Volume I Part 52 (1/2)

Our difference on ”principle of improvement” and ”power of adaptation” is too profound for discussion by letter If I aht, our difference will be got over only by your re-reading carefully and reflecting on ain carefully The so-called ieons, etc, does not presuppose or require any aboriginal ”power of adaptation,” or ”principle of improvement;” it requires only diversified variability, and e of those modifications which are useful to hiht modification which CHANCES to arise, and is useful to any creature, is selected or preserved in the struggle for life; any modification which is injurious is destroyed or rejected; any which is neither useful nor injurious will be left a fluctuating element When you contrast natural selection and ”improvement,” you seem always to overlook (for I do not see how you can deny) that every step in the natural selection of each species implies improvement in that species in relation to its conditions of life No modification can be selected without it be an ie I ans, all excellently adapted for their functions As each species is improved, and as the number of forms will have increased, if we look to the whole course of tianic condition of life for other forms will become more complex, and there will be a necessity for other forms to become improved, or they will be exterminated; and I can see no limit to this process of improvement, without the intervention of any other and direct principle of improvement All this seems to me quite compatible with certain for degraded

If I have a second edition, I will reiterate ”Natural Selection,” and, as a general consequence, ”Natural Ily to think, judging froo rand views on existing geological causes of change!

If at any time you think I can answer any question, it is a real pleasure to me to write

Yours affectionately, C DARWIN

CHARLES DARWIN TO J MURRAY Ilkley, Yorkshi+re [1859]

My dear Sir,

I have received your kind note and the copy; I am infinitely pleased and proud at the appearance of ree to all you propose about price But you are really too generous about the, tounfairly towards yourself? Would it not be better at least to share the 72 pounds 8 shi+llings? I shall be fully satisfied, for I had no business to send, though quite unintentionally and unexpectedly, such badly composed MS to the printers

Thank you for your kind offer to distribute the copies to my friends and assistors as soon as possible Do not trouble yourself ate have most kindly offered to do their best, and they are accustomed to send to all parts of the world

I will pay for ood as to undertake the publication of my book

My dear Sir, yours very sincerely, CHARLES DARWIN

PS--Please do not forget to let me hear about two days before the copies are distributed

I do not knohen I shall leave this place, certainly not for several weeks Whenever I am in London I will call on you

CHAPTER 1XIV -- BY PROFESSOR HUXLEY

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 naside of those of Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday; and, like therand ideal of a searcher after truth and interpreter of Nature They think of hienius, industry, and unswerving veracity, who earned his place ae 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 blaht 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 nificant of reasonable objectors

And with respect to that theory of the origin of the forlobe, hich Darwin's name is bound up as closely as that of Neith the theory of gravitation, nothing seeeneration than any attempt to smother it with ridicule or to crush it by vehele 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 rowth and multiplication; and, whether the full potency attributed to them is adnificance 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 realy The oldest of all philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand and foot and cast into utter darkness during the ical scholasticism But Darwin poured new life-blood into the ancient fraht of ancient Greece has proved itself to be a s than any of the schemes which have been accepted by the credulity and welcoenerations of ns of the tience of the philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of claiht, fros, is the most portentous event of the nineteenth century But the most effective weapons of the modern chain of Species' has enlisted a formidable body of combatants, trained in the severe school of Physical Science, whose earsremained 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 vehee the Second But there it is--not only as solidly seated as the Hanoverian dynasty, but happily independent of Parliaonists have come to see that they have to deal with an adversary whose bones are to be broken by no aians have alainst the no less plainof Nature Their iven up dealing with Evolution as if it were a dae 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 ofthem 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, clai none

As es, I can but be amused to think what a terrible hubbub would have been made (in truth was made) about any sio 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 antagonis the origin of species first beca, is so startling that, except for documentary evidence, I should be soreat 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 as with Darwin reat 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 Daras an obscure novice, who had no claiical and geological investigations had long given hiinal investigators of the day; while his chare of a Naturalist' had justly earned hieneral public I doubt if there was anyhe in 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 nity and spiced with shameless impertinences

Yet such was the portion of one of the kindest and truest ood 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 hich poured from the press I am loth to rake any of these ancient scandals froood a stateeneration, 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 ahen I wrote these passages that the authorshi+p of the article had been publicly acknowledged Confession unaccoation of judgment; and the kindliness hich Mr Darwin speaks of his assailant, Bishop Wilberforce (vol ii), is so striking an exeentleness and ainst the presuha, 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 e, is held up to scorn as a ”flighty” person, who endeavours ”to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation,” and whose ” with nature” is reprobated as ”utterly dishonourable to Natural Science” And all this high and hty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr

Darwin's equals, proceeds froence, 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 becoy, that he can talk of the ”flowers and fruits” of the plants of the carboniferous epoch; of coravely affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be ”entirely separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to they, 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 sti of the history of the conflicts between Astronoy, 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 in of Species'

to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, fro quite so foolish and unmannerly as the 'Quarterly Review' article, unless, perhaps, the address of a Reverend Professor to the Dublin Geological Society e 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 e required to follow hiical science which the 'Origin' covered; while, too corounds, and, as seems to be inevitable when this happens, eked out lack of reason by superfluity of railing