Darwin & Lincoln

Copyright images: Darwin, Gallica; Lincoln, Daily Telegraph (London), 1909.

Editor’s note: The following article was published in Daily Telegraph & Courier (London) and re-published in Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, (15 February 1909): 5. I find it a pity that the author for these articles, in those times at least, were often unknown. It really is remarkable that 200 years on, Darwin is still celebrated widely. Yesterday I came across an event being celebrated in Iran, their 4th! Amazing.

Referring to the remarkable conflux of centenary anniversaries of distinguished men occurring within 1909 the “Daily Telegraph” makes these remarks:-

But now we come to the great names. On Feb. 12, 1809, Charles Darwin was born at Shrewsbury. On the very same date, four thousand miles away, Abraham Lincoln saw light in Kentucky. We cannot doubt that their anniversaries are the greatest anniversaries of the year. Probably posterity will regard the work of the English philosopher as more epoch-making by far than the French Revolution and the appearance of Napoleon, just as Luther and Calvin –[…]

The modern mind is so saturated and modified through and through by the results of Charles Darwin’s teaching that we cannot even imagine what twentieth-century thought would be like if he had never existed. For generations, perhaps for centuries to come, his doctrines, even if much of their detail is discarded, will act with a cumulative and transforming power upon the world. Here again, we have one whose method was very different from that of a speculative genius like Leonardo da Vinci.

The general conception of evolution had formed itself in several minds before “The Origin of Species” was written. Alfred Russel Wallace, as we know, arrived independently at the same great theory. But Darwin’s was the quiet, yet prodigious, work of sapping and mining, carried on with the unswerving patience and devotion of a life-time, which brought to the ground a huge fabric of former doctrines. A more wonderful example of research for the sake of truth alone never has been known, and Darwin’s method was almost as great a legacy as his results. In his honour all civilisation will join.

Upon the other hand, the fame of Abraham Lincoln is the common possession of the Anglo-Saxon race. He is not only one of the three heroes of the United States, standing equal with Washington and Alexander Hamilton. It is true that, without that rugged, life-worn, unconquerable man, the great Republic might have been shattered for ever. Had the Confederates succeeded, the first secession would not have been the last. It is possible that the North might have won, in any case, whomsoever she had called to direct her counsels. Of America, at least, it may be said that she is not likely ever to lack men in a crisis. But it fell to Lincoln not only to save the State, but to give a new political life to all the best elements in his country. His character and example will ever be remembered, on all sides of the sea, as among the moral correctives of the worst tendencies in English, american, and Australian democracy.

How high were Darwin and Lincoln we realise when we say that lower than these were Tennyson and Gladstone […]

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