But, assuming Owen to have really discovered the one, he was as far off as ever from the origin of the many. And on this subject he never did reach any definite conclusion. He admits, it is true, a theory which sounds very like evolution:
‘Thus, at the acquisition of facts adequate to test the moot question of links between past and present species, as at the close of that other series of researches proving the skeleton of all Vertebrates, and even of Man, to be the harmonized sum of a series of essentially similar segments, I have been led to recognize species as exemplifying the continuous operation of natural law, or secondary cause; and that, not only successively, but progressively; from the first embodiment of the Vertebrate idea under its old Ichthyic vestment until it became arrayed in the glorious garb of the human form[[122]].’
In this quotation he is in the main stating the views he held in 1849, for the latter portion of it is from his essay On the Nature of Limbs, published in that year. But the nature of the secondary cause which produced species cannot be concluded from his works. He fiercely contested Darwin’s theory of natural selection, both in conversation and in periodicals. To the last he clung to a notion of a ‘vital property,’ which is thus described in the Anatomy (iii. 807):
‘So, being unable to accept the volitional hypothesis, or that of impulse from within, or the selective force exerted by outward circumstances, I deem an innate tendency to deviate from parental type, operating through periods of adequate duration, to be the most probable nature, or way of operation, of the secondary law, whereby species have been derived one from the other.’
In 1883 Owen resigned his office at the British Museum and retired into private life. His remaining years were passed at Sheen in a tranquil and apparently happy old age. In 1884 he was gazetted a K.C.B., and, on Mr Gladstone’s initiative, his pension was augmented by £100 a year. But, though it pleased him to be always pleading poverty, he was really a comparatively wealthy man, and when he died left £30,000 behind him. His wife died in 1873, and his only son in 1886; but a solitude which might have been painful was enlivened by the presence of his son’s widow and her seven children. Owen delighted in the country. He had a genuine love for outdoor natural history, and ‘the sight of the deer and other animals in the park, the birds and insects in the garden, the trees, flowers, and varying aspects of the sky, filled him with enthusiastic admiration.’ He died, literally of old age, on Sunday, 18 January, 1892.
It is much to be regretted that one who worked at his own subjects with such untiring zeal should have left behind him almost nothing to perpetuate his name with the great mass of the people. Mr Huxley remarks that, ‘whether we consider the quantity or the quality of the work done, or the wide range of his labours, I doubt if, in the long annals of anatomy, more is to be placed to the credit of any single worker’ (ii. 306); but he presently adds this caution: ‘Obvious as are the merits of Owen’s anatomical work to every expert, it is necessary to be an expert to discern them’ (ii. 332). He gave popular lectures, but they were not printed[[123]]; he wrote what he intended to be a work for all time, but it has faded out of recollection, and the whole theory of the archetype is now as dead as his own Dinornis. Nor was he at pains to surround himself with a circle of pupils who might have handed down the teaching of the Master to another generation, as Cuvier’s teaching was handed down by his pupils. It was one of Owen’s defects that he was repellent to younger men. In a word, he was secretive, impatient of interference, and preferred to be aut Cæsar aut nullus. Credit was to him worth nothing if it was to be divided. Again, brilliant as were his talents and assured as was his position, he could not recognize the truth that men may sometimes err, and that the greatest gain rather than lose by admitting it. During the whole of his long life we believe that he never owned to a mistake. Not only was what he said law, but what others ventured to say—especially if it ‘came between the wind and his nobility’—was to be brushed aside as of no moment. We believe that this feeling on his part explains his refusal to accept the Darwinian theory. As we have shown, he went half way with it, and then dropped it, because it had not been hammered on his own anvil. This unfortunate antagonism to other workers, coupled with his readiness to enter into controversy, and the acrimony and dexterity with which he handled his adversaries, naturally discouraged those who would otherwise have been only too happy to sit at the feet of the Nestor of English zoology; and during the last thirty years of his life he became gradually more and more isolated. Moreover, there was, or there was thought to be, a certain want of sincerity about him which no amount of external courtesy could wholly conceal. In a word, he was compact of strange contradictions. He had many noble qualities; and yet he could not truly be called great, for they were warped and overshadowed by many moral perversities. Had he lived in the previous century his portrait might have been sketched by Pope:
‘But were there one whose fires
True genius kindles and fair fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease;