Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I Part 51

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, September 25th [1859].

My dear Lyell,

I send by this post four corrected sheets. I have altered the sentence about the Eocene fauna being beaten by recent, thanks to your remark.

But I imagined that it would have been clear that I supposed the climate to be nearly similar; you do not doubt, I imagine, that the climate of the eocene and recent periods in DIFFERENT parts of the world could be matched. Not that I think climate nearly so important as most naturalists seem to think. In my opinion no error is more mischievous than this.

I was very glad to find that Hooker, who read over, in MS., my Geographical chapters, quite agreed in the view of the greater importance of organic relations. I should like you to consider page 77 and reflect on the case of any organism in the midst of its range.

I shall be curious hereafter to hear what you think of distribution during the glacial and preceding warmer periods. I am so glad you do not think the Chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record exaggerated; I was more fearful about this chapter than about any part.

Embryology in Chapter VIII. is one of my strongest points I think. But I must not bore you by running on. My mind is so wearisomely full of the subject.

I do thank you for your eulogy at Aberdeen. I have been so wearied and exhausted of late that I have for months doubted whether I have not been throwing away time and labour for nothing. But now I care not what the universal world says; I have always found you right, and certainly on this occasion I am not going to doubt for the first time. Whether you go far, or but a very short way with me and others who believe as I do, I am contented, for my work cannot be in vain. You would laugh if you knew how often I have read your paragraph, and it has acted like a little dram...

Farewell, C. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, September 30th [1859].

My dear Lyell,

I sent off this morning the last sheets, but without index, which is not in type. I look at you as my Lord High Chancellor in Natural Science, and therefore I request you, after you have finished, just to RERUN over the heads in the Recapitulation-part of last chapter. I shall be deeply anxious to hear what you decide (if you are able to decide) on the balance of the pros and contras given in my volume, and of such other pros and contras as may occur to you. I hope that you will think that I have given the difficulties fairly. I feel an entire conviction that if you are now staggered to any moderate extent, that you will come more and more round, the longer you keep the subject at all before your mind.

I remember well how many long years it was before I could look into the faces of some of the difficulties and not feel quite abashed. I fairly struck my colours before the case of neuter insects.

I suppose that I am a very slow thinker, for you would be surprised at the number of years it took me to see clearly what some of the problems were which had to be solved, such as the necessity of the principle of divergence of character, the extinction of intermediate varieties, on a continuous area, with graduated conditions; the double problem of sterile first crosses and sterile hybrids, etc., etc.

Looking back, I think it was more difficult to see what the problems were than to solve them, so far as I have succeeded in doing, and this seems to me rather curious. Well, good or bad, my work, thank G.o.d, is over; and hard work, I can a.s.sure you, I have had, and much work which has never borne fruit. You can see, by the way I am scribbling, that I have an idle and rainy afternoon. I was not able to start for Ilkley yesterday as I was too unwell; but I hope to get there on Tuesday or Wednesday. Do, I beg you, when you have finished my book and thought a little over it, let me hear from you. Never mind and pitch into me, if you think it requisite; some future day, in London possibly, you may give me a few criticisms in detail, that is, if you have scribbled any remarks on the margin, for the chance of a second edition.

Murray has printed 1250 copies, which seems to me rather too large an edition, but I hope he will not lose.

I make as much fuss about my book as if it were my first. Forgive me, and believe me, my dear Lyell,

Yours most sincerely, C. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Ilkley, Yorks.h.i.+re, October 15th [1859].

My dear Hooker,

Be a good man and screw out time enough to write me a note and tell me a little about yourself, your doings, and belongings.

Is your Introduction fairly finished? I know you will abuse it, and I know well how much I shall like it. I have been here nearly a fortnight, and it has done me very much good, though I sprained my ankle last Sunday, which has quite stopped walking. All my family come here on Monday to stop three or four weeks, and then I shall go back to the great establishment, and stay a fortnight; so that if I can keep my spirits, I shall stay eight weeks here, and thus give hydropathy a fair chance. Before starting here I was in an awful state of stomach, strength, temper, and spirits. My book has been completely finished some little time; as soon as copies are ready, of course one will be sent you. I hope you will mark your copy with scores, so that I may profit by any criticisms. I should like to hear your general impression. From Lyell's letters, he thinks favourably of it, but seems staggered by the lengths to which I go. But if you go any considerable length in the admission of modification, I can see no possible means of drawing the line, and saying here you must stop. Lyell is going to reread my book, and I yet entertain hopes that he will be converted, or perverted, as he calls it. Lyell has been EXTREMELY kind in writing me three volume-like letters; but he says nothing about dispersal during the glacial period.

I should like to know what he thinks on this head. I have one question to ask: Would it be any good to send a copy of my book to Decaisne?

and do you know any philosophical botanists on the Continent, who read English and care for such subjects? if so, give their addresses. How about Andersson in Sweden? You cannot think how refres.h.i.+ng it is to idle away the whole day, and hardly ever think in the least about my confounded book which half-killed me. I much wish I could hear of your taking a real rest. I know how very strong you are, mentally, but I never will believe you can go on working as you have worked of late with impunity. You will some day stretch the string too tight. Farewell, my good, and kind, and dear friend,

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO T.H. HUXLEY. Ilkley, Otley, Yorks.h.i.+re, October 15th [1859].

My dear Huxley,

I am here hydropathising and coming to life again, after having finished my accursed book, which would have been easy work to any one else, but half-killed me. I have thought you would give me one bit of information, and I know not to whom else to apply; viz., the addresses of Barrande, Von Siebold, Keyserling (I dare say Sir Roderick would know the latter).

Can you tell me of any good and SPECULATIVE foreigners to whom it would be worth while to send copies of my book, on the 'Origin of Species'?

I doubt whether it is worth sending to Siebold. I should like to send a few copies about, but how many I can afford I know not yet till I hear what price Murray affixes.

I need not say that I will send, of course, one to you, in the first week of November. I hope to send copies abroad immediately. I shall be INTENSELY curious to hear what effect the book produces on you. I know that there will be much in it which you will object to, and I do not doubt many errors. I am very far from expecting to convert you to many of my heresies; but if, on the whole, you and two or three others think I am on the right road, I shall not care what the mob of naturalists think. The penultimate chapter (Chapter XIII. is on Cla.s.sification, Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs.), though I believe it includes the truth, will, I much fear, make you savage. Do not act and say, like Macleay versus Fleming, "I write with aqua fortis to bite into bra.s.s."

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Ilkley, Yorks.h.i.+re, October 20th [1859].

My dear Lyell,

I have been reading over all your letters consecutively, and I do not feel that I have thanked you half enough for the extreme pleasure which they have given me, and for their utility. I see in them evidence of fluctuation in the degree of credence you give to the theory; nor am I at all surprised at this, for many and many fluctuations I have undergone.

There is one point in your letter which I did not notice, about the animals (and many plants) naturalised in Australia, which you think could not endure without man's aid. I cannot see how man does aid the feral cattle. But, letting that pa.s.s, you seem to think, that because they suffer prodigious destruction during droughts, that they would all be destroyed. In the "gran secos" of La Plata, the indigenous animals, such as the American deer, die by thousands, and suffer apparently as much as the cattle. In parts of India, after a drought, it takes ten or more years before the indigenous mammals get up to their full number again. Your argument would, I think, apply to the aborigines as well as to the feral.

An animal or plant which becomes feral in one small territory might be destroyed by climate, but I can hardly believe so, when once feral over several large territories. Again, I feel inclined to swear at climate: do not think me impudent for attacking you about climate. You say you doubt whether man could have existed under the Eocene climate, but man can now withstand the climate of Esquimaux-land and West Equatorial Africa; and surely you do not think the Eocene climate differed from the present throughout all Europe, as much as the Arctic regions differ from Equatorial Africa?

With respect to organisms being created on the American type in America, it might, I think, be said that they were so created to prevent them being too well created, so as to beat the aborigines; but this seems to me, somehow, a monstrous doctrine.

I have reflected a good deal on what you say on the necessity of continued intervention of creative power. I cannot see this necessity; and its admission, I think, would make the theory of Natural Selection valueless. Grant a simple Archetypal creature, like the Mud-fish or Lepidosiren, with the five senses and some vestige of mind, and I believe natural selection will account for the production of every vertebrate animal.

Farewell; forgive me for indulging in this prose, and believe me, with cordial thanks,

Your ever attached disciple, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--When, and if, you reread, I supplicate you to write on the margin the word "expand," when too condensed, or "not clear." or "?." Such marks would cost you little trouble, and I could copy them and reflect on them, and their value would be infinite to me.

My larger book will have to be wholly re-written, and not merely the present volume expanded; so that I want to waste as little time over this volume as possible, if another edition be called for; but I fear the subject will be too perplexing, as I have treated it, for general public.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Ilkley, Yorks.h.i.+re, Sunday [October 23rd, 1859].

My dear Hooker,

I congratulate you on your 'Introduction' ("Australian Flora".) being in fact finished. I am sure from what I read of it (and deeply I shall be interested in reading it straight through), that it must have cost you a prodigious amount of labour and thought. I shall like very much to see the sheet, which you wish me to look at. Now I am so completely a gentleman, that I have sometimes a little difficulty to pa.s.s the day; but it is astonis.h.i.+ng how idle a three weeks I have pa.s.sed. If it is any comfort to you, pray delude yourself by saying that you intend "sticking to humdrum science." But I believe it just as much as if a plant were to say that, "I have been growing all my life, and, by Jove, I will stop growing." You cannot help yourself; you are not clever enough for that.

You could not even remain idle, as I have done, for three weeks! What you say about Lyell pleases me exceedingly; I had not at all inferred from his letters that he had come so much round. I remember thinking, above a year ago, that if ever I lived to see Lyell, yourself, and Huxley come round, partly by my book, and partly by their own reflections, I should feel that the subject is safe, and all the world might rail, but that ultimately the theory of Natural Selection (though, no doubt, imperfect in its present condition, and embracing many errors) would prevail. Nothing will ever convince me that three such men, with so much diversified knowledge, and so well accustomed to search for truth, could err greatly. I have spoken of you here as a convert made by me; but I know well how much larger the share has been of your own self-thought. I am intensely curious to hear Huxley's opinion of my book. I fear my long discussion on Cla.s.sification will disgust him; for it is much opposed to what he once said to me.

But, how I am running on. You see how idle I am; but I have so enjoyed your letter that you must forgive me. With respect to migration during the glacial period: I think Lyell quite comprehends, for he has given me a supporting fact. But, perhaps, he unconsciously hates (do not say so to him) the view as slightly staggering him on his favourite theory of all changes of climate being due to changes in the relative position of land and water.

I will send copies of my book to all the men specified by you;... you would be so kind as to add t.i.tle, as Doctor, or Professor, or Monsieur, or Von, and initials (when wanted), and addresses to the names on the enclosed list, and let me have it pretty SOON, as towards the close of this week Murray says the copies to go abroad will be ready. I am anxious to get my view generally known, and not, I hope and think, for mere personal conceit...

CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Ilkley, Yorks.h.i.+re, October 25th [1859].