More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I

C >> Charles Darwin >> More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44

But I have much cause to apologise for the length of this ill-expressed
letter. My sole excuse is the extraordinary interest which I have felt in
your review, and the pleasure which I have experienced in observing the
points which have attracted your attention. I must say one word more.
Having kept the subject of sexual selection in my mind for very many years,
and having become more and more satisfied with it, I feel great confidence
that as soon as the notion is rendered familiar to others, it will be
accepted, at least to a much greater extent than at present. With sincere
respect and thanks...

LETTER 242. TO JOHN MORLEY.
Down, April 14th [1871].

As this note requires no answer, I do not scruple to write a few lines to
say how faithful and full a resume you have given of my notions on the
moral sense in the "Pall Mall," and to make a few extenuating or
explanatory remarks. (242/1. "What is called the question of the moral
sense is really two: how the moral faculty is acquired, and how it is
regulated. Why do we obey conscience or feel pain in disobeying it? And
why does conscience prescribe one kind of action and condemn another kind?
To put it more technically, there is the question of the subjective
existence of conscience, and there is the question of its objective
prescriptions. First, why do I think it obligatory to do my duty? Second,
why do I think it my duty to do this and not do that? Although, however,
the second question ought to be treated independently, for reasons which we
shall presently suggest, the historical answer to it, or the various
grounds on which men have identified certain sorts of conduct with duty,
rather than conduct of the opposite sorts, throws light on the other
question of the conditions of growth of the idea of duty as a sovereign and
imperial director. Mr. Darwin seems to us not to have perfectly recognised
the logical separation between the two sides of the moral sense question.
For example, he says (i. 97) that 'philosophers of the derivative school of
morals formerly assumed that the foundation of morality lay in a form of
Selfishness; but more recently in the Greatest Happiness principle.' But
Mr. Mill, to whom Mr. Darwin refers, has expressly shown that the Greatest
Happiness principle is a STANDARD, and not a FOUNDATION, and that its
validity as a standard of right and wrong action is just as tenable by one
who believes the moral sense to be innate, as by one who holds that it is
acquired. He says distinctly that the social feelings of mankind form 'the
natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality.' So far from holding
the Greatest Happiness principle to be the foundation of morality, he would
describe it as the forming principle of the superstructure of which the
social feelings of mankind are the foundation. Between Mr. Darwin and
utilitarians, as utilitarians, there is no such quarrel as he would appear
to suppose. The narrowest utilitarian could say little more than Mr.
Darwin says (ii. 393): 'As all men desire their own happiness, praise or
blame is bestowed on actions and motives according as they tend to this
end; and, as happiness is an essential part of the general good, the
Greatest Happiness principle INDIRECTLY serves as a NEARLY safe standard of
right and wrong.' It is perhaps not impertinent to suspect that the
faltering adverbs which we have printed in italics indicate no more than
the reluctance of a half-conscious convert to pure utilitarianism. In
another place (i. 98) he admits that 'as all wish for happiness, the
Greatest Happiness principle will have become a most important secondary
guide and object, the social instincts, including sympathy, always serving
as the primary impulse and guide.' This is just what Mr. Mill says, only
instead of calling the principle a secondary guide, he would call it a
standard, to distinguish it from the social impulse, in which, as much as
Mr. Darwin, he recognises the base and foundation."--"Pall Mall Gazette,"
April 12th, 1871.) How the mistake which I have made in speaking of
greatest happiness as the foundation of morals arose, is utterly
unintelligible to me: any time during the last several years I should have
laughed such an idea to scorn. Mr. Lecky never made a greater blunder, and
your kindness has made you let me off too easily. (242/2. In the first
edition of the "Descent of Man," I., page 97, Mr. Lecky is quoted as one of
those who assumed that the "foundation of morality lay in a form of
selfishness; but more recently in the 'greatest happiness' principle." Mr.
Lecky's name is omitted in this connection in the second edition, page 120.
In this edition Mr. Darwin makes it clearer that he attaches most
importance to the social instinct as the "primary impulse and guide.")
With respect to Mr. Mill, nothing would have pleased me more than to have
relied on his great authority with respect to the social instincts, but the
sentence which I quote at [Volume I.] page 71 ("if, as is my own belief,
the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that
reason less natural") seems to me somewhat contradictory with the other
words which I quote, so that I did not know what to think; more especially
as he says so very little about the social instincts. When I speak of
intellectual activity as the secondary basis of conscience, I meant in my
own mind secondary in period of development; but no one could be expected
to understand so great an ellipse. With reference to your last sentence,
do you not think that man might have retrograded in his parental, marriage,
and other instincts without having retrograded in his social instincts? and
I do not think that there is any evidence that man ever existed as a non-
social animal. I must add that I have been very glad to read your remarks
on the supposed case of the hive-bee: it affords an amusing contrast with
what Miss Cobbe has written in the "Theological Review." (242/3. Mr.
Darwin says ("Descent of Man" Edition I., Volume I., page 73; Edition II.,
page 99), "that if men lived like bees our unmarried females would think it
a sacred duty to kill their brothers." Miss Cobbe remarks on this "that
the principles of social duty would be reversed" ("Theological Review,"
April 1872). Mr. Morley, on the other hand, says of Darwin's assertion,
that it is "as reassuring as the most absolute of moralists could desire.
For it is tantamount to saying that the foundations of morality, the
distinctions of right and wrong, are deeply laid in the very conditions of
social existence; that there is in face of these conditions a positive and
definite difference between the moral and the immoral, the virtuous and the
vicious, the right and the wrong, in the actions of individuals partaking
of that social existence.") Undoubtedly the great principle of acting for
the good of all the members of the same community, and therefore the good
of the species, would still have held sovereign sway.

LETTER 243. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(243/1. Sir Joseph Hooker wrote (August 5th, 1871) to Darwin about Lord
Kelvin's Presidential Address at the Edinburgh meeting of the British
Association: "It seems to me to be very able indeed; and what a good
notion it gives of the gigantic achievement of mathematicians and
physicists!--it really made one giddy to read of them. I do not think
Huxley will thank him for his reference to him as a positive unbeliever in
spontaneous generation--these mathematicians do not seem to me to
distinguish between un-belief and a-belief. I know no other name for the
state of mind that is produced under the term scepticism. I had no idea
before that pure Mathematics had achieved such wonders in practical
science. The total absence of any allusion to Tyndall's labours, even when
comets are his theme, seems strange to me.")

Haredene, Albury, Guildford, August 6th [1871].

I have read with greatest interest Thomson's address; but you say so
EXACTLY AND FULLY all that I think, that you have taken all the words from
my mouth; even about Tyndall. It is a gain that so wonderful a man, though
no naturalist, should become a convert to evolution; Huxley, it seems,
remarked in his speech to this effect. I should like to know what he means
about design,--I cannot in the least understand, for I presume he does not
believe in special interpositions. (243/2. See "British Association
Report," page cv. Lord Kelvin speaks very doubtfully of evolution. After
quoting the concluding passage of the "Origin," he goes on, "I have omitted
two sentences...describing briefly the hypothesis of 'the origin of species
by Natural Selection,' because I have always felt that this hypothesis does
not contain the true theory of evolution, IF EVOLUTION THERE HAS BEEN in
biology" (the italics are not in the original). Lord Kelvin then describes
as a "most valuable and instructive criticism," Sir John Herschel's remark
that the doctrine of Natural Selection is "too like the Laputan method of
making books, and that it did not sufficiently take into account a
continually guiding and controlling intelligence." But it should be
remembered that it was in this address of Lord Kelvin's that he suggested
the possibility of "seed-bearing meteoric stones moving about through
space" inoculating the earth with living organisms; and if he assumes that
the whole population of the globe is to be traced back to these "moss-grown
fragments from the ruins of another world," it is obvious that he believes
in a form of evolution, and one in which a controlling intelligence is not
very obvious, at all events not in the initial and all-important stage.)
Herschel's was a good sneer. It made me put in the simile about Raphael's
Madonna, when describing in the "Descent of Man" the manner of formation of
the wondrous ball-and-socket ornaments, and I will swear to the truth of
this case. (243/3. See "Descent of Man," II., page 141. Darwin says that
no one will attribute the shading of the "eyes" on the wings of the Argus
pheasant to the "fortuitous concourse of atoms of colouring-matter." He
goes on to say that the development of the ball-and-socket effect by means
of Natural Selection seems at first as incredible as that "one of Raphael's
Madonnas should have been formed by the selection of chance daubs of
paint." The remark of Herschel's, quoted in "Life and Letters," II., page
241, that the "Origin" illustrates the "law of higgledy-piggledy," is
probably a conversational variant of the Laputan comparison which gave rise
to the passage in the "Descent of Man" (see Letter 130).)

You know the oak-leaved variety of the common honeysuckle; I could not
persuade a lady that this was not the result of the honeysuckle climbing up
a young oak tree! Is this not like the Viola case?

LETTER 244. TO JOHN LUBBOCK (LORD AVEBURY).
Haredene, Albury, Guildford, August 12th [1871].

I hope the proof-sheets having been sent here will not inconvenience you.
I have read them with infinite satisfaction, and the whole discussion
strikes me as admirable. I have no books here, and wish much I could see a
plate of Campodea. (244/1. "On the Origin of Insects." By Sir John
Lubbock, Bart. "Journ. Linn. Soc. (Zoology)," Volume XI., 1873, pages 422-
6. (Read November 2nd, 1871.) In the concluding paragraph the author
writes, "If these views are correct the genus Campodea [a beetle] must be
regarded as a form of remarkable interest, since it is the living
representative of a primaeval type from which not only the Collembola and
Thysanura, but the other great orders of insects, have all derived their
origin." (See also "Brit. Assoc. Report," 1872, page 125--Address by Sir
John Lubbock; and for a figure of Campodea see "Nature," Volume VII., 1873,
page 447.) I never reflected much on the difficulty which you indicate,
and on which you throw so much light. (244/2. The difficulty alluded to
is explained by the first sentence of Lord Avebury's paper. "The
Metamorphoses of this group (Insects) have always seemed to me one of the
greatest difficulties of the Darwinian theory...I feel great difficulty in
conceiving by what natural process an insect with a suctorial mouth, like
that of a gnat or butterfly, could be developed from a powerfully
mandibulate type like the orthoptera, or even from the neuroptera...A clue
to the difficulty may, I think, be found in the distinction between the
developmental and adaptive changes to which I called the attention of the
Society in a previous memoir."

The distinction between developmental and adaptive changes is mentioned,
but not discussed, in the paper "On the Origin of Insects" (loc. cit., page
422); in a former paper, "On the Development of Chloeon (Ephemera)
dimidiatum ("Trans. Linn. Soc." XXV. page 477, 1866), this question is
dealt with at length.) I have only a few trifling remarks to make. At
page 44 I wish you had enlarged a little on what you have said of the
distinction between developmental and adaptive changes; for I cannot quite
remember the point, and others will perhaps be in the same predicament. I
think I always saw that the larva and the adult might be separately
modified to any extent. Bearing in mind what strange changes of function
parts undergo, with the intermediate state of use (244/3. This slightly
obscure phrase may be paraphrased, "the gradational stages being of service
to the organism."), it seems to me that you speak rather too boldly on the
impossibility of a mandibulate insect being converted into a sucking insect
(244/4. "There are, however, peculiar difficulties in those cases in
which, as among the lepidoptera, the same species is mandibulate as a larva
and suctorial as an embryo" (Lubbock, "Origin of Insects," page 423).); not
that I in the least doubt the value of your explanation.

Cirripedes passing through what I have called a pupal state (244/5.
"Hence, the larva in this, its last stage, cannot eat; it may be called a
"locomotive Pupa;" its whole organisation is apparently adapted for the one
great end of finding a proper site for its attachment and final
metamorphosis." ("A Monograph on the Sub-Class Cirripedia." By Charles
Darwin. London, Ray Soc., 1851.)) so far as their mouths are concerned,
rather supports what you say at page 52.

At page 40 your remarks on the Argus pheasant (244/6. There is no mention
of the Argus pheasant in the published paper.) (though I have not the least
objection to them) do not seem to me very appropriate as being related to
the mental faculties. If you can spare me these proof-sheets when done
with, I shall be obliged, as I shall be correcting a new edition of the
"Origin" when I return home, though this subject is too large for me to
enter on. I thank you sincerely for the great interest which your
discussion has given me.

LETTER 245. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(245/1. The following letter refers to Mivart's "Genesis of Species.")

Down, September 16th [1871].

I am preparing a new and cheap edition of the "Origin," and shall introduce
a new chapter on gradation, and on the uses of initial commencements of
useful structures; for this, I observe, has produced the greatest effect on
most persons. Every one of his [Mivart's] cases, as it seems to me, can be
answered in a fairly satisfactory manner. He is very unfair, and never
says what he must have known could be said on my side. He ignores the
effect of use, and what I have said in all my later books and editions on
the direct effects of the conditions of life and so-called spontaneous
variation. I send you by this post a very clever, but ill-written review
from N. America by a friend of Asa Gray, which I have republished. (245/2.
Chauncey Wright in the "North American Review," Volume CXIII., reprinted by
Darwin and published as a pamphlet (see "Life and Letters," III., page
145).)

I am glad to hear about Huxley. You never read such strong letters Mivart
wrote to me about respect towards me, begging that I would call on him,
etc., etc.; yet in the "Q. Review" (245/3. See "Quarterly Review," July
1871; also "Life and Letters," III., page 147.) he shows the greatest scorn
and animosity towards me, and with uncommon cleverness says all that is
most disagreeable. He makes me the most arrogant, odious beast that ever
lived. I cannot understand him; I suppose that accursed religious bigotry
is at the root of it. Of course he is quite at liberty to scorn and hate
me, but why take such trouble to express something more than friendship?
It has mortified me a good deal.

LETTER 246. TO J.D. HOOKER.
Down, October 4th [1871].

I am quite delighted that you think so highly of Huxley's article. (246/1.
A review of Wallace's "Natural Selection," of Mivart's "Genesis of
Species," and of the "Quarterly Review" article on the "Descent of Man"
(July, 1871), published in the "Contemporary Review" (1871), and in
Huxley's "Collected Essays," II., page 120.) I was afraid of saying all I
thought about it, as nothing is so likely as to make anything appear flat.
I thought of, and quite agreed with, your former saying that Huxley makes
one feel quite infantile in intellect. He always thus acts on me. I
exactly agree with what you say on the several points in the article, and I
piled climax on climax of admiration in my letter to him. I am not so good
a Christian as you think me, for I did enjoy my revenge on Mivart. He
(i.e. Mivart) has just written to me as cool as a cucumber, hoping my
health is better, etc. My head, by the way, plagues me terribly, and I
have it light and rocking half the day. Farewell, dear old friend--my best
of friends.

LETTER 247. TO JOHN FISKE.

(247/1. Mr. Fiske, who is perhaps best known in England as the author of
"Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy," had sent to Mr. Darwin some reports of the
lectures given at Harvard University. The point referred to in the
postscript in Mr. Darwin's letter is explained by the following extract
from Mr. Fiske's work: "I have endeavoured to show that the transition
from animality (or bestiality, stripping the word of its bad connotations)
to humanity must have been mainly determined by the prolongation of infancy
or immaturity which is consequent upon a high development of intelligence,
and which must have necessitated the gradual grouping together of pithecoid
men into more or less definite families." (See "Descent," I., page 13, on
the prolonged infancy of the anthropoid apes.))

Down, November 9th, 1871.

I am greatly obliged to you for having sent me, through my son, your
lectures, and for the very honourable manner in which you allude to my
works. The lectures seem to me to be written with much force, clearness,
and originality. You show also a truly extraordinary amount of knowledge
of all that has been published on the subject. The type in many parts is
so small that, except to young eyes, it is very difficult to read.
Therefore I wish that you would reflect on their separate publication,
though so much has been published on the subject that the public may
possibly have had enough. I hope that this may be your intention, for I do
not think I have ever seen the general argument more forcibly put so as to
convert unbelievers.

It has surprised and pleased me to see that you and others have detected
the falseness of much of Mr. Mivart's reasoning. I wish I had read your
lectures a month or two ago, as I have been preparing a new edition of the
"Origin," in which I answer some special points, and I believe I should
have found your lectures useful; but my MS. is now in the printer's hands,
and I have not strength or time to make any more additions.

P.S.--By an odd coincidence, since the above was written I have received
your very obliging letter of October 23rd. I did notice the point to which
you refer, and will hereafter reflect more over it. I was indeed on the
point of putting in a sentence to somewhat of the same effect in the new
edition of the "Origin," in relation to the query--Why have not apes
advanced in intellect as much as man? but I omitted it on account of the
asserted prolonged infancy of the orang. I am also a little doubtful about
the distinction between gregariousness and sociability.

...When you come to England I shall have much pleasure in making your
acquaintance; but my health is habitually so weak that I have very small
power of conversing with my friends as much as I wish. Let me again thank
you for your letter. To believe that I have at all influenced the minds of
able men is the greatest satisfaction I am capable of receiving.

LETTER 248. TO E. HACKEL.
Down, December 27th, 1871.

I thank you for your very interesting letter, which it has given me much
pleasure to receive. I never heard of anything so odd as the Prior in the
Holy Catholic Church believing in our ape-like progenitors. I much hope
that the Jesuits will not dislodge him.

What a wonderfully active man you are! and I rejoice that you have been so
successful in your work on sponges. (248/1. "Die Kalkschwamme: eine
Monographie; 3 volumes: Berlin, 1872. H.J. Clark published a paper "On
the Spongiae Ciliatae as Infusoria flagellata" in the "Mem. Boston Nat.
Hist. Soc." Volume I., Part iii., 1866. See Hackel, op. cit., Volume I.,
page 24.) Your book with sixty plates will be magnificent. I shall be
glad to learn what you think of Clark's view of sponges being flagellate
infusorians; some observers in this country believe in him. I am glad you
are going fully to consider inheritance, which is an all-important subject
for us. I do not know whether you have ever read my chapter on pangenesis.
My ideas have been almost universally despised, and I suppose that I was
foolish to publish them; yet I must still think that there is some truth in
them. Anyhow, they have aided me much in making me clearly understand the
facts of inheritance.

I have had bad health this last summer, and during two months was able to
do nothing; but I have now almost finished a next edition of the "Origin,"
which Victor Carus is translating. (248/2. See "Life and Letters," III.,
page 49.) There is not much new in it, except one chapter in which I have
answered, I hope satisfactorily, Mr. Mivart's supposed difficulty on the
incipient development of useful structures. I have also given my reasons
for quite disbelieving in great and sudden modifications. I am preparing
an essay on expression in man and the lower animals. It has little
importance, but has interested me. I doubt whether my strength will last
for much more serious work. I hope, however, to publish next summer the
results of my long-continued experiments on the wonderful advantages
derived from crossing. I shall continue to work as long as I can, but it
does not much signify when I stop, as there are so many good men fully as
capable, perhaps more capable, than myself of carrying on our work; and of
these you rank as the first.

With cordial good wishes for your success in all your work and for your
happiness.

LETTER 249. TO E. RAY LANKESTER.
Down, April 15th [1872].

Very many thanks for your kind consideration. The correspondence was in
the "Athenaeum." I got some mathematician to make the calculation, and he
blundered and caused me much shame. I send scrap of proofs from last
edition of the "Origin," with the calculation corrected. What grand work
you did at Naples! I can clearly see that you will some day become our
first star in Natural History.

(249/1. Here follows the extract from the "Origin," sixth edition, page
51: "The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals,
and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of
natural increase. It will be safest to assume that it begins breeding when
thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing
forth six young in the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old;
if this be so, after a period of from 740 to 750 years, there would be
nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair."
In the fifth edition, page 75, the passage runs: "If this be so, at the
end of the fifth century, there would be alive fifteen million elephants,
descended from the first pair" (see "Athenaeum," June 5, July 3, 17, 24,
1869).)

LETTER 250. TO C. LYELL.
Down, May 10th [1872].

I received yesterday morning your present of that work to which I, for one,
as well as so many others, owe a debt of gratitude never to be forgotten.
I have read with the greatest interest all the special additions; and I
wish with all my heart that I had the strength and time to read again every
word of the whole book. (250/1. "Principles of Geology," Edition XII.,
1875.) I do not agree with all your criticisms on Natural Selection, nor
do I suppose that you would expect me to do so. We must be content to
differ on several points. I differ must about your difficulty (page 496)
(250/2. In Chapter XLIII. Lyell treats of "Man considered with reference
to his Origin and Geographical Distribution." He criticizes the view that
Natural Selection is capable of bringing about any amount of change
provided a series of minute transitional steps can be pointed out. "But in
reality," he writes, "it cannot be said that we obtain any insight into the
nature of the forces by which a higher grade of organisation or instinct is
evolved out of a lower one by becoming acquainted with a series of
gradational forms or states, each having a very close affinity with the
other."..."It is when there is a change from an inferior being to one of
superior grade, from a humbler organism to one endowed with new and more
exalted attributes, that we are made to feel that, to explain the
difficulty, we must obtain some knowledge of those laws of variation of
which Mr. Darwin grants that we are at present profoundly ignorant" (op.
cit., pages 496-97).) on a higher grade of organisation being evolved out
of lower ones. Is not a very clever man a grade above a very dull one? and
would not the accumulation of a large number of slight differences of this
kind lead to a great difference in the grade of organisation? And I
suppose that you will admit that the difference in the brain of a clever
and dull man is not much more wonderful than the difference in the length
of the nose of any two men. Of course, there remains the impossibility of
explaining at present why one man has a longer nose than another. But it
is foolish of me to trouble you with these remarks, which have probably
often passed through your mind. The end of this chapter (XLIII.) strikes
me as admirably and grandly written. I wish you joy at having completed
your gigantic undertaking, and remain, my dear Lyell,