Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II Part 8

The chapter on HYBRIDISM is not a WEAK, but a STRONG chapter. You have done wonders there. But still you have not accounted, as you may be held to account, for divergence up to a certain extent producing increased fertility of the crosses, but carried one short almost imperceptible step more, giving rise to sterility, or reversing the tendency. Very likely you are on the right track; but you have something to do yet in that department.

Enough for the present.

... I am not insensible to your compliments, the very high compliment which you pay me in valuing my opinion. You evidently think more of it than I do, though from the way I write [to] you, and especially [to]

Hooker, this might not be inferred from the reading of my letters.

I am free to say that I never learnt so much from one book as I have from yours, there remain a thousand things I long to say about it.

Ever yours, ASA GRAY.

CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. [February? 1860].

... Now I will just run through some points in your letter. What you say about my book gratifies me most deeply, and I wish I could feel all was deserved by me. I quite think a review from a man, who is not an entire convert, if fair and moderately favourable, is in all respects the best kind of review. About the weak points I agree. The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder, but when I think of the fine known gradations, my reason tells me I ought to conquer the cold shudder.

Pray kindly remember and tell Prof. Wyman how very grateful I should be for any hints, information, or criticisms. I have the highest respect for his opinion. I am so sorry about Dana's health. I have already asked him to pay me a visit.

Farewell, you have laid me under a load of obligation--not that I feel it a load. It is the highest possible gratification to me to think that you have found my book worth reading and reflection; for you and three others I put down in my own mind as the judges whose opinions I should value most of all.

My dear Gray, yours most sincerely, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I feel pretty sure, from my own experience, that if you are led by your studies to keep the subject of the origin of species before your mind, you will go further and further in your belief. It took me long years, and I a.s.sure you I am astonished at the impression my book has made on many minds. I fear twenty years ago, I should not have been half as candid and open to conviction.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, [January 31st, 1860].

My dear Hooker,

I have resolved to publish a little sketch of the progress of opinion on the change of species. Will you or Mrs. Hooker do me the favour to copy ONE sentence out of Naudin's paper in the 'Revue Horticole,' 1852, page 103, namely, that on his principle of Finalite. Can you let me have it soon, with those confounded dashes over the vowels put in carefully? Asa Gray, I believe, is going to get a second edition of my book, and I want to send this little preface over to him soon. I did not think of the necessity of having Naudin's sentence on finality, otherwise I would have copied it.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I shall end by just alluding to your Australian Flora Introduction. What was the date of publication: December 1859, or January 1860? Please answer this.

My preface will also do for the French edition, which I BELIEVE, is agreed on.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. February [1860].

... As the 'Origin' now stands, Harvey's (William Henry Harvey was descended from a Quaker family of Youghal, and was born in February, 1811, at Summerville, a country house on the banks of the Shannon. He died at Torquay in 1866. In 1835, Harvey went to Africa (Table Bay) to pursue his botanical studies, the results of which were given in his 'Genera of South African Plants.' In 1838, ill-health compelled him to obtain leave of absence, and return to England for a time; in 1840 he returned to Cape Town, to be again compelled by illness to leave. In 1843 he obtained the appointment of Botanical Professor at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1854, 1855, and 1856 he visited Australia, New Zealand, the Friendly and Fiji Islands. In 1857 Dr. Harvey reached home, and was appointed the successor of Professor Allman to the Chair of Botany in Dublin University. He was author of several botanical works, princ.i.p.ally on Algae.--(From a Memoir published in 1869.)) is a good hit against my talking so much of the insensibly fine gradations; and certainly it has astonished me that I should be pelted with the fact, that I had not allowed abrupt and great enough variations under nature.

It would take a good deal more evidence to make me admit that forms have often changed by saltum.

Have you seen Wollaston's attack in the 'Annals'? ('Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' 1860.) The stones are beginning to fly. But Theology has more to do with these two attacks than Science...

[In the above letter a paper by Harvey in the "Gardeners' Chronicle", February 18, 1860, is alluded to. He describes a case of monstrosity in Begonia frigida, in which the "sport" differed so much from a normal Begonia that it might have served as the type of a distinct natural order. Harvey goes on to argue that such a case is hostile to the theory of natural selection, according to which changes are not supposed to take place per saltum, and adds that "a few such cases would overthrow it [Mr. Darwin's hypothesis] altogether." In the following number of the "Gardeners' Chronicle" Sir J.D. Hooker showed that Dr. Harvey had misconceived the bearing of the Begonia case, which he further showed to be by no means calculated to shake the validity of the doctrine of modification by means of natural selection. My father mentions the Begonia case in a letter to Lyell (February 18, 1860):--

"I send by this post an attack in the "Gardeners' Chronicle", by Harvey (a first-rate Botanist, as you probably know). It seems to me rather strange; he a.s.sumes the permanence of monsters, whereas, monsters are generally sterile, and not often inheritable. But grant his case, it comes that I have been too cautious in not admitting great and sudden variations. Here again comes in the mischief of my ABSTRACT. In the fuller MS. I have discussed a parallel case of a normal fish like the monstrous gold-fish."

With reference to Sir J.D. Hooker's reply, my father wrote:]

Down, [February 26th, 1860].

My dear Hooker,

Your answer to Harvey seems to me ADMIRABLY good. You would have made a gigantic fortune as a barrister. What an omission of Harvey's about the graduated state of the flowers! But what strikes me most is that surely I ought to know my own book best, yet, by Jove, you have brought forward ever so many arguments which I did not think of! Your reference to cla.s.sification (viz. I presume to such cases as Aspicarpa) is EXCELLENT, for the monstrous Begonia no doubt in all details would be Begonia. I did not think of this, nor of the RETROGRADE step from separated s.e.xes to an hermaphrodite state; nor of the lessened fertility of the monster.

Proh pudor to me.

The world would say what a lawyer has been lost in a MERE botanist!

Farewell, my dear master in my own subject,

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

I am so heartily pleased to see that you approve of the chapter on Cla.s.sification.

I wonder what Harvey will say. But no one hardly, I think, is able at first to see when he is beaten in an argument.

[The following letters refer to the first translation (1860) of the 'Origin of Species' into German, which was superintended by H.G. Bronn, a good zoologist and palaeontologist, who was at the time at Freiburg, but afterwards Professor at Heidelberg. I have been told that the translation was not a success, it remained an obvious translation, and was correspondingly unpleasant to read. Bronn added to the translation an appendix of the difficulties that occurred to him. For instance, how can natural selection account for differences between species, when these differences appear to be of no service to their possessors; e.g., the length of the ears and tail, or the folds in the enamel of the teeth of various species of rodents? Krause, in his book, 'Charles Darwin,'

page 91, criticises Bronn's conduct in this manner, but it will be seen that my father actually suggested the addition of Bronn's remarks. A more serious charge against Bronn made by Krause (op. cit. page 87) is that he left out pa.s.sages of which he did not approve, as, for instance, the pa.s.sage ('Origin,' first edition, page 488) "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." I have no evidence as to whether my father did or did not know of these alterations.]

CHARLES DARWIN TO H.G. BRONN. Down, February 4 [1860].

Dear and much honoured Sir,

I thank you sincerely for your most kind letter; I feared that you would much disapprove of the 'Origin,' and I sent it to you merely as a mark of my sincere respect. I shall read with much interest your work on the productions of Islands whenever I receive it. I thank you cordially for the notice in the 'Neues Jahrbuch fur Mineralogie,' and still more for speaking to Schweitzerbart about a translation; for I am most anxious that the great and intellectual German people should know something about my book.

I have told my publisher to send immediately a copy of the NEW (Second edition.) edition to Schweitzerbart, and I have written to Schweitzerbart that I gave up all right to profit for myself, so that I hope a translation will appear. I fear that the book will be difficult to translate, and if you could advise Schweitzerbart about a GOOD translator, it would be of very great service. Still more, if you would run your eye over the more difficult parts of the translation; but this is too great a favour to expect. I feel sure that it will be difficult to translate, from being so much condensed.

Again I thank you for your n.o.ble and generous sympathy, and I remain, with entire respect,

Yours, truly obliged, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--The new edition has some few corrections, and I will send in MS. some additional corrections, and a short historical preface, to Schweitzerbart.

How interesting you could make the work by EDITING (I do not mean translating) the work, and appending notes of REFUTATION or confirmation. The book has sold so very largely in England, that an editor would, I think, make profit by the translation.

CHARLES DARWIN TO H.G. BRONN. Down, February 14 [1860].

My dear and much honoured Sir,

I thank you cordially for your extreme kindness in superintending the translation. I have mentioned this to some eminent scientific men, and they all agree that you have done a n.o.ble and generous service. If I am proved quite wrong, yet I comfort myself in thinking that my book may do some good, as truth can only be known by rising victorious from every attack. I thank you also much for the review, and for the kind manner in which you speak of me. I send with this letter some corrections and additions to M. Schweitzerbart, and a short historical preface. I am not much acquainted with German authors, as I read German very slowly; therefore I do not know whether any Germans have advocated similar views with mine; if they have, would you do me the favour to insert a foot-note to the preface? M. Schweitzerbart has now the reprint ready for a translator to begin. Several scientific men have thought the term "Natural Selection" good, because its meaning is NOT obvious, and each man could not put on it his own interpretation, and because it at once connects variation under domestication and nature. Is there any a.n.a.logous term used by German breeders of animals? "Adelung," enn.o.bling, would, perhaps, be too metaphysical. It is folly in me, but I cannot help doubting whether "Wahl der Lebensweise" expresses my notion. It leaves the impression on my mind of the Lamarckian doctrine (which I reject) of habits of life being al-important. Man has altered, and thus improved the English race-horse by SELECTING successive fleeter individuals; and I believe, owing to the struggle for existence, that similar SLIGHT variations in a wild horse, IF ADVANTAGEOUS TO IT, would be SELECTED or PRESERVED by nature; hence Natural Selection. But I apologise for troubling you with these remarks on the importance of choosing good German terms for "Natural Selection." With my heartfelt thanks, and with sincere respect,

I remain, dear Sir, yours very sincerely, CHARLES DARWIN.