THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES'--REVIEWS AND CRITICISMS--ADHESIONS AND ATTACKS.
"You are the greatest revolutionist in natural history of this
century, if not of all centuries."--H. C. Watson to C. Darwin, Nov.
21, 1859.
1860.
The second edition, 3000 copies, of the _Origin_ was published on
January 7th; on the 10th, he wrote with regard to it, to Lyell:--
_C. D. to C. Lyell._ Down, January 10th [1860].
... It is perfectly true that I owe nearly all the corrections to you,
and several verbal ones to you and others; I am heartily glad you
approve of them, as yet only two things have annoyed me; those
confounded millions[185] of years (not that I think it is probably
wrong), and my not having (by inadvertence) mentioned Wallace towards
the close of the book in the summary, not that any one has noticed this
to me. I have now put in Wallace's name at p. 484 in a conspicuous
place. I shall be truly glad to read carefully any MS. on man, and give
my opinion. You used to caution me to be cautious about man. I suspect I
shall have to return the caution a hundred fold! Yours will, no doubt,
be a grand discussion; but it will horrify the world at first more than
my whole volume; although by the sentence (p. 489, new edition[186]) I
show that I believe man is in the same predicament with other animals.
It is in fact impossible to doubt it. I have thought (only vaguely) on
man. With respect to the races, one of my best chances of truth has
broken down from the impossibility of getting facts. I have one good
speculative line, but a man must have entire credence in Natural
Selection before he will even listen to it. Psychologically, I have done
scarcely anything. Unless, indeed, expression of countenance can be
included, and on that subject I have collected a good many facts, and
speculated, but I do not suppose I shall ever publish, but it is an
uncommonly curious subject.
A few days later he wrote again to the same correspondent:
"What a grand immense benefit you conferred on me by getting Murray to
publish my book. I never till to-day realised that it was getting widely
distributed; for in a letter from a lady to-day to E., she says she
heard a man enquiring for it at the _Railway Station!!!_ at Waterloo
Bridge; and the bookseller said that he had none till the new edition
was out. The bookseller said he had not read it, but had heard it was a
very remarkable book!!!"
_C. D. to J. D. Hooker._ Down, 14th [January, 1860].
... I heard from Lyell this morning, and he tells me a piece of news.
You are a good-for-nothing man; here you are slaving yourself to death
with hardly a minute to spare, and you must write a review on my book! I
thought it[187] a very good one, and was so much struck with it, that I
sent it to Lyell. But I assumed, as a matter of course, that it was
Lindley's. Now that I know it is yours, I have re-read it, and my kind
and good friend, it has warmed my heart with all the honourable and
noble things you say of me and it. I was a good deal surprised at
Lindley hitting on some of the remarks, but I never dreamed of you. I
admired it chiefly as so well adapted to tell on the readers of the
_Gardeners' Chronicle_; but now I admire it in another spirit. Farewell,
with hearty thanks....
_Asa Gray to J. D. Hooker._ Cambridge, Mass., January 5th, 1860.
MY DEAR HOOKER,--Your last letter, which reached me just before
Christmas, has got mislaid during the upturnings in my study which take
place at that season, and has not yet been discovered. I should be very
sorry to lose it, for there were in it some botanical mems. which I had
not secured....
The principal part of your letter was high laudation of Darwin's book.
Well, the book has reached me, and I finished its careful perusal four
days ago; and I freely say that your laudation is not out of place.
It is done in a _masterly manner_. It might well have taken twenty years
to produce it. It is crammed full of most interesting matter--thoroughly
digested--well expressed--close, cogent, and taken as a system it makes
out a better case than I had supposed possible....
Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of it. He says it is
_poor--very poor_!! (entre nous). The fact [is] he is very much annoyed
by it, ... and I do not wonder at it. To bring all _ideal_ systems
within the domain of science, and give good physical or natural
explanations of all his capital points, is as bad as to have Forbes take
the glacier materials ... and give scientific explanation of all the
phenomena.
Tell Darwin all this. I will write to him when I get a chance. As I have
promised, he and you shall have fair-play here.... I must myself write a
review[188] of Darwin's book for _Silliman's Journal_ (the more so that
I suspect Agassiz means to come out upon it) for the next (March)
number, and I am now setting about it (when I ought to be every moment
working the Expl[oring] Expedition Compositae, which I know far more
about). And really it is no easy job as you may well imagine.
I doubt if I shall please you altogether. I know I shall not please
Agassiz at all. I hear another reprint is in the Press, and the book
will excite much attention here, and some controversy....
_C. D. to Asa Gray._ Down, January 28th [1860].
MY DEAR GRAY,--Hooker has forwarded to me your letter to him; and I
cannot express how deeply it has gratified me. To receive the approval
of a man whom one has long sincerely respected, and whose judgment and
knowledge are most universally admitted, is the highest reward an author
can possibly wish for; and I thank you heartily for your most kind
expressions.
I have been absent from home for a few days, and so could not earlier
answer your letter to me of the 10th of January. You have been extremely
kind to take so much trouble and interest about the edition. It has been
a mistake of my publisher not thinking of sending over the sheets. I had
entirely and utterly forgotten your offer of receiving the sheets as
printed off. But I must not blame my publisher, for had I remembered
your most kind offer I feel pretty sure I should not have taken
advantage of it; for I never dreamed of my book being so successful with
general readers: I believe I should have laughed at the idea of sending
the sheets to America.[189]
After much consideration, and on the strong advice of Lyell and others,
I have resolved to leave the present book as it is (excepting correcting
errors, or here and there inserting short sentences), and to use all my
strength, _which is but little_, to bring out the first part (forming a
separate volume, with index, &c.) of the three volumes which will make
my bigger work; so that I am very unwilling to take up time in making
corrections for an American edition. I enclose a list of a few
corrections in the second reprint, which you will have received by this
time complete, and I could send four or five corrections or additions of
equally small importance, or rather of equal brevity. I also intend to
write a _short_ preface with a brief history of the subject. These I
will set about, as they must some day be done, and I will send them to
you in a short time--the few corrections first, and the preface
afterwards, unless I hear that you have given up all idea of a separate
edition. You will then be able to judge whether it is worth having the
new edition with _your review prefixed_. Whatever be the nature of your
review, I assure you I should feel it a _great_ honour to have my book
thus preceded....
_C. D. to C. Lyell._ Down [February 15th, 1860].
... I am perfectly convinced (having read it this morning) that the
review in the _Annals_[190] is by Wollaston; no one else in the world
would have used so many parentheses. I have written to him, and told him
that the "pestilent" fellow thanks him for his kind manner of speaking
about him. I have also told him that he would be pleased to hear that
the Bishop of Oxford says it is the most unphilosophical[191] work he
ever read. The review seems to me clever, and only misinterprets me in a
few places. Like all hostile men, he passes over the explanation given
of Classification, Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs, &c. I
read Wallace's paper in MS.,[192] and thought it admirably good; he does
not know that he has been anticipated about the depth of intervening sea
determining distribution.... The most curious point in the paper seems
to me that about the African character of the Celebes productions, but I
should require further confirmation....
Henslow is staying here; I have had some talk with him; he is in much
the same state as Bunbury,[193] and will go a very little way with us,
but brings up no real argument against going further. He also shudders
at the eye! It is really curious (and perhaps is an argument in our
favour) how differently different opposers view the subject. Henslow
used to rest his opposition on the imperfection of the Geological
Record, but he now thinks nothing of this, and says I have got well out
of it; I wish I could quite agree with him. Baden Powell says he never
read anything so conclusive as my statement about the eye!! A stranger
writes to me about sexual selection, and regrets that I boggle about
such a trifle as the brush of hair on the male turkey, and so on. As L.
Jenyns has a really philosophical mind, and as you say you like to see
everything, I send an old letter of his. In a later letter to Henslow,
which I have seen, he is more candid than any opposer I have heard of,
for he says, though he cannot go so far as I do, yet he can give no good
reason why he should not. It is funny how each man draws his own
imaginary line at which to halt. It reminds me so vividly [of] what I
was told[194] about you when I first commenced geology--to believe a
_little_, but on no account to believe all.
Ever yours affectionately.
With regard to the attitude of the more liberal representatives of the
Church, the following letter from Charles Kingsley is of interest:
_C. Kingsley to C. Darwin._ Eversley Rectory, Winchfield,
November 18th, 1859.
DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for the unexpected honour of your book.
That the Naturalist whom, of all naturalists living, I most wish to know
and to learn from, should have sent a scientist like me his book,
encourages me at least to observe more carefully, and think more slowly.
I am so poorly (in brain), that I fear I cannot read your book just now
as I ought. All I have seen of it _awes_ me; both with the heap of facts
and the prestige of your name, and also with the clear intuition, that
if you be right, I must give up much that I have believed and written.
In that I care little. Let God be true, and every man a liar! Let us
know what is, and, as old Socrates has it, [Greek: hepesthai to
logo]--follow up the villainous shifty fox of an argument, into
whatsoever unexpected bogs and brakes he may lead us, if we do but run
into him at last.
From two common superstitious, at least, I shall be free while judging
of your book:--
(1.) I have long since, from watching the crossing of domesticated
animals and plants, learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of
species.
(2.) I have gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a
conception of Deity, to believe that He created primal forms capable of
self-development into all forms needful _pro tempore_ and _pro loco_, as
to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the
_lacunas_ which He Himself had made. I question whether the former be
not the loftier thought.
Be it as it may, I shall prize your book, both for itself, and as a
proof that you are aware of the existence of such a person as
Your faithful servant,
C. KINGSLEY.
My father's old friend, the Rev. J. Brodie Innes, of Milton Brodie, who
was for many years Vicar of Down, in some reminiscences of my father
which he was so good as to give me, writes in the same spirit:
"We never attacked each other. Before I knew Mr. Darwin I had adopted,
and publicly expressed, the principle that the study of natural history,
geology, and science in general, should be pursued without reference to
the Bible. That the Book of Nature and Scripture came from the same
Divine source, ran in parallel lines, and when properly understood would
never cross....
"In [a] letter, after I had left Down, he [Darwin] writes, 'We often
differed, but you are one of those rare mortals from whom one can differ
and yet feel no shade of animosity, and that is a thing [of] which I
should feel very proud if any one could say [it] of me.'
"On my last visit to Down, Mr. Darwin said, at his dinner-table, 'Innes
and I have been fast friends for thirty years, and we never thoroughly
agreed on any subject but once, and then we stared hard at each other,
and thought one of us must be very ill.'"
The following extract from a letter to Lyell, Feb. 23, 1860, has a
certain bearing on the points just touched on:
"With respect to Bronn's[195] objection that it cannot be shown how life
arises, and likewise to a certain extent Asa Gray's remark that natural
selection is not a _vera causa_, I was much interested by finding
accidentally in Brewster's _Life of Newton_, that Leibnitz objected to
the law of gravity because Newton could not show what gravity itself is.
As it has chanced, I have used in letters this very same argument,
little knowing that any one had really thus objected to the law of
gravity. Newton answers by saying that it is philosophy to make out the
movements of a clock, though you do not know why the weight descends to
the ground. Leibnitz further objected that the law of gravity was
opposed to Natural Religion! Is this not curious? I really think I shall
use the facts for some introductory remarks for my bigger book."
_C. D. to J. D. Hooker._ Down, March 3rd [1860].
... I think you expect too much in regard to change of opinion on the
subject of Species. One large class of men, more especially I suspect of
naturalists, never will care about _any_ general question, of which old
Gray, of the British Museum, may be taken as a type; and secondly,
nearly all men past a moderate age, either in actual years or in mind
are, I am fully convinced, incapable of looking at facts under a new
point of view. Seriously, I am astonished and rejoiced at the progress
which the subject has made; look at the enclosed memorandum. ---- says
my book will be forgotten in ten years, perhaps so; but, with such a
list, I feel convinced the subject will not.
[Here follows the memorandum referred to:]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geologists. | Zoologists and | Physiologists. |Botanists.
| Palaeontologists.| |
------------------|------------------|------------------|-----------------
Lyell. |Huxley. |Carpenter. |Hooker.
Ramsay.[196] |J. Lubbock. |Sir. H. Holland |H. C. Watson.
Jukes.[197] |L. Jenyns |(to large extent).|Asa Gray
H. D. Rogers.[198]|(to large extent).| |(to some extent).
|Searles Wood.[199]| |Dr. Boott
| |(to large extent).
| |Thwaites.[200]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
_C. D. to Asa Gray_. Down, April 3 [1860].
... I remember well the time when the thought of the eye made me cold
all over, but I have got over this stage of the complaint, and now small
trifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable. The
sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me
sick!...
You may like to hear about reviews on my book. Sedgwick (as I and Lyell
feel _certain_ from internal evidence) has reviewed me savagely and
unfairly in the _Spectator_.[201] The notice includes much abuse, and is
hardly fair in several respects. He would actually lead any one, who was
ignorant of geology, to suppose that I had invented the great gaps
between successive geological formations, instead of its being an almost
universally admitted dogma. But my dear old friend Sedgwick, with his
noble heart, is old, and is rabid with indignation.... There has been
one prodigy of a review, namely, an _opposed_ one (by Pictet,[202] the
palaeontologist, in the _Bib. Universelle_ of Geneva) which is
_perfectly_ fair and just, and I agree to every word he says; our only
difference being that he attaches less weight to arguments in favour,
and more to arguments opposed, than I do. Of all the opposed reviews, I
think this the only quite fair one, and I never expected to see one.
Please observe that I do not class your review by any means as opposed,
though you think so yourself! It has done me _much_ too good service
ever to appear in that rank in my eyes. But I fear I shall weary you
with so much about my book. I should rather think there was a good
chance of my becoming the most egotistical man in all Europe! What a
proud pre-eminence! Well, you have helped to make me so, and therefore
you must forgive me if you can.
My dear Gray, ever yours most gratefully.
_C. D. to C. Lyell._ Down, April 10th [1860].
I have just read the _Edinburgh_,[203] which without doubt is by ----.
It is extremely malignant, clever, and I fear will be very damaging. He
is atrociously severe on Huxley's lecture, and very bitter against
Hooker. So we three _enjoyed_ it together. Not that I really enjoyed it,
for it made me uncomfortable for one night; but I have got quite over it
to-day. It requires much study to appreciate all the bitter spite of
many of the remarks against me; indeed I did not discover all myself. It
scandalously misrepresents many parts. He misquotes some passages,
altering words within inverted commas....
It is painful to be hated in the intense degree with which ---- hates
me.
Now for a curious thing about my book, and then I have done. In last
Saturday's _Gardeners' Chronicle_,[204] a Mr. Patrick Matthew publishes
a long extract from his work on _Naval Timber and Arboriculture_
published in 1831, in which he briefly but completely anticipates the
theory of Natural Selection. I have ordered the book, as some few
passages are rather obscure, but it is certainly, I think, a complete
but not developed anticipation! Erasmus always said that surely this
would be shown to be the case some day. Anyhow, one may be excused in
not having discovered the fact in a work on Naval Timber.
_C. D. to J. D. Hooker._ Down [April 13th, 1860].
MY DEAR HOOKER,--Questions of priority so often lead to odious quarrels,
that I should esteem it a great favour if you would read the
enclosed.[205] If you think it proper that I should send it (and of
this there can hardly be any question), and if you think it full and
ample enough, please alter the date to the day on which you post it, and
let that be soon. The case in the _Gardeners' Chronicle_ seems a
_little_ stronger than in Mr. Matthew's book, for the passages are
therein scattered in three places; but it would be mere hair-splitting
to notice that. If you object to my letter, please return it; but I do
not expect that you will, but I thought that you would not object to run
your eye over it. My dear Hooker, it is a great thing for me to have so
good, true, and old a friend as you. I owe much for science to my
friends.
... I have gone over [the _Edinburgh_] review again, and compared
passages, and I am astonished at the misrepresentations. But I am glad I
resolved not to answer. Perhaps it is selfish, but to answer and think
more on the subject is too unpleasant. I am so sorry that Huxley by my
means has been thus atrociously attacked. I do not suppose you much care
about the gratuitous attack on you.
Lyell in his letter remarked that you seemed to him as if you were
overworked. Do, pray, be cautious, and remember how many and many a man
has done this--who thought it absurd till too late. I have often thought
the same. You know that you were bad enough before your Indian journey.
_C. D. to C. Lyell._ Down, April [1860].
... I was particularly glad to hear what you thought about not noticing
[the _Edinburgh_] review. Hooker and Huxley thought it a sort of duty to
point out the alteration of quoted citations, and there is truth in this
remark; but I so hated the thought that I resolved not to do so. I shall
come up to London on Saturday the 14th, for Sir B. Brodie's party, as I
have an accumulation of things to do in London, and will (if I do not
hear to the contrary) call about a quarter before ten on Sunday morning,
and sit with you at breakfast, but will not sit long, and so take up
much of your time. I must say one more word about our quasi-theological
controversy about natural selection, and let me have your opinion when
we meet in London. Do you consider that the successive variations in the
size of the crop of the Pouter Pigeon, which man has accumulated to
please his caprice, have been due to "the creative and sustaining powers
of Brahma?" In the sense that an omnipotent and omniscient Deity must
order and know everything, this must be admitted; yet, in honest truth,
I can hardly admit it. It seems preposterous that a maker of a universe
should care about the crop of a pigeon solely to please man's silly
fancies. But if you agree with me in thinking such an interposition of
the Deity uncalled for, I can see no reason whatever for believing in
such interpositions in the case of natural beings, in which strange and
admirable peculiarities have been naturally selected for the creature's
own benefit. Imagine a Pouter in a state of nature wading into the water
and then, being buoyed up by its inflated crop, sailing about in search
of food. What admiration this would have excited--adaptation to the laws
of hydrostatic pressure, &c. &c. For the life of me, I cannot see any
difficulty in natural selection producing the most exquisite structure,
_if such structure can be arrived at by gradation_, and I know from
experience how hard it is to name any structure towards which at least
some gradations are not known.
Ever yours.
P.S.--The conclusion at which I have come, as I have told Asa Gray, is
that such a question, as is touched on in this note, is beyond the human
intellect, like "predestination and free will," or the "origin of evil."
_C. D. to J. D. Hooker._ Down [May 15th, 1860].
... How paltry it is in such men as X., Y. and Co. not reading your
essay. It is incredibly paltry. They may all attack me to their hearts'
content. I am got case-hardened. As for the old fogies in
Cambridge,[206] it really signifies nothing. I look at their attacks as
a proof that our work is worth the doing. It makes me resolve to buckle
on my armour. I see plainly that it will be a long uphill fight. But
think of Lyell's progress with Geology. One thing I see most plainly,
that without Lyell's, yours, Huxley's and Carpenter's aid, my book would
have been a mere flash in the pan. But if we all stick to it, we shall
surely gain the day. And I now see that the battle is worth fighting. I
deeply hope that you think so.
_C. D. to Asa Gray._ Down May 22nd [1860].
MY DEAR GRAY,--Again I have to thank you for one of your very pleasant
letters of May 7th, enclosing a very pleasant remittance of L22. I am in
simple truth astonished at all the kind trouble you have taken for me. I
return Appletons' account. For the chance of your wishing for a formal
acknowledgment I send one. If you have any further communication to the
Appletons, pray express my acknowledgment for [their] generosity; for it
is generosity in my opinion. I am not at all surprised at the sale
diminishing; my extreme surprise is at the greatness of the sale. No
doubt the public has been _shamefully_ imposed on! for they bought the
book thinking that it would be nice easy reading. I expect the sale to
stop soon in England, yet Lyell wrote to me the other day that calling
at Murray's he heard that fifty copies had gone in the previous
forty-eight hours. I am extremely glad that you will notice in
_Silliman_ the additions in the _Origin_.[207] Judging from letters (and
I have just seen one from Thwaites to Hooker), and from remarks, the
most serious omission in my book was not explaining how it is, as I
believe, that all forms do not necessarily advance, how there can now be
_simple_ organisms still existing.... I hear there is a _very_ severe
review on me in the _North British_ by a Rev. Mr. Dunns,[208] a Free
Kirk minister, and dabbler in Natural History. In the _Saturday Review_
(one of our cleverest periodicals) of May 5th, p. 573, there is a nice
article on [the _Edinburgh_] review, defending Huxley, but not Hooker;
and the latter, I think, [the _Edinburgh_ reviewer] treats most
ungenerously.[209] But surely you will get sick unto death of me and my
reviewers.
With respect to the theological view of the question. This is always
painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write
atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and
as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides
of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade
myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly
created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding
within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with
mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye
was expressly designed. On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented
to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and
to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined
to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details,
whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.
Not that this notion _at all_ satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the
whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as
well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what
he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all
necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills a man, whether a good one
or bad one, owing to the excessively complex action of natural laws. A
child (who may turn out an idiot) is born by the action of even more
complex laws, and I can see no reason why a man, or other animal, may
not have been aboriginally produced by other laws, and that all these
laws may have been expressly designed by an omniscient Creator, who
foresaw every future event and consequence. But the more I think the
more bewildered I become; as indeed I have probably shown by this
letter.
Most deeply do I feel your generous kindness and interest.
Yours sincerely and cordially.
The meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1860 is famous for
two pitched battles over the _Origin of Species_. Both of them
originated in unimportant papers. On Thursday, June 28th, Dr. Daubeny
of Oxford made a communication to Section D: "On the final causes of the
sexuality of plants, with particular reference to Mr. Darwin's work on
the _Origin of Species_." Mr. Huxley was called on by the President, but
tried (according to the _Athenaeum_ report) to avoid a discussion, on the
ground "that a general audience, in which sentiment would unduly
interfere with intellect, was not the public before which such a
discussion should be carried on." However, the subject was not allowed
to drop. Sir R. Owen (I quote from the _Athenaeum_, July 7th, 1860), who
"wished to approach this subject in the spirit of the philosopher,"
expressed his "conviction that there were facts by which the public
could come to some conclusion with regard to the probabilities of the
truth of Mr. Darwin's theory." He went on to say that the brain of the
gorilla "presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man,
than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most
problematical of the Quadrumana." Mr. Huxley replied, and gave these
assertions a "direct and unqualified contradiction," pledging himself to
"justify that unusual procedure elsewhere,"[210] a pledge which he amply
fulfilled.[211] On Friday there was peace, but on Saturday 30th, the
battle arose with redoubled fury, at a conjoint meeting of three
Sections, over a paper by Dr. Draper of New York, on the "Intellectual
development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr.
Darwin."
The following account is from an eye-witness of the scene.
"The excitement was tremendous. The Lecture-room, in which it had been
arranged that the discussion should be held, proved far too small for
the audience, and the meeting adjourned to the Library of the Museum,
which was crammed to suffocation long before the champions entered the
lists. The numbers were estimated at from 700 to 1000. Had it been
term-time, or had the general public been admitted, it would have been
impossible to have accommodated the rush to hear the oratory of the bold
Bishop.[212] Professor Henslow, the President of Section D, occupied the
chair, and wisely announced _in limine_ that none who had not valid
arguments to bring forward on one side or the other, would be allowed to
address the meeting: a caution that proved necessary, for no fewer than
four combatants had their utterances burked by him, because of their
indulgence in vague declamation.
"The Bishop was up to time, and spoke for full half-an-hour with
inimitable spirit, emptiness and unfairness. It was evident from his
handling of the subject that he had been 'crammed' up to the throat, and
that he knew nothing at first hand; in fact, he used no argument not to
be found in his _Quarterly_ article.[213] He ridiculed Darwin badly, and
Huxley savagely, but all in such dulcet tones, so persuasive a manner,
and in such well-turned periods, that I who had been inclined to blame
the President for allowing a discussion that could serve no scientific
purpose, now forgave him from the bottom of my heart."
What follows is from notes most kindly supplied by the Hon. and Rev. W.
H. Fremantle, who was an eye-witness of the scene.
"The Bishop of Oxford attacked Darwin, at first playfully but at last in
grim earnest. It was known that the Bishop had written an article
against Darwin in the last _Quarterly Review_: it was also rumoured that
Professor Owen had been staying at Cuddesden and had primed the Bishop,
who was to act as mouthpiece to the great Palaeontologist, who did not
himself dare to enter the lists. The Bishop, however, did not show
himself master of the facts, and made one serious blunder. A fact which
had been much dwelt on as confirmatory of Darwin's idea of variation,
was that a sheep had been born shortly before in a flock in the North of
England, having an addition of one to the vertebrae of the spine. The
Bishop was declaring with rhetorical exaggeration that there was hardly
any actual evidence on Darwin's side. 'What have they to bring forward?'
he exclaimed. 'Some rumoured statement about a long-legged sheep.' But
he passed on to banter: 'I should like to ask Professor Huxley, who is
sitting by me, and is about to tear me to pieces when I have sat down,
as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his
grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?'
And then taking a graver tone, he asserted in a solemn peroration that
Darwin's views were contrary to the revelations of God in the
Scriptures. Professor Huxley was unwilling to respond: but he was called
for and spoke with his usual incisiveness and with some scorn. 'I am
here only in the interests of science,' he said, 'and I have not heard
anything which can prejudice the case of my august client.' Then after
showing how little competent the Bishop was to enter upon the
discussion, he touched on the question of Creation. 'You say that
development drives out the Creator. But you assert that God made you:
and yet you know that you yourself were originally a little piece of
matter no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case.' Lastly as to
the descent from a monkey, he said: 'I should feel it no shame to have
risen from such an origin. But I should feel it a shame to have sprung
from one who prostituted the gifts of culture and of eloquence to the
service of prejudice and of falsehood.'
"Many others spoke. Mr. Gresley, an old Oxford don, pointed out that in
human nature at least orderly development was not the necessary rule;
Homer was the greatest of poets, but he lived 3000 years ago, and has
not produced his like.
"Admiral Fitz-Roy was present, and said that he had often expostulated
with his old comrade of the _Beagle_ for entertaining views which were
contradictory to the First Chapter of Genesis.
"Sir John Lubbock declared that many of the arguments by which the
permanence of species was supported came to nothing, and instanced some
wheat which was said to have come off an Egyptian mummy and was sent to
him to prove that wheat had not changed since the time of the Pharaohs;
but which proved to be made of French chocolate.[214] Sir Joseph (then
Dr.) Hooker spoke shortly, saying that he had found the hypothesis of
Natural Selection so helpful in explaining the phenomena of his own
subject of Botany, that he had been constrained to accept it. After a
few words from Darwin's old friend Professor Henslow who occupied the
chair, the meeting broke up, leaving the impression that those most
capable of estimating the arguments of Darwin in detail saw their way to
accept his conclusions."
Many versions of Mr. Huxley's speech were current: the following report
of his conclusion is from a letter addressed by the late John Richard
Green, then an undergraduate, to a fellow-student, now Professor Boyd
Dawkins:--"I asserted, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be
ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor
whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would be a _man_, a man of
restless and versatile intellect, who, not content with an equivocal
success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions
with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an
aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the
real point at issue by eloquent digressions, and skilled appeals to
religious prejudice."[215]
The following letter shows that Mr. Huxley's presence at this
remarkable scene depended on so slight a chance as that of meeting a
friend in the street; that this friend should have been Robert Chambers,
so that the author of the _Vestiges_ should have sounded the war-note
for the battle of the _Origin_, adds interest to the incident. I have to
thank Mr. Huxley for allowing the story to be told in words of his not
written for publication.
_T. H. Huxley to Francis Darwin._
June 27, 1891.
... I should say that Fremantle's account is substantially correct; but
that Green has the passage of my speech more accurately. However, I am
certain I did not use the word "equivocal."[216]
The odd part of the business is that I should not have been present
except for Robert Chambers. I had heard of the Bishop's intention to
utilise the occasion. I knew he had the reputation of being a first-rate
controversialist, and I was quite aware that if he played his cards
properly, we should have little chance, with such an audience, of making
an efficient defence. Moreover, I was very tired, and wanted to join my
wife at her brother-in-law's country house near Reading, on the
Saturday. On the Friday I met Chambers in the street, and in reply to
some remark of his about the meeting, I said that I did not mean to
attend it; did not see the good of giving up peace and quietness to be
episcopally pounded. Chambers broke out into vehement remonstrances and
talked about my deserting them. So I said, "Oh! if you take it that way,
I'll come and have my share of what is going on."
So I came, and chanced to sit near old Sir Benjamin Brodie. The Bishop
began his speech, and, to my astonishment, very soon showed that he was
so ignorant that he did not know how to manage his own case. My spirits
rose proportionally, and when he turned to me with his insolent
question, I said to Sir Benjamin, in an undertone, "The Lord hath
delivered him into mine hands."
That sagacious old gentleman stared at me as if I had lost my senses.
But, in fact, the Bishop had justified the severest retort I could
devise, and I made up my mind to let him have it. I was careful,
however, not to rise to reply, until the meeting called for me--then I
let myself go.
In justice to the Bishop, I am bound to say he bore no malice, but was
always courtesy itself when we occasionally met in after years. Hooker
and I walked away from the meeting together, and I remember saying to
him that this experience had changed my opinion as to the practical
value of the art of public speaking, and that, from that time forth, I
should carefully cultivate it, and try to leave off hating it. I did the
former, but never quite succeeded in the latter effort.
I did not mean to trouble you with such a long scrawl when I began about
this piece of ancient history.
Ever yours very faithfully
T. H. HUXLEY.
The eye-witness above quoted (p. 237) continues:--
"There was a crowded conversazione in the evening at the rooms of the
hospitable and genial Professor of Botany, Dr. Daubeny, where the almost
sole topic was the battle of the _Origin_, and I was much struck with
the fair and unprejudiced way in which the black coats and white cravats
of Oxford discussed the question, and the frankness with which they
offered their congratulations to the winners in the combat."[217]
_C. D. to J. D. Hooker._ Monday night [July 2nd, 1860].
MY DEAR HOOKER,--I have just received your letter. I have been very
poorly, with almost continuous bad headache for forty-eight hours, and I
was low enough, and thinking what a useless burthen I was to myself and
all others, when your letter came, and it has so cheered me; your
kindness and affection brought tears into my eyes. Talk of fame, honour,
pleasure, wealth, all are dirt compared with affection; and this is a
doctrine with which, I know, from your letter, that you will agree with
from the bottom of your heart.... How I should have liked to have
wandered about Oxford with you, if I had been well enough; and how still
more I should have liked to have heard you triumphing over the Bishop. I
am astonished at your success and audacity. It is something
unintelligible to me how any one can argue in public like orators do. I
had no idea you had this power. I have read lately so many hostile
views, that I was beginning to think that perhaps I was wholly in the
wrong, and that ---- was right when he said the whole subject would be
forgotten in ten years; but now that I hear that you and Huxley will
fight publicly (which I am sure I never could do), I fully believe that
our cause will, in the long-run, prevail. I am glad I was not in Oxford,
for I should have been overwhelmed, with my [health] in its present
state.
_C. D. to J. D. Hooker._ [July 1860.]
... I have just read the _Quarterly_.[218] It is uncommonly clever; it
picks out with skill all the most conjectural parts, and brings forward
well all the difficulties. It quizzes me quite splendidly by quoting the
_Anti-Jacobin_ versus my Grandfather. You are not alluded to, nor,
strange to say, Huxley; and I can plainly see, here and there, ----'s
hand. The concluding pages will make Lyell shake in his shoes. By Jove,
if he sticks to us, he will be a real hero. Good-night. Your
well-quizzed, but not sorrowful, and affectionate friend,
C. D.
I can see there has been some queer tampering with the review, for a
page has been cut out and reprinted.
The following extract from a letter of Sept. 1st, 1860, is of interest,
not only as showing that Lyell was still conscientiously working out his
conversion, but also and especially as illustrating the remarkable fact
that hardly any of my father's critics gave him any new objections--so
fruitful had been his ponderings of twenty years:--
"I have been much interested by your letter of the 28th, received this
morning. It has _delighted_ me, because it demonstrates that you have
thought a good deal lately on Natural Selection. Few things have
surprised me more than the entire paucity of objections and difficulties
new to me in the published reviews. Your remarks are of a different
stamp and new to me."
_C. D. to Asa Gray._ [Hartfield, Sussex] July 22nd [1860].
MY DEAR GRAY,--Owing to absence from home at water-cure and then having
to move my sick girl to whence I am now writing, I have only lately read
the discussion in _Proc. American Acad._,[219] and now I cannot resist
expressing my sincere admiration of your most clear powers of reasoning.
As Hooker lately said in a note to me, you are more than _any one_ else
the thorough master of the subject. I declare that you know my book as
well as I do myself; and bring to the question new lines of illustration
and argument in a manner which excites my astonishment and almost my
envy![220] I admire these discussions, I think, almost more than your
article in _Silliman's Journal_. Every single word seems weighed
carefully, and tells like a 32-pound shot. It makes me much wish (but I
know that you have not time) that you could write more in detail, and
give, for instance, the facts on the variability of the American wild
fruits. The _Athenaeum_ has the largest circulation, and I have sent my
copy to the editor with a request that he would republish the first
discussion; I much fear he will not, as he reviewed the subject in so
hostile a spirit.... I shall be curious [to see], and will order the
August number, as soon as I know that it contains your review of
reviews. My conclusion is that you have made a mistake in being a
botanist, you ought to have been a lawyer.
The following passages from a letter to Huxley (Dec. 2nd, 1860) may
serve to show what was my father's view of the position of the subject,
after a year's experience of reviewers, critics and converts:--
"I have got fairly sick of hostile reviews. Nevertheless, they have been
of use in showing me when to expatiate a little and to introduce a few
new discussions.
"I entirely agree with you, that the difficulties on my notions are
terrific, yet having seen what all the Reviews have said against me, I
have far more confidence in the _general_ truth of the doctrine than I
formerly had. Another thing gives me confidence, viz. that some who went
half an inch with me now go further, and some who were bitterly opposed
are now less bitterly opposed.... I can pretty plainly see that, if my
view is ever to be generally adopted, it will be by young men growing up
and replacing the old workers, and then young ones finding that they can
group facts and search out new lines of investigation better on the
notion of descent, than on that of creation."
FOOTNOTES:
[185] This refers to the passage in the _Origin of Species_ (2nd edit.
p. 285) in which the lapse of time implied by the denudation of the
Weald is discussed. The discussion closes with the sentence: "So that it
is not improbable that a longer period than 300 million years has
elapsed since the latter part of the Secondary period." This passage is
omitted in the later editions of the _Origin_, against the advice of
some of his friends, as appears from the pencil notes in my father's
copy of the 2nd edition.
[186] In the first edition, the passages occur on p. 488.
[187] _Gardeners' Chronicle_, 1860. Sir J. D. Hooker took the line of
complete impartiality, so as not to commit the editor, Lindley.
[188] On Jan. 23 Gray wrote to Darwin: "It naturally happens that my
review of your book does not exhibit anything like the full force of the
impression the book has made upon me. Under the circumstances I suppose
I do your theory more good here, by bespeaking for it a fair and
favourable consideration, and by standing non-committed as to its full
conclusions, than I should if I announced myself a convert; nor could I
say the latter, with truth....
"What seems to me the weakest point in the book is the attempt to
account for the formation of organs, the making of eyes, &c., by natural
selection. Some of this reads quite Lamarckian."
[189] In a letter to Mr. Murray, 1860, my father wrote:--"I am amused by
Asa Gray's account of the excitement my book has made amongst
naturalists in the U. States. Agassiz has denounced it in a newspaper,
but yet in such terms that it is in fact a fine advertisement!" This
seems to refer to a lecture given before the Mercantile Library
Association.
[190] _Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist._ third series, vol. v. p. 132. My
father has obviously taken the expression "pestilent" from the following
passage (p. 138): "But who is this Nature, we have a right to ask, who
has such tremendous power, and to whose efficiency such marvellous
performances are ascribed? What are her image and attributes, when
dragged from her wordy lurking-place? Is she ought but a pestilent
abstraction, like dust cast in our eyes to obscure the workings of an
Intelligent First Cause of all?" The reviewer pays a tribute to my
father's candour "so manly and outspoken as almost to 'cover a multitude
of sins.'" The parentheses (to which allusion is made above) are so
frequent as to give a characteristic appearance to Mr. Wollaston's
pages.
[191] Another version of the words is given by Lyell, to whom they were
spoken, viz. "the most illogical book ever written."--_Life and Letters
of Sir C. Lyell_, vol. ii. p. 358.
[192] "On the Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago."--_Linn.
Soc. Journ._ 1860.
[193] The late Sir Charles Bunbury, well known as a Paleo-botanist.
[194] By Professor Henslow.
[195] The translator of the first German edition of the _Origin_.
[196] Andrew Ramsay, late Director-General of the Geological Survey.
[197] Joseph Beete Jukes, M.A., F.R.S., born 1811, died 1869. He was
educated at Cambridge, and from 1842 to 1846 he acted as naturalist to
H.M.S. _Fly_, on an exploring expedition in Australia and New Guinea. He
was afterwards appointed Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland.
He was the author of many papers, and of more than one good handbook of
geology.
[198] Professor of Geology in the University of Glasgow. Born in the
United States 1809, died 1866.
[199] Searles Valentine Wood, died 1880. Chiefly known for his work on
the Mollusca of the _Crag_.
[200] Dr. G. H. K. Thwaites, F.R.S., was born in 1811, or about that
date, and died in Ceylon, September 11, 1882. He began life as a Notary,
but his passion for Botany and Entomology ultimately led to his taking
to Science as a profession. He became lecturer on Botany at the Bristol
School of Medicine, and in 1849 he was appointed Director of the Botanic
Gardens at Peradeniya, which he made "the most beautiful tropical garden
in the world." He is best known through his important discovery of
conjugation in the Diatomaceae (1847). His _Enumeratio Plantarum
Zeylaniae_ (1858-64) was "the first complete account, on modern lines, of
any definitely circumscribed tropical area." (From a notice in _Nature_,
October 26, 1882.)
[201] _Spectator_, March 24, 1860. There were favourable notices of the
Origin by Huxley in the _Westminster Review_, and Carpenter in the
_Medico-Chir. Review_, both in the April numbers.
[202] Francois Jules Pictet, in the _Archives des Science de la
Bibliotheque Universelle_, Mars 1860.
[203] _Edinburgh Review_, April, 1860.
[204] April 7, 1860.
[205] My father wrote (_Gardeners' Chronicle_, April 21, 1860, p. 362):
"I have been much interested by Mr. Patrick Matthew's communication in
the number of your paper dated April 7th. I freely acknowledge that Mr.
Matthew has anticipated by many years the explanation which I have
offered of the origin of species, under the name of natural selection. I
think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any
other naturalist, had heard of Mr. Matthew's views, considering how
briefly they are given, and that they appeared in the appendix to a work
on Naval Timber and Arboriculture. I can do no more than offer my
apologies to Mr. Matthew for my entire ignorance of his publication. If
another edition of my work is called for, I will insert to the foregoing
effect." In spite of my father's recognition of his claims, Mr. Matthew
remained unsatisfied, and complained that an article in the _Saturday
Analyst and Leader_, Nov. 24, 1860, was "scarcely fair in alluding to
Mr. Darwin as the parent of the origin of species, seeing that I
published the whole that Mr. Darwin attempts to prove, more than
twenty-nine years ago." It was not until later that he learned that
Matthew had also been forestalled. In October 1865, he wrote Sir J. D.
Hooker:--"Talking of the _Origin_, a Yankee has called my attention to a
paper attached to Dr. Wells' famous _Essay on Dew_, which was read in
1813 to the Royal Soc., but not [then] printed, in which he applies most
distinctly the principle of Natural Selection to the races of Man. So
poor old Patrick Matthew is not the first, and he cannot, or ought not,
any longer to put on his title-pages, 'Discoverer of the principle of
Natural Selection'!"
[206] This refers to a "savage onslaught" on the _Origin_ by Sedgwick at
the Cambridge Philosophical Society. Henslow defended his old pupil, and
maintained that "the subject was a legitimate one for investigation."
[207] "The battle rages furiously in the United States. Gray says he was
preparing a speech, which would take 1-1/2 hours to deliver, and which he
'fondly hoped would be a stunner.' He is fighting splendidly, and there
seem to have been many discussions with Agassiz and others at the
meetings. Agassiz pities me much at being so deluded."--From a letter to
Hooker, May 30th, 1860.
[208] The statement as to authorship was made on the authority of Robert
Chambers.
[209] In a letter to Mr. Huxley my father wrote:--"Have you seen the
last _Saturday Review_? I am very glad of the defence of you and of
myself. I wish the reviewer had noticed Hooker. The reviewer, whoever he
is, is a jolly good fellow, as this review and the last on me showed. He
writes capitally, and understands well his subject. I wish he had
slapped [the _Edinburgh_ reviewer] a little bit harder."
[210] _Man's Place in Nature_, by T. H. Huxley, 1863, p. 114.
[211] See the _Nat. Hist. Review_, 1861.
[212] It was well known that Bishop Wilberforce was going to speak.
[213] _Quarterly Review_, July 1860.
[214] Sir John Lubbock also insisted on the embryological evidence for
evolution.--F. D.
[215] Mr. Fawcett wrote (_Macmillan's Magazine_, 1860):--"The retort was
so justly deserved and so inimitable in its manner, that no one who was
present can ever forget the impression that it made."
[216] This agrees with Professor Victor Carus's recollection.
[217] See Professor Newton's interesting _Early Days of Darwinism in
Macmillan's Magazine_, Feb. 1888, where the battle at Oxford is briefly
described.
[218] _Quarterly Review_, July 1860. The article in question was by
Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, and was afterwards published in his
_Essays Contributed to the Quarterly Review_, 1874. In the _Life and
Letters_, ii. p. 182, Mr. Huxley has given some account of this article.
I quote a few lines:--"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.'" The passage from the
_Anti-Jacobin_, referred to in the letter, gives the history of the
evolution of space from the "primaeval point or _punctum saliens_ of the
universe," which is conceived to have moved "forward in a right line,
_ad infinitum_, till it grew tired; after which the right line, which it
had generated, would begin to put itself in motion in a lateral
direction, describing an area of infinite extent. This area, as soon as
it became conscious of its own existence, would begin to ascend or
descend according as its specific gravity would determine it, forming an
immense solid space filled with vacuum, and capable of containing the
present universe."
The following (p. 263) may serve as an example of the passages in which
the reviewer refers to Sir Charles Lyell:--"That Mr. Darwin should have
wandered from this broad highway of nature's works into the jungle of
fanciful assumption is no small evil. We trust that he is mistaken in
believing that he may count Sir C. Lyell as one of his converts. We
know, indeed, the strength of the temptations which he can bring to bear
upon his geological brother.... Yet no man has been more distinct and
more logical in the denial of the transmutation of species than Sir C.
Lyell, and that not in the infancy of his scientific life, but in its
full vigour and maturity." The Bishop goes on to appeal to Lyell, in
order that with his help "this flimsy speculation may be as completely
put down as was what in spite of all denials we must venture to call its
twin though less instructed brother, the _Vestiges of Creation_."
With reference to this article, Mr. Brodie Innes, my father's old friend
and neighbour, writes:--"Most men would have been annoyed by an article
written with the Bishop's accustomed vigour, a mixture of argument and
ridicule. Mr. Darwin was writing on some parish matter, and put a
postscript--'If you have not seen the last _Quarterly_, do get it; the
Bishop of Oxford has made such capital fun of me and my grandfather.' By
a curious coincidence, when I received the letter, I was staying in the
same house with the Bishop, and showed it to him. He said, 'I am very
glad he takes it in that way, he is such a capital fellow.'"
[219] April 10th, 1860. Dr. Gray criticised in detail "several of the
positions taken at the preceding meeting by Mr. [J. A.] Lowell, Prof.
Bowen and Prof. Agassiz." It was reprinted in the _Athenaeum_, Aug. 4th,
1860.
[220] On Sept. 26th, 1860, he wrote in the same sense to Gray:--"You
never touch the subject without making it clearer. I look at it as even
more extraordinary that you never say a word or use an epithet which
does not express fully my meaning. Now Lyell, Hooker, and others, who
perfectly understand my book, yet sometimes use expressions to which I
demur."