Entangled in the meshes of this theory of a “pre-ordained law,” which seems to bear some relation to Aristotle’s “perfecting principle,” and is in close alliance with the teaching of the great Cuvier, at whose feet Owen had sat, he remained to the end of his life a type of arrested development. While the Church cited him as an authority against the Darwinian theory, especially in its application to man’s descent, there remained in the memory of his brother savants his lack of candour in never withdrawing the statement made by him, and demonstrated by Huxley as untrue, that the “hippocampus minor” in the human brain is absent from the brain of the ape.
As for the reception of the book abroad, the French savants were somewhat coy, but the Germans, with Haeckel at their head, were enthusiastic. Darwin had, like all prophets, more honour in other countries than in his own, Evolution being rechristened Darwinismus. Translation after translation of the Origin followed apace, and the personal interest that gathered round the central idea led to the perusal of the book by people who had never before opened a scientific treatise. Punch seized on it as subject of caricature; and writers of light verse found welcome material for “chaff” which the winds of oblivion have blown away, a stanza here and there surviving, as in Mr. Courthope’s Aristophanic lines:
Eggs were laid as before, but each time more and more varieties struggled and bred,
Till one end of the scale dropped its ancestor’s tail, and the other got rid of his head.
From the bill, in brief words, were developed the Birds, unless our tame pigeons and ducks lie;
From the tail and hind legs, in the second-laid eggs, the apes.—and Professor Huxley!
Heeding neither squib, satire, nor sermon, Darwin, in the quiet of his Kentish home, went on rearranging old materials, collecting new materials, and verifying both, the outcome of this being his works on the Fertilization of Orchids and the Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication, published in 1862 and 1867 respectively. Between these dates Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature—logical supplement to the Origin of Species—appeared. But of this more anon.
Meanwhile, as already named, Mr. Patrick Matthew had in the Gardener’s Chronicle of 7th April, 1860, drawn attention to an appendix to his book on Naval Timber and Arboriculture published in 1831, in which he anticipated Darwin and Wallace’s theory as follows:
“The self-regulating adaptive disposition of organised life may, in part, be traced to the extreme fecundity of Nature, who, as before stated, has in all the varieties of her offspring a prolific power much beyond (in many cases a thousandfold) what is necessary to fill up the vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited and pre-occupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better-suited-to-circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation and greater power of occupancy than any other kind; the weaker and less circumstance-suited being prematurely destroyed. This principle is in constant action; it regulates the colour, the figure, the capacities, and instincts; those individuals in each species whose colour and covering are best suited to concealment or protection from enemies, or defence from inclemencies or vicissitudes of climate, whose figure is best accommodated to health, strength, defence, and support; whose capacities and instincts can best regulate the physical energies to self-advantage according to circumstances—in such immense waste of primary and youthful life those only come to maturity from the strict ordeal by which Nature tests their adaptation to her standard of perfection and fitness to continue their kind by reproduction” (pp. 384, 385).
While speaking of difficulty in understanding some passages in Mr. Matthew’s appendix, Darwin says that “the full force of the principle of natural selection” is there, and, in referring to it in a letter to Lyell, he adds that “one may be excused in not having discovered the fact in a work on Naval Timber!”
Five years after this, another pre-Darwinian was unearthed, and, like Patrick Matthew, in unsuspected company. Dr. W. C. Wells read a paper before the Royal Society in 1813 on a White Female Part of whose Skin resembles that of a Negro, but this was not published till 1818, when it formed part of a volume including the author’s famous Two Essays upon Dew and Single Vision. In his Historical Sketch Darwin says that Wells “distinctly recognises the principle of natural selection, and this is the first recognition which has been indicated; but he applies it only to the races of man, and to certain characters alone.... Of the accidental varieties of man, which would occur among the first few and scattered inhabitants of the middle regions of Africa, some one would be better fitted than the others to bear the diseases of the country. This race would consequently multiply, while the others would decrease; not only from their inability to sustain the attacks of disease, but from their incapacity of contending with their more vigorous neighbours.”
When the simplicity of the long-hidden solution is brought home, we can understand Huxley’s reflection on mastering the central idea of the Origin: “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!” Twelve years elapsed before Darwin followed up his world-shaking book with the Descent of Man. But the ground had been prepared for its reception in the decade between 1860 and 1870. Quoting Grant Allen’s able summary of the advance of the theory of Evolution in his Charles Darwin: “One by one the few scientific men who still held out were overborne by the weight of evidence. Geology kept supplying fresh instances of transitional forms; the progress of research in unexplored countries kept adding to our knowledge of existing intermediate species and varieties. During those ten years, Herbert Spencer published his First Principles, his Biology, and the remodelled form of his Psychology; Huxley brought out Man’s Place in Nature, the Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, and the Introduction to the Classification of Animals; Wallace produced his Malay Archipelago and his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (Bates, we may here add to Mr. Allen’s list, published his paper on Mimicry in 1861, and his Naturalist on the Amazons in 1863); and Galton wrote his admirable work on Hereditary Genius, of which his own family is so remarkable an instance. Tyndall and Lewes had long since signified their warm adhesion. At Oxford, Rolleston was bringing up a fresh generation of young biologists in the new faith; at Cambridge, Darwin’s old university, a whole school of brilliant and accurate physiologists was beginning to make itself both felt and heard. In the domain of anthropology, Tylor was welcoming the assistance of the new ideas, while Lubbock was engaged on his kindred investigations into the Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man. All these diverse lines of thought both showed the widespread influence of Darwin’s first great work, and led up to the preparation of his second, in which he dealt with the history and development of the human race. And what was thus true of England was equally true of the civilized world, regarded as a whole: everywhere the great evolutionary movement was well in progress, everywhere the impulse sent forth from the quiet Kentish home was permeating and quickening the entire pulse of intelligent humanity.”
The Origin of Species, as we have seen, was intended as a rough draft or preliminary outline of the theory of natural selection. The materials which Darwin had collected in support of that theory being enormous, the several books which followed between 1859 and 1881, the year before his death, were expansions of hints and parts of the pioneer book. The last to appear was that treating of The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms. It embodied the results of experiments which had been carried on for more than forty years, since, as far back as 1837, Darwin read a paper on the subject before the Geological Society. Reference to it recalls a story, characteristic of Darwin’s innate modesty, told to the writer by the present John Murray. Darwin called on the elder Murray (presumably some time in 1880), and after fumbling in his coat-tail pocket, drew out a packet, which he handed to Murray with the timidity of an unfledged author submitting his first manuscript. “I have brought you,” he said, “a little thing of mine on the action of worms on soil,” and then paused as if in doubt whether Murray would care to run the risk of bringing out the book! One story leads to another, and our second relates to the burial of Darwin in Westminster Abbey. Among the signatures of members of Parliament, requesting Dean Bradley’s consent to Darwin’s interment there, was that of Mr. Richard B. Martin, partner in the well-known bank of that name, trading under the sign of the “Grasshopper.” In his history of this old institution Mr. John B. Martin prints the following letter, which was received on the 27th of April, 1882, the day after Darwin’s funeral.—