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Darwiniana

T >> Thomas Henry Huxley >> Darwiniana




It was this rarest and greatest of endowments which kept his vivid
imagination and great speculative powers within due bounds; which compelled
him to undertake the prodigious labours of original investigation and of
reading, upon which his published works are based; which made him accept
criticisms and suggestions from anybody and everybody, not only without
impatience, but with expressions of gratitude sometimes almost comically in
excess of their value; which led him to allow neither himself nor others to
be deceived by phrases, and to spare neither time nor pains in order to
obtain clear and distinct ideas upon every topic with which he occupied
himself.

One could not converse with Darwin without being reminded of Socrates.
There was the same desire to find some one wiser than himself; the same
belief in the sovereignty of reason; the same ready humour; the same
sympathetic interest in all the ways and works of men. But instead of
turning away from the problems of Nature as hopelessly insoluble, our
modern philosopher devoted his whole life to attacking them in the spirit
of Heraclitus and of Democritus, with results which are the substance of
which their speculations were anticipatory shadows.

The due appreciation, or even enumeration, of these results is neither
practicable nor desirable at this moment. There is a time for all things--a
time for glorying in our ever-extending conquests over the realm of Nature,
and a time for mourning over the heroes who have led us to victory.

None have fought better, and none have been more fortunate, than Charles
Darwin. He found a great truth trodden underfoot, reviled by bigots, and
ridiculed by all the world; he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by his
own efforts, irrefragably established in science, inseparably incorporated
with the common thoughts of men, and only hated and feared by those who
would revile, but dare not. What shall a man desire more than this? Once
more the image of Socrates rises unbidden, and the noble peroration of the
"Apology" rings in our ears as if it were Charles Darwin's farewell:--

"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways--I to die and you to
live. Which is the better, God only knows."




IX

THE DARWIN MEMORIAL

[June 9th, 1885]


_Address by the President of the Royal Society, in the name of the
Memorial Committee, on handing over the statue of Darwin to H.R.H. the
Prince of Wales, as representative of the Trustees of the British
Museum_.

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,--It is now three years since the announcement of the
death of our famous countryman, Charles Darwin, gave rise to a
manifestation of public feeling, not only in these realms, but throughout
the civilised world, which, if I mistake not, is without precedent in the
modest annals of scientific biography.

The causes of this deep and wide outburst of emotion are not far to seek.
We had lost one of these rare ministers and interpreters of Nature whose
names mark epochs in the advance of natural knowledge. For, whatever be the
ultimate verdict of posterity upon this or that opinion which Mr. Darwin
has propounded; whatever adumbrations or anticipations of his doctrines may
be found in the writings of his predecessors; the broad fact remains that,
since the publication and by reason of the publication, of "The Origin of
Species" the fundamental conceptions and the aims of the students of living
Nature have been completely changed. From that work has sprung a great
renewal, a true "instauratio magna" of the zoological and botanical
sciences.

But the impulse thus given to scientific thought rapidly spread beyond the
ordinarily recognised limits of biology. Psychology, Ethics, Cosmology were
stirred to their foundations, and the "Origin of Species" proved itself to
be the fixed point which the general doctrine of evolution needed in order
to move the world. "Darwinism," in one form or another, sometimes strangely
distorted and mutilated, became an everyday topic of men's speech, the
object of an abundance both of vituperation and of praise, more often than
of serious study.

It is curious now to remember how largely, at first, the objectors
predominated; but considering the usual fate of new views, it is still more
curious to consider for how short a time the phase of vehement opposition
lasted. Before twenty years had passed, not only had the importance of Mr.
Darwin's work been fully recognised, but the world had discerned the
simple, earnest, generous character of the man, that shone through every
page of his writings.

I imagine that reflections such as these swept through the minds alike of
loving friends and of honourable antagonists when Mr. Darwin died; and that
they were at one in the desire to honour the memory of the man who, without
fear and without reproach, had successfully fought the hardest intellectual
battle of these days.

It was in satisfaction of these just and generous impulses that our great
naturalist's remains were deposited in Westminster Abbey; and that,
immediately afterwards, a public meeting, presided over by my lamented
predecessor, Mr. Spottiswoode, was held in the rooms of the Royal Society,
for the purpose of considering what further step should be taken towards
the same end.

It was resolved to invite subscriptions, with the view of erecting a statue
of Mr. Darwin in some suitable locality; and to devote any surplus to the
advancement of the biological sciences.

Contributions at once flowed in from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark,
France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, the United States, and the British Colonies, no less than from
all parts of the three kingdoms; and they came from all classes of the
community. To mention one interesting case, Sweden sent in 2296
subscriptions "from all sorts of people," as the distinguished man of
science who transmitted them wrote, "from the bishop to the seamstress, and
in sums from five pounds to two pence."

The Executive Committee has thus been enabled to carry out the objects
proposed. A "Darwin Fund" has been created, which is to be held in trust by
the Royal Society, and is to be employed in the promotion of biological
research.

The execution of the statue was entrusted to Mr. Boehm; and I think that
those who had the good fortune to know Mr. Darwin personally will admire
the power of artistic divination which has enabled the sculptor to place
before us so very characteristic a likeness of one whom he had not seen.

It appeared to the Committee that, whether they regarded Mr. Darwin's
career or the requirements of a work of art, no site could be so
appropriate as this great hall, and they applied to the Trustees of the
British Museum for permission to erect it in its present position.

That permission was most cordially granted, and I am desired to tender the
best thanks of the Committee to the Trustees for their willingness to
accede to our wishes.

I also beg leave to offer the expression of our gratitude to your Royal
Highness for kindly consenting to represent the Trustees to-day. It only
remains for me, your Royal Highness, my Lords and Gentlemen, Trustees of
the British Museum, in the name of the Darwin Memorial Committee, to
request you to accept this statue of Charles Darwin.

We do not make this request for the mere sake of perpetuating a memory; for
so long as men occupy themselves with the pursuit of truth, the name of
Darwin runs no more risk of oblivion than does that of Copernicus, or that
of Harvey.

Nor, most assuredly, do we ask you to preserve the statue in its cynosural
position in this entrance-hall of our National Museum of Natural History as
evidence that Mr. Darwin's views have received your official sanction; for
science does not recognise such sanctions, and commits suicide when it
adopts a creed.

No; we beg you to cherish this Memorial as a symbol by which, as generation
after generation of students of Nature enter yonder door, they shall be
reminded of the ideal according to which they must shape their lives, if
they would turn to the best account the opportunities offered by the great
institution under your charge.




X

OBITUARY [Footnote: From the Obituary Notices of the _Proceedings of the
Royal Society_, vol. 44.]

[1888]


Charles Robert Darwin was the fifth child and second son of Robert Waring
Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood, and was born on the 12th February, 1809, at
Shrewsbury, where his father was a physician in large practice.

Mrs. Robert Darwin died when her son Charles was only eight years old, and
he hardly remembered her. A daughter of the famous Josiah Wedgwood, who
created a new branch of the potter's art, and established the great works
of Etruria, could hardly fail to transmit important mental and moral
qualities to her children; and there is a solitary record of her direct
influence in the story told by a schoolfellow, who remembers Charles Darwin
"bringing a flower to school, and saying that his mother had taught him
how, by looking at the inside of the blossom, the name of the plant could
be discovered." (I., p. 28. [Footnote: The references throughout this
notice are to the _Life and Letters_, unless the contrary is expressly
stated.])

The theory that men of genius derive their qualities from their mothers,
however, can hardly derive support from Charles Darwin's case, in the face
of the patent influence of his paternal forefathers. Dr. Darwin, indeed,
though a man of marked individuality of character, a quick and acute
observer, with much practical sagacity, is said not to have had a
scientific mind. But when his son adds that his father "formed a theory for
almost everything that occurred" (I., p. 20), he indicates a highly
probable source for that inability to refrain from forming an hypothesis on
every subject which he confesses to be one of the leading characteristics
of his own mind, some pages further on (I., p. 103). Dr. R. W. Darwin,
again, was the third son of Erasmus Darwin, also a physician of great
repute, who shared the intimacy of Watt and Priestley, and was widely known
as the author of "Zoonomia," and other voluminous poetical and prose works
which had a great vogue in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The
celebrity which they enjoyed was in part due to the attractive style (at
least according to the taste of that day) in which the author's extensive,
though not very profound, acquaintance with natural phenomena was set
forth; but in a still greater degree, probably, to the boldness of the
speculative views, always ingenious and sometimes fantastic, in which he
indulged. The conception of evolution set afoot by De Maillet and others,
in the early part of the century, not only found a vigorous champion in
Erasmus Darwin, but he propounded an hypothesis as to the manner in which
the species of animals and plants have acquired their characters, which is
identical in principle with that subsequently rendered famous by Lamarck.

That Charles Darwin's chief intellectual inheritance came to him from the
paternal side, then, is hardly doubtful. But there is nothing to show that
he was, to any sensible extent, directly influenced by his grandfather's
biological work. He tells us that a perusal of the "Zoonomia" in early life
produced no effect upon him, although he greatly admired it; and that, on
reading it again, ten or fifteen years afterwards, he was much
disappointed, "the proportion of speculation being so large to the facts
given." But with his usual anxious candour he adds, "Nevertheless, it is
probable that the hearing, rather early in life, such views maintained and
praised, may have favoured my upholding them, in a different form, in my
'Origin of Species.'" (I., p. 38.) Erasmus Darwin was in fact an
anticipator of Lamarck, and not of Charles Darwin; there is no trace in his
works of the conceptions by the addition of which his grandson
metamorphosed the theory of evolution as applied to living things and gave
it a new foundation.

Charles Darwin's childhood and youth afforded no intimation that he would
he, or do, anything out of the common run. In fact, the prognostications of
the educational authorities into whose hands he first fell were most
distinctly unfavourable; and they counted the only boy of original genius
who is known to have come under their hands as no better than a dunce. The
history of the educational experiments to which Darwin was subjected is
curious, and not without a moral for the present generation. There were
four of them, and three were failures. Yet it cannot be said that the
materials on which the pedagogic powers operated were other than good. In
his boyhood Darwin was strong, well-grown, and active, taking the keen
delight in field sports and in every description of hard physical exercise
which is natural to an English country-bred lad; and, in respect of things
of the mind, he was neither apathetic, nor idle, nor one-sided. The
"Autobiography" tells us that he "had much zeal for whatever interested"
him, and he was interested in many and very diverse topics. He could work
hard, and liked a complex subject better than an easy one. The "clear
geometrical proofs" of Euclid delighted him. His interest in practical
chemistry, carried out in an extemporised laboratory, in which he was
permitted to assist by his elder brother, kept him late at work, and earned
him the nickname of "gas" among his schoolfellows. And there could have
been no insensibility to literature in one who, as a boy, could sit for
hours reading Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, and Byron; who greatly admired
some of the Odes of Horace; and who, in later years, on board the "Beagle,"
when only one book could be carried on an expedition, chose a volume of
Milton for his companion.

Industry, intellectual interests, the capacity for taking pleasure in
deductive reasoning, in observation, in experiment, no less than in the
highest works of imagination: where these qualities are present any
rational system of education should surely be able to make something of
them. Unfortunately for Darwin, the Shrewsbury Grammar School, though good
of its kind, was an institution of a type universally prevalent in this
country half a century ago, and by no means extinct at the present day. The
education given was "strictly classical," "especial attention" being "paid
to verse-making," while all other subjects, except a little ancient
geography and history, were ignored. Whether, as in some famous English
schools at that date and much later, elementary arithmetic was also left
out of sight does not appear; but the instruction in Euclid which gave
Charles Darwin so much satisfaction was certainly supplied by a private
tutor. That a boy, even in his leisure hours, should permit himself to be
interested in any but book-learning seems to have been regarded as little
better than an outrage by the head master, who thought it his duty to
administer a public rebuke to young Darwin for wasting his time on such a
contemptible subject as chemistry. English composition and literature,
modern languages, modern history, modern geography, appear to have been
considered to be as despicable as chemistry.

For seven long years Darwin got through his appointed tasks; construed
without cribs, learned by rote whatever was demanded, and concocted his
verses in approved schoolboy fashion. And the result, as it appeared to his
mature judgment, was simply negative. "The school as a means of education
to me was simply a blank." (I. p. 32.) On the other hand, the extraneous
chemical exercises, which the head master treated so contumeliously, are
gratefully spoken of as the "best part" of his education while at school.
Such is the judgment of the scholar on the school; as might be expected, it
has its counterpart in the judgment of the school on the scholar. The
collective intelligence of the staff of Shrewsbury School could find
nothing but dull mediocrity in Charles Darwin. The mind that found
satisfaction in knowledge, but very little in mere learning; that could
appreciate literature, but had no particular aptitude for grammatical
exercises; appeared to the "strictly classical" pedagogue to be no mind at
all. As a matter of fact, Darwin's school education left him ignorant of
almost all the things which it would have been well for him to know, and
untrained in all the things it would have been useful for him to be able to
do, in after life. Drawing, practice in English composition, and
instruction in the elements of the physical sciences, would not only have
been infinitely valuable to him in reference to his future career, but
would have furnished the discipline suited to his faculties, whatever that
career might be. And a knowledge of French and German, especially the
latter, would have removed from his path obstacles which he never fully
overcame.

Thus, starved and stunted on the intellectual side, it is not surprising
that Charles Darwin's energies were directed towards athletic amusements
and sport, to such an extent, that even his kind and sagacious father could
be exasperated into telling him that "he cared for nothing but shooting,
dogs, and rat-catching." (I. p. 32.) It would be unfair to expect even the
wisest of fathers to have foreseen that the shooting and the rat-catching,
as training in the ways of quick observation and in physical endurance,
would prove more valuable than the construing and verse-making to his son,
whose attempt, at a later period of his Life, to persuade himself "that
shooting was almost an intellectual employment: it required so much skill
to judge where to find most game, and to hunt the dogs well" (I. p. 43),
was by no means so sophistical as he seems to have been ready to admit.

In 1825, Dr. Darwin came to the very just conclusion that his son Charles
would do no good by remaining at Shrewsbury School, and sent him to join
his elder brother Erasmus, who was studying medicine at Edinburgh, with the
intention that the younger son should also become a medical practitioner.
Both sons, however, were well aware that their inheritance would relieve
them from the urgency of the struggle for existence which most professional
men have to face; and they seemed to have allowed their tastes, rather than
the medical curriculum, to have guided their studies. Erasmus Darwin was
debarred by constant ill-health from seeking the public distinction which
his high intelligence and extensive knowledge would, under ordinary
circumstances, have insured. He took no great interest in biological
subjects, but his companionship must have had its influence on his brother.
Still more was exerted by friends like Coldstream and Grant, both
subsequently well-known zoologists (and the latter an enthusiastic
Lamarckian), by whom Darwin was induced to interest himself in marine
zoology. A notice of the ciliated germs of _Flustra_, communicated to
the Plinian Society in 1826, was the first fruits of Darwin's half century
of scientific work. Occasional attendance at the Wernerian Society brought
him into relation with that excellent ornithologist the elder Macgillivray,
and enabled him to see and hear Audubon. Moreover, he got lessons in
bird-stuffing from a negro, who had accompanied the eccentric traveller
Waterton in his wanderings, before settling in Edinburgh.

No doubt Darwin picked up a great deal of valuable knowledge during his two
years' residence in Scotland; but it is equally clear that next to none of
it came through the regular channels of academic education. Indeed, the
influence of the Edinburgh professoriate appears to have been mainly
negative, and in some cases deterrent; creating in his mind, not only a
very low estimate of the value of lectures, but an antipathy to the
subjects which had been the occasion of the boredom inflicted upon him by
their instrumentality. With the exception of Hope, the Professor of
Chemistry, Darwin found them all "intolerably dull." Forty years afterwards
he writes of the lectures of the Professor of Materia Medica that they were
"fearful to remember." The Professor of Anatomy made his lectures "as dull
as he was himself," and he must have been very dull to have wrung from his
victim the sharpest personal remark recorded as his. But the climax seems
to have been attained by the Professor of Geology and Zoology, whose
prælections were so "incredibly dull" that they produced in their hearer
the somewhat rash determination never "to read a book on geology or in any
way to study the science" so long as he lived. (I. p. 41.)

There is much reason to believe that the lectures in question were
eminently qualified to produce the impression which they made; and there
can be little doubt, that Darwin's conclusion that his time was better
employed in reading than in listening to such lectures was a sound one. But
it was particularly unfortunate that the personal and professorial dulness
of the Professor of Anatomy, combined with Darwin's sensitiveness to the
disagreeable concomitants of anatomical work, drove him away from the
dissecting room. In after life, he justly recognised that this was an
"irremediable evil" in reference to the pursuits he eventually adopted;
indeed, it is marvellous that he succeeded in making up for his lack of
anatomical discipline, so far as his work on the Cirripedes shows he did.
And the neglect of anatomy had the further unfortunate result that it
excluded him from the best opportunity of bringing himself into direct
contact with the facts of nature which the University had to offer. In
those days, almost the only practical scientific work accessible to
students was anatomical, and the only laboratory at their disposal the
dissecting room.

We may now console ourselves with the reflection that the partial evil was
the general good. Darwin had already shown an aptitude for practical
medicine (I. p. 37); and his subsequent career proved that he had the
making of an excellent anatomist. Thus, though his horror of operations
would probably have shut him off from surgery, there was nothing to prevent
him (any more than the same peculiarity prevented his father) from passing
successfully through the medical curriculum and becoming, like his father
and grandfather, a successful physician, in which case "The Origin of
Species" would not have been written. Darwin has jestingly alluded to the
fact that the shape of his nose (to which Captain Fitzroy objected), nearly
prevented his embarkation in the "Beagle"; it may be that the sensitiveness
of that organ secured him for science.

At the end of two years' residence in Edinburgh it hardly needed Dr.
Darwin's sagacity to conclude that a young man, who found nothing but
dulness in professorial lucubrations, could not bring himself to endure a
dissecting room, fled from operations, and did not need a profession as a
means of livelihood, was hardly likely to distinguish himself as a student
of medicine. He therefore made a new suggestion, proposing that his son
should enter an English University and qualify for the ministry of the
Church. Charles Darwin found the proposal agreeable, none the less,
probably, that a good deal of natural history and a little shooting were by
no means held, at that time, to be incompatible with the conscientious
performance of the duties of a country clergyman. But it is characteristic
of the man, that he asked time for consideration, in order that he might
satisfy himself that he could sign the Thirty-nine Articles with a clear
conscience. However, the study of "Pearson on the Creeds" and a few other
books of divinity soon assured him that his religious opinions left nothing
to be desired on the score of orthodoxy, and he acceded to his father's
proposition.

The English University selected was Cambridge; but an unexpected obstacle
arose from the fact that, within the two years which had elapsed, since the
young man who had enjoyed seven years of the benefit of a strictly
classical education had left school, he had forgotten almost everything he
had learned there, "even to some few of the Greek letters." (I. p. 46.)
Three months with a tutor, however, brought him back to the point of
translating Homer and the Greek Testament "with moderate facility," and
Charles Darwin commenced the third educational experiment of which he was
the subject, and was entered on the books of Christ's College in October
1827. So far as the direct results of the academic training thus received
are concerned, the English University was not more successful than the
Scottish. "During the three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was
wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned, as completely as
at Edinburgh and as at school." (I. p. 46.) And yet, as before, there is
ample evidence that this negative result cannot be put down to any native
defect on the part of the scholar. Idle and dull young men, or even young
men who being neither idle nor dull, are incapable of caring for anything
but some hobby, do not devote themselves to the thorough study of Paley's
"Moral Philosophy," and "Evidences of Christianity"; nor are their
reminiscences of this particular portion of their studies expressed in
terms such as the following: "The logic of this book [the 'Evidences'] and,
as I may add, of his 'Natural Theology' gave me as much delight as did
Euclid." (I. p. 47.)

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