Famous Men of Science

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Such consideration and politeness she naturally inherited. Francis Darwin says in his delightful life of his father, "He always spoke to servants with politeness, using the expression, 'Would you be so good,' in asking for anything. In business matters he was equally courteous. His solicitor, who had never met him, said, 'Everything I did was right, and everything was profusely thanked for.'" Of the drawings made by his children, he would say, "Michael Angelo is nothing to it!" but he always looked carefully at the work and kindly pointed out mistakes.

"He received," says his son, "many letters from foolish, unscrupulous people, and all of these received replies. He used to say that if he did not answer them, he had it on his conscience afterwards, and, no doubt, it was in great measure the courtesy with which he answered every one which produced the universal and widespread sense of his kindness of nature which was so evident on his death."

In November, 1853, Darwin received the Royal Society's Medal. He was gratified, finding it "a pleasant little stimulus. When work goes badly, and one ruminates that all is vanity, it is pleasant to have some tangible proof that others have thought something of one's labors."

November 24, 1859, when Darwin was fifty, his great work, "Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life," was published. For twenty years he had been making experiments with plants and animals, and filling his note-books with facts. To his old classmate, Fox, he writes asking that the boys in his school gather lizards' eggs, as well as those of snakes. "My object is," he says, "to see whether such eggs will float on sea-water, and whether they will keep alive thus floating for a month or two in my cellar. I am trying experiments on transportation of all organic beings that I can; and lizards are found on every island, and therefore I am very anxious to see whether their eggs stand sea-water." Again he writes, asking Fox for ducklings and dorkings; "The chief point which I am and have been for years very curious about is to ascertain whether the young of our domestic breeds differ as much from each other as do their parents, and I have no faith in anything short of actual measurement and the Rule of Three.... I have got my fan-tails and pouters in a grand cage and pigeon-house, and they are a decided amusement to me, and delight to H."

Of this book, Darwin himself says: "I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory—collected facts on a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed inquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I see the list of books of all kinds which I read and abstracted, including whole series of Journals and Transactions, I am surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants....

"In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read 'Malthus on Population,' and, being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.... But at that time I overlooked one problem of great importance.... This problem is the tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in character as they become modified. That they have diverged greatly is obvious from the manner in which species of all kinds can be classed under genera, genera under families, families under sub-orders, and so forth.... The solution, as I believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature."

The book was written slowly, each chapter requiring at least three months. When the "Origin of Species"—which had reached its thirty-third thousand in 1888—was published, it created the most profound sensation throughout the thinking world. Heretofore, most men of science had believed that each species had been separately created by the Almighty,—that species were immutable, unchanging.

Mr. Darwin, by twenty years of study, proved to his own mind, and now to most of the world, that there has been a gradual evolution, through unnumbered ages, of one form of animal life from another. He said, "Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on the earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed."

The theory of evolution was not original with Darwin. Lamarck, in 1801, published his "Organization of Living Bodies," in which he stated his belief "that nature, in all the long ages during which the world has existed, may have produced the different kinds of plants and animals by gradually enlarging one part and diminishing another to suit the wants of each." Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Goethe, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, all believed that species are descended from other species, and in various ways improved.

Some of the reasons for the belief in evolution are so simply and clearly stated by Arabella B. Buckley, in her "Short History of Natural Science," that I quote her words:—