was a pleasure to look at his face beaming with intelligence. When I
lectured for the first time on the Science of Language, I had in the
beginning to clear the ground of many prejudices, and amongst the rest,
to dispose of what was then almost an article of faith—namely, that all
the languages of the world were derived from Hebrew. I gave a whole
lecture to this question, and when it was over, an imposing old lady
came up to shake hands with me and to thank me for the beautiful lecture
I had delivered. “How delightful it is to know,” she continued, “that
Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew in Paradise, and that all the other languages
of the world, English not excepted, have come out of Hebrew and out of
Paradise.” I really felt very much humiliated, and when Faraday came up
I told him what had happened. “Oh, you must not be discouraged,” he
said, “I hardly ever lecture on chemistry without an old dowager coming
up to me with an incredulous smile and saying: ‘Now, Mr. Faraday, you
don’t really mean to say that the water I drink is nothing but what you
call oxygen and hydrogen?’ Go on,” he said, “something will always
stick.”
I certainly had splendid audiences; all the best men of the town were
there. But brilliant as my audiences were—they included A. P. Stanley,
Fredk. Maurice, Dean Milman, Bishop Thirlwall, Mill, Lady Stanley, even
royalty honoured me several times—the old _habitués_ of the Royal
Institution were not easy to please. The front row was generally
occupied by old men with hearing-trumpets, old Indians, old generals,
old clergymen, etc. A number of ladies came in with their newspaper and
unfolded it before the lecture began, and seemed to read it with their
eyes while their ears were supposed to follow my arguments. One’s
self-conceit is sometimes very much tried. After one of my lectures I
saw one of the old East Indians led out by his son or nephew, who
shouted in a loud voice into his father’s ear, “That was a splendid
lecture, was it not?” “Yes,” said the old man in a still louder voice,
“very interesting—very; didn’t understand a single word of it.” Such is
reputation. On another occasion the same deaf and loud-voiced gentleman
was heard to tell his neighbour who I was and what I had done. “Yes,” he
shouted, “I know him; he is a clever young man. And we have appointed
him to do some work for us, to publish the old Bible of India. We have
also made him our examiner for the Civil Service of India. A clever
young man, I assure you.”
That is how I rose in the estimation of the London world, and how
Albemarle Street became crowded with fashionable carriages, and people
could hardly find places in order to hear all about Aryan roots and our
Aryan ancestors, and our common Aryan home somewhere in Asia.
It was in the same Royal Institution that I first raised my voice
against the thoughtless extravagances of the so-called Darwinian School,
and this at a time when it required more courage to express a doubt on
any Darwinian theories than to doubt the descent of all languages from
Hebrew. As to Darwin himself, I had expressed my admiration of him in my
very first course of lectures, and I had more particularly tried to show
how the idea of evolution, or development, or growth, or whatever name
we like to use instead of the name of history, had at all times been the
guiding principle in the researches of the students of the “Science of
Languages.” Our object had always been to discover how languages came to
be what they are, to study the origin and growth, or more truly the
history of language. If we spoke of the development or evolution of
language (_Entwickelung_) it was simply in order to avoid the constant
use of the same word. We comparative philologists had, in fact, been
talking evolution for more than forty years, as M. Jourdain had been
talking prose all his life, without being aware of it (_sans que j’en
susse rien_). But we never went into raptures about that blessed word
“evolution,” or about the passage from the homogeneous to the
heterogeneous.
What I, from my own point of view, valued particularly in Darwin’s
philosophy was the technical term of Natural Selection. Logically it was
not quite correct, for, say what you like, selection presupposes a
selector. Without a selector there is no selection, and unless we speak
mythologically, we cannot speak of Nature as a selector. I should have
preferred, therefore, _Rational Elimination_, looking upon Reason, or
the Good of Plato, as the power that works for good or for fitness in
all that survives or is not crowded out. But with this restriction
Natural Selection was the very term we wanted to signify that process
which is constantly going on in language—“excluding caprice as well as
necessity, including individual exertion as well as general
co-operation, applicable neither to the unconscious building of bees nor
to the conscious architecture of human beings, yet combining within
itself both these operations, and raising them to a higher
conception.”[14] Natural selection was the very term we wanted for a
true insight into the so-called growth of language, and it was Darwin
who gave it us, even though for our own purposes we had to define it
more strictly.
I gave Darwin full credit for having discovered and popularised this new
“category of thought,” but the constant hallelujahs that were raised
over the discovery of Evolution showed surely an extraordinary ignorance
of the history of philosophical thought in Europe. Darwin himself was
the very last person to claim evolution as a discovery of his own; but
is there a single paper that has not called him the discoverer of
Evolution? He knew too well how, particularly in his own special field
of study, the controversy whether each so-called genus or species had
required a separate act of creation, had been raging for centuries. He
remembered the famous controversy in 1830 at the French Institute,
between Cuvier and Geoffray Saint-Hilaire, and Goethe’s equally famous
remarks on the subject. It would seem as if Darwin himself had
originally been under the spell of the old idea that every species, if
not every individual, required a special act of creation, and he
describes, if I remember rightly, the shock it gave him when he saw for
the first time that this idea had to be surrendered. It was evidently
considered to be the orthodox view of creation, though I do not know
why; nay, it seems to be so still, if we remember how the present
Archbishop of Canterbury was represented as unfit to wear a mitre
because he believed in evolution; that is, as I should say, in his
senses. I myself, on the contrary, was given to understand at the time
by my unorthodox friends that my want of belief in evolution was but a
survival of my orthodox opinions. I was much puzzled before I could
understand why I was looked at askance, till in one of the reviews I was
told in so many words that if I did not believe in evolution, I must
believe in the theory of special creations, or in nothing at all. Even
Tyndall, dear honest Tyndall, told me one day at the Royal Institution
that it was no use my kicking against the pricks, and I then had an
opportunity of telling him my mind. “When some substance is brought
you,” I said, “don’t you first of all analyse it to find out what it
consists of, before you use it for any further experiments? Well, that
is really what a student of language does. When you bring him a word
like evolution, the first thing he asks for is an analysis or
definition. That may often seem very discourteous, but it cannot be
otherwise in any decent laboratory of chemistry or thought. Now if
evolution is meant for an action, you cannot have an action without an
actor, whether his action is direct or indirect. Of course you will say
that we all know that, that it is mere childish logic; but, if so, we
should not imagine that we can neglect this childish logic with
impunity, that we can have a successful experiment without first wiping
our crucibles clean. If, on the contrary, evolution is to be taken in
the sense of a process excluding an actor or evolver, this should be
clearly stated, and in that case the more familiar word ‘growth’ would
have been far preferable, because it would not have raised unfounded
expectations. But even growth means very little unless it is
authenticated by history step by step.
“If then you tell me that there is growth, not only from the sperm to
men like you and me, not only from an egg to a caterpillar, from a
caterpillar to a chrysalis, and from a chrysalis to a butterfly, but
likewise from inorganic to organised matter, from plants to animals,
from reptiles to birds, from apes to men, I have not a word to say
against it. I know you to be an honest man, and if you can assure me
that there are historical facts, real, visible facts, to support this
transition from one species to another, or even from one genus to
another, I trust you. It would be simple arrogance were I to doubt your
word, within your own special sphere of study. You have seen the
transition or connecting links, you know that it is not only possible,
but real, and there is an end of it. Only allow me to say that from a
philosophical point of view there is nothing new in this concept of
growth, or, as you call it, evolution. You would never say that Lamarck
had been the discoverer of growth in nature, neither has it any definite
meaning to me when you say that Darwin was the discoverer of evolution.
I can understand enough of Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ to enable me to
admire his power of observation and his true genius of combination. I
can see how he has reduced the number of unnecessary species, and of
unnecessary acts of so-called special creation; and that possibly he has
traced back the whole of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to four
beginnings, and in the end to one Creator. Darwin did not go beyond
this, he required four beginnings and one Creator. It was left to his
followers to carry out his principles, as they thought, by eliminating
the Creator, and reducing the four beginnings to one. If you think that
all this rests on well ascertained facts, I have nothing to say except
to express my surprise that some men of great learning and undoubted
honesty are not so positive as to these facts as you are. But with the
exception of a Creator, that is, a subjective Author of the universe,
all this is really outside my special province, and I could afford to be
silent. Only when Darwin maintains the transition from some highly
developed animal into a human being, I say, Stop! Here the student of
language has a word to say, and I say that language is something that,
even in its most rudimentary form, puts an impassable barrier between
beast and man.”
Soon after, when I had been asked to give a new course of lectures at
the Royal Institution, I had selected this very point, the barrier which
language forms between man and brute, for my subject, and as Darwin’s
“Descent of Man” was then occupying the thoughts of philosophers, I
promised to give a course of lectures on “Darwin’s Philosophy of
Language.” Entertaining, as I did, a sincere admiration for Darwin, I
felt that it would have been even discourteous to attempt to be
courteous to such a man by passing over in silence what he had said on
language. This kind of courtesy is most offensive to a true man of
science. Otherwise nothing would have been easier than to find
antagonists for my purpose, beginning with Epicurus and ending with Mr.
H. Wedgwood’s “Etymological Dictionary of the English Language” (second
edition, 1872). It so happened that the author of that dictionary was a
friend of Darwin’s, and had easily persuaded him that interjections and
imitations of natural sounds formed the material elements of all human
speech, and that, as certain animals barked, and mocking birds and
parrots imitated sounds which they heard, there seemed to be no reason
whatever why animals in a few millions of years should not have invented
a language of their own. This naturally fell in with Darwin’s own views
and wishes, and though he always spoke with great reserve on the subject
of language, yet he would have been more than human if he had
surrendered his conviction of the descent of man from some kind of
animal on account of this, as his friend had assured him, so easily
removable barrier of language. Given a sufficient number of years, he
thought, and why should not bow-wow and pooh-pooh have evolved into “I
bark” and “I despise”? The fact that no animal had ever evolved such
words could not be denied, but it could be ignored, or explained away by
evidence clearly showing that animals communicated with each other; as
if to communicate were the same as to speak. My object in my lectures
(published at the time in _Longman’s Magazine_) was to show that no such
transition from _pooh-pooh_ to _I despise_ is possible; nay, that even
the first step, the formation of roots, that is, of general concepts out
of single sounds, that is, single percepts, is beyond the power of any
animal, except the human animal. Even now it is only the human baby or
puppy that can learn to imitate human language, and what is the mere
learning of a language, compared with the creation of language, which
was the real task of those human animals that became men? In all the
arguments which I used in support of my theory—a theory no longer
controverted, I believe, by any competent and independent scholar and
thinker—I never used a single disrespectful word about Mr. Darwin. But
for all that I was supposed to have blasphemed, again not by Mr. Darwin
himself, but by those who called themselves his bulldogs. I was actually
suspected of having written that notorious article in _The Quarterly
Review_ which gave such just offence to Darwin. Darwin himself was above
all this, and I have his letter in which he writes, 5th January, 1875:—
I have just read the few first pages of your article in _The
Contemporary Review_, and I hope that you will permit me to say that
neither I, nor my son, ever supposed that you were the author of the
review in the Quarterly. You are about the last man in England to whom
I should have attributed such a review. I know it was written by Mr.
M., and the utterly false and base statements contained in it are
worthy of the man.
But what was better still, Mr. Darwin gave me an opportunity of
discussing the facts and arguments which stood between him and me in a
personal interview. Sir John Lubbock took me to see the old philosopher
at his place, Down, Beckenham, Kent, and there are few episodes in my
life which I value more. I need not describe the simplicity of his
house, and the grandeur of the man who had lived and worked in it for so
many years. Darwin gave me a hearty welcome, showed me his garden and
his flowers, and then took me into his study, and standing leaning
against his desk began to examine me. He said at once that personally he
was quite ignorant of the science of language, and had taken his facts
and opinions chiefly from his friend, Mr. Wedgwood. I had been warned
that Darwin could not carry on a serious discussion for more than about
ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, as it always brought on his
life-long complaint of sickness. I therefore put before him in the
shortest way possible the difficulties which prevented me from accepting
the theory of animals forming a language out of interjections and sounds
of nature. I laid stress on the fact that no animal, except the human
animal, had ever made a step towards generalisation of percepts, and
towards roots, the real elements of all languages, as signs of such
generalised percepts, and I gave him a few illustrations of how our
words for one to ten, for father, mother, sun and moon had really and
historically been evolved. That man thus formed a real anomaly in the
growth of the animal kingdom, as conceived by him, I fully admitted; but
it was impossible for me to ignore facts, and language in its true
meaning has always been to my mind a fact that could not be wiped away
by argument, as little as the Himalayas could be wiped away with a silk
handkerchief even in millions of years. He listened most attentively
without making any objections, but before he shook hands and left me, he
said in the kindest way, “You are a dangerous man.” I ventured to reply,
“There can be no danger in our search for truth,” and he left the room.
He was exactly the man I had imagined, massive in his forehead, kind in
his smile, and hardly bent under the burden of his knowledge or the
burden of his years. I must give one more of his letters, because my
late friend Romanes, who saw it in my album, seems to have entirely
misapprehended its meaning. He saw in it a proof of Mr. Darwin’s
extraordinary humility. I do not deny his humility, it was
extraordinary, and, what is more, it was genuine. All great men know how
little they know in comparison with what they do not know. They are
humble, they do not only wish to appear so. But I see in Darwin’s letter
far more of humour than of humility. I see him chuckling while he wrote
it, and though I value it as a treasure, I never looked upon it as a
trophy.
DOWN, BECKENHAM, KENT,
_15th Oct., 1875_.
MY DEAR SIR,
I am greatly obliged to you for so kindly sending me your essay, which
I am sure will interest me much. With respect to our differences,
though some of your remarks have been rather stinging, they have all
been made so gracefully, I declare that I am like the man in the story
who boasted that he had been soundly horsewhipped by a Duke.
Pray believe me,
Yours very sincerely,
CHARLES DARWIN.
RECOLLECTIONS OF ROYALTIES
I
By royal I do not mean kings and emperors only, or queens and empresses.
I should have very little to tell of them. But royal, as is well known,
has a wider meaning. The families of all reigning sovereigns, whether
grand dukes, dukes, princes, landgraves, electors, etc., are royalty,
nay even certain mediatised families, families that have ceased to be
reigning, and which are very numerous on the continent, claim the same
status, and may therefore intermarry with royal princes and princesses.
Princes and princesses may also marry persons who are not royalty, but
in that case the marriage is morganatic—a perfectly good and legal form
of marriage both from an ecclesiastical and civil point of view, only
that the children of such marriages, though perfectly legitimate, cannot
succeed to the throne: in many cases no great loss to them. It has been
my good fortune to see a good deal of royalty during the whole of my
life. I say good fortune on purpose, for, with all the drawbacks
inherent in Court life, royal persons enjoy some great advantages. Their
position is assured and well defined. It requires no kind of
self-assertion, and wherever they appear, they have no equals, no
rivals, and hardly any enviers. They know that their presence always
gives pleasure, and that every kind word or look from them is highly
appreciated. They seldom have any inducement to try to appear different
from what they are, or to disguise what they think or feel. What is the
use of being a bishop, Stanley used to say, except that you can speak
your own mind! The same applies to crowned heads, and if some of them,
and it may be some bishops also, do not avail themselves of this
privilege, it is surely their own fault. No doubt, if a bishop wants to
become an archbishop, he has to think twice about what he may and what
he may not say. But a king or a prince does not generally want to become
anything else, and as they want nothing from anybody, they are not
likely to scheme, to flatter, or to deceive. Whatever people may say of
the atmosphere of courts and the insincerity of courtiers, the sovereign
himself, if only left to himself, if only seen in his own private
cabinet, is generally above the vitiated atmosphere that pervades his
palace, nor does he, as a rule, while speaking with perfect freedom
himself, dislike perfect freedom in others.
Of course there are differences among royalty as well as among
commonalty. Some sovereigns have become so accustomed to the daily
supply of the very cheapest flattery, that the slightest divergence from
the tone of their courtiers is apt to startle or to offend them. Still
most human beings like fresh air.
And have we not known persons who display their mitres and shake their
crosiers before our faces, far more than kings their crowns and their
sceptres? There is a whole class of people in ordinary life who have
_become_ something, and who seem always to be thanking God that they are
not as other men are. They have ceased to be what they were, quite
unaware that even in becoming something, there ought always to be or to
remain something that becomes or has become. They seem to have been
created afresh when they were created peers, temporal or spiritual.
But we must not be unfair to these new creations or creatures. I have
known bishops, and archbishops too, in England, who, to their friends,
always remained Thirlwalls or Thomsons, and in the second place only
Bishops of St. David’s or Archbishops of York. My friend Arthur Stanley
never became a dean. He was always Stanley; Dean of Westminster, if
necessary. If he had been what he ought to have been, Archbishop of
Canterbury, he would never have ceased to be A. P. Stanley, his chuckle
would always have been just the same, and if his admirers had presented
him with a mitre and crosier, he would probably have put the mitre on
his head sideways, and said to his friends what another bishop is
reported to have said on a similar occasion: “Thank you, my friends, but
a new hat and an alpaca umbrella would have been far more useful than a
mitre and a crosier.” With regard to royal personages, they have the
great advantage that they are to their business born. They have not
become, they were born royal. I was much struck by the extraordinary
power of observation of a French friend of mine, who, when in 1855 the
Queen and the Empress Eugénie entered the Grand Opera at Paris together,
and were received with immense applause, turned to his neighbour, an
Englishman, and said: “Look at the difference between your Queen and our
Empress.” They had both bowed most graciously, and then sat down. “Did
you not observe,” he continued, “how the Empress looked round to see if
there was a chair for her before she sat down. But your Queen, a born
Queen, sat down without looking. She knew a chair _must_ be there, as
surely as she is Queen of England.”
There must be something to hedge a king. While most people have to move
in a crowd, and hold their own even in a mob—and it is difficult to move
with ease when you are hustled and pushed—royal persons are never in a
crowd, and have never to adopt a position of self-defence or
self-assertion. Still there is a difference between royal persons also.
Some of them with all their dignity manage to hide their crown in
everyday life; others seem always conscious that it is there, and that
they must not condescend too low, lest it should tumble from their head.
My first acquaintance with royalty was at Dessau, my native town. Much
has been written to ridicule the small German princes and their small
Courts. And it cannot be denied that the etiquette kept up by the
courtiers, and the nobility, in some of the small capitals of Germany is
ludicrous in the extreme. But there is in the sovereigns themselves an
inherited dignity, a sentiment of _noblesse oblige_, which demands
respect. The reigning Duke of Anhalt-Dessau was to us boys a being by
himself, and no wonder. Though the Duchy was so small that on one
occasion a troublesome political agitator, who had been expelled from
the Duchy, threatened to throw stones and break the Duke’s windows as
soon as he had crossed the frontier, to us children Dessau was our
world. When I was a child, the town of Dessau, the capital of the Duchy,
contained not more than 10,000 or 12,000 inhabitants, but the Duke,
Leopold Friedrich (1817–1871), was really the most independent sovereign
in Europe. He was perfectly irresponsible, a constitution did not exist,
and was never allowed to be mentioned. All appointments were made by the
Duke, all salaries and pensions were paid from the Ducal chest, whatever
existed in the whole Duchy belonged, or seemed to belong, to him. There
was no appeal from him, at least not in practice, whatever it may have
been in theory. If more money was wanted, the Dukes, I believe, had only
to issue a new tax, and the money was forthcoming. And with all that one
never, or hardly ever, heard of any act of injustice. The Duke was rich,
nearly the whole of the Duchy belonged to him, and he had large landed
property elsewhere also. Taxation was low, and during years of war and
distress, taxes were actually remitted by the Dukes. The only public
opinion there was, was represented by the Duke’s own permanent civil
service, and certainly in it tradition was so strong that even the Duke,
independent as he was, would have hesitated before going against it.