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 last revise of the ‘Descent of Man’ was corrected on January 15th, 1871, so that the book occupied him for about three years. He wrote to Sir J. Hooker: “I finished the last proofs of my book a few days ago; the work half-killed me, and I have not the most remote idea whether the book is worth publishing.”

He also wrote to Dr. Gray:—

“I have finished my book on the ‘Descent of Man,’ &c., and its publication is delayed only by the Index: when published, I will send you a copy, but I do not know that you will care about it. Parts, as on the moral sense, will, I dare say, aggravate you, and if I hear from you, I shall probably receive a few stabs from your polished stiletto of a pen.”

The book was published on February 24, 1871 2500 copies were printed at first, and 5000 more before the end of the year. My father notes that he received for this edition £1470. The letters given in the present chapter deal with its reception, and also with the progress of the work on Expression. The letters are given, approximately, in chronological order, an arrangement which necessarily separates letters of kindred subject-matter, but gives perhaps a truer picture of the mingled interests and labours of my father's life.

A German Editor having written to me for an account of the development of my mind and character with some sketch of my autobiography, I have thought that the attempt would amuse me, and might possibly interest my children or their children. I know that it would have interested me greatly to have read even so short and dull a sketch of the mind of my grandfather, written by himself, and what he thought and did, and how he worked.

[In the Autobiographical chapter (Vol. I. p. 84) my father wrote:—“Early in 1856 Lyell advised me to write out my views pretty fully, and I began at once to do so on a scale three or four times as extensive as that which was afterwards followed in my ‘Origin of Species;’ yet it was only an abstract of the materials which I had collected.” The letters in the present chapter are chiefly concerned with the preparation of this unfinished book.

The work was begun on May 14th, and steadily continued up to June 1858, when it was interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Wallace's MS. During the two years which we are now considering, he wrote ten chapters (that is about one-half) of the projected book. He remained for the most part at home, but paid several visits to Dr. Lane's Water-Cure Establishment at Moor Park, during one of which he made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Gilbert White at Selborne.]

LETTERS.

C. Darwin to C. Lyell.

May 3 [1856].

… With respect to your suggestion of a sketch of my views, I hardly know what to think, but will reflect on it, but it goes against my prejudices. To give a fair sketch would be absolutely impossible, for every proposition requires such an array of facts.

[In a letter addressed to Captain Fitz-Roy, before the Beagle sailed, my father wrote, “What a glorious day the 4th of November will be to me— my second life will then commence, and it shall be as a birthday for the rest of my life.”

The circumstances which led to this second birth— so much more important than my father then imagined— are connected with his Cambridge life, but may be more appropriately told in the present chapter. Foremost in the chain of circumstances which led to his appointment to the Beagle, was my father's friendship with Professor Henslow. He wrote in a pocket-book or diary, which contains a brief record of dates, &c., throughout his life:—

“1831. Christmas.— Passed my examination for B.A. degree and kept the two following terms.

“During these months lived much with Professor Henslow, often dining with him and walking with him; became slightly acquainted with several of the learned men in Cambridge, which much quickened the zeal which dinner parties and hunting had not destroyed.

“In the spring paid Mr. Dawes a visit with Ramsay and Kirby, and talked over an excursion to Teneriffe. In the spring Henslow persuaded me to think of Geology, and introduced me to Sedgwick. During Midsummer geologized a little in Shropshire.

[The present chapter contains a series of miscellaneous letters on botanical subjects. Some of them show my father's varied interests in botanical science, and others give account of researches which never reached completion.]

BLOOM ON LEAVES AND FRUIT

[His researches into the meaning of the “bloom,” or waxy coating found on many leaves, was one of those inquiries which remained unfinished at the time of his death. He amassed a quantity of notes on the subject, part of which I hope to publish at no distant date.

One of his earliest letters on this subject was addressed in August, 1873, to Sir Joseph Hooker:—

”I want a little information from you, and if you do not yourself know, please to enquire of some of the wise men of Kew.

”Why are the leaves and fruit of so many plants protected by a thin layer of waxy matter (like the common cabbage), or with fine hair, so that when such leaves or fruit are immersed in water they appear as if encased in thin glass? It is really a pretty sight to put a pod of the common pea, or a raspberry into water. I find several leaves are thus protected on the under surface and not on the upper.

”How can water injure the leaves if indeed this is at all the case?”

On this latter point he wrote to Sir Thomas Farrer:—

“I am now become mad about drops of water injuring leaves. Please ask Mr. Paine whether he believes, from his own experience, that drops of water injure leaves or fruit in his conservatories.

[We have now to consider the work (other than botanical) which occupied the concluding six years of my father's life. A letter to his old friend Rev. L. Blomfield (Jenyns), written in March, 1877, shows what was my father's estimate of his own powers of work at this time:—

“My dear Jenyns (I see I have forgotten your proper names),—Your extremely kind letter has given me warm pleasure. As one gets old, one's thoughts turn back to the past rather than to the future, and I often think of the pleasant, and to me valuable, hours which I spent with you on the borders of the Fens.

“You ask about my future work; I doubt whether I shall be able to do much more that is new, and I always keep before my mind the example of poor old ——, who in his old age had a cacoethes for writing. But I cannot endure doing nothing, so I suppose that I shall go on as long as I can without obviously making a fool of myself. I have a great mass of matter with respect to variation under nature; but so much has been published since the appearance of the ‘Origin of Species,’ that I very much doubt whether I retain power of mind and strength to reduce the mass into a digested whole. I have sometimes thought that I would try, but dread the attempt.…”

At the beginning of the year 1867 he was at work on the final chapter—“Concluding Remarks” of the ‘Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,’ which was begun after the rest of the MS. had been sent to the printers in the preceding December. With regard to the publication of the book he wrote to Mr. Murray, on January 3:—

“I cannot tell you how sorry I am to hear of the enormous size of my book I fear it can never pay. But I cannot shorten it now; nor, indeed, if I had foreseen its length, do I see which parts ought to have been omitted.

“If you are afraid to publish it, say so at once, I beg you, and I will consider your note as cancelled. If you think fit, get any one whose judgment you rely on, to look over some of the more legible chapters, namely, the Introduction, and on dogs and plants, the latter chapters being, in my opinion, the dullest in the book. … The list of chapters, and the inspection of a few here and there, would give a good judge a fair idea of the whole book. Pray do not publish blindly, as it would vex me all my life if I led you to heavy loss.”

Mr. Murray referred the MS. to a literary friend, and, in spite of a somewhat adverse opinion, willingly agreed to publish the book.

[My father's Cambridge life comprises the time between the Lent Term, 1828, when he came up as a Freshman, and the end of the May Term, 1831, when he took his degree and left the University.

It appears from the College books, that my father “admissus est pensionarius minor sub Magistro Shaw” on Oct. 15, 1827. He did not come into residence till the Lent Term, 1828, so that, although he passed his examination in due season, he was unable to take his degree at the usual time,— the beginning of the Lent Term, 1831. In such a case a man usually took his degree before Ash-Wednesday, when he was called “Baccalaureus ad Diem Cinerum,” and ranked with the B.A.'s of the year. My father's name, however, occurs in the list of Bachelors “ad Baptistam,” or those admitted between Ash-Wednesday and St. John Baptist's Day (June 24th); he therefore took rank among the Bachelors of 1832.

He “kept” for a term or two in lodgings, over Bacon the tobacconist's; not, however, over the shop in the Market Place, now so well known to Cambridge men, but in Sidney Street. For the rest of his time he had pleasant rooms on the south side of the first court of Christ's.

What determined the choice of this college for his brother Erasmus and himself I have no means of knowing. Erasmus the elder, their grandfather, had been at St. John's, and this college might have been reasonably selected for them, being connected with Shrewsbury School.

[This book, as pointed out in the ‘Autobiography,’ is a complement to the ‘Fertilisation of Orchids,’ because it shows how important are the results of cross-fertilisation which are ensured by the mechanisms described in that book. By proving that the offspring of cross-fertilisation are more vigorous than the offspring of self-fertilisation, he showed that one circumstance which influences the fate of young plants in the struggle for life is the degree to which their parents are fitted for cross-fertilisation. He thus convinced himself that the intensity of the struggle (which he had elsewhere shown to exist among young plants) is a measure of the strength of a selective agency perpetually sifting out every modification in the structure of flowers which can affect its capabilities for cross-fertilisation.

The book is also valuable in another respect, because it throws light on the difficult problems of the origin of sexuality. The increased vigour resulting from cross-fertilisation is allied in the closest manner to the advantage gained by change of conditions. So strongly is this the case, that in some instances crossrfertilisation gives no advantage to the offspring, unless the parents have lived under slightly different conditions. So that the really important thing is not that two individuals of different blood shall unite, but two individuals which have been subjected to different conditions. We are thus led to believe that sexuality is a means for infusing vigour into the offspring by the coalescence of differentiated elements, an advantage which could not follow if reproductions were entirely asexual.