Darwin

by Gamaliel Bradford

In one field quite remote from what is usually considered natural science, that of physiognomy and expression, Darwin’s observation is especially interesting, though of course he connected this line of research, as so many others, with his general scientific theory. His book on ‘The Expression of the Emotions’ is one of the most entertaining and profitable of all for the general reader, and it is instructive to note, how early, how persistently, and how faithfully he collected memoranda on this comparatively collateral issue. The use of what was immediately about him, of his own personal experience in daily living, is especially significant in this regard. For the study of expression he felt that unconsciousness in the subject was a prime requisite. Hence the study of infants, who were perfectly indifferent to your investigations, was peculiarly profitable, and almost from the moment his children were born, Darwin began to make notes on their expressions of pain and pleasure, all the little subtle indications of desire and need, which mothers use instinctively but which fathers are not commonly apt to register as scientific data. The curious paper, published in Mind, called ‘The Biography of a Child,’ gives many of Darwin’s notes on this subject, and repeated references in ‘The Expression of the Emotions’ show what fruitful use he made of those notes at a later period. The minuteness with which he observed and reflected is well shown in this passage on childrens’ crying: ‘I ought to have thought of crying children rubbing their eyes with their knuckles, but I did not think of it, and cannot explain it. As far as my memory serves, they do not do so whilst roaring, in which case compression would be of no use.... I wish I knew more about the knuckles and crying.’[17]

The observation not only records the larger and more violent manifestations of passion, but is constantly on the watch for those trifling signs of feeling which appear and flit away in trivial social intercourse. Take this account of an animated conversation: ‘Another young lady and a youth, both in the highest spirits, were eagerly talking together with extraordinary rapidity; and I noticed that, as often as the young lady was beaten, and could not get out her words fast enough, her eyebrows went obliquely upwards, and rectangular furrows were formed on her forehead. She thus each time hoisted a flag of distress; and this she did half-a-dozen times in the course of a few minutes.’[18]

Nor is he content with his own observations, but in this, as in wider researches, he perpetually appeals to his friends for assistance, opens their eyes and sharpens their wits, to see and record matters which they would assuredly never have thought of for themselves. Note the care and tact with which he makes his requests: ‘I beg you, in relation to a new point for observation, to imagine as well as you can that you suddenly come across some dreadful object, and act with a sudden little start, a shudder of horror; please do this once or twice, and observe yourself as well as you can, and afterwards read the rest of this note, which I have consequently pinned down.’[19]

It is, however, in the regions of natural science more particularly so-called that Darwin’s observation is inexhaustibly rich, varied, exciting, and suggestive. He himself puts it very simply and effectively, when he says, ‘I was born a naturalist.’[20] At the age of ten his curiosity was intensely stimulated by the varying aspects of insects and he considered the desirability of collecting them. In one of his letters, Darwin gives an amusing illustration of this youthful enthusiasm for collecting. One day he had caught two most interesting beetles and was holding one in each hand, when he discovered a third, ‘a sacred Panagæus crux-major!’ ‘I could not bear to give up either of my Carabi, and to lose Panagæus was out of the question; so that in despair I gently seized one of the Carabi between my teeth, when to my unspeakable disgust and pain the little inconsiderate beast squirted his acid down my throat, and I lost both Carabi and Panagæus.’[21]

The delight of observation, which began in childhood, continued to old age, and increased instead of weakening. When he was fatigued and worn with writing and theorizing, when illness tormented him and weakness rendered more concentrated effort impossible, it was a relief to turn to the simple contemplation of facts, and the budding and fading of flowers and the varied activity of insects offered at all times diversion and contentment. Sometimes he dwells upon the larger aspects of such contemplation, the joy of discovery, the excitement of finding what has never been found before. Again and again in his southern voyages this excitement appears: ‘In these wild countries it gives much delight to gain the summit of any mountain. There is an indefinite expectation of seeing something very strange, which, however often it may be balked, never failed with me to recur on each successive attempt.’[22] Or the pleasure may come in what seem the humblest, smallest things, in what is to ordinary persons negligible, or even repulsive. One of Darwin’s most attractive books, perhaps with ‘The Expression of the Emotions,’ the most attractive from the casual reader’s standpoint, is that in which he gathers together the results of his study of earthworms, a study which had continued through years of patient and thoughtful investigation of a subject which, even from the naturalist’s point of view, would not seem one of the most fruitful or engaging.

The fundamental principal of all scientific observation is accuracy, and no one knew this better than Darwin. No one understood better than he the subtle, treacherous influences that are always at work, distracting, impairing, and distorting exact and lucid vision. There is the danger of seeing what we are accustomed to see and therefore think we see. There is the danger of seeing what others have seen and described before us. There is the supreme danger of seeing what we wish to see, what accords with some preconceived theory or dogma. Against all these dangers Darwin tried to be ever on his guard, and he is constantly warning others of them and emphasizing the importance of pure accuracy and the enormous difficulty of it. ‘Good heavens, how difficult accuracy is!’[23] Among all the merits of the scientist he values accuracy highest, the instinct and the ability to record facts correctly: ‘I value praise for accurate observation far higher than for any other quality.’[24] And especially in one admirable passage he stresses and reiterates both the difficulty and the value: ‘Accuracy is the soul of Natural History. It is hard to become accurate; he who modifies a hair’s breadth will never be accurate.... Absolute accuracy is the hardest merit to attain, and the highest merit.’[25]

Among the various elements of accuracy, that of statement, as well as of observation, is of course of the utmost importance, yet is too apt to be overlooked. Even those who are careful in their actual observing, may in their report of their observations be much less so. Words are misleading and inadequate things, and the tricks they have played with scientific accuracy have been deplorable. There is the strange ease of mere misstatement. There is the natural tendency to overstate. There is the tendency to clarify verbally what in fact is more or less confused or the opposite difficulty of making verbally clear what the senses may perceive with singular lucidity.

Here again Darwin is constantly on the watch. Memory is misleading and accounts based upon it are apt to be untrustworthy: ‘I foolishly trusted to my memory, and was much annoyed to find how hasty and inaccurate many of my remarks were.’[26] Words are inadequate, blundering, they will not render the finer, more delicate shades: ‘A difference may be clearly perceived, and yet it may be impossible, at least I have found it so, to state in what the difference consists.’[27] One cannot be too careful, too scrupulous, about one’s statements, or too anxious to correct them, when one has made a mistake. And Darwin gets up in the middle of the night and arouses a slumbering friend to explain that, after all, he felt the sense of the sublime more fully in the forests of Brazil than on the top of the Cordilleras.[28]

When one is so mistrustful of one’s own records one cannot always accept implicitly the narratives of others. Darwin is eager to get the accounts of other observers, and is singularly deferential to their opinions. At the same time he is gently and watchfully critical, and knows well how to estimate the ability of those with whom he deals. One of the most interesting remarks upon the skill of his methods in obtaining information, and one that every one who reads him carefully will confirm, is Sir William Turner’s comment upon ‘his care in avoiding leading questions.’[29]

And if Darwin was insistent upon accuracy in records, he was also extraordinarily thorough and exact in mathematical matters and measurement. He speaks of abstract mathematics as having been one of the neglected elements of his education,[30] but he shunned no amount of pains and toil in calculating, wherever he felt it necessary to work out his results. In his books which record the investigation of detail there is an almost incredible amount of slow and careful research involving exact counting and weighing and measuring. ‘I was compelled to count under the microscope above 20,000 seeds of Lythrum salicaria,’ he says casually in one instance,[31] and there are innumerable others of the same kind. In all these calculations the possibility of error haunts him and he does his best to eliminate it, yet still the possibility is there: ‘Although I always am endeavoring to be cautious and to mistrust myself, yet I know well how apt I am to make blunders.’[32] If he blundered, what shall be said of some of us? Most interesting and characteristic is the trait, pointed out by his son, that he assumed with singular naïveté the absolute accuracy of the instruments that came to him: ‘He had great faith in instruments, and I do not think it naturally occurred to him to doubt the accuracy of a scale or measuring glass.’[33] Yet further, ‘it was characteristic of him that he took scrupulous pains in making measurements with his somewhat rough scales.’[34]