Volume II Part 7 (1/2)
I am very much obliged for your letter. It is of great use and interest to me to know what impression my book produces on philosophical and instructed minds. I thank you for the kind things which you say; and you go with me much further than I expected. You will think it presumptuous, but I am convinced, IF CIRc.u.mSTANCES LEAD YOU TO KEEP THE SUBJECT IN MIND, that you will go further. No one has yet cast doubts on my explanation of the subordination of group to group, on h.o.m.ologies, embryology, and rudimentary organs; and if my explanation of these cla.s.ses of facts be at all right, whole cla.s.ses of organic beings must be included in one line of descent.
The imperfection of the Geological Record is one of the greatest difficulties... During the earliest period the record would be most imperfect, and this seems to me sufficient to account for our not finding intermediate forms between the cla.s.ses in the same great kingdoms. It was certainly rash in me putting in my belief of the probability of all beings having descended from ONE primordial form; but as this seems yet to me probable, I am not willing to strike it out.
Huxley alone supports me in this, and something could be said in its favour. With respect to man, I am very far from wis.h.i.+ng to obtrude my belief; but I thought it dishonest to quite conceal my opinion.
Of course it is open to every one to believe that man appeared by a separate miracle, though I do not myself see the necessity or probability.
Pray accept my sincere thanks for your kind note. Your going some way with me gives me great confidence that I am not very wrong. For a very long time I halted half way; but I do not believe that any enquiring mind will rest half-way. People will have to reject all or admit all; by ALL I mean only the members of each great kingdom.
My dear Jenyns, yours most sincerely, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, January 10th [1860].
... It is perfectly true that I owe nearly all the corrections (The second edition of 3000 copies of the 'Origin' was published on January 7th.) to you, and several verbal ones to you and others; I am heartily glad you approve of them, as yet only two things have annoyed me; those confounded millions (This refers to the pa.s.sage in the 'Origin of Species' (2nd edition, page 285), in which the lapse of time implied by the denudation of the Weald is discussed. The discussion closes with the sentence: ”So that it is not improbable that a longer period than 300 million years has elapsed since the latter part of the Secondary period.” This pa.s.sage is omitted in the later editions of the 'Origin,'
against the advice of some of his friends, as appears from the pencil notes in my father's copy of the second edition.) of years (not that I think it is probably wrong), and my not having (by inadvertance) mentioned Wallace towards the close of the book in the summary, not that any one has noticed this to me. I have now put in Wallace's name at page 484 in a conspicuous place. I cannot refer you to tables of mortality of children, etc. etc. I have notes somewhere, but I have not the LEAST idea where to hunt, and my notes would now be old. I shall be truly glad to read carefully any MS. on man, and give my opinion. You used to caution me to be cautious about man. I suspect I shall have to return the caution a hundred fold! Yours will, no doubt, be a grand discussion; but it will horrify the world at first more than my whole volume; although by the sentence (page 489, new edition (First edition, page 488.)) I show that I believe man is in the same predicament with other animals. It is, in fact, impossible to doubt it. I have thought (only vaguely) on man. With respect to the races, one of my best chances of truth has broken down from the impossibility of getting facts. I have one good speculative line, but a man must have entire credence in Natural Selection before he will even listen to it. Psychologically, I have done scarcely anything. Unless, indeed, expression of countenance can be included, and on that subject I have collected a good many facts, and speculated, but I do not suppose I shall ever publish, but it is an uncommonly curious subject. By the way, I sent off a lot of questions the day before yesterday to Tierra del Fuego on expression! I suspect (for I have never read it) that Spencer's 'Psychology' has a bearing on Psychology as we should look at it. By all means read the Preface, in about 20 pages, of Hensleigh Wedgwood's new Dictionary on the first origin of Language; Erasmus would lend it. I agree about Carpenter, a very good article, but with not much original... Andrew Murray has criticised, in an address to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, the notice in the 'Linnean Journal,' and ”has disposed of” the whole theory by an ingenious difficulty, which I was very stupid not to have thought of; for I express surprise at more and a.n.a.logous cases not being known.
The difficulty is, that amongst the blind insects of the caves in distant parts of the world there are some of the same genus, and yet the genus is not found out of the caves or living in the free world. I have little doubt that, like the fish Amblyopsis, and like Proteus in Europe, these insects are ”wrecks of ancient life,” or ”living fossils,” saved from compet.i.tion and extermination. But that formerly SEEING insects of the same genus roamed over the whole area in which the cases are included.
Farewell, yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.
P.S.--OUR ancestor was an animal which breathed water, had a swim bladder, a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull, and undoubtedly was an hermaphrodite!
Here is a pleasant genealogy for mankind.
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, January 14th [1860].
... I shall be much interested in reading your man discussion, and will give my opinion carefully, whatever that may be worth; but I have so long looked at you as the type of cautious scientific judgment (to my mind one of the highest and most useful qualities), that I suspect my opinion will be superfluous. It makes me laugh to think what a joke it will be if I have to caution you, after your cautions on the same subject to me!
I will order Owen's book ('Cla.s.sification of the Mammalia,' 1859.); I am very glad to hear Huxley's opinion on his cla.s.sification of man; without having due knowledge, it seemed to me from the very first absurd; all cla.s.sifications founded on single characters I believe have failed.
... What a grand, immense benefit you conferred on me by getting Murray to publish my book. I never till to-day realised that it was getting widely distributed; for in a letter from a lady to-day to E., she says she heard a man enquiring for it at the RAILWAY STATION!!! at Waterloo Bridge; and the bookseller said that he had none till the new edition was out. The bookseller said he had not read it, but had heard it was a very remarkable book!!!...
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 14th [January, 1860].
... I heard from Lyell this morning, and he tells me a piece of news. You are a good-for-nothing man; here you are slaving yourself to death with hardly a minute to spare, and you must write a review of my book! I thought it ('Gardeners' Chronicle', 1860. Referred to above. Sir J.D.
Hooker took the line of complete impartiality, so as not to commit Lindley.) a very good one, and was so much struck with it that I sent it to Lyell. But I a.s.sumed, as a matter of course, that it was Lindley's.
Now that I know it is yours, I have re-read it, and, my kind and good friend, it has warmed my heart with all the honourable and n.o.ble things you say of me and it. I was a good deal surprised at Lindley hitting on some of the remarks, but I never dreamed of you. I admired it chiefly as so well adapted to tell on the readers of the 'Gardeners' Chronicle'; but now I admired it in another spirit. Farewell, with hearty thanks... Lyell is going at man with an audacity that frightens me. It is a good joke; he used always to caution me to slip over man.
[In the ”Gardeners' Chronicle”, January 21, 1860, appeared a short letter from my father which was called forth by Mr. Westwood's communication to the previous number of the journal, in which certain phenomena of cros-breeding are discussed in relation to the 'Origin of Species.' Mr. Westwood wrote in reply (February 11) and adduced further evidence against the doctrine of descent, such as the ident.i.ty of the figures of ostriches on the ancient ”Egyptian records,” with the bird as we now know it. The correspondence is hardly worth mentioning, except as one of the very few cases in which my father was enticed into anything resembling a controversy.]
ASA GRAY TO J.D. HOOKER. Cambridge, Ma.s.s., January 5th, 1860.
My dear Hooker,
Your last letter, which reached me just before Christmas, has got mislaid during the upturnings in my study which take place at that season, and has not yet been discovered. I should be very sorry to lose it, for there were in it some botanical mems. which I had not secured...