Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection

by Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton

After the great fight with the bishop at the British Association at Oxford, he wrote to Hooker (July 2nd, 1860):—

“I have read lately so many hostile views, that I was beginning to think that perhaps I was wholly in the wrong, and that —— was right when he said the whole subject would be forgotten in ten years; but now that I hear that you and Huxley will fight publicly (which I am sure I never could do), I fully believe that our cause will, in the long-run, prevail.”

Looking at the history of opinion on this subject, the slowness with which the new ideas were absorbed appears remarkable. Even so able a man as the late Professor Rolleston wrote in 1870 (“Forms of Animal Life,” Introduction, p. xxv., First Edition) the following carefully guarded sentences, which, it is to be noted, deal with evolution rather than natural selection. Speaking of “the theory of evolution with which Mr. Darwin’s name is connected,” Rolleston says:—

“Many of the peculiarities which attach to biological classifications would thus receive a reasonable explanation; but where verification is, ex hypothesi, impossible, such a theory cannot be held to be advanced out of the region of probability. The acceptance or rejection of the general theory will depend, as does the acceptance or rejection of other views supported merely by probable evidence, upon the particular constitution of each individual mind to which it is presented!”

It was too much to expect that many of the older scientific men would retain sufficient intellectual flexibility to be able to recognise, as Lyell had, that the facts of nature were explained and predicted better by the new views than by those in which they had grown up. Darwin thoroughly understood this, and, writing to his friends, maintained that the fate of his views was in the hands of the younger men.

A grand yet simple conception like that of natural selection, explaining and connecting together innumerable facts which people had previously explained differently, or had become accustomed to regard as inexplicable, must always remain as a stumbling-block to the majority of those who have reached or passed middle life before its first appearance.

Hardly anything is more characteristic of Darwin than the tone with which he wrote to acknowledged opponents. Thus his letters to L. Agassiz (1868), Quatrefages (1869 or 1870), and Fabre (1880), are models of the way in which a correspondence which would present peculiar difficulties to most people may be conducted. In these letters there is not the least attempt to slur over or minimise the points of wide difference; on the contrary, they are most candidly stated, but with so much respect and sympathy, and with such marked appreciation of the knowledge he had gained from his correspondent, that the reader must have regretted the divergence of opinion as greatly as the writer.

Tyndall has given a very interesting and pathetic account of the evident distress with which Professor L. Agassiz, chief of the opponents of Darwin in America, recognised the success of the teachings he could not accept.

“Sprung from a race of theologians, this celebrated man combated to the last the theory of natural selection. One of the many times I had the pleasure of meeting him in the United States was at Mr. Winthrop’s beautiful residence at Brookline, near Boston. Rising from luncheon, we all halted, as if by a common impulse in front of a window, and continued there a discussion which had been started at table. The maple was in its autumn glory; and the exquisite beauty of the scene outside seemed, in my case, to interpenetrate without disturbance the intellectual action. Earnestly, almost sadly, Agassiz turned and said to the gentlemen standing round, ‘I confess that I was not prepared to see this theory received as it has been by the best intellects of our time. Its success is greater than I could have thought possible.’”[J]

The history of science can hardly supply anything more sad than the blight which may fall on a man’s career because he is unable, from conscientious motives, to use some great means of advance. Such a weapon for the progress of science was provided by the Darwinian theory, and men were to be henceforth divided according to their use or neglect of the new opportunities. Men who up to that time had been equals were to be for ever separated, some to press forward in the front rank of scientific discovery, others to remain as interesting relics of a byegone age.