Life of Charles Darwin Part 6

Professor Haeckel has given the following charming description of Darwin and his home surroundings in his later years: "In Darwin's own carriage, which he had thoughtfully sent for my convenience to the railway station, I drove, one sunny morning in October, through the graceful, hilly landscape of Kent, that with the chequered foliage of its woods, with its stretches of purple heath, yellow broom, and evergreen oaks, was arrayed in its fairest autumnal dress. As the carriage drew up in front of Darwin's pleasant country house, clad in a vesture of ivy and embowered in elms, there stepped out to meet me from the shady porch, overgrown with creeping plants, the great naturalist himself, a tall and venerable figure, with the broad shoulders of an Atlas supporting a world of thought, his Jupiter-like forehead highly and broadly arched, as in the case of Goethe, and deeply furrowed with the plough of mental labour; his kindly, mild eyes looking forth under the shadow of prominent brows; his amiable mouth surrounded by a copious silver-white beard. The cordial, prepossessing expression of the whole face, the gentle, mild voice, the slow, deliberate utterance, the natural and naive train of ideas which marked his conversation, captivated my whole heart in the first hour of our meeting, just as his great work had formerly, on my first reading it, taken my whole understanding by storm, I fancied a lofty world-sage out of h.e.l.lenic antiquity--a Socrates or Aristotle--stood before me."

The well-known botanist, Alphonse de Candolle, thus describes a visit to Down:

"I longed to converse once more with Darwin, whom I had seen in 1839, and with whom I kept up a most interesting correspondence. It was on a fine autumn morning in 1880 that I arrived at Orpington station, where my ill.u.s.trious friend's break met me. I will not here speak of the kind reception given to me at Down, and of the pleasure I felt in chatting familiarly with Mr. and Mrs. Darwin and their son Francis. I note only that Darwin at seventy was more animated and appeared happier than when I had seen him forty-one years before. His eye was bright and his expression cheerful, whilst his photographs show rather the shape of his head, like that of an ancient philosopher. His varied, frank, gracious conversation, entirely that of a gentleman, reminded me of that of Oxford and Cambridge _savants_. The general tone was like his books, as is the case with sincere men, devoid of every trace of charlatanism. He expressed himself in English easily understood by a foreigner, more like that of Bulwer or Macaulay, than that of d.i.c.kens or Carlyle. I asked him for news of the committee, of which he was a member, for reforming English spelling, and when I said that moderate changes would be best received by the public, he laughingly said, 'As for myself, _of course_, I am for the most radical changes.' We were more in accord on another point, that a man of science, even up to advanced age, ought to take an interest in new ideas, and to accept them, if he finds them true. 'That was very strongly the opinion of my friend Lyell,' he said; 'but he pushed it so far as sometimes to yield to the first objection, and I was then obliged to defend him against himself.' Darwin had more firmness in his opinions, whether from temperament, or because he had published nothing without prolonged reflection.

"Around the house no trace appeared to remain of the former labours of the owner. Darwin used simple means. He was not one who would have demanded to have palaces built in order to accommodate laboratories. I looked for the greenhouse in which such beautiful experiments on hybrid plants had been made. It contained only a vine. One thing struck me, although it is not rare in England, where animals are loved. A heifer and a colt were feeding close to us with the tranquillity which tells of good masters, and I heard the joyful barking of dogs. 'Truly,' I said to myself, 'the history of the variations of animals was written here, and observations must be going on, for Darwin is never idle.' I did not suspect that I was walking above the dwellings of those lowly beings called earthworms, the subject of his last work, in which Darwin showed once more how little causes in the long run produce great effects.

He had been studying them for thirty years, but I did not know it.

"Returning to the house, Darwin showed me his library, a large room on the ground floor, very convenient for a studious man; many books on the shelves; windows on two sides; a writing-table and another for apparatus for his experiments. Those on the movements of stems and roots were still in progress. The hours pa.s.sed like minutes. I had to leave. Precious memories of that visit remain."

Yet once more, in 1881, the famous publis.h.i.+ng house of Murray issued a new work--his last--by the great illuminator of Nature. Its subject was one which no one save those who knew him could have expected. It dealt with "The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits," and in it the lowly earthworm was at last raised to its true rank as the genuine preparer and possessor of the soil. Both Gilbert White and Edward Jenner had been impressed with the work earthworms do in nature, but no one had written extensively on the subject till Darwin himself, in 1837, read a short paper on the "Formation of Mould" before the Geological Society of London (published in the fifth volume of the Society's Transactions), showing that small fragments of burnt marl, cinders, &c., which had been thickly strewed over the surface of several meadows, were found after a few years lying at the depth of some inches beneath the turf. It was suggested to him by his relative Mr. Wedgwood, of Maer Hall, in Staffords.h.i.+re, that this was due to the quant.i.ty of fine earth continually brought up to the surface by worms in the form of castings. Observation and experiment were to settle the question in the usual Darwinian manner, and many a portion of soil was watched. One experiment lasted nearly thirty years, for a quant.i.ty of broken chalk and sifted coal cinders was spread on December 20, 1842, over distinct parts of a field near Down House, which had existed as pasture for a very long time. At the end of November, 1871, a trench was dug across this part of the field, and the nodules of chalk were found buried seven inches. A similar change took place in a field covered with flints, where in thirty years the turf was compact without any stones. A pathway formed of loose-set flagstones was similarly buried by worms, and became undistinguishable from the rest of the lawn.

And these are but a few of the evidences of the wonderful action of worms, collected by the activity of Charles Darwin and his sons.

Earthworms were not only scrutinised in their out-of-door work, but were kept in confinement and studied. It appears they swallow earth both to make their burrows and to extract all nutriment it may contain; they will eat almost anything they can get their skin over. From careful calculation it was shown that worms on an average pa.s.s ten tons of the soil on an acre of ground through their bodies every year. It is, then, but a truism to say that every bit of soil on the surface of the globe must have pa.s.sed through their bodies many times. They were discovered to work mainly by night, when hundreds may with care be discerned, with tails fixed in their burrows, prowling round in circles, rapidly retreating into holes, and strongly resisting efforts to extract them.

It was found by careful study that they have no sense of hearing, but a most remarkable sensitiveness to vibrations of the earth or even to contact with air in motion. No book Darwin wrote was fuller of interesting and undoubtedly correct observations.

In concluding, the author enforces the claims of worms on the grat.i.tude of archaeologists, as they protect and preserve for an indefinitely long period every object not liable to decay which is dropped on the surface of the land, by burying it beneath their castings. It is thus that many tesselated pavements and other ancient remains have been preserved; but, on the other hand, worms have undermined many old ma.s.sive walls and caused them to subside, and no building is in this respect safe unless the foundations are at least six or seven feet beneath the surface, below which depth worms cannot work. Worms also prepare the ground in an excellent manner for plant life, periodically exposing the mould to the air, sifting it so that no stones larger than the particles they can swallow are left in it, mingling the whole intimately together, burying all decaying objects within reach of the roots of the plants, allowing air to penetrate deeply into the earth. "When we behold a wide, turf-covered expanse, we should remember that its smoothness, on which so much of its beauty depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having been slowly levelled by worms. It is a marvellous reflection that the whole of the superficial mould over any such expanse has pa.s.sed, and will again pa.s.s, every few years through the bodies of worms. The plough is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed, and still continues to be thus ploughed by earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organised creatures."

After this last book Darwin felt much exhausted, and wrote: "I feel so worn out that I do not suppose I shall ever again give reviewers trouble." His brother Erasmus's death in the same year was the severance of a link with early days. Yet for some months he continued in a moderate degree of health, still working. For some weeks however in the following March and April he was slightly unwell, and the action of his heart became so weak that he was not allowed to mount the stairs. On Tuesday, April 18, he was in his study examining a plant which he had had brought to him, and he read the same evening before retiring. Till the day of his death he did not become seriously ill. On that day the heart, which had so long done its duty, failed, and about 4 p.m., on April 19, 1882, Charles Darwin breathed his last in peace, aged seventy-three years, two months, and seven days.

CHAPTER XI.

The death of Charles Darwin focussed, as it were, into one concentrated glow the feelings of admiration, and even reverence, which had been growing stronger and stronger in the years since the "Origin of Species"

was published. It soon became evident that a public funeral in Westminster Abbey was very generally called for, and this being granted, a grave was chosen in the north aisle and north-east corner of the nave, north of and side by side with that of Sir John Herschel, and ten or twelve feet only from that of Sir Isaac Newton. On April 26, 1882, a great representative host of scientists, literary men, politicians, and theologians a.s.sembled for the final scene. The pallbearers were the Dukes of Devons.h.i.+re and Argyll, the Earl of Derby, Mr. J. Russell Lowell (then American Minister in London), Mr. W. Spottiswoode (President of the Royal Society), Sir Joseph Hooker, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, Professor Huxley, Sir John Lubbock, and Canon Farrar. The Bishop of Carlisle, preaching at the Abbey on the following Sunday, admitted that Darwin had produced a greater change in the current of thought than any other man, and had done it by perfectly legitimate means. He had observed Nature with a strength of purpose, pertinacity, honesty, and ingenuity never surpa.s.sed.

"The career of Charles Darwin," wrote _The Times_ on the day of his funeral, "eludes the grasp of personal curiosity as much as of personal enmity. He thought, and his thoughts have pa.s.sed into the substance of facts of the universe. A gra.s.s plot, a plant in bloom, a human gesture, the entire circle of the doings and tendencies of nature, builds his monument and records his exploits.... The Abbey has its orators and ministers who have convinced senates and swayed nations. Not one of them all has wielded a power over men and their intelligences more complete than that which for the last twenty-three years has emanated from a simple country house in Kent. Memories of poets breathe about the mighty church. Science invokes the aid of imagination no less than poetry.

Darwin as he searched, imagined. Every microscopic fact his patient eyes unearthed, his fancy caught up and set in its proper niche in a fabric as stately and grand as ever the creative company of Poets' Corner wove from sunbeams and rainbows."

"Our century is Darwin's century," said the _Allgemeine Zeitung_. _The New York Herald_ described his life as "that of Socrates except its close." The _Neue Freie Presse_ said truly that his death caused lamentation as far as truth had penetrated, and wherever civilisation had made any impression.

A movement was at once set on foot for securing a worthy public memorial of Darwin. Subscriptions flowed in abundantly, and came from all countries of Europe, the United States, the British Colonies, and Brazil. Sweden sent the astonis.h.i.+ng number of 2296 subscriptions; persons of all ranks contributed, from a bishop to a seamstress. Over 4,000 in all was subscribed, and it was resolved, in the first place, to procure the best possible statue. This work was entrusted to Mr.

Boehm, R.A., with admirable results. Permission was obtained to place it in the great hall of the British Museum of Natural History, South Kensington, and here it was unveiled on June 9, 1885, by the Prince of Wales, who accepted the statue on behalf of the Trustees of the British Museum from Professor Huxley as representing the subscribers. It is agreed that the statue is excellent, the att.i.tude easy and dignified, the expression natural and characteristic. The only defect is that the hands are unlike Darwin's. The balance, about 2,200, remaining over from the fund, was given to the Royal Society to be invested for the promotion of biological studies and researches.

The conditions under which Darwin lived were just those in which, as _The Sat.u.r.day Review_ put it, his sweet and gentle nature could blossom into perfection. "Arrogance, irritability, and envy, the faults that ordinarily beset men of genius, were not so much conquered as non-existent in a singularly simple and generous mind. It never occurred to him that it would be to his gain to show that he and not some one else was the author of a discovery. If he was appealed to for help by a fellow-worker, the thought never pa.s.sed into his mind that he had secrets to divulge which would lessen his importance. It was science, not the fame of science, that he loved, and he helped science by the temper in which he approached it. He had to say things which were distasteful to a large portion of the public, but he won the ear even of his most adverse critics by the manifest absence of a mere desire to s.h.i.+ne, by his modesty, and by his courtesy. He told honestly what he thought to be the truth, but he told it without a wish to triumph or to wound. There is an arrogance of unorthodoxy as well as an arrogance of orthodoxy, and if ideas that a quarter of a century ago were regarded with dread are now accepted without a pang, the rapidity of the change of opinion, if not the change itself, is largely due to the fact that the leading exponent of these ideas was the least arrogant of men."

Geniality and genuine humour must be remembered as among the many delightful traits in Darwin's character. Mr. Edmund Yates, in his "Celebrities at Home" (second series), describes his as a laugh to remember, "a rich Homeric laugh, round and full, musical and jocund."

"At a droll suggestion of Mr. Huxley's, or a humorous doubt insinuated in the musical tones of the President of the Royal Society (Sir Joseph Hooker), the eyes twinkle under the ma.s.sive overhanging brows, the Socratic head, as Professor Tyndall loves to call it, is thrown back, and over the long white beard rolls out such a laugh as we have attempted to describe."

Exceptionally good-hearted and sympathetic as a man, Darwin discovered his life-work, and did it, in spite of a most powerful hindrance, in the best possible manner, with the least possible waste of force. But, more than doing his work, he set others to work, incited them, suggested to them, aided them, scattered among them seeds which, finding fertile soil, sprang up and bore fruit a hundredfold. His greatness is as much in what be caused others to do as in what he did himself. Even in arousing antagonism, though by the gentlest means, he did a great work, for he secured examination and criticism in such bulk that the whole world was leavened by his doctrine; and in controversy no man has any disagreeable reminiscence of him. Many have cause to bless the day when they first came into communication with Darwin, to find him welcome them, encourage them, place his own vast stores of knowledge and thought at their disposal, and, best of all, make them love him naturally as a dear friend.

Darwin's was one of those open and frank minds which are entrenched behind no rampart of isolating prejudice, and elevated on no platform of conscious superiority. It was equally natural to him to ask and to give information. No one ever was more accessible to all who genuinely sought his aid in their inquiries or their projects; no one ever more truly sought information from all quarters whence truth was attainable. Hence the ma.s.s of his letters to all kinds of persons is enormous, and only a small proportion, probably, will ever be published. His letters are like his conversation, free, frank, without a trace of _arriere pensee_, praising others where possible--and no man ever found it more possible to praise others more genuinely--depreciating himself and his work most unduly. "You so overestimate the value of what I do," he writes on one occasion, "that you make me feel ashamed of myself, and wish to be worthy of such praise." Again, "You have indeed pa.s.sed a most magnificent eulogium on me, and I wonder that you were not afraid of hearing 'oh, oh,' or some other sign of disapprobation. Many persons think that what I have done in science has been much overrated, and I very often think so myself, but my comfort is that I have never consciously done anything to gain applause." Here we see the scientific man occupying the highest possible moral standpoint as a seeker after truth. His election as one of the honorary members of the Physiological Society was to him a "wholly unexpected honour," and a "mark of sympathy" which pleased him in a very high degree.

"Work," he writes on another occasion, "is my sole pleasure in life."

"It is so much more interesting to observe than to write." So long as he could devise experiments and mark the results he continued to do it, rather than prepare his voluminous notes on many subjects for publication. "Trollope, in one of his novels, gives as a maxim of constant use by a brickmaker, 'It is dogged as does it,' and I have often and often," wrote Darwin, "thought this is a motto for every scientific worker." How faithfully he adopted it himself those who read through any one of his experimental books can appreciate. He habitually read or heard some good novel as a recreation, and took a by no means restricted interest in general literature.

Considering how usual it is for leading thinkers to be drawn into controversy, even when most desirous of avoiding it, it is remarkable how little Darwin was mixed up with hotly-debated questions. "I hate controversy," he writes, "and it wastes much time, at least with a man who, like myself, can work for only a short time in a day." One of the few occasions on which he appeared as a champion of a cause was on the question of vivisection, in which a chivalrous feeling led him to intervene with the following letter to Professor Holmgren, of Upsala University, which was published in _The Times_ of April 18, 1881. "I thought it fair," he wrote, "to bear my share of the abuse poured in so atrocious a manner on all physiologists."

"DEAR SIR,--In answer to your courteous letter of April 7, I have no objection to express my opinion with respect to the right of experimenting on living animals. I use this latter expression as more correct and comprehensive than that of vivisection. You are at liberty to make any use of this letter which you may think fit, but if published I should wish the whole to appear. I have all my life been a strong advocate for humanity to animals, and have done what I could in my writings to enforce this duty. Several years ago, when the agitation against physiologists commenced in England, it was a.s.serted that inhumanity was here practised, and useless suffering caused to animals; and I was led to think that it might be advisable to have an Act of Parliament on the subject. I then took an active part in trying to get a Bill pa.s.sed, such as would have removed all just cause of complaint, and at the same time have left physiologists free to pursue their researches--a Bill very different from the Act which has since been pa.s.sed. It is right to add that the investigation of the matter by a Royal Commission proved that the accusations made against our English physiologists were false. From all that I have heard, however, I fear that in some parts of Europe little regard is paid to the sufferings of animals, and if this be the case I should be glad to hear of legislation against inhumanity in any such country. On the other hand, I know that physiology cannot possibly progress except by means of experiments on living animals, and I feel the deepest conviction that he who r.e.t.a.r.ds the progress of physiology commits a crime against mankind. Any one who remembers, as I can, the state of this science half a century ago, must admit that it has made immense progress, and it is now progressing at an ever-increasing rate.

"What improvements in medical practice may be directly attributed to physiological research is a question which can be properly discussed only by those physiologists and medical pract.i.tioners who have studied the history of their subjects; but, as far as I can learn, the benefits are already great. However this may be, no one, unless he is grossly ignorant of what science has done for mankind, can entertain any doubt of the incalculable benefits which will hereafter be derived from physiology, not only by man, but by the lower animals. Look, for instance, at Pasteur's results of modifying the germs of the most malignant diseases, from which, as it so happens, animals will, in the first place, receive more relief than man. Let it be remembered how many lives, and what a fearful amount of suffering have been saved by the knowledge gained of parasitic worms through the experiments of Virchow and others on living animals. In the future every one will be astonished at the ingrat.i.tude shown, at least in England, to these benefactors of mankind. As for myself, permit me to a.s.sure you that I honour, and shall always honour, every one who advances the n.o.ble science of physiology.

"Dear sir, yours faithfully, "CHARLES DARWIN."

As an experimenter Darwin was by no means overconfident either in his methods or his power of obtaining results. He simply took the best means open to him, or that he could devise, applied them in the best way known to him, and calmly studied the result. "As far as my experience goes,"

he wrote, in reference to experimental work, "what one expects rarely happens." On another occasion, after working like a slave at a certain investigation, "with very poor success;" he remarks, "as usual, almost everything goes differently to what I had antic.i.p.ated." How few investigators have the magnanimity which appears in this confession. But more than this, it is an indication of the rare patience with which he stuck at a subject till he knew all he could read or discover or develop in connection with it. It was "dogged" that did it; "awfully hard work"

sometimes. In reference to an attempt of his to define intelligence, which he regarded as unsatisfactory, after remarking that he tried to observe what pa.s.sed in his own mind when he did the work of a worm, he writes: "If I come across a professed metaphysician, I will ask him to give me a more technical definition with a few big words, about the abstract, the concrete, the absolute, and the infinite. But sincerely, I should be grateful for any suggestions; for it will hardly do to a.s.sume that every fool knows what 'intelligent' means."

Inasmuch as it must necessarily be of great interest to know the att.i.tude which so great a thinker as Darwin adopted towards Christianity, revelation, and other matters of theology, we give unabridged two letters which were written without a view to publication, and were published after his death without the authorisation of his representatives. Having been widely published, however, it is right that they should be given here.

The first of these was sent in 1873 to N. D. Deedes, a Dutch gentleman, who wrote to ask Darwin his opinion on the existence of a G.o.d:

"It is impossible to answer your question briefly; I am not sure that I could do so even if I wrote at some length. But I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me our chief argument for the existence of G.o.d; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty from the immense amount of suffering through the world. I am, also, induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment of the many able men who have fully believed in G.o.d; but here, again, I see how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion seems to be that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect, but man can do his duty."

The second letter was addressed to Nicholas, Baron Mengden, a German University student, in whom the study of Darwin's books had raised religious doubts. It is dated June 5, 1879. The following is a re-translation of a German translation:

"I am very busy, and am an old man in delicate health, and have not time to answer your questions fully, even a.s.suming that they are capable of being answered at all. Science and Christ have nothing to do with each other, except in so far as the habit of scientific investigation makes a man cautious about accepting any proofs. As far as I am concerned, I do not believe that any revelation has ever been made with regard to a future life; every one must draw his own conclusions from vague and contradictory probabilities."

It should be added that he was greatly averse to every form of militant anti-religious controversy, and always deprecated it. He would have been the last to desire that his words should be quoted as of scientific authority, or as being more than the results of his own thought on questions which were not the subject of his life study. Let those who think that his having expressed these views is a regrettable blow to orthodox Christianity, set against it the enormous service Darwin did to reasonable natural theology by giving an intelligible key to the explanation of the universe. And let all men remember that genuine honesty such as Darwin's cannot possibly hinder the interests or the spread of truth. His declaration that "man can do his duty," implies his conviction that man may know what his duty is; and very many n.o.ble spirits besides Darwin have not found it possible to advance with certainty beyond this point.

As to Darwin's place in literature, that is due supereminently to his thoughts. In his expression of them he had the saving quality of directness, and usually wrote with simplicity. Incisive he was not ordinarily; caution of his type harmonises ill with incisiveness. But what he lost thereby he gained in solidity and in permanence. Sometimes, as we have pointed out, his imagination carried him beyond his usual sober vein, and then he showed himself aglow with feeling or with sympathetic perception.

But when we speak of his imagination we pa.s.s at once to the other side of his mind--if indeed any such patient inquiry as his could have been maintained except for the imaginative side of him. This lit up his path, buoyed him in difficulties and failures, suggested new expedients, experiments, and combinations. The use of imagination in science has never been more aptly ill.u.s.trated nor more beneficial than in his case.

Darwin, more than any other man perhaps, showed the value, if not the essentiality, of "working hypotheses"; and if any man now wants to progress in biology, he will be foolish if he does not seek such and use them freely, and abandon them readily if disproved.

Darwin imagined grandly, and verified his imaginings as far as one man's life suffices; and no man can do more. And Darwin won, as far as a man can win, success during his lifetime. As Professor Huxley said, in lecturing on "The Coming of Age of 'The Origin of Species,'" "the foremost men of science in every country are either avowed champions of its leading doctrines, or at any rate abstain from opposing them." His prescience has in less than a generation been justified by the discovery of intermediate fossil forms of animals too numerous to be here recounted. The break between vertebrate and invertebrate animals, between flowering and non-flowering plants, between animal and plant, is now bridged over by discoveries in the life histories of animals and plants which exist to-day. Embryo animals and plants are now known to go through stages which repeat and condense the upward ascent of life; and they give us information of the greatest value as to lost stages in the path. We can, as it were, see the actual track through which evolution may have proceeded. "Thus," says Professor Huxley, "if the doctrine of evolution had not existed, palaeontologists must have invented it, so irresistibly is it forced upon the mind by the study of the remains of the Tertiary mammalia which have been brought to light since 1859;" and again, "so far as the animal world is concerned, evolution is no longer a speculation, but a statement of historical fact."

As to the limits of the truth of Darwin's theory, Professor Huxley, writing on "Evolution in Biology," in "The Encyclopaedia Britannica,"

says: "How far natural selection suffices for the production of species remains to be seen. Few can doubt that, if not the whole cause, it is a very important factor in that operation; and that it must play a great part in the sorting out of varieties into those which are transitory, and those which are permanent. But the causes and conditions of variation have yet to be thoroughly explored; and the importance of natural selection will not be impaired, even if further inquiries should prove that variability is definite, and is determined in certain directions rather than in others, by conditions inherent in that which varies."

We have not s.p.a.ce to describe the importance of the work Darwin did in, or bearing on, entomology, changing its face and vastly elevating its importance. A volume might be compiled from his writings on this subject, as reference to Professor Riley's excellent summary (Darwin Memorial Meeting, Was.h.i.+ngton, 1882) will readily show. Nor can we recount his important work in other branches of biology further than has been already done in the foregoing pages. To do so would require much more than a volume of this size.

One special department may perhaps claim notice on the ground of its supposed non-scientific character. Dr. Masters (_Gardeners' Chronicle_, April 22, 1882) says of Darwin's service to horticulture: "Let any one who knows what was the state of botany in this country even so recently as fifteen or twenty years ago, compare the feeling between botanists and horticulturists at that time with what it is now. What sympathy had the one for the pursuits of the other? The botanist looked down on the varieties, the races, and strains, raised with so much pride by the patient skill of the florist as on things unworthy of his notice and study. The horticulturist, on his side, knowing how very imperfectly plants could be studied from the mummified specimens in herbaria, which then const.i.tuted in most cases all the material that the botanist of this country considered necessary for the study of plants, naturally looked on the botanist somewhat in the light of a laborious trifler....

Darwin altered all this. He made the dry bones live; he invested plants and animals with a history, a biography, a genealogy, which at once conferred an interest and a dignity on them. Before, they were as the stuffed skin of a beast in the gla.s.s case of a museum; now they are living beings, each in their degree affected by the same circ.u.mstances that affect ourselves, and swayed, _mutatis mutandis_, by like feelings and like pa.s.sions. If he had done nothing more than this we might still have claimed Darwin as a horticulturist; but as we shall see, he has more direct claims on our grat.i.tude. The apparently trifling variations, the variations which it was once the fas.h.i.+on for botanists to overlook, have become, as it were, the keystone of a great theory."

A valuable summary of Darwin's influence on general philosophic thought has been given by Mr. James Sully, in his article, "Evolution in Philosophy," in "The Encyclopaedia Britannica," 9th ed., vol. viii. He, like many other thinkers, considers that Darwin has done much to banish old ideas as to the evidence of purpose in nature. Mr. Sully's views are not entirely shared, however, by Professor Winch.e.l.l, an able American evolutionist ("Encyclopaedia Americana," vol. ii.) who considers that the question of teleology, or of purpose in nature, is not really touched by the special principle of natural selection, nor by the general doctrine of evolution. The mechanical theorist may, consistently with these doctrines, maintain that every event takes place without a purpose; while the teleologist, or believer in purpose, may no less consistently maintain that the more orderly and uniform we find the succession of events, the more reason is there to presume that a purposeful intelligence is regulating them. It is certainly impossible to show that the whole system of evolution does not exist for a purpose. The ranks of the evolutionists, and even of the Darwinians, as a fact, embrace believers in the most diverse systems of philosophy, including many of those who accept Christ's teaching as an authoritative Divine revelation. May not this diversity among Darwinians itself teach hope?

Darwinism is held with vital grip and will therefore not become a dead creed, a fossil formula. The belief that every generation is a step in progress to a higher and fuller life contains within it the promise of a glorious evolution which is no longer a faint hope, but a reasoned faith.

"Man's thought is like Antaeus, and must be Touched to the ground of Nature to regain Fresh force, new impulse, else it would remain Dead in the grip of strong Authority.

But, once thereon reset, 'tis like a tree, Sap-swollen in spring-time: bonds may not restrain; Nor weight repress; its rootlets rend in twain Dead stones and walls and rocks resistlessly.

Thine then it was to touch dead thoughts to earth, Till of old dreams sprang new philosophies, From visions systems, and beneath thy spell Swiftly uprose, like magic palaces,-- Thyself half-conscious only of thy worth-- Calm priest of a tremendous oracle."[13]

Here let us leave Charles Darwin; a marvellously patient and successful revolutioniser of thought; a n.o.ble and beloved man.