement in such engagements.
In fact, he used to say in later life, more than half in earnest, that he
gave up hoping for work from men who accepted official duties and,
especially, Government appointments. Happily for him, he was exempted from
the necessity of making any sacrifice of this kind, but an even heavier
burden was laid upon him. During the earlier half of his voyage Darwin
retained the vigorous health of his boyhood, and indeed proved himself to
be exceptionally capable of enduring fatigue and privation. An anomalous
but severe disorder, which laid him up for several weeks at Valparaiso in
1834, however, seems to have left its mark on his constitution; and, in the
later years of his London life, attacks of illness, usually accompanied by
severe vomiting and great prostration of strength, became frequent. As he
grew older, a considerable part of every day, even at his best times, was
spent in misery; while, not unfrequently, months of suffering rendered work
of any kind impossible. Even Darwin's remarkable tenacity of purpose and
methodical utilisation of every particle of available energy could not have
enabled him to achieve a fraction of the vast amount of labour he got
through, in the course of the following forty years, had not the wisest and
the most loving care unceasingly surrounded him from the time of his
marriage in 1839. As early as 1842, the failure of health was so marked
that removal from London became imperatively necessary; and Darwin
purchased a house and grounds at Down, a solitary hamlet in Kent, which was
his home for the rest of his life. Under the strictly regulated conditions
of a valetudinarian existence, the intellectual activity of the invalid
might have put to shame most healthy men; and, so long as he could hold his
head up, there was no limit to the genial kindness of thought and action
for all about him. Those friends who were privileged to share the intimate
life of the household at Down have an abiding memory of the cheerful
restfulness which pervaded and characterised it.
After mentioning his settlement at Down, Darwin writes in his
Autobiography:--
"My chief enjoyment and sole employment throughout life has been scientific
work; and the excitement from such work makes me, for the time, forget, or
drives quite away, my daily discomfort. I have, therefore, nothing to
record during the rest of my life, except the publication of my several
books." (I, p. 79.)
Of such works published subsequently to 1859, several are monographic
discussions of topics briefly dealt with in the "Origin," which, it must
always be recollected, was considered by the author to be merely an
abstract of an _opus majus_.
The earliest of the books which may be placed in this category, "On the
Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilised by Insects," was
published in 1862, and whether we regard its theoretical significance, the
excellence of the observations and the ingenuity of the reasonings which it
records, or the prodigious mass of subsequent investigation of which it has
been the parent, it has no superior in point of importance. The conviction
that no theory of the origin of species could be satisfactory which failed
to offer an explanation of the way in which mechanisms involving
adaptations of structure and function to the performance of certain
operations are brought about, was, from the first, dominant in Darwin's
mind. As has been seen, he rejected Lamarck's views because of their
obvious incapacity to furnish such an explanation in the case of the great
majority of animal mechanisms, and in that of all those presented by the
vegetable world.
So far back as 1793, the wonderful work of Sprengel had established, beyond
any reasonable doubt, the fact that, in a large number of cases, a flower
is a piece of mechanism the object of which is to convert insect visitors
into agents of fertilisation. Sprengel's observations had been most
undeservedly neglected and well-nigh forgotten; but Robert Brown having
directed Darwin's attention to them in 1841, he was attracted towards the
subject, and verified many of Sprengel's statements. (III, p. 258.) It may
be doubted whether there was a living botanical specialist, except perhaps
Brown, who had done as much. If, however, adaptations of this kind were to
be explained by natural selection, it was necessary to show that the plants
which were provided with mechanisms for ensuring the aid of insects as
fertilisers, were by so much the better fitted to compete with their
rivals. This Sprengel had not done. Darwin had been attending to cross
fertilisation in plants so far back as 1839, from having arrived, in the
course of his speculations on the origin of species, at the conviction
"that crossing played an important part in keeping specific forms constant"
(I, p. 90). The further development of his views on the importance of cross
fertilisation appears to have taken place between this time and 1857, when
he published his first papers on the fertilisation of flowers in the
"Gardener's Chronicle." If the conclusion at which he ultimately arrived,
that cross fertilisation is favourable to the fertility of the parent and
to the vigour of the offspring, is correct, then it follows that all those
mechanisms which hinder self-fertilisation and favour crossing must be
advantageous in the struggle for existence; and, the more perfect the
action of the mechanism, the greater the advantage. Thus the way lay open
for the operation of natural selection in gradually perfecting the flower
as a fertilisation-trap. Analogous reasoning applies to the fertilising
insect. The better its structure is adapted to that of the trap, the more
will it be able to profit by the bait, whether of honey or of pollen, to
the exclusion of its competitors. Thus, by a sort of action and reaction, a
two-fold series of adaptive modifications will be brought about.
In 1865, the important bearing of this subject on his theory led Darwin to
commence a great series of laborious and difficult experiments on the
fertilisation of plants, which occupied him for eleven years, and furnished
him with the unexpectedly strong evidence in favour of the influence of
crossing which he published in 1876, under the title of "The Effects of
Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom." Incidentally, as it
were, to this heavy piece of work, he made the remarkable series of
observations on the different arrangements by which crossing is favoured
and, in many cases, necessitated, which appeared in the work on "The
Different Forms of Flowers in Plants of the same Species" in 1877.
In the course of the twenty years during which Darwin was thus occupied in
opening up new regions of investigation to the botanist and showing the
profound physiological significance of the apparently meaningless
diversities of floral structure, his attention was keenly alive to any
other interesting phenomena of plant life which came in his way. In his
correspondence, he not unfrequently laughs at himself for his ignorance of
systematic botany; and his acquaintance with vegetable anatomy and
physiology was of the slenderest. Nevertheless, if any of the less common
features of plant life came under his notice, that imperious necessity of
seeking for causes which nature had laid upon him, impelled, and indeed
compelled, him to inquire the how and the why of the fact, and its bearing
on his general views. And as, happily, the atavic tendency to frame
hypotheses was accompanied by an equally strong need to test them by
well-devised experiments, and to acquire all possible information before
publishing his results, the effect was that he touched no topic without
elucidating it.
Thus the investigation of the operations of insectivorous plants, embodied
in the work on that topic published in 1875, was started fifteen years
before, by a passing observation made during one of Darwin's rare holidays.
"In the summer of 1860, I was idling and resting near Hartfield, where two
species of Drosera abound; and I noticed that numerous insects had been
entrapped by the leaves. I carried home some plants, and on giving them
some insects saw the movements of the tentacles, and this made me think it
possible that the insects were caught for some special purpose.
Fortunately, a crucial test occurred to me, that of placing a large number
of leaves in various nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous fluids of equal
density; and as soon as I found that the former alone excited energetic
movements, it was obvious that here was a fine new field for
investigation." (I, p. 95.)
The researches thus initiated led to the proof that plants are capable of
secreting a digestive fluid like that of animals, and of profiting by the
result of digestion; whereby the peculiar apparatuses of the insectivorous
plants were brought within the scope of natural selection. Moreover, these
inquiries widely enlarged our knowledge of the manner in which stimuli are
transmitted in plants, and opened up a prospect of drawing closer the
analogies between the motor processes of plants and those of animals.
So with respect to the books on "Climbing Plants" (1875), and on the "Power
of Movement in Plants" (1880), Darwin says;--
"I was led to take up this subject by reading a short paper by Asa Gray,
published in 1858. He sent me some seeds, and on raising some plants I was
so much fascinated and perplexed by the revolving movements of the tendrils
and stems, which movements are really very simple, though appearing at
first sight very complex, that I procured various other kinds of climbing
plants and studied the whole subject.... Some of the adaptations displayed
by climbing plants are as beautiful as those of orchids for ensuring
cross-fertilisation." (I, p. 93.)
In the midst of all this amount of work, remarkable alike for its variety
and its importance, among plants, the animal kingdom was by no means
neglected. A large moiety of "The Variation of Animals and Plants under
Domestication" (1868), which contains the _pièces justificatives_ of
the first chapter of the "Origin," is devoted to domestic animals, and the
hypothesis of "pangenesis" propounded in the second volume applies to the
whole living world. In the "Origin" Darwin throws out some suggestions as
to the causes of variation, but he takes heredity, as it is manifested by
individual organisms, for granted, as an ultimate fact; pangenesis is an
attempt to account for the phenomena of heredity in the organism, on the
assumption that the physiological units of which the organism is composed
give off gemmules, which, in virtue of heredity, tend to reproduce the unit
from which they are derived.
That Darwin had the application of his theory to the origin of the human
species clearly in his mind in 1859, is obvious from a passage in the first
edition of "The Origin of Species." (Ed. I, p. 488.) "In the distant future
I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be
based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental
power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man
and his history." It is one of the curiosities of scientific literature,
that, in the face of this plain declaration, its author should have been
charged with concealing his opinions on the subject of the origin of man.
But he reserved the full statement of his views until 1871, when the
"Descent of Man" was published. The "Expression of the Emotions"
(originally intended to form only a chapter in the "Descent of Man") grew
into a separate volume, which appeared in 1872. Although always taking a
keen interest in geology, Darwin naturally found no time disposable for
geological work, even had his health permitted it, after he became
seriously engaged with the great problem of species. But the last of his
labours is, in some sense, a return to his earliest, inasmuch as it is an
expansion of a short paper read before the Geological Society more than
forty years before, and, as he says, "revived old geological thoughts" (I,
p. 98). In fact, "The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of
Worms," affords as striking an example of the great results produced by the
long-continued operation of small causes as even the author of the
"Principles of Geology" could have desired.
In the early months of 1882 Darwin's health underwent a change for the
worse; attacks of giddiness and fainting supervened, and on the 19th of
April he died. On the 24th, his remains were interred in Westminster Abbey,
in accordance with the general feeling that such a man as he should not go
to the grave without some public recognition of the greatness of his work.
Mr. Darwin became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1839; one of the Royal
Medals was awarded to him in 1853, and he received the Copley Medal in
1864. The "Life and Letters," edited with admirable skill and judgment by
Mr. Francis Darwin, gives a full and singularly vivid presentment of his
father's personal character, of his mode of work, and of the events of his
life. In the present brief obituary notice, the writer has attempted
nothing more than to select and put together those facts which enable us to
trace the intellectual evolution of one of the greatest of the many great
men of science whose names adorn the long roll of the Fellows of the Royal
Society.