Chapter XI: The Influence of Darwin's Works

In two essays 'On the Coming of Age of the Origin of Species[134],' and 'On the Reception of the Origin of Species[135],' published in 1880 and 1887 respectively, Huxley has discussed the course of events following the publication of Darwin's great work, he having the advantage of being one of the chief actors in those events. There is a striking parallelism between the manner that the _Principles of Geology_ had been received thirty years earlier, and the way that the _Origin of Species_ was met, both by Darwin's scientific contemporaries and the reading public.

At the outset, as we have already intimated, Lyell and Darwin were equally fortunate, in that each found a critic, in one of the chief organs of public opinion, who was at the same time both competent and sympathetic. The story of the lucky accident by which this came about in Darwin's case has been told by Huxley himself[136].

'The _Origin_ was sent to Mr Lucas, one of the staff of the
_Times_ writers at that time, in what was I suppose the
ordinary course of business. Mr Lucas, though an excellent
journalist, ... 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 the 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[137].'

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:--

'I asserted--and I repeat--that a man has no reason to be
ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an
ancestor whom I should feel ashamed in recalling, it would
rather be a _man_--a man of restless and versatile
intellect--who not content with success in his own sphere of
activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no
real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric,
and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at
issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious
prejudice[138].'

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:

'Lyell, up to that time a pillar of the antitransmutationists
(who regarded him, ever afterwards, as Pallas Athene may have
looked at Dian, after the Endymion affair), declared himself a
Darwinian, though not without putting in a serious _caveat_.
Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength and his courageous
stand for truth as against consistency, did him infinite
honour[139].'

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.