CHAPTER XIX.
THE DIFFICULTY WITH WHICH THE “ORIGIN” WAS UNDERSTOOD.
Even earlier than Huxley, H. C. Watson wrote warmly accepting natural selection. In his letter, which is dated November 21st, 1859, he said:—
“Your leading idea will surely become recognised as an established truth in science—i.e. ‘Natural Selection.’ It has the characteristics of all great natural truths, clarifying what was obscure, simplifying what was intricate, adding greatly to previous knowledge. You are the greatest revolutionist in natural history of this century, if not of all centuries.”
MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE THEORY.
For some years to come, however, such views as these were the exception, as will soon be shown.
The Duke of Argyll has argued (Nineteenth Century, December, 1887) that the success of “Natural Selection” has followed from the convincing character of the words used, scientific men (“the populace of science” he calls them) being so easily led by the power of loose analogies that they have been convinced of the truth of the principle because they are familiar with Nature on the one hand, and selection as a process on the other!
As I am not aware that this preposterous suggestion has ever been publicly disproved, and since therefore some readers of the journal in question may have been misled by it, I have collected much evidence, which proves that the principle of natural selection was only absorbed with the very greatest difficulty, and that the words used in describing it for a long time entirely failed to inform even eminent scientific men of the essential characteristics of the theory itself, and certainly failed most signally to convince them. Conviction came very gradually as the theory was slowly understood and was seen to offer an intelligible explanation of an immense and ever-increasing number of facts.
I will now bring together quotations from Darwin’s letters in 1859 and 1860, showing how soon he came to realise the difficulty with which natural selection was understood, and to feel that he might have been more successful with some other title.
In 1859 he wrote to Dr. W. B. Carpenter—“I have found the most extraordinary difficulty in making even able men understand at what I was driving.” The remaining quotations are all taken from letters written in 1860. By the middle of this year, when he was feeling oppressed by hostile reviews and unfair and ignorant criticisms (“I am getting wearied at the storm of hostile reviews, and hardly any useful”), he often alludes to the failure of opponents to understand his theory. Thus, in a letter to Hooker (June 5th), he says:—
“This review, however, and Harvey’s letter have convinced me that I must be a very bad explainer. Neither really understand what I mean by Natural Selection.... I hope to God you will be more successful than I have been in making people understand your meaning.”