Editkd uv ANDllKW LANG 
 
 CHAELES DAE WIN 
 
 BY 
 
 GKANT ALLEN 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 1885 
 
 ■ ill ri'jhti /t'served 
 
 3662 79 
 
I'llIXTF.l) BY 
 .'IPOTTISWOODI; AND CO., NKW-STUKET SQUAIM- 
 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 -*»*- 
 
 In tliis little volum(5 I havt^ eiulenvourod to present the 
 litb uiul work of Charles Darwin viewed as a moment 
 in a threat revolution, in due relation both to those who 
 went belong and to those who come after him. Recog- 
 nisin<^-, as has been well said, that the wave makes 
 the crest, not the crest the wave, I have tried to let my 
 hero fall naturally into his propter plac(> in a vast onward 
 movement of the human intellect, of which he was 
 liimself at once a splendid product and a moving cause 
 of the hrst importance. I have attempted to show him 
 both as receiving the torch from Lamarck and Malthus, 
 and as passing it on with renewed brilliancy to the wide 
 school of evolutionary thinkers whom his work was 
 instrumental in arousing to fresh and viu'orous activitv 
 along a thousand separate and varied lines of thought 
 and action. 
 
 As ]Mr, Francis Darwin wjis already engaged upon a 
 life of his father, I should have shrunk from putting 
 
 ^ 
 
iv Ph'i-F.tr/': 
 
 fortli my own little hook if I liiul wA succeetlod in 
 soonriniT Ix'foreliund liis kind .sanction. Tliat sanction, 
 however, was at once so frankly and cordially j^-iven, that 
 all my hesit.ation upon snch a score was innnediately 
 laid aside : and as I have necessarilv had to deal rather 
 with Darwin's position as a thinker and worker than 
 with the hioLrraphical details of his private life, T trust 
 the lesser book may not clash witli the jjfreater, hnt to 
 some ext(Mit may snppleinent and ev(Mi illnstrate it. 
 
 Treating my snhject mainly as a study in tlu' inter- 
 action of organism and environment, it has been neces- 
 sary for me frequently to introduce the names of living 
 men of science side by side with some of those who 
 have more or less recently passed away from among us. 
 For uniformity's sake, as well as for brevity's, 1 have 
 been conipelliMl, in every instance alike, to omit the 
 customary conventiomil handles. I trust those who thus 
 find themselves docked of their usual titles of respect 
 will kindly remember that the practice is in fact adopted 
 honorU cavxil ; they are paying prematurely the usual 
 penalty of intellectual greatness. 
 
 INfy obligations to l^rofessor Huxley, to JVof(\ssor 
 Fiske, to Mr. IferlxM-t Spencer, to Professor Sachs, to 
 Hermann iMiiller, to Dr. Krause, to Charles Darwin him- 
 self, find to many other historians and critics of evolu- 
 tionism, will be sufficiently obvious to all instructed 
 
l^h'I-.l'ACE V 
 
 roatlcrs, and are for the most part fully acknowledprcd 
 already in tlio text. It would be absurd to overload so 
 small and po])ularly written a book with reference's and 
 authorities. I hope, ther"fore, that any other writers to 
 wlio!)! I may inadvertently have neglected to confess my 
 debts will kindlv rest satisfied with this ovneral acknow- 
 Icdgment. There are, however, three persons in par- 
 ticular from whom I have so larufelv l)orrowed facts or 
 ideas that I owe them more special and definite thanks. 
 From ^Fr. WoodalTs admirable paper on Charles Dar- 
 win, contributed to the 'Transactions of the Shropshire 
 Arcluuological Society,' I have taken much interesting 
 information about my hero's innnediate ancestry and 
 early days. From Mr. Samuel iiutler, the author of 
 ' F]volution Old and New," I have derived many preg- 
 nant suggestions with regard to the true position and 
 meaning of BufFon, V]rasmus Darwin, and t3ie early 
 essentially teleological evolutionists — suggestions which 
 1 am all the more anxious \o acknowledge since I differ 
 fundamentally from ^\v. ] hitler in his estimate of the 
 worth of Charles Darwin's distinctive discovery of 
 natnral selection. Fin.ally, to ^Er. Bates, the ' Xatnralist 
 on the Amazons,' I am indebted for several valuable 
 items of information as to the general workings of the 
 pre-Darwinian evolutionary spirit. 
 
 In a book dealing so largely with a contemporary 
 
vi Prefaci-: 
 
 movomeiif, tlic history of wliicli has never V(>t been con- 
 seciitively written down in full, or subjected as a whole 
 to searchiiifjf criticism, tliere must prol)ably be many 
 errors of detail, whicli can hardly be avoided under such 
 circumstances. 1 have endeavoured to minimise them 
 as far as possible. For those which may have escaped 
 my own scrutiny I nnist trust both for correction and 
 for indul<^'ence to the kindness of mv readers. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEr: 
 
 I. THE WORLD INTO WHICH DARWIN WAS BORN . 
 
 II. CHARLES DAUWIK AND HIS ANTECEDENTS . 
 
 III, EARLY DAYS 
 
 IV. DARWIN'S WANDER-YEARS 
 
 V. THE PERIOD OF INCUBATION .... 
 
 VI. THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 
 
 VII. THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION BEGINS 
 
 VIII. THE DESCENT OF MAN 
 
 IX. THE THEORY OF COURTSHIP .... 
 
 X. VICTORY AND REST 
 
 XI. DARWIN'S PLACE IN THE EVOLUTIONARY MOVEMKNT 
 
 XH. THE NET RESULT 
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 20 
 
 31 
 
 38 
 r.s 
 73 
 112 
 132 
 IM 
 
 i5r. 
 
 177 
 102 
 203 
 
CHARLES DAE WIN. 
 
 CHAFPER I. 
 
 THE WORLD INTO WIIICII DAliWIN WAS BORN. 
 
 Charles Darwin was a great man, and lie accomplished 
 a great work. The Newton of biology, he found the 
 science of life a chaotic maze : he left it an orderly 
 system, with a definite plan and a recognisable meaning. 
 Great men are not accidents ; great works are not 
 accomplished in a single day. Both are the product 
 of adequate causes. The great man springs from an 
 ancestry competent to produce him ; he is the final 
 flower and ultimate outcome of converging hereditary 
 forces, that culminate at last in the full production of 
 his splendid and exceptional personality. The great 
 work which it is his mission to perform in the world is 
 never wholly of his own inception. It also is the last 
 effect of antecedent conditions, the slow result of ten- 
 dencies and 'ideas long working unseen or but little 
 noticed beneath the surface of opinion, yet all gradually 
 conspiring together towards the definitive revolution at 
 whose head, in the fulness of time, the as yet unborn 
 genius is destined to place himself. This is especially 
 
 B 
 
2 Charles Darwin 
 
 the case with those extraordinary wa\es of mental 
 upheaval, one of which gave us the Italian renaissance, 
 and another of which is actually in progress around us 
 at the present day. They have their sources deep 
 down in the past of human thought and human feeling, 
 and they are themselves but the final manifeotation of 
 innumerable energies which have long been silently agi- 
 tating the souls of nations in their profoundest depths. 
 Thus, every great man may be regarded as possess- 
 ing two distinct lines of ancestry, physical and spiritual, 
 each of which separately demands elucidation. He 
 owes much in one way to his father and his mother, 
 his grandfathers and his grandmothers, and his remoter 
 progenitors, from some or all of whom he derives, in 
 varying degrees and combinations, the personal qualities 
 whose special interaction constitutes his greatness and 
 his idiosyncrasy ; he owes much in another way to his 
 intellectual and moral ancestors, the thinkers and 
 workers who have preceded him in his own department 
 of thought or action, and have made possible in the 
 course of ages the final development of his special revo- 
 lution ©r his particular system. Viewed as an indivi- 
 dual, he is what he is, with all his powers and faculties 
 and potentialities, in virtue of the brain, the frame, the 
 temperament, the energy he inherits directly from his 
 actual ancestors, paternal and maternal ; viewed as a 
 factor or element in a great movement, he is what he 
 is because the movement had succeeded in reachinof 
 such and such a point in its progress already without 
 him, and waited only for such and such a grand and 
 commanding personality in order to carry it yet a step 
 fiulliej' on its course of development. 
 
The World into which Darwin was Born 3 
 
 No man who ever lived would more cordially 
 have recognised these two alternative aspects of the 
 great worker's predetermining causes than Charles 
 Darwin. He knew well that the individual is the 
 direct cumulative product of his physical predecessors, 
 and that he works and is worked upon in innumerable 
 ways by the particular environment into whose midst 
 he is born. Let us see, then, in his own case what 
 were these two main sets of conditioning circumstances 
 which finally led up to the joint production of Charles 
 Darwin, the man and the philosopher, the thinking 
 brain and the moving energy. In other words, what 
 was the state of the science of life at the time when he 
 first began to observe and to speculate ; and what was 
 the ancestry which made him be born a person capable 
 of helping it forward at a single bound over its great 
 restricting dogmatic barrier of the fixity of species ? 
 
 Let us begin, in the first place, by clearing the 
 path beforehand of a popular misconception, so extremely 
 general and almost universal that, unless it be got ritl 
 of at the verv outset of our sketch, much of the real 
 scope and purport of Darwin's life and work nuist, of 
 necessity, remain entirely misunderstood by the vast 
 mass of English readers. In the public mind Darwin 
 is, perhaps, most connnonly regarded as the discoverer 
 and founder of the evolution hypothesis. Two ideas 
 are usually associated with his name and memory, if 
 is believed that he was the first propounder of the 
 theory which supposes all plant and animal forms 
 to be the result, not of special creation, but of slow 
 modification ia pre-existent organisms. It is further 
 and more particularly believed that he was the fiibt 
 
 B 2 
 
4 Charles Dariv/n 
 
 propounder of the theory which supposes the descent of 
 man to be traceable from a remote and more or less 
 monkey-like ancestor. Now, as a matter of fact, Darwin 
 was not the prime originator of either of these two 
 great cardinal ideas. Though he held both as part of 
 his organised theory of things, he was not by any 
 means the first or the earliest thinker to hold them or 
 to propound them publicly. Though he gained for 
 them both a far wider and more general acceptance 
 than they had ever before popularly received, he laid 
 no sort of claim himself to originality or proprietorship 
 in either theory. The grand idea which he did really 
 originate was not the idea of ' descent with modifica- 
 tion,' but the idea of ' natural selection,' by which 
 agency, as he was the first to prove, definite kinds of 
 plants and animals have been slowly evolved from 
 simpler forms, with definite adaptations to the special 
 circumstances by which they are surrounded. In a 
 word, it was the peculiar glory of Charles Darwin, not 
 to have suggested that all the variety of animal and 
 vegetable life might have been produced by slow modi- 
 fications in one or more original types, but to have 
 shown the nature of the machinery by which such a 
 result could be actually attained in the practical working 
 out of natural causes. He did not invent the develop- 
 ment theory, but he made it believable and comprehen- 
 sible. He was not, as most people falsely inuigine, the 
 Closes of evolutionism, the prime mover in the biological 
 revolution ; he was the Joshua who led the world of 
 thinkers and workers into full fruition of that promised 
 land which earlier investigators had but dimly descried 
 from the Pisgah-top of conjectural speculation. 
 
The World into which Darwfn ivas Born 5 
 
 How far Darwin's special idea of natural selection 
 supplemented and rendered credible the earlier idea of 
 descent with modification we shall see more fully when 
 we come to treat of the inception and growth of his 
 great epoch-making work, ' The, Origin of ri)ecies ; ' 
 for the present, it must suffice to point out that in the 
 world into which he was born, the theory of evolution 
 already existed in a more or less shadowy and un- 
 developed shape. And since it was his task in life to 
 raise this theory from the rank of a mere plausible and 
 happy guess to the rank of a highly elaborate and 
 almost universally accepted biological system, we may 
 pause awhile to consider on the threshold what was the 
 actual state of natural science at the moment when tlie 
 great directing and organising intelligence of Charles 
 Darwin first appeared. 
 
 From time immemorial, in modern Christendom at 
 least, it had been the general opinion of learned and 
 simple alike that every species of plant or animal owed 
 its present form and its original existence to a distinct 
 act of special creation. This nn'ff belief, unsupported 
 as it was by any sort of internal evidence, was supposed 
 to rest directly upon the express authority of a few 
 obscure statements in the Book of Genesis. The Creator, 
 it was held, had in the beginning formed each kind 
 after a particular pattern, had endowed it with special 
 organs devised with supreme wisdom for subserving 
 special functions, and had bestowed upon it the mystical 
 power of reproducing its like in its own image to all 
 generations. No variation of importance ever occurred 
 within the types thus constituted ; all plants and animals 
 always retained their special forms unaltered in any 
 
6 Charles Darwin 
 
 way from era to era. This is the doctrine of the fixity 
 and immutability of species, almost universal in the 
 civilised world up to the end of the last century. 
 
 Improbable as such a crude idea now seems to any 
 person even moderately acquainted with the extra- 
 ordinary variety and variability of living forms, it 
 nevertheless contained nothing at all likely to con^ 
 tradict the ordinary experience of the everyday observer 
 in the last century. The handful of plants and animals 
 with which he was personally acquainted consisted for 
 the most part of a few large, highly advanced, and 
 well-marked forms, not in the least liable to be mistaken 
 for one another even by the most hasty and casual 
 spectator. A horse can immediately be discriminated 
 by the naked eye from fi donkey, and a cow from a 
 sheep, without risk of error; nobody is likely to confuse 
 wheat with barley, or to hesitate between classing any 
 given fruit that is laid before him as a pear or an apple, 
 a plum or a nectarine. Variability seldom comes under 
 the notice of the ordinary passing spectator as it does 
 under that of the prying and curious scientific observer ; 
 and when it comes at all, as in the case of dogs and 
 pigeons, roses and hyacinths, it is no doubt set down 
 carelessly on a superficial view as a mere result of 
 human selection or of deliberate mongrel interbreed- 
 ing. To the eye of the average man, all the living 
 objects ordinarily perceived in external nature fall at 
 once under certain fixed and recognisable kinds, as 
 dogs and horses, elms and ashes, whose limits he is 
 never at all inclined to confound in any way one with 
 the other. 
 
 LinnaBus, the great father of modern scientific 
 
The World into which Darwin was Born 7 
 
 biology, had frankly and perhaps unthinkingly accepted 
 this current and almost universal dogma of the fixity and 
 immutability of species. Indeed, by defining a kind as 
 a group of plants or animals so closely resembling one 
 another as to give rise to the belief that they might all 
 be descended from a single ancestor or pair of ancestors, 
 he implicitly gave the new sanction of his weighty 
 authority to the creation hypothesis, and to the pre- 
 valent doctrine of the unchangeability of organic forms. 
 To Linnasus, the species into which he mapped out all 
 the plants and animals then known, appeared as the 
 descendants each of a solitar^^ progenitor or of a 
 primitive couple, called into existence at the beginning 
 of all things by the direct fiat of a designing Creator. 
 He saw the world of organic life as composed of so 
 many well-demarcated types, each separate, distinct, 
 and immutable, each capable of f)rodncing its like adi 
 injinitum, and each unable to vary from its central 
 standard in any of its individuals, except perhaps 
 within very narrow and unimportant limits. 
 
 But towards the close of the eighteenth century, 
 side by side with the general awakening of the human 
 intellect and the arrival of a new era of free 
 social investigation, which culminated in a fresh order 
 of things, there was developed a more critical and 
 sceptical attitude in the world of science, which soon 
 produced a notable change of front among thinking 
 naturalists as to the origin and meaning of specific 
 distinctions. 
 
 Buffon was the first great biological innovator who 
 ventured, in very doubtful and tentative language, to 
 suggest the possibility of the rise of species from one 
 
8. Charles Darwin 
 
 another by slow modification of ancestral forms. Essen- 
 tially a popular essayist, writing in the volcanic priest- 
 suppressed France of the aucien rer/imc, during the 
 inconsistent days of Louis XA\ and T.ouis XVI., when 
 it was uncertain whether novel and heterodox opinions 
 would bring down upon their author fame and reputa- 
 tion or tlie Sorbonne and the Bastille, BufFon was 
 careful to put his conjectural conclusions in a studiously 
 guarded and often even ironical form. But time after 
 time, in his great discursive work, the ' Histoire Natu- 
 relle ' (published in successive volumes between 1 749 
 and 1788), he recurs anew to the pregnant suggestion 
 that plants and animals may not be bound by fixed and 
 immovable limits of species, but may freely vary in 
 everv direction from a connnon centre, so that one kind 
 may gradually and slowly be evolved by natural causes 
 from the type of another. He points out that, under- 
 lying all external diversities of character and shape, 
 fundamental likenesses of type occur in many animals, 
 which irresistibly suggest the novel notion of conmion 
 descent from a single ancestor. Thus regarded, he 
 says, not only the ass and the horse (to take a parti- 
 cular passage) but even man himself, the monkeys, the 
 quadrupeds, and all vertebrate animals, might be viewed 
 as merely forming divergent branches of one and the 
 same great family tree. Every such family, he believed, 
 whether animal or vegetable, might have sprung ori 
 ginally from a single stock, which after many gener- 
 ations had here developed into a higher form, and 
 there degenerated into a lower and less perfect type 
 of organisation. Granting this — granting that nature 
 could by slow variation produce one species in the 
 
The World into which Darwin was Born g 
 
 course of direct descent from nnotlier niilike it (for 
 example, tlie ass from the horse), then, Buffon observed, 
 tliere was no further limit to be set to her powers in 
 this respect, and we might reasonably conclude that 
 from a single primordial being she has gradually been 
 able in the course of time to develop the whole con- 
 tinuous gamut of existing animal and vegetable life. 
 To be sure, BufFon always saves himself from censure 
 by an obvious afterthought — ' But no ; it is certain 
 from revelation that every species was directly created 
 by a separate fiat.' This half-hearted and somewhat 
 subrisive denial, however, must be taken merely as a 
 concession to the Sorbonne and to the fashionable 
 exegesis of liis own day ; and, even so, the Sorbonne 
 was too much in the end for the philosophic thinker. 
 He had once in his life at least to make his submission 
 and demand pardon from the offended orthodoxy of the 
 Paris faculty. 
 
 The wave of thought and feeling, thus apologetically 
 and tentatively stirred on the unruffled pond of 
 eighteenth century opinion by the startling plop of 
 Buffon's little smooth-cut pebble, soon widened out 
 on every side in concentric circles, and affected with its 
 wash the entire world of biological science in every 
 country. Before the close of the eighteenth century 
 speculation as to the origin of species was rife in 
 all quarters of Europe. In France itself, Geoffroy 
 St. Hilaire, constitutionally cautious and undecided, 
 but wide of view and free from prejudice, came slowly 
 to the conclusion, in 1795, that all species are really 
 derived by modification from one or more primitive 
 types. In Germany, in the very same year, Goethe, 
 
10 Charles Darwin 
 
 with the keen vision of the poet and the calm eye of 
 the philosopher uniquely combined, discerned indepen- 
 dently as by a lightning flash the identical idea of the 
 origin of kinds by modification of pre-existent organisms. 
 ' We may assert without hesitation,' says that great 
 nebulous thinker and observer, ' that all the more 
 perfect organic natures, such as fishes, amphibians, 
 birds and mammals, with man at their head, were formed 
 at first on one original type, which still daily changes 
 and modifies its form by propagation.' In England, 
 twelve months earlier, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Charles 
 Darwin's grandfather (of whom more anon), published 
 his '• Zoonomia,' a treatise on the laws of animal life, in 
 which he not only adopted Button's theory of the 
 origin of species by evolution, but also laid down as 
 the chief cause of such development the actions and 
 needs of the animals themselves. According to Dr. 
 Erasmus Darwin, animals came to vary from one 
 another chiefly because they were always altering their 
 habits and voluntarily accommodating themselves to new 
 actions and positions in life. His v/ork produced com- 
 paratively little effect upon the world at large in his 
 own time, but it had immense influence upon the next 
 great prophet of evolution, Lamarck, and through 
 Lamarck on Lyell, Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, 
 jmd the modern school of evolutionists generally. We 
 shall consider his views in greater detail when we pass 
 from the spiritual to the j)liysical antecedents of Charles 
 Darwin. 
 
 It was in 1801 that Lamarck first gave to the world 
 his epoch-making speculations and suggestions on the 
 origin of species ; and from that date to the day of his 
 
The World into which Darwin w.is Born ii 
 
 death, in 1831, the unwearied old philosopher continued 
 to devote his whole time and energy, in blindness and 
 poverty, to the elucidation of this interesting and im- 
 portant subject. A bold, acute, and vigorous thinker, 
 trained in the great school of Diderot and D'Alembert, 
 with something of the vivid Celtic poetic imagination, 
 iuid a fearless habit of forming his own conclusions 
 irrespective of common or preconceived ideas, Lamarck 
 went to the very root of the matter in the most deter- 
 mined fashion, and openly proclaimed in the face of 
 frowning officialism under the Napoleonic reaction his 
 profound conviction that all species, including man, 
 were descended by modification from one or more 
 primordial forms. In Charles Darwin's own words, 
 ' He first did the eminent service of arousing attention 
 to the probability of all change, in the organic as well 
 as in the inorganic world, being the result of law and 
 not of miraculous interposition. Lamarck seems to 
 have been chiefiy led to his conclusion on the gradual 
 change of species by the difficulty of distinguishing 
 species and varieties, by the almost perfect gradation of 
 forms in certain groups, and by the analogy of domestic 
 productions. With respect to the means of modifica- 
 tion, 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, 
 that is, to the effects of habit. To this latter agency 
 he seems to attribute all the beautiful adaptations in 
 nature — such as the long neck of the giraffe for browsing 
 on the branches of trees.' He believed, in short, that 
 animals had largely developed themselves, by functional 
 effort followed by increased powers and abilities. 
 
12 Charles Darwin 
 
 Lamarck's great work, the ' Philosophie Zoologique/ 
 thonufh opposed by the austere and formal jj^eniua of the 
 immortal Cuvier — a reactionary biolofjical conservative 
 and obscurantist, equal to tlie enormous task of map- 
 ping out piecemeal with infinite skill and power the 
 separate provinces of his chosen science, but incapable 
 of taking in all the bearings of ^he whole field at a 
 single vivid and comprehensive sweep — Lamarck's great 
 work produced a deep and lasting impression upon 
 the entire subsequent course of evolutionary thought 
 in scientific Europe. True, owing to the retrograde 
 tendencies of the First Empire, it caused but little 
 immediate stir at the precise moment of its first publica- 
 tion ; but the seed it sowed sank deep, and, lying fallow 
 long in men's minds, bore fruit at last in the next gener- 
 ation with the marvellous fecundity of the germs of 
 genius. Indeed, from the very beginning of the present 
 century, a ferment of inquiry on the subject of creation 
 and evolution was everywhere obvious among speculative 
 thinkers. The profound interest which Goethe took in 
 the dispute on this very subject in the French Academie 
 des Sciences between Cuvier and Geoffrov St. Hilaire, 
 amid the thundering guns of a threatened European 
 convulsion, was but a solitary symptom of the general 
 stir which preceded the gestation and birth of the Dar- 
 winian hypothesis. It is impossible to take up any 
 scientific memoirs or treatises of the first half of our own 
 century without seeing at a glance how every mind of 
 high original scientific importance was permeated and 
 disturbed by the fundamental questions aroused, but 
 not fully answered, by Buffon, Lamarck, and Erasmus 
 Darwin. In Lyell's letters and in Agassiz's lectures, in 
 
The World into which Dan win was Born 13 
 
 tho ' Botanic Journal ' and the ' Philosophical Transac- 
 tions,' in treatises on Madeira beetles and the Australian 
 flora, we find everywhere the thoughts of men pro- 
 foundly influenced in a thousand directions by this 
 universal evolutionary solvent and leaven. 
 
 And while the world of thought was thus seething and 
 moving restlessly before the wave of ideas set in motion 
 by these various independent philosophers, another 
 group of cautjs in another field was rendering smooth 
 the path beforehand for the future champion of the 
 amended evolutionism. Geology on the one hand and 
 astronomy on the other were making men's minds 
 gradually familiar with the conception of slow natural 
 development, as opposed to immediate and miraculous 
 creation. 
 
 The rise of geology had been rapid and brilliant. 
 In the last century it had been almost universally 
 believed that fossil organisms were the relics of sub- 
 merged and destroyed worlds, strange remnants of 
 successive terrible mundane catastrophes. Cuvier 
 I'imself, who had rendered immense f vices to geo- 
 logical science by his almost unerring reconstructions 
 of extinct animals, remained a partisan of the old 
 theory of constant cataclysms and fresh creations 
 throughout his whole life ; but Lamarck, here as else- 
 where the prophet of the modern uniforniitarian con- 
 cept of nature, had already announced his grand idea 
 that the ordinary process of natural laws sufficed to 
 account for all the phenomena of the earth's crust. In 
 England, William Smith, the ingenious land surveyor, 
 riding up and down on his daily task over the face of 
 the country, became convinced by his obser\utionb iu 
 
14 Charles Darwin 
 
 the first years of the present century that a fixed order 
 of sequence could everywhere be traced anion «^ tlie 
 various superincumbent <j^eological strata. jModern 
 scientific geology takes its rise from the moment of this 
 luminous and luminiferous discovery. With astonishing 
 rapidity the sequence of strata was everywhere noted, 
 and the succession of characteristic fossils mapped out, 
 with the result of showing, however imperfectly at first, 
 that the history of organic life upon the globe had 
 followed a slow and regular course of constant develop- 
 ment. Immediately whole schools of eager workers 
 employed themselves in investigating in separate detnil 
 the phenomena of these successive stages of unfolding 
 life. Murchison, fresh from the IVninsular campaign, 
 began to study the dawn of organic history in the gloom 
 of the Silurian and Cambrian epochs. A group of less 
 articulate but not less active workers like Buckland and 
 Mantell performed similar services for the carboniferous, 
 the wealden, and the tertiary deposits. Sedgwick en- 
 deavoured to co-ordinate the whole range of then known 
 facts into a single wide and comprehensive survey. De 
 La Beche, JMiillipps, and Agassiz added their share to 
 the great work of reconstruction. Last of all, among 
 those who were contemporary and all but coeval with 
 Charles Darwin himself, Lyell boldly fought out the 
 battle of ' unifbrmitarianism,' proving, with all the 
 accunuilated weight of his encyclopjiidic and world- 
 wide knowledge, that every known feature of geological 
 development could be traced to the agency of causes 
 now in action, and illustrated by means of slow secular 
 changes still actually taking place on earth before our 
 Very eyes. 
 
TuF. World lvtu which Darwin was Born 15 
 
 Tlie influenc(^ of theso novel conceptions upon the 
 growth and spreud of evolutionary ideas was far- reach- 
 ing and twofold. In the first place, the discovery of 
 a definite succession of nearly related organic forms, 
 following one another with evid'^ ■■ closeness through 
 the various ages, inevitably suggested to every in(juiring 
 observer the possibility of their direct descent one from 
 the other. In the second place, the discovery that 
 geological formations were not really separated each 
 from its predecessor by violent revolutions, but were the 
 result of gradual and ordinary changes, discredited the 
 old idea of frequent fresh creations after each cata- 
 strophe, and familiarised the minds of men of science 
 with the alternative notion of slow and natural evolu- 
 tionary processes. The past was seen to be in effect tlu^ 
 parent of the present ; the present was recognised as 
 the child of the past. 
 
 Current astronomical theories also pointed inevit- 
 ably in the same direction. Kant, whose supereminent 
 fame as a philosopher has almost overshadowed his just 
 claims as a profound thinker in physical science, had 
 already in the third quarter of the eighteenth century 
 arrived at his sublime nebular hypothesis, in which he 
 suggested the possible development of stars, suns, planets, 
 and satellites by the slow contraction of very diffuse and 
 incandescent haze-clouds. This magnificent cosmical con- 
 ception was seized and adapted by the genius of Laplace 
 in his celestial system, and made familiar through his 
 great work to thinking minds throughout the whole of 
 Europe. In England it was further modified and 
 remodelled by Sir William Herschel, whose period of 
 active investigation coincided in part with Charles 
 
1 6 Charles Darwin 
 
 Darwin's early boyhood. The bearings of the nebular 
 hypothesis upon the rise of Darwinian evolutionism are 
 by no means remote : the entire modern scientific 
 movement forms, in fact, a single great organic whole, 
 of which the special doctrine of biological development 
 is but a small separate integral part. All the theories 
 and doctrines which go to make it up display the one 
 common trait that they reject the idea of direct creative 
 interposition from without, and attribute the entire 
 existing order of nature to the regular unfolding of one 
 undeviating continuous law. 
 
 Yet another factor in the intellectual stir and bustle 
 of the time must needs be mentioned even in so short 
 and cursory a sketch as this of the causes which led to 
 the Darwinian crisis. In 1798, Thomas Malthus, a 
 clergyman of the Church of Elngland, published the 
 first edition of his famous and nmch-debated ' Essay on 
 the Principle of Population.' Malthus was the first 
 person who ever called public attention to the tendency 
 of population to increase up to the utmost limit of sub- 
 sistence, as well as to the necessary influence of starvation 
 in checking its further development beyond that point- 
 Though his essay dealt only with the question of repro- 
 duction in human societies, it was clear that it possessed 
 innumerable analogies in every domain of aninuil and 
 veget.'ible life. The book ran through many successive 
 editions with extraordinary rapidity for a work of its 
 class, it was fiercely attacked and bravely defended, 
 it caused an immense amount of discussion ancil debate, 
 and besides its marvellous direct influence as a germinal 
 power upon the whole subsequent course of politico- 
 economical and sociological thought, it produced also a 
 
TiiF. World into wiucii Darwin was Born 17 
 
 remarkable indirect influence on tlie side current of 
 biological and speculative opinion. In particular, as we 
 shall more fully see hereafter, it had an immediate effect 
 in suggesting to the mind of the great naturalist who 
 forms our present subject the embryo idea of ' natural 
 selection.' 
 
 Such then was the intellectual and social world into 
 which, early in the present century, Charles Darwin 
 found himself born. Everywhere around him in liis 
 childhood and youth these great but formless evolu- 
 tionary ideas were brewing and fermenting. The 
 scientific society of his elders and of the contemporaries 
 among whom he grew up was permeated with the 
 leaven of Laplace and of Lamarck, of Hutton and of 
 Herschel. Inquiry was especially everywhere rife as 
 to the origin and nature of specific distinctions among 
 ]ilants and animals. Those who believed in the doctrine 
 (yf Buffbn and of the ' Zoonomia ' and those who dis- 
 believed in it, alike, were profoundly interested and 
 aijfitated in soul bv the far-reaching implications of 
 that fundamental problem. On every side evolutionism, 
 in its crude form, was already in the air. Long before 
 Charles Darwin himself published his conclusive ' Origin 
 of Species,' every thinking mind in the world of science, 
 elder and younger, was deeply engaged upon the self-same 
 problem. Lyell and Horner in altern.'ite fits were doubt- 
 ing and debating. Herbert Spencer had already frankly 
 accepted the new idea with the profound conviction of 
 (( jiriorl reasoning. Agassiz was hesitating and raising 
 difficulties. Treviranus was ardently ])roclaiming his u 11- 
 tliuching adhesion. Oken was spinning in metaphy- 
 sical Germany his fanciful parodies of the Lamarckian 
 
 C 
 
1 8 Charles Darwin 
 
 hypotliesis. Amoncr the depths of Brazilian forests Bates 
 was reading the story of evolution on the gauze-like 
 wings of tropical butterflies. Under the scanty shade of 
 Malayan palm-trees Wallace was independently spelling 
 out in rude outline the very theory of survival of the 
 fittest, which Charles Darwin himself was simultaneously 
 perfecting and polishing among the memoirs and pam- 
 phlets of his English study. Wollaston in Madeira was 
 pointing out the strange adaptations of the curious local 
 snails and beetles. Von Bucli in the Canaries was 
 coming to the conclusion that varieties may be slowly 
 changed into permanent species. Lecoq and Von Baer 
 were gradually arriving, one by the botanical route, the 
 other by the erabryological, at the same opinion. Before 
 Charles Darwin was twentv, Dean Herbert had declared 
 from the profound depth of his horticultural knowledge 
 that kinds were only mere fixed sports ; and Patrick 
 Matthew, in the appendix to a work on ' Naval Timber,' 
 had casually developed, without perceiving its import- 
 ance, the actual distinctive Darwinian doctrine of natural 
 selection. Robert Chambers published in 1 81-4 his 
 ' Vestiges of Creation,' in which Lamarck's theory was 
 impressed and popularised under a somewhat spoilt and 
 mistaken form : it was not till 1 859 that the first 
 edition of the 'Origin of Species' burst like a thunder- 
 bolt upon the astonished world of unprepared and 
 unscientific thinkers. 
 
 This general attitude of interest and inquiry is of 
 deep importance to the proper comprehension of Charles 
 Darwin's life and work, and that for two distinct reasons. 
 In the first place, the universal stir and deep prying 
 into evolutionary questions which everywhere existed 
 
The World into which Darwin was Born 19 
 
 ainong scientific men in liis early days was naturally 
 communicated to a lad born of a scientific family, and 
 inheritinof directly in blood and bone the biological 
 tastes and tendencies of Erasmus 13arwin. In the 
 second place, the existence of such a deep and wide- 
 spread curiosity as to ultimate origins, and the common 
 prevalence of profound uniformitai'ian and evolutionary 
 views among philosophers and thinkers, made the accept- 
 ance of Charles Darwin's particular theoiy, when it at 
 last arrived, a comparatively easy and certain matter, 
 because by it the course of organic development was 
 assimilated, on credible grounds, to the course of all 
 other development in general, as then already widely 
 recognised. The first consideration helps us to account 
 in part for the man himself; the second consideration 
 helps us even more to account for the great work which 
 he was enabled in tlie tMid so successfully to accomplish. 
 
 2 
 
20 CnARj.Es Darwin 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHARLES DAK WIN AND HIS ANTECEDENTS. 
 
 From the environment let us turn to the individual ; 
 from the world in which the man moved to the man who 
 moved in it, and was in time destined to move it. 
 
 Who was he, and whence did he derive his excep- 
 tional energy and intellectual panoply ? 
 
 Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather, the first of the line 
 in whom the distinctive Darwinian strain of intellect 
 overtly displayed itself, was the son of one Robert 
 Darwin, a gentleman of Nottinghamshire, ' a person of 
 curiosity,' with ' a taste for literature and science ; ' so 
 that for four generations at least, in the paternal line, 
 the peculiar talents of the Darwin family had been 
 highly cultivated in either direction. Robert Darwin 
 was an early member of the Sp.'ilding Club, a friend of 
 Stukeley the antiquary, and an embryo geologist, after 
 the fantastic, half-superstitious fashion of his own time. 
 Of his four sons, both Robert, the eldest, and Erasmus, 
 the youngest, were authors and botanists. Erasmus 
 himself was a Cambridge man, and his natural bent of 
 mind and energy led him irresistibly on to tlie study of 
 medicine. Taking his medical degree at his own uni- 
 versity, and afterwards preparing for practice by attend- 
 
Charles Darwin and his Antecedents 21 
 
 ing Hunter's lectures in London, besides going through 
 the regular medical course at Edinburgh, the young 
 doctor finally settled down as a physician at Nottingham, 
 whence shortly afterward he removed to Lichfield, then 
 the centre of a famous literary coterie. So large a part 
 of Charles Darwin's remarkable idiosyncrasy was derived 
 by heredity from his paternal grandfather, that it may be 
 worth while to dwell a little here in passing on the 
 character and career of this brilliant precursor of the 
 great evolutionist. Both in the physical and in the 
 spiritual sense, Erasmus Darwin was one among the 
 truest and most genuine ancestors of his grandson 
 Charles. 
 
 A powerful, robust, athletic man, in florid health 
 and of temperate habits, yet with the full-blooded ten- 
 dency of the eighteenth century vividly displayed in his 
 ample face and broad features, Erasmus 13arwin bubbled 
 over with irrepressible vivacity, the outward and visible 
 sign of that overflowing energy which forms everywhere 
 one of the most marked determining conditions of high 
 genius. vStrong in body and strong in mind, a tee- 
 totaler before teetotalism, an abolitionist before the anti- 
 slavery movement, he had a great contempt for weak- 
 nesses and prejudices of every sort, and he rose far 
 superior to the age in which he lived in breadth of view 
 and freedom from preconceptions. The eighteenth cen-^ 
 tury considered him, in its cautious, cut-and-dried 
 fashion, a man of singular talent but of remarkably 
 eccentric and unsafe opinions. Unfortunately for his 
 lasting fame, Dr. Darwin was much given to writing 
 poetry ; and this poetry, though as ingenious as every- 
 thing else he did, had a certain false gallop of 
 
22 Charles Dariv/a 
 
 verse about it wliicli lias doomed it to become since 
 Canning's parody a sort of warning beacon against the 
 worst faults of the post-Augustan decadence in the 
 ten-syllabled metre. Nobody now reads the ' Botanic 
 Garden ' except eithei* to laugh at its exquisite ex- 
 travagances, or to wonder at the queer tinsel glitter of 
 its occasional clever rhetorical rhapsodies. 
 
 But in his alternative character of philosophic 
 biologist, rejected by the age which swallowed his 
 poetry all applausive, Erasmus Darwin is well worthy 
 of the highest and deepest respect, as a prime founder 
 and early prophet of the evolutionaiy system. His 
 ' Zoonomia,' ' which, though ingenious, is built upon the 
 most absurd hypothesis ' — as men still said only thirty 
 years ago — contains in the germ the whole theory of 
 organic development as understood up to the very 
 moment of the publication of the ' Origin of Species.' 
 In it Dr. Darwin calls attention to ' the sfreat changes 
 introduced into various animals by artificial or acci- 
 dental cultivation,' a subject afterwards fully elucidated 
 by his greater grandson in his work on ' The Variation 
 of Animals and Plants under Domestication.' He 
 specitdly notes ' the immense changes of shape and 
 colour' produced by man in rabbits and pigeons, the 
 very species on which Charles Darwin subsequently 
 made some of his most remarkable and interesting ob- 
 servations. IMore than any previous writer, Erasmus 
 Darwin, with ' prophetic sagacity,' insisted strongly on 
 the essential unity of parent and offspring — a truth 
 which lies at the very base of all modern philosophical 
 biology. ' Owing to the imperfection of language,' 
 wrote the Lichfield doctor nearly a hundred years ago, 
 
Charles Darwin and his Antecedents 23 
 
 '■ the offspring is termed a new animal, but is in truth a 
 branch or elongation of the parent, since a part of the 
 embryon-animal is or was a part of the parent, and 
 therefore may retain some of the habits of the parent 
 system.' He laid peculiar stress upon the hereditary 
 nature of some acquired properties, such as the nniscles 
 of dancers or jugglers, and the diseases incidental to 
 special occupations. Nay, he even anticipated his great 
 descendant in pointing out that varieties are often pro- 
 duced at first as mere ' sports ' or accidental variations, 
 as in the case of six-fingered men, five-clawed fowls, or 
 extra-toed cats, and are afterwards handed down bv 
 hereditv to succeeding: venerations. Charles Darwin 
 would have added that if these new stray peculiarities 
 happened to prove advantageous to the species they 
 would be naturally favoured in the struggle for exist- 
 ence, while if they prov'ed disadvantageous, or even 
 neutral, they would die out at once or be bred out in 
 the course of a few crosses. That last truth of natural 
 selection was the only cardinal one in the evolutionary 
 system on which Erasmus Darwin did not actually fore- 
 stall his more famous and greater namesake. For its 
 full perception, the discovery of Malthus had to be 
 collated with the speculations of Button. 
 
 ' When we revolve in our minds,' says the eighteenth 
 century prophet of evolution, ' the great similarity of 
 structure which obtains in all the warm-blooded animals, 
 as well quadrupeds, birds, and amphibious animals, 
 as in mankind ; from the mouse and bat to the elephant 
 and whale ; one is led to conclude that they have alike 
 been produced from a similar living filament. In some 
 this filament iu its advance to maturity has ac(j[uired 
 
24 Charles Darwin 
 
 liaiuls and fingers with a fine sense of^o^h, as ii>^man- 
 kiud. In others it has accjuired chuvs or talons, as in 
 tigers and eagles. In others, toes with an intervening 
 web or niendjrane, as in seals find geese. In others it 
 has aef[uired cloven hoofs, as in cows and swine ; and 
 whole hoofs in others, as in the horse : while in the 
 bird kind this original living filament has pnt forth 
 wings instead of arms or legs, and feathers instead of 
 Iniir.' This is a very crude form of evolutionism indeed, 
 but it is leading up by gradual stages to the finished 
 and all-sided philosophy of physical life, which at last 
 definitely formulates itself through the mouth of 
 Charles Darwin. We shall see hereafter wherein 
 JOrasmus Darwin's conception of devel(jpment chielly 
 failed — in attributing evolution for the most part to the 
 exertions and endeav^ours of the anininl itself, rather 
 than to inevitable survival of the fittest among innu- 
 merable spontaneous variations — but we must at least 
 conclude our glimpse of his pregnant and suggestive 
 work by quoting its great fundamental ape^u : — ' As 
 the earth and ocean were probably peopled with vege- 
 table productions long before the existence of animals, 
 and many families of these animals long before other 
 families of them, shall we conjecture that one and the 
 same kind of living filament is and has been the cause 
 of all organic life ? ' 
 
 A few lines from the ' Temple of Nature,' one of 
 Erasmus Darwin's poetic rhapsodies, containing his fully 
 matured views on the origin of living creatures, may 
 be worth reproduction in further elucidation of his 
 philosophical position : — 
 
C//ARf.F.s Darwin and ///s Axt/'X-I'Idexts 25 
 
 ' Organic life beneath the shoreless waves 
 Was born, and nnrsed in ocean's pearly caves ; 
 
 ( First forms minute, unseen by spheric <?]ass, ^ 
 Move on the nuul, or pierce the watery mass ; 
 These, us successive generations bloom. 
 New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume ; 
 Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, 
 And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.' 
 
 Have we not here tlie very begiiiiiiiio-s of Cliarles 
 Darwin ? Do we not see, in tliese profound and liinda- 
 mental snggestions, not merely hints as to the evolu- 
 tion of evolution, but also as to the evolution of the 
 evolutionist ? 
 
 On the other hand, tliough Erasmus Darwin defined 
 a fool to liis friend Edgewortli as ' a man wlio never 
 tried an experiment in his life,' he was wanting himself 
 in the rigorous and patient inductive habit which so 
 strikingly distinguished his grandson Charles. That 
 trait, as we shall presently see, the biological chief of 
 the nineteenth century derived in all probability from 
 another root of his genealogical tree. Erasmus Darwin 
 gave us brilliant suggestions rather than cumulative 
 proof: he apologised in his ' Zoonomia ' for 'many con- 
 jectures not supported by accurate investigation or con- 
 clusive experiments.' Such an apology would have 
 been simply hupossible to the painstaking sj^irit of his 
 grandson Charles. 
 
 Erasmus Darwin was twice nuirried. His first wife 
 was Mary, daughter of ]\Ir. Charles How^ard, of Lichfield, 
 and it was her son, Robert Waring Darwin, who be- 
 came the father of our hero, Charles. It is fashionable 
 to say, in this and sundry other like cases, that the 
 mental energy skips a generation. People have said so 
 
26 Charles Darwin 
 
 in the case of tliiif- intermodiato ^rendelssohn who was 
 son of Moses Mendelssohn, the philosopher, and fatlier 
 of Felix liartholdy Mendelssohn, the composer — that 
 mere link in a niarvellons chain who was wont to 
 observe of liimself in the decline of life, that in 
 his yonfh he was called the son of the ^reat Men- 
 delssohn, and in his old age the father of the great 
 Mendelssohn. As a matter of fact, one may fairly 
 donbt whether such a case of actual skipping is ever 
 possible in the nature of things. In the particular 
 instance of Robert Waring Darwin at least we may be 
 pretty sure that the distinctive Darwinian strain of 
 genius lay merely latent rather than dormant : that it 
 did not display itself to the world at large, but that it 
 persisted silently as powerful as ever within the remote 
 recesses of tlie thinking organism. Not every man 
 brings out before men all that is within him, Robert 
 Waring Darwin was a physician at Shrewsbury ; and 
 he attained at least sufficient scientific eminence in his 
 own time to become a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 
 days when that honour was certainly not readily con- 
 ferred upon country doctors of modest reputation. 
 Charles Darwin says of him plainly, ' He was incom- 
 parably the most acute observer whom I ever knew.' 
 It may well have been that Robert Darwin lived and 
 died, as his famous son lived for fifty years of his great 
 life, in comparative silence and learned retirement ; for 
 we must never forget that if Charles Darwin had only 
 completed the first half century of his laborious exist- 
 ence, he would have been remembered merely as the 
 author of an entertaining work on the voyage of the 
 ' Beagle/ a plausible theory of coral islands, and a 
 
Cif.tK'/./-:s Darwin and ///s Antecedents 27 
 
 learned monof^raph on the fossil barnacles. Dnring 
 all those years, in fact, he had really done little else 
 than collect material for the work of his lifetime. If 
 we judge men by outward performance only, we may 
 often be greatly mistaken in our estimates : poten- 
 tiality is wider than actuality; what a num does is 
 never a certain or extreme criterion of what he can 
 do. 
 
 The Darwins, indeed, were all a mighty folk, of 
 varied powers and varied attainments. Krasmus's 
 brother, Robert, was the author of ji work on botany, 
 which long enjoyed a respectable repute. Of his sons, 
 one, Sir Francis Darwin, was noted as a keen observer 
 of animals ; a second, Charles, who died at twenty-one, 
 was already the author of a very valuable medical 
 essay ; while the third, Robert, was the Shrewsbury 
 F.R.8., the father of our erreat evolutionarv thinker. 
 And among Charles Darwin's own cousins, one is ^Ir. 
 Hensleigh Wedgwood, the philologist ; a second was the 
 late Sir Henry Holland ; and a third is ^Iv. Francis 
 Galton, the author of that essentially Darwinian book, 
 ' Hereditary Genius.' 
 
 Robert Waring Darwin took to himself a wife from 
 another very great and eminent family. He married 
 Susannah Wedgwood, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, 
 the famous potter ; and from these two silent repre- 
 sentatives of powerful stocks, Charles Robert Darwin, 
 the ftither of modern evolutionary biology, was born at 
 Shrewsbury, on February the 12th, 1809. That Wedg- 
 wood connection, again, is no mere casual or unimportant 
 incident in the previous life-history of the Darwinian 
 originality ; it throws a separate clear light of its own 
 
28 Cii.iRi.r.s Darwin 
 
 upon tlio pocuHiir Jind admirably compounded idiosyn- 
 crasy of Charles Darwin. 
 
 A man, indeed, owes on the average quite as much 
 to liis mother's as to his father's family. It is a mere 
 unscientitic old-world |)r('jiidice which makes us for 
 the most part count ancestry in the direct ascendiii<jf 
 male line alone, to the complete neglect of the equally 
 important maternal pedigree. From the biological 
 point of view, jit least, every individual is a highly com- 
 plex conq)ound of hereditary elements, a resultant of 
 numerous converging forces, a meeting ])lace of two 
 great streams of inheritance, each of which is itself 
 similarly made up by the like confluence of innumerable 
 distinct prior tributaries. Between these two it is 
 almost impossible for us accurately to distribute any 
 given individualitv. How much Charles Darwin owed 
 to the Darwins, and how much he owed in turn to the 
 Wedgwoods, no man is yet psychologist enough or phy- 
 siologist enough to say. But that he owed a great deal 
 to either strong and vigorous strain we may even now 
 quite safely take for granted. 
 
 The Wedgwood family were ' throwers ' by handi- 
 craft, superior artisans long settled at Burslem, in the 
 Staffordshire potteries. Josiah, the youngest of thirteen 
 children, lamed by illness in early life, was turned by 
 this happy accident from his primitive task as a 
 * thrower ' to the more artistic and original work of pro- 
 ducing ornamental coloured earthenware. Skilful and 
 indefatigable, of indomitable energy and with great 
 powers of forcing his way in life against all obstacles, 
 young Wedgwood rose rapidly by his own unaided 
 exertions to be a master potter, and a manufacturer of 
 
CiiARf.Rs Darwin axd ///s Antfcfdi-nts 29 
 
 the famous uu^luzrcl black porcelain, ^riiose were the 
 darkest days of industrial art and decorative handicraft 
 in modern I'jn<^land. Josiah Wed<,'wood, hy liis marked 
 oriirinalitv and force of character, succt*eded in turnin<r 
 the current of national taste, and creatin*'" anion<jf us a 
 new and distinctly higher type of artistic workman- 
 ship. His activity, however, was not confined to liis 
 art alone, but found itself a liundred other different 
 outlets in the most varied directions. AV'hen his pot- 
 teries needed enlargement to meet the increjised 
 demand, he founded for the hands employed upon liis 
 works the model industrial viUage of Etruria. When 
 Brindley began cutting artificial waterways across the 
 broad face of central l']ngland, if was in the! great potter 
 that lie found liis chief ally in promoting the construc- 
 tion of the (J rand Trunk Canal. Wedgwood, indeed, 
 was a builder of schools and a maker of roads ; a 
 chemist and <'in artist ; a friend of Watt and an emplo\'er 
 of Flaxm.an. In short, like Erasnnis Darwin, he pos- 
 sessed that prime essential in the character of genius, 
 an immense underlying stock of energy. And with it 
 tliere went its best concomitant, the ' infinite capacity 
 for taking pains.' Is it not probable that in their joint 
 descendant, the brilliant but discursive and hazardous 
 genius of Erasmus Darwin was bal.anced and regulated 
 by soberer qualities inherited directly from the profound 
 industry of the painstaking potter ? Wlien later on 
 we find Charles Darwin spending hours in noting tlie 
 successive movements of the tendrils in a ])lant, or 
 watching for long years the habits and manners of 
 eartliworms in flower-pots, may we not reasonjibly con- 
 jecture that he derived no little share of his extraordi- 
 
30 Charles Darwin 
 
 nary patience, carefulness, and minuteness of handicraft 
 from liis motlier's father, Josiah Wedgwood ? 
 
 Such, then, were the two main component elements, 
 paternal and maternal, from which the striking joerson- 
 ality of Charles Darwin was no doubt for the most part 
 ultimately built up. 
 
31 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EARLY DAYS. 
 
 As the Chester express steams out of Shrewsbury 
 station, you see on your left, overhanging tlie steep bank 
 of Severn, a large, square, substantial-looking house, 
 known as the Mount, the birthplace of the author of 
 the ' Origin of Species.' There, in the comfortable 
 home he had built for himself, Dr. Robert Darwin, the 
 father, lived and worked for fifty years of unobtrusive 
 usefulness. He had studied medicine at Edinburgh and 
 Leyden, and had even travelled a little in Germany, 
 before he settled down in the quiet old Salopian town, 
 where for half a century his portly figure and yellow 
 chaise were familiar objects of the country-side for 
 miles around. Among a literary society which included 
 Coleridge's friends, the Tayleurs, and where Hazlitt 
 listened with delight to the great poet's ' music of the 
 spheres,' in High Street Unitarian Chapel, the IMount 
 kept up with becoming dignity the family traditions of 
 the Darwins and the Wedgwoods as a local centre of 
 sweetness and light. 
 
 On February the 12tli, 1800, Charles Darwin first 
 saw the light of day in this his father's house at Shrews- 
 bury. Time and place were both propitious, liorn in 
 
32 Charles Darwin 
 
 a cultivated scientific family, surrounded from his birtli 
 by elevating influences, and secured beforeliand/rom the 
 cram])ing necessity of earning his own livelihood by his 
 own exertions, the boy was destined to grow up to. full 
 maturity in the twenty-one years of slow development 
 that immediately preceded the passing of the first lieform 
 Act. The thunder of the great European upheaval had 
 grown silent at Waterloo when he was barely six years 
 old, and his boj^hood was passed amid country sights 
 and sounds during that long period of reconstruction 
 and assimilation which followed the fierce volcanic 
 outburst of the French Revolution. Happy in the 
 opportunity of his birth, he came upon the world eight 
 years after the first publication of Lamarck's remarkable 
 speculations, and for the first twenty-two years of his 
 life he was actually the far younger contemporary of the 
 great Frencli evolutionary philosopher. Eleven years 
 before his arrival upon the scene IMalthus had set forth 
 his ' Principle of Population.' Charles Darwin thus 
 entered upon a stage well prepared for him, and he 
 entered it with an idiosyncrasy exactly adapted for 
 makincr the best of the situation. The soil had been 
 tliorouofhlv turned and dressed beforehand : Charles 
 Darwin's seed had only to fall upon it in order to spring 
 up and bear fruit a hundredfold, in every field of science 
 or speculation. 
 
 For it was not biology alone that he was foredoomed 
 to revolutionise, but the whole range of human thought, 
 and perhaps even ultimately of human action. 
 
 Is it mere national prejudice which makes one add 
 with congratulatory pleasure that Darwin was born in 
 England, rather than in France, in Germanv, or in 
 
Early Days 33 
 
 America ? Perhaps so ; perhaps not. For the English 
 intellect does indeed seem more capable than most of 
 uniting high speculative ability with high practical skill 
 and experience : and of that union of rare qualities 
 Darwin himself was a most conspicuous example. It is 
 probable that England has produced more of the great 
 organising and systematising intellects than any other 
 modern country. 
 
 Among those thinkers in his own line avIio stood 
 more nearly abreast of Darwin in the matter of age, 
 Lyell was some eleven years his senior, and contributed 
 not a little (though quite unconsciously) by his work 
 and conclusions to the formation of Darwin's own pecu- 
 liar scientific opinions. The veteran Owen, who still 
 survives him, was nearly five years older than Darwin, 
 and also helped to a great extent in giving form 
 and exactness to his great contemporary's anatomical 
 ideas. Humboldt, who preceded our English naturalist 
 in the matter of time by no less than forty years, might 
 yet almost rank as coeval in some respects, owing to his 
 long and active life, his late maturity, and the very 
 recent date of his greatest and most thought-couipelling 
 work, the ' Cosmos ' (begun wlien Humboldt was 
 seventy-five, and finished when he lacked but ten years 
 of his century), in itself a sort of preparation for due 
 acceptance of the Darwinian theories. In fact, as 
 many as fifty years of their joint livTS coincided entirely 
 one with the other's. A^'assiz antedated Darwin bv two 
 years. On the other hand, among the men who most 
 helped on the recognition of Darwin's theories. Hooker 
 and Lewes were his juniors by eight years, Herbert 
 Spencer by eleven, Wallace by thirteen, and Huxley 
 
 D 
 
34 Charles Darwin 
 
 by sixteen. His cousin, Francis Galton, another grand- 
 son of Erasnuis Darwin, and joint inheritor of the dis- 
 tinctive family biological ply, was born at the same 
 date as Alfred Kussell Wallace, thirteen years after 
 Charles Darwin. In such a goodly galaxy of workers 
 was the Darwinian light destined to shine through the 
 middle of the century, as one star excelleth another in 
 glory. 
 
 Charles Darwin was the second son : but nature 
 refuses doggedly to acknowledge the custom of primo- 
 geniture. His elder brother, Erasmus, a man of mute 
 and inarticulate ability, with a sardonic humour alien 
 to his race, extorted unwonted praise from the critical 
 pen of Thomas Carlyle, who ' for intellect rather pre- 
 ferred him to his brother Charles.' But whatever spark 
 of the Darwinian genius was really innate in Erasmus 
 the Less died with him unacknowledged. 
 
 The boy was educated (so they call it) at Shrews- 
 bury Grammar School, under sturdy Sam Butler, after- 
 wards Bishop of Lichfield ; and there he picked up so 
 much Latin and Greek as was then considered absolutely 
 essential to the due production of an English gentleman. 
 Happily for the world, having no taste for the classics, he 
 escaped the ordeal with little injury to his individuality. 
 His mother had died while he was still a child, but his 
 father, that ' acute observer,' no doubt taught him to 
 know and love nature. At sixteen he went to Edin- 
 burgh University, then rendered famous by a little knot 
 of distinguished professors, and there he remained for two 
 years. Already at school he had made himself notable 
 by his love of collecting — the first nascent symptom of the 
 naturalist bent. He collected everything, shells, eggs, 
 
Early Days 35 
 
 minerals, coins, nay, since postage stamps were then not 
 yet invented, even franks. But at Edinburgh he gave the 
 earliest distinct evidence of his definite scientific tastes 
 by contributing to the local academic society a paper on 
 I he floating eggs of the common sea-mat, in which he 
 had even then succeeded in discovering for the first 
 time organs of locomotion. Thence he proceeded 
 to Christ's College, Cambridge. The Darwins were 
 luckily a Cambridge family : luckily, let us say, for had 
 it been otherwise — had young Darwin been distorted 
 from his native bent by Plato and Aristotle, and plunged 
 deep into the mysteries of Barbara and Celarent, as would 
 infallibly have happened to him at the sister university 
 — who can tell how lonfj we mi"fht have had to wait in 
 vain for the ' Origin of Species ' and the ' Descent of 
 jMan ' ? But Cambridge, which rejoiced already in the 
 glory of Newton, was now to match it by the glory of 
 Darwin. In its academical course, the mathematical 
 wedge had always kept open a dim passage for physical 
 science ; and at the exact moment when Darwin was an 
 undergraduate at Christ's — from 1827 to 1831 — the 
 university had the advantage of several good scientific 
 teachers, and amongst them one. Professor Ilenslow, a 
 well-known botanist, who took a special interest in 
 young Darwin's intellectual development. There, too, 
 he met with Sedgwick, Airy, Ramsay, Jind numerous 
 other men of science, whose intercourse with him nnist 
 no doubt have contributed largely to mould and form 
 the future cast of his peculiar philosophical idiosyn- 
 crasy. 
 
 It was to Henslow's influence that Darwin in later 
 years attributed in great part his powerful taste for 
 
 u 2 
 
36 Charles Darwin 
 
 natural history. But in truth the ascription of such 
 higli praise to his early teacher smacks too much of the 
 Darwinian modesty to be accepted at once without 
 demur by the candid critic. The naturalist, like the 
 poet, is born, not made. How much more, then, must 
 this needs be the case with the grandson of Erasmus 
 Darwin and of Josiah Wedgwood ? As a matter of fact, 
 already at Edinburgh the lad had loved to spend his 
 days among the sea-beasts and wrack of the Inches in 
 the Firth of Forth ; and it was through the instrument- 
 ality of his ' brother entomologists ' that he first became 
 acquainted with Henslow himself when he removed to 
 Cambridge. The good professor could not make him 
 into a naturalist : inherited tendencies and native ener- 
 gies had done that for him already from his very cradle. 
 ' Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam ; ' and it was 
 well that Darwin took up at Cambridge with the study 
 of geology as his first love. For geology was then the 
 living and moving science, as astronomy had been in 
 the sixteenth century, and as biology is at the present 
 day — the growing-point, so to speak, of European de- 
 velopment, whence all great things might naturally be 
 expected. Moreover, it was and is the central science 
 of the concrete class, having relations with astronomy 
 on the one hand, and with biology on the other ; con- 
 cerned alike with cosmical chances or changes on this 
 side, and with the minutest facts of organic nature on 
 that ; the m.eeting-place and border-land of all the sepa- 
 rate branches of study that finally bear upon the com- 
 plex problems of our human life. No other subject of 
 investigation was so well calculated to rouse Darwin's 
 interest in the ultimate questions of evolution or creation, 
 
Early Days 37 
 
 of sudden cataclysm or gradual growtli, of miraculous 
 intervention or slow development. Here, if anywhere, 
 his enigmas were all clearly propounded to him by the 
 inarticulate stony sphinxes ; he had only to riddle them 
 out for himself as he went along in after years with the 
 aid of the successive side-lights thrown upon the 
 world bv the unconnected lanterns of Lamarck and of 
 Malthus. 
 
 Fortunately for us, then, Darwin did not waste his 
 time at Cambridge over the vain and frivolous pursuits 
 of the classical tripos. He preferred to work at his 
 own subjects in his own way, and to leave the short- 
 lived honours of the schools to those who cared for 
 them and for nothing higher. He came out with the 
 ol TToWoL in 1831, and thenceforth proceeded to study 
 life in the wider university for which his natural incli- 
 nations more properly fitted him. The world was all 
 before him where to choose, and he chose that better 
 part which shall not be taken away from him as long 
 as the very memory of science survives. 
 
38 Chart.f.s Darwin 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DARWm'S WANDER-YEARS. 
 
 Scarcely had Darwin taken his pass degree at Cam- 
 bridge when the great event of his life occurred which, 
 more than anything else perhaps, gave the final direction 
 to his categorical genius in the line it was thenceforth so 
 successfully to follow. In the autumn of 1831, when 
 Darwin was just twenty-two, it was decided by Govern- 
 ment to send a ten-gun brig, the ' Beagle,' under command 
 of Captain Fitzroy, to complete the unfinished survey of 
 Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, to map out the shores of 
 Chili and Peru, to visit several of the Pacific archipelagoes, 
 and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements 
 round the whole world. This was an essentially scien- 
 tific expedition, and Captain Fitzroy, afterwards so 
 famous as the meteorological admiral, was a scientific 
 officer of the highest type. He was anxious to be 
 accompanied on his cruise by a competent naturalist 
 who would undertake the collection and preservation of 
 the animals and plants discovered on the voyage, for 
 which purpose he generously offered to give up a share 
 of his own cabin accommodation. Professor Henslow 
 seized upon the opportunity to recommend for the post 
 his promising pupil, young Darwin, ' grandson of the 
 poet.' Darwin gladly volunteered his services without 
 
Darwins' WandrR'Yf.ars 39 
 
 salary, and partly paid his own expenses on condition 
 of being permitted to retain in liis own possession the 
 animals and plants he collected on the jonrney. The 
 ' Beagle ' set sail from Devonport on December the 27th, 
 1831; she returned to Falmonth on October the 2nd, 
 18:JG. 
 
 That long five years' cruise around the world, the 
 journal of which Darwin has left us in the ' Voyage of 
 the " Beagle," ' proved a marvellous eiioch in the great 
 naturalist's quiet career. It left its abiding mark 
 deeply imprinted on all his subsequent life and thinking. 
 Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin were cabinet biologists, 
 who had never beheld with their own eyes the great 
 round world and all that therein is ; Cluirles Darwin 
 had the inestimable privilege of seeing for himself, at 
 first hand, a large part of the entire globe and of the 
 creatures that inhabit it. Ev^en to have caught one 
 passing glimpse of the teeming life of the tropics is in 
 itself an education ; to the naturalist it is more, it is a 
 revelation. Our starved little northern fauna and flora, 
 the mere leavings of the vast ice sheets that spread 
 across our zone in the glacial epoch, show us a world 
 depopulated of all its largest, strangest, and fiercest 
 creatures ; a world dwarfed in all its component elements, 
 and immensely differing in ten thousand ways from 
 that rich, luxuriant, over-stocked hot-house in which 
 the first great problems of evolution were practically 
 worked out by survival of the fittest. But the tropics 
 preserve for us still in all their jungles something of the 
 tangled, thickly-peopled aspect which our planet must 
 have presented for countless ages in all latitudes before 
 the advent of primceval man. We now know that 
 
40 Chart.f.s Dar win 
 
 tlironofliont tlie greater part of geological time, essentially 
 tro])ical conditions existed nnbroken over tlie whole 
 snrface of the entire earth, from the Ant.arctic continent 
 to the shores of Greenland ; so that some immediate 
 acquaintance at least with the equatorial world is of 
 immense value to the philosophical naturalist for the 
 sake of the analogies it inevitably suggests ; and it is a 
 significant fact that almost all those great and fruitful 
 thinkers who in our own time have done good work in 
 the wider combination of biological facts have themselves 
 passed a considerable number of years in investigating 
 the conditions of tropical nature. Europe and England 
 are at the ends of the earth ; the tropics are biological 
 head-quarters. The equatorial zone is therefore the 
 true school for the historian of life in its more universal 
 and lasting aspects. 
 
 Nor was that all. The particular countries visited 
 by the ' Beagle ' during the course of her long and 
 vfiried cruise happened to be exactly such as were 
 naturally best adapted for bringing out the latent po- 
 tentialities of Djirwin's mind, and suggesting to his 
 active and receptive brain those deep problems of life 
 and its environment which he afterwards wrousfht out 
 with such subtle skill and such consummate patience 
 in the ' Origin of Species ' and the ' Descent of Man.' 
 T'he Cape de Verdes, and the other Atlantic islands, 
 with their scanty population of plants and animals, 
 composed for the most part of waifs and strays drifted 
 to their barren rocks by ocean currents, or blown out 
 helplessly to sea by heavy winds ; Brazil, with its 
 marvellous contrasting wealth of tropical luxuriance 
 and self-strangling fertility, a new province of inter- 
 
Darwin's Wandf.r-Yfars 41 
 
 minable delights to the soul of the enthusiastic yoiinpj 
 collector ; the South American pampas, with their 
 colossal remains of extinct animals, hti^^e ^eolo^^ical 
 precursors of the stunted modern sloths and armadillos 
 that still inh.'ibit the self-same plains ; Tierra del 
 Fuego, with its almost Arctic climate, and its glimpses 
 into the secrets of the most degraded savage types ; 
 the vast range of the Andes and the Cordilleras, 
 with their volcanic energy and their closely crowded 
 horizontal belts of climatic life ; the South Sea Islands, 
 those paradises of the Pacific, Hesperian fables true, 
 alike for the lover of the picturesque and the biological 
 student ; Australia, that surviving fragment of an ex- 
 tinct world, with an antiquated fauna whose archaic 
 character still closely recalls the European life of ten 
 million years back in the secondary epoch : all these 
 and many others equally novel and equally instructive 
 passed in long alternating panorama before Darwin's 
 eyes, and left their images deeply photographed for 
 ever after on the lasting tablets of his retentive memory. 
 That was the real great university in which he studied 
 nature and read for his degree. Our evolutionist was 
 now being educated. 
 
 Throughout the whole of the journal of this long 
 cruise, which Darwin afterwards published in an en- 
 larged form, it is impossible not to be struck at 
 every turn with the way in which his inquisitive 
 mind again and again recurs to the prime elements of 
 those great problems towards whose solution he after- 
 wards so successfully pointed out the path. The Dar- 
 winian ideas are all already there in the germ ; the 
 embryo form of the ' Origin of Species ' plays in and 
 
42 Charles Darwin 
 
 out on pveiy page with the qnaintost olusiveness. We 
 are always just on the very point of catchinp^ it ; and 
 every now and again we do actually all but catch it in 
 essence and spirit, though ever still its bodily shape 
 persistently evades us. Questions of geographical dis- 
 tribution, of geological continuity, of the influence of 
 cliniate, of the niodiliiibility of instinct, of the effects 
 of surrounding conditions, absorb the young observer's 
 vivid interest at every step, wherever he lands. He is 
 all unconsciously collecting notes and materials in pro- 
 fuse abundance for his great work ; he is thinking in 
 rough outline the new thoughts wdiicli are hereafter to 
 revolutionise the thought of humanity. 
 
 Five years are a great slice out of a man's life : 
 those five years of ceaseless wandering by sea and land 
 were spent by Charles Darwin in accumulating endless 
 observations and hints for the settlement of the profound 
 fundamental problems in which he was even then so 
 deeply interested. The ' Beagle ' sailed from England 
 to the Cape de Verdes, and already, even l)efore she had 
 touched her first land, the young naturalist had observed 
 with interest that the irapalpably fine dust which fell on 
 deck contained no less than sixty-seven distinct organic 
 forms, two of them belonging to species peculiar to 
 South America. In some of the dust he found particles 
 of stone so very big that they measured ' above the 
 thousandth of an inch square ; ' and after this fact, says 
 the keen student, ' one need not be surprised at the 
 diffusion of the far lighter and smaller sporules of crypto- 
 gamic plants.' Would Erasmus Darwin have noticed 
 these minute points and their implications one wonders ? 
 Probably not. May we not see in the observation 
 
Darw/n's VVandf.R'Yf.aa\s 43 
 
 partly tlio liereditary tondc^nciea of .Tosiali Wedo-wood 
 towards inimitt' iiivestijjfation and accuracy of detail, 
 partly the influonce of tlie soientiHc tiine-wave, and tlie 
 careful training' iiudt'r Professor ilenslow? Erasmus 
 Darwin comes before us rather as the brilliant and 
 inyvnions amateur, his jj^randson Charles as the in- 
 structed and fully etpiipped tiujd product of the scientific 
 schools. 
 
 At St. Paul's Itocks, once more, a nuiss of new 
 volcjinic peaks rising abru])tly from the midst of the 
 Atlantic, the naturalist of the ' lieagle " notes with 
 interest that feather and dirt-feedino- and parasitic 
 insects or spiders are the first inhabitants to take up 
 their quarters on recently formed oceanic islands, ^i'his 
 problem of the p(H)pling of new lands, indeed, so closely 
 connected with the evolution of new species, necessarily 
 obtruded itself upon his attention again and again 
 during his five years' cruise ; and in some cases, espe- 
 cially that of the Galapagos Islands, the curious insular 
 faunas and floras which he observed upon this trip, 
 composed as they Avere of mere casual straylings from 
 adjacent sliores, produced upon his mind a very deep 
 and lasting impression, whose traces one may without 
 difliculty discern on every second page of the • Origin 
 of Species.' 
 
 On the last day of February, 1832, the 'Beagle' 
 came to anchor in the harbour of Bahia, and young 
 Darwin caught sight for the first time of the mutually 
 strangling luxuriance of tropical vegetation. Nowhere 
 on earth are the finest conditions of tropical life more 
 fully realised than in the tangled depths of the great 
 uncleared Brazilian forests, which everywhere gird round 
 
44 Chart.es Darwin 
 
 like a natural palisade witli their impenetrable belt the 
 narrow and laborious clearings of over-mastered man. 
 The rich alluvial silt of mighty river systems, the im- 
 memorial manuring of the virgin soil, the fierce energy 
 of an almost equatorial sun, and the universal presence 
 of abundant water, combine to make life in that mar- 
 vellous region unusually wealthy, varied, and crowded, 
 so that the struggle for existence is there perhaps more 
 directly visible to the seeing eye th.'in in any other 
 known portion of God's universe. ' Delight itself,' says 
 Darwin in his journal, with that naive simplicity which 
 everywhere forms the chief charm of his direct and un- 
 affected literary style — ' delight itself is a weak term to 
 express the feelings of a naturalist who for the first 
 time has wandered by himself in a Brazilian forest. 
 The elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the para- 
 sitical plants, the beauty of the flowers, the glossy green 
 of the foliage, but above all the general luxuriance of 
 the vegetation, filled me with admiration.' In truth, 
 among those huge buttressed trunks, overhung by the 
 unbroken canopy of foliage on the vast spreading and 
 interlacing branches, festooned with lianas and drooping 
 lichens, or beautified by the pendent alien growth of 
 perfumed orchids, Darwin's mind must indeed have 
 found congenial food for apt reflection, and infinite 
 oi^portunities for inference and induction. From the 
 mere picturesque point of view, indeed, the naturalist 
 enjoys such sights as this a thousand times more truly 
 and profoundly than the mere casual unskilled observer : 
 for it is a shallow, self-flattering mistake of vulgar and 
 narrow minds to suppose that fuller knowledge and 
 clearer insight can destroy or impair the beauty of 
 
Dariv/n's Wandeh-Yeaj^s 45 
 
 beautiful objects — as who should imagine that a great 
 painter appreciates the sunset less than a silly boy or 
 a sentimental schoolgirl. As a matter of fact, the 
 naturalist knows and admires a thousand exquisite 
 points of detail in every flower and every insect which 
 only he himself and \}\q true artist can equally delight 
 in. And a keen intellectual and aesthetic joy in the 
 glorious fecundity and loveliness of nature was every- 
 where present to Darwin's mind. But, beyond and 
 above even that, there was also the architectonic delight 
 of the great organiser in the presence of a noble organised 
 product : the peculiar pleasure felt only by the man in 
 whose broader soul all minor details fall at once into 
 their proper place, as component elements in one great 
 consistent and harmonious whole — a sympathetic plea- 
 sure akin to that with which an architect views the 
 interior of Ely and of Lincoln, or a musician listens to 
 the linked harmonies of the ' Messiah ' and the ' Crea- 
 tion.' The scheme of nature was now unfolding itself 
 visibly and clearly before Charles Darwin's very eyes. 
 
 After eighteen memorable days spent with unceasing 
 delight at Baliia, the ' Beagle ' sailed again for Rio, where 
 Darwin stopped for three months, to improve his ac- 
 quaintance with the extraordinary wealth of the South 
 American fauna and flora. Collecting insects was here 
 his chief occupation, and it is interesting to note even 
 at this early period how his attention was attracted by 
 some of those strange alluring devices on the part of 
 the males for charming their partners which afterwards 
 formed the principal basis for his admirable theory of 
 sexual selection, so fully developed in the ' Descent of 
 Man.' ' Several times,' he says, ' when a pair [of 
 
46 Charles Darwin 
 
 butterflies], probably male and female, were cliasiiig 
 each other in an irregular course, they passed within a 
 few yards of me ; and I distinctly heard a clicking 
 noise, similar to that produced by a toothed wheel pass- 
 ing under a spring catch.' In like manner he observed 
 here the instincts of tropical ants, the habits of phos- 
 phorescent insects, and the horrid practice of that wasp- 
 like creature, the sphex, which stuffs the clay cells of 
 its larvic full of half-dead spiders and writhing cater- 
 pillars, so stung with devilish avoidance of vital parts 
 as to be left quite paralysed yet still alive, as future 
 food for the developing grubs. Cases like these helped 
 naturally to shake the young biologist's primitive faith 
 in the cheap and crude current theories of universal 
 beneficence, and to introduce that wholesome sceptical 
 reaction against received dogma which is the necessary 
 ground-work and due preparation for all great progres- 
 sive philosophical thinking. 
 
 In July they set sail again for ]\Ionte Video, where 
 the important question of climate and vegetation began 
 to interest young Darwin's mind. Uruguay is almost 
 entirely treeless ; and this curious phenomenon, in a 
 comparatively moist sub-tropical plain-land, struck him 
 as a remarkable anomaly, and set him speculating on its 
 probable cause. Australia, he remembered, was far 
 more arid, and yet its interior was everywhere covered 
 by whole forests of (puxint indigenous gum-trees. Could 
 it be that there were no trees adapted to the climate ? 
 As yet, the true causes of geographical distribution had 
 not clearly dawned upon Darwin's mind ; but that a 
 young man of twenty-three should seriously busy him- 
 self about such problems of ultinuite causation afc all is 
 
Darwin's Wander-Years 47 
 
 in itself a sufficiently pointed and remarkable phe- 
 nomenon. It was here, too, that he first saw that 
 curious animal, the Tucutuco, a true rodent with the 
 habits of a mole, which is almost always found in a 
 blind condition. With reference to this singular 
 creature, there occurs in his journal one of those inter- 
 esting anticipatory passages which show the rough 
 workings of the distinctive evolutionary Darwinian 
 concept in its earlier stages. ' Considering the strictly 
 subterranean habits of the Tucutuco,' he writes, ' the 
 l)lindness, though so common, cannot be a very serious 
 evil ; yet it appears strange that any animal should 
 possess an organ frequently subject to be injured. 
 Lamarck would have been delighted with this ftict, had 
 he known it, when speculating (probably witli more 
 truth than usual with him) on the gradually acquired 
 blindness of the Aspalax, a gnawer living under the 
 ground, and of the Proteus, a reptile living in dark 
 caverns filled with water ; in both of which animals the 
 eye is in an almost rudimentary state, and is covered by 
 a tendinous membrane and skin. In the common mole 
 the eye is extraordinarily snuill but perfect, though 
 many anatomists doubt whether it is connected with 
 the true optic nerve; its visit 1 must certainly be im- 
 perfect, though probably useful to the animal when it 
 leaves its burrow. In the Tucutuco, which I believe 
 never comes to the surface of the ground, the eye is 
 rather larger, but often rendered blind and useless, 
 though without apparently causing any inconvenience to 
 the animal : no doubt Lamarck would have said that the 
 Tucutuco is now passing into the state of the Aspalax 
 and Proteus.' The passage is instructive both as show- 
 
48 Charles Darwin 
 
 ing that Darwin was already familiar with Lamarck's 
 writings, and as pointing out the natural course of his 
 own future development. 
 
 For the two years from her arrival at Monte Video, 
 the ' Beagle ' was employed in surveying the eastern 
 coast of South America ; and Darwin enjoyed unusual 
 opportunities for studying the geology, the zoology, and 
 the botany of the surrounding districts during all 
 that period. It was a suggestive field indeed for the 
 young naturalist. The curious relationship of the 
 gigantic fossil armour-plated animals to the existing 
 armadillo, of the huge megatherium to the modern 
 sloths, and of the colossal ant-eaters to their degenerate 
 descendants at the present day, formed one of the direct 
 inciting causes to the special study whicli produced at 
 last the ' Origin of Species.' In the Introduction to 
 that immortal work Darwin wrote, some twenty-seven 
 years later, ' When on board H.M.S. " Beagle " as natu- 
 ralist, I was much struck with certain facts in the dis- 
 tribution of the organic beings inhabiting South Ame- 
 rica, and in the geological relations of the present to the 
 past inhabitants of that continent. These facts, as will 
 be seen in the latter chapters of this volume, seemed to 
 throw some light on the origin of species — that mystery 
 of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest 
 philosophers.' And in the body of the work itself he 
 refers over and over again to numberless observations 
 made by himself during this period of rapid psycho- 
 logical development — observations on the absence of 
 recent geological formations along the lately upheaved 
 South American coast ; on the strange extinction of the 
 horse in La Plata ; on the atlinities of the extinct and 
 
Darwin's Wandrr-Years 49 
 
 recent species; on tlie effect of minute individual 
 peculiarities in preserving life under special circum- 
 stances ; and on the influence of insects and blood-suck- 
 ing bats in determining the existence of the larger 
 naturalised mammals in parts of Brazil and the 
 Argentine Republic. It was the epoch of wide collec- 
 tion of facts, to be afterwards employed in brilliant 
 generalisations : the materials for the ' Origin of Species ' 
 were being slowly accumulated in the numberless 
 pigeon-holes of the Darwinian memory. 
 
 Among the facts thus industriously gathered by 
 Darwin in the two j'ears spent on the South American 
 coast were several curious instincts of the cuckoo-like 
 niolothrus, of the owl of the Pampas, and of the 
 American ostrich. A few sentences scattered here and 
 there through this part of the ' Naturalist's Journal ' 
 may well be extracted in the present phice as showing, 
 better than any mere secondhand description could do, 
 the slow germinating process of the ' Origin of Species.' 
 In speaking of the toxodon, that strange extinct South 
 American mammal, the young author remarks acutely 
 that, though in size it ecpalled the elephant and the 
 megatherium, the structure of its teeth shows it to be 
 closely allied to the ruminants, while several other 
 details link it to the pachyderms, and its aquatic 
 peculiarities of ear and nostril approximate it rather 
 to the manatee and the dugong. ' How wonder- 
 fully,' he says, ' are the different orders, at the present 
 time so well separated, blended together in different 
 points of the structure of the toxodon.' We now 
 know that unspecialised ancestral forms always display 
 this close union of peculiarities afterwards separately 
 
 E 
 
50 Charles Darwin 
 
 developed in distinct species of their later descend- 
 ants. 
 
 Still more pregnant with evolutionism in the bud is 
 the prophetic remark about a certain singular group of 
 South American birds, ' This small family is one of those 
 which, from its varied relations to other families, 
 although at present offering only difficulties to the 
 systematic naturalist, ultimately may assist in revealing 
 the grand scheme, common to tlie present and past ages, 
 on which organised beings have been created.' Of the 
 agouti, once more, that true friend of the desert, 
 Darwin notes that it does not now range as far south as 
 Port St. Julian, though Wood in 1G70 found it abundant 
 there ; and he asks suggestively, ' What cause can have 
 altered, in a wide, uninhabited, and rarely visited 
 country, the range of an animal like this ? ' Again, 
 when speaking of the analogies between the extinct 
 camel-like macrauchenia and the modern guanaco, as 
 well as of those between the fossil and living species of 
 South American rodents, he says, with even more pro- 
 phetic insight, ' This wonderful relationship in the same 
 continent between the dead and the living will, I do 
 not doubt, hereafter throw more light on the appearance 
 of organic l)eings on our earth, and their disappearance 
 from it, than any other class of facts.' He was liim- 
 self destined in another thirty years to prove the truth 
 of his own vaticination. 
 
 A. yet more remarkable passage in the ' Journal of 
 the " Beagle," ' though entered under the account of 
 events observed in the year 1834, must almost certainly 
 have been written somewhat later, and subsequently to 
 Darwin's first reading of Malthus's momentous work, 
 
Darwin's Wander- Yf.ars 51 
 
 *TliP Principle of Population,' which (as we know 
 from his own pen) formed a cardinal point in the great 
 biologist's mental development. It runs as follows in 
 the published journal : ' — ' AVe do not steadily bear in 
 mind how profoundly ignorant we are of Wm condi- 
 tions of existence of every animal ; nor do we always 
 remember that some check is constantly preventing the 
 too rapid increase of every organised being left in a 
 state of nature. The supply of food, on an average, 
 remains constant ; yet the tendency in every animal to 
 increase by propagation is geometrical, and its sur- 
 prising effects have nowhere been more astonishingly 
 shown than in the case of the European animals run 
 wild during the last few centuries in America. Every 
 animal in a state of nature regularly breeds ; yet in a 
 species long established any great increase in numbers 
 is obviously impossible, and must be checked by some 
 means.' Aut Malthus aut Diabolus. And surely here, 
 if anywhere at all, we tremble on the very verge of 
 natural selection. 
 
 It would be impossible to follow young Darwin in 
 detail through his journey to Buenos Ay res, and up the 
 Parana to Santa F6, which occupied the autumn of 1 833. 
 Ill tlie succeeding year he visited Patagonia and the 
 Falkland Islands, having previously made his first ac- 
 quaintance with savage life among the naked Fue- 
 giaus of the extreme southern point of the continent. 
 Some of these interesting natives, taken to England by 
 
 ' The full narrative was first given to the world in 18.^9, some 
 three years after Darwin's return to England, so that much of it 
 evidently represents the results of his maturcr tliinkini,' and reading 
 on the facts collected during his journey round the world. 
 
 K 2 
 
52 Charles Darwin 
 
 Captain Fitzroy on a former visit, had accompanied the 
 * Beagle ' through all her wanderings, and from them 
 Darwin obtained tluit close insight into the workings of 
 savage human nature which he afterwards utilised with 
 such conspicuous ability in the ' Descent of Man.' 
 Through Magellan's Straits the party made their way 
 up the coasts of Chili, and Darwin had there an oppor- 
 tunity of investigating the geology and biology of the 
 Cordillera. The year 1835 was chiefly spent in that 
 temperate country and in tropical Peru ; and as the 
 autumn went on, the ' Beagle ' made her way across a 
 belt of the Pacific to the Galapagos archipelago. 
 
 Small and unimportant as are those little equatorial 
 islands from the geographical and commercial point of 
 view, they will yet remain for ever classic ground to the 
 biolojjists of the future from their close connection with 
 the master-problems of the ' Origin of Species.' Here 
 more, perhaps, than anywhere else the naturalist of the 
 ' Beagle ' found himself face to face in real earnest with 
 the ultimate questions of creation or evolution. A 
 group of tiny volcanic islets, never joined to any land, 
 nor even united to one another, yet each possessing its 
 own special zoological features — the Galapagos roused 
 to an extraordinary degree the irresistible questionings 
 of Darwin's mind. They contain no frogs, and no 
 mammal save a mouse, brought to them, no doubt, by 
 some passing ship. The only insects are beetles, which 
 possess peculiar facilities for being transported in the 
 ®^g or grub across salt water upon floating logs. There 
 are two kinds of snake, one tortoise, and four lizards ; 
 but, in striking contrast to this extreme poverty of 
 terrestrial forms, there are at least fifty-five distinct 
 
Darw/n's VVandek-Years 53 
 
 species of native birds. A few snails complete the list. 
 Now most of these animals, though closely resembling 
 the fauna of Ecuador, the nearest mainland, are 
 specifically distinct ; they have varied (as we now know^ 
 from their continental types owing to natural selection 
 under the new circumstances in which they have been 
 placed. But Darwin had not yet evolved that potent 
 key to the great riddle of organic existence. He saw 
 the problem, but not its solution. * ^NFost of the organic 
 productions,' he saj's plainly, ' are aboriginal creations, 
 found nowhere else ; there is even a difference between 
 the inhabitants of the different islands : yet all show a 
 marked relationship with those of America, though 
 separated from that continent by an open space of ocean, 
 between 500 and GOO miles in width. . . . Considering 
 the small size of these islands, we feel the more 
 astonished at the number of their aboriginal beings, 
 and at their confined range. Seeing every height 
 crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most of 
 the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to believe that 
 within a period geologically recent the unbroken sea was 
 here spread out. Hence, both in space and time we 
 seem to be brought somewhat nearer to that great fact — 
 that mystery of mysteries — the first appearance of new 
 beings on this earth.' Among the most singular of 
 these zoological facts mav be mentioned the existence 
 in the Galapagos archipelago of a genus of gigantic and 
 ugly lizard, the amblj rhyncus, unknown elsewhere, but 
 here assuming the forms of two species, the one marine 
 and the other terrestrial. In minuter points, the dif- 
 ferences of fauna and flora between the various islands 
 are simply astounding, so as to compel the idea that 
 
54 Charles Darwin 
 
 eacli form must necessarily have been developed not 
 merely for the group, but for the special island which it 
 actually inhabits. No wonder that Darwin should say 
 in conclusion, ' One is astonished at the amount of 
 creative force, if such an expression may be used, dis- 
 played on these snuill, barren, and rocky islands; and 
 still more so at its diverse, yet analogous, action on 
 points so near each other.' Here again, in real earnest, 
 the young observer trembles visibly on the very verge 
 of natural selection. In the ' Origin of Species ' he 
 makes full use, more than once, of the remarkable facts 
 he observed with so much interest in these tiny isolated 
 oceanic specks of the American galaxy. 
 
 From the Galapagos the ' Beagle ' steered a straight 
 course for Tahiti, and Darwin then beheld with his own 
 eyes the exquisite beauty of the Polynesian Islands. 
 Thence they sailed for New Zealand, the most truly 
 insular large mass of land in the whole world, supplied 
 accordingly with a fauna and flora of most surprising 
 meagreness and poverty of species. In the woods, our 
 observer noted very few birds, and he remarks with 
 astonishment that so big an island — as large as Great 
 Britain — should not possess a single living indigenous 
 mammal, save a solitary rat of doubtful origin. Australia 
 and Tasmania, with their antiquated and stranded mar- 
 supial inhabitants, almost completed the round trip. 
 Keeling Island next afforded a basis for the future 
 famous observations upon coral reefs; and thence by 
 Mauritius, St. Helena, Ascension, Bahia, Pernambuco, 
 and the beautiful Azores, the ' Beagle ' made her way 
 home by slow stages to England, which she reached in 
 safety on October the 2nd, 1 8oG. What an ideal education 
 
Darwin's Wande^^-Years 55 
 
 for the future reconstructor of biological science ! He 
 had now all his problems cut and dried, ready to his 
 hand, and he had nothing important left to do — except 
 to sit down quietly in his study, and proceed to solve 
 them. Observ^ation and collection had given him one 
 half the subject-matter of the ' Origin of Species ; ' 
 reflection and IMalthus were to give him the other half. 
 Never had great mind a nobler chance ; never, again, 
 had noble chance a great mind better adapted by nature 
 and heredity to make the most of it. The man was 
 not wanting to the opportunity, nor was the opportunity 
 wanting to the man. Organism and environment fell 
 together into perfect h.armony ; and so, by a lucky com- 
 bination of circumstances, the secret of the ages was 
 finally wrung from not unwilling nature by the far- 
 seeing and industrious volunteer naturalist of the 
 ' Beagle ' expedition. 
 
 It would be giving a very false idea of the interests 
 which stirred Charles Darwin's mind during his long 
 five years' voyage, however, if we were to dwell ex- 
 clusively upon the biological side of his numerous 
 observations on that memorable cruise. Ethnology, 
 geology, oceanic phenomena, the height of the snow- 
 line, the climate of the Antarctic islands, the formation 
 of icebergs, the transport of boulders, the habits and 
 manners engendered by slavery, all almost equally 
 aroused in their own way the young naturalist's vivid 
 interest. Nowhere do we get the faintest trace of 
 narrow specialism ; nowhere are we cramped within 
 the restricted horizon of the mere vulgar beetle-hunter 
 and butterfly-catcher. The biologist of the ' Beagle ' 
 had taken the whole world of science for his special 
 
56 Charges Darwin 
 
 province. Darwin's mind with all its vastness was not, 
 indeed, profoundly analytical. The task of* workinj^ 
 out the psychological and metaphysicjd aspects of 
 evolution fell rather to the great organising and sys- 
 tematising intellect of Herbert 8pencer. J3ut within 
 the realm of material fact, and of the widest possible 
 inferences based upon such fact, Darwin's keen and 
 comprehensive spirit ranged freely over the whole 
 illimitable field of natnre. ' No one,' says Buckle 
 with unwonted felicity, ' can have a firm grasp of any 
 science if, by confining himself to it, he shuts out the 
 light of analogy. He may, no doubt, work at the 
 details of his subject ; he may be useful in adding to 
 its facts ; he will never be able to enlarge its philosophy. 
 For the philosophy of every department depends on its 
 connection with other departments, and must therefore 
 be sought at their points of contact. It must be looked 
 for in the place where they touch and coalesce : it lies, 
 not in the centre of each science, but on the confines 
 and margin.' This profound truth Darwin fully and 
 instinctively realised. It was the all-embracing catho- 
 licity of his manifold interests that raised him into the 
 greatest pure biologist of all time, and that enabled 
 him to co-ordinate with such splendid results the raw 
 data of so many distinct and separate sciences. And 
 even as early as the days of the cruise in the ' Beagle,' 
 that innate catholicity had already asserted itself in 
 full vigour. Now it is a party of Gauchos throwing 
 the bola that engages for the moment his eager atten- 
 tion ; and now again it is a group of shivering Fuegians, 
 standing naked with their long hair streaming in the 
 wind on a snowy promontory of their barren coast. 
 
Darivin\^ Wandek-Yp.ars 57 
 
 Here he examines the tubuhirlijjfhtniiier-holes molted in 
 the solid rock of ^^Maldonudo by the electric enerfj}-; 
 uiid there he observes the movinir boiilder-streunis that 
 course like torrents down the rnfrcred corries of the 
 Falkland Islands. At one time he works npon the 
 uiistndied fj^eoloj^y of the South American Tanipas; at 
 another, he inspects the now classical la<ifoon and nar- 
 row fringing reef of the Keeling archipelago. Hvery- 
 where he sees whatever of most noteworthy in animate 
 or immimate nature is there to be seen ; and every- 
 where he draws from it innumerable lessons, to be 
 applied hereafter to the special field of study upon 
 which his intense and active energies were finally 
 concentrated. It is not too much to say, indeed, that 
 it was the voyage of the ' Beagle ' which gave ns in the 
 last resort the ' Origin of Species' and its great fellow 
 the ' Descent of IMan.' 
 
$8 Charles Darwin 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TEKIOD OF INCUBATION. 
 
 When Charles Darwin landed in England on his return 
 from the voyage of the ' Beagle ' he was nearly twenty- 
 eight. When he published the first edition of the 
 ' Origin of Species ' he was over fifty. The intermediate 
 years, though much occupied by many minor works of 
 deep specialist scientific importance, were still mainly 
 devoted to collecting material for the one crowning 
 eff'ort of his life, the chief monument of his great co- 
 ordinating and commanding intellect — the settlement 
 of the question of organic evolution. 
 
 ' Hiere is one thing,' says Professor Fiske, ' which 
 a man of original scientific or philosophical genius in 
 a rightly ordered world should never be called upon to 
 do. He should never be called upon to earn a living ; 
 for that is a wretched waste of energy, in which the 
 highest intellectual power is sure to suffer serious 
 detriment, and runs the risk of being frittered away 
 into hopeless ruin.' From this unhappy necessity 
 Charles Darwin, like his predecessor Lyell, was luckily 
 free. He settled down early in a home of his own, 
 and worked away at liis own occupations, with no 
 sordid need for earning the day's bread, but with 
 
TiiR Period of Incubation 59 
 
 perfect leisure to carr}' out the great destiny for which 
 the chances of the universe had singled him out. His 
 subsequent history is the history of his wonderful and 
 unique contributions to natural science. 
 
 The first thing to be done, of course, was the ar- 
 rangement and classification of the natural history spoils 
 gathered during the cruise, and the preparation of his 
 own journal of the voyage for publication. The strict 
 scientific results of the trip were described in the 
 ' Zoology of the Voyage of the " J5eagle," ' the difterent 
 parts of which were undertaken by rising men of 
 science of the highest distinction, under Charles 
 Darwin's own editorship. Sir Richard Owen took in 
 hand the fossil mammals ; Waterhouse arranged their 
 living allies ; Gould discussed the birds, Jenyns the 
 fish, and Bell the amphibians and rejotiles. In this 
 vast co-operative publication Darwin thus obtained 
 the assistance of many among the most competent 
 specialists in the England of his day, and learned to 
 understand his own collections by the light thrown 
 upon them from the focussed lamps of the most minute 
 technical learning. As for the journal, it was origi- 
 nally published with the general account of the cruise 
 by Captain Fitzroy in 1839, but was afterwards set 
 forth in a separate form under the title of ' A Natural- 
 ist's Voyage Round the World.' 
 
 But while Darwin was thus enofaijfed in arran<>in<^ 
 and classifying the aninuils and plants he had brought 
 home with him, the germs of those inquiring ideas about 
 the origin of species which we have already observed 
 in his account of the voyage were quickening into fresh 
 life within him. As he ruminated at his leisure over 
 
6o CiiARLRs Darwin 
 
 the results of liis accumnlationsi, he was beginning 
 to work upon tlie great problem with the definite and 
 conscious resolution of solving it. ' On my return 
 home, it occurred to me,' he says, ' in 1 8o7, that some- 
 thing might perhaps be made out on this question by 
 patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of 
 facts which could possibly have any bearing on it. 
 After five years' work, I allowed myself to speculate on 
 the subject, and drew up some short notes ; these I en- 
 larged in 18'tl' into a sketch of the conclusions that 
 then seemed to me probable ; from that period to the 
 present day [1 859] 1 have steadily pursued the same 
 object. I hope that I may be excused for entering on 
 these personal details, as I give them to show tluit I 
 have not been hastv in coming to a decision.' 
 
 So Darwin wrote at fifty. The words are weighty 
 and well worthy of consideration. They give us in a 
 nutshell the true secret of Darwin's success in compel- 
 ling the attention and assent of his contemporaries to 
 his completed theory. For speculations and hypotheses 
 like those of Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin, however 
 brilliant and luminous they may be, the hard, dry, 
 scientific mind cares as a rule less than nothing. Men 
 of genius and insight like Goethe and Oken may, 
 indeed, seize greedily upon the pregnant suggestion ; 
 their intellects are already attuned by nature to its due 
 reception and assimilation ; but the mere butterfly- 
 catchers and plant-hunters of the world, with whom 
 after all rests ultimately the practical acceptance or 
 rejection of such a theory, can only be convinced by 
 long and patient accumulations of facts, by infinite 
 instances and endless examples, by exhaustive surveys 
 
s 
 
 The Period of Incubation 6i 
 
 of the whole field of nature in a thousand petty details 
 piecemeal. They have to be driven by repeated beating 
 into the right path. Everywhere they fancy they see 
 the loophole of an objection, which must be carefully 
 closed beforehand against them with anticipatory 
 argument, as we close hedges by the wayside against 
 the obtrusive donkev with a cautious bunch of 
 thorny brambles. Even if Charles Darwin had liit 
 upon the fundamental idea of natural selection, and 
 had published it, as Wallace did, in the form of a mere 
 splendid apcr(iii, he would never have revolutionised 
 the world of biology. When the great discovery was 
 actually promulgated, it was easy enough to win the 
 assent of philosophical thinkers like Herbert Spencer ; 
 easy enough, even, to gain the ready adhesion of non- 
 biological but kindred minds, like Leslie Stephen's and 
 John Morley's ; those might all, perhaps, have been 
 readily convinced by far less liea\y and crushing artillery 
 than that so triumphantly marshalled together in the 
 ' Origin of Species.' But in order to command the slow 
 and grudging adhesion of the rank and file of scientific 
 workers, the ' hodmen of science,' as Professor Huxley 
 calls them, it was needful to bring together an imposing 
 array of closely serried facts, to secure every post in 
 the rear before taking a single step onward, and to 
 bring to bear upon every antjigonist the exact form of 
 arorument with which he was alreadv thorouo-hlv familiar. 
 It was by carefully pursuing these safe and cautious phi- 
 losophical tactics that Charles Darwin gained his great 
 victory. Where others were pregnant, he was cogent. 
 He met the Dryasdusts of science on their own ground, 
 and he put them fairly to flight with their own weapons. 
 
62 Charles Darwin 
 
 More than that, he brought them all over in the long 
 run as deserters into his own camp, and converted them 
 from doubtful and suspicious foes into warm adherents 
 of the evolutionary banner. 
 
 Moreover, fortunately for the world, Darwin's own 
 mind was essentially one of the inductive type. If a 
 great deductive thinker and speculator like Herbert 
 Spencer had hit upon the self-same idea of survival of 
 the fittest, he might have communicated it to a small 
 following of receptive disciples, who would have under- 
 stood it and accepted it, on a imori grounds alone, and 
 gradually passed it on to the grades beneath them ; but 
 he would never have touched the slow and cautious 
 elephantine intellect of the masses. The common run 
 of mankind are not deductive ; they require to have 
 everything made quite clear to them by example and 
 instance. The English intelligence in particular shows 
 itself as a rule congenitally incapable of appreciating 
 the superior logical certitude of the deductive method. 
 Englishmen will not even believe that the square on 
 the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the containing 
 sides until they have measured and weighed as well as 
 they are able by rude experimental devices a few selected 
 pieces of rudely shaped rectangular paper. It was a 
 great gain, therefore, that the task of reconstructing 
 the course of organic evolution should fall to the lot of 
 a highly trained and masterly intelligence of the in- 
 ductive order. Darwin had first to convince himself, 
 and then he could proceed to convince the world. He 
 set about the task with characteristic patience and 
 thoroughness. No man that ever lived possessed in a 
 more remarkable degree than he did the innate capacity 
 
The Period oe Incubation 63 
 
 for taking trouble. For five years, as a mere pre- 
 liminary, he accumulated facts in immense variety, and 
 then for the first time and in the vaguest possibk> way 
 he ' allowed himself to speculate.' That brings us down 
 to the year 1842, when the first notes of the ' Origin of 
 Species ' must have been tentatively committed to 
 paper. It was in 1859 that the first edition of the 
 complete work was given to tlie world. Compare this 
 with the case of Newton, who similarly kept his grand 
 idea of gravitation for many years in embrj^o, until 
 more exact measurements of the moon's mass and dis- 
 tance should enable him to verify it to his own satis- 
 faction. 
 
 One other item of immense importance in the genesis 
 of the full Darwinian doctrine deserves mention here — 
 I mean, the exact moment of time occupied by Charles 
 Djirwin in the continuous history of scientific thought. 
 A gener ion or two earlier, in Erasmus Darwin's days, 
 biology had not yet arrived at the true classification of 
 animals and plants upon an essentially hereditary basis. 
 The LinnoDan arrangement, then universally accepted, 
 was wholly artificial in its main features ; it distributed 
 species without regard to their fundamental likenesses 
 of structure and ory-auisation. But the natural svstem 
 of Jussieu and De CandoUe, by arranging plants into 
 truly related groups, made possible the proofs of an 
 order of affiliation in the vegetable kingdom ; while 
 Cuvier's similar reconstruction of the animal world 
 gave a like foothold to the evolutionary philosopher in 
 the other great department of organic nature. The 
 recognition of kinship between the various members 
 of the same family necessarily preceded the establish- 
 
64 Charles Darwin 
 
 ment of a regular genealogical theory of life in its 
 entirety. 
 
 Though we are here concerned mainly with Charles 
 Darwin the thinker and writer — not with Charles Darwin 
 the husband and father — a few words of explanation as 
 to liis private life must necessarily be added at the 
 present point, before we pass on to consider the long, 
 slow, and cautious brewing of that wonderful work, the 
 ' Origin of Species.' Darwin returned home from the 
 voyage of the ' Beagle ' at the end of the year 183G. 
 Soon after, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, 
 no doubt through the influence of his friend Lyell, who 
 was quite enthusiastic over his splendid geological 
 investigations on the rate of elevation in the Pampas 
 and the Cordillera. Acting on Ly ell's advice, too, he 
 determined to seek no official appointment, but to 
 devote himself entirelv for the rest of his life to the 
 pursuit of science. In 1838, at the age of twenty-nine, 
 he read before the Geological Society his paper on the 
 ' Connection of Volcanic Phenomena with the Elevation 
 of Mountain Chains,' when, says Lyell admiringly in a 
 private letter, ' he opened upon De la Beche, Phillips, 
 and others ' — tlie veterans of the science — ' his whole 
 battery of the earthquakes and volcanoes of the Andes.' 
 Shortly after, the audacious young man was appointed 
 secretary to the Geological Society, a post which he 
 filled when the voyage of the ' Beagle ' was first pub- 
 lished in 1839. 
 
 In the earlj' part of that same year, the rising 
 naturalist took to himself a wife from one of the 
 houses to which he himself owed no small part of his 
 conspicuous greatness. His choice fell upon his cousin, 
 
The Period of iKcrnATioN 65 
 
 j\liss Kininu Wedo^wood, dang'hter of Jusiali "Wedgwood, 
 of Maer Hall; and, after tlnve yeai's of married life in 
 London, lie settled at last at Down House, near Orpino-- 
 ton, in Kent, where for the rest of his days he passed 
 his time amon^- his conservatories and his pigeons, his 
 (••arden and liis fowls, with liis children growing up 
 quietly heside him, and the great thinking world of 
 Loudon within easy reach of a few minutes' journey. 
 J lis ]")rivfite means enabled him to live the pleasant life 
 of an hhiglish country gentleman, and devote himself 
 unremittingly to the pursuit of science. HI health, 
 indeed, interfered sadly with his powers of work ; but 
 system and patience did wonders during his working 
 days, which were regularly ]iarcelled out between study 
 and recreation, and utilised and economised in the 
 very higliest possible degree. Early to bed and early 
 to rise, wandering unseen among the lanes and paths, 
 or riding slowly on his fa\'ourite black cob. the great 
 naturalist passed forty years happily and usefully at 
 Down, where all the village knew and loved him. A 
 man of singular simplicity and largeness of heart, 
 Charles Darwin never reallv learnt to know his own 
 greatness. And that charming innocence and ignorance 
 of his real value made the value itself all the greater. 
 His moral qualities, indeed, were no less admirable and 
 unique in their way than his intellectual faculties. To 
 that charming candour and delightful unostentatious- 
 ness which everybody must have noticed in his published 
 writings, he united in private life a kindliness of dis- 
 position, a width of sym]:)athy, and a ready generosity 
 which made him as much beloved by his friends as he 
 was admired and respected by all Europe. The very 
 
 F 
 
66 Charles DakwiS' 
 
 sprvnnts wlio caine heneatli his roof stopped tliere for 
 the most part (hirin<»' tlieir wliole lifetime. In Ids 
 earlier years at Down, the quiet Kentisli home was 
 constantly enlivened by the visits of men like liyell, 
 Huxley, Hooker, Lubbock, and Wollaston. Durinpf his 
 later days, it was the Mecca of a world-wide scientific 
 and philosophic pilj^rimage, where all the greatest men 
 our age has produced sought at times the rare honour 
 of sitting before the face of the immortal master. J3nt 
 to the very last Darwin himself never seemed to dis- 
 cover that he was anything more than just an average 
 man of science among his natural ]ieers. 
 
 Shortlv after Darwin went to Down he beo-an one 
 long and memorable experiment, which in itself casts a 
 Hood of light upon his patient and painstaking method 
 of inquiry. '^i\vo years before, he had read at the Geo- 
 logical Society a paper on the ' Formation of ]\rould,' 
 which more than thirty years later he expanded into 
 his famous treatise on the ' Action of Earthworms.' 
 His uncle and father-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, sug- 
 gested to him that the apparent sinking of stones on 
 the surface might really be due to earthworm castings. 
 So, as soon as he had some land of his own to experi- 
 ment upon, he began, in 181-2, to spread broken chalk 
 over a held at Down, in which, twenty-nine years later, 
 in 1871, a trench was dug to test the results. "What 
 other naturalist ever waited so long and so patiently to 
 discover the upshot of a single experiment ? Is it wonder- 
 ful that a man who worked like that should succeed, not 
 by faith but by logical power, in removing mountains ? 
 
 Unfortunately, we do not know the exact date when 
 Darwin tirst read JMalthus. l^ut that the perusal of 
 
TiiR Period of Ixcuiiat/om 6y 
 
 tliut reiiiark{i])le book fonneil a crisis and turning-point 
 in his muntal development we know from his own 
 distinct statement in a letter to llaeckel, prefixed to 
 tlie brilliant German evolutionist's ' Historv of Creation.' 
 
 t.' 
 
 ' It seemed to me probable,' says Darwin, speaking of 
 his own early development, ' that allied species were 
 descended from a common ancestor. Rut during several 
 years I could not conceive how each form could have 
 been modified so as to become admirably adapted to its 
 place in nature. I began therefore to study domesti- 
 cated animals and cultivated plants, and after a time 
 perceived that man's power of selecting and breeding 
 from certain individuals was the moat powerful of all 
 means in the production of new races. Having attended 
 to the habits of animals and their relations to the sur- 
 rounding conditions, I was able to realise the severe 
 struggle for existence to which all organisms aiv sub- 
 jected ; and my geological observations had allowed me 
 to appreciate to a certain extent the duration of past 
 geological periods. With my luind thus prepared 1 
 fortunately happened to read Maltlms's '' h]ssay on Popu- 
 lation ; " and the idea of natural selection through the 
 struggle for existence at once occurred to me. Of all the 
 subordinate points in the theory, the last which 1 under- 
 stood was the cause of the tendencv in the descerulants 
 from a common progenitor to diverge in character." 
 
 It is impossible, indeed, to overrate the importance 
 of Malthus, viewed as a schoolmaster to bring men to 
 Darwin, and to bring l^arwin himself to the truth. 
 Without the " l']ssay on the Principle of Poi)ulation " it is 
 quite conceivable that we should never have had the 
 ' Origin of Species ' or the ' Descent of Man.' 
 
 V 2 
 
68 Char I. lis Darwin , 
 
 At the same time, Darwin liad not been idle in 
 other departments of scientific work. Side by side with 
 liis collections for his final effort he had been busy on 
 his valuable treatise upon Coral lleefs, in which he 
 proved, mainly from his own observations on the Keelin*^ 
 archipelago, that atolls owe their origin to a subsidence 
 of the supporting ocean-floor, the rate of upward growth 
 of the reefs keeping pace on the whole with the gradual 
 depression of the sea-bottom. ' No more admirable 
 example of scientific method,' says Professor Geikie 
 forty years later, ' was ever given to the world ; and 
 even if he had written nothing else, this treatise alone 
 would have placed Darwin in the very front of investi- 
 gators of nature.' But, from our present psychologicd 
 and historical point of view, as a moment in the de- 
 velopment of Darwin's influence, and therefore of the 
 evolutionary impulse in general, it possesses a still 
 greater and more profound importance, because the 
 work in which the theory is unfolded forms a perfect 
 masterpiece of thorough and comprehensive inductive 
 method, and gained for its author a well-deserved repu- 
 tation as a sound and sober scientific in([uirer. ^Hie ac- 
 quisition of such a reputation, afterwards increased by the 
 publication of the monograph on the Family Cirripediu 
 (in 1851), proved of immense use to Charles Darwin in 
 the fierce battle which was to rage around the uncon- 
 scious body of the ' Origin of Species.' To be ' sound ' is 
 everywhere of incalculable value ; to have approved one- 
 self to the slow and cautious intelligence of the Phillstini' 
 classes is a mighty spear and shield for a strong man ; 
 but in England, and above all in scientific England, it 
 is absolutely indispensable to the thinker who would 
 
TiiF Pi-Rinn m- Ixrun.-rrin.v 6() 
 
 iiecomplish ?iiiy great ivvolutioii. Souii(lnt'ss is to tlie 
 world of science what respectal)ility is to the world of 
 business — the sine 'ji((i noii for successfully gaining even 
 a liearing from esttiblished personages. 
 
 To read the book on Coral Reefs is indeed to take a 
 lesson of the deepest value in applied inductive canons. 
 I'iVcrv fact is dulv nuirshalled : everv conclusion is 
 drawn by the truest and most legitimate process from 
 careful observation or crucial experiment, l^it by bit, 
 Darwin shows most admirably that, through gradual 
 submergence, fringing reefs are developed into barrier- 
 reefs, and these again into atolls or hagoon ishmds ; and 
 incideritallv he throws a vivid li<>-ht on the slow secular 
 movements upward or downward for ever taking place 
 ill the world's crust. But the value of the work as a 
 geological record, great as it is, is as nothing compared 
 with its value as a training exercise in inductive logic. 
 Darwin was now learning by experience how to use his 
 own immense powers. 
 
 Meanwhile, the e>nvironment too had been gradually 
 moviuo-. In 18o2,the vear after vouni? Darwin set out 
 upon his cruise, Lyell published the tirst edition of his 
 'Principles of Geology," establishing once for all the 
 uniformitarian concept of that branch of science, in 
 I80G, the 3'ear when he returned, Ilatin(^s(jue, in his 
 'New Flora of North America,' had accepted within 
 certain cramping limits the idea that ' all species might 
 once have been vai'ieties, and that niiinv varieties are 
 gradually becoming species by assuming constant and 
 peculiar characters.' Haldeman in Boston, and Grant 
 at University College, Ijondon, were teaching from their 
 professorial chairs the self-same novel and revolutionary 
 
70 CiiARi Hs Darwin 
 
 (.locti'iiic. At last, ill I 8 It, Robi'rt CliaiiiLcrs ])iil)lislu'(l 
 aiionyiiiously liis f'aiiioiis niid imicli-dt'batt'd " Vesti<^es 
 of Civation,' wliicli l^rou^-lit down tlio (|nestifm of evolu- 
 tion /v/•.s•/^s• creation from tlie senate ()f sardnfs to the 
 arena of tlie mere general public, and set up at once a 
 uin'versal fever of iiuinirv into the mysterious {piHstion 
 of the origin of species. (Jluunbers himself was a man 
 rather of general knowltnln-c and some native philo- 
 sophical insight than of any marked scientific accuracy 
 or depth. His work in its original form displayed 
 comparatively little acfjuaintance with the vast ground- 
 work of the qnestion at issue — zoological, botanical, 
 geological, and so forth — and in Charles Diirwin's own 
 opinion showed ' a great wiint of scientiiic caution.' 
 But its graphic style, its vivid pictnres([ueness, and to 
 the world at large the startling novelty of its brilliant 
 and piquant suggestions, made it burst at once into an 
 unwonted popularity for a work of so distinctly philo- 
 sophical a character. In nine years it leaped rapidly 
 through no less than ten successive editions, and re- 
 mained until the publication of the ' Origin of Species ' 
 the chief authoritative exponent in England of the still 
 struggling evolutionary principle. 
 
 The 'Vestiges of Creation' may be snccinctly de- 
 scribed as Lamarck and wati^r, the waterv element 
 being due in part to the unnecessary obtrusion (more 
 Srofiiuj^ of a metaphysical and theological principle into 
 the physical universe. Chambers himself, in his latest 
 edition (before tlie book was finally killed by the advent 
 of Darwinism), thus briefly describes his main concepts : 
 ' The several series of animated beings, from the simplest 
 and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, nnder 
 
Till-: J^jiRjDi) OF iNcuiiAiioyj 71 
 
 tilt' jinwidt'iicc of (!otl, the rt'sults, ///w/, of an im])iilse 
 wliirli has been iin])}U'tt'(l to tlic tonus of lite, atlvjineing 
 tlii'iii, ill tlctiiiitr tiiiu's, by ^'t'licriitioii, through grmles 
 of organisation, tcniiinating in flic highest ilicotyh'doiis 
 and verte))rata, these grades being few in nninber, and 
 generally marked by intervals of organic character, 
 which we find to be 'a practical ditliculty in ascertaining 
 atlinities; Kn-diiil, of another ini[)nlse connected witli 
 the vital forces, tending, in the course of generations, to 
 modifv oi'ganic structures in accordance with external 
 circumstances, as food, the nature of the habitat, and 
 the meteoric agencies.' Now it is clear at once that 
 these two supposed ' impulses * are really (juite miracu- 
 lous in their essence. They do not help us at all to a 
 distinct physical and realisable conception of any natural 
 agency whereby species became differentiated one from 
 the other. 'I'hey lay the whole burden of s])ecies- 
 iiiaking u])on a single primordial su])ernatural im])etus, 
 imparted to the first living germ by the will of the 
 Creator, and acting ever since continuously it is true, 
 but none the less miraculously for all that. For many- 
 creations Chambers substitutes one single long creative 
 nisus : where Darwin saw natural selection, his Scotch 
 predecessor saw a d(;its t\c itiacJtina, helping on the 
 course of organic development by a constant but unseen 
 interference from above, lie supposed evolution to be 
 predetermined by some intrinsic and externally im- 
 planted proclivity. In short, Chambers's theory is 
 fjamarck's theologised, and spoilt in the process. 
 
 The book had nevertheless a most prodigious and 
 perfectly unprecedented success. I'he secret of its 
 authorship was keenly debated and jealously kept, 'flie 
 
72 Charles Darwin 
 
 most ridiculous surmises .o,s to its anonvmous oriu-iii 
 were everywhere atlout. Some attributed it to Thackeray, 
 and some to Prince Albert, some to Lyell, some to Sir 
 John Herschel, and some to Charles Darwin himself. 
 Obscurantists thought it a wicki'd book; 'intellectual" 
 people thought it an advanced book. As a matter of 
 fact it was neither the one nor the other. It was just 
 a pale and colourless transcript of the old familiar 
 teleolojj'ical Lamarckism. Vet it did good in its 
 generation. The pul)lic at large were induced by its 
 ephemei'al vogue to interest themselves in a question to 
 which they had never previously given even a passing 
 thought, though more practised biologists of evolutionary 
 tendencies were grieved at heart that evolution should 
 first have IxnMi popularly presented to the English 
 world under so unscientific, garbled, and nnitilated a 
 form. From tlu^ ])hilosophic side, Herbert Spencei' 
 found 'this ascri]ition of organic evolution to some 
 aptitude naturally possessed by organisms or miracu- 
 lously imposed upon them ' to be ' one of those explana- 
 tions which explain nothing — a shaping of ignorance 
 into the semblance of knowledge. 'The cause assigned,' 
 he says, ' is not a true cause — not a cause assimilable 
 to known causes — not a cause that can be anvwhere 
 shown to produce analogous effects. It is a cause un- 
 rejirest'iitable in thought : one of those illegitinuite 
 symbolic conceptions which cannot by any mental pro- 
 cess be elaborated into a real conception.' From the 
 scientific side, on the other hand, Djirwin felt sadlv the 
 inaccuracy and want of profound technical knowledge 
 everywhere displayed by the anonymous author. These 
 tilings might natunilly cause the enemy to blaspheme, 
 
Tin: Pr.Rinn of /.yrr//i,tr/(Ky 
 
 / .•) 
 
 Xo worse calaiuity, indeed, can Imppeii to ;i o-reat tnitli 
 than for its defence to be intrusted to inetlicient luinds. 
 Nevertheless, long after, in the *()riu-in of Species,' 
 the great naturalist wrote with generous appreciation of 
 the ' Wstiges of Creation,' ' Jn my own opinion it has 
 (lone excellent service in this country in calling attention 
 to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus pre- 
 paring the ground for the reception of analogous views.' 
 Still Darwin gave no sign. A iiaccid, cartihiginous, 
 unphilosophic evolutionism had full possession of the 
 held for the moment, and claimed, as it were, to be the 
 genuine representative of the young and vigorous 
 biological creed, while he himself was in truth the real 
 heir to all tlie lionours of the situation. He was in 
 ])()ssession ci' the master-key which alone could unlock 
 the bars that opposed the progress of evolution, and still 
 he waited. He could afford to wait. He was diligently 
 collecting, amassing, investigating: eagerlv reading 
 every new systenuitic work, every book of travels, every 
 scientific journal, every record of sport, or exploration, or 
 discovery, to extract from the dead nui'js of undigested 
 fact whatever item of im])licit value might swell the 
 (It'iinite co-ordiuiited series of notes in his own connnon- 
 place books for the now distinctly contemplated 'Origin 
 of Species.' His way was to nudce all sure behind him, 
 to summon u]) all his facts in irresistible array, and 
 iH'Vcr to set out u])ou a public progress until he was 
 secure against all possible attacks of the ever- watch. ful 
 and alert enemv in the rear. i'Vw nu'u would hav^e 
 had strength of mind enough to resist the temptation 
 ort'cred by the ])ublication » ■' the 'Vestiges of Creation, 
 and the extraordinarv success attained bv so flabbv a 
 
74 CHAh'fi'.r Darwin 
 
 presentiil ion of the evohitioiinry case : Davwin resisted 
 it, and he did wisely. 
 
 We may, liowever, take it for granted, I doubt not, 
 tliat it was the ajDpearance .'ind success of Chambers's 
 invertebrate book which induced Darwin, iu 1811' (the 
 year of its publication), to enlarge his short notes 'into 
 a sketch of the conclusions which then seemed to him 
 probable.' This sketch he showed to V\\\ (now Sir 
 Joseph) Hooker, no doubt as a precaution to ensure his 
 own claim of priority against any future ])ossible com- 
 petitor. And having thus eased his mind for the 
 moment, he continued to observe, to read, to devour 
 ' Transactions,' to collate instances, with indefatigable 
 persistence for fifteen years longer. If any man mentally 
 measures out fifteen years of his own life, and bethinks 
 Inm of how long a space it seems when thusdeliberateh' 
 pictured, lie will be able to realise a little more definitely 
 — but oidy a little — how profound was the patience, 
 the self-denial, the single-mindedness of Darwin's intense 
 search after the ultimate truths of natural science. 
 
 What was the sketch that he thus committed to 
 paper in 1811, and submitted to the judgment of his 
 friend Hooker ? It was the germ of tlie theory of 
 natural selection. According to that theory, organic 
 development is due to the survival of the fittest among 
 innumerable variations, good, bad, and indifferent, from 
 one or more parent stocks. Darwin's reading of jMal- 
 thus had suggested to him (apparently as early as the 
 date of publication of the 'Naturalist's Journal") the 
 idea that every species of plant and animal must idways 
 be producing a far greater number of seeds, eggs, germs, 
 or young offspring than could ])ossibly be needed for 
 
Tnr J^FRinn of IxmnATiox 75 
 
 tlie inainteiiance of lln' nvrra^'r miuibcr oi' tlu' species. 
 Of tliese voniio- l,v liir the <>'reater number must always 
 perish from n-eiieratiou to i>'eneration, for want of space, 
 of food, of air, of raw material. Tlie survivors in each 
 brood uuist l)e those naturally best adapted for survival. 
 The uianv would be eaten, stiirved, overrun, or crowded 
 out ; the few that survive would be those that jjossesscd 
 auv special means of defence aij'ainst ai>'<''ressors, any 
 special advantage for escaping starvation, any special 
 protection against overrunning or overcrowding foes. 
 Animals and plants, Darwin found on impiiry and iii- 
 vestiu'iition, tended to varv under divi'rse circumstances 
 from the parent or parents that originally produced 
 them. These variations were usually intinitesinnd in 
 amount, but sometimes more considerable or ev(Mi 
 strikino-. If anv particular variation tended in anv 
 way to preserve the life of the creatur(\s that exhibited 
 it. beyond the avenige of their like competitors, that 
 variation would in the long run survive, ami the indi- 
 viduals that possessed it, being thus favoured in the 
 struggle for existence, would replace the less adapted 
 form from which they sprang. Darwinism is ^[althnsian- 
 ism on the large scale : it is the application of the 
 calculus of po])ulation t«) the wide facts of universal life. 
 Tn one sense, indeed, it may be said that, given 
 ^lalthus on the one hand and the Lamarckian evolu- 
 tionism on the other, some great nnin somewhere must 
 sooner or later, almost of necessity, have combined 
 the two, and hit out the doctrine of natural selection as 
 we actually know it. Quite so ; but then the point is 
 just this : Darwin /'vrv the great man in question ; he 
 d\i{ the work which in the very essence of things some 
 
yG ClIARIF.S DaRW/N 
 
 suclioTeat" inim was iiiitiiriilly and inevitably predestinetl 
 to do. You can ahvavs easilvmauau'e to o;et on witliout 
 any particular great num, provided, of course, you have 
 ready to hand another equally able great man by whom 
 to replace him in tlie scheme of existence. But how 
 many ordinary naturalists possess the width of mind 
 and universality of interest whicli would prompt tliem 
 to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest a politico- 
 economical treatise of the calibre of Malthus? How 
 many, having done so, have the keenness of ^'ision to 
 perceive the ensuing biological implications ? How 
 many, having seen them, have the skill and the patience 
 to work up the infinite chaos of botanical and zoological 
 det.'dl into the far-reaching generalisations of the ' Oi'igin 
 of Species * ? ]\[erely to have caught at the grand idea 
 is in itself no small achievement ; others did so and 
 deserve all honour for their insight ; but to flesh it out 
 with all the minute care and conclusive force of Darwin's 
 nuisterpiece is a thousand times a greater and nobler 
 monument of human endeavour. 
 
 During the fifteen years from 1811< to 1850, how- 
 ever, Darwin's pen was by no means idle. h\ the first- 
 nanied year he published his 'Oeological Observations 
 on Volcanic Islands' — part of the ' Beagle" exploration 
 series; in 1 S-IG he followed this up by his 'Geological 
 Observations on South America ; ' in 1851 he gave to 
 the world his monograph on ' Recent Barnacles ; ' and 
 in 185o, his treatise on the fossil species of the same 
 family. But all these works of restricted interest 
 remrined always subsidiary to the one great central 
 task of his entire lifetime, the preparation of his pro- 
 jected volume on the Origin of S))ecies. 
 
T/iR Period of TxcrnATioN y) 
 
 All throno-li tli(^ iniddlo decades of the centnrv 
 Darwin continued to labour at his vast accumulation f)t" 
 illustrative facts ; and side by side with liis continuous 
 toil, outside o])inion kept paving the way for the final 
 acceptance of his lucid ideas. The public was buying 
 and reading all the time its ten editions of the 'Vestiges 
 of Creation.' It was slowly digesting LyelTs ' Principles 
 of (xeology,' in which the old cataclysmic theories were 
 featly demolished, and the uniformitai'ian conception 
 of a past gradually and insensibly merging into the 
 present was conclusively established. It was getting 
 accustomed to statements like those of the younger 
 St. Hilaire, in 1850, that specific characters may be 
 uiodified by changes in the environing conditions, and 
 that the modifications thus produced may often be of 
 generic value — may make a difference so great that we 
 must regard the product not merely as beL)nging to a 
 distinct species, but even to a distinct genus or higher 
 kind. In 1 852 Herbert Spencer published in tlie 
 'Leader* his remarkable essay, contrasting the theories 
 of creation and evolution, as applied to organic beings, 
 with all the biting force of his profound intelligence; 
 and in 1855. the same encyclop;edic philosopher put 
 forth the first rough sketch of his 'Principles of 
 Psychology,' in which he took the lead in treating the 
 phenomena of mind from the ])oiut of view of gradual 
 development. In that extraordinary work, the philo- 
 sopher of evolution traced the origin of all mental 
 ])owers and faculties by slow gradations from the very 
 sim])lest subjective elements. The ' Principles of 
 Psychology ' ]ireceded <"he ' Origin of Species ' ])y nearly 
 five years; the first collected volume of Mr. Spencer's 
 
78 Charles Darwin 
 
 essavs iDrPCpdetl Ojirwiji's work bv some twelve iiiontlis. 
 Jiutleii-l'oweU's essay on tlie ' P]iilos(jpliy of Creation' 
 (nincli debated and condennied in ecclesiastical circles), 
 and IVol'essor Owen's somewhat contradictory utterances 
 on the nature of types and archetypal ideas, also helped 
 to keep alive interest in tlie problem of origins np to 
 the ver}' moment of the final appearance of Darwin's 
 great and splendid solution. 
 
 It is interesting' during tliese intermediate years to 
 watch from time to time the occasional side-hints of 
 J)arwin's activity and of the interest it aroused among 
 his scientiiic contemporaries. In 1854', for examjile, 
 Sir Charles Lyell notes, after an evening at Darwin's, 
 how Sir Joseph Hooker astonished him with an account 
 of that strange orchid, Catasetum, which bears three 
 totally distinct kinds of flowers on the same plant; ' It 
 will figure,' he says, ' in C. Darwin's book on species, 
 with many other " ugly facts," fis Hooker, clinging like 
 me to the orthodox faith, calls these and other abnormal 
 vagaries.' On a shiiilar occasion, a little later, Lyell 
 asks, after meeting ' Huxley, Hooker, and AVollaston at 
 Darwin's,' 'After all, did we not come from an ourang ?' 
 Last of all, in 1857, Darwin himself writes an aiiti- 
 cijmtory h^tttn^ to his American friend, Asa Gray, in 
 which he mentions ' six points' — the cardinal concep- 
 tions of the ' Origin of Species.' His book is now 
 fairly under weigh; he speaks of it himself to accpiaint- 
 ance and correspondents as an acknowledged project. 
 
 Events were growing ripe for the birth. A lucky 
 accident precipitated its parturition in the course of the 
 year 1858. 
 
79 
 
 CHAPTER Vl. 
 
 ' THE OKKJIN OF SPKCIES/ 
 
 The uccideiit came in this wise. 
 
 Alfred UuHsel Wallace, a young AVelsh biologist, 
 went out at twenty -four, in 1818, to the Amazons lliver, 
 in company with Bates (the author of ' 'I'lie Naturalist 
 on the Amazons'), to collect birds and butterflies, and 
 to study tropical life in the richest region of equatorial 
 America. Like all other higher zoologists of their time, 
 the two young explorers were deeply interested in the 
 profound questions of origin and metamorphosis, and of 
 geographical distribution, and in the letters that passed 
 between them before tliev started thev avowed to o\w 
 another that the object of their quest was a solution of 
 the pressing biological enignui of creation or evolu- 
 tion. Starting with fresh hopes and a few pounds in 
 pocket, on an old, worn-out, and unseaworthy slave- 
 trader, they often discussed these deep problems of life 
 and nature together upon the Sargasso sea, or among 
 the palms and lianas of the Ih-azilian woodlands. The 
 air was thick with whiffs and foretastes of evolutionism, 
 and the two budding naturalists of the Amazons expe- 
 dition had inhaled them eagerh" witli every breath. 
 They saw among the mimicking organisms of that 
 
8o Charles Darwin 
 
 eqnatnriiil zone striin^f*- pnzzlps to «'ii<i';i|iv tlieir dcH'pest 
 atteiitiou ; tlu^v rec()<>"iusp(l in the veins unci spots that 
 diversified the filmv membranes of insects' winjjs tlie 
 liieroo'lyphs of nature, writing as on a tablet for them 
 to deci])liei- the story of the slow modification of species. 
 In 1 852 — the year when Herbert Spencer in England 
 pnblislied liis essay on the ' Develo]mient Hypothesis,' 
 and when Nandin in France pnt forth his bold and able 
 pajier on the ' Origin of Species' — A\'^allace once more 
 returned to h]urope, and gave to the world liis interest- 
 iu"- ' Travels on the Amazons and the llio Nem-o.' Two 
 vears later the indefatigable traveller set out a second 
 time on a voyage of tropical exploration, among the 
 islands of the Malav archiiielago, and for eijjlit vears 
 he wandered about in Malav huts and remote islets, 
 gathering in solitude and isolation the enormous store 
 of minute facts which he afterwards lavished with so 
 prodigal a hand upon ' Tropical Nature,' and the ' (jeo- 
 graphical Distribution of Animals.' 
 
 While AVallace was still at Ambovna, he sent home 
 in 1858 a striking memoir, addressed to Darwin, with a 
 request that he would forward it to Sir Charles Lyell, for 
 presentation to the liinnean Society. Darwin opened 
 and read his brother naturalist's paper, and found to his 
 surprise that it contained his own theory of natural 
 selection, not worked out in detail, as he himself was 
 working it out, but still complete in s])irit and essence, 
 with no im])ortant ])ortion of the central idea lacking to 
 its full rotundity of conception. A jealous man would 
 have thrown obstacles in the way of publication ; but 
 both Darwin and Wallace were born superior to the 
 meannesses of jealousy. The elder naturalist commended 
 
' Tun Origin of Spec/fs ' 8 1 
 
 liis yoiin»( rival's papor ft once to Sir Charles Lyell, 
 wlio sent it on immediately to the Linnean Society. 
 
 But Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker, both 
 of whom knew of Darwin's work, thought it advisable 
 that he should publish, in tlie ' Journal ' of the Society, 
 a few extracts from his own manuscripts, side by side 
 with Wallace's paper. Darwin, therefore, selected some 
 essential passages for the purpose from his own long- 
 irathered and voluminous notes, and the two contributions 
 were read together before tlie Society on Julv the 1st, 
 1858. That double communication marks the date of 
 birth of modern evolutionism. It is to the eternal 
 credit of both thinkers that each accepted his own true 
 position with regard to the great discovery in perfect 
 sincerity. The elder naturalist never strove for a 
 moment to press his own claim to priority against the 
 younger : the younger, with singular generosity and 
 courtesy, waived his own claim to divide the honours of 
 discovery in favour of the elder. Not one word save 
 words of fraternal admiration and cordial appreciation 
 ever passed the lips of tutlier with regard to the other. 
 
 The distinctive notion of natural selection, indeed, 
 like all true and fruitful ideas, had more than once 
 flashed for a moment across the penetrating mind of 
 more than one independent investigator. As early as 
 1813, Dr. Wells, the famous author of the theory of 
 dew, applied that particular conception to the single 
 case of the production of special races among mankind. 
 
 ' Of the accidental varieties of man, which would 
 occur among the first few and scattered inhjibitants of 
 the middle regions of Africa,' he wrote, ' some one would 
 be better fitted than the others to bear the diseases of 
 
 G 
 
82 Charles Dakwin 
 
 tlie couutry. 'I'his nice would consequently luiiltiply, 
 wlii^ the others would decrease ; not only from their 
 inability to sustain the attacks of disease, but from their 
 incapacity of contending with their more vigorous 
 neighbours. . . . The same disposition to form varieties 
 still existing, a darker and a darker race would in the 
 course of time occur; and as tin; darkest would l)e the 
 best fitted foi" the climate, this would at last become the 
 most prevalent, if not the only racc^ in the country.' 
 Here we have not merely the radical concept of natural 
 selection, but jdso the subordinate idea of its exertion 
 upon what Darwin calls ' spontaneous variations.' 
 What is wanting in the paper is the application of the 
 faintly descried law to the facts and circumstances of 
 general biology : Wells saw only a particular instance, 
 where Darwin and Wallace more vividly perceived a uni- 
 versal princi])le. Again, in 1 8-"31 , ]\[r. Patrick Matthew 
 in that singular appendix to his book on naval timber 
 actually enunciates the same idea, applied this time 
 to the whole of nature, in words sometimes almost iden- 
 tical with Darwin's own. ' As nature in all her modifi- 
 cations of life,' says this unconscious discoverer, ' has a 
 power of increase far beyond what is needed to supply 
 the place of what falls by Time's decay, those indivi- 
 duals who possess not the requisite strength, swiftness, 
 hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without repro- 
 ducing — either a prey to their natural devourers, or 
 sinking under disease, generally induced by want of 
 nourishment, their place being occupied by the more 
 perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the 
 means of existence. . . . The self-regulating adapti\'e 
 disposition of organised life may, in part, be traced to 
 
' Till Oa'Ihia of Sri:cU'S "^i 
 
 the extreme fecundity of imtnre, wlio, as before statetl. 
 has in all the varieties of her otlspriiiu^ a ])roli(ic ])ower 
 nuicli beyond (in many cases a tlionsandfold) wliat is 
 necessary to fill up tho vacancies cansed by senile decay. 
 As the field of existence is limited and preoccupied, it 
 is only the hardier, more robust, better-suited-to-cir- 
 cumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward 
 to nnitnrity, these inhabitini,^ V)\\\\ the situations to 
 which they liave snperior ada])tati()n and <(reater power 
 of occupancy than any other kind ; the weaker and 
 less circumstance-suited being prematurely destroyed. 
 This principle is in constant action ; it reo'ulates the 
 colour, the figure, the capacities, and instincts ; those 
 individuals in each species whose colour and covering 
 are best suited to concealment or protection from 
 enemies, or defence from inclemencies and vicissitudes 
 of climate, whose figure is best accommodated toliealth, 
 strength, defence, and snp])ort ; whose capacities and 
 instincts can best regulate the physical energies to self- 
 advantage according to circumstances — in such im- 
 mense waste of primary and youthful life those only 
 come forward to maturity from the strict ordeal by 
 which nature tests their adaptation to her standard of 
 perfection and fitness to continue their kind by repro- 
 duction.' Of the ideas expressed in these paragraphs, 
 and others which preceded them, Djirwin himself rightly 
 observes, ' He gives precisely the same view on the 
 origin of species as that propounded by Mr. Wallace 
 and mvself. He clearlv saw the full force of the prin- 
 ciple of natural selection.' 
 
 In 1852, once more, so eminent and confirmed an 
 evolutionist as ]\Ir. Herbert Spencer himself had hit 
 
 o 2 
 
84 Chani.rs Darwin 
 
 upon a glimpse of the same gre.iu truth, strange to say 
 without perceiving the width and scope of its implica- 
 tions. ' All mankind,' he wrote in that vear in an essav 
 on population in the ' Westminster Ilevievv,' ' in turn 
 subject themselves more or less to the discipline de- 
 scribed ; they either may or may not advance under 
 it ; but, in the nature of things, only those who do 
 advance under it eventually survive. For, necessarily, 
 families and races whom this increasing difficulty of 
 getting a living which excess of fertility entails does 
 not stimulate to improvements in production .... are 
 on the high road to extinction ; and must ultimately be 
 supplanted by those whom the pressure does so stimu- 
 late. . . . And here, indeed, without further illustra- 
 tion, it will be seen that premature death, under all its 
 forms, and from all its causes, cannot fail to work in the 
 same direction. For as those prematurely carried off 
 must, in the average of cases, be those in whom the 
 power of self-preservation is the least, it unavoidably 
 follows that those left behind to continue the race must 
 be those in whom the power of self-preservation is the 
 greatest, must be the select of their generation.' In 
 this striking pre-Darwinian passage we have a partial 
 perception of what Mr. Spencer afterwards described as 
 the survival of the fittest ; but, as our great philosopher 
 liimself remarks, it ' shows how near one may be to a 
 great generalisation without seeing it.' For not only 
 does Mr. Spencer, like Wells before him, limit the 
 application of the principle to the case of humanity ; 
 but, unlike Wells, he overlooks the all-important factor 
 of spontaneous variation, and the power of natural 
 selection, acting upon such, to produce specific and 
 
^The Origin of Species' 85 
 
 generic divergences of structure. In short, in his own 
 words, the paragrapli ' contains merely a passing recog- 
 nition of the selective process, and indicates no suspicion 
 of the enormous range of its effects, or of the conditions 
 under which a large part of its effects are produced.' 
 On the other hand, it must be noted that both Spencer 
 and Matthew, like Darwin himself, based their ideas 
 largely upon the Malthusian principle, and thus held 
 the two true keys of the situation fairly within their 
 unconscious hands. 
 
 Frankly to recognise these various foreshadowings 
 of the distinctive Darwinian theory of natural selection 
 is not in any way to undermine the foundations of 
 Charles Darwin's own real and exceptional greatness. 
 On the contrary, the mere fact that his views were so 
 far anticipated by Wells, Matthew, Spencer, and others, 
 and were simultaneously arrived at across half the 
 globe by the independent intellect of Alfred Kussel 
 Wallace, is in itself the very best proof and finest 
 criterion of Charles D.irwin's genuine apostleship. No 
 truly grand and fruitful idea was ever yet the sole 
 property of a single originator. Great discoveries, says 
 an acute critic, must alwavs be concerned with some 
 problem of the time which many of the world's foremost 
 minds are just then cudgelling their active brains about. 
 It was so with the discoverv of the differential calculus, 
 and of tlie planet Neptune ; with the interpretation of 
 the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and of the cuneiform in- 
 scriptions ; with the undulatory theory of light, with 
 the mechanical equivalent of heat, with the doctrine of 
 the correlation and conservation of energies, with the 
 invention of the steam engine, the locomotive, the 
 
 \ 
 
86 ' Charles D ah win 
 
 telep^rapli and the telephone ; with the nebnlar hypo- 
 thesis, and with spectrum analysis. It was so, too, 
 with the evolutionary movement. The fertile upturning 
 of virgin sod in the biological field which produced 
 Darwin's forerunners, as regards the idea of descent 
 with modification, in the ])ersons of Buffon, Lamarck, 
 and Erasmus Darwin, necessarily produced a little later, 
 under the fresh impetus of the Malthusian conception, 
 his forerunners or coadjutors, as regards the idea of 
 natural selection, in the persons of Wells, Matthew, and 
 Wallace. It was Darwin's task to recognise the uni- 
 versal, where Wells and Spencer had seen only the 
 particular ; to build up a vast and irresistible inductive 
 system, where JMatthew and Wallace had but thrown 
 out a pregnant hint of wonderful a jrriori interest and 
 suggestiveness. It is one thing to draw out the idea of 
 a campaign, another thing to carry it to a successful 
 conclusion ; one thing rudely to sketch a ground-plan, 
 another thing finally to pile aloft to the sky the front 
 of an august and imposing fabric. 
 
 As soon as the papers at the Linnean had been read 
 and printed, Darwin set to work in real earnest to bring 
 out the first instfilment of his great work. That instal- 
 ment was the ' Origin of Species.' The first edition 
 was ready for the public on November the 24tli, 1859. 
 
 In his own mind Darwin regarded that immortal 
 work merely in the light of an abstract of his projected 
 volumes. So immense were his collections and so 
 voluminous his notes that the ' Origin of Species ' itself 
 seemed to him like a mere small portion of the contem- 
 plated publication. And indeed he did ultimately work 
 out several other portions of his original plan in his 
 
' Tup. Origin of Species' %7 
 
 detailed treatises on the Variation of Animals and ]Mants 
 under Domestication, on tlie P^ffects of Cross and Self- 
 Fertilisation, and on the Descent of Man and Sexual 
 Selection. But the immense and unexpected vogue of 
 his first volume, the almost inunediate revolution which 
 it caused in biological and general opinion, and the all 
 but universal adhesion to his views of all tlie greatest 
 and most rising naturalists, to a great extent saved him 
 the trouble of carrying out in full the task he had 
 originally contemplated as necessary. Younger and 
 less occupied labourers took part of the work off their 
 leader's hands ; the great chief was left to prosecute his 
 special researches in some special lines, and was relieved 
 from the necessity of further proving in minuter detail 
 what he had already proved with sufficient cogency to 
 convince all but the wilfully blind or the hopelessly 
 stupid. 
 
 The extraordinary and unprecedented success of the 
 * Origin of Species ' is the truest test of the advance it 
 made upon all previous evolutionary theorising. Those 
 who had never been convinced before were now con- 
 vinced by sheer force of reasoning ; those who believed 
 and those who wavered had their faith confirmed into 
 something like the reposeful calm of absolute certitude. 
 
 Let us consider, therefore, what exactly were the 
 additions which Charles Darwin offered in his epoch- 
 making work to the pre-existing conceptions of evolu- 
 tionists. 
 
 In 1852, seven years before the publication of 
 Darwin's masterpiece, Mr. Herbert Spencer wrote as 
 follows in an essay in the ' Leader ' on creation and 
 evolution. The expressions of so profound and philo- 
 
88 Chaa'i.p.s Darwin 
 
 sophical a hi )logist may be regarded as the higli-water 
 mark of evolutionary thinking up to the date of the 
 appearance of Walhice and Darwin's theory : — 
 
 ' Even could the supporters of the development 
 hypothesis merely show that the production of species 
 by the process of modification is conceivable, they 
 would be in a better position than their opponents. 
 But they can do much more than this ; they can show 
 that the process of modification has effected and is 
 effecting great changes in all organisms, subject to 
 
 modifying influences thc^y can show that any 
 
 existing species — animal or vegetable — when placed 
 under conditions different from its previous ones, imme- 
 diately begins to undergo Certain changes of structure 
 fitting it for the new conditions. They can show that 
 in successive generations these changes continue until 
 ultimately the new conditions become the natural ones. 
 They can show that in cultivated plants and domesti- 
 cated animals, and in the several races of men, these 
 changes have uniforaily taken place. They can show 
 that the degrees of difference, so produced, are often, as 
 in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of 
 species are in other cases founded. They can show 
 that it is a nuitter of dispute whether some of these 
 modified forms <n'c varieties or modified species. They 
 can show too that the changes daily taking place in 
 ourselves ; the facility that attends long practice, and 
 the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases ; 
 the development of every faculty, bodily, moral or in- 
 tellectual, according to the use made of it, are all ex- 
 plicable on this same principle. And thus they can 
 show that throughout^ all organic nature there \x at 
 
* The Origin of Species^ 89 
 
 work SI modifying influence of the kind they assign as 
 tlie cause of these specific differences, an influence 
 which, though slow in its action, does in time, if the 
 circumstances demand it, produce marked clianges ; an 
 influence whicli, to all appearance, would produce in the 
 millions of years, and under the great varieties of 
 condition which geological records imply, any amount 
 of change.' 
 
 This admirable passage, written seven years before the 
 publication of the ' Origin of Species,' contains explicitly 
 almost every idea that ordinary people, not specially 
 biological in their interests, now associate with the 
 name of Darwin. That is to say, it contains, in a veiy 
 ])liilosophical and abstract form, the theory of ' descent 
 with modification' irlthuut the distinctive Darwinian 
 adjunct of ' natural selection' or ' survival of the fittest.' 
 Yet it was just that particular lever, dexterously applied, 
 and carefully weighted with the whole weight of his 
 endlessly accumulated inductive instances, that finally 
 enabled our modern Archimedes in so short a time to 
 move the world. The public, that was deaf to the high 
 philosophy of Herbert Spencer, listened at once to the 
 practical wisdom of Charles Darwin. They did not care 
 at all for the a priori proof, but they believed forthwith 
 as soon as a cautious and careful investigator laid bare 
 before their eyes in minute detail the moduli ojierandi of 
 nature herself. 
 
 The main argument of Darwin's chief work runs 
 somewhat after the following fashion * : — 
 
 ' The remainder of the present chapter, which consists almost 
 entirely of an exposition of the doctrine of natural selection, may 
 safely be skipped by the reader already well accjuainted with the 
 
90 Charles Darwin 
 
 Variation, to a greater or less degree, is a common 
 and well-known fact in nature. ^lore especially, animals 
 and plants under domestication tend to vary from one 
 another far more than do the individuals of any one 
 species in the wild state. Kabbits in a warren are all 
 alike in shape, size, colour, and features : rabbits in a 
 hutch vary indefinitely in the hue of their fur, the 
 length of their efirs, the character of their coat, and half 
 a dozen other minor particulars, well known to the 
 observant souls of boys and fanciers. This great varia- 
 bility, though partly perhaps referable to excess of food, 
 is probably due on the whole to their having been 
 raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and 
 somewhat different from, those to which the parent 
 species is commonly exposed in a state of nature. In 
 other words, variability is one result of altered and more 
 varied surrounding circumstances. 
 
 Again, this variability is usually indefinite. You can- 
 not say what direction it will take, or to what particular 
 results it is likely in any special instance to lead. 
 Marked differences sometimes occur even between the 
 young of the same litter, or between the seedlings sown 
 from the same capsule. As a rule, the variations 
 exhibit themselves in connection with sexual reproduc- 
 tion ; but somethnes, as in the case of ' sporting plants,' 
 a new bud suddenly produces leaves or flowers of a 
 different character from the rest of those on the self- 
 same stem, thus showing that the tendency to vary is 
 inherent, as it were, in the organism itself. Upon this 
 
 Origin of Species. The abstract is taken for the most part from the 
 latest and fullest enlarged edition, but attention is usually called in 
 passing to the points which did not appear in the first issue of 185'J. 
 
^ The Origin of Species' 91 
 
 f'uiulainental fact ot'tlie exi><tence in iiatmv ot' nniiiprous 
 and indefinite variations, tlie whole theory of natural 
 selection is ultimately built up. In illustrating by ex- 
 ample the immense variability of domesticated creatures, 
 Darwin lays great stress upon the case of pigeons, 
 with which he was familiar from his long experience as 
 a breeder and fancier in his own home at IXiwn. 
 Naturalists are almost universally of opinion that all 
 the breeds of domestic pigeons, from the carrier to the 
 tumbler, from the runt to the fantail, are alike descended 
 from the wild rock pigeon of the IJuropean coasts. The 
 immense amount of variation which this original species 
 has undergone in domestication may be seen by com- 
 paring the numberless breeds of pigeon now exhibited 
 at all our poultry shows with one another. 
 
 But variation gives us only half the elements of 
 the ultimate problem, even in the case of domestic 
 kinds. For the other half, we must have recourse to 
 human selection, which, by picking out for seed or breed- 
 ing purposes certain specially fjivoured varieties, has pro- 
 duced at last all the purposive or intentional diversity 
 between the different existing stocks or breeds. In 
 these artificially produced domestic races we see every- 
 where special adaptations to man's particular use or 
 tancy. The dray-horse has been fashioned for purposes 
 of strength and sure-lbotedness in draught, the race- 
 horse for purposes of fleetness in running. In the fox- 
 hound, man has encouraged the special properties that 
 tend to produce a good day's hunting; in the sheep- 
 clog, those that make for the better maintenance and 
 safety of a herd. The cauliflower is a cabbage, with 
 specialised and somewhat abortive flower-heads ; the 
 
9^ Charles I^arwiN 
 
 fuller's teasel is u sport of the wild form, with curved 
 hooks specially adapted by a freak of nature for tlie 
 teasing of wool. So in every case man, by deliberately 
 picking out for breeding or seeding purposes the acci- 
 dental variations which happened best to suit his own 
 needs, has succeeded at last in producing races admirably 
 fitted in the minutest particulars for the special func- 
 tions to which they are applied. There appears indeed 
 to be hardly any limit to the almost infinite plasticity 
 and modifiability of domestic animals. ' It would seem,' 
 said a great sheep-breeder, speaking of sheep, ' as if 
 farmers had chalked out upon a wall a form perfect in 
 itself, and then proceeded to give it existence.' 
 
 Now, what is thus true within narrow limits, and in 
 a short space of time about the deliberate action of 
 man, Darwin showed to be also true within wider limits 
 and spread over longer geological epochs about the un- 
 conscious action of nature. And herein consisted his 
 great advance upon the earlier evolutionism of Lsimarck, 
 Goethe, and Erasnms Darwin. For while these instinc- 
 tive pioneers of the evolutionary spirit saw clearly that 
 auiuuds and plants betrayed signs of common descent 
 from one or a tew original ancestors, they did not see 
 what was the mechanism by which such organisms had 
 been differentiated into so many distinct genera and 
 species. They caught, indeed, at the analogy of varia- 
 tion under domestication and in the wild state, but they 
 missed the subtler and deeper analogy between human 
 and natural selection. Now, variation alone would give 
 us a world consisting not of definite kinds fairly w^ell 
 demarcated one from the other, but of innumerable un- 
 classified and unorganisable individuals, all shading off 
 
* Thf. Origin of Specifs ' 93 
 
 indefinitely one into the other, and incapable of beinj^ 
 reduced by human ingenuity to any orderly hierarchical 
 system. Furthermore, it would give us creatures with- 
 out special adaptation of any kind to the peculiar cir- 
 cumstances of their own environment. To account for 
 adaptation, for the almost perfect fitness of every 
 plant and every animal to its position in life, for the 
 existence (in other words) of definitely correlated parts 
 and organs, we must call in the aid of survival of the 
 fittest. Without that potent selective agent, our con- 
 ception of the becoming of life is a mere chaos ; order 
 and organisation are utterly inexplicable save by the 
 brilliant illuminating ray of the IDarwinian principle. 
 That is why Darwin destroyed at one blow the specious 
 arguments of the early teleologists ; he showed that 
 where Chambers and even Erasmus Darwin had seen 
 the working of a final cause, we ought rather to recog- 
 nise the working of an efficient cause, whose outcome 
 necessarily but fallaciously simulates the supposed fea- 
 tures of an a jrn'ori finality. 
 
 From art, then, Darwin harks back once more to 
 nature. He proceeds to show that variability occurs 
 among all wild plants and animals, though not so fre- 
 quently under ordinary circumstances as in the case of 
 domesticated species. Individual differences everywhere 
 occur between plant and plant, between animal and 
 animal. Sometimes these differences are so very 
 numerous that it is impossible to divide the individuals 
 at all into well-marked kinds ; for example, among 
 British wild-roses, brambles, hawkweeds and epilobes, 
 with a few other very variable families, Babington 
 makes as many as 251 distinct species, where Bentham 
 
94 CifARi F.s Darwin 
 
 ^ives only 112 — a mavgin of 130 doubtful forms of 
 shadowy indefiniteness. Varieties, in fact, are always 
 arising, and dominant species in particular always tend 
 to vary most in every direction. The reason why varia- 
 tion is not so marked in the wild state as under domes- 
 tication is of course because the conditions are there 
 less diverse ; but where the conditions of wild things 
 are most diverse, as in the case of dominant kinds, 
 which range over a wide space of country or of ocean, 
 abundant individual variations habitually occur. Local 
 varieties thus produced are regarded by Darwin as 
 incipient species : they are the raw material on which 
 natural selection gradually exerts itself in the struggle 
 for existence. 
 
 Granting individual variability, then, how do species 
 arise in nature ? And how are all the exquisite adapta- 
 tions of part to whole, and of whole to environment, 
 gradually initiated, improved, and perfected ? 
 
 Here ]\lalthus and the struggle for life come in to 
 help us. 
 
 For the world is perpetually over-populated. It is 
 not, as many good people fearfully imagine, on a half- 
 comprehension of the Malthusian principle, shortly 
 going to be over-populated ; it is now, it has always 
 been, and it will always be, pressed close up to the 
 utmost possible limit of population. Reproduction is 
 everywhere and in all species for ever outrunning means 
 of subsistence ; and starvation or competition is for 
 ever keeping down the number of the offspring to tlie 
 level of the av^erage or normal supply of raw material. 
 A single red campion produces in a year three thousand 
 seeds ; but there are not this year three thousand times 
 
' TiiF. OrKi/n or Srr.r/F.s 95 
 
 {IS many red campions as there were last summer, nor 
 will tliere be three thousunil times as manv more in the 
 succeetling season. The roe of a cod contains sometimes 
 nearly ten million ej^^s ; ^^n^" snpposin<>f eacli oi' these 
 produced a younu; fish which arrived at maturity, the 
 whole sea would immediutely become a solid mass of 
 closely packed codtish. Liuiuuus reckoned that it" an 
 anuual plant had two seeds, each of which produced two 
 seedlintjfs in the succeeding season, and so on continually, 
 in twenty years their progeny would amount to a million 
 plants. A struggle for existence necessarily results 
 from this universal tendency of animals and plants to 
 increase faster than the means of subsistence, whether 
 those means be food, as in the first case, or carbonic 
 acid, water, and sunshine as in the second. Animals 
 are all perpetually battling with one another for the 
 food-supply of the moment ; plants are perpetually bat- 
 tling with one another for their share of the soil, the 
 rainfall, and the sunshine. 
 
 The case of the plant is a very important one to 
 understand in this connection, because it is probable 
 that most people greatly misunderstand the biological 
 meaning of the phrase ' struggle for existence.' They 
 imagine that the struggle is chiefly conducted between 
 ditierent species, whereas in reality it is chiefly conducted 
 between members of the same species. It is not so 
 nmch the battle between the tiger and the antelope, 
 between the wolf and the bison, between the snake 
 and the bird, that ultimately results in natural selection 
 or surviyal of the fittest, as the struggle between tiger 
 and tiger, between bison and bison, between snake and 
 snake, between antelope and antelope. A human 
 
96 Charles Darwin 
 
 analogy may help to make this difiicalt principle a little 
 clearer. The baker does not fear the competition of 
 the butcher in the struggle for life : it is the competi- 
 tion of the other bakers that sometimes inexorably 
 crushes him out of existence. The lawyer does not 
 press hard upon the doctor, nor the architect upon the 
 journeyman painter. A war in the Soudan or in South 
 Africa is far less fatal to the workman in our great towns 
 than the ceaseless competition of his fellow-workmen. 
 It is not the soldier that kills the artisan, but the num- 
 ber of other artisans who undersell him and crowd to 
 fill up every vacant position. In this way the great 
 enemies of the individual herbivore are not the carnivores, 
 but the other herbivores. The lion eats the antelope, 
 to be sure ; but the real struggle lies between lion and 
 lion for a fair share of meat, or between antelope and 
 antelope for a fair share of pasturage. Ilomu homini 
 Iniim^ says the old proverb, and so, we may add, in a 
 wider sense, luiniH liqw lupim, also. Of course, the 
 cariuvore plays a great part in the selective process ; 
 but he is the selector only ; the real competition is be- 
 tween the selected. Now, let us take the case of the 
 plant. A thousand seedlings occupy the space where 
 few alone can ultimately grow ; and between these 
 seedlings the struggle is fierce, the strongest and best 
 adapted ultimately surviving. To take Darwin's own 
 example, the mistletoe, which is a parasite, cannot truly 
 be said to struggle with the apple tree on which it 
 fastens ; for if too many parasites cover a tree, it 
 perishes, and so they kill themselves as well as their 
 host, all alike dying together. But several seedling 
 mistletoes growing together on the same branch may 
 
' Tju-: Origix of Species' 97 
 
 fairly be said to struggle with one another for light and 
 air ; and since mistletoe seeds are disseminated by birds 
 and dropped by them in the angles of brandies, the 
 mistletoe may also be said to compete with other berry- 
 bearing bashes, like cornel and hawthorn, for the minis- 
 trations of the fruit-eatin": birds. The stru^fjifle is 
 fierce between allied kirids, and fiercest of all between 
 individual members of the same species. 
 
 Owing to this constant struggle, variations, however 
 slight, and from whatever cause arising, if in any degree 
 profitable to the individual which presents them, will 
 tend to the preservation of the particular organism, and, 
 being on the average inherited by its offspring, will 
 similarly tend to increase and multiply in the world at 
 large. This is the principle of natural selection or sur- 
 vival of the fittest — the great principle which Darwin 
 and Wallace added to the evolutionism of Lamarck and 
 his successors. 
 
 Let us take a single concrete example. In the 
 desert, with its monotonous sandy colouring, a black 
 insect or a white insect, still more a red insect or a blue 
 insect, would be immediately detected and promptly de- 
 voured by its natural enemies, the birds and lizards. 
 But any greyish or yellowish insects would be less likely 
 to attract attention at first sight, and would be over- 
 looked as long as there were any more conspicuous in- 
 dividuals of their own kind about for the birds and 
 hzards to feed on at their leisure. Hence, in a very 
 short time, the desert would be depopulated of all but 
 the greyest and yellowest insects ; and among these the 
 birds would pick out those which differed most markedly 
 iu hue or shade from the sand around them. Jhit those 
 
 II 
 
98 Charles Darwin 
 
 which happened to vary most in the direction of a sandy 
 or spotty colour would be most likely to survive, and to 
 become the parents of future generations. Thus, in the 
 course of long ages, all the insects which inhabit deserts 
 have become sand-coloured ; because the least sandv 
 were perpetually picked out for destruction by their 
 ever-watchful foes, while the most sandy escaped and 
 multiplied and replenished the earth with their own likes. 
 
 Conversely, the birds and the lizards ag.ain would 
 probably begin by being black, and white, and blue, and 
 green, like most other birds and lizards in the world 
 generally. But the insect would have ample warning 
 of the near approach of such conspicuous self-advertising 
 enemies, and would avoid them accordingly whenever 
 they appeared within range of his limited vision, either 
 by lying close, or by shamming death, or by retreating 
 precipitately to holes and crannies. Therefore, whatever 
 individual birds or lizards happened to vary most in the 
 direction of grey or sand-colour, and so to creep unob- 
 served upon the unguarded insects, would succeed best 
 on the average in catching beetles or desert grasshoppers. 
 Hence, by the slow dying out of the more highly 
 coloured and distinctive insect-eaters, before the severe 
 competition of the greyest and sandiest, all the birds and 
 lizards of the desert have become at last as absolutely 
 sand-coloured as the insects themselves. Only the gi'eyest 
 insect could escape the bird ; only the greyest bird, en 
 revanche, could surprise and devour the unwary insect. 
 
 Sir Charles Lyell and the elder De Candolle had 
 already seen the great importance of the struggle for 
 existence in the organic world, but neither of them had 
 observed the magnificent corollary of natural selection, 
 
' The Or mix or Spf.c/f.s ' 99 
 
 which flows from it ahnost as a mathematical necessity 
 when once suggested ; for, given indefinite variability, 
 and a geometrical rate of increase, it must needs 
 follow that some varieties will be better suited to the 
 circumstances than others, and therefore that they will 
 survive on the average in increased proportions. A 
 passage from one of LyelFs early letters will show how 
 near he too went to this i^reat luminous "'eneralisation, 
 and yet how utterly he missed the true implications of 
 liis own vague and chaotic idea. He writes thus to Sir 
 John Herschel in 1836, while Darwin was still but 
 homeward bound on the voyage of the ' Beagle ' : — 
 
 ' In regard to the origination of new species, I am 
 very glad to find that you think it probable that it may 
 be carried on through the intervention of intermediate 
 causes. . . . An insect may be made in one of its 
 transformations to resemble a dead stick, or a leaf, or a 
 lichen, or a stone, so as to be somewhat less easily 
 found by its enemies ; or if this would make it too 
 strong, an occasional variety of the species may have 
 this advantage conferred on it ; or if this would be still 
 too much, one sex of a certain variety. Probably there 
 is scarcely a dash of colour on the wing or body of 
 which the choice would be quite arbitrary, or which 
 might not affect its duration for thousands of years.' 
 
 Now, this comes in some ways perilously near to 
 Darwin indeed ; but in the most important point of all 
 it is wide apart from him as the pole is from the 
 equator. For Lyell thought of all this as a matter of 
 external teleological arrangement ; he imagined a de- 
 liberate power from outside settling it all by design 
 beforehand, and granting to varieties or species these 
 
 H 2 
 
lOO Charles Darwin 
 
 special peculiarities in a manner that was at bottom 
 essentially supernatural, or in other words miraculous ; 
 whereas Darwin thinks of it as the necessary result of 
 the circumstances themselves, an inevitable outcome of 
 indefinite variability flm the geometrical rate of in- 
 crease. Where Lyell sees a final cause, Darwin sees an 
 eflficient cause ; and this distinction is fundamental. It 
 marks Darwin's position as that of a great philosophi- 
 cal thinker, who can dash aside at once all metaphysical 
 cobwebs, and penetrate to the inmost recesses of things, 
 unswerved by the vain but specious allurements of 
 obvious and misleading teleological fallacies. 
 
 Darwin also laid great stress on the immense com- 
 plexity of the relations which animals and plants bear 
 to one another, in the struggle for existence. For 
 example, on the heathy uplands near Farnham in 
 Surrey, large spaces were at one time enclosed, on 
 which, within ten years, self-grown fir-trees from the 
 wind-borne seeds of distant clumps sprang up so 
 thickly as actually to choke one another with their tiny 
 branches. All over the heaths outside, when Darwin 
 looked for them, he could not find a single fir, except 
 the old clumps on the hilltops, from which the seedlings 
 themselves had originally sprung. But, on looking 
 closer among the stems of the heath, he descried a 
 number of very tiny firs, which had been perpetually 
 browsed down by the cattle on the commons ; and one 
 of them, with twenty-six rings of growth, had during 
 many years endeavoured unsuccessfully to raise its 
 head above the surrounding heather. Hence, as soon 
 as the land was enclosed, and the cattle excluded, it 
 became covered at once with a thick growth of vigorous 
 
'The Origin of Specius' ioi 
 
 younpf fir-trees. Yet who would ever liave supposed 
 beforehand that the mere presence or absence of cattle 
 would absolutt^lv have determined the very existence of 
 the Scotch fir throughout a wide range of well-adapted 
 sandy English upland ? 
 
 To take another curious instance mentioned by 
 Darwin. In Paraguay, unlike the greater part of 
 neighbouring South America, neither horses nor cattle 
 liave ever run wild. This is due to the presence of a 
 parasitic fly, which lays its eggs in their bodies when first 
 born, the maggots killing off the tender young in their 
 first stages. But if any cause were to alter the number 
 of the dangerous flies, then cattle and wild horses would 
 abound; and this would alter the vegetation, as Darwin 
 himself observed in other parts of America ; and the 
 change in the vegetation would affect the insects ; and 
 that again the insectivorous birds ; and so on in ever 
 widening circles of incalculable complexity. Once 
 more, to quote the most famous instance of all, the 
 visits of humble-bees are absolutelv necessary in order 
 to place the pollen in the right position for setting the 
 seeds of purple clover. Heads from which Darwin 
 excluded the bees produced no seeds at all. Hence, if 
 humble-bees became extinct in England, the red clover, 
 too, would die ofi": and indeed, in New Zealand, where 
 there are no humble-bees, and where the efforts to 
 introduce them for this very purpose have been uni- 
 formly unsuccessful, the clover never sets its seed at 
 all, and fresh stocks have to be imported at great ex- 
 pense every year from Europe. But the number of 
 humble-bees in any district largely depends upon the 
 number of field-mice, which destroy the combs and 
 
102 Char/.p.s Darwin 
 
 nosfs ill iininonsp qnantities. The number of mice, 
 again, is greatly affected by the pvopoi*tion of cats in 
 the neiglibourhood ; so that Colonel Newman, who paid 
 mnch attention to this subject, found humble-bees most 
 numerous in the neighbourhood of villages and small 
 towns, an effect which he attributed to the .ibundance 
 of cats, and the consequent scarcity of the destructive 
 field-mice. Yet here once more, who could suppose 
 beforehand that the degree to which the purple clover 
 set its seeds was in part determined by the number of 
 cats kept in houses in the surrounding district ? 
 
 One of Darwin's own favourite examples of the 
 action of natural selection, which he afterwards ex- 
 panded largely in his work on Orchids and in several 
 other volumes, is that which relates to the origin of 
 conspicuous flowers. Many plants have a sweet excre- 
 tion, which is eliminated sometimes even by the leaves, 
 as in the case of the common laurel. This juice, though 
 small in quantity, is eagerly sought and eaten by insects. 
 Now let us suppose that, in some variety of an incon- 
 spicuous flower, similar nectar was produced in the 
 neighbourhood of the petals and stamens. Insects, in 
 seeking the nectar, would dust their bodies over with 
 the pollen, and would carry it awaj' with them to the 
 next flow^er visited. This would result in an act of 
 crossing ; and that act, as Darwin afterwards abundantly 
 proved in a separate and very laborious treatise, gives 
 rise to exceptionally vigorous seedlings, which would 
 therefore have the best chance of flourishing and sur- 
 viving in the struggle for existence. The flowers which 
 produced most hone}' would oftenest be visited, and 
 oftenest crossed ; so that they would finally form a new 
 
* The Origin of Species^ 103 
 
 species. The more brightly coloured among them, 
 again, would be more readily discriminated than the 
 less brightly coloured ; and this would give them such 
 an advantage that in the long run, as we actually see, 
 almost all habituallv insect-fertilised flowers would come 
 to liave brilliant petals. The germ of this luminous 
 ideji, once more, is to be found in Sprengel's remarkable 
 work on the fertilisation of flowers — a work far in 
 advance of its time in many ways, and to which Darwin 
 always expressed his deep obligations ; but, as in so 
 many other instances, while Sprengel looked upon all 
 the little modifications and adaptations of flower and 
 insect to one another as the result of distinct creative 
 design, Darwin looked upon them as the result of 
 natural selection, working upon the basis of indeter- 
 luinate spontaneous variations. 
 
 How do these variations arise ? Not by chance, of 
 course (for in the strict scientific sense nothing on earth 
 can be considered as really fortuitous), but as the out- 
 come for the most part of very minute organic causes, 
 whose particular action it is impossible for us to predict 
 with our present knowledge. Some physical cause in 
 each case there must necessarily be ; and indeed it is 
 often possible to show that certain changes of condition 
 in the parent do result in variations in the off*spring, 
 though what special direction the variation will take 
 can never be foretold with any accuracy. In short, our 
 ignorance of the laws of variation is profound, but our 
 knowledge of the tact is clear and certain. The fact 
 alone is essential to the principle of natural selection ; 
 the cause, though in itself an interesting subject of 
 inquiry, may be safely laid aside for the present as com- 
 
104 Chart.es Darwin 
 
 purativoly uniniportiiiit. What we liuve achiially <^-iven 
 to us in the concrete universe is, organisms varying 
 perpetually in minute points, and a rapid rate of in- 
 crease causing every minute point of advantage to be 
 exceptionally favoured in tlie struggle for existence. 
 
 J^ut Darwin is remarkable amonff all broachers of 
 new theories for the extraordinary candour and open- 
 ness of liis method, tie acknowledged beforehand all 
 the difficulties in the wav of his theory, and thoujifh he 
 himself confessed tliat some of them were serious (a 
 statement which subsequent research has often rendered 
 unnecessaiy), he met many of them with cogent argu- 
 ments by anticipation, and demolished objections before 
 they could even be raised against him by hostile critics. 
 Of these objections, only two need here be mentioned. 
 The first is the question, why is not all nature even now 
 a confused mass of transitional forms ? Why do generji 
 and species exist as we see them at present in broad 
 distinction one from the other? To this Darwin 
 answers rightly that, where the process of species- 
 making is still going on, we do actually find fine grada- 
 tions and transitional forms existing between genera, 
 varieties, and species.' But, furthermore, as natural 
 selection acts solely bv the preservation of useful modi- 
 fications, each better-adapted new form will always tend 
 in a fully stocked country to oust and exterminate its 
 own unimproved parent type, as well as all other 
 competing but less perfect varieties. Thus natural 
 selection and extinction of intermediates ^(:> for ever 
 
 ' The researches of Seebohm and others hjive since proved that 
 this Is really the case to a far greater extent than Darwin was awai'e 
 of in 185y, or, indeed, till many years afterward. 
 
* Tub Origin of Species' 105 
 
 hand in hand. Tlio more pcrfec't tht' new varicfy, tlic 
 more absolutely will it kill ott' the intermediate forms. 
 The second great difficulty lies in the question of the 
 origin of instinct, which, as Darwin shows, by careful 
 inductive instances, may have arisen by the slow and 
 gradual accumulation of numerous slight 3-et profitable 
 variations. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length upon those portions of 
 the ' Origin of Species ' which deal in detail with the 
 theor}' of natural selection, the chief contribution which 
 Darwin made to the evolutionary movement, bt^cause it 
 is impossible otherwise fully to understand the great 
 gulf which separates his evolutionism from the earlier 
 evolutionism of Lamarck and his followers. But it is 
 impracticable here to give any idea of the immense wealth 
 of example and illustration which Darwin brought to 
 the elucidation of every part of his complex problem. 
 In order to gain a full conception of this side of his 
 nature, we must turn to the original treatise itself, and 
 still more to the subsequent volumes in which the 
 ground-work of observations and experiments on which 
 he based his theory was more fully detailed for the 
 specialist public. 
 
 The rem.'iindi'r of Darwin's epoch-making work deals, 
 strictly sjieaking, rather with the general theory of 
 'descent with modification' than with the special doc- 
 trine of natural selection. It restates and reinforces, 
 by the light of the new additional concept, and with 
 fuller facts and later knowledge, the four great argu- 
 ments alreadv known in favour of oryanic evolution as 
 u whole, the argument from Geological Succession, the 
 argument from Geographical Distribution, the argument 
 
io6 CitARi.F.s Darwin 
 
 from l']inbry()l()giciil Duvelopnient, aiul the argument 
 from Classificatory Affinities. Each of these we may 
 briefly summarise. 
 
 The geological record is confessedly imperfect. At 
 the time when Darwin first published the ' Origin of 
 Species,' it had disclosed to our view comparatively few 
 intermediate or transitional forms between the chief 
 great chisses of plants or animals ; since that time, in 
 singular confirmation of the Darwinian hypothesis, it 
 has disclosed an immense number of such connecting 
 types, amongst which may be more particularly noticed 
 the ' missing links ' between the birds and reptiles, the 
 ancestors of the horses, the camels, and the pigs, jmd 
 tlie common progenitor of the ruminants and the 
 pachyderms, two great groups classed by Cuvier as 
 distinct orders — all of which instances were incorporated 
 by Darwin in later editions of his ' Origin of Species.' 
 But, apart from these special and newly discovered cases, 
 the whole general course of geological history ' agrees 
 admirably with the theory of descent with modification 
 through variation and natural selection.' The simpler 
 aninuds of early times are followed by the more complex 
 and more specialised animals of later geological periods. 
 As each nuiin group of animals appears upon the stage 
 of life, it appears in a very central and ' generalised ' 
 form ; as time goes on, we find its various members 
 differing more and more widely from one another, and 
 assuming more and more specialised adaptive forms. 
 And in each country it is found, as a rule, that the 
 extinct animals of the later formations bear a close 
 general resemblance and relationship to the animals 
 which now inhabit the same regions. For example. 
 
' The Origin of Species* 107 
 
 tlie fossil mammals from the Australian caves aiv nearly 
 allied to the modern kantrarooa. ]ihalanfrers, and wom- 
 bats; and the «^''i<>antic extinct sloths and armadillos 
 of South America are reproduced in their smaller repre- 
 sentatives at the present day. So, too, the moa of 
 New Zealand was a huge apteryx ; and the birds dis- 
 entombed from the bone-caves of lira/il show close 
 affinities to the toucans and jaca^^ars that still scream 
 and flit in countless flocks amon<jf Brazilian forests. 
 The obvious implication is that the animals now in- 
 habiting any given area are the modified descendants 
 of those that formerly inhabited it. ' On the theory 
 of descent with modification, the grejit law of the suc- 
 cession of the same types within the same areas is at 
 once explained.' 
 
 This last consideration leads us up to the argument 
 from Geographical Distribution. In considering the 
 various local faunas and floras on the face of the globe, 
 no point strikes one more forcibly than the fact that 
 neither their similarities nor their dissimilarities can be 
 accounted for bv climate or physical conditions. The 
 animals of South Africa do not in the least resendjle 
 the animalsof the corresponding belt of South America; 
 the Australian beasts and birds and trees are utterly 
 unlike those of France and Germany ; the fishes and 
 crustaceans of the Pacific at Panama are widely different 
 from those of the Caribbean at the same point, sepa- 
 rated from them only by the narrow belt of intervening 
 isthmus. On the other hand, within the same con- 
 tinuous areas of sea or land, however great the ditter- 
 ences of physical conditions, we find everywhere closely 
 related types in possession of the most distinct and 
 
io8 C//AAW.F.S Darwin 
 
 varit»(l situationa. On flic biirniiipf plains of La Plata 
 we get tlie agouti ami the bizcacIiaaH the chief rodents; 
 we ascend the Cordillera, and close to the eternal snows 
 we discover, not hares and rabbits like those of Knrope, 
 but a specialised chilly mountain form of the same 
 distinctly Sonth American type. We turn to the 
 rivers, and we see no nmsk-rat or beaver, but the 
 coypu and capybara, slightly altered varieties of the 
 original bizcacha ancestor. Australia has no wolf, but 
 it has instead fierce and active carnivorous marsupials ; 
 it has no mice, but some of its tiny kangaroo-like 
 creatures fulfil analogous functions in its animal 
 economy. Everywhere the evidence points to the con- 
 clusion that local species luive been locally evolved from 
 jDre-existing similar species. The oceanic isles, of which 
 Darwin had had so large an experience., and especially 
 his old friends the Galapagos, come in usefully for this 
 stage of the (question. They are invariably inhabited, 
 as Darwin pointed out, and as Wallace has since 
 abundantly shown in the minutest detail, by waifs 
 and strays from neighbouring continents, altered and 
 specialised by natural selection in accordance with the 
 conditions of their new habitat. As a rule, they point 
 back to the districts whence blow the strongest and 
 most prevalent winds ; and the modifications they have 
 undergone are largely dependent upon the nature of 
 the other species with which they have to compete, or 
 to whose habits they must needs accommodate them- 
 selves. In such cases it is easy to see how far Darwin's 
 special conception of natural selection helps to explain 
 and account for facts not easily explicable by the older 
 evolutionism of mere descent with modification. 
 
' Till: Origin or Sp/:c/i-.s' ioo 
 
 Kiii])ryol()<>fy, tlu^ study of early (Ifvclojimont in the 
 individual animal or plant, also throws much side light 
 upon the nature and ancestry of each species or family. 
 For example, gorse, which is a member of the Tv-n 
 flower tribe, lias in its adult sta<2fe solid, spiny, thorn-nKo 
 leaves, none of which in the least resemble the folia<i^e 
 of the clover, to which it is closely related ; but tlie 
 young" seedling in its earliest stages has trefoil leaves, 
 which only slowly pass by infinitesimal gradations into 
 flat blades and fituilly into the familiar defensive 
 prickles. Here, natural selection under stress of 
 herbivorous animals on open heaths and commons lias 
 spared only those particular gorse-bushes which varied 
 in the direction of the stiffest and most inedible 
 foliage ; but the young plant in its first days still pre- 
 serves for us the trefoil leaf which it shared originally 
 with a vast group of clover-like congeners. The adult 
 barnacle, once more, presents a certain fallacious ex- 
 ternjd resemblance to a mollusk, and was actually so 
 classed even by the penetrating and systematic intellect 
 of Cuvier ; but a glance at the larva shows an instructed 
 eye at once that it is really a shell-making and abnormal 
 crustacean. On a wider scale, the embryos of mammals 
 are at first indistinguishable from those of birds or 
 reptiles ; the feet of lizards, the hoofs of horses, the 
 hands of man, the wings of the bat, the pinions of 
 birds, all arise from the same fundamental shapeless 
 bud, in the same spot of an almost identical embryo. 
 Even the human foetus, at a certain stage of its develop- 
 ment, is provided with gill-slits, which point dimly back 
 to the remote ages when its ancestor was something 
 very like a fish. The embryo is a picture, more or less 
 
1 10 Charles Darwin 
 
 obscured and blurred in its outline, of the common 
 progenitor of a whole great class of plants or animals. 
 
 Finally, classification points in the same way to the 
 afiiliation of all existing genera and species upon certain 
 early divergent ancestors. The whole scheme of the 
 biological system, jis initiated by Linna3us and improved 
 by Cuvier, Jussieu, De Candolle, and their successors, 
 is essentially that of a genealogical tree. The prime 
 central vertebrate ancestor — to take the case of the 
 creatures most familiar to the general reader — appears 
 to have been an animal not uidike the existing lancelet, 
 a mud-haunting, cartilaginous, undeveloped fish, whose 
 main lineaments are also embryologically preserved for 
 us in the ascidian larva and the common tadpole. 
 From this early common centre have been developed, 
 apparently, in one direction the fishes, and in another 
 the amphibian tribes of frogs, newts, salamanders, and 
 axolotls. From an early amphibian, again, the connnon 
 ancestor of birds, reptiles, and mammals seems to have 
 diverged : the intermediate links between bird and 
 reptile being faintly traced among the extinct deino- 
 saurians and the archasopteryx, some years subsequently 
 to the first appearance of the ' Origin of Species ; ' while 
 the ornithorhyncus, which to some extent connects the 
 mammals, and especially the marsupials, with the lower 
 egg-laying types of vertebrate, was already Avell-known 
 and thoroughly stuilied before the publication of 
 Darwin's great work. Throughout, the indications 
 given ])y all the chief tribes of aninuils and plants point 
 back to slow descent and divergence from common 
 ancestors ; and all the subsequent course of paljDonto- 
 logical research has supplied us rapidly, one after 
 
* TiiF. Okigin of Species ' 1 1 1 
 
 {mother, with the remains of just such undifferentiated 
 family starting-points. 
 
 Stress has mainly been laid, in this brief and neces- 
 sarily imperfect .abstract, on the essentially Darwinian 
 principle of natural selection, T3ut Darwin did not 
 himself attribute everything to this potent factor in the 
 moulding of species. ' 1 am convinced,' he wrote 
 pointedly in the introduction to his first edition, * that 
 natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive 
 means of modification.' lie attributed considerable 
 importance as W(^ll to the Lamarckian principle of use 
 and disuse, already so fully insisted upon before him by 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer. The chief factors in his compound 
 theory, as given in his own words at the end of his work, 
 are as follows : ' Growth with Reproduction ; Inheritance, 
 which is almost implied by reproduction ; N^ariability, 
 from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of 
 life, and from use and disuse ; a Ratio of Increase, so 
 high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a conse- 
 quence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of 
 Character, and the Extinction of the less improved 
 forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and 
 death, the most exalted object which we are capable of 
 conceiving, namely, the production of the higher 
 animals, directlv follows.' 
 
 Such w\as the simple and inoffensive-looking bomb- 
 shell which Darwin launched from his quiet home at 
 Down into the very midst of the teleological camp in 
 the peaceful year 1859. Subsequent generations will 
 remember the date as a crisis and turning-point in the 
 history of mankind. 
 
112 Charles Darwin 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE DAinVINIAN REVOLUTION BEGINS. 
 
 So far as tlie scientific world was concerned the ' Origin 
 of Species ' fell, like a grain of mustard seed, upon 
 good and weli-prepared ground ; tlie plant that sprang 
 from it grew up forthwith into a great and stately tree, 
 that overshadowed with its spreading branches all the 
 corners of the earth. 
 
 The soil, indeed, had been carefully broken for it 
 beforehand : Lamarck and St. Hilaire, Spencer and 
 Chambers, had ploughed and harrowed in all diligence ; 
 and the minds of men were thoroughly ready for the 
 assimilation of the new doctrine. But the seed itself, 
 too, was the right germ for the exact moment ; it con- 
 tained within itself the vivifying principle that enabled 
 it to grow and wax exceeding great where kindred 
 germs before had withered away, or had borne but 
 scanty and inunature fruit. 
 
 Two conditions contributed to this result, one ex- 
 ternal, the other internal. 
 
 First for the less important external consideration. 
 Darwin himself was a sound man with an established 
 reputation for solidity and learning. That gained for 
 his theory from the very first outset universal respect 
 
The DARWiNiAy Rrvoi.ution Begins 113 
 
 and a fair liea,rlng. Herbert Spencer was known to be 
 a philosopher : and the practical Englis^h nation mis- 
 trusts philosophers : those people probe too deep and soar 
 too high for any sensible person to follow them in all 
 their flights. Robert Chambers, the unknown author of 
 ' Vestiges of Creation,' was a shallow sciolist ; it was 
 whispered abroad that he was even inaccurate and 
 slovenly in his facts : and your scientific plodder detests 
 the very shadow of minute inaccuracy, though it speak 
 with the tongues of men and angels, and be bound up 
 with all the grasp and power of a Newton or a (loethe. 
 But Charles Darwin was a known personage, an F.R.S., 
 a distinguished authority upon coral reefs and barnacles, 
 a great geologist, a great biologist, a great observer and 
 indefatigable collector. His book came into the public 
 hands stamped with the imprimatui* of official recogni- 
 tion. Darwin was the father of tlie infant theory ; 
 Lyell and Hooker stood for its sponsors. The world 
 could not afford to despise its contents ; they could not 
 brand its author offhand as a clever dreamer or a foolish 
 amateur, or consign him to the dreaded h^nglish limbo 
 of the ' mere theorist.' 
 
 Next, for the other and far more important internal 
 consideration. The book itself was one of the greatest, 
 the most learned, the most lucid, the most logical, the 
 most crushing, the most conclusive, that the world had 
 ever yet seen. Step by step, jmd principle by principle, 
 it proved every point in its progress triumphantly 
 before it went on to demonstrate the next. So vast an 
 array of facts so thoroughly in hand had never before 
 been nuistered and marsludled in favour of any bio- 
 logical theory. Those who had insight to learn and 
 
 I 
 
114 Charles Darwin 
 
 nnclerstaiid were convinced at once bv the cocencv of 
 the argument ; those who had not were overpowered 
 and silenced by the weight of the authority and the 
 mass of tlie learning. A hot battle burst forth at once, 
 no doubt, around the successful volume ; but it was one 
 of those battles which are aroused only by great truths, 
 — a battle in which the victory is a foregone conclusion, 
 and the rancour of the assailants the highest compliment 
 to the prowess of the assailed. 
 
 Darwin himself, in his quiet country home at Down, 
 was simply astonished at the rapid success of his own 
 work. The first edition was published at the end of 
 November 1859 ; it was exhausted almost immediately, 
 and a second was got ready in hot liaste by the beginning 
 of Januarv 18G0. In less than six weeks th(» book had 
 become famous, and Darwin found himself the centre of 
 a European contest, waged with exceeding bitterness, 
 over the truth or falsity of his wonderful volume. To the 
 world at large Darwinism and evolution became at once 
 synonymous terms. The same people who would entirely 
 ascribe the Protestant Reformation to the account of 
 TiUther, and the inductive philosophy to the account of 
 Bacon, also believed, in the simplicity of their hearts, that 
 the whole vast evolutionary movement was due at bottom 
 to that very insidious and dangerous book of 3Ir. Darwin's. 
 The fact is, profound as had been the impulses in 
 the evolutionarv direction amongf men of science before 
 Darwin's work appeared at all, immense as were the 
 throes and pangs of labour throughout all Europe which 
 preceded and accompanied its actual birth, when it 
 came at last it came to the general world of unscientific 
 readers with all the sudden vividness and novelty of a 
 
The Darwinfan Rei'qlution Begins 115 
 
 tremendous earthquake. Long predestined, it was yet 
 wholly unexpected, ^[en at large had known nothing or 
 next to nothing of this colossal but hidden revolutionary 
 force which had been gathering head and energy for so 
 many years unseen within the bowels of the earth ; and 
 now that its outer manifestation had actually burst 
 upon them, they felt the solid ground of dogmatic 
 security bodily giving way beneath their feet, and knew 
 not where to turn in their extremity for support. 
 Naturally, it was the theological interest that felt itself 
 at first most forcibly assailed. The first few chapters of 
 Genesis, or rather the belief in their scientific and his- 
 torical character, already sapped by the revelations of 
 geology, seemed to orthodox defenders to be fatally 
 undermined if the Darwinian hypothesis were once 
 to meet with general recognition. The first resource 
 of menaced orthodoxy is always to deny the alleged 
 facts ; the second is to patch up tardily the feeble 
 and hollow inodiiK vlvcncU of an artificial ]:)act. On 
 this occasion the orthodox acted strictly after their 
 kind : but to their credit it should be added that they 
 yielded gracefully in the long run to the unanimous 
 voice of scientific opinion. Twenty-three years later, 
 when all that was mortal of Charles Darwin was being 
 borne with pomp and pageantry to its last resting- 
 place in Westminster Abbey, enlightened orthodoxy, 
 with generous oblivion, ratified a truce over the dead 
 body of the great leader, and, outgrowing its original 
 dread of naturalistic interpretations, accepted his theory 
 without reserve as ' not necessarily hostile to the main 
 fundamental truths of religion.' J^et us render justice 
 to the vanquished in a memorable struggle. Churchmen 
 
 I 2 
 
Ii6 CiiARf.Rs Darwin 
 
 followed respectfully to the grave wjtli frank and noble 
 inconsistency the honoured remains of the very teacher 
 whom less than ji quarter of a century earlier they had 
 naturally dreaded as loosening the traditional foundations 
 of all accepted religion and morality. 
 
 But if the attack was fierce and bitter, the defence 
 was assisted by a sudden access of powerful forces from 
 friendly quarters. A few of the elder generation of 
 naturalists held out, indeed, for various shorter or longer 
 periods; some of them never came into the camp at all, 
 but lingered on, left behind, like stragglers from the 
 onward march, by the younger biologists, in isolated non- 
 conformity on the lonely heights of austere officialism. 
 Tlieir business was to ticket and docket and pigeon-hole, 
 not to venture abroad on untried wings into the airy 
 regions of philosophical speculation. The elder men, 
 in fact, had many of them lost that elasticity and modi- 
 fiability of intellect which is necessary for the reception 
 of new and revolutionary fundamental concepts. A mind 
 that has hardened down into the last stage of extreme 
 maturity may assimilate fresh facts and fresh minor 
 principles, but it cannot assimilate fresh synthetic sys- 
 tems of the entire cosmos. Moreover, some of the elder 
 thinkers were committed beforehand to opposing views, 
 with which they lacked either the courage or the in- 
 tellectual power to break ; while others were entangled 
 by religious restrictions, and unable to free themselves 
 from the cramping fetters of a narrow orthodoxy. 
 But even among his own contempor.iries and seniors 
 Darwin found not a few whose minds were thoroughly 
 prepared beforehand for the reception of his lucid 
 and luminous hypothesis ; while the younger' natural- 
 
The Darwinian Revolution Begins iiy 
 
 ists, with tlie plasticity of yontli, assimilated almost 
 to a man, with the utmost avidity, the great truths 
 thus showered down upon them by the preacher of 
 evolution. 
 
 Sir Joseph Hooker and T'rofessor Huxley were among 
 the first to give in their adhesion and stand up boldly 
 for the new truth by the side of the reckless and dis- 
 turbing: innovator. In June 1859, nearlv a vear after 
 the reading of the Darwin- Wallace papers at the Linnean 
 Society, but five months previously to the publication 
 of the ' Origin of Species,' Huxley lectured at the Royal 
 Institution on ' l^ersistent Types of Animal Life,' and 
 declared against the old barren theory of successive 
 creations, in favour of the new and fruitful hypothesis 
 of gradual modification. In December 1 859, a month 
 later than the appearance of Darwin's book, Hooker 
 published his ' Introduction to the Flora of Australia,' 
 in the first part of which he championed the belief in 
 the descent and modification of species, and enforced 
 his views by many original observations drawn from the 
 domain of botanical science. For fifteen years, as Darwin 
 himself gratefully observed in his introduction to the 
 ' Origin of Species,' that learned botanist had shared 
 the secret of natural selection, and aided its author in 
 ev^ery possible way by his large stores of knowledge 
 and his excellent judgment. Bates, the naturalist on 
 the Amazons, followed fast with his beantiful and striking 
 theory of mimicry, a crucial instance well explained. 
 The facts of the strange disguises which birds and 
 insects often assume had long been present to his acute 
 mind, and he hailed with delight the discovery of the 
 new principle, which at once enabled him to rednce 
 
ii8 Charles Darwin 
 
 them with ease to symmetry and order. 'Po Herbert 
 Spencer, an evolutionist in fibre from tlie very beginning, 
 tlie fresh doctrine of natural selection came like a power- 
 ful ally and an unexpected assistant in deciphering the 
 deep fundamental problems on which he was at that 
 moment actually engaged ; and in liis ' Principles of 
 Biology,' even then in contemplation, he at once adopted 
 and utilised the new truth with all the keen and vigorous 
 iiisi<rht of his profound analvtic and synthetic intellect. 
 The first part of that important work was issued to 
 subscribers just three years after the original appearance 
 of the ' Origin of Species ; ' the first volume was fully 
 completed in October 1864. It is to Mr. Spencer that 
 we owe the pellucid expression ' survival of the fittest,' 
 wliich conveys even better than Darwin's own phrase, 
 ' natural selection,' the essential element added by the 
 ' Origin of Species ' to the pre-existing evolutionary 
 conception. 
 
 Tlie British Association for the Advancement of 
 Science held its big annual doctrinaire picnic the next 
 summer after the publication of Darwin's book, at 
 Oxford. The Oxford meeting was a stormy and a well- 
 remembered one. The ' Origin of Species ' was there 
 discussed and attacked before a biological section 
 strangely enough presided over by Darwin's old 
 Cambridge teacher. Professor Henslow. Though then 
 a beneficed parish priest, Henslow had the boldness 
 frankly to avow his own acceptance of his great pupil's 
 startling conclusions. Huxley followed in the same 
 path, as did also Lubbock and Hooker. On the whole, 
 the evolutionists were already in the ascendant ; the 
 fresh young intellects especially being quick to seize 
 
The Darw lmax Ri:\'ni.uTiox Begins 119 
 
 upon the new pahuliim so generously dealt out to tliem 
 by the new evolutionism. 
 
 Among scientific minds of the first order, Lyell 
 alone in England, lieavily weiglited by theological pre- 
 conceptions, for awhile hung back. All his life long, 
 as his letters show us, the great geologist had felt the 
 powerful spell of the Lamarckiau hypothesis continually 
 enticing him with its seductive charm. He had fought 
 against it blindly, in the passionate endeavour to pre- 
 serve what he thought his higher faitli in the separate 
 and divine creation of man ; but ever and anon he 
 returned anew to the biological Circe with a fresh fasci- 
 nation, as the moth returns to the beautiful flame that 
 has scorched and singed it. In a well-known passage 
 in the earlier editions of his ' l*rinciples of Geology,' 
 the father of uniformitarianism gives at length his own 
 reasons for dissenting from the doctrine of evolution as 
 then set forth ; and even after Darwin's discovery had 
 supplied him with a new clue, a vctxi causa, a sufficient 
 power for the modification of species into fresh forms, 
 theological difficulties nuide him cling still as long as 
 possible to the old theory of the origin of man which 
 he loved to describe as that of the ' archangel ruined.' 
 He was loth to «^xchange this cherished belief for the 
 degrading alternative (as it approved itself to him) of 
 the ape elevated. But in the end, with the fearless 
 honesty of a searcher after truth, he gave way slowly 
 and regretfully. Always looking back with something 
 like remorse to the flesh-pots of the ecclesiastical Egypt, 
 with its enticing visions of fallen grandeur, the great 
 thinker whose uniformitarian theory of geology had 
 more than aught else paved the way for the gradual 
 
120 Charles Darwin 
 
 acceptance of Danvin's evolutionism, came out at last 
 from the house of bondaj]fe, and nobly ranged himself 
 on the side of what his intellect judged to be the truth 
 of nature, thougli his emotions urged him hard to blind 
 liis judgment and to neglect its lights for an emotional 
 figment. Science has no uiore pathetic figure than 
 that of the old philoso]iher, in his sixty-sixth year, 
 tlirowiug himself with all tlit^ eagerness of youth into 
 what he had long considered the wrong scale, and 
 vigorously wrecking in tlie ' Antiquity of ^lan ' what 
 seemed to the dinnned vision of his own emotioiud 
 nature the very foundations of his beloved creed. But 
 still he did it. He came out and was separate. In his 
 own idiomatic language, he found at last that ' we nuist 
 go the whole ourang ; ' and, deep as was the pang that 
 the recantation cost liim, lie formally retracted the con- 
 demnation of ' transforniism * in his earlier works, and 
 accepted, however unwillingly, the theory he had so 
 often and so deliberately rejected. 
 
 The ' Antiquity of ]Man ' came out in February 
 18G3, some three years after tlie 'Origin of Species.' 
 For some time speculation had been active over the 
 strange hatchets which Boucher de Perthes had recently 
 uneai'thed among the Abbeville drift — shapeless masses 
 of chipped Hint rudely fashioned into the form of an axe, 
 which we now call pakeolithic implements, and know to 
 be the handicraft of preglacial men. But until Lyell's 
 authoritative work appeared the unscientitic public could 
 not tell exactly what to think of these curious and almost 
 unhumau-looking objects. Lyell at once set all doubts 
 at rest ; the magic of his name silenced the derisive 
 whispers of the dissidents. Already, in the previous year, 
 
The Darwinian Rrvolution Begins 121 
 
 tlie first fasciculus of Colenso's fuuious work on llic 
 J'entatcucli had dealt a serious blow from tlic ecclesias- 
 tical and critical side at the authenticity and historical 
 truth f)f the Mosaic cosmogony. Lyell now from the 
 scientific side completely demolished its literal truth, as 
 ordinarily interpreted, by throwing l)ack tlu^ ])rimitive 
 origin of our race into a dim past of immeasui'able anti- 
 quity. In so doing he was clearing the way for Charles 
 Darwin's second great work, ' Tlie Descent of Man ; ' 
 and by incorporating in his book Huxley's remarks on 
 the Neanderthal skull, and nuicli similar evolutionarv 
 matter, he advertised the new creed in the aninud 
 origin of our race with all the ac({uired weight ol' his 
 innnense and justly-deserved European reputation. As 
 a matter of taste, Lyell did not relish the application of 
 evolutionism to his own species. But, with that perfect 
 loyalty to fact which he shared so completely with 
 Charles Darwin, as soon as he found the evidence over- 
 whelming, he gave in. By that grudging concession 
 he immensely strengthened the position of the new 
 creed. ' I plead guilty,' he writes to Sir Joseph 
 Hooker, * to going farther in my reasoning towards 
 transnnitation than in my sentiments and imagination, 
 and perhaps for that very reason I shall lead moi'e 
 people on to Darwin and you, than one who, being born 
 later, like Lubbock, has comparatively little to abandon 
 of old and long-cherished ideas, which constituted the 
 charm to me of the theoretical part of the science in my 
 earlier days.' And to Darwin liimself he writes re- 
 gretfully. ' The descent of man from the brutes t.akes 
 away nuich of the charm from my speculations on the 
 past relating to such matters." This very reluctance 
 
122 Char[.fs Darwin 
 
 itself told powerfully in fuvour of Charles Diirwin's 
 novel theories : there is no evidence more valuable to a 
 cause than that whieli it extorts by moral force, in s])ite 
 of himself, from the falterin*^ lips of an unwillinuf 
 witness. 
 
 The same year that saw the publication of LycH's 
 'Antiquity of Man' saw also the first appearance of 
 Huxley's work on 'Man's I'lace in Nature.' Darwin 
 himself had been anxious rather than otherwise to avoid 
 too close reference to the im})lications of his theory as 
 re«i^ards the origin and destiny of the human race. He 
 had desired that his strictly sr-ientific views on the rise 
 of specific distinctions should be judged entirely on 
 their own merits, niduimpered by the interference of 
 real or supposed theological and ethical considerations. 
 His own langnage on all such subjects, wherever he was 
 compelled to trench on them in the ' Origin of Species,' 
 was guarded and conciliatory ; he scarcely referred at 
 all to man or his history ; and his occasional notices of 
 the moving principle and first cause of the entire cosmos 
 were I'cverential and religious in the truest sense and in 
 the highest degree. But you cannot let loose a moral 
 whirlwind, and then attempt to direct its course ; you 
 cannot open the floodgates of opinion or of speculation, 
 and then pretend to set limits to the scope of their 
 restless motion. Darwin soon found out that i)eople 
 would insist in drawing inferences beyond what was 
 written, and in seeing implicit conclusions when they 
 were not definitely formulated in the words of their 
 author. ' Man is perennially interesting to man,' says 
 the great chaotic American thinker ; and whatever all- 
 embracing truth you set before him, you may be sure 
 
ThU DaKW INIAN ReI'OI.UTIOX Pi/'G/AS I 23 
 
 that man will see in it chiefly the iin])lieati()ns that most 
 closely affect his own happiness and his own destiny. 
 The l)i()l(\<>;ieal question of the orif^'in of species is a 
 Hiifliciently wide one, but it includi's also, amonu^ other 
 cases, the t)ri«^in of the vi>ry familiar sjiecies Homo 
 ffif [liens of Liiniious. Some theolojjfians jumped fit once at 
 the conclusion, right or wronpf, that if Darwinism wen; 
 true man was nothing more than a developed monkey, 
 the innnortal soul was an exploded niyth, the founda- 
 tions of religion itself were sluittered, and the wave of 
 infidelity was doomed to swamp the wholt^ of Christen- 
 dom with its blank nihilism. Scientific men, on the 
 other hand, drew the conclusion that man must be 
 descended, like other mamnuds, from some common 
 early vertebrate ancestor, and tluit the current views of 
 his origin and destiny must be largely modified by the 
 evolutionary creed. Of this profound scientific belief 
 Professor Huxley's maiden work was the earliest out- 
 come. 
 
 Meantime, on the continent of Europe and over-sea 
 in America, the Darwinian theory was being liotly 
 debated and warndy defended. France, coldly sceptical 
 and critical, positive rather than inuiginative in matters 
 of science, and little prone by native cast of mind to 
 the evolutionary attitude, stood aloof to a great extent 
 from the onward course of the general movement. Here 
 and there, to be sure, a Gaudry or a Ribot, a Delbocuf 
 or a De Candolle (the two latter a Li6ge Belgian and a 
 Genevan Swiss) might heartily throw himself into the 
 new ideas, and contribute whole squadrons of geological 
 or botanical fact to the final victory. Yet, as a whole, 
 the dry and cautious French intelligence, ever inclined 
 
124 Charles Daniv/.v 
 
 to a scientific opportiinisiii, pivferred for the moment to 
 stand by ex])(.'ctant und await tlie resnlt of the European 
 consensus. But philosophical Germany, on the other 
 luuid, beaming enthusiasm from its myriad spectacles, 
 eagerly welcomed tlie novel ideas, and proclaimed from 
 tlit^ liousetops tlie evolutionary faith as a main ])lank in 
 tlui rising platform of the newly-roused Kiilturkampf. 
 Fritz Midler began with all the ardour of a fresli con- 
 vert to collect his admirable ' Facts for Darwin ; ' his 
 brotlier Hernninn sat down with indomitable patience, 
 like the nuister's own, to watch the ceaseless action of 
 the bees and butterflies in the fertilisation of flowers, 
 lliitinu^yer applied the Darwinian principles to the 
 explanatio . of mammalian relationships, and Haeckel 
 set to work upon his vast reconstructive ' History of 
 Creation," a largely speculative work which, with all its 
 faults, distinctly carried forward the evolutionary im- 
 pulse, and set fresli researchers working upon new lines, 
 to confirm or to disprove its audacious imaginings. In 
 America, Asa Gray gave to the young creed the liigh 
 authority of his well-known name, and Chauncey 
 Wright helped it onward on the road with all the re- 
 strained force of his singular and oblique but powerful 
 and original ])ersonality If Agassiz and Dawson still 
 Jiesitated, Fiske and Youmans were ardent in the 
 faith. If critical Boston put up its eye-glass doubt- 
 fully, Chicago and St. Louis were ready for conversion. 
 Everywhere Darwin and Darwinism became as house- 
 liold words ; it was the singular fate of die great 
 prophet of evolution, alone almost among the sons of 
 men, to hear his own name familiarlv twisted during 
 liis own lifetime into a collo(|uial adjective, and to see 
 
The Darwinian Revolution Begins 125 
 
 the. Danviiiian tlieory and tlie errors of Darwinism 
 staring him in the face a Imndred times a day from 
 every newspaper and every periodical. 
 
 Of conrse the 'Origin of Species' was Largely 
 translated at once into all the civilised lanjjfuaofes of 
 l^jnrope, llnssian as well as French, Dutch as well as 
 (lernian, Swedish as well as Italian, Spanish as well as 
 Hungarian, nay even, at last, transcending narrow 
 continental limits, Japanese as well as Hindustani. The 
 revolution which it was rapidly effecting was indeed a 
 revolution in every mode of thought and feeling as well 
 as a revolution in mere restricted biological opinion. 
 But all this time, the modest, single-minded, and un- 
 assuming author was working unmoved among his 
 ])lants and pigeons in his home at Down, regardless of 
 the European fame he was so quickly ac(|uiring, and 
 anxious only to bring to a termination the vast work 
 which he still contemplated. A little more than eleven 
 years intervened between the publication of the 'Origin 
 of Species,' in 1859, and the first appearance of the 
 ' Descent of Man,' in 1871. The interval was occupied 
 in carrying out in part the gigantic scheme of his 
 original collections for the full treatment of the develop- 
 ment theory, l^he work published in 1850 Darwin 
 regarded merely as an abstract and preliminary outline 
 of his full opinions : ' No one can feel more sensible 
 than I do,' he wrote, ' of the necessity of her(>af(er 
 publishing in detail all the facts, with references, on 
 which my conclusions have been grounded.' The 
 marvellously learned work on the ' Variation of 
 Animals and Plants under Domestication,' which came 
 out in two volumes in 1 8G7, formed the first instalment 
 
126 Ch art.es Darwin 
 
 of this long-projected treatise. The second part, as lie 
 told j\tr. Fiske, was to have treated of the variation of 
 animals and plants through natural selection ; while the 
 third part would have dealt at length with the pheno- 
 mena of morphology, of classification, and of distribu- 
 tion in space and time. But these latter portions of 
 the work were never written. To say the truth, they 
 were never needed. So universal was the recognition 
 among the younger men of Darwin's discovery, that 
 before ten years were over innumerable workers were 
 pushing out the consequences of natural selection into 
 every field of biology and palaeontology. It seemed no 
 longer so necessary as it had once seemed to write the 
 larger and more elaborate treatise he had originally 
 contemplated. 
 
 The volume on the variation of animals and plants 
 contained also Darwin's one solitary contribution to the 
 pure speculative philosophy of life — liis 'Provisional 
 Hypothesis of Pangenesis,' by which he strove to 
 account on philosophical principles for the general facts 
 of physical and mental heredity. Not to mince matters, 
 it was his one conspicuous failure, and is now pretty 
 universally admitted as such. Let not the love of the 
 biographer deceive us ; Darwin was here attempting a 
 task ulini virefi. As already observed, his mind, vast 
 as it was, leaned rather to the concrete than to the 
 abstract side : he lacked the distinctively metaphysical 
 and speculative twist. Strange to say, too, his abor- 
 tive theory appeared some years later than Herbert 
 Spencer's magnificent all-sided conception of ' Physio- 
 logical Units,' put forth expressly to meet the self-same 
 difficulty. But while Darwin's hypothesis is rudely 
 
The Darwixian Revotajtion Begins 127 
 
 materialistic, Herbert Spencer's is built np by an acute 
 and subtle analytical perception of ail the analogous 
 lacts in universal nature. It is a singular instance 
 of a crude and essentially unphilosopliic conception 
 endeavouring to replace a finished and delicate philo- 
 sophical idea. 
 
 Earlier still, in 1862, Darwin had published his 
 wonderful and fascinating book on the ' Fertilisation of 
 Orchids.' It is delightful to contemplate the picture 
 of the unruffled naturalist, in the midst of that uni- 
 versal storm of ecclesiastical obloquy and scientific 
 enthusiasm which he had roused throughout Europe, 
 sitting down calmly in his Kentish conservatory to 
 watch the behaviour of catasetums and masdevallias, and 
 to work out the details of his chosen subject, with that 
 marvellous patience of which he was so great a master, 
 in the pettiest minutiaa of fertilisation as displayed 
 by a single highly developed family of plants. Who- 
 ever wishes to learn the full profundity of Darwin's 
 researches, into every point that he set himself to inves- 
 tigate, cannot do better than turn for a while to the 
 consideration of that exquisite treatise on one of the 
 (|uaintest fairylands of science. He will there learn 
 by what an extraordinary wealth of cunning devices 
 natural selection has ensured the due conveyance of 
 the fecundating pollen from stamens to stigmas within 
 the limits of a single group of vegetable organisms. 
 Here the fertilising mass is gummed automatically 
 between the eyes of the exploring bee, and then 
 bent round by the drying of its stalk so as to come in 
 contact with the stigmatic surface. There the pollen club 
 is jerked out elastically by a sensitive fibre, and actually 
 
128 Charles Darwin 
 
 flung by its irritable antenna) at tht^ unconscious head 
 of the fertilising insect. In one case, the lip of the 
 flower secretes moisture and forms a sort of cold bath, 
 which wets the wings of the bees, so compelling them 
 to creep out of the bucket by a passage close to the 
 anthers and stigma ; in another case, the honey is con- 
 cealed at the bottom of so long a tube that only the 
 proper fertilising moth with a proboscis of ten or eleven 
 inches in length can probe the deep recess in which it 
 is hidden. These, and a hundred other similar in- 
 stances, were all carefully considered and described by 
 the great naturalist as the by-work with which he filled 
 up one of the intervals between his greater and more 
 comprehensive treatises. 
 
 In the decade between 18 GO and 1870 the progress 
 of Darwinism was rapid and continuous. One by one, 
 the feAV scientific men who still held out were overborne 
 by the Aveight of evidence. Geology kept supplying 
 fresh instances of transitional forms ; the progress of 
 research in unexplored countries kept adding to our 
 knowledge of existing intermediate species and varieties. 
 During those ten years, Herbert Spencer published his 
 ' First Principles,' his ' Biology,' and the remodelled 
 form of his ' Psychology ; ' Huxley brought out ' Man's 
 Place in Nature,' the ' Lectures on Comparativ(^ 
 Anatomv,' and the ' Introduction to the Classification 
 of Animals;' Wallace produced his 'Malay Archi- 
 pelago ' and his ' Contributions to the Theory of Natural 
 Selection ; ' and Galton wrote his admirable work on 
 * Hereditary Genius,' of which his own famil}^ is so re- 
 markable an instance. T^-ndall and Lewes had long 
 since signified their warm adhesion. At Oxford, 
 
The Darwinian Rrvolution Begins 129 
 
 Rollestoii was bringinc!' np a frosh veneration of young 
 biologists in tlie new faitli ; at Cambridge, Darwin's 
 old university, a whole school of brilliant and accurate 
 physiologists was beginning to make itself both felt 
 and heard in the world of science. In the domain ot 
 anthropology, Tylor was welcoming the assistance of the 
 new ideas, while Lubbock was engaged on his kindred 
 investigations into the Origin of Civilisation and the 
 Primitive Condition of Man. All these diverse lines 
 of thought both showed the wide-spread infku'Jice of 
 Darwin's first great work, and led up to the prepara- 
 tion of his second, in which he dealt with the his- 
 tory and development of the human race. And what 
 was thus true of England was equally true of the 
 civilised world, regarded as a whole : everywhere the 
 great evolutionary movement was well in ])rogress ; 
 everywhere the impulse sent forth from that quiet 
 Iventish home was permeating and quickening the entire 
 pulse of intelligent humanity. 
 
 Why was it that the ' Origin of Species ' possessed 
 this extraordinary vitalising and kinetic power, this 
 .oerminal energy, this contagious Ibrce, beyond all other 
 forms of evolutionism previously promulgated ? Why 
 did the world, that listened so coldly to Lamarck and 
 Chambers, turn so readv an ear to Charles Darwin and 
 natural selection ? Partly, no donl)t, because in the 
 fulness of time the moment had come and the prophet 
 had arisen. All great movements are long brewing, 
 and burst out at last (like the Reformation and the 
 French Revolution) with explosive energy. But the 
 cause is largely to be found, also, I believe, in the 
 peculiar nature of the Darwinian solution. True, a 
 
 K 
 
130 Charles Darwin 
 
 thoroughly logical mind, a mind of the very highest 
 order, would have said even before Darwin, ' Creation 
 can have no possible place in the physical series of 
 things at all. How organisms came to be I do not yet 
 exactly see ; but I am sure they must have come to be 
 by some merely physical process, if we could only find 
 it out.' And such minds were all actually evolutionary 
 even before Darwin had made the modm operandi of 
 evolution intelligible. But most people are not so clear- 
 sighted. They require to have everything proved to 
 them bv the strictest collocation of actual instances. 
 They will not believe unless one rise from the dead. 
 There are men who rejected the raw doctrine of special 
 creation on evidence adduced ; and there are Tnen who 
 never even for a moment entertained it as conceivable. 
 The former compose the mass of the scientific world, and 
 it was for their conversion that the Darwinian hypothesis 
 was so highly salutary. As Professor Fiske rightly 
 remarks, ' The truth is that before the publication of 
 the " Origin of Species " there was no opinion whatever 
 current respecting the subject that deserved to be called 
 a scientific hypothesis. That the more complex forms 
 of life must have come into existence tlirough some 
 process of development from simpler forms was no doubt 
 the only sensible and rational view to take of the subject; 
 but in a vague and general opinion of this sort there is 
 nothing that is properly scientific. A scientific hypo- 
 thesis must connect the phenomena with which it 
 deals by alleging a " true cause ; " and before 1859 no 
 one had suggested a " true cause " for the origination of 
 new species, although the problem was one over which 
 every philosophical naturalist had puzzled since the 
 
The Darwinian Rfa'qi.ution Begins 131 
 
 beginning of the century. This explains why ]\Ir. 
 Darwin's success was so rapid and complete, and it also 
 explains why he came so near being anticipated.' To 
 put it briefly, a p'loi'l, creation is from the very first 
 unbelievable; but, as a matter of evidence, Lamarck 
 failed to make evolution comprehensible, or to give a 
 rationale of its mode of action, while ])arwin's theory 
 of natural selection succeeded in doing so for those who 
 awaited a jwstoiiorl proof Hence Darwin was able to 
 convert the world, where Lamarck had onlv been able 
 to stir up enquiry among the picked spirits of the 
 scientific and philosophical coterie. Therein lies the 
 true secret of his rapid, his brilliant, and his triumphant 
 progress. He had found out not only that it was so, 
 but how it was so, too. In Aristotelian phrase, he had 
 discovered the irws as well as the ore. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 Charles Darwin 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 
 
 In 1871, nearly twelve years after tlie 'Origin of 
 Species/ Danvin published his ' Descent of Man.' 
 
 We have seen already that he would fain have 
 avoided the treatment of this difficult and dangerous 
 topic a little longer, so as to let his main theory be 
 fairly judged on its own merits, without the obtrusion 
 of theological or personal feelings into so purely biologi- 
 cal a question ; but the current was too strong for him, 
 and at last he yielded. On the one hand, the adversaries 
 had drawn for themselves the conclusion of man's purely 
 animal origin, and held it up to ridicule under false 
 forms in the most absurd and odious light. On the 
 other hand, imprudent allies had put forth under the 
 evolutionary aegis their somewhat hypothetical and ex- 
 travagant speculations on this involved subject, which 
 Darwin was naturally anxious to correct and modify by 
 his own more sober and guarded inferences. The result 
 was the second great finishing work of the complete 
 Darwinian system of things. 
 
 Ever since evolutionism had begun to be at all it 
 had been observed that a natural corollary from the 
 doctrine of descent with modification was the belief in 
 
The Descent of Man 133 
 
 man's coiniuon ancestry \\\\\\ tlic anthropoid apes. As 
 early as the niidthe of the hist century, indeed, Lord 
 Monboddo, a wliimsical Scotch eccentric, had suggested 
 in liis famous book on the origin of huiguage the idea 
 that men were merely developed monkeys. But this 
 crude and unorganised statement of a great truth, 
 being ultimately based upon no distinct physical grounds, 
 deserved scarcely to be classed higher than the childish 
 evolutionism of 'Telliamed' De Maillet, which makes 
 birds descend from fh'ing-fish and men the offsi)ring 
 of the hypothetical tritons. On this point as on most 
 others the earliest definite scientific views are those of 
 Buffon, who ventured to hint with extreme caution the 
 possibility of a conunon ancestry for man and all other 
 vertebrate animals. Goethe the all-sided had caught 
 a passing glimpse of the same profound conception 
 aljout the date of the lieign of Terror ; and Erasmus 
 Darwin had openly announced it, though without much 
 elaboration, in his precocious and premature ' Zoonomia.' 
 Still more specifically, in a note to the ' Temple of 
 Nature,' the English evolutionist says : ' It has been 
 supposed by some that nuinkind were formerly qua- 
 drupeds. . . . These philosophers, with Buffon and 
 Helvetius, seem to imagine that mankind arose from 
 one family of monke'ys on the banks of the j\lediter- 
 ranean ; ' and in the third canto of that fantastic poem, 
 he enlarges u])on the great ])art performed by the hand, 
 with its opposable tlunnb, in the development and [jro- 
 gress of the human species. Lamarck, in his ' Philo- 
 sopliie Zoologique,' distinctly lays down the doctrine 
 that man is descended from an ape-like ancestor, which 
 gradually acquired the upright position, not even now 
 
134 Charles Darwin 
 
 wholly iiatiiriil to the liinTian race, ami maintained only 
 by the most constant watchfulness. The orang-outang 
 was then the highest known anthropoid ape ; and it 
 was from the orang-outang, therefore, that the fancy of 
 Lyell and other objectors in the pre-Darwinian days 
 continually derived the l^amarckian Adam. 
 
 The introduction of the chimpanzee into or.r Euro- 
 pean Zoological Gardens gave a fresh type of anthropoid 
 to the crude speculators of the middle decades of tlie 
 century; and in 1859, Paul du Chaillu, the explorer 
 and hunter of the Gaboon country, brouglit over to 
 America and Europe the first specimens of the true 
 gorilla ever seen by civilised men. There can be little 
 doubt that the general interest excited by his narrative 
 of his adventures (published in London in 18G1) and 
 l)y the well-known stuffed specimen of the huge African 
 anthropoid ape so long conspicuous in the rooms of the 
 British Museum, and now surviving (somewhat the 
 worse for wear) in the natural history collection at 
 South Kensington, did much to kindle public curiosity 
 as to the nature of our relations with the lower animals. 
 It is no mere accidental circumstance, indeed, that 
 Huxley should have brought out ' Man's Place in Nature ' 
 just two years after Du Chaillu's ' Explorations and 
 Adventures in Equatorial Africa ' had made the whole 
 world, lay and learned, familiar with the name and 
 features of the most human in outer aspect among the 
 anthropoid family. Thenceforth the gorilla, and not 
 the orang-outang, was popularly hit upon by scoffer 
 and caricaturist as the imaginary type of our primitive 
 ancestors. 
 
 On the other hand, during the twelve intervening 
 
The Descent oe Man 135 
 
 years iiiiineiiHe strides had been made in every dejiart- 
 nient of anthropological science, and the whole tenor of 
 modern specnlation had been clearing the gronnd for 
 the 'Descent of Man." In 18G5, RoUe in Germany 
 had published his work on ' ]\Iaii \'ie\ved by the Light 
 of the Darwinian Theory.' Two years later, Canestriiii 
 in Italy read before the Naturalists' Society of Modena 
 his interesting paper on rudimentary characters as 
 bearing on the origin of the human s])ecies. In 18G8, 
 J3uchner brought out his rudely matei'ialistic sledge- 
 hammer lectures on the Darwinian principle ; and in 
 18G9, Barrago flung straight at the head of the Roman 
 clericals his offensive work on nnin and the anthropoid 
 apes. Most of these foreign publications were unhappily 
 marked by that coarse and almost vituperative opposi- 
 tion to received views which too often disfigures French 
 and German controversial literature. In J^higlaiid, on 
 the contrary, under our milder and gentler ecclesiastical 
 yoke, the contest had been conducted with greater 
 decorum and with far better results. Wallace had 
 broken ground tentatively anil reverently in his essay 
 on the ' Origin of Human ]laces,' where he endeavoured 
 to show that man is the co-descendant with the anthro- 
 poid apes of some ancient lower and extinct form. 
 Jiubbock's 'Prehistoric Times' (1805) antl 'Origin of 
 Civilisation' (187U) helped to clear the way in the 
 opposite direction by demolishing the old belief, firndy 
 upheld by Whately and others, that savages represent 
 a degraded type, and that the civilised state is natural 
 and, so to speak, congenital to man. Tylor's ' Early 
 History of Mankind ' (18G5) did still more eminent 
 service in the same direction. Colenso's 'IVntateuch 
 
136 Charles Darwin 
 
 and I )0()k olMoshuji Critically Kxaniiiied,' tiir puhlicatioii 
 ot'wliicli l)('«»an in 1802, had alrrady sliaken the t'ounda- 
 tions of tlic Mosaic cosmogony, and incidentally dis- 
 credited the received view of the direct creation of the 
 first human family. M'Lennan's ' Primitive Marriage' 
 (I8G0) and Herbert S[)encer"s articles on the origin of 
 religior had kept speculation alive along other paths, 
 all tending ultimately towards the same conclusion. 
 Darwin's own cousin, Hensleigh Wedgwood, and Canon 
 Farrar, had independently endeavoured to prove that 
 language, instead of being a divine gift, might have 
 arisen in a purely natural numner from instinctive cries 
 and the imitation of exteriud sounds. The Duke of 
 Argyll and Professor i\[ax AL idler, by the obvious feeble- 
 ness of their half-hearted replies, had unconsciously 
 aided in disseminating and enforcing the very views they 
 attempted to combat. Bagehot and Flower, Maudsley 
 and Jevons, Vogt and Lindsay, Galton and Brown- 
 Sequard liad each in liis way contributed facts and argu- 
 ments ultimately utilised by the great master architect 
 in building up his consistent and harmonious edifice. 
 Finally, in 1808, Haeckel had published his ' Natural 
 History of Creation,' in which he discussed witli sur- 
 prising and perhaps excessive boldness the various stages 
 in the genealogy of man. These various works, follow- 
 ing so close upon Huxley's ' Alan's Place in Nature ' 
 and Lyell's conclusive ' Antiquity of Man,' left Darwin 
 no choice but to set forth his own reasoned opinions on 
 the subject of the origin and development of the human 
 species. 
 
 The evidence of the descent of man from some lower 
 form, collected and marshalled together by Darwin, con- 
 
The Deschnt of Man 137 
 
 isists cliiefly of iiiiuiitt' iiifrrciitial [ji'oofs wliicli liardly 
 {ulmit of deliberate coiidt'iisatiou. In his bodily struc- 
 tiirc mail is ibnned on the same undei'lvin<^ tvnc or 
 model as all the other manunals, bone ansNverin<^" 
 thronghoLit to bone, as, tor example, in the fore limb, 
 where homologous parts have been modified in the dog- 
 into toes, in the hat into wing-supports, in the seal into 
 flippers, and in man himself into fingers and thumb, 
 while still retaining in every case their essential funihi- 
 m«ntal likeness of construction. Even the brain of 
 man resembles closely the brain of the higlu'r monkeys ; 
 the differences which separate him in this res])ect from 
 the orang or the gorilla are far slighter than the 
 differences which separate those a])es themselves from 
 the inferior monkeys. Indeed, as Huxley conclusively 
 showed, on anatomical grounds alone, man must be 
 classed in the order J'rimates as only one among the 
 many divergent forms which that order includes within 
 its wide limits. 
 
 In liis embryonic development num closely resembles 
 the lower animals, the human creature being almost indis- 
 tinguishable in certain stages from the dog, the bat, the 
 seal, and especially the monkeys. At a very early age 
 lie possesses a slight projecting tail ; at another, the 
 great toe is shorter than its neighbours, and ])rojects 
 like the thumb at a slight angle ; and at ji third, the 
 convolutions of the brain reach a point of development 
 about equivalent to that of the adult baboon. In his 
 first stages man himself stands far more closely related 
 to the apes than the apes in turn stand to cats or 
 liya3nas. 
 
 Rudiments of muscles not normally found in man 
 
138 Charles Darwin 
 
 occur ill many aberrant human individuals. Some 
 people poss(\ss the ])o\ver of moving tlieir scalps and 
 wayirinii: their ears like dojjfs and nionkevs ; others can 
 twitch the skin of their bodies, as horses do when 
 worried by flies, ^fr. Woolner, the sculptor, pointed 
 out to Darwin a certain little projectinor point or knob 
 on the margin of the ear, observed by him in the course 
 of modelling, wliich comparison shows to be the last 
 folded remnant or rudiment of the once erect and 
 pointed monkey-like ear-tip. The nictitating membrane, 
 or third eyelid, once more, which in birds can be drawn 
 so rapidly across the ball of the eye, and which gives 
 the familiar glazed or murky appearance, is fairly well 
 developed in the ornithorhynchus and the kangaroo, as 
 well as in a few higher manunals, like the walrus ; but 
 in man, as in the monkey group, it survives only under 
 the degenerate form of a ]:)ractically useless rudiment, 
 the semilunar fold. J\lan difiers from the other 
 l*rimates in his apparently hairless condition ; but the 
 hair, though short and downy, still remains on close 
 inspection, and in some races, such as the Ainos of 
 Japan, forms a shaggy coat like an orang's or a gibbon's. 
 A few long rough hairs sometimes ))roject from the short 
 smooth down of the (eyebrows ; and these peculiar bristles, 
 occasional only in the hunum species, are habitual in 
 the cliim])!inzee and in many baboons. Internal organs 
 show similar rudiments, of less enthralling interest, it 
 nuist be candidly confessed, to the unscientific outside 
 intelligence. Even the bony skeleton contributes its 
 share of confirmatory evidence; for in the lower monkeys 
 and in many other manunals a certain main trunk nerve 
 passes through a special perforation in the shouldei'- 
 
The Descent of Man 139 
 
 blade, and tliis perforation, tliou«jcli now almost obsolete, 
 sometimes recurs in man, in which case the nerve in 
 question invariably passes through it, as in tlie inferior 
 monkevs. What is still more remarkable is the fact 
 that the perforation occurs far more fre({uently (in ]jro- 
 portion) among the skeletons of very ancient races than 
 among those of our own time. One chief cause why 
 in this and other cases ancient races often present 
 structures resembling those of the lower animals seems 
 to be that they stand nearer in the long line of descent 
 to their remote animal-like ])rogenitors. 
 
 The conclusion at which, after fully examining all 
 the evidence, Darwin finallv arrives is somewhat as 
 follows : 
 
 The early ancestors of man must have been more 
 or less monkey-like animals, belonging to the great 
 anthropoid group, and related to the progenitors of the 
 orang-outang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla. They 
 must have been once covered with hair, both sexes 
 possessing beards. TluMr ears were probably pointed 
 and capable of movement, and their bodies were pro- 
 vided with a movable tail. The foot had a great toe 
 somewhat thumb-like in its action, with which they 
 could gras]) the branches of trees, l^hey were probably 
 arboreal in their habits, fruit-eaters by choice, and in- 
 habitants of some warm forest-clad land. The males had 
 great canine teeth, with which they fought one another 
 fur tlie possession of the females. A.t a much earlier 
 period, the internal anatomical peculiarities a])proached 
 those of the lowt^st mammals, and the eye was ])rovided 
 with a third eyelid. IVering still further back into the 
 dim abyss of the ages, Darwin vaguely describes the 
 
 V 
 
140 Charles Darwin 
 
 ancestors of liuiuanity as a(|iiatic animals, allied to tlie 
 mudfish; tor our lungs are known to consist of modified 
 swim-bladders, which must once have served our remote 
 progenitors in the office of a float. The gill-clefts on 
 the neck of the liunnin (Mubryo still point to the spot 
 wliere the branchifc once, no doubt, existed. Our priiu- 
 (jrdial birthplace appears to liave been a sliore washed 
 twice a day by the recurrent tides. Tlie heart then took 
 the shape merely of a simpU^ pulsating vessel ; and a 
 long undivided spinal cord usurped the place of the 
 vertebral column. These extremely primitive ancestors 
 of man, thus dimly beheld across the gulf of ages, must 
 have been at least as simply ajid humbly organised as 
 that very lowest and earliest of existing vertebrates, the 
 worm-like lancelet. 
 
 From such a rude and indefinite beginning ]iatural 
 selection, aided by the various concomitant principles, 
 has slowly built up the pedigree of num. Starting 
 from these remote half-invertebrate forms, whose vague 
 shapi' is still perhaps in part preserved for us by the soft 
 and jelly-like larva of the modern ascidian, we rise by 
 long stages to a group of early fishes, like the lancelet 
 itself. From these the ganoids and then the lung-bearing 
 mudfish must have been gradually developed. From 
 such fish a very snudl advance would carry us on to the 
 newts and other amphibians. '^Phe duck-billed platypus 
 liel])s us slightly to bridge over the gap between the 
 reptiles and the lower mannnals, such as the kangsiroo and 
 the wombat, though the connection with the amphibians 
 is still, as when Darwin wrote, highly problematical. 
 From marsupials, such as the kangaroo, we ascend 
 gradually to the insectivorous type represented by the 
 
The Descent of M.ix 141 
 
 slirews and hcdi^t^lioirs, and thence once more by very 
 well-marked intermediate stages to the lemnrs of 
 ]\radagascar, a gronp linked on the one hand to the 
 insectivores, and on the other to the true monkeys. The 
 monkeys, again, ' l)ranched off into t\vo great stems — 
 the Ne\v World and Old World monkeys ; and from the 
 latter, at a remote period, man, the wonder and glory of 
 the nniyerse, proceeded.' 
 
 Tlie word was si^oken ; the secret was out. The 
 world might well have been excused for treating it 
 scornfully. But as a matter of fact, the storm which 
 followed the ' Descent of ]\[an ' was as nothing compared 
 with the torrent of abuse that had jnirsued the author 
 of the ' Origin of Species.' In twelve years society 
 had grown slowly accustomed to the once startling idea, 
 and it listened now with comparatively languid interest 
 to the final utterance of the great biologist on the 
 question of its own origin and destinies. In 1850 it 
 cried in horror, ' Hoav very shocking!' in 1871, it 
 murmured complacently, ' Is that all ? Why, everybody 
 knew that much already ! ' 
 
 Nevertheless, on the moral and social side, the 
 ultimate importance of the ' Descent of Man ' upon the 
 world's liistory cau hardly be overrated by a p^r'losophic 
 investigator. Vast as was the rtn^olution effected in 
 biology by the ' Origin of Species,' it was as nothing 
 compared with the still wider, deeper, and more subtly- 
 working revolution inaugurated by the announcement 
 of man's purely animal origin. The main discovery, 
 strange to say, affected a single branch of thought alone ; 
 the minor corollary drawn from it to a single specii's 
 has already affected, and is destined in the future still 
 
142 Charles Darwin 
 
 more profountledly to affect, every possible spliere of 
 human energy. Not only has it completely reversed 
 our entire conception of history generally, by teaching 
 us that man has slowly risen from a very low and 
 humble beginning, but it has also revolutionised our 
 whole ideas of our own position and our own destiny, it 
 has permeated the sciences of language and of medicine, 
 it has introduced new conceptions of ethics and of 
 religion, and it threatens in the future to produce im- 
 mense effects upon the theory and practice of education, 
 of politics, and of economic and social science. These 
 wide-reaching and deep-seated results began to be felt 
 from the first moment when the Darwinian principle 
 was definitely promulgated in the ' Origin of Species, 
 but their final development and general acceptance was 
 immensely accelerated by Darwin's own authoritative 
 statement in the ' Descent of Man.' 
 
 To some among us still, as to Lyell before us, this 
 new belief in the animal origin of man seems far less 
 beautiful, noble, and inspiriting than the older faith in his 
 special and separate divine creation. Such thinkers find it 
 somehow more pleasant and comfortable to suppose that 
 man has fallen than that man has risen ; the doctrine of 
 the universal degradation of humanity paradoxically ap- 
 pears to them more full of promise and aspiration for the 
 times to come than the doctrine of its universal elevation. 
 To Darwin himself, however, it seemed otherwise. ' Man," 
 he says, ' may be excused for feeling some pride at having 
 risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very 
 summit of the organic scale ; and the fact of his having 
 thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed 
 there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in 
 
The Descent of Man 143 
 
 the distant future.' Surely this is tlie truer and manlier 
 way of looking at the reversed and improved attitude 
 of man. Surely it is better to climb to the top than to 
 have been placed there—and fallen— at the veiy outset. 
 Surely it is a nobler view of life that we may yet by 
 our own strenuous exertions raise our race some places 
 higher in the endless and limitless hierarchy of nature 
 than that we are the miserable and hopelessly degene- 
 rate descendants of a ruined and deOTaded aiKrelic 
 progenitor. Surely it is well, while we boast with 
 Glaucus that we indeed are far braver and better than 
 our ancestors, to pray at the same time, in the words of 
 Hector, that our sons may be yet braver and better than 
 ourselves. 
 
144 Char LPS Darwin 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE THEORY OF COURTSHIP. 
 
 In the same volumes with the ' Descent of Man ' Darwin 
 induded his admirable treatise on sexual selection. 
 This form of selection lie liad already dealt with briefly 
 in the ' Origin of Species ; ' but as in his opinion it was 
 largely instrumental in producing the minor differences 
 which separate one race of men from anotlier, he found 
 it necessary to enlarge and expand it in connection with 
 his account of the rise and progress of the liuman 
 species. 
 
 Among many animals, and especially in the liigher 
 classes of animals, the males and females do not mate 
 together casually ; there is a certain amount of selection 
 or of courtship. In some cases, as with deer and 
 antelopes, the males fight with one another for the 
 possession of the females. In other cases, as with the 
 peacock and the humming-birds, tlie males display their 
 beauty and their skill before the eyes of the assembled 
 females. In the first instance, the victor obtains the 
 mates ; in the second instance, the mates themselves 
 select from the group the handsomest and most person- 
 ally pleasing competitor. Sexual selection, of whicli 
 these are special cases, depends on tlie advantage 
 
The Theory of Couktsh/p 145 
 
 possessed by certain iiidividuuls over others of the same 
 sex and species solely in respect to the question of 
 mating. In all such instances, the males have acquired 
 their weapons of offence and defence or their ornamental 
 decorations, not from being better fitted to survive in 
 the struggle for existence, but from having gained an 
 advantage over other males of the same kind, and from 
 having transmitted this advantage to offspring of their 
 own sex alone. 
 
 Just as man can improve the breed of his game- 
 cocks by the selection of those birds which are victorious 
 in the cockpit, so the strongest and most vigorous males, 
 or those provided with the best weapons, have prevailed 
 in the state of nature over their feebler and more 
 cowardly competitors. Just as man can give beauty, 
 according to his own standard of taste, to his male 
 poultry, by selecting special birds for their ])lumage, 
 their port, their wattles, or their hackles, so female 
 birds in a state of nature have by a long-continued 
 choice of the more attractive males added to their 
 beauty and their ornamental adjuncts. In these two 
 ways, Darwin believed, a limited selection has slowly 
 developed weapons like the horns of buffaloes, the 
 antlers of stags, the tusks of boars, and the spurs of 
 game-birds, together with the courage, strength, and 
 ]nignacity always associated with such special organs. 
 it has also developed the ornamental plumage of the 
 peacock, the argus pheasant, and the birds of paradise ; 
 the song of the lark, the thrush, and the nightingale; 
 the brilliant hues on the face of the mandrill ; and the 
 attractive perfume of the musk-deer, the snakes, and 
 the scented butterflies. AVherever one sex possesses 
 
 L 
 
146 Charles Darwin 
 
 any decorative or ullurinn- adjunct not ef[iially shared 
 by the other, Darwin attributed tliis special gift eitlier 
 to the hiw of battk^, or to the long and slowly exerted 
 selective action of their fastidious mates. 
 
 The ^'^n'vci of the doctrine of sexual selection is to be 
 found, like so many other of Charles Darwin's theories, 
 in a pro])lietic passage of his grandfather's ' Zoononiisi.' 
 Stags, the Lichfield physician tells us, are provided with 
 antlers ' for the purpose of combating other stags for 
 the exclusive possession of the females, who are ob- 
 served, like the ladies in the time of chivalrv, to attend 
 the car of the victor. The birds which do not carry 
 food to their }Oung, and do not therefore marry, are 
 armed with spurs for the purpose of fighting for the 
 exclusive possession of the females, as cocks and quails. 
 It is certain that these weapons are not provided for 
 their defence against other adversaries, because the 
 females of these species are without this armour. The 
 final cause of this contest among the males seems ^0 be 
 that the strongest and most active animal should propa- 
 gate the species, which should thence become improved.' 
 
 It must be noticed, however, that Erasmus J)arwin 
 here imports into the question the met^iphysical and 
 teleological notion of the final cause, implying that the 
 struggle of the males wjis ordained from without, for 
 this express and preconceived purpose; whereas Charles 
 Darwin, never transcending the world of phenomena, 
 more logically regards the struggle itself as an efficient 
 cause, having for its result the survival of the strongest 
 or the handsomest as the case may be. This distinction 
 is fundamental ; it marks the gulf between the essen- 
 tially teleological spirit of the eighteenth century and 
 
The Theory or Courtship 147 
 
 the essentially positive spirit of })liilosophy and science 
 at the present day. 
 
 Here a<i^ain, too, tlie innnenst' loj^icnl superiority of 
 Charles Darwin's rigorous and twhaustive inductive 
 method over tlu' loose sugmvstivfuess of his grandfather 
 JOrasnius may easily be observed. For while Erasmus 
 nu'rely throws out a clevi'r and interesting hint as to 
 the supposed method and intention of nature, Charles 
 Darwin proves his thesis, point by point, with almost 
 mathematical exactitude, leaving no objection unmet 
 behind him, but giving statistical and inductive warrant 
 for every step in his cumulative argument. He goes 
 carefully into the numerical proportion of the two sexes 
 in various species ; into tlu' relative dates of arrival in 
 any particular country of tlu^ males and females of 
 migratory birds ; into the question whether any indivi- 
 duals ever renuun in the long run unpaired ; into the 
 chances of the earliest-nuited or most vigorous couples 
 leaving behind more numerous or stronger off'spi'ing 
 to represent them in the next generation. He collects 
 from every quarter and from all sources whatever 
 available evidence can be obtained as to the courtship 
 and rivalry of birds and butterflies, of deer and ante- 
 lopes, of fish and lizards. He shows by numerous 
 examples and quotations how even flies coquet together 
 in their pretty rhythmical aerial dances ; how wasps 
 battle eagerly with one another to secure ]Dossession of 
 their unconcerned mates ; how cicadas strive to win 
 their 'voiceless brides' with stridulating music; how 
 s])hinx-moths endeavour to alb.ire their partners with 
 the musky odour of their pencilled wings; and how 
 emperors and orange-tips display their gorgeous spots 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Charles Darwin 
 
 and bauds ill tlie broad suushiiie before the admiring 
 and attentive eyes of their observant dames. VLi^ traces 
 up tlie same spirit of rivalry and ostentation to the 
 cock-})heasant sti'utting about before tlie attendant 
 lien, and to the nieetiiig-jjlaces of the blackcock, where 
 all the males of the district fight with one another 
 and undertake long love-dances in regular tournaments, 
 while the females stand by and watch the chances 
 and changes of the contest with att'ected indifferenci'. 
 Finally, he points out how similar effects are ])roduced 
 by like causes among the higher animals, especially 
 among our near relations the monkeys ; and then he 
 proceeds to apply the principles thus firmly grounded 
 to the pirticular instance of the human race itself, the 
 primary object of his entire treatise. 
 
 Some of the most interesting of the modifications 
 due to this particular form of selective action are to be 
 found amongst the insects and other low types of animal 
 life. The crickets, the locusts, and the grasshoppers, 
 for example, are all fanunis for their musical powers ; 
 but the sounds themselves are ]iroduced in the different 
 families by very different and quaintly varied organs. 
 The song of the crickets is evoked by the scraping of 
 minute teeth on the under side of either wing-cover ; 
 in the case of the locusts, the left wing, which acts as a 
 bow, overlies the right wing, which serves as a fiddle ; 
 while with the grasshoppers, the leg does duty as the 
 musical instrument, and has a row of lancet-shaped 
 elastic knobs along its outer surface, which tin' insect 
 rubs across the nerves of the wing-covers when it wishes 
 to charm the ears and rouse the affection of its silent 
 mate. In a South African species of the same family, 
 
Tni- Theory of Courtship 149 
 
 tli(> w]iol(> body of the nialo is fniHy ronvei*to(l into n 
 musical instrimiciit, In-iiio- imni(Mist»ly inflated, hollow, 
 and distended like u ])ellnc'id air-hliidder in order to act 
 as an efticient sonndinir-board. Anion<^ the beetles, 
 taste seems pfenerally to liave specialis(Ml its(»lf rather 
 on form than on music or colour, and the males are 
 here usually remarkable for their sini^ular and very 
 complicated horns, often compared in various species to 
 those of stags or rhinoceroses, and entirely absent in 
 the females of most kinds. But it is arnont^ the butter- 
 flies and moths that insect a?stheticism has produced its 
 greatest artistic triumphs : for liere the Ijeautiful eye- 
 spots and delicate markino-s on the expanded wing- 
 membranes are almost certainly due to sexual selection. 
 Tlie liigher animals display like evidence of the same 
 slow selective action. The coui-tship of the stickleback, 
 wlio dances ' mad with delight ' around the mate he has 
 allured into the nest he prepares for lier, lias been ob- 
 served bv dozens of observers both before and since in 
 the domestic aquarium. 'J'he gem-like colours of the 
 male dragonet, the butterfly wings of certain gurnards, 
 and the decorated tails of some exotic carps all point in 
 the same direction. Our own larger newt is adorned 
 during the breeding season with a serrated crest edged 
 with orange ; while in the smaller kind the colours of 
 the body acquire at the same critical ]")eriod of love- 
 making a vivid brilliancy. The strange horns and 
 luridly coloured throat-pouches of tropical lizards are 
 familiar to all visitors in equatorial climates, and they 
 are confined exclusivelv to the male sex. Among birds, 
 the superior beauty of the male plumage is known to 
 everybody ; and their greatest glory invariably coincides 
 
150 Charles Darwin 
 
 witli tlu» spcclul season for tlu' selection of mates. Tii 
 the sprinpf, as even our poets liave told us, the wanton 
 lapwin<^ gets himself another crest. The law of battle 
 produces the sjmr of the game-birds and the still 
 stranger wing-spurs of certnin species of the plover 
 kind. /Esthetic rivnlrv is auswerable rather for vocal 
 music, and for tlie ])lnmage of the umbrella-bird, the 
 lyre-bird, the Innnmiiig-birds, and the cock of the rocks. 
 Among mannnals, strength rather tlian beauty seems 
 to have carried the day ; horns, and tusks, and spikes, 
 and antlers are here the special gnerdou of the victorious 
 males. Yet even mammals show occiisional signs of 
 distinctly aosthetic and artistic preferences, as in the 
 gracefully twisted horns of the koodoo, the scent-glands 
 of the mnsk-deer or of certain antelopes, the brilliant 
 hues of the male mandrill, and the tufts and moustaches 
 of so manj' monkeys. 
 
 It must be frankly conceded that the reception 
 accorded to Darwin's doctrine of sexual selection, even 
 among the biological public, was far less unanimous, 
 enthusiastic, and full than that which had been granted 
 to his more extensive theory of survival of the fittest. 
 !Many eminent naturalists declined from the very outset 
 to accept the conclusions thus definitely set before them, 
 and others who at first seemed disposed to bow to the 
 immense weight of Darwin's supreme authority gradually 
 withdrew their grudging assent from the new doctrine, 
 as they found their relapse backed up by others, and 
 refused to believe that the theory of courtship had been 
 fairly proven before the final tribunal of science. Several 
 critics began by objecting that the whole theory was a 
 nv^re afterthought. Darwin, they said, finding that 
 
Tin: Theory of CounrsHir 151 
 
 iKitural selection did iiot suflice 1)V itself to exiihiin all 
 the details of structure in man, luid invented sexual 
 selection as a sup])K'nientaiy principle to hel]) it over 
 the liard places. 'I'hose who wrote and sjioke in this 
 thoun:litless fashion could have had but a verv inade(|uat(^ 
 idea of Darwin's close experimental methods of enf|uiry. 
 As a nuitter of fact, indeed, they were entirely wron**-; 
 the doctrine of sexual selectiou itself, alreadv faintlv 
 foreshadowed by Erasmus Darwin in the ' Zoonomia,' 
 had been distiuctly developed iu the first edition of the 
 ' ()ri<>'iu of Species ' with at least as much provisional 
 elaboration as any other equally important flictor in the 
 biolot^ical drama as set forth va that confessedlv intro- 
 ductory work. Nay, Haeckel had caup^ht gladly at the 
 luminous conception there expressed, even before tlu^ 
 appearance of the ' Descent of ^lan,' and had woi'ked it 
 ont in his ' Generelle ^lorphologie,' with great insight, to 
 its leo-itimate conclusions in manv directions. Indeed, 
 the sole reason why so much space was devoted to the 
 subject in Darwin's work on human development was 
 simply because there for the first time an opportunity 
 arose of utilising his vast ston^ of collected ii\formation on 
 this single aspect of the evolutionary process. It was no 
 afterthought, but a necessary and inevitable component 
 element of the fully-developed evolutionary concept. 
 
 Still, it cannot be denied that naturalists generallv 
 did not accept with effusion the new clause in the 
 evolutionary creed. Many of them hesitated ; Ji few 
 acquiesced ; the majority more or less openly dissented. 
 But Darwin's belief remained firm as a rock. ' I am 
 glad you defend sexual selection,' he wrote a few years 
 later in a private letter ; ' I have no fear about its ulti- 
 
152 Chari.fs Darwin 
 
 mate fate, tliono'li it" is now at a discount;' and in tlie 
 preface to tlie second edition of tlie ' Descent of ]\tan,' 
 lie remarks acutely, ' I liave been struck with the like- 
 ness of many of the half-favourable criticisms on sexual 
 selection with those which ap]ieared at iirst on natural 
 selection ; such as that it would explain some few details, 
 but certainly was not applical>le to the extent to which 
 I have employed it. ^ly conviction of the power of 
 sexual selection remains unshaken. . . . When natural- 
 ists have become familiar with the idea, it will, as 1 
 believe, be much more largely accepted ; and it has 
 alreadv been fully and favourablv received bv several 
 capable judges.' 
 
 In spite of the still continued demurrer of not a few 
 among the leading evolutionists, it is probable, I think, 
 that Djirwin's prophecy on this matter will yet be justi- 
 fied by tlie verdict of time. Yov the opposition to the 
 doctrine of sexual selection proceeds almost invariably, 
 as it seems to me, from those persons who still desire 
 to erect an efficient barrier of one sort or another 
 between the human and animal worlds ; while on the 
 contrary the theory in qui^stion is almost if not cpiite 
 universally accepted by just those rigorously evolutionary 
 biologists who are freest from preconceptions or s]")ecinl 
 n 'priori teleological objections of any kind whatever. 
 The half of the doctrine which deals with the law of 
 battle, indeed, can hardly be doubted by any com]ietent 
 naturalist ; the other half, which deals with the supposed 
 resthetic preferences of the females, is, no doubt, dis- 
 tasteful to certain thinkers because it seems to imply 
 the existence in the lower animals of a sense of beauty 
 which many among us are not even now prepared gene- 
 
TifR TifRnRY OF Coi/RTS/i/r 153 
 
 ronsily to ndinit. Tlic desire to arrogntc to mankind 
 alone all tlic liiglu'r tacultics cither of sense or intellect 
 has prohaljly nnicli to do with the current disinclina- 
 tion towards the Darwim'an idea of sexnal selection. 
 'J^hinkei's who allow themselves to be eniotionallv swaved 
 by snch extraneons considerations foi-o-ct that the liean- 
 tif'nl is merely that which ]'»leases ; that beanty has no 
 external objective existence ; and that the ran<>'e of 
 taste, both among ourselves and among* animals at large, 
 is practically intinite. 'I'he greatest blow ever aimed at 
 the Darwinian theory of sexual selection was undoubt- 
 edly that dealt out by Mr. Alfred lluss(>l AVallace (et 
 tu, Brute !) in his able and subtle article on the Colours 
 of Animals in ' .^^acmillau's Magazine,' since reprint(Hl 
 in his delightful work on ' IVopical Nature.' Wallace 
 there urges with his usual acuteness, ingeiniity, and 
 skill several fundamental objt^ctions to the Darwinian 
 hypothesis of no little importance and weight. But it 
 must always be renu'ml)ered (with all dii(» respect to 
 the joint discoverer of natural selection) that Mr. 
 AVallace himself, after publishing his own admirable 
 essay on the developuuMit of man. drew back aghast in 
 the end from th(^ full consequences of his own admission, 
 and uttered his partial rc'cantation in the singular words, 
 ' Natural selection could onlv have endowed the sava<>'e 
 with a brain a little superior to that of an ape.' it 
 seems prol){d)le that in every case an analogous desin^ 
 to erect a iirm barrier between man and brute bv 
 positing the faculty for perceiving beauty as a special 
 (piasi-divine differentia of the human race has been at 
 the bottom of the still faintly surviving dislike^ amongst 
 a section of scientific men to sexual selection. 
 
154 C/iARLRs Darwin 
 
 Nevertlielpss, a candid and impartial critic would be 
 compelled frankly to admit that Darwin's admirable 
 theory of courtship has not on the whole jDroved so gene- 
 rally acceptable to the biological world up to the present 
 time as his greater and far more comprehensive theory 
 of survival of the fittest. It still waits for its final 
 recognition, towards which it is progressin(>- moi-e 
 rapidly and surely every day it li\'es. 
 
155 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 VICTORY AND KEST. 
 
 The last eleven years of Darwin's life were spent in en- 
 forcing and developing the principles already reached, 
 and in enjoying the almost unchequered progress of the 
 revolution he had so unconsciously to himself succeeded 
 in inaugurating. 
 
 Only one year elapsed between the publication of 
 the ' Descent of Man ' and that of its next important 
 successor, the ' Expression of the Emotions.' The occa- 
 sion of this learned and bulky treatise in itself stands 
 as an innnortal proof of the conscientious way in which 
 Darwin went to work to anticipate the slightest and 
 most comparatively impertinent possible objections to 
 his main theories. Sir Charles Bell, in one of the 
 ([uaintly antiquated Bridgwater treatises — those nuir- 
 vellous monuments of sadly mis])laced t(>leological in- 
 {ifenuitv — had maintained that man was endowed with 
 sundry small facial nmscles solely for the sake of ex- 
 pressing his emotions. This view was so obviously 
 opposed to the belief in the descent of man from some 
 lower form, ' that,' says Darwin, ' it was necessary for 
 me to consider it ; ' and so he did, in a lengthy wf)rk, 
 where the whole subject is exhaustively treated, and 
 
156 Charirs Darwix 
 
 T3( ll's id^n is ronipletely pulverised by the apt nlle^'ation 
 of analogous expressions in the animal world. In his 
 old age Darwin grew, in fact, onlv the more ceaselessly 
 and wonderfnllv indnstrious. In 1875, after three 
 yeai's of comparative silence, came the ' Insectivorous 
 Plants,' a work full of minute observation on the 
 habits and manners of the sundew, the butterwort, tlie 
 Venus's fly-catcher, {uul the various heterogeneous bog- 
 haunting species known by the common name of 
 pitch.er plants. The bare mass and weiglit of the facts 
 which Darwin had collected for the ' Origin of Species ' 
 miglit well-nigli have stifled the very existence of that 
 marvellous book : it was lucky tliat the prematui-e 
 publication of Wallace's paper compelled liim to hurry 
 on his ' brief abstract,' for if he liad waited to select 
 and arrange the wliolt^ series of obser\''ations that he 
 finally published in his various later justificatory 
 volumes, we might have looked in vain for the great 
 systematic and organising work, which would no doubt 
 have been ' surcharged with its own weight, and 
 strangled with its waste fertilitv.' But the task that 
 he himself best loved was to watch in minute detail 
 the principles whose secret he had penetrated, and 
 whose reserve he had broken, working themselves out 
 before his V(My ej'es, naked and not ashamed — to catch 
 Acta?ou-like the undraped form of nature herself in the 
 actual process of her inmost being. He could patiently 
 observe the rtnl and slimv hair-o-lands of the drosera 
 closing slowly and remorselessly round the insect prey, 
 and sucking from their bodies with sensitive tentacles 
 the protoplasmic juices denied to its leaves by the poor 
 and boP'O'v soil, on which alone its scanty rootlets can 
 
Victory axd Rest 157 
 
 ])roper1y thrive. lie could watch the butterwort curving 
 round the edges of its wan green Ibliage upon the 
 captured limbs of fly or a]ihis. He could note how the 
 serried mass of tinger-like processes in the utricles 
 of the bladderwort si owl v absorb orffiinic matter 
 from the larva of a gnat, or the miiuite water-insects 
 entangled within its living and almost animated lobster- 
 pot. He could track the long line of treacherous honey- 
 o'lauds bv which the sarracenia entices flies into the 
 festering manure-wells of its sticky pitchers. The 
 minuteness and skill of all his observations on these 
 lesser problems of natural selection inevitably inspired 
 faith among outsiders in the cautious judgment of the 
 observer and experimenter ; and day by day throughout 
 his later years the evidence of the popular acceptance 
 of his doctrine, and of the dying away of the general 
 ridicule with which it was first received by the unlearned 
 public, was very gratifying to the great naturalist. 
 
 A year later, in 1. (j, came the 'Effects of Cross 
 and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom.' So 
 far as regarded the world of plants, especially with re- 
 spect to its higher divisions, this work vras of innnense 
 theoretical importance ; and it also cast a wonderful 
 side-light upon the nature of that strange distinction 
 of sex which occurs both in the ve<>'etable and animal 
 kingdom, and in each is the concomitant — one might 
 almost say the necessary concomitant — of high develo])- 
 ment and complex organisation. ^'he great result 
 attained by Darwin in his long and toilsome scries of 
 experiments on this interesting subject was the splendid 
 proof of the law that cross-fertilisation produces finer 
 and healthier offspring, while continuous self-iertilisa- 
 
T58 CiTART.Rs Darwin 
 
 tion tends in the long run to degnidation, degeneration, 
 and final extinction. 
 
 Here as elsewhere, however, Darwin's principle does 
 not spring spontaneous, like Athene from the head of 
 Zeus, a goddess full-formed, uncaused, inexplicable : it 
 arises gradually by a slow process of development and 
 modification from the previous investigations of earlier 
 biologists. At the close of the last century, in the 
 terrible year of u])lieaval 179o,a quiet German botanist, 
 Christian Konrad Sprengel by name, published at 
 Berlin his long unheeded but intensely interesting work 
 on the ' Fertilisation of Flowers.' In the sunmier of 
 1789, while all ^]urope was ablaze with the news that 
 the Bastile had been stormed, and a new era of humanity 
 begun, the calm and peaceful Pomeranian observer was 
 noting in his own garden the curious fact that many 
 flowers are incapable of being fertilised without the 
 assistance of flying insects, which carry pollen from the 
 stamens of one blossom to the sensitive surface or 
 ovary of the next. Hence he concluded that the secre- 
 tion of honey or nectar in flowers, tlie contrivances by 
 which it is protected from rain, the bright hues or lines 
 of the corolla, and the sweet perfume distilled by the 
 blossoms, are all so manv cunning devices of nature 
 to ensure fertilisation by the insect-visitors. Moreover, 
 Sprengel observed that nuuiy flowers are of one sex only, 
 and that in sev-u'nl others the sexes do not mature 
 sinndtaneously ; ' so that,' said he, ' nature seems to 
 intend that no flower shall be fertilised by means of its 
 own pollen.' Indeed, in some instances, as he showed 
 by experiments upon the yellow day lily, plants impreg- 
 nated from their own stamens cannot be made to set 
 
VicroKY AND Rest 159 
 
 seed at all. ' So near,' says liis able successor, Hermann 
 ]\liill«'r, ' was Sprengel to the distinct recognition of the 
 fact that self-fertilisation leads to worse results than 
 cross-fertilisation, and that all the arrangements which 
 favour insect-visits are of value to the plant itself, 
 simply because the insect-visitors effect cross-fertilisa- 
 tion ! ' As in most other anticipatory casey, however, 
 it nuist be here remarked that Sprengel's idea was 
 wholly teleological : he conceived of nature as animated 
 by a direct informing principle, which deliberately aimed 
 at a particular result ; whereas Darwin rather came to 
 the conclusion that cross-fertilisation as a matter of fact 
 does actually produce beneficial results, and that there- 
 fore those plants which varied most in the direction 
 of arrangements for favouring insect-visits were likely 
 to be exceptionally fortunate in the struggle for exist- 
 ence against competitors otherwise arranged. It is just 
 the usual Darwinian substitution of an efiicient for a 
 final cause. 
 
 Even before Sprengel, Kol renter had recognised, in 
 17G1, that self-fertilisation was avoided in nature ; and 
 his observations and experiments on intercrossing and 
 on hybridism were largely relied upon by Darwin him- 
 self, to whom they suggested at an early period many 
 fruitful lines of original investigation. In 1709, again, 
 Andrew Knight, following u]) the same line of thought 
 in England as Sprengel in (Jermany, declared as the 
 result of his close experiments upon the garden pea, 
 that no plant ever fertilises itself for a perpetuity of 
 generations. But Knight's law, not being bi'ought 
 into causal connection with any great fundamental 
 principle of nature, was almost entirely overlooked by the 
 
i6o Charles Darwin 
 
 scientific woi-ld until tlie publication of J)ai'\vin's ' Orio;in 
 of Species,' half a century later. The same nejyflect 
 also overtook S])rengers innnensely interesting and 
 curious work on fertilisation of flowers. The world, \\\ 
 fact, was not yet ready for the separate treatment ot 
 functional problems connected with the interrelations 
 of organic beings ; so Knight and 8i)reiigel were laid 
 aside unnoticed on the dusty to]) bookshelves of public 
 libraries, while the drv classificatorv and systematic 
 biology of the moment had it all its own way for the 
 time being on the centre reading-taljles. 80 many 
 separate and independent strands of thought does it 
 ultimately require to make up the grand final generalisa- 
 tion which the outer world attributes in its totality to 
 the one supreme organising intelligence. 
 
 But in the ' Origin of Species ' itself Darwin 
 reiterated and emplnisised Knight's law as a general 
 and all-pervading principle of nature, placing it at 
 the same time on broader and surer biological founda- 
 tions by affiliating it intimately upon his own 
 great illuminating and unifying doctrine of natural 
 selection. He also soon after rescued from oblivion 
 Sprengel's curious and fairy-like book, showing in full 
 detail in his w^ork on orchids the wonderful contrivances 
 l)y which flowers seelv to attract and to secure the assist- 
 ance of insects for the impregnation of their embryo 
 seeds. In the ' A^ariation of Animals and Plants under 
 Domestication,' he further showed that breeding in-and- 
 in diminishes the strength and productiveness of the 
 offs])ring ; while crossing with another stock produces, 
 on the contrary, the best ]30ssible ])hysical results in 
 both directions. And now at last, in the ' Effects of 
 
Victory and Ri.st i6i 
 
 Cross and Self Fertilisation,' he proved by careful and 
 frequently repeated experiments that a constant in- 
 fusion of fresh blood (so to speak) is essential to the 
 production of the healthiest offspring. In the words 
 of his own emphatic summinpf up, ' Nature abhors per- 
 petual self-fertilisation.' 
 
 '^riie immediate result of these new statements and 
 this fresh rationale of Kni_t»"ht's law was to bring down 
 Sprengel forthwith from the top shelf, where he had 
 languished ingloriously for seventy years, and to set a 
 whole school of ardent botanical observers working hard 
 in the lines he had laid down upon the mutual corre- 
 lations of insects and flowers. A vast literature sprang 
 up at once upon tliis enchanting and long-neglected 
 subject, the most eminent workers in the rediscovered 
 field being Delpino in Italy, Hildebrand and Hermann 
 Miiller in Germany, Axel in Sweden, Lubbock in 
 England, and Fritz Miiller in tropical South America. 
 Darwin found the question, in fact, almost taken out of 
 his hands before he had time himself to treat of it ; for 
 Hildebrand's chief work was published as early as 18G7, 
 while Axel's appeared in 18G9, both of them several 
 years earlier than Darwin's own final essay on the 
 subject in the ' Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation.' 
 No statement^ perhaps, could more clearly mark the 
 enormous impetus given to researches in this direction 
 than the fact that D'Arcy Thompson, in his appendix 
 to Muller's splendid work on the ' Fertilisation of 
 Flowers,' has collected a list of no less than eight hun- 
 dred and fourteen separate works or important papers 
 bearing on that special department of botany, almost 
 all of them subsequent in date to the first jDublication 
 
 M 
 
1 62 Charles Darwin 
 
 of tlie ' Origin of Species.' So widely did the Darwinian 
 wave extend, and so profonndly did it affect every 
 minute point of biological and psychological investiga- 
 tion. 
 
 Kach of these later works of Darwin's consists, as i\, 
 ride, of an expansion of some single chapter or para- 
 graph in the ' Origin of Species ; ' or, to speak more 
 correctly, of an arrangement of the materials collected 
 and tlie experiments designed for that particular portion 
 of the great projected encyclopaedia of evolutionism, of 
 whicli the 'Origin of Species' itself was but a brief 
 anticipatory summary or rough outline. Thus, the book 
 on Orchids, published in I8G2, is already foreshadowed 
 in a part of the chapter on the Difficulties of the Theory 
 of Natural Selection ; the ' Movements and Habits of 
 Climbing Plants' (1805) is briefly summarised by 
 anticipation in the long section on Modes of Transition ; 
 the ' Variation of Animals and Plants under Domesti- 
 cation ' (1808) consi«ts of the vast array of y^/^V.vi.s 
 jiisfr/lrafrres for the first chapter of the ' Origin of 
 Species ; ' and the germ of the ' Cross and Self Fertili- 
 sation ' (1870) is to be seen in the passage ' On the 
 Intercrossing of Individuals ' in Chapter IV. of the 
 same work. It was well indeed that Darwin began by 
 publishing the shorter and more manageable abstract ; 
 the half, as the wise Greek proverb shrewdly remarks, 
 is often more than the whole ; and a world that eagerly 
 devoured the first great deliverance of the Darwinian 
 principle, might have stood aghast had it been asked to 
 swallow it piecemeal in such gigantic treatises as those 
 with which its author afterwards sought thrice to van- 
 quish all his foes and thrice to slay the slain. 
 
Victory axd Rr st 163 
 
 Yet, with each fresh manifestation of Darwin's in- 
 exliaustihle resources, on tlie otlier liancl, the opposition 
 to liis princ'ipU'S grew feebler and feelilrr, and the 
 universality of tlieir acceptance more and moi*e pro- 
 nounced, till at last, among biologists at least, not to be 
 a Hjirwinian was equivalent to being hopelessly left 
 behind by tlu^ general onward movenu'ut of the time. 
 In 1871' Tyndall delivered his famous address at the 
 Belfast meeting of the British Association ; and in 1877, 
 from the same presidentijd chair at Plymouth, Allen 
 Thomson, long reputed a doubtful waverer, enforced liis 
 cordial adhesion to the Darwinian principles by his 
 inaugural discourse on ' The ])evelo])ment of the Forms 
 of Animal Life.' A new generation of active workers, 
 trained up from the first in the evolutionarj' school, like 
 Romanes, i?ay Lankester, ^Phistleton Dyer, Balfour, 
 Sullv, and Moo-q-rido-e, had now risen Q'raduallv around 
 the great master; and in every direction lie could see 
 the seed he had himself planted being watered and 
 nourished in fresh soil by a hundred ardent and 
 enthusiastic young disciples. Even in France, ever 
 irresponsiv^e to the touch of new ideas of alien origin. 
 Colonel Moulinie's admirable and sympathetic transla- 
 tions were beg-inning to win over to the evolutionarv 
 creed many rising workers; while in Germany, A^ictor 
 Carus's excellent versions had from the verv first brou^'ht 
 in the enthusiastic Teutonic .biologists with a congenial 
 ' swarmery ' to the camp of the Darwinians. Corre- 
 spondents from every part of the world kept pressing 
 fresli facts and fresh applications upon the founder of 
 the faith ; and Darwin saw his own work so fast being 
 taken out of his hands by specialist disciples that he 
 
 M 2 
 
164 Cl/ARIFS DaRWIX 
 
 nl)iin(lon(Ml (Mitiroly liis originnl intention of pn])lisliiii^r 
 in (letiiil the ])iisis of liis first book, and contented In'ni- 
 self instead witli traein«»- ont minutely some minor 
 portions of his contemplated task as specimens of evo- 
 lutionary method. 
 
 In 1877, in pursuance of this chanprcd purpose, 
 Darwin published his book on ' Forms of Flowers,' in 
 which he dealt closely with the old problem of differ- 
 ently shaped blossoms on plants of the same species. 
 It had long been known, to take a single example, that 
 primroses existed in two forms, the ]iin-eyed and the 
 thrum-eyed, of which the former has the pin-like 
 summit of the ])istil at the top of the tube, and the 
 stamens concejded half way down its throat ; while in 
 the latter these relative positions are exactly reversed, 
 the stamens answering in place to the pistil of the 
 alternative form with geometrical accuracy. As early 
 as 1 8G2 Darwin had shown, in the ' Journal of the 
 Ijinnean Society,' that this curious arrangement owed 
 its development to the greater security which it afforded 
 for cross-fertilisation, because in this way each flower 
 had to be impregnated with the pollen from a totally 
 distinct blossom, gi-owing on a different individual 
 plant. In a series of successive papers read before the 
 same Society in the years between 1803 and 18G8, he 
 had extended a similar course of explanation to the 
 multiform flowers of the flaxes, the loosestrifes, the 
 featherfoil, the auricula, the buckbean, and several other 
 well-known plants. At last, in 1877, he gathered to- 
 gether into one of the now familiar green-covered 
 volumes the whole of his observations on this strange 
 peculiarity, and proved by abundant illustration and 
 
Victory axd Rest 165 
 
 t^x'jcrhneiit. that tlie diversity of form is always due 
 tliroii<^li natural selection to the advantafifci <^aintHl by 
 perfect security of cross-fertilisation, resulting as it 
 invariably does in the production of the finest, strongest, 
 and most successful seedlings. Any variation, however 
 peculiar, which helps to ensure this constant infusion of 
 fresh blood is certain to be favoured in the struggle for 
 life, owing to the su])erior vitality of the stock it begets. 
 But it is worthy of notice, as showing the extreme 
 minuteness and exhaustiveuess of Darwin's method 011 
 the small scale, side by side with his extraordinary and 
 unusual power of rising to the very highest and grandest 
 generalisations, that the volume which he devoted to 
 the elucidation of this minor factor in the question of 
 hereditary advantages runs to nearly as many p.'iges as 
 the last edition of the 'Origin of Species' itself. So 
 great was the wealth of observation and experiment 
 which he could lavish upon the solution of a single, 
 small, incidental problem. 
 
 Even fuller in minute original research was the 
 work which Darwin published in 1880, on 'The Power 
 of Movement in Plants,' detailing the result of innu- 
 merable observations on the seemingly irresponsible yet 
 almost purposive rotations of the growing rootlets and 
 young stems of peas and climbers. Anyone wdio wishes 
 to see on what a Avide foundation of irrefragable fact 
 the great biologist built up the stately fabric of his vast 
 theories cannot do better than turn for instruction to 
 this remarkable volume, which the old naturalist gave to 
 the world some time after passing the allotted span of 
 threescore years and ten. 
 
 It was in the same year (1880) that Huxley delivered 
 
1 66 Charles DarwiN 
 
 at tlic Royal Institution lils (ainoiis address on tlie 
 (.'onuno- of Age of the ' Origin of Species.' The time 
 was a favourable one foi' reviewing tlie silent and almost 
 unobserved ])rogress of a great revolution. Twenty- 
 one vears had come and o'one since the father of mod(>rn 
 scientific evolutionism had launched upon the world his 
 tentative work. In those tweiity-one years the thought 
 of hunuinity had been twisted around as upon some 
 invisible pivot, and a new heaven and a new earth had 
 been presented to the eyes of seers and thinkers. One- 
 and-twenty years before, despite the influence of Hutton 
 and of Lyell, the dominant view of the earth's past 
 liistory revealed but one vast and lawless succession of 
 hideous catastrophes. Wholesale creations and whole- 
 sale extinctions, world-wide cataclysms followed by fresh 
 world-wide births of interwoven faunas and floras — 
 these, said Huxley, were the ordinary machinery of the 
 geological epic brought into fashion by the misap])lied 
 genius of the mighty Cuvier. One-and-tAventy years 
 al'ter, the o])ponents themselves had given up the game 
 in its fullest form as lost beyond the hope of possible 
 restitution. Some hesitating thinkers, it is true, while 
 accepting the evolutionary doctrine more or less in its 
 earlier form, like jMivart and ]\leehan, yet refused their 
 assent on one ground oi* another <o Ihe s|)ecific Darwinian 
 doctrine of natural selection. Others, like Wallace, 
 nuule a s])ecial exception with regard to the develojuneiit 
 of the liunum species, which they supposed to be due to 
 other causes from those im])lied in the renuiinder of the 
 organic scale. Vet on the whole, biological science had 
 fairly carried the day in favour of evolution, In one form 
 or another, and not even the cavillers dared now to sug- 
 
V/CTOA'V AND Rest 167 
 
 gest that wliole systems of creation liad been swept away 
 oih hjiic, and remade ap-iiln in ditferent forriis for a suc- 
 ceeding' epocli, ill accordance witli tlie belief wliicli was 
 ahnost nniversal amonii;' o'coloo-ists n\) to the exact mo- 
 ment of the |)ublicati()ii of Darwin's master]iiec(\ 
 
 Diu'ino' tlie twenty-one years, too, as lluxh-y like- 
 wise" pointed out, an innnense nnmbei' of new i'acts had 
 come to strens>'then the hands of the evolutionists at 
 the very |)oiut where tlu-y had before felt themselves 
 most openly vulnerable. Palaeontology had suppb'ed 
 many of those missin<>' links in the organic chain whose 
 absence from the interrupted and imperfect geological 
 record had been loudlv alle<>'ed ag{iinst the Darwinian 
 liypotliesis in the earlier days of struggle and hesita- 
 tion. Two years after the publication of the ' Origin 
 of Species,' the discovery of a winged and feathered 
 creature, haj)])ily preserved for us in the Soleidu)i'en 
 slates, with lizard-like head and teeth and tail, and 
 bird-like pinions, feet, aiul breast, had bridged over in 
 ])art the great gap that yawns between the existing 
 birds and ivptiles. A few years later, new fossil 
 rt'])tilian forms, erect on their hind legs like kangaroos, 
 and with very singular peculiarities of bony structure, 
 had helped still further to show the nature' of the modi- 
 ticf'tions by which the scale-bearing (piadruped type 
 passed slowly into that of the feather-bearing bi])ed. 
 In I87'"3, again, Professor Marsh's discovery of the 
 tooth(?d birds In tlie Americ{in cretaceous strata com- 
 pleted the illustrative stn-ies of transitional forms over 
 what had once been the most renuirkable existing break 
 in the continuity of organic development. Similarly, 
 Ilofmeister's investigations in the vegetable world 
 
1 68 Charles D.iA'w/.v 
 
 brou<^']it close together the flowering arid llowerless 
 phmts, by indicating that tlie ferns and the horsetails 
 were connected in curious unforeseen ways, tln-ough the 
 pill-worts and club-mosses, with the earliest and 
 simplest of forest trees, the firs and the puzzle-monkeys. 
 In minor nuitters like progress was continually re- 
 ported on every side. Gaudry found among the fossils 
 of Atticji the successive stances bv which the ancient 
 and undeveloped civets passed into the more modern 
 aiul specialised tribe of the hya3nas ; ^farsh traced out 
 in Western America, the ancestrv of the horse from a 
 five-toed creature no bigger than a fox, through inter- 
 mediate four-toed and three-toed forms, to the existing 
 single solid-hoofed type with its digits reduced to the 
 mininuun of unity ; and Filhol unearthed among the 
 phosphorites of (^uercy the common ])rogenitor of the 
 most distinct among the recent carnivores, the cats and 
 the dogs, the plantigrade bears and the digitigrade pumas. 
 ' So far as the aninud w^orld is concerned,' Professor 
 Huxley said in conclusion, reviewing these additions to 
 the evidence upon tliat memorable occasion, ' evolution 
 is no longer a speculation but a statement of historical 
 fact.' (Jf ]3arwin himself he renuirked truly, ' He has 
 lived long enough to outlast detraction and opposition, 
 and to see the stone that the builders rejected become 
 tlie head-stone oi' the corner.' 
 
 it was in 1881 that Darwin published his last 
 volume, ' The Formation of Vegetable Mould through 
 the Action of Worms,' In this singularly fascinating 
 and interesting monograph he took iu hand one of the 
 lowliest and humblest of living forms, the common 
 earthworm, and by an exhaustive study of its habits 
 
Victory a.wd Rest 169 
 
 and niaiiners strove to show liow the entire existence of 
 veufetable mould — the ordinary coverin": of fertile soil 
 upon the face of the earth — is due to the long but un- 
 obtrusive action of tliese little-noticed and ever-active 
 architects. J3y tlie acids wliich they evolve, they appear 
 to aid largely in the disintegration of the stone beneath 
 the surftice ; by their constant practice of eating fallen 
 leaves, which they drag down with tlu'ni into their 
 subterranean burrows, they produce the fine castings of 
 soft earth, so familiar to everybody, and thus reinstate 
 the coating of humus above the bare rock as often as it is 
 washed away again in the course of ordinary denudation 
 by the rain and the torrents. It is true that subsequent 
 investigation has shown the possibility of vegetable 
 mould existing under certain conditions without the 
 intervention of worms to any marked extent ; but, as a 
 whole, there can be little doubt that over most parts of 
 the world the presf nee of soil, and therefore of the vege- 
 table growth rooted in it, is entirely due to the unsus- 
 pected yet ceaseless activity of these humble creatures. 
 The germ of the earthworm theory a])pears to me to 
 have been first suggested to Darwin's miud by a passage 
 in a work where one would little have suspected it — 
 White's ' Natural History of Selborne.' ^ l^arthworms,' 
 says the idyllic llam])shire naturalist, ' though in ap- 
 pearance a small and despicable link in the chain of 
 nature, yet, if lost, would nudce a lamentable chasm. 
 For to say nothing of half the birds, and some (piad- 
 rupeds, which are almost eutin'ly supported by them, 
 worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, 
 which would proceed but lamely without them, by 
 boring, perforating, and loosening the soil, and rendering 
 
170 Charles Darwin 
 
 it pervious to ruins and the fibres of plants, by tlrawiiig 
 straws and stalks of leaves into it; and, most of all, by 
 throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth, 
 called worm-casts, which, being their excrement, is a 
 fine manure for grain and grass. Worms probably 
 provide new soils for hills and slopes where the rain 
 washes the earth away; and they affect slopes, probably, 
 to .avoid being flooded. (Jardeners and farmers express 
 their detestation of worms ; the former, because they 
 render their walks unsightly, and make them much 
 work ; and the latter, because, as they thiidv, worms 
 eat their green corn. But tkese men would find, that 
 the earth without worms would soon become cold, hard- 
 bound, and void of fermentation ; and, conse(juently, 
 sterile.' 
 
 If Darwin ever read this interesting passage, which 
 he almost certainly nnist fit some time have done, it 
 would appear that he had overlooked it in later life ; 
 for he, who was habitually so candid and careful in the 
 acknowledgment of all his obligations, however great 
 or however small, do(^s not make any mention r)f it at 
 all in his ' AVo'etable Mould,' though he alludes inci- 
 dentally to sonu^ other observations of Gilbert White's 
 on the minor habits and manners of earthworms. Ihit 
 whether Darwin was originally indebted to White or 
 not foi" the fonndation of his theorv on the subiect of 
 mould, the important point to notice is really this, that 
 what with the observant parson of Selborne was but a 
 casual glimpse, the mere passing suggestion of a fruit- 
 i'ul idea, became witli Darwin, in his wider fashion, a 
 carefully elaborated and powerfully buttressed theorv, 
 supported l)y long and patient investigation, ample 
 
Victory and Rest 171 
 
 t'X])eriiiieiit, and vast collections of mliiutt' facts. The 
 difference is strikino-ly cliaractcM^istic of the strono- point 
 of Darwin's genius. While he had all the breiidth Jind 
 universality of the profoundest thinkers, he luid also all 
 the marvellous and inexhaustible patience of th(> most 
 precise and s])ecial microscopical student. 
 
 For vears, indeed, Darwin studied the wavs and 
 instincts of the common earthworm with the same i-lose 
 and accurate observation which he gave to every otlier 
 abstruse subject that engaged in any way his acute 
 inttdlect. ^Fhe hiwyer's maxim, ' De mininus lex non 
 curat,' he used to say, never truly applies to science. 
 As early as the year 1887 he read a paper, before the 
 Geological Society of London, 'On the Formation of 
 jMould," in which he developed with some fulness the 
 mother idea of his complete theory on the earthworm 
 question. He there showed that layers of cinders, nuirl, 
 or ashes, which had been strewn thickly over the surface 
 of meadows, were found a few years after at a depth of 
 some inches beneath the turf, yet still forming in spite 
 of their burial a reo-ular and fairlv horizontal stratum, 
 '^i'his apparent sinking of the stones, he believed, was 
 due to the quantity of tine earth brought u]) to the 
 surface by worms in the form of castings. It was ob- 
 jected to his theory at the time that the work su])posed 
 to be acconqilished by the worms was out of all reason- 
 able proportion to the size and numbers of the alleged 
 actors. Here Darwin's foot was on his native heath ; 
 he felt himself immediately on solid ground again. 
 Th(> cumulative im])ortance of separately iniinitesiinal 
 elements is indeed the very keynote -id special pecu- 
 liarity of the great biologist's method of thinking. He 
 
1/2 ClfARLES DaR win 
 
 had found out in very truth tliat many a litth* makes a 
 mickh', thiit the infinitely small, infinitely repeated, 
 may become in process of infinite years infinitely im- 
 portant. 80 he set himself to work, with characteristic 
 contempt of time, to weigh and measure worms and 
 worm-castings. 
 
 lie began by keeping tame earthworms in flower- 
 pots ill iiis own house, counting the number of worms 
 and burrows in certain measured spaces of pasture or 
 garden, and starting his long Jind slow experiment in 
 his field at Down already alluded to. lie tried issues 
 on their senses, on their instincts, on their emotions, 
 on their intelligence ; he watched them darting wildly 
 like rabbits into their holes when alarmed from without, 
 overcominyf en<j;ineeriny: difiicidties in dragoing down 
 oddly-shaped or unfamiliar leaves, and protecting the 
 open mouths of their tunnels from intruders with a little 
 defensive military glacis of rounded pebbles. He found 
 that more than 5o,000 worms on an average inhabit 
 every acre of garden land, and that a single casting 
 sometimes weighs as much as three ounces avoirdupois. 
 Ten tons of soil per acre pass annually through their 
 bodies, and mould is thrown up by them at an average 
 rate of 22 inches in a century. Careful observations 
 on the stones of Stonehenge ; on the tiknl floors of 
 buried buildings ; on Roman ruins at Silchester and 
 Wroxeter, and on his own meadows and pastures at 
 Down, fiiuilly enabled the cautious experimenttjr to 
 prove conclusively the truth of his thesis, and to present 
 to the world the despised earthworm in a new character, 
 as the friend of man and of agriculture, the producer 
 and maintainer of the ve<i:etaljle mould on our hills or 
 
Victory axd Rj-:st 173 
 
 valleys, find the prime cause of the very existence of 
 that cloak of greensward that clothes our lawns, our 
 fields, and our pleasure-grounds. 
 
 It was his last work. Persistent ill-health and 
 equally persistent study for seventy-three years had 
 broken down a constitution never really strong, and 
 consumed from within by the ceaseless fires of its own 
 overpowering and undying energy. On Tuesday, April 
 the 18tli, 1882, he was seized at midnight by violent 
 pains, and at four o'clock on Wednesday afternoon he 
 died suddenly in his son's arms, after a very short but 
 painful illuess. So retired was the family life at Down 
 that the news of the great biologist's death was not 
 actually known in London itself till two days after 
 he had breathed his last. 
 
 The universal regret and grief expressed at the loss 
 in all civilised countries was the best measure of the 
 innnense change of front which had slowly come over 
 the whole educated conununity, in the twenty-three 
 years since the first publication of the ' Origin of 
 Species.' No sooner was Darwin's death announced 
 than all lands and all classes vied with one another in 
 their eagerness to honour the name and memory of the 
 great biologist. Indeed, the spontaneous and immediate 
 nature of the outburst of regret and affectionate regard 
 which followed hard upon the news of Darwin's death, 
 astonished even those who had v.^atched closelv the 
 extraordinary revolution the man himself had brought 
 so well to its final consummation. In England, it was 
 felt instinctively on every side tliat the great naturalist's 
 proper place was in the aisles of Westminster, hard by 
 the tomb of Newton, his innnortal predecessor. To 
 
174 CnAiH.r.s Darwin 
 
 this nniversnl find deep-seated It'cliiiu,- D.'invin's t'niiiily 
 regretfully sucrifieed tlieir own luitural j^reference for a 
 ([iiiet interment in the gi'aveyard at IJown. On the 
 Wednesday morning next after his death, (Jharles 
 Darwin's I'emains wm'e borne witli unwonted marks of 
 respeet and ceremony, in the assembled presence of all 
 Ihat was noble and good in Bi'itain, to an honoured 
 grave in the ])recincts of the great Abbey. Wallace 
 and Huxley, Lubbock aiul Hooker, his m'arest peers in 
 the domain of ])ure science, stood among the bearers who 
 held the pall. Lowell represented the re])ublics of 
 America and of letters. Statesmen, and poets, and phi- 
 losophers, and theologiiuis mingled with the throng of 
 scientific thinkers who crowded close around the vene- 
 rated bier. No incident of fitting pomp or dignity was 
 wanting as the organ pealed out iu solemn strains the 
 special anthem composed for the occasion, to the appro- 
 jiriate words of the Hebrew poet, ' Happy is the nuin 
 that tindeth wisdom.' Even tlie narrow Philistine 
 intelligence itself, which still knew Darwin only as the 
 man who thought we were all descended from monkeys, 
 was impressed with the sole standard of greatness open 
 to its feeble and shallow comprehension by the mere 
 solemnity and ceremony of tlu' occasion, and began to 
 enquire with blind wonderment what this thinker had 
 done whom a whole people thus delighted to honour. 
 
 Of Darwin's pure and exalted moral nature no 
 Englishman of the present generation can trust himself 
 to speak with becoming moderation. His love of truth, 
 his singleness of heart, his sincerity, his earnestness, 
 his modesty, his candour, his absolute sinking of self and 
 selfishness — these, indeed, are all conspicuous to every 
 
Victory and Rf.st 175 
 
 reader, 011 tlie very face of every word he ever printed. 
 Like liis woi'ks tlu'inselves, tliey must loii«»; outlive him. 
 ]hit liissyuipatlu'tic kiudhness, his ready ^'emn-osity, tlie 
 staiinehm'ss of his friendship, tlie witUli and deptli and 
 bi'cadth of his affections, the manner in whicli ' he hoi'c 
 with tliose wlio hlaint-d liim nnjnstly without hlamiuf^ 
 them in return,' tliese things can never so well be known 
 to any other generation of men as to the three genera- 
 tions who walked the world with him. Manv even of 
 those who did not know him loved him like a father; to 
 many who never saw his face, the hope of winning 
 Charles Darwin's approbation and regard was the high- 
 est incentive to thought and action. Towards younger 
 men, especially, his unremitting kindness was always 
 most noteworthy : he spoke and wrote to them, not 
 like one of the masters in Israel, but like a fellow- 
 worker and seeker after truth, interested in their 
 interests, pleased at their successes, sympathetic with 
 their failures, gentle to their mistakes. Not that he ever 
 spared rightful criticism ; on the contrary, the love of 
 truth was with him so overpowering and enthralling 
 a motive that he pointed out what seemed to him errors 
 or misconceptions in the work of others with perfect 
 frankness, fully expecting them to be as pleased and 
 delighted at a suggested amendment of their faulty 
 writing as he himself was in his own case. But his 
 praise was as generous as his criticism was frank ; and, 
 amid all the toil of his laborious life in his studv jit 
 Down, he could .always find time to read and comment 
 at full length upon whatever fresh contributions to his 
 own subjects the merest tyro might venture to submit 
 for his consideration. He had th(^ sympathetic recep- 
 
176 CllAh'IFS DaK'\\7\ 
 
 tivltv Df all truly trreat minds, ami wlien he died, 
 thousands upon tli inds wlio had never belield his 
 serene features and his fatherly eyes felt they had lost 
 indeed a personal friend. 
 
 (ireatness is not always joined with ji'entleness : in 
 Charles Darwin's case, by universal consent of all who 
 knew him, 'an intellect which had no superior' was 
 w^edded to ' a character even nobler than the intellect.' 
 
177 
 
 ClIAPTEU XI. 
 
 DAKWIX'S PLACE IN THE EVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT. 
 
 To most people Darwinism .'ind evolution mean one 
 and tlie sjime thing. After what has lieiv been said, 
 liowever, with regard to the pre-Darwinian evohitionary 
 movement, and the distinction between tlie doctrines of 
 descent witli modification and of natural selection, it 
 need hardly be added that the two are quite separate 
 and separable in thought, even within the Hunts of tlie 
 purely restricted biological order. Darwinism is only a 
 part of organic evolution ; the theory, as a whole, owes 
 much to Darwin, but it does not owe everything to him 
 alone. There were biological evolutionists before e\er 
 he published the ' Origin of Species ; ' there are bio- 
 logical evolutionists even now who refuse to accept the 
 truth of his great discovery, and who cling firnd}' to 
 the primitive faitli set forth in earlier and cruder 
 shapes by hh'asmus Darwin, by liamarck, or by llobert 
 Chambers. 
 
 Much more, then, must Darwinism and the entire 
 theory of organic development to which it belongs be 
 carefully discriminated, as a part or factor, from evolu- 
 tion at large, as a universal and all-embracing cosniical 
 system. That system itself has gradually emerged as a 
 
 N 
 
178 Charles Darwin 
 
 slow growth of the past two centuries, a ]irogressivo 
 development of the collective scientific and philosophical 
 mind of humanity, not due in its totality to any one 
 single commanding thinker, but summing itself up at 
 last in our own time more fully in the person and 
 teaching of Mr. Herbert Spencer than of any other 
 solitary mouthpiece. Indeed, intimately as we all now 
 associate the name of Darwin, with the word 'evolution,' 
 that term itself (whose vogue is almost entirely due to 
 Mr. Spencer's influence) was one but rarely found upon 
 Darwin's own lips, and but rarely written by his own 
 pen. He speaks rather of development and of natural 
 selection than of evolution : his own concern was more 
 with its special aspect as biological modification than 
 with its general aspect as cosmical unfolding. L«'f us 
 ask, then, from this wider standpoint of a great and 
 far-reaching mental revolution, what was Charles 
 Darwin's exact niche in the evolutionary movement of 
 the two last centuries ? 
 
 Evolutionism, as now conmionly understood, nitiy 
 be fairly regarded as a mode of envisaging to ourselves 
 the history of the universe, a tendency or frame of 
 mind, a temperament, one might almost say, or habit 
 of thought rather than a definite creed or body of 
 dogmas. The evolutionist looks out upon the cosmos 
 as a continuous process unfolding itself in regular ordfi' 
 in obedience to definite natural laws. He sees in it 
 all, not a warring chaos restrained by the constjiut 
 interference from without of a wise and beneficent ex- 
 ternal power, but a vast aggregate of original elements, 
 perpetually working out their own fresh redistribution, in 
 accordance with their own inherent energies. He regards 
 
Darwinism and Evoiution 179 
 
 the cosmos as an almost infinite collection of material 
 atoms, animated by an almost infinite sum-total of 
 energy, potential or kinetic. 
 
 In the very beginning, so far as the mental vision 
 of the astronomer can dimly pierce with hypothetical 
 glance the abyss of ages, the matter which now com- 
 poses the material universe seems to have existed in a 
 highly diffuse and nebulous condition. The gravitative 
 force, however, with which every atom of the whole 
 vast mass was primarily endowed, caused it gradu- 
 ally to aggregate around certain fixed and definite 
 centres, which became in time the rally ing-points or 
 nuclei of future suns. The primitive potential energy 
 of separation in the atoms of the mass was changed 
 into actual energy of motion as they drew closer and 
 closer together about the common centre, and into 
 molecular energy or heat as they clashed with one 
 another in bodily impact around the hardening core. 
 Thus arose stars and suns, composed of fiery atomic 
 clouds in a constant state of progressive concentration, 
 ever gathering-in the hem of their outer robes on the 
 surface of the solid globe within, and ever radiating 
 off their store of associated energy to the impalpable 
 and hypothetical surrounding ether. This, in neces- 
 sarily brief and shadowy abstract, is the nebular theory 
 of Kant and Laplace, as amended and supplemented by 
 the modern doctrine of the correlation and conservation 
 of energies. 
 
 Applied to the solar system, of which our own 
 planet forms a component member, the evolutionary 
 doctrine (in its elder shape) teaches us to envisage that 
 minor group as the final result of a single great diffuse 
 
 H 2 
 
l8o CflARf.F.S DARWI!^ 
 
 iiHbiiln, wliicli once spread its faint, and cloud-like mass 
 with inconceivable tenuity, at least as far from its 
 centre, now occupied by the sun's body, as the furthest 
 point in the orbit of Neptune, the outermost of the yet 
 known planets. From this remote and immense peri- 
 phery it has gradually gathered itself in, growing 
 denser and denser all the time, towards its common 
 core, and has left behind, at irregular intervals, con- 
 centric rings or belts of nebulous matter, which, after 
 rupturing at their weakest point, have hardened and 
 concentrated round their own centre of gravity into 
 Jupiter, Saturn, the Earth, or Venus. ^J'he main central 
 body of all, retreating ever within as it dropped in its 
 course the raw material of the planetary masses, has 
 formed, at last, the sun, the great ruler and luminary 
 of our system. Much as this primitive evolutionary 
 concept of the development and history of the solar 
 system has been modified and altered of late years by 
 recent researches into the nature of i.omets and meteors 
 and of the sun's surface, it still remains for all practical 
 purposes of popular exposition the best and simplest 
 mental picture of the general type of astronomical 
 evolution. For the essential point which it impresses 
 upon the mind is the idea of the planets in their several 
 orbits and with their attendant satellites as due, not to 
 external design and special creation, iu the exact 
 order in which we now see them, but to the slow and 
 regular working out of preordained physical laws, in 
 accordance with which tliey have each naturally assumed, 
 by pure force of circumstances, their existing size, and 
 weight, and orbit, and position. 
 
 Geology has applied a similar conception to the 
 
Daa'W/n/sm and Evolution i8i 
 
 ori<)^in and becoming of tlie earth's material and external 
 features as we now know them. Accepting from astro- 
 nomy the notion of our planet's primary condition as a 
 cooling- sphere of incandescent matter, it goes on to 
 show how the two great envelopes, atmospheric and 
 oceanic, gaseous and liquid, have gradually formed 
 around its solid core ; how the hard crust of the central 
 mass has been wrinkled and corrugated into mountain 
 chain and deep-cut valley, uplifted here into elevated 
 table-land or there depressed into hollow ocean bed ; 
 how sediment has slowly gathered on the floor of the 
 sea, and how volcanic energies or lateral pressure have 
 subsequently forced up the resulting deposits into Alpine 
 peaks and massive continents. In this direction, it was 
 Lyell who principally introduced into science the uni- 
 formitarian or evolutionary principle, who substituted 
 for the frequent cataclysms and fresh beginnings of the 
 earlier geologists the grand conception of continuous 
 action, producing from comparatively infinitesimal but 
 cumulative causes effects which at last attain by accretion 
 the most colossal proportions. 
 
 Here biology next steps in, with its splendid ex- 
 planation of organic life, as due essentially to the 
 secondary action of radiated solar energy on the outer 
 crust of such a cooling and evolving planet. Falling 
 on the cells of the simplest green plants, the potent 
 sunlight dissociates the carbon from the oxygen in the 
 carbonic acid floating in the atmosphere, and builds it 
 up with the hydrogen of water in the tissues of the 
 organism into starches and other organic products, 
 which differ from the inert substances around them, 
 mainly by the possession of locked-up solar energy. On 
 
1 82 Charles Darwin 
 
 the energy-yielding food-stuffs thus stored up the 
 animal in turn feeds and battens, reducing what was 
 before potential into actual motion, just as the steam- 
 engine reduces the latent solar energy of coal into 
 visible heat and visible movement in its furnace and its 
 machinery. How the first organism came to exist 
 biology has not yet been able fully to explain for us ; but 
 aided by chemical science it has been able to show us 
 in part how some of the simpler organic bodies may 
 have been originally built up, and it does not despair of 
 showing us in the end how the earliest organism may 
 actually have been produced from the prime elements 
 of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. Into this 
 most fundamental of biological problems, however, 
 Darwin himself, with his constitutional caution and dread 
 of speculative theorising, was not careful or curious to 
 enter. Even upon the far less abstruse and liypothetical 
 question, whether all life took its prime origin from a 
 single starting-point or from several distinct and separate 
 tribal ancestors, he hardly cared so much as to liazard 
 a passing speculation. With splendid self-restraint he 
 confined his attention almost entirely to the more 
 manageable and practical problem of the origin of 
 species by natural selection, which lay then and there 
 open for solution before him. '^I'aking for granted the 
 existence of the original organism or group of organisms, 
 the fact of reproduction, and the tendency of such 
 reproduction to beget increase in a geometrical ratio, 
 he deduced from these elementary given factors the 
 necessary corollary of survival of the fittest, with all its 
 marvellous and fiir-reaching implications of adaptation 
 to the environment and specific distinctions. By doing 
 
D^iR\v/.y/s.\f A. WD Evolution 1S3 
 
 so, he rendpred conceivaljle tlie nieclmnism of evolution 
 in the organic* world, thus bringing anotlier great aspect 
 of external nature within the range of the developmental 
 as opposed to tiie miraculous philosophy of the cosmos. 
 
 1 Psychology, once more, in the hands of Herbert 
 8pencer and his followers, not wholly unaided by 
 Darwin himself, has extended the self-same evolu- 
 tionary treatment to the involved and elusive pheno- 
 mena of mind, and has shown how from the simplest 
 unorganised elements of feeling, the various mental 
 powers and faculties as we now know them, both on 
 the intellectual and on the emotional side, have been 
 slowly built up in the long and ever-varying inter- 
 action between the sentient organism and the natural 
 environment. It has traced the first faint inception of 
 a nervous system as a mere customary channel of com- 
 munication between part and part ; the gradual growth 
 of fibre and ganglion ; the vague beginnings of external 
 sense-organ and internal brain ; the final perfection of 
 eye and ear, of sight and hearing, of pleasure and pain, 
 of intellect and volition. It has thus done for the sub- 
 jective or mental half of our complex nature what 
 biology, as conceived by Darwin, has done for the 
 physical or purely organic half; it has traced the origin 
 and development of mind, without a single break, from 
 its first faint and half-unconscious manifestation in the 
 polyp or the jelly-fish to its final grand and varied 
 outcome in the soul of the poet or the intellect of the 
 philosopher. 
 
 Finally, sociology has applied the evolutionary 
 metliod to the origin and rise of human societies, with 
 their languages, customs, arts, and institutions, their 
 
1^4 Chari.f.s Darwin 
 
 proven iinental ovi»'.inisatioii and their ecclesiasticul polity. 
 Taking from biology- the evolving savage, viewed as a 
 developed and liigldy gifted product of the anthropoid 
 stock, it has sliown bv what stayes and throuj^h what 
 causes he lias slowly aggregated into tribes and nations ; 
 has built up his communal, polygamic, or monoganiic 
 family ; has learnt the use of fire, of impU'ments, of 
 pottery, of metals ; has developed the whole resources 
 of oral speecli and significant gesture ; has invented 
 writing, pictorial or alphabetic ; has grown up to science, 
 to philosophy, to morals, and to religion. The chief 
 honoui's of this particular line of enquiry, the latest and 
 youngest of all to receive the impact of tlie evolutionary 
 impulse, belong mainly to Tylor, Lubbock, and Spencer 
 in England, and to Haeckel, I)e ^rortillet, and AVagner 
 on the continent. 
 
 In the sublime conception of the external universe 
 and its present workings which we thus owe to the inde- 
 pendent efforts of so many great progressive thinkers, 
 and which has here been briefly and inadecpiately 
 sketched out, Darwin's work in life falls naturallv into 
 its own place as the principal contribution to the evo- 
 lutionary movement in the special biological depart- 
 ment of tliought. Within tlie more limited range of 
 that department itself, the evolutionary impulse did 
 not owe its origin to Charles Darwin personally ; it took 
 its rise with Erasmus Darwin, Buffon, and Lamarck, 
 and it derived from our great modern English naturalist 
 its final explanation and definitive proof alone. But 
 just as the evolutionary movement in astronomy and 
 cosmical thought is rightly associated in all our minds 
 with the mighty theories of Kaut, Laplace, and Her- 
 
Darivia/ism and Evolution 185 
 
 scliel ; just as tho pvolutionary movenient in geolotry is 
 riirhtlv associated with the far lesser yet brilliant aiul 
 effective personality of Lyell ; just as the evolutionary 
 niov^enient in the derivative sciences is rij^'htly associated 
 with so many great still living- thinkers; so the evo- 
 lutionary movement in bioloj^y in particular ri<rhtly 
 sums itself up in the honoured nanu' of Charles 13arwin. 
 For wliat others suspected, he was the first to prove ; 
 where others speculated, he was the first to observe, to 
 experiment, to demonstrate, and to convince. 
 
 It should be noted, too, that while to us who come 
 after, the <)freat complex evolutionary movement of the 
 two last centuries justly reveals itself as one and in- 
 divisible, a single grand cosmical drama, having many 
 acts and many scenes, but all alike inspired by one 
 informing and pervading unity, yet to those whose half 
 unconscious co-operation slowly built it up by episodes, 
 piecemeal, each act and each scene unrolled itself 
 separately as an end in itself, to be then and tliere 
 attained and proved, (piite apart from the conception of 
 its analytic value as a part in a great harmonious 
 natural poem of the constitution of things, 'riiough 
 evolution appears to us now as a single grand continu- 
 ous process, a phase of the universe dependent upcju a 
 preponderating aggregation of matter and dissipation of 
 energy, yet to Kant and Laplace it was the astronomical 
 aspect alone that proved attractive, to Darwin it was 
 the biological aspect alone, and to many of the modern 
 workers in the minor fields it is the human and socio- 
 logical aspect that almost monopolises the whole wide 
 mental horizon. No greater proof can be given of the 
 subjective distinctness of parts in what was objectively 
 
1 86 CnARi.r.s Darwin 
 
 and fundaincnfjilly a sinL^li' broad psyclinlno-icul revolu- 
 tion of the liunian mind, than tlie fact tliat Lvell liini- 
 self, who more than any one man had introduced the 
 evolutionary conception into the treatment of geolo<ry, 
 should have stood out so long and fou_i»;ht so blindly 
 against the evolutionary conception in the organic 
 world. Indeed, it was not until the various scattei'ed 
 and many-coloured strands of evolutionary thought had 
 been gathered together and woven into one by the vast 
 catholic and synthetic intelligence of Herbert Spencer 
 tluit the idea of evolution as a whole, as a single con- 
 tinuous cosmical process, began to be apprehended and 
 gradually assimilated by the picked intelligences of the 
 several distinct scientific departments. 
 
 Observe also that the evolutionary method has 
 invaded each of the concrete sciences in the exact order 
 of their natural place in the hierarchy of knowledge. 
 It had been applied to astronomy by Kant and Laplace 
 before it was applied to geology by Lyell ; it had been 
 applied to geology by Lyell before it was applied to 
 biology by Darwin ; it had been applied to biology (in 
 part, at least) by Ljimarck and the Darwins before it was 
 applied to ])sychology by Spencer; and it is only at 
 the very end of all that it has been applied to sociology 
 and the allied branches of thouo-ht bv a hundred different 
 earnest workers in contemporary Kurope. Each stage 
 helped on the next ; each was dependent only on those 
 that went naturally before it, and aided in turn the 
 subsequent development of those that naturally came 
 afler it. 
 
 Nevertheless, the popular instinct which regards 
 Darwinism and evolution as practically synonymous is 
 
DAR\\7x/s.]r AXD Evof.ur/nx 187 
 
 to a largo extent justified by tlie actual facts of the 
 psycholot^ical upheaval. Darwin's work forms on the 
 whole the central keystone of the evolutionary system, 
 ami deserves the honour which has been thrust upon it 
 of suppoi'ting by its own mass the entire superstructun3 
 of the deveh)pment theory. 
 
 For, in the first plnce, Darwin had to deal with the 
 science of life, the science where the opposition to 
 evolutionism was sure to be strongest, and where the 
 forces and tendencies in favour of obscurantism were 
 sure to gather in fullest force. Fverv other great 
 onward step in our knowledge of our o^vn relation to 
 the universe of which we form a part had been com- 
 pelled indeed to run the gauntlet, in its own time, of 
 ecclesiastical censure and of popular dislike. 'J'hose 
 inveterate prejudices of human ignorance which sedu- 
 lously hide their genuine shape under the guise of 
 dogma masquerading as religion, had long since brought 
 to bear their baneful resources upon the discoveries of 
 Copernicus and the theories of Galileo, as blind, mislead- 
 ing, and diabolical lights, opposed to the sure and 
 certain warranty of Holy Scripture. Newton, again, 
 had in due time been blamed in that he boldlv sub- 
 stituted (as his critics dt^clared) the bald and barren 
 formula of gravitation for the personal superinten- 
 dence of a divine Providence. Laplace had been 
 accused of dethroning the deity from the centre and 
 governance of his celestial system. Around the early 
 geologists the battle of the six days of crt^ation 
 had raged fiercely for nearly half a century. But 
 all these varying modes of thought, though deemed 
 heretical enough in their own day, had touched, as it 
 
i8«^ CnARi.P.s Darwin 
 
 were, but the minor ramparts and unimportant out- 
 W(H'ks of tlie great obscurantist dogmatic strongliolds : 
 Darwinism, by openly attacking the inmost problems of 
 life and mind, had brought to bear its powerful artillery 
 upon the very keep and highest tower of the fortress 
 itself. The belief that the various stars, planets, and 
 satellites had or had not been wisely created in their 
 existing positions, and with their present orbits, moNe- 
 ments, and relations accurately fore-measured, did not 
 fundamentally affect, for good or evil, the cherished 
 dogmas of the ordinary multitude. JJut the analogous 
 belief in the distinct and separate creation of phmts and 
 animals, and more especially of the human species, was 
 far more closely and intimately bound up with all the 
 current religious conceptions. It was at first supposed, 
 not perhaps without some practical wisdom, that to upset 
 the primitive faith in the separate creation of living 
 beings was to loosen and imperil tlie very foundations of 
 common morality and revealed religion. The ' argument 
 from design ' had been immemorially regarded as the 
 principal buttress of orthodox thought. Theologians had 
 unwisely staked their all upon the teleological dogma, 
 and could ill afford to retire without a blow from that 
 tenaciously defended bastion of their main position. 
 Hence the evolutionary concept had its hardest fight to 
 wage over the biological field ; and when that field was 
 once fairly won, it had little more to fear from banded 
 preconceptions and established prejudices in any other 
 portion of the wide territory it claimed for its own. 
 
 In the second place, biological evolution, firmly 
 established by Darwin on a safe, certain, and unim- 
 peachable basis, led naturally and almost inevitably to 
 
Darwinism asd Evolution 189 
 
 all tlip other imiuniprablt' appHcutlonH of the pvolutioii- 
 arv method, in the doniuins of iisvch oh )<»■%•, sot'iolo<'v, 
 pl*ilolo^^f^', political thou<2fht, and ethical science. Hence 
 the immediate and visible results of its ]iromulgati()n 
 have been far more striking, noticeable, and evident than 
 those which followed the establishment of the evolution- 
 ary conception in the astronomical and f2feolo<jrical 
 departments. It was possible to accept cosmical ev(«lu- 
 tion and solar evolution and planetary evolution, without 
 at the same time accepting evolution in the restricted 
 field of life and mind. Rut it was impossible to accept 
 evolution in biolo<^y without at the same time extending 
 its application to psychology, to the social orgnnism, to 
 language, to ethics, to all the thousand and one varied in- 
 terests of human life and human development. Now, most 
 peo])le are little moved by speculations and hypotheses 
 as to the origin of the milky way or the belt of Orion ; 
 they care very slightly for Jupiter's moons or Saturn's 
 rings ; they are stolidly incurious as to the development 
 of the earth's crust, or the precise date of the cretaceous 
 epoch ; but they understand and begin to be touched 
 the moment you come to the practical {questions of man's 
 origin, nature, and history. Darwinism compelled their 
 attention by its inmiediate connection with their own 
 race ; and the proof of this truth is amply shown by the 
 mere fact that out of all the immense varietv of Charles 
 Darwin's theories and ideas, tlie solitarv one which 
 alone has succeeded in attaching to itself the public 
 interest and public ridicule is the theory of man's 
 ultimate descent from a monkey-like ancestor. J Popu- 
 lar instinct, here as elsewhere profoundly true at core 
 in the midst of all its superficial foolishness, has 
 
IQO Chaki lis Darwin 
 
 riglitly hit upon the central element in the Dnnvinian 
 conception which more than any otlier has caused its 
 irnitt'ul and wonderful expansion through every fertile 
 field of human enquiry. 
 
 In short, it was Danvin's task in life to draw down 
 evolution from heaven to earth, and to bring within the 
 scope of its luminous method all that is most interesting 
 to the uninstructed and unsophisticated heart of the 
 natural man. 
 
 The application of the evolutionary principle to tlie 
 world of life, human or animal, thus presents itself as 
 the chief philosophic and scientific achievement of the 
 nineteenth centurv. Throughout the whole middle 
 decades of the present age, the human mind in all its 
 highest embodiments was eagerly searching, groi)ing, and 
 eiupiiring after a naturalistic explanation of the origin 
 and progress of organic life. In the vast scheme for 
 the System of Synthetic Philosophy which Herbert 
 Spencer set forth as an antici])atory synopsis of his 
 projected work, the philosoi)her of develo])ment leapt at 
 once from the First Principles of evolution as a whole to 
 the Principles of Biology, l^sychology, and Sociology, 
 omitting all reference to the api)lication of evolution to 
 the vast field of inorganic nature ; and he did so on the 
 distinctly stated ground that its application to organic 
 nature was tlienand tliere more imjiortant and interest- 
 ing. That suggestive expression of belief aptly sums 
 up the general Jittitude of scientific and philosophic 
 ;ninds at the precise moment of the advent of Darwinism. 
 Kant and Laplace and Lyell had already applied the 
 evolutionary method to suns and systems, to planets and 
 continents ; what was needed next was that some 
 
Dakivin/sm and Evolution 191 
 
 deeply learned and universally equipped biological leader 
 should help the lame evolutionism of Lamarck over the 
 organic stile, and leave it free to roam the boundless 
 fields of what i\Ir. Spencer has sometimes well described 
 as tlie super-organic sciences. For that office, Darwin 
 at the exact moment presented himself; and his victory 
 and its results rightly entitle him to the popular regard 
 as the founder of all tluit most men .mean when they 
 spealv together in everyday conversation of the doctrine 
 of evolution. 
 
 On the other hand, the total esoteric philosophic 
 conception of evolution as a cosmical process, one and 
 continuous from nebula to man, from star to soul, from 
 atom to society, we owe rather to the other great 
 prophet of the evolutionary creed, Herbert Spenctn', 
 whose name will ever be equally remembered side l)y 
 side with his mighty peer's, in a place of high collateral 
 glory. It is he who has given us the general delinition 
 of evolution as a progress from an indefinite, incoherent 
 homoffeneitv to a definite coherent lu'teroi'-encifv, 
 accompanyi ig an integration of matter Jind dissipation 
 of motion, or, as we should now perhaps more correctly 
 say, of energy. In the establishment of the various 
 lines of thought which merge at last in that magnificent 
 cosmical law, it was Darwin's special task to bring the 
 ]ihen()niena of organic life well wdthin the clear ken of 
 known and invariable natural processes. 
 
192 Charles Darwin 
 
 ClIAPTEll XII. 
 
 THE NET RESULT, 
 
 And now let us ask ourselves, in all sincerity, what was 
 the final outcome and net result of Darwin's great and 
 useful life ? 
 
 If Charles Darwin had never existed at all, there 
 would still have been a considerable and expansive 
 evolutionaiy movement both in biology and in its sister 
 sciences throughout the latter half of the present 
 century. The harvest indeed was ready, juid the 
 labourers, though few, were full of Vigour. Suppose 
 for a moment that that earnest and sing]e-heart(>d dar- 
 winian genius had been cut off by some untimely disease 
 of childhood at five years old, all other conditions 
 remaining as they were, we should even so have had in 
 our midst to-day, a small philosophical and influential 
 band of evolutionary workers. Spencer would none 
 the less have given us his ' I'irst Principles ' and the 
 major part of his ' Principles of Biology,' with com- 
 paratively little alteration or omission. Wallace would 
 none the less have pronudgated his inchoate theory of 
 njitural selection, and rallied round his primordial con- 
 ception the very best and deepest minds of the biological 
 fraction. Geology would have enforced the continuity 
 
The Net Result 193 
 
 of types ; Cope and Marsh would liave unearthed for 
 our edification the ancestral forms of the evolving horse 
 and the toothed birds of the Western American deposits. 
 The Solenhofen lithographic slates would still have 
 yielded us the half-reptilian, half-avian Archnaopteryx ; 
 the tertiary deposits would still have presented us with 
 a long suite of gradually specialised and modified 
 mammalian forms. The Siberian meadows would have 
 sent us that intermediate creature which Prjevalsky re- 
 cognises as the half-way house between the horses and 
 the donkeys ; the rivers of Queensland would have dis- 
 closed to our view that strange lung-bearing and gill- 
 breathing barramunda, in which Giinther discerns the 
 missing link between the ganoid fishes on the one hand, 
 and the mudfish and salamandroid amphibians on the 
 other. From data such as these, biologists and palaeon- 
 tologists of the calibre of Huxley, Gaudry, Geikie, 
 Rutimeyer, and Busk, would necessarily have derived, 
 by the aid of Wallace's pregnant principle, conclusions 
 not so very far remote from Darwin's own. Heer and 
 Saporta would have drawn somewhat similar inferences 
 from the fossil flora of Switzerland and of Greenland ; 
 Hooker and De Candolle would have read pretty much 
 the self-same lessons in the scattered ferns and scanty 
 palm-trees of oceanic islands. Kowalevsky would have 
 seen in the ascidian larva a common prototype of the 
 vertebrate series ; the followers of Von Baer would have 
 popularised the embryological conception of the single 
 origin of animal life. The researches of Boucher de 
 Pertues, of Lyell, of Evans, of Boyd Dawkins, of 
 Keller, and of Christy and Lartet, would have unrolled 
 before our eyes, under any circumstances, the strange 
 
 •o 
 
194 Charles Darwin 
 
 story of prehistoric man. On the facts so gained, 
 Lubbock and Tylor, Schaafhausen and Buchner, would 
 have built up their various consistent theories of human 
 development and human culture. In short, even with- 
 out Charles Darwin, the nineteenth century would not 
 have stood still ; it would have followed in the wake of 
 BufFon and Diderot, of Lamarck and Laplace, of St. 
 Hilaire and Goethe, of Kant and Herschel, of Hutton 
 and Lyell, of Malthus and of Spencer. The great world 
 never rolls down the abysses of time obedient to the 
 nod of one single overruling Titanic intellect. ' If 
 the doctrine of evolution had not existed,' says Huxley, 
 * palasontologists must have invented it.' 
 
 But Charles Darwin acted, nevertheless, the part of 
 an immense and powerful accelerating energy. The 
 impetus which he gave gained us at least fifty years of 
 progress ; it sent us at a bound from Copernicus to 
 Newton ; so far as ordinary minds were concerned, in- 
 deed, it transcended at a single leap the whole interval 
 from Ptolemy to Herschel. The comparison is far from 
 being a mere rhetorical one. A close analogy really exists 
 between the two cases. Before Copernicus, the earth 
 stood fixed and immovable in the centre of the universe, 
 with obsequious suns, and planets, and satellites dancing 
 attendance in cycle and epicycle around the solid mass, 
 to which by day and night they continually ministered. 
 The great astronomical revolution begun by Copernicus, 
 Galileo, and Kepler, and completed by Newton, Laplace, 
 and Herschel, reduced the earth to its true position as 
 a petty planet, revolving feebly among its bigger brethren 
 round a petty sun, in some lost corner of a vast, majestic, 
 and almost illimitable galaxy. Even so, before Darwin, 
 
The Nut Result 195 
 
 iiiiin stood in liis own esteem tli(5 fixed point of an 
 anthropocentric universe, divinely born and divinely 
 instructed, with all the beasts of the lield, and the fowls 
 of the air, and the fruits of the earth specially created 
 with a definite purpose in subservience to his lordly 
 wants and interests. The great biological revolution, 
 which rightly almost sums itself up in the name of 
 Darwin, reduced man at once to his true position as the 
 last ])roduct of kinetic solar energy, working upon the 
 peculiar chemical elements of an evolving planet. It 
 showed that every part of every plant and every animal 
 existed primarily for the sake of that plant or animal 
 alone ; it unseated man from his imaginary throne in 
 the centre of the cosmos, teaching him at once a lesson 
 of humility and w lesson of aspiration — pointing out to 
 him how low was the origin from which, in very truth, 
 he first sprang, and suggesting to him, at the same 
 time, how high was the grand and glorious destiny to 
 which bv'his own strenuous and ardent eflbrts he micrht 
 yet perchance some day attain. 
 
 ^J'hat result, inevitable perhaps in the long run, from 
 the slow unfolding of human intelligence, was iunnensely 
 hastened in our own time by the peculiar idiosyncrasy 
 and lofty personality of Charles 13arwin. Without him 
 we should have had, not only evolutionism, but also, as 
 Wallace's discovery testifies, natural selection itself into 
 the bartrain. But we should never have had the ' Orisrin 
 of Species.' We should never have had that vast and 
 enthusiastic consensus of scientific opinion through an 
 all but unanimous thinking world, wliich has forced an 
 immediate acceptance of evolutionary ideas down the 
 unwilling throats of half unthinking Europe. The 
 
 o 2 
 
196 CnARi.Rs Darwin 
 
 prodigious mass of Darwin's facts, the cautions working 
 of Darwin's intellect, the immense weight of Darwin's 
 reputation, the crushing force of Darwin's masterly in- 
 ductive method, bore down before them all opposition in 
 the inner circle of biologists, Jind secured the triumph 
 of the evolutionary system even in the very strongholds 
 of ignorance and obscurantism. AVithout Darwin, a 
 small group of philosophic thinkers would still be striv- 
 ing to impress upon an incredulous and somewhat con- 
 temptuous world the central truths of the evolutionary 
 doctrine. The opposition of the elders, long headed even 
 in the society we actually know by .'i few stern scientific 
 recalcitrants, like Owen and Agassiz, I'ictet and Dawson, 
 Yirchow and Mivart, would have fought desperately in 
 the last trench for the final figment of the fixity of 
 species. AVhat is now the general creed, more or less 
 loosely held and imperfectly understood, of hundreds and 
 thousands among the intelligent mass, would, under such 
 circumstances, be even yet the mere party-shibboleth of 
 an esoteric few, struggling hard against the bare force 
 of overwhelming numbers to ensure not only recogni- 
 tion but a fair hearing for the first principles of the 
 development theory. It is to Darwin, and to Darwin 
 almost alone, that we owe the present comparatively 
 wide acceptance of the all-embracing doctrine of evolu- 
 tion. 
 
 No other man did so much or could have done so 
 much to ensure its triumph. He began early in life to 
 collect and arrange a vast encyclojiicdia of facts, all 
 finally focussed with supreme skill upon the great prin- 
 ciple he so clearly perceived, and so lucidly expounded, 
 lie brought to bear upon the question an amount of 
 
Till-. Net Rr.sui.r 197 
 
 personal observation, of minute experiment, of world- 
 wide book-knowledge, of universal scientific ability, such 
 as never perhaps was lavished by any other man upon 
 any other department of study. His conspicuous and 
 beautiful love of truth, his unflinching candour, his 
 transparent fearlessness and honesty of purpose, his 
 child-like simplicity, his modesty of demeanour, his 
 charming manner, his aH'ectionate disposition, his kind- 
 liness to friends, his courtesy to opponents, his gentleness 
 to harsh and often bitter assailants, kindled in the minds 
 of men of science evervwhere throughout the world a 
 contagious enthusiasm, only equalled perhaps among the 
 disciples of Socrates and the great teachers of the 
 revival of learning. His name became a rallying-point 
 for the children of light in every country ; and what 
 philosophers and speculators might have taken a century 
 or two more to establish in embryo was firndy grounded, 
 never to be overthrown, bv the vast accumulatiijns of 
 fact and argument in the ' Origin of Species,' and its 
 companion volnnu^s. 
 
 The end of that great Darwinian revolution the 
 world has not yet seen : in a sense, indeed, it will never 
 see it. For the general acceptance of Darwin's theory, 
 which we may watch progressing around us every 
 minute to-day, implies a complete lioulei'crscmeiU of 
 anthropocentric ideas, a total change in our human con- 
 ception of our own relations to the world and the 
 universe, which must work out for ever increasinglv 
 wide-reaching jind complex effects in all our dealings 
 with one another and with the environment at large. 
 There is no department of human thought or human 
 action which evolutionism leaves exactlv where it stood 
 
198 ClIAh'I.ES DaRW/N 
 
 bofore flu* advent of the Darwinian conception. In 
 notliing is this fact more conspicuously seen than in the 
 immediate obsok-scence (if one may so speak) of all the 
 statical pre-Darwinian philosophies which ignored de- 
 velopment, as soon as ever the new progressive evolu- 
 tionary theories had fairly burst upon an astonished 
 world. Dogmatic Comte was left forthwith to his little 
 band of devoted adherents ; shadowy Hegel was rele- 
 gated with a bow to the cool shades of the common- 
 rooms of Oxford ; Buckle was exploded like an inflated 
 wind-bag ; even ^lill himself — magmim et venerahiJe 
 'iLomcn — with all his mighty steam-hammer force of 
 logical directness, was felt instinctively to be lacking in 
 full appreciation of the d\'naniic and kinetic element in 
 universal nature. Spencer and Hartmann, Haeckel 
 and Clifford, had the field to themselves for the establish- 
 ment of their essentially evolutionarv svstems. Great 
 thinkers of the elder generation, like Bain and Lj'ell, 
 felt bound to remodel their earlier conceptions by the 
 light of the new Darw^inian hypotheses. Those who 
 failed by congenital constitution to do so, like Carlyle and 
 Carpenter, Avere, philosophically speaking, left hopelessly 
 behind and utterlv extinjifuished. Those who only half 
 succeeded in thus reading themselves into the new 
 ideas, like Lewes and Max !^ [tiller, lost ground imme- 
 diately before the eager onslaught of their younger 
 competitors. ' The Avorld is to the young,' says the 
 eastern proverb ; and in a world peopled throughout in 
 the high places of thought by men ahnost without 
 exception evolutionists, there was little or no place for 
 the timid group of stranded Girondins, avIio still stood 
 aloof in sullen antique scientific orthodoxy from what 
 
The Net Result 199 
 
 seemed to them tlie carmagnoles and orgies of a bio- 
 logical Thermidor. 
 
 At the same time, it mnst be steadily remembered 
 that there are many natnralists at the pi'esent day, 
 especially among those of the lower order of intelli- 
 gence, who, while accepting evolutionism in a general 
 Avay, and therefore always describing themselves as 
 Darwinians, do not believe and often cannot even 
 imderstand the distinctive Darwinian addition to the 
 evolutionary doctrine — namely, the principle of natural 
 selection. Such hazv and indistinct thinkers as these 
 are still really at the prior stage of Lamarckian evolu- 
 tionism. It is probable that in the future, while a 
 formal acceptance of Darwinism becomes general, the 
 special theory of natural selection will be thoroughly 
 understood and assimilated only by the more abstract 
 and philosophical minds. Our children will be taught 
 as a matter of course the doctrine of development or of 
 descent with modification ; but the rationale of that 
 descent will still remain in all likelihood alwavs bevond 
 the grasp of most of them : just as thousands accept on 
 authority the Copernican astronomy, who would never 
 even be capable of comprehending the simplest proofs 
 of the earth's annual movement round the sun. Thus 
 the name of Darwin will often no doubt be tacked on 
 to what are in reality the principles of Lamarck. 
 
 Every day, however, in spite of such half-'gnorant 
 adherents, the effects of true Darwinism are widening 
 and deepening. One group of earnest workers is using 
 it now as a guide to physiological, embryological, and 
 anatomical researches. Another is employing it with 
 zeal and skill in the field of classificatoiy and physio- 
 
20O Charles Darwin 
 
 lotjficsil botany, ^'et others are working out its psycho- 
 logical implications, encpiiring into instinct antl animal 
 intelligence, and solving by its aid abstruse problems 
 of the human mind and the human emotions. One 
 philosopher lias brought it to bear on (p.iestions of 
 ethics, another on ([uestioiis of social and political 
 economy. Its principles have been applied in one place 
 to {esthetics, in another place to logic, in a third place 
 to the origin and growth of religion. I'he study of 
 laniTuasre has derived new lijjhts from the {jreat central 
 Darwinian luminary. The art of education is beo:inning 
 \vi feel the progressive influence of the I3arwinian im- 
 pulse. In fact, there is hardly a snigle original worker 
 in any department of thought or science who has not 
 been more or less profoundly affectt^l, whether he 
 knows it or whether he knows it not, bv the vast 
 spreading and circling wave of the Darwinian concep- 
 tions. All our ideas have been revolutionised and 
 evolutionised. The new notions are abroad in the 
 world, quickening with their fresh and vigorous germinal 
 power the dry bones of all the sciences, all the arts, and 
 all the philosophies. 
 
 And evolutionism is gradually though slowl}- filter- 
 ing downward. It is permeating the daily press of the 
 nations, and gaining for its vocabulary a recognised 
 place in the phraseology of the unlearned vulgar. Such 
 expressions as ' natural selection,' ' survival of the 
 fittest,' ' struggle for existence,' ' adaptation to the 
 environment,' and all the rest of it, are becoming as 
 household words upon the lips of thousands who only 
 know the name of Darwin as a butt for the petty empty 
 jibes of infinitesimal cheap witlings. And Darwinism 
 
Tun Net Result 201 
 
 will tricklf down still through u thousaiul cliuimels, l)v 
 definite populurisutiou, uiid still more by indeHnite 
 absorption into the connnon tli()U<^ht of universal 
 liumanity, till it becomes part and parcel of the g-eneral 
 inht'ritance, bred in onr bone and burnt into our blood, 
 an heir-loom of our race to all time and in all countries. 
 (Ireat thoughts like his do not readily die : they expand 
 and grow in ten thousand bosoms, till they transform the 
 world at last into their own likeness, and adapt it to 
 the environment they hav^e themselves created by their 
 informing power. 
 
 Hjippy above ordinary human happiness, Charles 
 Darwin lived himself to see the prosperous beginning of 
 this great silent philosophical revolution. Harvey's grand 
 discovery, it has been well said, was scoffed at for nearly 
 a whole generation. Newton's marvellous law of gravi- 
 tation was coldly received even by the gigantic intellect 
 of Leibnitz himself. Francis Bacon, in disgrace and 
 humiliation, could only connnend his name and memory 
 * to foreio'u nations and to the next age.' It is too often 
 SO with thinkers of the fir^l and highest order : it was 
 not so, hiippily, with the gentle soul of Charles 13arwin. 
 Alone among the prophets and teachers of triumphant 
 creeds, he saw with his own eyes the adoption of the 
 faith he had been the first to promulgate in all its fulness 
 by every fresh and powerful mind of the younger race 
 that grew up around him. The Nestor of evolutionism, 
 he had lived among two successive generations of 
 thinkers, and over the third he ruled as king. With 
 that crowning joy of a great, a noble, and a happy life, 
 let us leave him here alone in his yiorv. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 -•o*- 
 
 AGASSIZ 
 
 Agassiz, 17, 33 
 
 AtiticiiJiitions of natural selec- 
 tion, 81 
 •Antiquity of Man,' 120 
 Astronomy, 15 
 
 Baden-Powell, 7S 
 
 Bahia, 43 
 
 Bates, 18 : in Brazil, 79 ; on 
 
 niimicry, 117 
 ♦ Beagle,' voyap'c of the, 38 ; 
 
 Zoology of, 51) 
 Bell, Sir C, 15r> 
 Boucher de Perthes, 1 20 
 Brazil, 43 
 
 British Association, 118 
 Button, 7 
 
 Chambers, Robert, 18; his 
 ' Vestiges of Creation,' 70 
 
 Colenso on the Pentateuch, 121 
 
 • Coral Ileefs,' 68 
 
 Cuvier, 12 ; as a geologist, 13 ; 
 system of animals, G3 
 
 DAinviN 
 Dauwin, Cliarlus, his ancestry, 
 20; birtli, 27; birthplace, 
 31 ; contempt)raries, 33 ; 
 education, 34 ; at Edinburgh 
 University, ib. ; at Cam- 
 bridge, 35 ; starts on the 
 voyage of the ' Beagle,' 38 ; 
 returns to England, 58 ; pub- 
 lishes his journal, 59 ; plans 
 'Origin of Sp.ieies,' <J0; 
 elected to Koyal Society, 64 ; 
 secretary to (Jeological 
 Society, 64; marries, ib. 
 publishes ' Coral Reefs,' 68 
 geological observations, 76 
 iMonograph on Barnacles, /ft. 
 publishes ' Origin of Species,' 
 86; its success, 112; second 
 edition, 114; variation of 
 animals and plants, 125 ; 
 pangenesis, 126; fertilisa- 
 tion of orchids, 127; ' Descent 
 of Man,' 132; later works, 
 155 ; last illness and death, 
 1 73 ; character, 1 74 ; place 
 in evolutionary movement, 
 
204 
 
 Charles Darwin 
 
 DARWIN 
 177; outcome of his work, 
 
 iy2 
 
 Darwin, Erasmus, 10; liis life, 
 20 ; apiwaranco, 21 ; poems, 
 ih.\ 'Zoonoinia, 21 ; ' Temple 
 of Nature,' 2.") ; his marriages, 
 2i) ; on descent of man, 1 i?!? ; 
 on sexual selection, 1-1() 
 
 Darwin, Erasmus, the younger, 
 34 
 
 Darwin, Robert, 20 
 
 Darwhi, Robert Waring, 25, 26; 
 his home, 31 
 
 Do Candolle, 63 
 
 Down House, Darwin settles 
 at, 65 
 
 Du Chaillu, 134 
 
 Eauth WORMS, 66, 168 
 Edgeworth, 25 
 
 Evolution, general tin.- -y of, 
 177 
 
 LYELL 
 
 Hakckel, letter to, 67; 
 •History of Creation,' 124; 
 on sexual selection, 151 
 
 Henslow, Prof., 35; recom- 
 mends Darwin to Capt. 
 Fitzroy, 38 ; at Oxford, 1 18 
 
 Herbert, Dean, 18 
 
 Herschel, Sir "\Vm., 15 
 
 Holland, Sir Henry, 27 
 
 Hooker, Sir Joseph, 74 ; on 
 catasetuni, 78 ; accept* 
 Darwinism, 117; publislies 
 liis ' Flora of Australia,' ih. 
 
 Horner, Jjconard, 17 
 
 Humboldt, 33 
 
 Huxley, i'rof ., lecture at Royal 
 Institution, 117; 'Man's 
 Place in Nature,' 122; on 
 coming of age of ' Origin of 
 Species,' 166 
 
 JussiEU, 63 
 
 FlLTfOL, 168 
 
 Fiske, Prof., 58 ; on natural 
 
 selection, 130 
 Fitzroy, Cajjtain, 38 
 Fuegians, 51 
 
 Galapaoos Islands, 52 
 
 Galton, Francis, 27 
 
 Gaudry, 168 
 
 Geolog}', rise of, 13 ; evolution- 
 ary aspect of, 180 
 
 Goethe, 0, 12; on animal ori- 
 gin of man, 133 
 
 Gorilla, 134 
 
 Gray, Asa, 78, 124 
 
 Kant, nebular hypothesis, 15 
 Knight's law, 15S> 
 Kolreuter, 15'J 
 
 Lamauck, 10; Darwin's read- 
 ing of, 47 ; on descent of 
 man, 133 
 
 Laplace, nebular hypothesis, 15 
 
 Lecocj, 18 
 
 Linnaeus, 6 ; his artificial 
 system, 63 
 
 Lyell, 14, 61; 'Principles of 
 Geology,' 6S) ; extract from 
 letters, 78; anticipations of 
 
Index 
 
 MALTHUS 
 
 natural selection, 1)9 ; slow 
 acceptance of Darwinism, 
 119 ; ' Anti(iuity of IMan,' 120 
 
 205 
 
 VON BUCH 
 Powell, ]5a(loii-, 78 
 ' riiysiological Units,' 12G 
 Psychology, evolution in, 183 
 
 Malthus, 15; influence on 
 Darwin, 60, G7, 74, 91 
 
 jMatthew, Patrick, 18 ; ex- 
 tracts from, 82 
 
 Mimicry, 79 
 
 IVIoiite Video, Darwin at, 46 
 
 Mould, formation of, GO 
 
 ]\Iount, the, 31 
 
 ISIiiller, Fritz, 124 
 
 jMiiller, Hermann, 124 
 
 Murchison, 14 
 
 ' Naturalist on the Amazons,' 
 
 79 
 ' Naturalist's Voyage round the 
 
 World ' published, 59 
 Natural system, G3 
 Nebular hypothesis, 15, 179 
 New Zealand, Darwin at, 54 
 
 Okkn, 17 
 
 'Origin of Species,' first 
 
 planned, GO ; projected, 78 ; 
 
 jiublished, 8G ; analysis of, 
 
 89; its success, 112; second 
 
 edition, 111 
 
 Owen, tSir K., 
 types, 78 
 
 33, 59 ; on 
 
 RAFIN'ESQUE, G9 
 
 llio Janeiro, Darwin at, 45 
 
 «T. Hilairk, Cicoffroy, 9; the 
 younger, 77 
 
 St. Paul's Pocks, 43 
 
 Sexual selection, first glimpse 
 of, 45 ; Darwin's theory of, 
 144 
 
 Smith, William, 13 
 
 Sociology, 183 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 17; on 
 ' Vestiges of Creation,' 72 ; 
 essay in the ' Leader,' 77 ; 
 ' Principles of Psycliology,' 
 ih. ; essay in ♦ Westminster 
 Review,' 84 ; extracts from 
 'Leader' essay, 88; accepts 
 Darwin's theory, 118; • J'rin- 
 ciples of Biology,' ih. ; ' Phy- 
 siological Units,' 12G ; theory 
 of evolution, 191 
 
 Sprengel, 103, 158 
 
 Thompson, Allen, 163 
 Treviranus, 1 7 
 Tucutuco, 47 
 Tyndall, Prof., 1G3 
 
 Pangenesis, 12G 
 ' Philosophic Zoologique,' 12 
 Population, Malthus 's essay on, 
 10, 51 
 
 'Vestices of Creation,' 18; 
 
 criticism of, 70 
 Von Paer, 18 
 Von Puch, 18 
 
206 
 
 Charles Darwin 
 
 WALLACE 
 
 Wallace, Alfred Kussel, 18; 
 goes to Brazil, 71> ; publishes 
 his travels, 80; in Malay 
 archipelago, ih. ; discovers 
 natural selection, \h. ; paper 
 at Linnean Societ)', 81 ; on 
 sexual selection, 151? 
 Wedgwood, Emma, 65 
 Wedgwood, Hensleigh, 27 
 Wedgwood, Josiah, 27, 28 
 Wedgwood, Susannali, 27 
 
 ZOONOMIA 
 
 Wells, Dr., anticipates natural 
 
 selection, 81 
 White, Gilbert, on worms, 169 
 WoUaston, 18 
 Worms, action of, *o^, 1G8 
 Wright, Chauncey, 124 
 
 ' ZooNOMlA,' Erasmus Dar- 
 win's, 22 
 
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 Culley's Handbook of Practical Telegraphy, Svo. 16s. 
 
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 Fairbairn's Useful Information for Engineers. 3 vols, crown Svo. .31. «. Gil. 
 
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 Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Agriculture. Svo. 21. «. 
 
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 Mitchell's Manual of Practical Assaying. Svo. 31.?. C(/. 
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 Sennett's Treatise on the Marine Steam Engine. Svo. 21.*. 
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 Experience of Life. 
 Gertrude, Ivors, 
 
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 Katharine Ashton. 
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 Margaret Percival, Ursula . 
 
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General Lists of Works. 
 
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 The Young Dnke, Ulc. 
 Vivian Grey. 
 EudyuiioM. 
 
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 and her Lover. 
 
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 Tlie Warden. 
 By Major Whytr-Melvilk'. 
 
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 (ieneral Bounrc. 
 
 Kate C'ovcntrv , 
 
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 Good for Nothing. 
 
 Holmliy Hoii-e. 
 
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 The Atelier du L\-. 
 Atheistone I'riory. 
 The Burgonia-ter',~ Famil>. 
 ENa and tier \idtiue. 
 Mademoiselle Mori. 
 The Six Sisun< of the Valley.-. 
 Unawares. 
 
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 Oliphanfs (ilrs.) Mudam. Crown 8vo. 3<. (iil. 
 Sturgis* My Friend and I. Crown Svo. ."<x. 
 
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12 
 
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