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Oh, if I gauge my heart aright, Sunday Magazine. From The Church Quarterly Review. CHARLES DARWIN AND EVOLUTION.* with regard to some of his views, Mr. Darwin's scientific work has secured him ON April 19th last died Charles Dar- a reputation that in all probability will win in his seventy-fourth year, by general endure throughout the civilized world for acknowledgment the greatest scientist of many generations to come. It may be the age, and the man whose influence said of him, if of any one, upon the world of thought not only ex- Exegit monumentum ære perennius. ceeds that of any of his contemporaries, A man of such acknowledged eminence, but can scarcely be paralleled by more paradoxical as it may seem to say so, than one or two instances in the centu-is peculiarly the product, the child, of ries which we call modern. If the philo- the age to which he belongs; and this sophical basis of thought be regarded, the fact may assist us to understand our own far-reaching, though in relation to the age and to anticipate, in part, the view mass of mankind indirect, influence of which posterity will take of its distinguishKant, may perhaps, be compared with ing characteristics. If excellence in literathat of Darwin. If an example of the more ture, the expression of the noblest thought direct influence upon popular thought be in the best language, was the dominant sought for, we shall have to go back to intellectual aim three centuries ago, Luther to find the parallel. Shakespeare, the product of that age, was also its master mind, and has remained its representative. The subsequent tendency of thought has been to develop the passionate desire to arrive at scientific truth, the desire to follow the operations of nature in her most hidden recesses, and to understand the constitution of the material world. What was scarcely more than a prophecy and an ideal three centuries ago, the ideal of scientific inquiry and of the investigator of nature, has gradually become reality. From Bacon's writings we might gather most of the essential characters of the ideal man of science, and it would not be possible to find the lineaments of such a conception more faithfully and fully presented than by him who forms the subject of this paper. Recognizing, as we do, that every truth is a portion of divine light, and believing, as we do, in God's providential government of the world, we must hold that the appearance on the terrestrial stage of a commanding scientific genius is a divinely ordered means for the accomplishment of a great divine purpose. And if that which presents itself as new light demands a change in our previous conceptions of things which, at the best, we but saw 66 through a glass, darkly," it is our duty in this case, as in others, to impartially consider its claims to be one of those "good and perfect gifts" which come down "from the Father of lights," as it is our duty to "prove "" or rather to It is publicly announced that Mr. Darwin has left his own autobiography amongst his papers. To its appearance, together with such additional details of his life and of his thought as may be given to the world at some future day, we shall look forward with very great interest. Until the life is published it would be premature, as it seems to us, to attempt to add anything to the sketches of Mr. Darwin's career which have already been published, and with which most of our readers are probably familiar. But his scientific writings are in our hands, and a few of the thoughts which their perusal suggests may not be out of place in these pages. Whatever may be the ultimate verdict * 1. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; or, The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. By CHARLES DARWIN, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. Sixth Edition, with Additions and Corrections to 1872. Twenty-fourth Thousand. London, 1882. 2. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. By the same Author. Second Edi tion, revised. 3. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. By the same Author. Second Edition, revised. Thirteenth Thousand. 4. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. By the same Author. Ninth Thousand. 5. The Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilized by Insects. By the same Author. Second 6. The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants. test "all things," and to "hold fast that | tion of secondary causes has reached its Man apprehends him newly at each stage; Bacon did not exaggerate when he spoke of the extreme subtlety of nature, and of the patience, the concentration, the directness of aim and the perfect honesty which must be possessed by those who seek to track her footsteps if any worthy result is to be gained. But he could not imagine the immense extent of territory which the exposition of nature that we call science would cover within a few centuries. He cannot have conceived the vast amount of detail which the man of science would be required to master and to co-ordinate. He could not anticipate in any adequate measure the necessity under which investigators would lie of division of labor. limits and he can no longer see his way, he is the model of a scientific pioneer. It was by the aid of his admirable moral qualities, as well as by the abundance and weight of his arguments, and the skill with which he marshalled them, that he won respectful attention to his theories, however novel, from all who were qualified to judge. It was these qualities which largely helped to win for the theory with which the name of Darwin is, and always will be, most commonly associated that of the origin of species by natural selection the considsome form of it has received, notwitherable amount of acceptance, which it or standing that this theory ran counter to the traditional opinions of all religious men, and seemed at first sight to threaten the very foundations of religious belief, and notwithstanding that a similar theory had previously encountered the scorn of the scientific world. We may measure the extent of the revolution which Mr. Darwin has effected in educated thought during the progress of a single generation by recalling the statements which so liberal-minded a writer as the late Archbishop Whately propounded as typical examples of the false and absurd. originally descended from Reptiles or Insects." Here, every one (except certain French Naturalists) would perceive the falsity of all three of these propositions.* As an original explorer of nature's secrets, Mr. Darwin is unsurpassed, we may say, perhaps, unrivalled, in regard to those qualities of mind which Bacon perceived to be indispensable. As a patient Even if you suppose a case [he says] where one or both of the Premises shall be maniaccumulator of facts, an acute experimenter, a ready interpreter of phenom- conclusiveness of the Reasoning; though the festly false and absurd, this will not alter the ena, as an unswerving, unbiassed searcher conclusion itself may perhaps be absurd also. for truth, he was a man after Bacon's own For instance, "All the Ape tribe are originally heart. In the industry and pains with descended from Reptiles or Insects: Mankind which he acquainted himself with the re-are of the Ape tribe; therefore Mankind are sults of studies pursued by other diligent laborers, and in his quickness to perceive the evidential force of facts recorded by others, he is eminently typical of the true man of science, as he is actually required These statements do not indeed exactly to be in the presence of that ample page represent the views of advanced evolu of knowledge, "rich with the spoils of tionists at the present time. It is maintime," which has been unrolled since Ba-tained that apes and men are collaterally con's days. In his frank and generous descended from some remote common acknowledgment of the merits of other ancestor; the former, it may be, on a dewriters, whether they are hostile or favor-scending, the latter on an ascending line: able to his own views, in his earnest en- not that men are the lineal descendants deavor to state those views fairly, his of any known species of apes. In fact, candid admission of difficulties wherever all attempts to pass beyond a general he sees them, and his unhesitating con fession of ignorance when his investiga * Whately's Logic, p. 19 (London, 1851). doctrine of evolution and to construct | want of scientific caution." Mr. Darwin's ancestral trees involve a great deal of con- own work offered a conspicuous contrast jecture or of unfounded assertion. But in regard to both these qualities. Its assuredly such examples as those selected abundance of scientific resource, and the by Archbishop Whately would not now patience and cautiousness with which the be put forward by any writer of note as author had arrived at his conclusions, the types, the ne plus ultra, of absurd- compelled at once the attention of the sciity. entific world, and secured for him the adherence of some of the foremost thinkers of the age, many of whom afterwards assisted him by communicating facts observed in the course of their own studies, and which received an explanation from, and lent support to, his theory. The first edition of Mr. Darwin's book on "The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection " appeared at the close of 1859. Previously, the belief entertained generally by naturalists, and almost universally by the rest of the world, was that species were separate and sudden creations, and immutable. Mr. Darwin himself, at an earlier period, had shared the same view. He was not the first to proclaim a different one. Here and there, since the beginning of the present century, a few writers had maintained a doctrine of the descent of existing from previous species, which was more or less anticipatory of Mr. Darwin's views. Prominent amongst these writers was Lamarck, for whom Frenchmen now claim the honor of having been the true parent of the evolution theory, and whose merits Mr. Darwin frankly allows.* But the most widely known work on the subject was the "Vestiges of Creation," published anonymously in 1843. Of this work Mr. Darwin expresses his opinion that it did excellent service in this 'country by calling attention to the subject and removing prejudice. The first part of this verdict is undoubtedly just; the latter part requires some qualification. Our own im. pression on reading the book in 1852 was that the author had brought forward some very striking facts in regard, for example, to the resemblances and differences in embryological development in widely different species, but that his explanation of the facts was wild and fanciful. On the whole, the effect of the book was in some quarters certainly to strengthen the prejudice against any doctrine of the development of species, and this was only the natural result of a work which, to quote Mr. Darwin's own words, displayed "little accurate knowledge and a great • See The Origin of Species. Historical sketch, p. xiii. It was when visiting South America, on board H. M. ship "Beagle," as naturalist,* that Mr. Darwin was forcibly struck with certain facts that seemed likely to throw light on the great scientific mystery of the origin of species. After his return home in 1837, he devoted twenty-two years to accumulating and digesting all sorts of facts "which could possibly have any bearing upon it." At length, finding that he was not alone in the opinions which he had formed, Mr. Wallace having arrived at almost identical conclusions, Mr. Darwin was strongly urged by friends to publish his views without any further delay, which accordingly he did, with an abstract of the facts in support of them, in the work, entitled "The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection." Two emi nent scientists had in this case, as has so often happened in other cases, been simultaneously working at the same problem, and had arrived at very similar results. It is, however, generally admitted that the actual conversion of the world to the solution then propounded, or to something like it, is due to Mr. Darwin. The Buddhists distinguish between the "Pacceka-Buddha," him who is "enlightened for one," who has arrived at truth for himself, and the " Sam-Buddha," or "veryBuddha," that rare being, who not only himself possesses insight, but has the gift to make others participate in his knowledge. Without in the least underrating Mr. Darwin's "A Naturalist's Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of Countries visited during a Voyage round the World" is by itself, and much more when its sequel is taken into account, a proof of the utility and fruitfulness of some" endowment of research." |