Charles Darwin: His Life in an Autobiographical Chapter Part 32

[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 pa.s.sion 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 circ.u.mscribed 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 _Sat.u.r.day a.n.a.lyst 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 t.i.tle-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 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 Aga.s.siz and others at the meetings. Aga.s.siz 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 _Sat.u.r.day 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 a.s.sailed 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 pa.s.sage from the _Anti-Jacobin_, referred to in the letter, gives the history of the evolution of s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce filled with vacuum, and capable of containing the present universe."

The following (p. 263) may serve as an example of the pa.s.sages 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 a.s.sumption 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 trans.m.u.tation 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. Aga.s.siz." 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."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SPREAD OF EVOLUTION.

1861--1871.

The beginning of the year 1861 saw my father engaged on the 3rd edition (2000 copies) of the _Origin_, which was largely corrected and added to, and was published in April, 1861.

On July 1, he started, with his family, for Torquay, where he remained until August 27--a holiday which he characteristically enters in his diary as "eight weeks and a day." The house he occupied was in Hesketh Crescent, a pleasantly placed row of houses close above the sea, somewhat removed from what was then the main body of the town, and not far from the beautiful cliffed coast-line in the neighbourhood of Anstey's Cove.

During the Torquay holiday, and for the remainder of the year, he worked at the fertilisation of orchids. This part of the year 1861 is not dealt with in the present chapter, because (as explained in the preface) the record of his life, seems to become clearer when the whole of his botanical work is placed together and treated separately. The present chapter will, therefore, include only the progress of his work in the direction of a general amplification of the _Origin of Species_--_e.g._, the publication of _Animals and Plants_ and the _Descent of Man_. It will also give some idea of the growth of belief in evolutionary doctrines.

With regard to the third edition, he wrote to Mr. Murray in December, 1860:--

"I shall be glad to hear when you have decided how many copies you will print off--the more the better for me in all ways, as far as compatible with safety; for I hope never again to make so many corrections, or rather additions, which I have made in hopes of making my many rather stupid reviewers at least understand what is meant. I hope and think I shall improve the book considerably."

An interesting feature in the new edition was the "Historical Sketch of the Recent Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species,"[221] which now appeared for the first time, and was continued in the later editions of the work. It bears a strong impress of the author's personal character in the obvious wish to do full justice to all his predecessors,--though even in this respect it has not escaped some adverse criticism.

A pa.s.sage in a letter to Hooker (March 27, 1861) gives the history of one of his corrections.

"Here is a good joke: H. C. Watson (who, I fancy and hope, is going to review the new edition of the _Origin_) says that in the first four paragraphs of the introduction, the words 'I,' 'me,' 'my,' occur forty-three times! I was dimly conscious of the accursed fact. He says it can be explained phrenologically, which I suppose civilly means, that I am the most egotistically self-sufficient man alive; perhaps so. I wonder whether he will print this pleasing fact; it beats hollow the parentheses in Wollaston's writing.

"I am, _my_ dear Hooker, ever yours, "C. DARWIN.

"P.S.--Do not spread this pleasing joke; it is rather too biting."

He wrote a couple of years later, 1863, to Asa Gray, in a manner which ill.u.s.trates his use of the personal p.r.o.noun in the earlier editions of the _Origin_:--