Still another element of observation richly illustrated in Darwin, and closely connected with the patience and the continuity, is the element of comparison. Observation by itself, the mere accumulation of curious detail, does not get us very far. Observations must be bound together, one with another, they must be connected and related, intertwined into results and conclusions, often remote and far-reaching, or they do not begin to attain all their possible significance. In Darwin’s own phrase: ‘As you say, there is an extraordinary pleasure in pure observation; not but what I suspect the pleasure in this case is rather derived from comparisons forming in one’s mind from allied structures.’[48] This more elaborate process of comparison, however, leads us at once to the methods of deliberate experiment for a special purpose, and will therefore be more fully and naturally considered in the next chapter.
As to the more practical side of observation, one is largely impressed with all the difficulties and drawbacks of it, when pursued on any considerable scale, and certainly Darwin’s life affords abundant illustration of these, some peculiar to himself and some of a more general nature which beset most naturalists more or less.
There are the difficulties that always attend extensive field and outdoor work. In a voyage such as that of the Beagle, in a small sailing ship a hundred years ago, there were the elements of actual danger. Darwin was the last person to enlarge upon his courage in meeting these or in disregarding them. Of his childhood he says: ‘I remember how very much I was afraid of meeting the dogs in Barker Street, and how at school I could not get up my courage to fight: I was very timid by nature.’[49] But repeated experiences during the voyage of the Beagle make it evident that the timidity was overcome by a calm and intelligent comprehension of conditions and necessities. Perhaps the most interesting illustration is Darwin’s attitude toward an earthquake in South America: ‘I have had ill luck, however, in only one little earthquake having happened. I was lying in bed when there was a party at dinner in the house; on a sudden I heard such a hubbub in the dining-room; without a word being spoken, it was devil take the hindmost and who should get out first; at the same moment I felt my bed slightly vibrate in a lateral direction. The party were old stagers, and heard the noise which always precedes a shock; and no old stager looks at an earthquake with philosophical eyes.’[50]
Worse perhaps than the specific, exceptional dangers were the constant annoyances and discomforts. Food was often insufficient, ill-prepared, and indigestible. Cold was wearing and heat was wearing. There was exposure to all sorts of weather, there was the torment of insects, there was endless, inescapable fatigue, which could not be remedied or avoided, but just had to be borne and forgotten in the excitement of great or even little objects to be attained. Glimpses here and there, never unduly emphasized, show what these trials were and how they were met: ‘The road, from some recent rain, was full of little puddles of clear water, yet not a drop was drinkable. I had scarcely been twenty hours without water, and only part of the time under a hot sun, yet the thirst rendered me very weak. How people survive two or three days under such circumstances, I cannot imagine.’[51] To put up with discomforts during a camping trip of a few weeks or months is one thing. To endure them constantly for five years implies a very pretty enthusiasm for the cause of science.
Besides these external drawbacks to observation, there are others more subjective and personal. A minor aspect of these has interested me, because it shows such a delightful mixture of human feeling and scientific curiosity. As we shall have occasion to amplify later, Darwin was remarkable for tenderness, for sympathy, for affectionate and kindly interest, not only in humanity generally and in animals, but especially in those directly connected with him. Yet his investigations of expression led him, forced him, to a calm and cold-blooded analysis of situations and emotions which at the same time made the strongest appeal to his sympathies. All through his children’s infancy he pursued the practice of making notes on them, yet it is most curious to trace the play of personal emotion in combination with the abstract research, and the working of this well appears in his son’s remark: ‘It was characteristic of him that (as I have heard him tell), although he was so anxious to observe the expression of a crying child, his sympathy with the grief spoiled his observation.’[52] A more impersonal example is his careful record as to a woman whom he studied in a railway carriage, watching with minute attention the movement of her depressores anguli oris, which appeared to indicate extreme distress: ‘As her countenance remained as placid as ever, I reflected how meaningless was this contraction, and how easily one might be deceived. The thought had hardly occurred to me when I saw that her eyes suddenly became suffused with tears almost to overflowing and her whole countenance fell. There could now be no doubt that some painful recollection, perhaps that of a long-lost child, was passing through her mind.’[53] And so instances of intense individual suffering became generalized into typical cases of scientific record.
Far more important, however, in Darwin’s career, as a drawback to scientific observation, than any intrusions of subjective sympathy, were the bitter, persistent limitations of physical illness and weakness. During a very large part of his life he was tormented by nervous indigestion, manifesting itself, under any strain, in persistent nausea. This first appeared in the ever-returning and unconquerable sea-sickness which made all his southern voyages a misery. When the ocean was at all boisterous the malady prostrated him, and those who know how absolutely prostrating sea-sickness is will appreciate the positive heroism which enabled him to prosecute his journey and his researches with such a handicap.
After his return to England the trouble continued to hound and haunt him through all his later years. He never could work for more than a small portion of the day. The excitement of visitors always upset him. There were long periods when any work was impossible and often an absorbing investigation had to be laid aside altogether just at the most critical point, laid aside so completely that not only actual labor but even thought was prohibited. The idleness which he detested was forced upon him for a very large part of his days and hours and the spirit framed for such constant and intense activity was obliged to discipline itself to the most irksome and profitless repose.
It made no difference in the intensity or the persistence of his scientific preoccupations. Perhaps if he had abandoned his pursuits altogether and had contented himself with an indolent and externally diversified existence, he might have enjoyed reasonable health. But he would not yield for a moment. His whole soul was in the studies, the pursuits, the investigations that enthralled and inspired him, and life without them would have been inconceivable. ‘We have come here for rest for me, which I have much needed; and shall remain here for about ten days more, and then home to work, which is my sole pleasure in life.’[54] That is the constant note. In the midst of his travels he wrote home: ‘My mind has been since leaving England, in a perfect hurricane of delight and astonishment, and to this hour scarcely a minute has passed in idleness.’[55] The body might lag and drag and harass and torment, but the spirit lived in just such a hurricane of excitement and enthusiasm always.
IV
It must be recognized that even in the pure habit of observation for itself, whether in the natural world or otherwise, there is a charm for those who are born for it. Curiosity is a natural instinct with most of us, and there is inexhaustible entertainment in letting the spirit lie fallow within, while the external world plays upon it with an endless succession of picturesque incidents and highly colored circumstance. At the same time, and especially in the realm of nature, it is astonishing what a difference even a little knowledge makes. Most of us walk through the fields and woods like blind men, utterly oblivious of all the fascinating secrets which await our eyes and ears if we were only alive to them. As one who has always delighted in solitary wood walks merely for their associative beauty, I at least can bewail the deplorable ignorance as to plants and birds and insects which makes it impossible for me even to interrogate them intelligently. Lack of time or natural indolence have prevented my accumulating the knowledge which would put all these things in their proper relations and make them tell a story which the trained and expert observer instantly and instinctively reads in them. It is comforting to find even Darwin complaining of the same ignorance and the same blindness, when he gets into surroundings that are strange to him. Thus in his earlier voyaging, he notes: ‘One great source of perplexity to me is an utter ignorance whether I note the right facts, and whether they are of sufficient importance to interest others.’[56] And again even more vividly: ‘It is positively distressing to walk in the glorious forest amidst such treasures and feel they are all thrown away upon one.’[57]