But if he liked sincere, earnest argument, he detested controversy, the bitter war of excited personal feelings bent rather on achieving an individual triumph than on proving an abstract theory. He condemned and deplored the injury to science inevitably wrought by such disputes and had nothing but disgust for the manifestations of temper that were bound to accompany them: ‘I went the other evening to the Zoölogical Society, where the speakers were snarling at each other in a manner anything but like that of gentlemen.’[77]
When his own views were involved in bitterness, as, alas, they too often were, he expressed the keenest regret: ‘I often think that my friends ... have good cause to hate me, for having stirred up so much mud, and led them into so much odious trouble. If I had been a friend of myself, I should have hated me.’[78] He early made up his mind to keep out of quarrels if possible, and he congratulated himself on the whole on his success: ‘I rejoice that I have avoided controversies, and this I owe to Lyell, who many years ago, in reference to my geological works, strongly advised me never to get entangled in a controversy, as it rarely did any good and caused a miserable loss of time and temper.’[79]
Thus, whenever it was possible, he shunned dispute, and if, by any chance, haste and eagerness involved him in a mistaken cause, he bitterly regretted his blunder and was ready to acknowledge it with the utmost frankness. One of the most striking cases of this is that of the parallel roads of Glen Roy, as to which Darwin had developed a geological theory which he asserted with a good deal of conviction. A careful consideration of his opponent’s arguments, obliged him to recognize that he was completely in the wrong, and he gave up, though with a pang: ‘I am very poorly to-day, and very stupid, and hate everybody and everything. One lives only to make blunders.’[80] His acknowledgment of his error was ample and complete.
It was his natural frankness in admitting his mistakes and endeavoring to rectify them which made Darwin so attractive and engaging. Goethe complains of the disposition of many people to reiterate a misstatement because they have once made it.[81] Such reiteration did not appeal to Darwin in the least. Sometimes he was irritated and annoyed by the attitude of his adversaries, and he expressed the annoyance with the same outspokenness that he gave to other things; but there was never any attempt to conceal his blunders or to maintain his own positions simply because they were his.
Indeed, in this regard, as in all others, what distinguished him was a singular and charming candor. It is this which makes his letters so attractive and so revealing. They are not great literary letters. They are always written in haphazard fashion and with the utmost casual directness. But few correspondences of literary men or of any others reveal the man with such clear and winning amplitude. He opens his heart and leads you right into it without the least pretence of self-revelation, but simply as if he were thinking aloud to you, as he is. Take, for instance, among a bewildering mass of illustrations, his confession of the sense of inferiority in regard to Spencer: ‘I feel rather mean when I read him: I could bear, rather enjoy feeling that he was twice as ingenious and clever as myself, but when I feel that he is about a dozen times my superior, even in the master art of wriggling, I feel aggrieved.’[82] Or this other acknowledgment to Hooker: ‘How candidly and meekly you took my Jeremiad on your severity to second-class men. After I had sent it off, an ugly little voice asked me, once or twice, how much of my noble defence of the poor in spirit and in fact, was owing to your having not seldom smashed favorite notions of my own. I silenced the ugly little voice with contempt, but it would whisper again and again.’[83] The sense, the atmosphere, of a pervading candor, was what Huxley expressed so excellently when he spoke of Darwin’s having ‘a certain intense and almost passionate honesty by which all his thoughts and actions were irradiated, as by a central fire. It was this greatest and rarest of endowments which kept his vivid imagination and great speculative powers within due bounds ... which made him accept criticisms and suggestions from anybody and everybody, not only without impatience, but with expressions of gratitude sometimes almost comically in excess of their value.’[84]
For the honesty and the candor not only led him to admit his own mistakes, but made him singularly ready to recognize the merits of others, and to tolerate not only their views but even their dogmatic assertion of them. He made mistakes all the time, and yet he knew that he was sincere and lofty in purpose. Why should not others be the same? Why should not their theories be right and his wrong? ‘It matters very little to any one except myself, whether I am a little more or less wrong on this or that point; in fact, I am sure to be proved wrong on many points.’[85] Of one who did not agree with him he could say: ‘I know nothing of him excepting from his letters: these show remarkable talent, astonishing perseverance, much modesty, and what I admire, determined difference from me on many points.’[86] And how winning is his defense of blunderers, of those who do poor work which is not all poor: ‘Shall you think me very impudent if I tell you that I have sometimes thought that ... you are a little too hard on bad observers; that a remark made by a bad observer cannot be right; an observer who deserves to be damned you would utterly damn. I feel entire deference to any remark you make out of your own head; but when in opposition to some poor devil, I somehow involuntarily feel not quite so much.’[87]
The truth is, that Darwin’s tolerance was based, as all real tolerance is apt to be, on the vast and haunting sense of his own ignorance. Again and again he repeats and emphasizes how little he knows, how little any one knows, and how petty, imperfect, and inadequate are the efforts of any and all of us to penetrate the veil of shrouding mystery which involves the deepest secrets of life. To probe this mystery the vague and flickering torch of reason is all that is given to us. And those who are most conversant with reason and make most use of it mistrust it most. When the far surer guidance of instinct fails us, reason is our only support, and we must employ it not only for the larger speculative purposes, but for the practical decisions. At its best, it is a bright and splendid instrument, incredibly keen and penetrating, and able to accomplish miracles in the hands of those who manipulate it skillfully. But it is an instrument as delicate as it is bright, and it loses point and edge, unless constant pains are taken to keep it in working condition. Also, it cuts both ways, and every way, and to even the expert manipulator, perhaps to him most of all, it is apt to be difficult, dangerous, treacherous.
There is the subtle, unfathomable connection of reason with our wishes, desires, and prejudices. A clever Frenchman said that reason was given us to enable us to justify the gratification of our passions, and when we see how the devices of logic may be used to work from any premises to any conclusion, one feels the force of the Frenchman’s view.
No one was more aware than Darwin of these dangers and difficulties of reason, or of the endless possibilities of deception when one gives oneself up to that enchanting and deluding siren. He often emphasizes his distress and almost despair at finding himself making deductions quite different from those which others draw from the same facts. ‘It is really disgusting and humiliating to see directly opposite conclusions drawn from the same facts.’[88] And again: ‘Nothing is so vexatious to me, as so constantly finding myself drawing different conclusions from better judges than myself, from the same facts.’[89] And yet again: ‘I hate beyond all things finding myself in disagreement with any capable judge, when the premises are the same.’[90]
These comments make us see clearly what Darwin’s relation to reason was. Few thinkers have been so ready, so fertile, so abundant, so ingenious, yet at the same time so sober, so restrained and controlled.