G. T. Bettany

“ 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. ”

“ Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, I am convinced that the whole economy of nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness; we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life ”

“ Yet Darwin’s achievements far transcend his advantages of ancestry, surroundings, previous suggestion, position. He stands magnificently conspicuous as a genius of rare simplicity of soul, of unwearied patience of observation, of striking fertility and ingenuity of method, of unflinching devotion to and belief in the efficacy of truth. He revolutionised not merely half-a-dozen sciences, but the whole current of thinking men’s mental life. ”

“ Of individual objects, perhaps no one is more certain to create astonishment than the first sight in his native haunt of a real barbarian, of man in his lowest and most savage state. One’s mind hurries back over past centuries, and then asks, could our progenitors have been such as these? Men, whose very signs and expressions are less intelligible to us than those of the domesticated animals; men, who do not possess the instinct of those animals, nor yet appear to boast of human reason, or at least of arts consequent on that reason. ”

“ Here we see how much light may be thrown on animal structures and functions by vegetable physiology. We learn to limit our ideas of the superiority of animals by discovering how much of what we consider peculiar to them is found in plants. We appreciate the unity of biology, indivisible without injury to our knowledge of its parts. No structure in plants appears more wonderful, as Darwin describes it, than the tip of the rootlet of a seedling. ”

“ Darwin impresses forcibly on his readers the endless diversity of structures, and the prodigality of resources displayed for gaining the same end, the fertilisation of one flower by pollen from another plant. “The more I study nature,” he says, “the more I become impressed with ever-increasing force that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations slowly acquired through each part occasionally varying in a slight degree ... transcend in an incomparable manner the contrivances and adaptations which the most fertile imagination of man could invent.” ”

“ To Down, occasionally, came distinguished men from many lands; and there in later years would sometimes be found the younger generation of scientific students, looking up to the great naturalist with the reverence of disciples, who had experienced his singular modesty, his patient readiness to listen to all opinions, and the winning grace with which he informed their ignorance and corrected their mistakes. In the midst of all the delights of home and the demands of study, Darwin kept an open mind for public affairs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Delight itself, however, is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who, for the first time, has wandered by himself in a Brazilian forest. The elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the parasitical plants, the beauty of the flowers, the glossy green of the foliage, but, above all, the general luxuriance of the vegetation, filled me with admiration. A most paradoxical mixture of sound and silence pervades the shady parts of the wood. The noise from the insects is so loud that it may be heard even in a vessel anchored several hundred yards from the shore ”

“ As the answers to these questions are obvious, Darwin first concentrated his inquiry upon two points on which disputes must necessarily occur, namely, the traces which man shows, in his bodily structure, of descent from some lower form, and the mental powers of man as compared with those of lower animals. The facts of our bodily structure are inexplicable on any other view than our community of descent with the quadrumana, unless structure is but a snare to delude our reason. ”

“ Those who look tenderly at the slave-owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter. What a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! Picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children—those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own—being torn from you, and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that His will be done on earth! ”

“ Sensitive, sociable, a good talker, high-spirited and somewhat irascible, a man who admitted no one to his friendship whom he could not thoroughly respect, the friend of the poor, prescribing gratuitously to all who were needy, pre-eminent for sympathy, which for a time made him hate his profession for the constant suffering it brought before his eyes—such was Charles Darwin’s father. ”

“ 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. ”

“ CHAPTER I. IF ever a man’s ancestors transmitted to him ability to succeed in a particular field, Charles Darwin’s did. If ever early surroundings were calculated to call out inherited ability, Charles Darwin’s were. If ever a man grew up when a ferment of thought was disturbing old convictions in the domain of knowledge for which he was adapted, Charles Darwin did. If ever a man was fitted by worldly position to undertake unbiassed and long-continued investigations, Charles Darwin was such a man. ”

“ Instead of struggle and pain, producing starvation and extinction merely, struggle and pain were seen as the conditions of development and improvement; the death of the lower, the life of the higher.
It is less profitable here to attempt to sketch the history of ideas of evolution in general, because that history as now revealed by research, and as detailed by many writers, was not the path along which Darwin travelled. Indeed, many of these ideas were not disinterred, and certainly were not brought to Darwin’s notice till after the publication of the “Origin of Species.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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,- 158 - 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. ”

“ As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications. ”

“ And here Darwin strikes one of his truest and most helpful notes. It is far more satisfactory to contemplate the rapine and war of nature as incidents which aid in working out a grand progress than as multitudinous cruelties, working no good, and in past ages of unknown length merely preluding the struggle and rapine through which man works out his rise or fall. ”

“ 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 retards the progress of physiology commits a crime against mankind. ”

“ Can we wonder, then, that nature’s productions should be far ‘truer’ in character than man’s productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?” The words in italics certainly are a good answer to those who think Darwin had any tendency to depreciate the marvels of nature by bringing them under the law of natural selection. ”

“ Among these rich descendants of Europeans Darwin felt as if he were among the inhabitants of Central Africa; so low can the proud superior race descend, that the distance between it and the negro appeared small indeed. The remarkable absence of trees in the country could not fail to provoke comment; but it is on the old-fashioned basis, and the young student does not get beyond the conclusion “that herbaceous plants, instead of trees, were created to occupy that wide area, which, within a period not very remote, has been raised above the waters of the sea.” ”

“ In the group to which our common orchids belong, remarkable adaptations for securing that the pollen masses brought from another flower solely through the visits of insects shall reach their precise destination, were brought to light. “A poet,” says Darwin, “might imagine that whilst the pollinia were borne through the air from flower to flower, adhering to an insect’s body, they voluntarily and eagerly placed themselves in that exact position in which alone they could hope to gain their wish and perpetuate their race.” ”

“ The bearing of the Darwinian doctrine on some important practical questions for society leads to the remark that, while man scans with scrupulous care the pedigree of his animals, when he comes to his own marriage he rarely or never takes any such care. Perhaps Darwin was somewhat in error here; and, also, he seems to have underrated the unconscious tendency to act according to natural law, which has no doubt influenced mankind largely. ”

“ The interdependence of animal upon animal, of animal upon plant, of plant upon animal, is enforced in many ways by Darwin. For instance, the visits of humble-bees are of special importance to the welfare of red clover; humble-bees are largely destroyed by field-mice; cats largely destroy field-mice near villages, and so favour humble-bees, and secondarily red clover. Every paragraph of the chapter on the struggle for existence is full of suggestion, and subversive of old imaginings. But Darwin’s knowledge is to him slight, his ignorance profound. ”

“ 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 illustrated 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It might have been thought that there was scant stimulus for a biological student in the Cambridge of that period; but although the old literary and mathematical studies were still the only paths to a degree, there were men of original force and genius at work preparing the ground for a coming revolution. Sedgwick was teaching geology with the fire of a prophet, and Henslow as a botanist was showing that lessons of enthralling interest were to be learned from the humblest flower. Henslow especially attracted young Darwin, who never forgot his old teacher. ”

“ If I have erred in giving to natural selection great power, which I am far from admitting, or in having exaggerated its power, which is in itself probable, I have, at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations. ”