The Meaning of Evolution

by Samuel Christian Schmucker

Darwin and Wallace

We have seen in the last chapter that whenever men have actively thought they have attempted to explain the origin of plants and animals as well as of themselves. No one who wrote previous to the time of Charles Darwin had expressed any idea concerning this matter with force enough to convince any large portion of the thinking world. If Lamarck had fallen on better times, if the great Cuvier had not laughed him to scorn, if Goethe had found him out and made him known to the world, evolution might have come into its own sooner. None of these conditions arose, and it remained for Charles Darwin to give to the world in clear and cogent form the thought of evolution. He gathered so much material before he expressed his opinions, and looked at the matter from so many sides that, when he published his results, he had foreseen most of the objections which were subsequently to arise in opposition to his announcement. Charles Darwin is recognized to-day as the father of the evolutionary movement.

It has been sometimes said in recent years that Darwinism is dead, and there is a sense in which this is true. Unmodified and unassisted natural selection is not to-day considered by most scientists a sufficient agent for producing evolution. But everyone connected with the subject acknowledges Darwin as the master, and says that it was his work which converted the world to a belief in evolution. We can have no better preparation for an intelligent understanding of this subject than to consider carefully the life of this remarkable man and the circumstances under which he came to his epoch-making conclusions.

Evolution has taught us to attempt as far as may be to account for man on the basis of his heredity or of his environment. It is interesting to note that both of these factors in Darwin's case were entirely favorable. In the latter part of the eighteenth century Erasmus Darwin had given to the world an astonishing poem in which he anticipated not a little of the thought which his more famous grandson was to make so widely known. Josiah Wedgwood had learned to make for England her most famous pottery, no quality of which was more widely recognized than the sterling patience with which it was made. Erasmus Darwin, with his scientific proclivities, and Josiah Wedgwood, with his sturdy common sense and patient workmanship, united to give Charles Darwin his inherited tastes, for he was a grandson of both. Born in 1809, on the banks of the Severn in England, Charles Darwin was the delicate son of a practicing physician of modest but sufficient means. Owing to his lack of early vigor, Darwin spent much time in the open air, and in his excursions about his home was chiefly interested in collecting beetles. This taste, which lasted through all his young manhood, is the one early indication of the traits that were later to develop. At first in the day-school and later in the preparatory school Charles Darwin was anything but a satisfactory student. Even a kindly desire later to make the most of him makes it impossible to find traces of any especial fondness for earnest study. He himself believed his education to have been nearly useless, although he doubtless under-estimated its value. At the age of sixteen he went to Edinburgh at his father's desire, to study medicine. The sight of the dissecting-room nauseated him completely, and he refused to continue working in it. Later an operation which he witnessed in a clinic at the hospital sickened him so thoroughly that he declined to attend further operations. It became evident that the young man was not adapted to the life of a physician. The next move was to educate him for the church, and for this purpose, at the age of nineteen, he went to Cambridge. Here it soon appeared that he was no better adapted to the ministry than he was to the practice of medicine, and his university career went on in very desultory fashion. Most of his work was distinctly neglected, but two of the men he met there were to influence largely his future life. Henslow, the botanist, was unusually fond, for a professor in those days, of work in the field. Charles Darwin's tastes coincided with those of Henslow, with whom he formed an intimate friendship. He was always welcomed as a companion on the field trips. Though he studied little of botany in the classroom or laboratory, he was constantly with Henslow or with Sedgwick in the field. Sedgwick was the professor of geology, and of him Darwin was particularly fond, and under him did much the largest amount of his study. When he came up for graduation he ranked tenth of those who "did not go in for honors," a not very remarkable class standing. He was still required to put in two years of residence, and during this interval he spent most of his time with Sedgwick in the study of geology in the field. Returning to his home after a geological trip into Wales, Darwin found awaiting him a letter from Henslow, offering him an appointment that opened to his ardent mind the door to a career after his own heart.

The British nation, being the greatest commercial nation of the globe, has the greatest need for accurate charts of all the seas. Frequently she has sent out great charting expeditions to various parts of the world. One of these was to go out in Her Majesty's ship, Beagle, for a voyage around the world. Captain Fitzroy was in command, and he was especially commissioned to map the coast of South America from La Plata to Cape Horn and up the western side. In addition to this work, by carrying a set of accurate chronometers, he was to check up the longitude of the various ports to be visited in this circumnavigation of the globe. It was customary on such expeditions to carry a young man whose duty it was to study the natural history of the countries visited on the trip. The salary of such a naturalist was so small that an experienced man could scarcely afford to take the place. Therefore the appointment usually went to a man rather of promise than of achievement. Through Henslow's influence, Charles Darwin was offered this position in 1831. Darwin hastened to obtain his father's permission, but the elder Darwin at first declined to consider the matter. He felt that his son had not made such use of his time at the university as warranted the hope that much could be expected of such a journey. He believed it necessary that Charles should have some means of earning an adequate living before he could think of devoting his time to science. Charles found an efficient advocate in the person of his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood, Jr. Together they persuaded the father of the propriety of giving to Charles this opportunity to follow out his real tastes and ambitions. Accordingly, at the age of twenty-two, we find him embarked on a journey around the world. In the cabin of the Beagle he had abundant time, in his long sail across the Atlantic, to read the two volumes of Lyell's "Elements of Geology," which Henslow had handed him, with the suggestion that he read it, but on no account believe it. Filled with the love of geology as Darwin was, this epoch-making book was exactly the stimulus needed. Lyell had just begun to persuade the world that to understand the past we must study the present. In the forces now at work he saw cause enough to account for all the history of the past of the earth.

There is little doubt that this book was one of the most potent factors in determining the bent of Darwin's mind. His entire educational experience had failed to appeal to him. It is fortunate, we now know, that this was the case. If the university course of the time had really seized him it would have made but one more student like hundreds it was turning out each year. For most of us this is the happy event. Now and then comes the rare spirit to whom all of this fails to appeal because he is ready for something better. Such was the spirit of Charles Darwin. He started on his journey with a mind singularly free from prepossessions. In the long hours of this sailing voyage across the Atlantic Ocean Darwin had time to read and ponder Lyell's weighty words. By the time he reached the Brazilian shore he was filled with Lyell's conception that the present is the child of the past, developing out of it in orderly sequence. Lyell expressly denied that this is true of the animal and plant world. He applied it only to the face of the earth, with its mountains of uplift and its valleys of erosion. But the underlying principle of an orderly development under the action of natural causes was there. In Darwin's mind this at once found acceptance, and was destined to a fruition its author had expressly disclaimed.

The narrative of this voyage, as subsequently written, describes the islands visited by the Beagle in crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The contrast between the simple and general interest in these islands and the care with which Darwin described the Galapagos and the Keeling Atoll visited later in the voyage are speaking evidence of the rapid development going on in the mind of the young naturalist.

Reaching the shore of South America, Darwin first turns to its geology. But before long the animal life attracts his attention. In the Brazilian forest Darwin had his first experience of the wealth of animal and plant life in the tropics, and, like all naturalists, he was very enthusiastic over it. Among the animals that particularly attracted his attention was the sloth, a peculiar creature climbing slowly about the trees, small of size and sluggish of habit. Another animal that interested him greatly was the little armadillo with its interesting habit of curling up in its plated skin.

Captain Fitzroy soon finished what work he was required to do in this neighborhood, and Darwin was called back to the Beagle to continue his voyage. When they arrived at the mouth of La Plata their most serious work began. Here there was much tedious charting for Fitzroy, and Darwin could now leave the vessel for a lengthy trip on shore. This was doubly welcome. Seasickness was nearly constant with Darwin while on this entire voyage and every opportunity to work on land was eagerly seized. This region, too, was rich in objects of interest and in strange people. While exploring the pampas, beyond Buenos Ayres, Darwin came across the skeletons of the great mammals some of which Cuvier had previously described. He studied these bones with much care, and recognized at once in the megatherium a great similarity in structure to the sloth he had seen in Brazil. The enormous skeletons of the glyptodons struck him also as strangely similar to that of the armadillo. One evening, seated alone in the broad expanse of the pampas, the idea suddenly swept over him, stimulated, of course, by his study of Lyell: "Can it be that the little armadillo and the sloth of to-day are the degenerate descendants of the enormous megatherium and glyptodon of the past?" But his mind was not yet ready to accept so bold an idea and he swept it aside.

The people of this wild neighborhood interested Darwin very greatly, and he describes them with care. In this connection a charming trait of Darwin's character comes beautifully in evidence. The absolute purity of his mind, his utter freedom from grossness, shows clearly in his account of the first really semi-civilized people he had ever seen.