We have seen in the last chapter that whenever men have actively thought they have attempted to explain the origin of plants and animals as well as of themselves. No one who wrote previous to the time of Charles Darwin had expressed any idea concerning this matter with force enough to convince any large portion of the thinking world. If Lamarck had fallen on better times, if the great Cuvier had not laughed him to scorn, if Goethe had found him out and made him known to the world, evolution might have come into its own sooner. None of these conditions arose, and it remained for Charles Darwin to give to the world in clear and cogent form the thought of evolution. He gathered so much material before he expressed his opinions, and looked at the matter from so many sides that, when he published his results, he had foreseen most of the objections which were subsequently to arise in opposition to his announcement. Charles Darwin is recognized to-day as the father of the evolutionary movement.

It has been sometimes said in recent years that Darwinism is dead, and there is a sense in which this is true. Unmodified and unassisted natural selection is not to-day considered by most scientists a sufficient agent for producing evolution. But everyone connected with the subject acknowledges Darwin as the master, and says that it was his work which converted the world to a belief in evolution. We can have no better preparation for an intelligent understanding of this subject than to consider carefully the life of this remarkable man and the circumstances under which he came to his epoch-making conclusions.

Evolution has taught us to attempt as far as may be to account for man on the basis of his heredity or of his environment. It is interesting to note that both of these factors in Darwin’s case were entirely favorable. In the latter part of the eighteenth century Erasmus Darwin had given to the world an astonishing poem in which he anticipated not a little of the thought which his more famous grandson was to make so widely known. Josiah Wedgwood had learned to make for England her most famous pottery, no quality of which was more widely recognized than the sterling patience with which it was made. Erasmus Darwin, with his scientific proclivities, and Josiah Wedgwood, with his sturdy common sense and patient workmanship, united to give Charles Darwin his inherited tastes, for he was a grandson of both. Born in 1809, on the banks of the Severn in England, Charles Darwin was the delicate son of a practicing physician of modest but sufficient means. Owing to his lack of early vigor, Darwin spent much time in the open air, and in his excursions about his home was chiefly interested in collecting beetles. This taste, which lasted through all his young manhood, is the one early indication of the traits that were later to develop. At first in the day-school and later in the preparatory school Charles Darwin was anything but a satisfactory student. Even a kindly desire later to make the most of him makes it impossible to find traces of any especial fondness for earnest study. He himself believed his education to have been nearly useless, although he doubtless under-estimated its value. At the age of sixteen he went to Edinburgh at his father’s desire, to study medicine. The sight of the dissecting-room nauseated him completely, and he refused to continue working in it. Later an operation which he witnessed in a clinic at the hospital sickened him so thoroughly that he declined to attend further operations. It became evident that the young man was not adapted to the life of a physician. The next move was to educate him for the church, and for this purpose, at the age of nineteen, he went to Cambridge. Here it soon appeared that he was no better adapted to the ministry than he was to the practice of medicine, and his university career went on in very desultory fashion. Most of his work was distinctly neglected, but two of the men he met there were to influence largely his future life. Henslow, the botanist, was unusually fond, for a professor in those days, of work in the field. Charles Darwin’s tastes coincided with those of Henslow, with whom he formed an intimate friendship. He was always welcomed as a companion on the field trips. Though he studied little of botany in the classroom or laboratory, he was constantly with Henslow or with Sedgwick in the field. Sedgwick was the professor of geology, and of him Darwin was particularly fond, and under him did much the largest amount of his study. When he came up for graduation he ranked tenth of those who “did not go in for honors,” a not very remarkable class standing. He was still required to put in two years of residence, and during this interval he spent most of his time with Sedgwick in the study of geology in the field. Returning to his home after a geological trip into Wales, Darwin found awaiting him a letter from Henslow, offering him an appointment that opened to his ardent mind the door to a career after his own heart.

The British nation, being the greatest commercial nation of the globe, has the greatest need for accurate charts of all the seas. Frequently she has sent out great charting expeditions to various parts of the world. One of these was to go out in Her Majesty’s ship, Beagle, for a voyage around the world. Captain Fitzroy was in command, and he was especially commissioned to map the coast of South America from La Plata to Cape Horn and up the western side. In addition to this work, by carrying a set of accurate chronometers, he was to check up the longitude of the various ports to be visited in this circumnavigation of the globe. It was customary on such expeditions to carry a young man whose duty it was to study the natural history of the countries visited on the trip. The salary of such a naturalist was so small that an experienced man could scarcely afford to take the place. Therefore the appointment usually went to a man rather of promise than of achievement. Through Henslow’s influence, Charles Darwin was offered this position in 1831. Darwin hastened to obtain his father’s permission, but the elder Darwin at first declined to consider the matter. He felt that his son had not made such use of his time at the university as warranted the hope that much could be expected of such a journey. He believed it necessary that Charles should have some means of earning an adequate living before he could think of devoting his time to science. Charles found an efficient advocate in the person of his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood, Jr. Together they persuaded the father of the propriety of giving to Charles this opportunity to follow out his real tastes and ambitions. Accordingly, at the age of twenty-two, we find him embarked on a journey around the world. In the cabin of the Beagle he had abundant time, in his long sail across the Atlantic, to read the two volumes of Lyell’s “Elements of Geology,” which Henslow had handed him, with the suggestion that he read it, but on no account believe it. Filled with the love of geology as Darwin was, this epoch-making book was exactly the stimulus needed. Lyell had just begun to persuade the world that to understand the past we must study the present. In the forces now at work he saw cause enough to account for all the history of the past of the earth.

There is little doubt that this book was one of the most potent factors in determining the bent of Darwin’s mind. His entire educational experience had failed to appeal to him. It is fortunate, we now know, that this was the case. If the university course of the time had really seized him it would have made but one more student like hundreds it was turning out each year. For most of us this is the happy event. Now and then comes the rare spirit to whom all of this fails to appeal because he is ready for something better. Such was the spirit of Charles Darwin. He started on his journey with a mind singularly free from prepossessions. In the long hours of this sailing voyage across the Atlantic Ocean Darwin had time to read and ponder Lyell’s weighty words. By the time he reached the Brazilian shore he was filled with Lyell’s conception that the present is the child of the past, developing out of it in orderly sequence. Lyell expressly denied that this is true of the animal and plant world. He applied it only to the face of the earth, with its mountains of uplift and its valleys of erosion. But the underlying principle of an orderly development under the action of natural causes was there. In Darwin’s mind this at once found acceptance, and was destined to a fruition its author had expressly disclaimed.

The narrative of this voyage, as subsequently written, describes the islands visited by the Beagle in crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The contrast between the simple and general interest in these islands and the care with which Darwin described the Galapagos and the Keeling Atoll visited later in the voyage are speaking evidence of the rapid development going on in the mind of the young naturalist.

Reaching the shore of South America, Darwin first turns to its geology. But before long the animal life attracts his attention. In the Brazilian forest Darwin had his first experience of the wealth of animal and plant life in the tropics, and, like all naturalists, he was very enthusiastic over it. Among the animals that particularly attracted his attention was the sloth, a peculiar creature climbing slowly about the trees, small of size and sluggish of habit. Another animal that interested him greatly was the little armadillo with its interesting habit of curling up in its plated skin.

Captain Fitzroy soon finished what work he was required to do in this neighborhood, and Darwin was called back to the Beagle to continue his voyage. When they arrived at the mouth of La Plata their most serious work began. Here there was much tedious charting for Fitzroy, and Darwin could now leave the vessel for a lengthy trip on shore. This was doubly welcome. Seasickness was nearly constant with Darwin while on this entire voyage and every opportunity to work on land was eagerly seized. This region, too, was rich in objects of interest and in strange people. While exploring the pampas, beyond Buenos Ayres, Darwin came across the skeletons of the great mammals some of which Cuvier had previously described. He studied these bones with much care, and recognized at once in the mégathérium a great similarity in structure to the sloth he had seen in Brazil. The enormous skeletons of the glyptodons struck him also as strangely similar to that of the armadillo. One evening, seated alone in the broad expanse of the pampas, the idea suddenly swept over him, stimulated, of course, by his study of Lyell: “Can it be that the little armadillo and the sloth of to-day are the degenerate descendants of the enormous mégathérium and glyptodon of the past?” But his mind was not yet ready to accept so bold an idea and he swept it aside.

The people of this wild neighborhood interested Darwin very greatly, and he describes them with care. In this connection a charming trait of Darwin’s character comes beautifully in evidence. The absolute purity of his mind, his utter freedom from grossness, shows clearly in his account of the first really semi-civilized people he had ever seen.

A little later, while exploring Patagonia, Darwin noticed the terrace-like formation of that desolate country. A flat near the sea was succeeded by a rapid rise, then came another flat. Three of these terraces in succession stretch back toward the Andes. At the base of the high terraces Darwin found marine shells, largely similar to those of the ocean beach so many miles to the east. His study of Lyell led him to suspect at once that this portion of South America had been raised in successive stages out of the bed of the Pacific. When they passed around Cape Horn and up the western coast he hunted for similar beach marks on the sheer western face of the Andes, and found them without difficulty, confirming his idea of the recent rise of this end of the Andean chain.

The Beagle continued its voyage up the western coast of South America until it reached Peru. Once more the abundance of tropical life is under Darwin’s eyes, but now it is the life of an entirely different section. The dry climate of Peru furnished him with an environment distinctly unlike that of the moist Brazilian forest. He collects now with avidity, gathering especially insects and birds. Then the ship turned its prow westward across the Pacific, only to stop five hundred miles out at the Galapagos Islands. This little group he studied intensely, collecting large numbers of insects and birds. He had not worked over his collection long before he realized that each island in the group had peculiarities which marked its animals from those of any other island. Whenever two islands were close together in the group the differences in their fauna were found to be comparatively slight. If, however, he examined the animals from two islands lying at opposite ends of the group, the differences were always considerably greater. There was, however, a strong general resemblance among them all and a distant though not so strong resemblance to the corresponding animals of the Peruvian coast. On leaving the Galapagos group, Charles Darwin writes in his diary the suggestive observation that this little group of rocky islands seems to be one of the greatest centers of creative activity. It was this interesting resemblance of the animals of these islands to each other and to those of the Peruvian coast that finally persuaded Darwin that they were all related and were all descended from those of Peru. For the rest of his life, with an intensity which increased with each year, Darwin persisted in a patient search for the possible agencies by which such change could have been brought about. The problem, however, was temporarily eclipsed by a pressing geological question aroused by his visit to the Keeling Atoll. Here his investigation of coral reef formation absolutely captivated him. In the case of most coral islands in the Pacific Ocean the reef exists as a circle of coral enclosing a lagoon of water. In the center of this lagoon stands commonly a rocky island. It is plain that this is the foundation on which the coral built. But, in the case of the Atoll, the coral ring was present and so was the internal lagoon, but there was no rocky island. The key to the solution came with an interesting discovery. Darwin began to put down a grappling iron on the outer side of the reef and to drag up coral. The farther away from the reef he went the deeper was the water from whose bottom he pulled the coral. What at first puzzled him was the fact that so long as he dragged up his coral from depths of a hundred feet or less the coral was alive. Whenever he went to depths of much more than a hundred feet, his coral was always dead, though he was evidently pulling it from situations in which it had grown. Then Darwin remembered the rising Andes, lifting themselves out of the bed of the Pacific. Here was the correlated movement. The bottom of the ocean here was sinking. As it sank it dragged down the corals with it. But the descent was so slow that new corals could build on top of the others fast enough to keep the reef up to the surface of the water. At the rate of growth of coral, this would seem to mean that the bottom could be sinking at a rate of only a few feet a century. But while the reef could keep up to the surface, the rocky island must slowly sink. Darwin inferred that there must be a rocky summit within the lagoon, below the surface of the water. A little sounding soon discovered this island, and the verification of Darwin’s theory of coral reef formation was at hand. The description of this Atoll and of his theory of its formation won for Darwin the esteem of geologists when he later presented it in book form.

The voyage was continued around the Cape of Good Hope. Pursuing the usual course of sailing vessels, the Beagle touched once more at Brazil, returning home to England in 1836, after an absence of five years. Charles Darwin himself believed this trip to have been both his education and his opportunity. He had started on it a rather careless and indifferent student. He returned from it the most painstaking and patient naturalist the world has ever known. His father, who had hardly consented to his going because he believed him not stable enough to be intrusted to his own devices for so long a period, was profoundly moved at the sight of him on his return. Believing in phrenology, as did many of the physicians of his time, his father turned to his mother and said, “Look at the shape of his head; it is quite altered”; which, translated into the language of to-day, would read, “How wonderfully the young man has developed.”

A part of Charles Darwin’s duty to the British Government was to write a narrative of the voyage, and this account of his trip upon the Beagle is one of the great classics of travel in the English language. It won the confidence and respect of a wide circle of readers. In his next book he published his observations made at the Keeling Atoll and announced his theory of the formation of coral islands. This was a distinctly scientific investigation, and it won such immediate favor among geologists as to increase materially the young man’s reputation. No one man is ever widely enough acquainted with the animal world to classify all the specimens gathered on such an expedition. In accordance with custom, Darwin began distributing his collections among specialists. Each of these was to identify and describe, to name, if necessary, the kind of material he knew best. Among others, Darwin had a considerable collection of barnacles gathered from boats and wharves in all parts of the world. As he could find no one sufficiently acquainted with these creatures to classify them he decided reluctantly to work them up himself. For about eight years much of his spare time was given to this painfully exacting work. He expresses himself as fearing it was a waste of time. Few systematic workers will agree with him. He did his work so well that it has been unnecessary for anyone to do it again. In addition it gained him the esteem of a new circle of scientists and that a decidedly exclusive circle.

The publication of these books did much for Darwin. His narrative of the voyage gained the good will of cultured England in general. The book on coral reefs won the geologists. His “Manual of the Cirrhipedia” (as the barnacle book was called) secured the attention of systematic zooelogists. The time was not far distant when he would need every aid possible toward gaining and keeping the regard of men; for he was to promulgate a theory that would arouse the bitterest opposition and the keenest scorn.

All the while Darwin was working on these books his mind was quietly busying itself with what he called the species question. The more he studied the material collected on his long tour, the more confident he became that the animals of the present are the altered descendants of the animals of the past. He tried patiently to work out every conceivable hypothesis to see whether he could account for the alteration. He felt quite sure animals changed, but how they changed, and why, he could not for a long time conceive. He knew that gardeners were constantly producing new varieties of plants, and that animals of various breeds were clearly the descendants of other and familiar varieties. Accordingly he began to study the methods of animal and plant breeders, to visit their farms, to open correspondence with them and read all their trade journals, to undertake experiments in the breeding of plants. The longer he worked the more confident he became of the reality of the change; but for a long time no glimmer of the cause by which it could be brought about came to his mind. In 1838 he came across a book by Malthus called “An Essay on Population,” in which the author shows that, whereas man increases by a geometric ratio, he cannot hope to increase his food supply in more than an arithmetic ratio. That is, while the food might increase like the series 2-4-6-8-10, the population would increase like the series 2-4-8-16-32. On this basis it is only a question of time when the earth will be too full of people for it to be possible for the food to sustain them. Malthus added many observations and suggestions, but this is as much of the book as interests us in this connection. Here was the idea that suggested to Darwin his agency for producing the change of the animals of the past into those of the present.

The number of animals of any particular species remains practically the same. There may be a few more one year, and a few less another, but on the average, year by year, the number of toads, the number of blacksnakes, the number of field mice, remains sensibly the same. Sometimes the rise of man brings an end to the wild population, and so in the past animals have dropped out of the race. Yet in the long run and for a considerable time the number of any species is constant. But each animal produces offspring in quantities sufficient to far more than replace himself as he dies out. In other words, animals increase not by addition but by multiplication. Too many are born for all of them to live. What becomes of the great mass of them? The answer is they die; most of them die young. Only a few fortunate individuals, favored by being a little stronger, a little more cunning, a little more attractively colored than their mates, survive to carry on the race.

The skillful gardener, looking over his flowers, finds a plant of more than ordinary beauty and thrift of growth. When it comes to maturity he keeps its seeds separate from those of the rest and next year plants them by themselves. As they come up he weeds out all unthrifty plants, only allowing the strongest to come to maturity. As they break into bloom he plucks away all whose flowers do not come up to the high standard he has set for himself. After a while he has but a few plants left, but these are the thriftiest and bear the most beautiful flowers. Again he allows these to mature and selects the seed of the very finest. Next year the process is repeated. After a few generations, usually three if the man is skillful enough, he has a definite strain of flowers that will thereafter come true. This is the process of artificial selection as carried on by man.

Darwin saw that Nature is constantly carrying on a similar process. She produces seeds enough on almost any plant to clothe the world in a few years if all of them could fall into proper ground and thrive like their parents. A friend of mine found a mullein stalk that bore more than seven hundred seed pods and averaged more than nine hundred seeds to the pod, a total of more than six hundred and thirty thousand seeds. If each of these could find lodgment on a plot eighteen inches square, produce a similar number of seeds and plant them all, the result would be overwhelming. The fourth generation would cover land and sea, from pole to pole, one hundred layers deep. But there is no such danger. Year by year the mulleins hold their own and no more. Any particular field may have more or less, but in the long run the average for a district is about the same. Some of the seeds are poor and thin. These scarcely sprout. Others spring up into thin-skinned plants, and the first frost nips them. Still others lack the woolly coating in its finest abundance, and the browsing animals eat these. Others lack power to put out a wide-ranging root supply and the first drought kills these. Still others fail to send up a vigorous stem and the passing animal knocks them over and they die. Of the few that are still surviving, some produce such small and inconspicuous blossoms that the insects scarcely see them, and they go unfertilized. In the end only the aristocrats of the group are left, aristocrats in the best sense of the word. These are strong, thrifty, and beautiful, and are provided with every defense known to the mullein world. From these the mulleins of the next generation will spring. Again Nature will select the best of these, by a repetition of the same process. Thus year by year the stock is improved. Any new feature that is favorable helps its possessor to survive, and, if happily mated, will show itself after a while in the entire group. This, in brief, is the underlying idea of Natural Selection, as Darwin conceived it.

In 1842, at Lyell’s suggestion, Darwin wrote a short sketch of his ideas which he, two years later, expanded into a somewhat larger account. The manuscript of these early views of the theory was completely lost and has only been recovered within the last few years. It was recently published under the editorship of Charles Darwin’s son, Francis. It is astonishing to see how clearly the first short sketch states the underlying conception which all of Darwin’s subsequent work amplifies. Hooker was constantly urging Darwin to write out his whole theory in the form of a book, and Darwin had begun to do so in 1856.

Meanwhile, down in the Moluccas, Alfred Russell Wallace had been lying sick of a fever contracted during his exploring expedition in that neighborhood. He had been studying the distribution of the animal life of the Malay Archipelago. Overcome by sickness, as he lay in bed, he began to think over a book which he had read not long before, “Malthus on Population.” Wallace had been pondering on the question of the origin of the animals of the Malay Archipelago. He had not the faintest knowledge of what Darwin was doing, but was influenced, of course, like Darwin, by what he read in Malthus. Interesting to relate, he had come to exactly the same conclusions, writing his opinions in the form of an essay. By the strangest sort of coincidence, he sent this essay to Charles Darwin, asking him to read it, and, if he thought it was not altogether too foolish, to send it to Lyell for publication by the Linnaean Society. Darwin read with utter astonishment this essay containing views so absolutely like those that had come to him from his own long series of observations and reflections. With uncommon magnanimity his first impulse was to withhold his own publication entirely, but to this Lyell and Hooker would not for a moment consent. They were determined that Darwin should give them his long series of notebooks as evidence of the independence of his work and that he present to the Linnaean Society, simultaneously with Wallace’s paper, one of his own upon the same subject. In this manly form both essays were read at the next meeting of the society. The joint papers provoked instant discussion and prompt opposition. The world at large scarcely admitted a possible doubt of the fixity of species. Men generally believed the idea to be absolutely irreconcilable with their religious faith. Any question of the fact that the species of to-day exist practically as they had been handed down to the earth in the beginning by the Creator himself seemed to most men a direct blow at religion. At this time a very large number of natural scientists were clergymen, hence the opposition had abundant and influential support. The storm grew fiercer and more widespread. The publication in 1859 of Darwin’s great book on “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life” added fuel to the flame.

In 1860 the British Association met in Oxford, and Bishop Wilberforce, the retiring president, in accordance with the custom of the society, gave a summary of the advance of science, especially during the preceding year. Everyone knew perfectly that the bishop would deal with the species question, and that he would handle it severely. Darwin was prevented by his usual ill health from being present at this meeting, but Huxley was there to see that their side of the question received proper attention. The bishop made a lengthy address, in the major portion of which he brought forward entirely worthy objections to Darwin’s theories. Toward its close his feelings overmastered him and he departed from his manuscript and unburdened his mind. The lack of stenographers in those days and the tenseness of the moment, which made everyone forget to take down what was said, make it impossible to tell exactly what happened. It seems that Bishop Wilberforce, appealing to the prejudices of his audience, said, in language that now seems ludicrous but then was terribly bitter: “However, any of us might be willing to consider ourselves descended from an ape upon his father’s side, no one would so demean his mother’s memory as to imagine that she could possibly have shared in this descent.” Huxley, who had waited patiently for the close of the bishop’s address, saw immediately the fatal mistake. Turning to his companion beside him, he said, “The Lord has delivered the Philistine into my hands,” and, rising, he hurled back at the bishop the indignant reply, “I should far rather owe my origin to an ape than I would owe it to a man who would use great gifts to obscure the truth.” The bishop had made the mistake, and the struggle was on. Year by year it raged. One by one the scientists, first of England, and then of Germany, took their stand by Darwin. Huxley in England and Haeckel in Germany were the foremost advocates of the Darwinian idea. Long and fiercely the battle raged; slowly and gradually men began to see that, instead of undermining religion, the idea of evolution uplifted creation and made it not a strange happening in the distant past, but a divine activity through all time. But the battle had by no means subsided when one day came the sad news that Darwin’s heart, so long feeble, so serious a hindrance to his work, had beaten its last on April 19, 1882.

His own people wished to bury Darwin quietly at his home in Down, but Darwin now belonged to the nation. A petition signed by many public men was sent to the Dean of Westminster, asking that his body might be granted burial in the Abbey. Probably no greater honor can come to man to-day, and fortunately Dean Bradbury was broad-minded enough to acquiesce. So it came to pass that the church that had so long believed him her enemy, that had first so bitterly fought him, came at length to see that he added a new dignity and worth to her faith, and took him to her bosom. Darwin’s body lies buried in the Abbey.

In all the glorious company of immortal dead whose earthly frames are gathered in England’s great mausoleum, there is no other one who has done so much to modify the mind of thinking man.