Charles Darwin. The Centenary of his Birth

Editor’s note: The text was first transcribed in Manchester Evening News – 04 February 1909. The author is unknown but it is an excellent mini biography of Darwin’s life. The emphasis are my own. Many of Darwin’s biographies & unique sketches can be found here.

In the sixties many honest, intelligent gentlemen held the opinion that Darwin, the centenary of whose birth is on Thursday next, was a madman, if not something worse. It was said of him in tones of deepest scorn, “He is the man who believes we are descended from monkeys.” That was enough in most cases to put him entirely out of court.

Since then events have moved; the evolution theory has become generally, if not entirely, accepted. The most orthodox have been heard to admit that that piece of work, man, “so infinite in faculty, so noble in reason,” may have evolved from a lower order of being, and that Darwin, after all, may have propounded the right theory.

The eminent scientist, for all admit his eminence, who so startled the world nearly 50 years ago, was a native of Shrewsbury, and lived from February 12, 1809 to April 19, 1882, when a grateful nation buried him with high honours in Westminster Abbey. The son of a doctor he was the youngest but one of a family of six. His mother dying when he was eight years old his education fell in a great measure in the hands of his elder sisters. At Shrewsbury School he was taught on the narrowest possible classical lines, so narrow indeed that his schoolmaster rebuked him for working at chemistry in a gimcrack laboratory in the tool-house of his father’s garden.

Early studies

Intended for the medical profession he went to Edinburgh, but profited little by his set studies there. Anatomy disgusted him, and the operating theatre, before the days of chloroform, horrified him. After two years as a medical student he decided to study for the church, and with this object became an undergraduate at Cambridge, and a very merry and jovial undergraduate too. His hobbies included beetle collecting, gallops across country, card parties, shooting in the Fens, and the singing of anthems. More important from the point of view of his after development was his friendship with Henslow, professor at botany at the University. The two were much together outside the class-room, Darwin being sometimes referred to as “the man who walks with Henslow.” Another significant fact was that the reading of “Humboldt’s Personal Narratives” roused in him burning enthusiasm for natural history and the travels of naturalists.

The voyage of the Beagle

It was through Henslow that Darwin, then 22, was nominated naturalist on board, the Beagle, which sailed on its long voyage of investigation and discovery in December 1831. This was the determining point if his life. He left England, his son has recorded, almost uneducated for science. He returned a successful collector, a practised and brilliant geologist, and with a wide general knowledge of zoology gained at first hand in many parts of the world. He came back after several years full of thoughts of evolution, impressed upon him by South American fossils and by a general knowledge of the inter-dependence of all living things. At this time he began his first notebook on evolution, the first stone of “The Origin of Species.”

His intention to join the church had now died a natural death. Not that he was heterodox at this time, though in his later years he inclined to agnosticism, but that he had joyfully determined to devote his life to science. A grant of ….1,000 from the Treasury, which had paid him no salary during his long voyages, enabled him to publish “The Voyage of the Beagle,” which has long been a classis. In 1837 the failure of his health first became apparent. He was dyspeptic, and for the remainder of his life lived in seclusion at Down, about sixteen miles from London. It is recorded that for forty years he did not know one day of the health of an ordinary man.

“The Origin of the Species.”

In 1842 he wrote his first short sketch of “The Origin of Species.” In 1858, when he had completed eight or ten chapters of the book, he received from a fellow scientist, Mr. A. R. Wallace, who still survives, a manuscript in which a theory identical with his own was propounded. Astonished beyond measure Darwin himself said that if Wallace had been in possession of a copy of his manuscript of 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract than that this manuscript contained.

Anxious, as he invariably was, to act with scrupulous fairness Darwin submitted the facts to his friends, Lyell and Hooker, two of the most eminent scientists of the day, and after conference it was decided that Wallace’s manuscript should be published along with a letter of September 5, 1857, addressed to Dr. Asa Gray, in which Darwin had given an account of his theory together with some passages of his sketch of 1844. The two papers were read on July 1, 1858, and published together in the Linnean Society’s Journal.

This remarkable incident, which shows that the trend of scientific thought was accumulating in support of the evolutionary theory, led Darwin to proceed at once with the writing of “The Origin of the Species” in the form in which the world knows it. An edition of 1,250 copies, issued on November 24, 1859, was sold out the same day. The reception of the book was astonishing. Some of the most eminent scientists sent congratulations at once; others were more cautious; by the general public and in clerical circles the work roused the most violent prejudices and the most virulent opposition. Darwin watched the course of events with a mind perfectly calm, and in 1860 was able to write to Hooker,

   “I am astonished and rejoiced at the progress which the subject has made.”

Other works on plants and animals followed, in which the theory of evolution was further strengthened, and in 1871 came the expansion of “The Origin of the Species” in the famous “Descent of Man.” Though the last book was more likely to give offence than any of its predecessors, Darwinism by this time had numberless influential supporters, and its reception was respectful in all quarters, and among scientists it was regarded as the great teacher’s crowning triumph.

Personal Traits.

As already indicated, during his last forty years Darwin led a life of rigorous simplicity and extreme regularity. Husbanding his strength, he parcelled out his day into a number of short periods of work, interposed with regular intervals of rest. To economy of time he attached great importance. Novels were a great relief and pleasure to him. He blessed all novelists, even those who are not entertaining.

Personally he was the most charming of men, transparently honest, simple, and unaffected. Conversation was one of his most enjoyable recreations. Generally his talk was placid and quiet, but the mention of cases of cruelty roused him to anger.

His favourite work was the study of botany, in which his labours were prodigious. Experimental work was always enjoyable to him, much more so than writing about the results of his researches.  He had ready control over his stores of information, and could at once, his son says, get together any required set of facts from among the accumulations of a lifetime. Of himself he modestly says:—

                My success as a man of science, whatever this may have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, by complex and diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these the most important have been the love of science, unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject, industry in observing and calculating facts, and a fair share of invention as well as of common sense.

Another of his remarkable qualities was his power of noticing things that easily escape attention, his determination not to allow anything in the nature of an exception to pass unnoticed. To this trait in his mental equipment he owed many discoveries of the highest value. Today his name is among the most honoured in the scientific world. No one has done more to throw modern thought into new channels. He would be the last man to say he had spoken the last word on his beloved subjects. Indeed, if he could speak, he would be much more likely to repeat Newton’s famous saying,

“I have gathered a few rare pebbles on the shore, but the great ocean of knowledge lies before me unexplored.”

Anon. Manchester Evening News – Thursday 04 February 1909