Чарльз Дарвин
Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters
J. D. Hooker to C. Darwin. Kew [1859]
Dear Darwin, – You have, I know, been drenched with letters since the publication of your book, and I have hence forborne to add my mite.182 I hope now that you are well through Edition II., and I have heard that you were flourishing in London. I have not yet got half-through the book, not from want of will, but of time – for it is the very hardest book to read, to full profits, that I ever tried – it is so cram-full of matter and reasoning.183 I am all the more glad that you have published in this form, for the three volumes, unprefaced by this, would have choked any Naturalist of the nineteenth century, and certainly have softened my brain in the operation of assimilating their contents. I am perfectly tired of marvelling at the wonderful amount of facts you have brought to bear, and your skill in marshalling them and throwing them on the enemy; it is also extremely clear as far as I have gone, but very hard to fully appreciate. Somehow it reads very different from the MS., and I often fancy that I must have been very stupid not to have more fully followed it in MS. Lyell told me of his criticisms. I did not appreciate them all, and there are many little matters I hope one day to talk over with you. I saw a highly flattering notice in the English Churchman, short and not at all entering into discussion, but praising you and your book, and talking patronizingly of the doctrine!.. Bentham and Henslow will still shake their heads, I fancy…
Ever yours affectionately
C. D. to T. H. Huxley. Down, Dec. 28th [1859]
My dear Huxley, – Yesterday evening, when I read the Times of a previous day, I was amazed to find a splendid essay and review of me. Who can the author be? I am intensely curious. It included an eulogium of me which quite touched me, though I am not vain enough to think it all deserved. The author is a literary man, and German scholar. He has read my book very attentively; but, what is very remarkable, it seems that he is a profound naturalist. He knows my Barnacle-book, and appreciates it too highly. Lastly, he writes and thinks with quite uncommon force and clearness; and what is even still rarer, his writing is seasoned with most pleasant wit. We all laughed heartily over some of the sentences… Who can it be? Certainly I should have said that there was only one man in England who could have written this essay, and that you were the man. But I suppose I am wrong, and that there is some hidden genius of great calibre. For how could you influence Jupiter Olympus and make him give three and a half columns to pure science? The old fogies will think the world will come to an end. Well, whoever the man is, he has done great service to the cause, far more than by a dozen reviews in common periodicals. The grand way he soars above common religious prejudices, and the admission of such views into the Times, I look at as of the highest importance, quite independently of the mere question of species. If you should happen to be acquainted with the author, for Heaven-sake tell me who he is?
My dear Huxley, yours most sincerely
There can be no doubt that this powerful essay, appearing in the leading daily Journal, must have had a strong influence on the reading public. Mr. Huxley allows me to quote from a letter an account of the happy chance that threw into his hands the opportunity of writing it: —
"The Origin was sent to Mr. Lucas, one of the staff of the Times writers at that day, in what I suppose was the ordinary course of business. Mr. Lucas, though an excellent journalist, and, at a later period, editor of Once a Week, was as innocent of any knowledge of science as a babe, and bewailed himself to an acquaintance on having to deal with such a book. Whereupon he was recommended to ask me to get him out of his difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly, explaining, however, that it would be necessary for him formally to adopt anything I might be disposed to write, by prefacing it with two or three paragraphs of his own.
"I was too anxious to seize upon the opportunity thus offered of giving the book a fair chance with the multitudinous readers of the Times to make any difficulty about conditions; and being then very full of the subject, I wrote the article faster, I think, than I ever wrote anything in my life, and sent it to Mr. Lucas, who duly prefixed his opening sentences.
"When the article appeared, there was much speculation as to its authorship. The secret leaked out in time, as all secrets will, but not by my aid; and then I used to derive a good deal of innocent amusement from the vehement assertions of some of my more acute friends, that they knew it was mine from the first paragraph!
"As the Times some years since referred to my connection with the review, I suppose there will be no breach of confidence in the publication of this little history, if you think it worth the space it will occupy."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES' – REVIEWS AND CRITICISMS – ADHESIONS AND ATTACKS
"You are the greatest revolutionist in natural history of this century, if not of all centuries." – H. C. Watson to C. Darwin, Nov. 21, 1859.
1860
The second edition, 3000 copies, of the Origin was published on January 7th; on the 10th, he wrote with regard to it, to Lyell: —
C. D. to C. Lyell. Down, January 10th [1860]
… It is perfectly true that I owe nearly all the corrections to you, and several verbal ones to you and others; I am heartily glad you approve of them, as yet only two things have annoyed me; those confounded millions184 of years (not that I think it is probably wrong), and my not having (by inadvertence) mentioned Wallace towards the close of the book in the summary, not that any one has noticed this to me. I have now put in Wallace's name at p. 484 in a conspicuous place. I shall be truly glad to read carefully any MS. on man, and give my opinion. You used to caution me to be cautious about man. I suspect I shall have to return the caution a hundred fold! Yours will, no doubt, be a grand discussion; but it will horrify the world at first more than my whole volume; although by the sentence (p. 489, new edition185) I show that I believe man is in the same predicament with other animals. It is in fact impossible to doubt it. I have thought (only vaguely) on man. With respect to the races, one of my best chances of truth has broken down from the impossibility of getting facts. I have one good speculative line, but a man must have entire credence in Natural Selection before he will even listen to it. Psychologically, I have done scarcely anything. Unless, indeed, expression of countenance can be included, and on that subject I have collected a good many facts, and speculated, but I do not suppose I shall ever publish, but it is an uncommonly curious subject.
A few days later he wrote again to the same correspondent:
"What a grand immense benefit you conferred on me by getting Murray to publish my book. I never till to-day realised that it was getting widely distributed; for in a letter from a lady to-day to E., she says she heard a man enquiring for it at the Railway Station!!! at Waterloo Bridge; and the bookseller said that he had none till the new edition was out. The bookseller said he had not read it, but had heard it was a very remarkable book!!!"
C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Down, 14th [January, 1860]
… I heard from Lyell this morning, and he tells me a piece of news. You are a good-for-nothing man; here you are slaving yourself to death with hardly a minute to spare, and you must write a review on my book! I thought it186 a very good one, and was so much struck with it, that I sent it to Lyell. But I assumed, as a matter of course, that it was Lindley's. Now that I know it is yours, I have re-read it, and my kind and good friend, it has warmed my heart with all the honourable and noble things you say of me and it. I was a good deal surprised at Lindley hitting on some of the remarks, but I never dreamed of you. I admired it chiefly as so well adapted to tell on the readers of the Gardeners' Chronicle; but now I admire it in another spirit. Farewell, with hearty thanks…
Asa Gray to J. D. Hooker. Cambridge, Mass., January 5th, 1860
My dear Hooker, – Your last letter, which reached me just before Christmas, has got mislaid during the upturnings in my study which take place at that season, and has not yet been discovered. I should be very sorry to lose it, for there were in it some botanical mems. which I had not secured…
The principal part of your letter was high laudation of Darwin's book.
Well, the book has reached me, and I finished its careful perusal four days ago; and I freely say that your laudation is not out of place.
It is done in a masterly manner. It might well have taken twenty years to produce it. It is crammed full of most interesting matter – thoroughly digested – well expressed – close, cogent, and taken as a system it makes out a better case than I had supposed possible…
Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of it. He says it is poor – very poor!! (entre nous). The fact [is] he is very much annoyed by it, … and I do not wonder at it. To bring all ideal systems within the domain of science, and give good physical or natural explanations of all his capital points, is as bad as to have Forbes take the glacier materials … and give scientific explanation of all the phenomena.
Tell Darwin all this. I will write to him when I get a chance. As I have promised, he and you shall have fair-play here… I must myself write a review187 of Darwin's book for Silliman's Journal (the more so that I suspect Agassiz means to come out upon it) for the next (March) number, and I am now setting about it (when I ought to be every moment working the Expl[oring] Expedition Compositæ, which I know far more about). And really it is no easy job as you may well imagine.
I doubt if I shall please you altogether. I know I shall not please Agassiz at all. I hear another reprint is in the Press, and the book will excite much attention here, and some controversy…
C. D. to Asa Gray. Down, January 28th [1860]
My dear Gray, – Hooker has forwarded to me your letter to him; and I cannot express how deeply it has gratified me. To receive the approval of a man whom one has long sincerely respected, and whose judgment and knowledge are most universally admitted, is the highest reward an author can possibly wish for; and I thank you heartily for your most kind expressions.
I have been absent from home for a few days, and so could not earlier answer your letter to me of the 10th of January. You have been extremely kind to take so much trouble and interest about the edition. It has been a mistake of my publisher not thinking of sending over the sheets. I had entirely and utterly forgotten your offer of receiving the sheets as printed off. But I must not blame my publisher, for had I remembered your most kind offer I feel pretty sure I should not have taken advantage of it; for I never dreamed of my book being so successful with general readers: I believe I should have laughed at the idea of sending the sheets to America.188
After much consideration, and on the strong advice of Lyell and others, I have resolved to leave the present book as it is (excepting correcting errors, or here and there inserting short sentences), and to use all my strength, which is but little, to bring out the first part (forming a separate volume, with index, &c.) of the three volumes which will make my bigger work; so that I am very unwilling to take up time in making corrections for an American edition. I enclose a list of a few corrections in the second reprint, which you will have received by this time complete, and I could send four or five corrections or additions of equally small importance, or rather of equal brevity. I also intend to write a short preface with a brief history of the subject. These I will set about, as they must some day be done, and I will send them to you in a short time – the few corrections first, and the preface afterwards, unless I hear that you have given up all idea of a separate edition. You will then be able to judge whether it is worth having the new edition with your review prefixed. Whatever be the nature of your review, I assure you I should feel it a great honour to have my book thus preceded…
C. D. to C. Lyell. Down [February 15th, 1860]
… I am perfectly convinced (having read it this morning) that the review in the Annals189 is by Wollaston; no one else in the world would have used so many parentheses. I have written to him, and told him that the "pestilent" fellow thanks him for his kind manner of speaking about him. I have also told him that he would be pleased to hear that the Bishop of Oxford says it is the most unphilosophical190 work he ever read. The review seems to me clever, and only misinterprets me in a few places. Like all hostile men, he passes over the explanation given of Classification, Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs, &c. I read Wallace's paper in MS.,191 and thought it admirably good; he does not know that he has been anticipated about the depth of intervening sea determining distribution… The most curious point in the paper seems to me that about the African character of the Celebes productions, but I should require further confirmation…
Henslow is staying here; I have had some talk with him; he is in much the same state as Bunbury,192 and will go a very little way with us, but brings up no real argument against going further. He also shudders at the eye! It is really curious (and perhaps is an argument in our favour) how differently different opposers view the subject. Henslow used to rest his opposition on the imperfection of the Geological Record, but he now thinks nothing of this, and says I have got well out of it; I wish I could quite agree with him. Baden Powell says he never read anything so conclusive as my statement about the eye!! A stranger writes to me about sexual selection, and regrets that I boggle about such a trifle as the brush of hair on the male turkey, and so on. As L. Jenyns has a really philosophical mind, and as you say you like to see everything, I send an old letter of his. In a later letter to Henslow, which I have seen, he is more candid than any opposer I have heard of, for he says, though he cannot go so far as I do, yet he can give no good reason why he should not. It is funny how each man draws his own imaginary line at which to halt. It reminds me so vividly [of] what I was told193 about you when I first commenced geology – to believe a little, but on no account to believe all.
Ever yours affectionately
With regard to the attitude of the more liberal representatives of the Church, the following letter from Charles Kingsley is of interest:
C. Kingsley to C. Darwin. Eversley Rectory, Winchfield, November 18th, 1859
Dear Sir, – I have to thank you for the unexpected honour of your book. That the Naturalist whom, of all naturalists living, I most wish to know and to learn from, should have sent a scientist like me his book, encourages me at least to observe more carefully, and think more slowly.
I am so poorly (in brain), that I fear I cannot read your book just now as I ought. All I have seen of it awes me; both with the heap of facts and the prestige of your name, and also with the clear intuition, that if you be right, I must give up much that I have believed and written.
In that I care little. Let God be true, and every man a liar! Let us know what is, and, as old Socrates has it, ἑπεσθαι τὡ λὁγὡ [Greek: hepesthai tô logô] – follow up the villainous shifty fox of an argument, into whatsoever unexpected bogs and brakes he may lead us, if we do but run into him at last.
From two common superstitious, at least, I shall be free while judging of your book: —
(1.) I have long since, from watching the crossing of domesticated animals and plants, learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species.
(2.) I have gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of Deity, to believe that He created primal forms capable of self-development into all forms needful pro tempore and pro loco, as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the lacunas which He Himself had made. I question whether the former be not the loftier thought.
Be it as it may, I shall prize your book, both for itself, and as a proof that you are aware of the existence of such a person as
Your faithful servant,
C. Kingsley.
My father's old friend, the Rev. J. Brodie Innes, of Milton Brodie, who was for many years Vicar of Down, in some reminiscences of my father which he was so good as to give me, writes in the same spirit:
"We never attacked each other. Before I knew Mr. Darwin I had adopted, and publicly expressed, the principle that the study of natural history, geology, and science in general, should be pursued without reference to the Bible. That the Book of Nature and Scripture came from the same Divine source, ran in parallel lines, and when properly understood would never cross…
"In [a] letter, after I had left Down, he [Darwin] writes, 'We often differed, but you are one of those rare mortals from whom one can differ and yet feel no shade of animosity, and that is a thing [of] which I should feel very proud if any one could say [it] of me.'
"On my last visit to Down, Mr. Darwin said, at his dinner-table, 'Innes and I have been fast friends for thirty years, and we never thoroughly agreed on any subject but once, and then we stared hard at each other, and thought one of us must be very ill.'"
The following extract from a letter to Lyell, Feb. 23, 1860, has a certain bearing on the points just touched on:
"With respect to Bronn's194 objection that it cannot be shown how life arises, and likewise to a certain extent Asa Gray's remark that natural selection is not a vera causa, I was much interested by finding accidentally in Brewster's Life of Newton, that Leibnitz objected to the law of gravity because Newton could not show what gravity itself is. As it has chanced, I have used in letters this very same argument, little knowing that any one had really thus objected to the law of gravity. Newton answers by saying that it is philosophy to make out the movements of a clock, though you do not know why the weight descends to the ground. Leibnitz further objected that the law of gravity was opposed to Natural Religion! Is this not curious? I really think I shall use the facts for some introductory remarks for my bigger book."
C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Down, March 3rd [1860]
… I think you expect too much in regard to change of opinion on the subject of Species. One large class of men, more especially I suspect of naturalists, never will care about any general question, of which old Gray, of the British Museum, may be taken as a type; and secondly, nearly all men past a moderate age, either in actual years or in mind are, I am fully convinced, incapable of looking at facts under a new point of view. Seriously, I am astonished and rejoiced at the progress which the subject has made; look at the enclosed memorandum. – says my book will be forgotten in ten years, perhaps so; but, with such a list, I feel convinced the subject will not.
[Here follows the memorandum referred to:]
1. Andrew Ramsay, late Director-General of the Geological Survey.
2. Joseph Beete Jukes, M.A., F.R.S., born 1811, died 1869. He was educated at Cambridge, and from 1842 to 1846 he acted as naturalist to H.M.S. Fly, on an exploring expedition in Australia and New Guinea. He was afterwards appointed Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland. He was the author of many papers, and of more than one good handbook of geology.
3. Professor of Geology in the University of Glasgow. Born in the United States 1809, died 1866.
4. Searles Valentine Wood, died 1880. Chiefly known for his work on the Mollusca of the Crag.
5. Dr. G. H. K. Thwaites, F.R.S., was born in 1811, or about that date, and died in Ceylon, September 11, 1882. He began life as a Notary, but his passion for Botany and Entomology ultimately led to his taking to Science as a profession. He became lecturer on Botany at the Bristol School of Medicine, and in 1849 he was appointed Director of the Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya, which he made "the most beautiful tropical garden in the world." He is best known through his important discovery of conjugation in the Diatomaceæ (1847). His Enumeratio Plantarum Zeylaniæ (1858-64) was "the first complete account, on modern lines, of any definitely circumscribed tropical area." (From a notice in Nature, October 26, 1882.)
C. D. to Asa Gray. Down, April 3 [1860]
… I remember well the time when the thought of the eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of the complaint, and now small trifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!..
You may like to hear about reviews on my book. Sedgwick (as I and Lyell feel certain from internal evidence) has reviewed me savagely and unfairly in the Spectator.195 The notice includes much abuse, and is hardly fair in several respects. He would actually lead any one, who was ignorant of geology, to suppose that I had invented the great gaps between successive geological formations, instead of its being an almost universally admitted dogma. But my dear old friend Sedgwick, with his noble heart, is old, and is rabid with indignation… There has been one prodigy of a review, namely, an opposed one (by Pictet,196 the palæontologist, in the Bib. Universelle of Geneva) which is perfectly fair and just, and I agree to every word he says; our only difference being that he attaches less weight to arguments in favour, and more to arguments opposed, than I do. Of all the opposed reviews, I think this the only quite fair one, and I never expected to see one. Please observe that I do not class your review by any means as opposed, though you think so yourself! It has done me much too good service ever to appear in that rank in my eyes. But I fear I shall weary you with so much about my book. I should rather think there was a good chance of my becoming the most egotistical man in all Europe! What a proud pre-eminence! Well, you have helped to make me so, and therefore you must forgive me if you can.
My dear Gray, ever yours most gratefully
C. D. to C. Lyell. Down, April 10th [1860]
I have just read the Edinburgh,197 which without doubt is by – . It is extremely malignant, clever, and I fear will be very damaging. He is atrociously severe on Huxley's lecture, and very bitter against Hooker. So we three enjoyed it together. Not that I really enjoyed it, for it made me uncomfortable for one night; but I have got quite over it to-day. It requires much study to appreciate all the bitter spite of many of the remarks against me; indeed I did not discover all myself. It scandalously misrepresents many parts. He misquotes some passages, altering words within inverted commas…
It is painful to be hated in the intense degree with which – hates me.
Now for a curious thing about my book, and then I have done. In last Saturday's Gardeners' Chronicle,198 a Mr. Patrick Matthew publishes a long extract from his work on Naval Timber and Arboriculture published in 1831, in which he briefly but completely anticipates the theory of Natural Selection. I have ordered the book, as some few passages are rather obscure, but it is certainly, I think, a complete but not developed anticipation! Erasmus always said that surely this would be shown to be the case some day. Anyhow, one may be excused in not having discovered the fact in a work on Naval Timber.
C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Down [April 13th, 1860]
My dear Hooker, – Questions of priority so often lead to odious quarrels, that I should esteem it a great favour if you would read the enclosed.199 If you think it proper that I should send it (and of this there can hardly be any question), and if you think it full and ample enough, please alter the date to the day on which you post it, and let that be soon. The case in the Gardeners' Chronicle seems a little stronger than in Mr. Matthew's book, for the passages are therein scattered in three places; but it would be mere hair-splitting to notice that. If you object to my letter, please return it; but I do not expect that you will, but I thought that you would not object to run your eye over it. My dear Hooker, it is a great thing for me to have so good, true, and old a friend as you. I owe much for science to my friends.
… I have gone over [the Edinburgh] review again, and compared passages, and I am astonished at the misrepresentations. But I am glad I resolved not to answer. Perhaps it is selfish, but to answer and think more on the subject is too unpleasant. I am so sorry that Huxley by my means has been thus atrociously attacked. I do not suppose you much care about the gratuitous attack on you.
Lyell in his letter remarked that you seemed to him as if you were overworked. Do, pray, be cautious, and remember how many and many a man has done this – who thought it absurd till too late. I have often thought the same. You know that you were bad enough before your Indian journey.
C. D. to C. Lyell. Down, April [1860]
… I was particularly glad to hear what you thought about not noticing [the Edinburgh] review. Hooker and Huxley thought it a sort of duty to point out the alteration of quoted citations, and there is truth in this remark; but I so hated the thought that I resolved not to do so. I shall come up to London on Saturday the 14th, for Sir B. Brodie's party, as I have an accumulation of things to do in London, and will (if I do not hear to the contrary) call about a quarter before ten on Sunday morning, and sit with you at breakfast, but will not sit long, and so take up much of your time. I must say one more word about our quasi-theological controversy about natural selection, and let me have your opinion when we meet in London. Do you consider that the successive variations in the size of the crop of the Pouter Pigeon, which man has accumulated to please his caprice, have been due to "the creative and sustaining powers of Brahma?" In the sense that an omnipotent and omniscient Deity must order and know everything, this must be admitted; yet, in honest truth, I can hardly admit it. It seems preposterous that a maker of a universe should care about the crop of a pigeon solely to please man's silly fancies. But if you agree with me in thinking such an interposition of the Deity uncalled for, I can see no reason whatever for believing in such interpositions in the case of natural beings, in which strange and admirable peculiarities have been naturally selected for the creature's own benefit. Imagine a Pouter in a state of nature wading into the water and then, being buoyed up by its inflated crop, sailing about in search of food. What admiration this would have excited – adaptation to the laws of hydrostatic pressure, &c. &c. For the life of me, I cannot see any difficulty in natural selection producing the most exquisite structure, if such structure can be arrived at by gradation, and I know from experience how hard it is to name any structure towards which at least some gradations are not known.
Ever yours
P.S. – The conclusion at which I have come, as I have told Asa Gray, is that such a question, as is touched on in this note, is beyond the human intellect, like "predestination and free will," or the "origin of evil."
C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Down [May 15th, 1860]
… How paltry it is in such men as X., Y. and Co. not reading your essay. It is incredibly paltry. They may all attack me to their hearts' content. I am got case-hardened. As for the old fogies in Cambridge,200 it really signifies nothing. I look at their attacks as a proof that our work is worth the doing. It makes me resolve to buckle on my armour. I see plainly that it will be a long uphill fight. But think of Lyell's progress with Geology. One thing I see most plainly, that without Lyell's, yours, Huxley's and Carpenter's aid, my book would have been a mere flash in the pan. But if we all stick to it, we shall surely gain the day. And I now see that the battle is worth fighting. I deeply hope that you think so.
C. D. to Asa Gray. Down May 22nd [1860]
My dear Gray, – Again I have to thank you for one of your very pleasant letters of May 7th, enclosing a very pleasant remittance of £22. I am in simple truth astonished at all the kind trouble you have taken for me. I return Appletons' account. For the chance of your wishing for a formal acknowledgment I send one. If you have any further communication to the Appletons, pray express my acknowledgment for [their] generosity; for it is generosity in my opinion. I am not at all surprised at the sale diminishing; my extreme surprise is at the greatness of the sale. No doubt the public has been shamefully imposed on! for they bought the book thinking that it would be nice easy reading. I expect the sale to stop soon in England, yet Lyell wrote to me the other day that calling at Murray's he heard that fifty copies had gone in the previous forty-eight hours. I am extremely glad that you will notice in Silliman the additions in the Origin.201 Judging from letters (and I have just seen one from Thwaites to Hooker), and from remarks, the most serious omission in my book was not explaining how it is, as I believe, that all forms do not necessarily advance, how there can now be simple organisms still existing… I hear there is a very severe review on me in the North British by a Rev. Mr. Dunns,202 a Free Kirk minister, and dabbler in Natural History. In the Saturday Review (one of our cleverest periodicals) of May 5th, p. 573, there is a nice article on [the Edinburgh] review, defending Huxley, but not Hooker; and the latter, I think, [the Edinburgh reviewer] treats most ungenerously.203 But surely you will get sick unto death of me and my reviewers.
