



Produced by Sue Asscher.  HTML version by Al Haines.









ON THE RECEPTION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES'


by

PROFESSOR THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY



FROM THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF CHARLES DARWIN

EDITED BY FRANCIS DARWIN



ON THE RECEPTION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.'

To the present generation, that is to say, the people a few years on
the hither and thither side of thirty, the name of Charles Darwin
stands alongside of those of Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday; and,
like them, calls up the grand ideal of a searcher after truth and
interpreter of Nature.  They think of him who bore it as a rare
combination of genius, industry, and unswerving veracity, who earned
his place among the most famous men of the age by sheer native power,
in the teeth of a gale of popular prejudice, and uncheered by a sign of
favour or appreciation from the official fountains of honour; as one
who in spite of an acute sensitiveness to praise and blame, and
notwithstanding provocations which might have excused any outbreak,
kept himself clear of all envy, hatred, and malice, nor dealt otherwise
than fairly and justly with the unfairness and injustice which was
showered upon him; while, to the end of his days, he was ready to
listen with patience and respect to the most insignificant of
reasonable objectors.

And with respect to that theory of the origin of the forms of life
peopling our globe, with which Darwin's name is bound up as closely as
that of Newton with the theory of gravitation, nothing seems to be
further from the mind of the present generation than any attempt to
smother it with ridicule or to crush it by vehemence of denunciation.
"The struggle for existence," and "Natural selection," have become
household words and every-day conceptions.  The reality and the
importance of the natural processes on which Darwin founds his
deductions are no more doubted than those of growth and multiplication;
and, whether the full potency attributed to them is admitted or not, no
one doubts their vast and far-reaching significance.  Wherever the
biological sciences are studied, the 'Origin of Species' lights the
paths of the investigator; wherever they are taught it permeates the
course of instruction.  Nor has the influence of Darwinian ideas been
less profound, beyond the realms of Biology. The oldest of all
philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand and foot and cast into
utter darkness during the millennium of theological scholasticism.  But
Darwin poured new life-blood into the ancient frame; the bonds burst,
and the revivified thought of ancient Greece has proved itself to be a
more adequate expression of the universal order of things than any of
the schemes which have been accepted by the credulity and welcomed by
the superstition of seventy later generations of men.

To any one who studies the signs of the times, the emergence of the
philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of claimant to the throne of
the world of thought, from the limbo of hated and, as many hoped,
forgotten things, is the most portentous event of the nineteenth
century.  But the most effective weapons of the modern champions of
Evolution were fabricated by Darwin; and the 'Origin of Species' has
enlisted a formidable body of combatants, trained in the severe school
of Physical Science, whose ears might have long remained deaf to the
speculations of a priori philosophers.

I do not think any candid or instructed person will deny the truth of
that which has just been asserted.  He may hate the very name of
Evolution, and may deny its pretensions as vehemently as a Jacobite
denied those of George the Second.  But there it is--not only as
solidly seated as the Hanoverian dynasty, but happily independent of
Parliamentary sanction--and the dullest antagonists have come to see
that they have to deal with an adversary whose bones are to be broken
by no amount of bad words.

Even the theologians have almost ceased to pit the plain meaning of
Genesis against the no less plain meaning of Nature.  Their more
candid, or more cautious, representatives have given up dealing with
Evolution as if it were a damnable heresy, and have taken refuge in one
of two courses.  Either they deny that Genesis was meant to teach
scientific truth, and thus save the veracity of the record at the
expense of its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the
cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope
of making them confess the creed of Science.  But when the peine forte
et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always
reasserts itself.  Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be
no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown
origin, claiming no scientific authority and possessing none.

As my pen finishes these passages, I can but be amused to think what a
terrible hubbub would have been made (in truth was made) about any
similar expressions of opinion a quarter of a century ago.  In fact,
the contrast between the present condition of public opinion upon the
Darwinian question; between the estimation in which Darwin's views are
now held in the scientific world; between the acquiescence, or at least
quiescence, of the theologians of the self-respecting order at the
present day and the outburst of antagonism on all sides in 1858-9, when
the new theory respecting the origin of species first became known to
the older generation to which I belong, is so startling that, except
for documentary evidence, I should be sometimes inclined to think my
memories dreams.  I have a great respect for the younger generation
myself (they can write our lives, and ravel out all our follies, if
they choose to take the trouble, by and by), and I should be glad to be
assured that the feeling is reciprocal; but I am afraid that the story
of our dealings with Darwin may prove a great hindrance to that
veneration for our wisdom which I should like them to display.  We have
not even the excuse that, thirty years ago, Mr. Darwin was an obscure
novice, who had no claims on our attention.  On the contrary, his
remarkable zoological and geological investigations had long given him
an assured position among the most eminent and original investigators
of the day; while his charming 'Voyage of a Naturalist' had justly
earned him a wide-spread reputation among the general public.  I doubt
if there was any man then living who had a better right to expect that
anything he might choose to say on such a question as the Origin of
Species would be listened to with profound attention, and discussed
with respect; and there was certainly no man whose personal character
should have afforded a better safeguard against attacks, instinct with
malignity and spiced with shameless impertinences.

Yet such was the portion of one of the kindest and truest men that it
was ever my good fortune to know; and years had to pass away before
misrepresentation, ridicule, and denunciation, ceased to be the most
notable constituents of the majority of the multitudinous criticisms of
his work which poured from the press. I am loth to rake any of these
ancient scandals from their well-deserved oblivion; but I must make
good a statement which may seem overcharged to the present generation,
and there is no piece justificative more apt for the purpose, or more
worthy of such dishonour, than the article in the 'Quarterly Review'
for July, 1860.  (I was not aware when I wrote these passages that the
authorship of the article had been publicly acknowledged. Confession
unaccompanied by penitence, however, affords no ground for mitigation
of judgment; and the kindliness with which Mr. Darwin speaks of his
assailant, Bishop Wilberforce (vol. ii.), is so striking an
exemplification of his singular gentleness and modesty, that it rather
increases one's indignation against the presumption of his critic.)
Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr. Young, the world has seen no such
specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science
as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of
observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors,
of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person,
who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and
speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as
"utterly dishonourable to Natural Science."  And all this high and
mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's
equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of
conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to
Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable
varieties of turnips are tending to become men;" who is so ignorant of
paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the
plants of the carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can
gravely affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be
"entirely separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar
to themselves;" of the rudiments of physiology, that he can ask, "what
advantage of life could alter the shape of the corpuscles into which
the blood can be evaporated?"  Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour
this outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a little stimulation of
the odium theologicum.  Some inkling of the history of the conflicts
between Astronomy, Geology, and Theology, leads him to keep a retreat
open by the proviso that he cannot "consent to test the truth of
Natural Science by the word of Revelation;" but, for all that, he
devotes pages to the exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's
theory "contradicts the revealed relation of the creation to its
Creator," and is "inconsistent with the fulness of his glory."

If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of Species'
to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I
do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the
'Quarterly Review' article, unless, perhaps, the address of a Reverend
Professor to the Dublin Geological Society might enter into competition
with it.  But a large proportion of Mr. Darwin's critics had a
lamentable resemblance to the 'Quarterly' reviewer, in so far as they
lacked either the will, or the wit, to make themselves masters of his
doctrine; hardly any possessed the knowledge required to follow him
through the immense range of biological and geological science which
the 'Origin' covered; while, too commonly, they had prejudiced the case
on theological grounds, and, as seems to be inevitable when this
happens, eked out lack of reason by superfluity of railing.

But it will be more pleasant and more profitable to consider those
criticisms, which were acknowledged by writers of scientific authority,
or which bore internal evidence of the greater or less competency and,
often, of the good faith, of their authors.  Restricting my survey to a
twelvemonth, or thereabouts, after the publication of the 'Origin,' I
find among such critics Louis Agassiz ("The arguments presented by
Darwin in favor of a universal derivation from one primary form of all
the peculiarities existing now among living beings have not made the
slightest impression on my mind."

"Until the facts of Nature are shown to have been mistaken by those who
have collected them, and that they have a different meaning from that
now generally assigned to them, I shall therefore consider the
transmutation theory as a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts,
unscientific in its method, and mischievous in its
tendency."--Silliman's 'Journal,' July, 1860, pages 143, 154.  Extract
from the 3rd volume of 'Contributions to the Natural History of the
United States.'); Murray, an excellent entomologist; Harvey, a botanist
of considerable repute; and the author of an article in the 'Edinburgh
Review,' all strongly adverse to Darwin.  Pictet, the distinguished and
widely learned paleontogist of Geneva, treats Mr. Darwin with a respect
which forms a grateful contrast to the tone of some of the preceding
writers, but consents to go with him only a very little way.  ("I see
no serious objections to the formation of varieties by natural
selection in the existing world, and that, so far as earlier epochs are
concerned, this law may be assumed to explain the origin of closely
allied species, supposing for this purpose a very long period of time."

"With regard to simple varieties and closely allied species, I believe
that Mr. Darwin's theory may explain many things, and throw a great
light upon numerous questions."--'Sur l'Origine de l'Espece.  Par
Charles Darwin.'  'Archives des Sc. de la Bibliotheque Universelle de
Geneve,' pages 242, 243, Mars 1860.) On the other hand, Lyell, up to
that time a pillar of the anti-transmutationists (who regarded him,
ever afterwards, as Pallas Athene may have looked at Dian, after the
Endymion affair), declared himself a Darwinian, though not without
putting in a serious caveat.  Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength,
and his courageous stand for truth as against consistency, did him
infinite honour.  As evolutionists, sans phrase, I do not call to mind
among the biologists more than Asa Gray, who fought the battle
splendidly in the United States; Hooker, who was no less vigorous here;
the present Sir John Lubbock and myself.  Wallace was far away in the
Malay Archipelago; but, apart from his direct share in the promulgation
of the theory of natural selection, no enumeration of the influences at
work, at the time I am speaking of, would be complete without the
mention of his powerful essay 'On the Law which has regulated the
Introduction of New Species,' which was published in 1855.  On reading
it afresh, I have been astonished to recollect how small was the
impression it made.

In France, the influence of Elie de Beaumont and of Flourens--the
former of whom is said to have "damned himself to everlasting fame" by
inventing the nickname of "la science moussante" for Evolutionism (One
is reminded of the effect of another small academic epigram.  The
so-called vertebral theory of the skull is said to have been nipped in
the bud in France by the whisper of an academician to his neighbour,
that, in that case, one's head was a "vertebre pensante."),--to say
nothing of the ill-will of other powerful members of the Institut,
produced for a long time the effect of a conspiracy of silence; and
many years passed before the Academy redeemed itself from the reproach
that the name of Darwin was not to be found on the list of its members.
However, an accomplished writer, out of the range of academical
influences, M. Laugel, gave an excellent and appreciative notice of the
'Origin' in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.'  Germany took time to
consider; Bronn produced a slightly Bowdlerized translation of the
'Origin'; and 'Kladderadatsch' cut his jokes upon the ape origin of
man; but I do not call to mind that any scientific notability declared
himself publicly in 1860. (However, the man who stands next to Darwin
in his influence on modern biologists, K.E. von Baer, wrote to me, in
August 1860, expressing his general assent to evolutionist views.  His
phrase, "J'ai enonce les memes idees...que M. Darwin" (volume ii.) is
shown by his subsequent writings to mean no more than this.) None of us
dreamed that, in the course of a few years, the strength (and perhaps I
may add the weakness) of "Darwinismus" would have its most extensive
and most brilliant illustrations in the land of learning.  If a
foreigner may presume to speculate on the cause of this curious
interval of silence, I fancy it was that one moiety of the German
biologists were orthodox at any price, and the other moiety as
distinctly heterodox.  The latter were evolutionists, a priori,
already, and they must have felt the disgust natural to deductive
philosophers at being offered an inductive and experimental foundation
for a conviction which they had reached by a shorter cut.  It is
undoubtedly trying to learn that, though your conclusions may be all
right, your reasons for them are all wrong, or, at any rate,
insufficient.

On the whole, then, the supporters of Mr. Darwin's views in 1860 were
numerically extremely insignificant.  There is not the slightest doubt
that, if a general council of the Church scientific had been held at
that time, we should have been condemned by an overwhelming majority.
And there is as little doubt that, if such a council gathered now, the
decree would be of an exactly contrary nature.  It would indicate a
lack of sense, as well as of modesty, to ascribe to the men of that
generation less capacity or less honesty than their successors possess.
What, then, are the causes which led instructed and fair-judging men of
that day to arrive at a judgment so different from that which seems
just and fair to those who follow them? That is really one of the most
interesting of all questions connected with the history of science, and
I shall try to answer it.  I am afraid that in order to do so I must
run the risk of appearing egotistical.  However, if I tell my own story
it is only because I know it better than that of other people.

I think I must have read the 'Vestiges' before I left England in 1846;
but, if I did, the book made very little impression upon me, and I was
not brought into serious contact with the 'Species' question until
after 1850