Beacon Lights of History Volume Xiv Part 4

VI.

It is the two volumes ent.i.tled the "Principles of Ethics" to which we shall lastly invite attention. The six parts of which this work is composed were published in an irregular manner. Part I., presenting the data of ethics, was issued in 1879; Part IV., a treatise on "Justice,"

in 1891; Parts II. and III., which set forth respectively the inductions of ethics and the ethics of individual life, and which, along with Part I., form the first volume, were issued in 1892; Parts V. and VI., which treat respectively of negative beneficence and positive beneficence, were issued in 1893, and, along with Part IV., const.i.tute the second volume. With regard to the "Principles of Ethics," considered as a whole, it should be noted that the author was prompted to prepare the work, notwithstanding the ill health by which he was incessantly interrupted, by the conviction that the establishment of rules of conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now that moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative. Those who reject the current creed appear to a.s.sume that the controlling agency conferred by it may safely be thrown aside. On the other hand, those who defend the current creed allege that, in the absence of the guidance it yields, no guidance can exist, divine commandments being, in their opinion, the only possible guides. Dissenting from both of these beliefs, Mr. Spencer has had for his primary purpose in the two volumes under review to show that, apart from any supposed supernatural basis, the principles of ethics have a natural basis. In these two volumes this natural basis is set forth, and its corollaries are elaborated. If the conclusions to which the general law of evolution introduces us are not in all cases as definite as might be wished, yet our author submits that they are more definite than those to which we are introduced by the current creed. Complete definiteness is not, of course, to be expected.

Right regulation of the actions of so complex a being as man, living under conditions so complex as those presented by a society, evidently forms a subject-matter unlikely to admit of specific statements throughout its entire range.

The princ.i.p.al inductions drawn from the data collected in the first of these volumes may be set forth in a few sentences. Mult.i.tudinous proofs are brought forward of the fact that the ethical sentiment prevailing in different societies, and in the same society under different conditions, are sometimes diametrically opposed. In Europe and in the United States to have committed a murder disgraces for all time a man's memory, and disgraces for generations all who are related to him. By the Pathans, however, a contrary sentiment is displayed. One who had killed a Mellah (priest) and failed to find refuge from the avengers, said at length: "I can but be a martyr; I will go and kill a Sahib." He was hanged after shooting a sergeant, perfectly satisfied "at having expiated his offence." The prevailing ethical sentiment in England is such that a man who should allow himself to be taken possession of and made an unresisting slave would be regarded with scorn; but the people of Drekete, a slave-district of Fiji, "said it was their duty to become food and sacrifices for the chiefs," and that "they were honored by being considered adequate to such a n.o.ble task." Less extreme, though akin in nature, is the contrast between the feelings which the history of Englishmen has recorded within a few centuries. In Elizabeth's time, Sir John Hawkins initiated the slave-trade, and, in commemoration of the achievement, was allowed to put in his coat-of-arms: "a demi-moor proper, bound with a cord,"--the honorableness of his action being thus a.s.sumed by himself, and recognized by Queen and public. At the present day, on the other hand, the making slaves of men, called by Wesley "the sum of all villanies," is regarded in England with detestation; and for many years the British government maintained a fleet to suppress the slave-trade. Again, peoples who have emerged from the primitive family-and-clan organization, hold that one who is guilty of a crime must himself bear the punishment, and it is thought extreme injustice that the punishment should fall upon any one else. The remote ancestors of the English people thought and felt differently, as do still the Australians, whose "first great principle with regard to punishment is that all the relatives of a culprit, in the event of his not being found, are implicated in his guilt: the brothers of the criminal conceive themselves to be quite as guilty as he is." Then, too, among civilized peoples the individualities of women are so far recognized that the life and liberty of a wife are not supposed to be bound up with those of her husband; and she now, having obtained a right to exclusive possession of property, contends for complete independence, domestic and political. It is, or was, otherwise in Fiji. The wives of the Fijian chiefs consider it a sacred duty to suffer strangulation on the deaths of their husbands. A woman who had been rescued by an Englishman "escaped during the night, and, swimming across the river, and presenting herself to her own people, insisted upon the completion of the sacrifice which she had in a moment of weakness reluctantly consented to forego." Another foreign observer tells of a Fijian woman who loaded her rescuer "with abuse, and ever afterwards manifested the most deadly hatred towards him." In England and on the Continent the religious prohibition of theft and the legal punishment of it are joined with a strong social reprobation, so that the offence of a thief is never condoned. In Beloochistan, on the other hand, quite contrary ideas and feelings are current. There "a favorite couplet is to the effect that the Biloch who steals and murders, secures Heaven to seven generations of ancestors." In England and the United States reprobation of untruthfulness is strongly expressed, alike by the gentleman and the laborer. In many parts of the world it is not so. In Blantyre, for example, according to MacDonald, "to be called a liar is rather a compliment." Once more: English sentiment is such that the mere suspicion of incontinence on the part of a woman is enough to blight her life; but there are peoples whose sentiments entail no such effect, and, in some cases, a reverse effect is produced: "Unchast.i.ty is, with the Wetyaks, a virtue." It seems, then, that in respect of all the leading divisions of human conduct, different races of men, and the same races at different stages, entertain opposite beliefs, and display opposite feelings.

In Mr. Spencer's opinion, the evidence here brought to a focus ought to dissipate once for all the belief in a moral sense, as commonly entertained. A long experience of mankind, however, prevents him from indulging in such an expectation. Among men at large, lifelong convictions are not to be destroyed either by conclusive arguments or mult.i.tudinous facts. Only to those who are not by creed or cherished theory committed to the hypothesis of a supernaturally created human species will the evidence above summed up prove that the human mind has no originally implanted conscience. Mr. Spencer himself at one time espoused the doctrine of the intuitive moralists, but it has gradually become clear to him that the qualifications required practically obliterate the doctrine as enunciated by them. It has become clear to him, in other words, that if among civilized folk the current belief is that a man who robs and does not repent will be eternally d.a.m.ned, while an accepted proverb among the Bilochs is, that "G.o.d will not favor a man who does not steal and rob," it is impossible to hold that men have in common an innate perception of right and wrong.

At the same time, while the inductions drawn by Mr. Spencer from the data of ethics show that the moral-sense doctrine in its original form is not true, they also show that it adumbrates a truth, and a much higher truth. For the facts cited, chapter after chapter, unite in proving that the sentiments and ideas current in each society become adjusted to the kinds of activity predominating in it. A life of constant external enmity generates a code in which aggression, conquest, revenge, are inculcated, while peaceful occupations are reprobated.

Conversely, a life of settled internal amity generates a code inculcating the virtues conducing to harmonious co-operation,--justice, honesty, veracity, regard for others' claims. The implication is that, if the life of internal amity continues unbroken from generation to generation, there must result not only the appropriate code, but the appropriate emotional nature,--a moral sense adapted to the moral requirements. Men so conditioned will acquire to the degree needful for complete guidance that innate conscience which the intuitive moralists erroneously supposed to be possessed by mankind at large. There needs but a continuance of absolute peace externally and a rigorous insistence on non-aggression internally, to insure the moulding of men into a form naturally characterized by all the virtues. This general induction is re-enforced by especial induction. Now as displaying this high trait of nature, now as displaying that, Mr. Spencer has instanced various uncivilized peoples who, inferior to us in other respects, are morally superior to us. He has also pointed out that such peoples are, one and all, free from inter-tribal antagonisms. The peoples showing this connection between external and internal peacefulness on the one hand, and superior morality on the other, are of various races. In the Indian Hills are found some who are by origin Mongolian, Kelarian, Dravidian; in the forests of Malacca, Burma, and in secluded parts of China exist such tribes of yet other bloods; in the East Indian archipelago are some belonging to the Papuan stock; in j.a.pan there are the amiable Ainos, who have no traditions of internecine strife; and in North Mexico exists yet another such people unrelated to the rest, the Pueblos. Our author holds that no more conclusive proof could be wished than that supplied by these isolated groups of men, who, widely remote in locality and differing in race, are alike in the two respects that circ.u.mstances have long exempted them from war, and that they are now organically good. May we not reasonably infer, asks Mr. Spencer, in conclusion, that the state reached by these small, uncultured tribes may be reached by the great cultured nations, when the life of internal amity shall be unqualified by the life of external enmity?

We bring to an end our review of the "Synthetic Philosophy" by pointing out that the ethical doctrine const.i.tuting the culmination of the system which is set forth in the "Principles of Ethics" is fundamentally a corrected and elaborated version of the doctrine propounded in "Social Statics" issued as long ago as 1850. The correspondence between the two works is shown not only by the coincidence of their constructive divisions, but also by the agreement of their cardinal ideas. As in the one, so in the other, Man, in common with lower creatures, is held to be capable of indefinite change by adaptation to conditions. In both he is regarded as undergoing transformation from a nature appropriate to his aboriginal wild life, to a nature appropriate to a settled civilized life; and in both this transformation is described as a moulding into a form fitted for harmonious co-operation. In both works, too, this moulding is said to be effected by the repression of certain primitive traits no longer needed, and the development of needful traits. As in the first work, so in this last, the great factor in the progressive modification is shown to be sympathy. It was contended in "Social Statics," as it is contended in the "Principles of Ethics," that harmonious social co-operation implies that limitation of individual freedom which results from sympathetic regard for the freedoms of others; and that the law of equal freedom is the law in conformity to which equitable individual conduct and equitable social arrangements co-exist. Mr. Spencer's theory in 1850 was, as his theory still is, that the mental products of Sympathy which const.i.tute what is called "the moral sense," arise as fast as men are disciplined into social life; and that along with them arise intellectual perceptions of right human relations, which become clearer as the form of social life becomes better. Further, in the earlier work it was inferred, as it is inferred in the latest, that there is being effected a conciliation of individual natures with social requirements; so that there will eventually be achieved the greatest individuation, along with the greatest mutual dependence,--an equilibrium of such kind that each, in fulfilling the wants of his own life, will aid in fulfilling the wants of all other lives. We observe, finally, that, in the first work, there were drawn essentially the same corollaries respecting the rights of individuals and their relations to the State that are drawn in the "Principles of Ethics."

A word may be said in conclusion about the difference between the relation of Mr. Spencer on the one hand and Darwin on the other to the thought of the Nineteenth Century. The fact is not to be lost sight of that the principles of the Evolutionary, or, as Mr. Spencer prefers to term it, the Synthetic, philosophy were formulated before the publication of the "Origin of Species." What the ultimately general acceptance of the theory propounded in Darwin's work did for Mr. Spencer was precisely this: it greatly strengthened the biological evidence for the evolutionary hypothesis. That hypothesis was upheld, however, by evidence drawn not merely from biology, but from many other sources.

Moreover, while the Darwinian theory of natural selection, supplemented as it was by the adoption of the Lamarkian factors,--the effect of use and disuse and the a.s.sumed transmissibility of acquired character,--merely attempted to explain the mode in which the changes in organic life have taken place upon the earth, the evolutionary hypothesis put forth by Mr. Spencer professed to be applicable to the whole sphere of the knowable. It is further to be borne in mind that Mr.

Spencer has devoted a large part of his life to tracing in detail the applications of his fundamental principles to social, political, religious, and ethical phenomena. Darwin, on the other hand, strictly confined himself to the biological field, and left to disciples the task of indicating the bearing of the Darwinian theory upon sociology, theology, and morals.

AUTHORITIES.

The Complete Works of Herbert Spencer (The Synthetic Philosophy).

Also, "Facts and Comments," by Herbert Spencer (Appleton's).

John Fiske's "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy."

F.H. Collins's "Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy."

A.D. White's "Herbert Spencer: The Completion of the Synthetic Philosophy."

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN.

1809-1882;

HIS PLACE IN MODERN SCIENCE.

BY MAYO W. HAZELTINE.

There is no doubt that, by the judgment of a large majority of scientists, the place of pre-eminence in the history of science during the nineteenth century should be a.s.signed to Charles Robert Darwin. The theory a.s.sociated with his name deserves to be called epoch-making. The Darwinian hypothesis, indeed, should not be confounded with the cosmic theory of Evolution which was formulated earlier and independently by Herbert Spencer, and supported by many arguments drawn from sources outside the field of natural history. The specific merit of the Darwinian hypothesis is that it furnishes a rational and almost universally accepted explanation of the mode in which changes have taken place in the development of organic life upon the earth. With the possible cosmical applications of his theory Darwin did not concern himself, though the bearing of his hypothesis upon wider problems was at once discerned, and has been set forth by Spencer and others. Before stating, however, the conclusions at which Darwin arrived in his "Origin of Species," the "Descent of Man," and other writings, and before indicating the extent to which these conclusions have been adopted, we should say a word about his interesting, amiable, and exemplary personality. Concerning his private life, there is no lack of information. He himself wrote an autobiographical sketch which has been amplified by his son Francis Darwin, and supplemented with numerous extracts from his correspondence.

I.

Charles Robert Darwin was born at Shrewsbury, Feb. 12, 1809. His mother was a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the well-known Staffordshire potter, and his father, Dr. Robert Waring Darwin, was a son of Erasmus Darwin, celebrated in the eighteenth century as a physician, a naturalist, and a poet. It is a curious fact that in some of his speculations Erasmus Darwin antic.i.p.ated the views touching the evolution of organic life subsequently announced by Lamarck, and ultimately incorporated by Charles Darwin in the theory that bears his name. The only taste kindred to natural history which Dr. Darwin possessed in common with his father and his son was a love of plants. The garden of his house in Shrewsbury, where Charles Darwin spent his boyhood, was filled with ornamental trees and shrubs, as well as fruit-trees.

When Charles Darwin was about eight years old, he was sent to a day-school, and it seems that even at this time his taste for natural history, and especially for collecting sh.e.l.ls and minerals, was well developed. In the summer of 1818 he entered Dr. Butler's great school in Shrewsbury, well known to the amateur makers of Latin verse by the volume ent.i.tled "Sabrinae Corolla." He expressed the opinion in later life that nothing could have been worse for the development of his mind than this school, as it was strictly cla.s.sical, nothing else being taught except a little ancient biography and history. During his whole life he was singularly incapable of mastering any language. With respect to science, he continued collecting minerals with much zeal, and after reading White's "Selborne" he took much pleasure in watching the habits of birds. Towards the close of his school life he became deeply interested in chemistry, and was allowed to a.s.sist his elder brother in some laboratory experiments. In October, 1825, he proceeded to Edinburgh University, where he stayed for two years. He found the lectures intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry. Curiously enough, while walking one day with a fellow-undergraduate, the latter burst forth in high admiration of Lamarck and his views on evolution. So far as Darwin could afterwards judge, no impression was made upon his own mind. He had previously read his grandfather's "Zoonomia," in which similar views had been propounded, but no discernible effect had been produced upon him. Nevertheless, it is probable enough that the hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favored his upholding them under a different form in the "Origin of Species."

While at Edinburgh, Darwin was a member of the Plinian Society, and read a couple of papers on some observations in natural history. After two sessions had been spent at Edinburgh, Darwin's father perceived that the young man did not like the thought of being a physician, and proposed that he should become a clergyman. In pursuance of this proposal, he went to the University of Cambridge in 1828, and three years later took a B.A. degree. In his autobiography the opinion is expressed that at Cambridge his time was wasted. It was there, however, that he became intimately acquainted with Professor Henslow, a man of remarkable acquirements in botany, entomology, chemistry, mineralogy, and geology.

During his last year at Cambridge Darwin read with care and interest Humboldt's "Personal Narrative," and Sir John Herschel's "Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy." These books influenced him profoundly, arousing in him a burning desire to make even the most humble contribution to the structure of natural science. At Henslow's suggestion he began the study of biology, and in 1831 accompanied Professor Sedgwick in the latter's investigations amongst the older rocks in North Wales.

It was Professor Henslow who secured for young Darwin the appointment of naturalist to the voyage of the "Beagle." This voyage lasted from Dec.

27, 1831, to Oct. 2, 1836. The incidents of this voyage will be found set forth in Darwin's "Public Journeys." The observations made by him in geology, natural history, and botany gave him a place of considerable distinction among scientific men. In 1844 he published a series of observations on the volcanic islands visited during the voyage of the "Beagle," and two years later "Geological Observations on South America." These two books, together with a volume ent.i.tled "Coral Reefs," required four and a half years' steady work. In October, 1846, he began the studies embodied in "Cirripedia" (barnacles). The outcome of these studies was published in two thick volumes. The time came when Darwin doubted whether the work was worth the consumption of the time employed, but probably it proved of use to him when he had to discuss in the "Origin of Species" the principles of a natural cla.s.sification. From September, 1854, and during the four ensuing years, Darwin devoted himself to observing and experimenting in relation to the trans.m.u.tation of species, and in arranging a huge pile of notes upon the subject. As early as October, 1838, it had occurred to him as probable, or at least possible, that amid the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on in the animal world, favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of new species.

It was not until June, 1842, however, that Darwin allowed himself the satisfaction of writing a very brief abstract of his theory in thirty-five pages. This was enlarged two years later into one of 230 pages. Early in 1856, Sir Charles Lyell, the well-known geologist, advised him to write out his views upon the subject fully, and Darwin began to do so on a scale three or four times as extensive as that which was afterwards followed in his "Origin of Species." He got through about half the work on this scale. His plans were overthrown, owing to the curious circ.u.mstance that, in the summer of 1858, Mr. Alfred E. Wallace, who was then in the Malay archipelago, sent him an essay "On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type." It turned out upon perusal that this essay contained exactly the same theory as that which Darwin was engaged in elaborating. Mr. Wallace expressed the wish that, if Darwin thought well of the essay, he should send it to Lyell. It was Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker who insisted that Darwin should allow an abstract from his ma.n.u.script, together with a letter to Prof. Asa Gray, dated Sept. 5, 1857, to be published at the same time with Wallace's essay. Darwin was unwilling to take this course, being then unacquainted with Mr. Wallace's generous disposition. As a matter of fact, the joint productions excited very little attention, and the only published notice of them a.s.serted that what was new in them was false, and that what was true was old. From the indifference evinced to the papers which first propounded the theory of natural selection, Darwin drew the inference that it is necessary for any new view to be explained at considerable length in order to obtain the public ear.

In September, 1858, Darwin, at the earnest advice of Lyell and Hooker, set to work to prepare a volume on the trans.m.u.tation of species. The book cost him more than thirteen months' hard labor. It was published in November, 1859, under the t.i.tle of "Origin of Species." This, which Darwin justly regarded as the chief work of his life, was from the first highly successful. The first edition was sold on the day of publication, and the book was presently translated into almost every European tongue.

Darwin himself attributed the success of the "Origin" in large part to his having previously written two condensed sketches, and to his having finally made an abstract of a much larger ma.n.u.script, which itself was an abstract. By this winnowing process he had been enabled to select the more striking facts and conclusions. As to the current a.s.sertion that the "Origin" succeeded because the subject was in the air, or because men's minds were prepared for it, Darwin was disposed to doubt whether this was strictly true. In previous years he had occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and had never come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species. Probably men's minds were prepared in this sense, that innumerable well-verified facts were stored away in the memories of naturalists, ready to take their proper places as soon as any theory which would account for them should be strongly supported. Darwin himself thought that he gained much by a delay in publishing, from about 1839, when the "Darwinian" theory was clearly conceived, to 1859; and that he lost nothing, because he cared very little whether men attributed most originality to him or to Wallace.

Darwin's "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication" was begun in 1860, but was not published till 1868. The book was a big one, and cost him four years and two months' hard labor. It gives in the first volume all his personal observations, and an immense number of facts, collected from various sources, about domestic productions, animal and vegetable. In the second volume the causes and laws of variation, inheritance, etc., are discussed. Towards the end of the work is propounded the hypothesis of Pangenesis, which has been generally rejected, and which the author himself looked upon as unverified, although by it a remarkable number of isolated facts could be connected together and rendered intelligible.

The "Descent of Man" was published in February, 1871. Touching this work, Darwin has told us that, as soon as he had become (in 1837 or 1838) convinced that species were mutable productions, he could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law. Accordingly, he collected notes on the subject for his own satisfaction, and not for a long time with any intention of publishing. In the "Origin of Species,"

the derivation of any particular species is never discussed; but in order that no honorable man should accuse him of concealing his views, Darwin had thought it best to add that by that work, "light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history." It would have impeded the acceptance of the theory of natural selection if Darwin had paraded, without giving any evidence, his conviction with respect to man's origin. When he found, however, that many naturalists accepted his doctrine of the evolution of species, it seemed to him advisable to work up such notes as he possessed, and to publish a special treatise on the origin of man. He was the more glad to do so, as it gave him an opportunity of discussing at length s.e.xual selection, a subject which had always interested him.

Darwin's book on the "Expression of Emotion in Men and Animals" was published in the autumn of 1872. This had been intended to form a chapter on the subject in the "Descent of Man," but as soon as Darwin began to put his notes together he saw that it would require a separate treatise. In July, 1875, appeared the book on "Insectivorous Plants."

The fact that a plant should secrete, when properly excited, a fluid containing an acid and ferment closely a.n.a.logous to the digestive fluid of an animal, was certainly a remarkable discovery. In the autumn of 1876 appeared "The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilization," a work in which are described the endless and wonderful contrivances for the transportation of pollen from one plant to another of the same species.

About the same time was brought out an enlarged edition of the "Fertilization of Orchids," originally published in 1862. Among the minor works issued during the later years of Darwin's life may be mentioned particularly the little book on "The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms." This was the outgrowth of a short paper read before the Geological Society more than fourteen years before.

In order to appreciate the enormous amount of research accomplished by Charles Darwin, it is needful to keep in mind the conditions of ill-health under which almost continually he worked. For nearly forty years he never knew one day of the health of ordinary men. His life was one long struggle against the weariness and drain of sickness. During his last ten years there were signs of amendment in several particulars, but a loss of physical vigor was apparent. Writing to a friend in 1881, he complained that he no longer had the heart or strength to begin any prolonged investigations. In February and March, 1882, he frequently experienced attacks of pain in the region of the heart, attended with irregularity of the pulse. On April 18 he fainted, and was brought back to consciousness with great difficulty. He seemed to recognize the approach of death, and said, "I am not the least afraid to die." On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 19, he pa.s.sed away. On April 26 he was interred in Westminster Abbey. The funeral was attended by representatives of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Russia, and by delegates of the universities and learned societies of which he had been a member. Among the pall-bearers were Sir John Lubbock, Sir Joseph Hooker, Professor Huxley, Mr. A.R. Wallace, Mr. James Russell Lowell, the Duke of Argyll, and the Duke of Devonshire. The grave is appropriately placed in the north aisle of the nave, only a few feet from the last resting-place of Sir Isaac Newton.

II.

An outline of Darwin's personality would not be complete without a glance at some of his mental characteristics, and at his att.i.tude toward religion. Of his intellectual powers, he himself speaks with extraordinary modesty in his autobiography. He points out that he always experienced much difficulty in expressing himself clearly and concisely, but he opines that this very difficulty may have had the compensating advantage of forcing him to think long and intently about every sentence, and thus enabling him to detect errors in reasoning and in his own observations, or in those of others. He disclaimed the possession of any great quickness of apprehension or wit, such as distinguished Huxley. He protested, also, that his power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought was very limited, for which reason he felt certain that he never could have succeeded with metaphysics or mathematics. His memory, too, he described as extensive, but hazy. So poor in one sense was it that he never could remember for more than a few days a single date or a line of poetry. On the other hand, he did not accept as well founded the charge made by some of his critics that, while he was a good observer, he had no power of reasoning. This, he thought, could not be true, because the "Origin of Species" is one long argument from the beginning to the end, and has convinced many able men. No one, he submits, could have written it without possessing some power of reasoning. He was willing to a.s.sert that "I have a fair share of invention, and of common sense or judgment, such as every fairly successful lawyer or doctor must have, but not, I believe, in any higher degree." He adds humbly that perhaps he was "superior to the common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully."

Writing in the last year of his life, he expressed the opinion that in two or three respects his mind had changed during the preceding twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty or beyond it poetry of many kinds gave him great pleasure. Formerly, too, pictures had given him considerable, and music very great, delight. In 1881, however, he said: "Now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry; I have tried lately to read Shakspeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music.

Music generally sets me thinking too energetically of what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did." Darwin was convinced that the loss of these tastes was not only a loss of happiness, but might possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional side of one's nature. So far as he could judge, his mind had become in his later years a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, and that atrophy had taken place in that part of the brain on which the higher aesthetic tastes depend.

Curiously enough, however, he retained his relish for novels, and for books on history, biography, and travels.

It is well known that Darwin was extremely reticent with regard to his religious views. He believed that a man's religion was essentially a private matter. Repeated attempts were made to draw him out upon the subject, and some of these were partially successful. Writing to a Dutch student in 1873, he said: "I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance seems to me the chief argument for the existence of G.o.d; but whether this is an argument of real value I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a First Cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty from the immense amount of suffering through the world. I am also induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment of the many able men who have fully believed in G.o.d; but here again I see how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion seems to me that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect; but man can do his duty." To questions put by a German student in 1879, he replied: "Science has nothing to do with Christ, except in so far as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence. For myself I do not believe that there ever has been any revelation. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities." In the same year he told another correspondent: "In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a G.o.d. I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind." His latest view is indicated in a letter dated July 3, 1881. Here he expressed the "inward conviction that the universe is not the result of chance." He adds, however: "But, then, with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value, or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust the convictions in a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?" The Duke of Argyll has recorded the few words on the subject spoken by Darwin in the last year of his life. The Duke said that it was impossible to look at the wonderful contrivances for certain purposes in nature, and fail to recognize that they were the effect and the expression of mind. Darwin looked at the Duke very hard, and said, "Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at other times"--here he shook his head vaguely--"it seems to go away."

III.

We pa.s.s to a consideration of Darwin's masterworks, the "Origin of Species," the "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," and the "Descent of Man." Before indicating the conclusions reached in the first of these works, we should point out to what extent Darwin had been preceded by dissenters from the belief once almost universally entertained by biologists that species were independently created, and, once created, were immutable. Lamarck was the first naturalist whose divergent views upon the subject excited much attention. In writings published at various dates from 1801 to 1815, he upheld the doctrine that all species, including man, are descended from other species. He p.r.o.nounced it probable that all changes in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, were the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. He seems to have been led to his opinion that the change of species had been gradual by the difficulty experienced in distinguishing species from varieties by the almost perfect gradation of forms in certain groups, and by the a.n.a.logy of domestic productions.

With respect to the means of modification, he attributed something to the direct action of the physical conditions of life, something to the crossing of already existing forms, and much to use and disuse, or, in other words, to the effect of habit. Finally, he held that characters acquired by an existing individual might be transmitted to its offspring.

In 1813 Dr. W.C. Wells read before the Royal Society "An Account of a White Female, Part of whose Skin resembles that of a Negro." In this paper the author distinctly recognized the principle of natural selection, but applied it only to the races of man, and in man only to certain characters. After remarking that negroes and mulattoes enjoy an immunity from certain tropical diseases, he observed, first, that all animals tend to vary in some degree, and, secondly, that agriculturalists improve their domesticated animals by selection. He added that what is done in the latter case by art seems to be done with equal efficacy, though more slowly, by nature in the formation of varieties of mankind fitted for the countries which they inhabit. Again in 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published a work on "Naval Timber and Arboriculture," in which he put forth precisely the same view concerning the origin of species as that propounded by Mr. Wallace and by Darwin. Unfortunately for himself, the view was cursorily suggested in scattered pa.s.sages of an appendix to a work on a different subject, so that it remained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew himself drew attention to it in 1860, after the publication of the "Origin of Species." We observe finally that Mr. Herbert Spencer, in an essay published in 1852, and republished six years later, contrasted the theories of the creation and the development of organic beings. He argued from the a.n.a.logy of domestic productions, from the changes which the embryos of many species undergo, from the difficulty of distinguishing species and varieties, and from the principle of general gradation, that species have been modified; and he attributed the modification to the change of circ.u.mstances.