The Coming of Evolution: The Story of a Great Revolution in Science

Many journalists, however, were less conscientious than Mr Lucas, and most of the other early notices of the book were pretty equally divided between undiscriminating praise of it as a novelty and foolish reprobations of its 'wickedness.'

It was fortunate that Darwin followed the strong advice given to him by Lyell, and did not attempt to reply to the adverse criticisms; for the only effect of these was to arouse curiosity and thus to increase the circulation of the book.

Although Darwin had wisely avoided the danger of exciting prejudice against his work by definitely applying the theory of Natural Selection to the case of man—simply remarking, in order to avoid the charge of concealing his views, that 'light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history'—yet friends and foes alike at once drew what was the necessary corollary from the theory. It is as amusing, as it is surprising at the present day, to recall the storm of prejudice which was excited. At the British Association Meeting at Oxford in 1860, after an American professor had indignantly asked the question, 'Are we a fortuitous concourse of atoms?' as a comment on Darwin's views, Dr Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, ended a clever but flippant attack on the Origin by enquiring of Huxley, who was present as Darwin's champion, if it 'was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey?'

Huxley made the famous and well-deserved retort:—

The violent attack on Darwin's views by the once-famous Bishop of Oxford was outdone, a few years later, by an even more absurd outburst on the part of Benjamin Disraeli, who—after stigmatising Darwinism as the question 'Is man an ape or an angel?'—declared magniloquently to the episcopal chairman, 'My Lord, I am on the side of the angels!'

But in spite of attacks like these and numerous bitter pasquinades and comic cartoons—perhaps to some extent in consequence of them—Darwin's views became widely known and eagerly discussed, so that the circulation of the Origin of Species went up by leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, as Huxley said, 'years had to pass away before misrepresentation, ridicule and denunciation, ceased to be the most notable constituents of the multitudinous criticisms of his work which poured from the press.'

Among his contemporary men of science Darwin could at first count few converts. Hooker, whose candid and valuable criticisms of his friend's work had been continued up to the very end during its composition, did an eminent service to the cause of Evolution by publishing, almost simultaneously with the Origin of Species, his splendid memoir on The Flora of Australia, its Origin, Affinities, and Distribution, in which similar views were, not obscurely, indicated. Of Lyell, Darwin's other friend and counsellor, Huxley justly says:

Huxley himself accepted the theory of Natural Selection—but not without some important reservations—these, however, did not prevent him from becoming its most ardent and successful champion. Darwin used to acknowledge Huxley's great service to him in undertaking the defence of the theory—a defence which his own hatred of controversy and the state of his health made him unwilling to undertake—by laughingly calling him 'my general agent!' while Huxley himself in replying to the critics, declared that he was 'Darwin's bulldog.'

Although, at first, Darwin was able to enumerate less than a dozen naturalists who were prepared to accept his views, while influential leaders of thought in science—like Richard Owen in this country and Louis Agassiz in America—were bitterly opposed to them, the theory gradually obtained supporters especially among the younger cultivators of botany, zoology and geology.

It is evident that Darwin for some time regarded his 'abstract,' as he called the Origin of Species, as only a temporary expedient—one to be superseded by the publication of the much more extended work, designed and commenced long before. Although the Origin was only published late in November 1859, and he was called upon immediately to prepare a second edition, we find that on January 1st, 1860, Darwin began to arrange his materials for dealing with the first great division of his subject, 'the variation of animals and plants under domestication.' So numerous and important were his notes and records of experiments, however, that he soon found that to expand the whole of the 'abstract,' on the same scale, would be an impossible task for any one man, however able and diligent. Unwilling that the results of some of his special researches should be lost, he wisely determined to issue them as separate books. The first of these to appear was that on the Fertilisation of Orchids, a beautiful illustration of the relation of insects to flowers in producing crossing. He had been more than twenty years working and experimenting on this subject, his interest in it having been quickened by having read an almost forgotten book of the botanist Sprengel. Almost at the same time, and in following years, he wrote papers for the Linnean Society on dimorphic and trimorphic forms of flowers, and their bearing on the question of cross-fertilisation. These papers were the foundation of his well-known work, The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the same Species. In the same way, a paper read in 1864 to the Linnean Society was subsequently expanded into The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants.

Owing to delays caused by the preparation and publication of these books and frequent interruptions from sickness, the work on variation did not appear till 1868. It was a very extensive piece of work in two volumes, and, at its end, Darwin tentatively propounded a hypothesis to account for the facts of Heredity and Variation to which he gave the name of 'pangenesis.'

Charles Darwin had reached the age of fifty, when he wrote the Origin of Species. At a very early period in his career, he had resolved that he would never start a new theory or revise an old one after he was sixty; as he used laughingly to say, 'I have seen too many of my friends make fools of themselves by doing that.' But as he approached this 'fatal age,' one more subject of a theoretical and highly controversial nature remained to be dealt with, namely, the question of the application of the theory of natural selection to man, both as regards his physical structure and his intellectual and moral characteristics.

Darwin tells us that in 1837 or '38, as soon as he had become 'convinced that species were mutable productions,' he 'could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law[140].' From that time, he began collecting facts bearing on the question. As each of his children was born, he examined closely the signs of dawning intelligence, and made notes of the manner in which new sensations and passions were exhibited by them. His dog and other animals, for whom he always showed the greatest fondness, were closely watched with the object of noting correspondences between their mental and moral processes and their modes of exhibiting them and our own; while visits were made by him to the Zoological Gardens with the same object. By reading and correspondence also, an enormous mass of notes was collected, and on February 4th, 1868, having seen his great work on Variation under Domestication published, Darwin was able to make the entry in his diary, 'Began work on Man.'

As was usual with most of his works, Darwin underestimated the time required to complete it. Through all the years 1867—'68, '69 and '70 we find the entries in his diary 'working at Descent of Man,' and only early in the year 1871 was the book finished. His original plan of compressing his notes on the expression of the Emotions into a chapter at the end of the book proved to be impracticable, and the material was reserved for a new work. This work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, was commenced directly the Descent of Man was out of hand, a rough copy was finished by April 27th, 1871, but the last proofs were not corrected till August 23rd, 1873.

In dealing with the question of the origin of the human race, Darwin was led to propound his views concerning Sexual selection, the results of the preferences shown by males and females, respectively, not only among mankind, but in various other animals. It was with respect to some of the conclusions contained in this work that Wallace found himself unable to follow Darwin. Wallace maintained that while man's body could have been developed by Natural Selection, his intellectual and moral nature must have had a different origin. He also declined to adopt the theory of sexual selection, so far as it depends on preferences exhibited by females for beauty in the males. Wallace, however, in some respects has always been disposed to attach more importance to Natural Selection, as the greatest, if not the only factor in evolution, than Darwin himself.

It will be seen that although Darwin had in all probability thought out all his important theoretical conclusions before 1869, when he reached the 'fatal age,' yet, owing to various delays, the books, in which he embodied his views, had not all appeared till more than four years later.

Lyell, who was a convinced evolutionist before the publication of the Principles of Geology, as is shown by his letters,—and the fact is strongly insisted on both by Huxley and Haeckel[141],—was slow in coming into complete agreement with Darwin concerning the theory of Natural Selection. While he followed his friend's investigations with the deepest interest, his less sanguine nature led him often to despair of the possibility of solving 'the mystery of mysteries.' As Darwin wrote only a year before his own death, Lyell 'would advance all possible objections to my suggestions, and even after these were exhausted would long remain dubious[142].' It is evident from the correspondence that Darwin was at times tempted to become impatient with the friend, for whose advocacy of his views he so deeply longed. Fourteen years after the publication of the Origin of Species, however, Lyell, in his Antiquity of Man, gave in his adhesion to Darwin's theory but, even then, not in the unqualified manner that the latter desired. Yet I have reason to know that some years before his death, Lyell was able to assure his friend of his complete agreement, and Darwin, six years after the loss of his friend, wrote, 'His candour was highly remarkable. He exhibited this by becoming a convert to the Descent theory, though he had gained much fame by opposing Lamarck's views, and this after he had grown old.' Darwin adds that Lyell, referring to the 'fatal age' of sixty, said 'he hoped that now he might be allowed to live[143]!'

When I first came into personal relations with Darwin, after the death of Lyell in 1875, he was in the habit of deprecating any idea of his writing on theoretical questions. He used to talk of 'playing with plants and such things,' and undoubtedly derived the greatest pleasure from his ingenious experimental researches. The result of this 'play' in which Darwin took such delight is seen in his books on the Power of Movement in Plants and Insectivorous Plants; full of the records of ingenious experiments and patient observation.

It was a great relief to Darwin that his friend Wallace was able in 1871 to undertake the preparation of a work on The Geographical Distribution of Animals, for, on many points, the views held by Wallace on this subject were more in accordance with Darwin's own, than were those of Lyell and Hooker. Nevertheless, on all questions connected with the geographical distribution of plants, and the causes by which they were brought about, Darwin always expressed the fullest confidence in Hooker's judgment, and the greatest satisfaction with his results.

With regard to another great division of his work, that dealing with the imperfection, but yet great value, of the geological record, Darwin was always anxious, when I met him, to learn of any new discoveries. But he felt that he had done all that was possible in his outline of the subject in the Origin, and that he must leave to palaeontologists all over the world the filling in of these outlines. So great was the delight with which he used to hear of new discoveries in palaeontology, that I often recall our conversations in these later days, when so many interesting forms of extinct animal and vegetable life—veritable 'missing links'—are being discovered in all parts of the globe, and wish that he could have known of them. They are indeed 'Facts for Darwin.'

Very happy indeed was Charles Darwin in the last years of his useful life, in returning to his oldest 'love'—geology. In studying the action of earthworms he found a geological study in which his rare powers of ingenious experimentation could be employed with profit. His earliest published memoir had dealt with the question, and for more than forty years with dogged perseverance, he had laboured at it from time to time. It was delightful to watch his pleasure as he examined what was going on in the flower-pots full of mould in his study, and when his book was published and favourably received, he rejoiced in it as 'the child of his old age[144].'

Charles Darwin's death took place rather more than twenty-two years after the publication of the Origin of Species. Before he passed away, he had the satisfaction of knowing that the doctrine of evolution had come to be—mainly through his own great efforts—the accepted creed of all naturalists and that even for the world at large it had lost its imaginary terrors. As Huxley wrote a few days after our sad loss, '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[145]?'

More than a quarter of a century has passed since these words were written. How during that period the influence of Darwin's writings on human thought has grown, in an accelerated ratio, will be seen by anyone who will turn the pages of the memorial volume—Darwin and Modern Science—published fifty years after the Origin of Species. Therein, not only zoologists, botanists and geologists, but physicists, chemists, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, philologists, historians—and even politicians and theologians—are found testifying to the important part which Darwin's great work has played, in revolutionising ideas and moulding thought in connexion with all branches of knowledge and speculation.

CHAPTER XII

While Darwin doubtless derived his inspiration, and much valuable aid, from the Principles of Geology, and its gifted author, yet Lyell, with all his clearness of vision, logical faculty and literary skill, did not possess the strong faith and resolute courage—to say nothing of that wonderful tenacity of purpose and power of research which were such striking characteristics of Darwin—which would have enabled him to do for the organic what he did for the inorganic world. If it be true, as Darwin used to suggest, that the Origin of Species might never have been written had not Lyell first produced the Principles of Geology, I believe it is no less certain that the crowning of Lyell's great edifice, by the full application of his principles to the world of living beings, could only have been accomplished by a man possessing, in unique combination, the powers of observation, experiment, reasoning and criticism, joined to unswerving determination, which distinguished Darwin.

Starting from Lyell's most advanced post, Darwin boldly advanced into regions in which his friend was unable to lead, and indeed long hesitated to follow. Together, for nearly forty years, the two men—influencing one another 'as iron sharpeneth iron'—thought and communed and worked, aided at all times by the wide knowledge and judicious criticism of the sagacious Hooker; and together the fame of these men will go down to posterity.

There is a tendency, when a great man has passed from our midst, to estimate his merits and labours with undiscriminating, and often perhaps exaggerated, admiration; and this excessive praise is too often followed by a reaction, as the result of which the idol of one generation becomes almost commonplace to the next. A still further period is required before the proper position of mental perspective is reached by us, and a just judgment can be formed of the man's real place in history. The reputations of both Lyell and Darwin have, I think, passed through both these two earlier phases of thought, and we may have arrived at the third stage.

There was one respect in which both Lyell and Darwin failed to satisfy many both of their contemporaries and successors. Lyell, like Hutton, always deprecated attempts to go back to a 'beginning,' while Darwin, who strongly supported Lyell in his geological views, was equally averse to speculations concerning the 'origin of life on the globe.' Scrope[146], and also Huxley[147] in his earlier days, held the opinion that it was legitimate to assume or imagine a beginning, from which, with ever diminishing energy, the existing 'comparatively quiet conditions,' thought to characterise the present order of the world, would be reached. Both Lyell and Darwin insisted that geology is a historical science, and must be treated as such quite distinct from Cosmogony. And in the end, Huxley accepted the same view[148]. 'Geology,' he asserted, 'is as much a historical science as archaeology.'

The sober historian has always had to contend against the traditional belief that 'there were giants on the earth in those days!' The love of the marvellous has always led to the ascription of past events to the work of demigods who were not of like powers and passions with ourselves. Hence the invention of those 'catastrophies'—in which the reputations of deities as well as of men and women have often suffered. It is the same tendency in the human mind which makes it so difficult to conceive of all the changes in the earth's surface-features and its inhabitants being due to similar operations to those still going on around us.

Lyell's views have constantly been misrepresented by the belief being ascribed to him that 'the forces operating on the globe have never acted with greater intensity than at the present day.' But his real position in this matter was a frankly 'agnostic' one. 'Bring me evidence,' he would have said, 'that changes have taken place on the globe, which cannot be accounted for by agencies still at work when operating through sufficiently long periods of time, and I will abandon my position.' But such evidence was not forthcoming in his day, and I do not think has ever been discovered since. Professor Sollas has very justly said, 'Geology has no need to return to the catastrophism of its youth; in becoming evolutional it does not cease to remain essentially uniformitarian[149].'

Alfred Russel Wallace, who has always been as stout a defender of the views of Lyell as he has of those of Darwin, has given me his permission to quote from a letter he wrote me in 1888. After referring to what he regards as the weak and mistaken attacks on Lyell's teachings, 'which have of late years been so general among geologists,' he says:—

I believe that Mr Wallace's expression, adopted from the mathematicians, 'the same order of magnitude,' would have met with Lyell's complete acquiescence. He was not so unwise as to suppose that, in the limited periods of human history, we must necessarily have had experience—even at Krakatoa or 'Skaptar Jokull'—of nature's greatest possible convulsions, but he fought tenaciously against any admission of 'cataclysms' that would belong to a totally different category to those of the present day.

Apart from theological objections, the most formidable obstacle to the reception of evolutionary ideas had always been the prejudice against the admission of vast duration of past geological time. It was unfortunate that, even when rational historical criticism had to a great extent neutralised the effect of Archbishop Usher's chronology, the mathematicians and physicists, assuming certain sources of heat in the earth and sun could have been the only possible ones, tried to set a limit to the time at the disposal of the geologist and biologist. Happily the discovery of radio-activity and the new sources of heat opened up by that discovery, have removed those objections, which were like a nightmare to both Geology and Biology.

Lyell used to relate the story of a man, who, from a condition of dire poverty, suddenly became the possessor of vast wealth, and when remonstrated with by friends on the inadequacy of a subscription he had offered, the poor fellow exclaimed sadly, 'Ah! you don't know how hard it is to get the chill of poverty out of one's bones.'

Geologists and biologists alike have long been the victims of this 'chill of poverty,' with respect to past time. So long as physicists insisted that one hundred millions, or forty millions, or even ten millions of years, must be the limit of geological time, it was not possible to avoid the conclusion stated by Lord Salisbury in 1894, 'Of course, if the mathematicians are right the biologists cannot have what they demand[150].' But now geologists and biologists may alike feel that the liberty with respect to space, which is granted ungrudgingly to the astronomer, is no longer withheld from them in regard to time. We can say with old Lamarck:—

Darwin, equally with Lyell, has suffered from a reaction following on extravagant and uninformed praise of his work. The fields in which he laboured single-handed, have yielded to hundreds of workers in many lands an abundant harvest. New doctrines and improved methods of enquiry have arisen—Mutationism, Mendelism, Weismannism, Neo-Lamarckism, Biometrics, Eugenics and what not—are being diligently exploited. But all of these vigorous growths have their real roots in Darwinism. If we study Darwin's correspondence, and the successive essays in which he embodied his views at different periods, we shall find, variation by mutation (or per saltum), the influence of environment, the question of the inheritance of acquired characters and similar problems were constantly present to Darwin's ever open mind, his views upon them changing from time to time, as fresh facts were gathered.

No one could sympathise more fully than would Darwin, were he still with us, in these various departures. He was compelled, from want of evidence, to regard variations as spontaneous, but would have heartily welcomed every attempt to discover the laws which govern them; and equally would he have delighted in researches directed to the investigation of the determining factors, controlling conditions and limits of inheritance. The man who so carefully counted and weighed his seeds in botanical experiments, could not but rejoice in the refined mathematical methods now being applied to biological problems.

Let us not 'in looking at the trees, lose sight of the wood.' Underlying all the problems, some of them very hotly discussed at the present day, there is the great central principle of Natural Selection—which if not the sole factor in evolution, is undoubtedly a very important and potent one. It is only necessary to compare the present position of the Natural History sciences with that which existed immediately before the publication of the Origin of Species, to realise the greatness of Darwin's achievement.

The fame of both Lyell and Darwin will endure, and their names will remain as closely linked as were the two men in their lives, the two devoted friends, whose remains found a meet resting-place, almost side by side, in the Abbey of Westminster. Very touching indeed was it to witness the marks of affection between these two great men; an affection which remained undiminished to the end. Lyell was twelve years senior to Darwin, and died seven years before his friend. During the last year of Lyell's life, I spent the summer with him at his home in Forfarshire. How well do I recollect the keenness with which—in spite of a near-sightedness that had increased with age almost to blindness—he still devoted himself to geological work. The 264 note-books, all carefully indexed, were in constant use, and visits were made to all the haunts of his youth, with the frequent pathetic appeal to me, 'You must lend me your eyes.' In spite of age and weakness, he would insist on clambering up the steepest hills to show me where he had found glacial markings, and would eagerly listen to my report on them. But the great delight of those days was the arrival of a letter from Darwin! Lyell was the recipient of many honours, and he declined many more, when he feared that they might interfere with the work to which he had devoted his life, but the distinction he prized most of all was that conferred on him by his life-long friend, who used to address him as 'My dear old Master,' and subscribe himself 'Your affectionate pupil.'

During the seven years that elapsed after the death of Lyell, I saw Darwin from time to time, for he loved to hear 'what was doing' in his 'favourite science.' On board the Beagle, before he had met the man whose life and work were to be so closely linked with his own, he was in the habit of specially treasuring up any 'facts that would interest Mr Lyell'; in middle life he declared that 'when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes[152]'; and never, I think, did we meet after the friend was gone, without the oft repeated query, 'What would Lyell have said to that?'

These reminiscences of the past, in which I have ventured to indulge, may not inappropriately conclude with a reference to the last interview I was privileged to have with him, who was 'the noblest Roman of them all!' On the occasion of his last visit to London, in December, 1881, Charles Darwin wrote asking me to take lunch with him at his daughter's house, and to have 'a little talk' on geology. Greatly was I surprised at the vigour which he showed on that afternoon, for, contrary to his usual practice, he did not interrupt the conversation to retire and rest for a time, though I suggested the desirability of his doing so, and offered to stay. His brightness and animation, which were perhaps a little forced, struck me as so unusual that I laughingly suggested that he was 'renewing his youth.' Then a slight shade passed over his countenance—but only for a moment—as he told me that he had 'received his warning.' The attack, to which his son has alluded, as being the prelude to the end[153], had occurred during this visit to town; and he intimated to me that he knew his heart was seriously affected. Never shall I forget how, seeing my concern, he insisted on accompanying me to the door, and how, with the ever kindly smile on his countenance, he held my hand in a prolonged grasp, that I sadly felt might perhaps be the last. And so it proved.

And now all the world is united in the conviction which Darwin so modestly expressed concerning his own career, 'I believe that I have acted rightly in steadily following and devoting myself to science!'

For has not that devotion resulted in a complete reform of the Natural-History Sciences! The doctrine of the 'immutability of species'—like that of 'Catastrophism' in the inorganic world—has been eliminated from the Biological sciences by Darwin, through his steadily following the clues found by him during his South American travels; and continuity is now as much the accepted creed of botanists and zoologists as it is of geologists. As a result of the labours of Darwin, new lines of thought have been opened out, fresh fields of investigation discovered, and the infinite variety among living things has acquired a grander aspect and a special significance. Very justly, then, has Darwin been universally acclaimed as 'the Newton of Natural History.'

NOTES