Chapter XVIII
Per Contra
“‘The evil that men do lives after them” [239a] is happily not so true as that the good lives after them, while the ill is buried with their bones, and to no one does this correction of Shakespeare’s unwonted spleen apply more fully than to Mr. Darwin. Indeed it was somewhat thus that we treated his books even while he was alive; the good, descent, remained with us, while the ill, the deification of luck, was forgotten as soon as we put down his work. Let me now, therefore, as far as possible, quit the ungrateful task of dwelling on the defects of Mr. Darwin’s work and character, for the more pleasant one of insisting upon their better side, and of explaining how he came to be betrayed into publishing the “Origin of Species” without reference to the works of his predecessors.
In the outset I would urge that it is not by any single book that Mr. Darwin should be judged. I do not believe that any one of the three principal works on which his reputation is founded will maintain with the next generation the place it has acquired with ourselves; nevertheless, if asked to say who was the man of our own times whose work had produced the most important, and, on the whole, beneficial effect, I should perhaps wrongly, but still both instinctively and on reflection, name him to whom I have, unfortunately, found myself in more bitter opposition than to any other in the whole course of my life. I refer, of course, to Mr. Darwin.
His claim upon us lies not so much in what is actually found within the four corners of any one of his books, as in the fact of his having written them at all—in the fact of his having brought out one after another, with descent always for its keynote, until the lesson was learned too thoroughly to make it at all likely that it will be forgotten. Mr. Darwin wanted to move his generation, and had the penetration to see that this is not done by saying a thing once for all and leaving it. It almost seems as though it matters less what a man says than the number of times he repeats it, in a more or less varied form. It was here the author of the “Vestiges of Creation” made his most serious mistake. He relied on new editions, and no one pays much attention to new editions—the mark a book makes is almost always made by its first edition. If, instead of bringing out a series of amended editions during the fifteen years’ law which Mr. Darwin gave him, Mr. Chambers had followed up the “Vestiges” with new book upon new book, he would have learned much more, and, by consequence, not have been snuffed out so easily once for all as he was in 1859 when the “Origin of Species” appeared.
The tenacity of purpose which appears to have been one of Mr. Darwin’s most remarkable characteristics was visible even in his outward appearance. He always reminded me of Raffaelle’s portrait of Pope Julius the Second, which, indeed, would almost do for a portrait of Mr. Darwin himself. I imagine that these two men, widely as the sphere of their action differed, must have been like each other in more respects than looks alone. Each, certainly, had a hand of iron; whether Pope Julius wore a velvet glove or no, I do not know; I rather think not, for, if I remember rightly, he boxed Michael Angelo’s ears for giving him a saucy answer. We cannot fancy Mr. Darwin boxing any one’s ears; indeed there can be no doubt he wore a very thick velvet glove, but the hand underneath it was none the less of iron. It was to his tenacity of purpose, doubtless, that his success was mainly due; but for this he must inevitably have fallen before the many inducements to desist from the pursuit of his main object, which beset him in the shape of ill health, advancing years, ample private means, large demands upon his time, and a reputation already great enough to satisfy the ambition of any ordinary man.
I do not gather from those who remember Mr. Darwin as a boy, and as a young man, that he gave early signs of being likely to achieve greatness; nor, as it seems to me, is there any sign of unusual intellectual power to be detected in his earliest book. Opening this “almost” at random I read—“Earthquakes alone are sufficient to destroy the prosperity of any country. If, for instance, beneath England the now inert subterraneous forces should exert those powers which most assuredly in former geological ages they have exerted, how completely would the entire condition of the country be changed! What would become of the lofty houses, thickly-packed cities, great manufacturies (sic), the beautiful public and private edifices? If the new period of disturbance were to commence by some great earthquake in the dead of night, how terrific would be the carnage! England would be at once bankrupt; all papers, records, and accounts would from that moment be lost. Government being unable to collect the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the hand of violence and rapine would go uncontrolled. In every large town famine would be proclaimed, pestilence and death following in its train.” [240a] Great allowance should be made for a first work, and I admit that much interesting matter is found in Mr. Darwin’s journal; still, it was hardly to be expected that the writer who at the age of thirty-three could publish the foregoing passage should twenty years later achieve the reputation of being the profoundest philosopher of his time.
I have not sufficient technical knowledge to enable me to speak certainly, but I question his having been the great observer and master of experiment which he is generally believed to have been. His accuracy was, I imagine, generally to be relied upon as long as accuracy did not come into conflict with his interests as a leader in the scientific world; when these were at stake he was not to be trusted for a moment. Unfortunately they were directly or indirectly at stake more often than one could wish. His book on the action of worms, however, was shown by Professor Paley and other writers [242a] to contain many serious errors and omissions, though it involved no personal question; but I imagine him to have been more or less hébété when he wrote this book. On the whole I should doubt his having been a better observer of nature than nine country gentlemen out of ten who have a taste for natural history.
Presumptuous as I am aware it must appear to say so, I am unable to see more than average intellectual power even in Mr. Darwin’s later books. His great contribution to science is supposed to have been the theory of natural selection, but enough has been said to show that this, if understood as he ought to have meant it to be understood, cannot be rated highly as an intellectual achievement. His other most important contribution was his provisional theory of pan-genesis, which is admitted on all hands to have been a failure. Though, however, it is not likely that posterity will consider him as a man of transcendent intellectual power, he must be admitted to have been richly endowed with a much more valuable quality than either originality or literary power—I mean with savoir faire. The cards he held—and, on the whole, his hand was a good one—he played with judgment; and though not one of those who would have achieved greatness under any circumstances, he nevertheless did achieve greatness of no mean order. Greatness, indeed, of the highest kind—that of one who is without fear and without reproach—will not ultimately be allowed him, but greatness of a rare kind can only be denied him by those whose judgment is perverted by temper or personal ill-will. He found the world believing in fixity of species, and left it believing—in spite of his own doctrine—in descent with modification.
I have said on an earlier page that Mr. Darwin was heir to a discredited truth, and left behind him an accredited fallacy. This is true as regards men of science and cultured classes who understood his distinctive feature, or thought they did, and so long as Mr. Darwin lived accepted it with very rare exceptions; but it is not true as regards the unreading, unreflecting public, who seized the salient point of descent with modification only, and troubled themselves little about the distinctive feature. It would almost seem as if Mr. Darwin had reversed the usual practice of philosophers and given his esoteric doctrine to the world, while reserving the exoteric for his most intimate and faithful adherents. This, however, is a detail; the main fact is, that Mr. Darwin brought us all round to evolution. True, it was Mr. Darwin backed by the Times and the other most influential organs of science and culture, but it was one of Mr. Darwin’s great merits to have developed and organised this backing, as part of the work which he knew was essential if so great a revolution was to be effected.
This is an exceedingly difficult and delicate thing to do. If people think they need only write striking and well-considered books, and that then the Times will immediately set to work to call attention to them, I should advise them not to be too hasty in basing action upon this hypothesis. I should advise them to be even less hasty in basing it upon the assumption that to secure a powerful literary backing is a matter within the compass of any one who chooses to undertake it. No one who has not a strong social position should ever advance a new theory, unless a life of hard fighting is part of what he lays himself out for. It was one of Mr. Darwin’s great merits that he had a strong social position, and had the good sense to know how to profit by it. The magnificent feat which he eventually achieved was unhappily tarnished by much that detracts from the splendour that ought to have attended it, but a magnificent feat it must remain.