Even in this mere outline there is evidence of hereditary genius in the Darwin family—evidence which becomes irresistible when all available details of every member of the family are brought together, as they are in the great “Life and Letters.” When it is further remembered that two of Charles Darwin’s sons have achieved distinction as scientific investigators, it will be admitted that the history of the family affords a most striking example of hereditary intellectual power.
There is nothing in this history to warrant the belief that the nature and direction of hereditary genius receive any bias from the line of intellectual effort pursued by a parent. We recognise the strongest evidence for hereditary capacity, but none at all for the transmission of results which follow the employment of capacity. Thus Erasmus inherited high intellectual power, with a bias entirely different from that of his younger brother Charles—his interests being literary and artistic rather than scientific. The wide difference between the brothers seems to have made a great impression upon Charles, for he wrote:—
“Our minds and tastes were, however, so different, that I do not think I owe much to him intellectually. I am inclined to agree with Francis Galton in believing that education and environment produce only a small effect on the mind of anyone, and that most of our qualities are innate” (“Life and Letters,” 1887, p. 22).
Equally significant is the fact that Professor George Darwin’s important researches in mathematics have been applied to astronomy—subjects which were not pursued by his father.
CHARACTER AND POWERS.
It appears probable that Charles Darwin’s unique power was largely due to the inheritance of the imagination of his grandfather combined with the acute observation of his father. Although he possessed an even larger share of both these qualities than his predecessors, it is probable that he owed more to their co-operation than to the high degree of their development.
It is a common error to suppose that the intellectual powers which make the poet or the historian are essentially different from those which make the man of science. Powers of observation, however acute, could never make a scientific discoverer; for discovery requires the creative effort of the imagination. The scientific man does not stumble upon new facts or conclusions by accident; he finds what he looks for. The problem before him is essentially similar to that of the historian who tries to create an accurate and complete picture of an epoch out of scattered records of contemporary impressions more or less true, and none wholly true. Fertility of imagination is absolutely essential for that step from the less to the more perfectly known which we call discovery.
But fertility of imagination alone is insufficient for the highest achievement in poetry, history, or science; for in all these subjects the strictest self-criticism and the soundest judgment are necessary in order to ensure that the results are an advance in the direction of the truth. A delicately-adjusted balance between the powers of imagination and the powers which hold imagination in check, is essential in the historian who is to provide us with a picture of a past age, which explains the mistaken impression gained by a more or less prejudiced observer who saw but a small part of it from a limited standpoint, and has handed down his impression to us. A poem which sheds new light upon the relation between mind and mind, requires to be tested and controlled by constant and correct observation, like a hypothesis in the domain of the natural sciences.
It is probable, then, that the secret of Darwin’s strength lay in the perfect balance between his powers of imagination and those of accurate observation, the creative efforts of the one being ever subjected to the most relentless criticism by the employment of the other. We shall never know, I have heard Professor Michael Foster say, the countless hypotheses which passed through the mind of Darwin, and which, however wild and improbable, were tested by an appeal to Nature, and were then dismissed for ever.
Darwin’s estimate of his own powers is given with characteristic candour and modesty in the concluding paragraph of his “Autobiography” (“Life and Letters,” 1887, p. 107):—