Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters

"The state of the scientific mind is most curious; Darwin is conquering everywhere, and rushing in like a flood, by the mere force of truth and fact."

The change did not proceed without a certain amount of personal bitterness. My father wrote in February, 1863: —

"What an accursed evil it is that there should be all this quarrelling within what ought to be the peaceful realms of science."

I do not desire to keep alive the memories of dead quarrels, but some of the burning questions of that day are too important from the biographical point of view to be altogether omitted. Of this sort is the history of Lyell's conversion to Evolution. It led to no flaw in the friendship of the two men principally concerned, but it shook and irritated a number of smaller people. Lyell was like the Mississippi in flood, and as he changed his course, the dwellers on the banks were angered and frightened by the general upsetting of landmarks.

C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Down, Feb. 24 [1863]

My dear Hooker, – I am astonished at your note. I have not seen the Athenæum,[225 - In the Antiquity of Man, first edition, p. 480, Lyell criticised somewhat severely Owen's account of the difference between the Human and Simian brains. The number of the Athenæum here referred to (1863, p. 262) contains a reply by Professor Owen to Lyell's strictures. The surprise expressed by my father was at the revival of a controversy which every one believed to be closed. Professor Huxley (Medical Times, Oct. 25th, 1862, quoted in Man's Place in Nature, p. 117) spoke of the "two years during which this preposterous controversy has dragged its weary length." And this no doubt expressed a very general feeling.] but I have sent for it, and may get it to-morrow; and will then say what I think.

I have read Lyell's book. [The Antiquity of Man.] The whole certainly struck me as a compilation, but of the highest class, for when possible the facts have been verified on the spot, making it almost an original work. The Glacial chapters seem to me best, and in parts magnificent. I could hardly judge about Man, as all the gloss and novelty was completely worn off. But certainly the aggregation of the evidence produced a very striking effect on my mind. The chapter comparing language and changes of species, seems most ingenious and interesting. He has shown great skill in picking out salient points in the argument for change of species; but I am deeply disappointed (I do not mean personally) to find that his timidity prevents him giving any judgment… From all my communications with him, I must ever think that he has really entirely lost faith in the immutability of species; and yet one of his strongest sentences is nearly as follows; "If it should ever[226 - The italics are not Lyell's.] be rendered highly probable that species change by variation and natural selection," &c. &c. I had hoped he would have guided the public as far as his own belief went… One thing does please me on this subject, that he seems to appreciate your work. No doubt the public or a part may be induced to think that, as he gives to us a larger space than to Lamarck, he must think that there is something in our views. When reading the brain chapter, it struck me forcibly that if he had said openly that he believed in change of species, and as a consequence that man was derived from some Quadrumanous animal, it would have been very proper to have discussed by compilation the differences in the most important organ, viz. the brain. As it is, the chapter seems to me to come in rather by the head and shoulders. I do not think (but then I am as prejudiced as Falconer and Huxley, or more so) that it is too severe; it struck me as given with judicial force. It might perhaps be said with truth that he had no business to judge on a subject on which he knows nothing; but compilers must do this to a certain extent. (You know I value and rank high compilers, being one myself!)

The Lyells are coming here on Sunday evening to stay till Wednesday. I dread it, but I must say how much disappointed I am that he has not spoken out on species, still less on man. And the best of the joke is that he thinks he has acted with the courage of a martyr of old. I hope I may have taken an exaggerated view of his timidity, and shall particularly be glad of your opinion on this head. When I got his book I turned over the pages, and saw he had discussed the subject of species, and said that I thought he would do more to convert the public than all of us, and now (which makes the case worse for me) I must, in common honesty, retract. I wish to Heaven he had said not a word on the subject.

C. D. to C. Lyell. Down, March 6 [1863]

… I have been of course deeply interested by your book.[227 - The Antiquity of Man.] I have hardly any remarks worth sending, but will scribble a little on what most interested me. But I will first get out what I hate saying, viz. that I have been greatly disappointed that you have not given judgment and spoken fairly out what you think about the derivation of species. I should have been contented if you had boldly said that species have not been separately created, and had thrown as much doubt as you like on how far variation and natural selection suffices. I hope to Heaven I am wrong (and from what you say about Whewell it seems so), but I cannot see how your chapters can do more good than an extraordinary able review. I think the Parthenon is right, that you will leave the public in a fog. No doubt they may infer that as you give more space to myself, Wallace, and Hooker, than to Lamarck, you think more of us. But I had always thought that your judgment would have been an epoch in the subject. All that is over with me, and I will only think on the admirable skill with which you have selected the striking points, and explained them. No praise can be too strong, in my opinion, for the inimitable chapter on language in comparison with species…

I know you will forgive me for writing with perfect freedom, for you must know how deeply I respect you as my old honoured guide and master. I heartily hope and expect that your book will have a gigantic circulation, and may do in many ways as much good as it ought to do. I am tired, so no more. I have written so briefly that you will have to guess my meaning. I fear my remarks are hardly worth sending. Farewell, with kindest remembrance to Lady Lyell,

    Ever yours.

A letter from Lyell to Hooker (Mar. 9, 1863), published in Lyell's Life and Letters, vol. ii. p. 361, shows what was his feeling at the time: —

"He [Darwin] seems much disappointed that I do not go farther with him, or do not speak out more. I can only say that I have spoken out to the full extent of my present convictions, and even beyond my state of feeling as to man's unbroken descent from the brutes, and I find I am half converting not a few who were in arms against Darwin, and are even now against Huxley." Lyell speaks, too, of having had to abandon "old and long cherished ideas, which constituted the charm to me of the theoretical part of the science in my earlier days, when I believed with Pascal in the theory, as Hallam terms it, of 'the archangel ruined.'"

C. D. to C. Lyell. Down, 12th [March, 1863]

My dear Lyell, – I thank you for your very interesting and kind, I may say, charming letter. I feared you might be huffed for a little time with me. I know some men would have been so… As you say that you have gone as far as you believe on the species question, I have not a word to say; but I must feel convinced that at times, judging from conversation, expressions, letters, &c., you have as completely given up belief in immutability of specific forms as I have done. I must still think a clear expression from you, if you could have given it, would have been potent with the public, and all the more so, as you formerly held opposite opinions. The more I work, the more satisfied I become with variation and natural selection, but that part of the case I look at as less important, though more interesting to me personally. As you ask for criticisms on this head (and believe me that I should not have made them unasked), I may specify (pp. 412, 413) that such words as "Mr. D. labours to show," "is believed by the author to throw light," would lead a common reader to think that you yourself do not at all agree, but merely think it fair to give my opinion. 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 my surprise) I gained nothing. But I know you rank it higher, which is curious, as it did not in the least shake your belief. But enough, and more than enough. Please remember you have brought it all down on yourself!!

I am very sorry to hear about Falconer's "reclamation."[228 - "Falconer, whom I [Lyell] referred to oftener than to any other author, says I have not done justice to the part he took in resuscitating the cave question, and says he shall come out with a separate paper to prove it. I offered to alter anything in the new edition, but this he declined." – C. Lyell to C. Darwin, March 11, 1863; Lyell's Life, vol ii. p. 364.] I hate the very word, and have a sincere affection for him.

Did you ever read anything so wretched as the Athenæum reviews of you, and of Huxley[229 - Man's Place in Nature, 1863.] especially. Your object to make man old, and Huxley's object to degrade him. The wretched writer has not a glimpse of what the discovery of scientific truth means. How splendid some pages are in Huxley, but I fear the book will not be popular…

In the Athenæum, Mar. 28, 1862, p. 417, appeared a notice of Dr. Carpenter's book on 'Foraminifera,' which led to more skirmishing in the same journal. The article was remarkable for upholding spontaneous generation.

My father wrote, Mar. 29, 1863: —

"Many thanks for Athenæum, received this morning, and to be returned to-morrow morning. Who would have ever thought of the old stupid Athenæum taking to Oken-like transcendental philosophy written in Owenian style!

"It will be some time before we see 'slime, protoplasm, &c.' generating a new animal. But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation,[230 - This refers to a passage in which the reviewer of Dr. Carpenter's book speaks of "an operation of force," or "a concurrence of forces which have now no place in nature," as being, "a creative force, in fact, which Darwin could only express in Pentateuchal terms as the primordial form 'into which life was first breathed.'" The conception of expressing a creative force as a primordial form is the reviewer's.] by which I really meant 'appeared' by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter."

The Athenæum continued to be a scientific battle-ground. On April 4, 1863, Falconer wrote a severe article on Lyell. And my father wrote (Athenæum, 1863, p. 554), under the cloak of attacking spontaneous generation, to defend Evolution. In reply, an article appeared in the same Journal (May 2nd, 1863, p. 586), accusing my father of claiming for his views the exclusive merit of "connecting by an intelligible thread of reasoning" a number of facts in morphology, &c. The writer remarks that, "The different generalisations cited by Mr. Darwin as being connected by an intelligible thread of reasoning exclusively through his attempt to explain specific transmutation are in fact related to it in this wise, that they have prepared the minds of naturalists for a better reception of such attempts to explain the way of the origin of species from species."

To this my father replied as follows in the Athenæum of May 9th, 1863: —

    Down, May 5 [1863].

I hope that you will grant me space to own that your reviewer is quite correct when he states that any theory of descent will connect, "by an intelligible thread of reasoning," the several generalizations before specified. I ought to have made this admission expressly; with the reservation, however, that, as far as I can judge, no theory so well explains or connects these several generalizations (more especially the formation of domestic races in comparison with natural species, the principles of classification, embryonic resemblance, &c.) as the theory, or hypothesis, or guess, if the reviewer so likes to call it, of Natural Selection. Nor has any other satisfactory explanation been ever offered of the almost perfect adaptation of all organic beings to each other, and to their physical conditions of life. Whether the naturalist believes in the views given by Lamarck, by Geoffroy St. Hilaire, by the author of the Vestiges, by Mr. Wallace and myself, or in any other such view, signifies extremely little in comparison with the admission that species have descended from other species, and have not been created immutable; for he who admits this as a great truth has a wide field opened to him for further inquiry. I believe, however, from what I see of the progress of opinion on the Continent, and in this country, that the theory of Natural Selection will ultimately be adopted, with, no doubt, many subordinate modifications and improvements.

    Charles Darwin.

In the following, he refers to the above letter to the Athenæum: —

C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Saturday [May 11, 1863]

My dear Hooker, – You give good advice about not writing in newspapers; I have been gnashing my teeth at my own folly; and this not caused by – 's sneers, which were so good that I almost enjoyed them. I have written once again to own to a certain extent of truth in what he says, and then if I am ever such a fool again, have no mercy on me. I have read the squib in Public Opinion;[231 - Public Opinion, April 23, 1863, A lively account of a police case, in which the quarrels of scientific men are satirised. Mr. John Bull gives evidence that —"The whole neighbourhood was unsettled by their disputes; Huxley quarrelled with Owen, Owen with Darwin, Lyell with Owen, Falconer and Prestwich with Lyell, and Gray the menagerie man with everybody. He had pleasure, however, in stating that Darwin was the quietest of the set. They were always picking bones with each other and fighting over their gains. If either of the gravel sifters or stone breakers found anything, he was obliged to conceal it immediately, or one of the old bone collectors would be sure to appropriate it first and deny the theft afterwards, and the consequent wrangling and disputes were as endless as they were wearisome."Lord Mayor. – Probably the clergyman of the parish might exert some influence over them?"The gentleman smiled, shook his head, and stated that he regretted to say that no class of men paid so little attention to the opinions of the clergy as that to which these unhappy men belonged."] it is capital; if there is more, and you have a copy, do lend it. It shows well that a scientific man had better be trampled in dirt than squabble.

In the following year (1864) he received the greatest honour which a scientific man can receive in this country, the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. It is presented at the Anniversary Meeting on St. Andrew's Day (Nov. 30), the medallist being usually present to receive it, but this the state of my father's health prevented. He wrote to Mr. Fox: —

"I was glad to see your hand-writing. The Copley, being open to all sciences and all the world, is reckoned a great honour; but excepting from several kind letters, such things make little difference to me. It shows, however, that Natural Selection is making some progress in this country, and that pleases me. The subject, however, is safe in foreign lands."

The presentation of the Copley Medal is of interest in connection with what has gone before, inasmuch as it led to Sir C. Lyell making, in his after-dinner speech, a "confession of faith as to the Origin." He wrote to my father (Life of SirC. Lyell, vol. ii. p. 384), "I said I had been forced to give up my old faith without thoroughly seeing my way to a new one. But I think you would have been satisfied with the length I went."

Lyell's acceptance of Evolution was made public in the tenth edition of the Principles, published in 1867 and 1868. It was a sign of improvement, "a great triumph," as my father called it, that an evolutionary article by Wallace, dealing with Lyell's book, should have appeared in the Quarterly Review (April, 1869). Mr. Wallace wrote: —

"The history of science hardly presents so striking an instance of youthfulness of mind in advanced life as is shown by this abandonment of opinions so long held and so powerfully advocated; and if we bear in mind the extreme caution, combined with the ardent love of truth which characterise every work which our author has produced, we shall be convinced that so great a change was not decided on without long and anxious deliberation, and that the views now adopted must indeed be supported by arguments of overwhelming force. If for no other reason than that Sir Charles Lyell in his tenth edition has adopted it, the theory of Mr. Darwin deserves an attentive and respectful consideration from every earnest seeker after truth."

The incident of the Copley Medal is interesting as giving an index of the state of the scientific mind at the time.

My father wrote: "some of the old members of the Royal are quite shocked at my having the Copley." In the Reader, December 3, 1864, General Sabine's presidential address at the Anniversary Meeting is reported at some length. Special weight was laid on my father's work in Geology, Zoology, and Botany, but the Origin of Species was praised chiefly as containing a "mass of observations," &c. It is curious that as in the case of his election to the French Institute, so in this case, he was honoured not for the great work of his life, but for his less important work in special lines.

I believe I am right in saying that no little dissatisfaction at the President's manner of allusion to the Origin was felt by some Fellows of the Society.

My father spoke justly when he said that the subject was "safe in foreign lands." In telling Lyell of the progress of opinion, he wrote (March, 1863): —

"A first-rate German naturalist[232 - No doubt Haeckel, whose monograph on the Radiolaria was published in 1862.] (I now forget the name!), who has lately published a grand folio, has spoken out to the utmost extent on the Origin. De Candolle, in a very good paper on 'Oaks,' goes, in Asa Gray's opinion, as far as he himself does; but De Candolle, in writing to me, says we, 'we think this and that;' so that I infer he really goes to the full extent with me, and tells me of a French good botanical palæontologist[233 - The Marquis de Saporta.] (name forgotten), who writes to De Candolle that he is sure that my views will ultimately prevail. But I did not intend to have written all this. It satisfies me with the final results, but this result, I begin to see, will take two or three life-times. The entomologists are enough to keep the subject back for half a century."

The official attitude of French science was not very hopeful. The Secrétaire Perpétuel of the Académie published an Examen du livre de M. Darwin, on which my father remarks: —

"A great gun, Flourens, has written a little dull book[234 - Examen du livre de M. Darwin sur l'origine des espèces. Par P. Flourens. 8vo. Paris, 1864.] against me, which pleases me much, for it is plain that our good work is spreading in France."

Mr. Huxley, who reviewed the book,[235 - Lay Sermons, p. 328.] quotes the following passage from Flourens: —

"M. Darwin continue: Aucune distinction absolue n'a été et ne peut être établie entre les espèces et les variétés! Je vous ai déjà dit que vous vous trompiez; une distinction absolue sépare les variétés d'avec les espèces." Mr. Huxley remarks on this, "Being devoid of the blessings of an Academy in England, we are unaccustomed to see our ablest men treated in this way even by a Perpetual Secretary." After demonstrating M. Flourens' misapprehension of Natural Selection, Mr. Huxley says, "How one knows it all by heart, and with what relief one reads at p. 65, 'Je laisse M. Darwin.'"

The deterrent effect of the Académie on the spread of Evolution in France has been most striking. Even at the present day a member of the Institute does not feel quite happy in owning to a belief in Darwinism. We may indeed be thankful that we are "devoid of such a blessing."

Among the Germans, he was fast gaining supporters. In 1865 he began a correspondence with the distinguished Naturalist, Fritz Müller, then, as now, resident in Brazil. They never met, but the correspondence with Müller, which continued to the close of my father's life, was a source of very great pleasure to him. My impression is that of all his unseen friends Fritz Müller was the one for whom he had the strongest regard. Fritz Müller is the brother of another distinguished man, the late Hermann Müller, the author of Die Befruchtung der Blumen (The Fertilisation of Flowers), and of much other valuable work.

The occasion of writing to Fritz Müller was the latter's book, Für Darwin, which was afterwards translated by Mr. Dallas at my father's suggestion, under the title Facts and Arguments for Darwin.

Shortly afterwards, in 1866, began his connection with Professor Victor Carus, of Leipzig, who undertook the translation of the 4th edition of the Origin. From this time forward Professor Carus continued to translate my father's books into German. The conscientious care with which this work was done was of material service, and I well remember the admiration (mingled with a tinge of vexation at his own shortcomings) with which my father used to receive the lists of oversights, &c., which Professor Carus discovered in the course of translation. The connection was not a mere business one, but was cemented by warm feelings of regard on both sides.

About this time, too, he came in contact with Professor Ernst Haeckel, whose influence on German science has been so powerful.

The earliest letter which I have seen from my father to Professor Haeckel, was written in 1865, and from that time forward they corresponded (though not, I think, with any regularity) up to the end of my father's life. His friendship with Haeckel was not merely the growth of correspondence, as was the case with some others, for instance, Fritz Müller. Haeckel paid more than one visit to Down, and these were thoroughly enjoyed by my father. The following letter will serve to show the strong feeling of regard which he entertained for his correspondent – a feeling which I have often heard him emphatically express, and which was warmly returned. The book referred to is Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie, published in 1866, a copy of which my father received from the author in January, 1867.