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Morgan puts it: 'Despite the contempt with which Darwin referred to Lamarck's theory, he himself, as we have seen, often made use of the principle of the inheritance of acquired characters, and even employed the same illustrations cited by Lamarck.'68 And Pro 68. Evolution and Adaptation, p. 231. [page] 12
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aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.'71 VII So through the sixties and seventies the battle for evolution went merrily on, and before Darwin's death in 1881 it was evident that the scientific world was largely converted and still more evident that the theory had taken solid hold upon the popular mind. Even in the sixties Charles Kingsley could write to F. D. Maurice: 'The state of the scientific mind is most curious; Darwin is conquering everywhere, and rushing in like a flood
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his mother's knee. 'I don't know what it means,' he said; 'I don't know whether there is a God, or whether He hears me, or what I want of Him; but I pray.' And I, who had not prayed for thirty years, heard him with amazement. Nevertheless, I do not believe that Darwin repeated 'Now I lay me' to the end, or prayed for triumph with evolution as he had prayed for triumph in the foot-race. The question of a future life seems to have had as little actuality for Darwin as that of prayer, and we have
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he determines to do so no more: 'I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant appeared by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.'9 As regards this world, in questions of morals, of conduct, and generally of the bearing of evolution on sociology, Darwin's own sturdy moral habit and self-poised temperament made him
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be sounded the knell of the virtue of mankind.' On which Darwin remarks comfortably, 'It is to be hoped that the belief in the permanence of virtue on this earth is not held by many persons on so weak a tenure.'13 When it comes to the bearing of evolution on another world, Darwin's attitude is equally interesting, and equally inconclusive. To me one of the most characteristic and suggestive sentences he ever wrote occurs in a letter to Wallace, of August, 1872 (italics mine): 'Perhaps the mere
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to follow the loss of belief in another. And again, there is evolution and God. Darwin frequently insists that he is no atheist, and that his system must not be charged with any atheistical conclusion: 'Let each man hope and believe what 15. To Hooker, February 9, 1865, More Letters, vol. I, p. 260. 16. To Lyell, August 21, 1861, More Letters, vol. I, p. 194. [page] 21
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elements must be reconciled, and should be. Science in contradiction with religion? Fie! Never! Why, science only clarifies religion, and religion enriches and fructifies science. The marriage of the two is triumphantly proclaimed in the joyous cry of Dr. Cadman, which typifies thousands of others, and demonstrates that everything is for the best in the best of all possible clerical worlds: 'So far from evolution being incompatible with religion, it is of all scientific theories the most easily
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are merely his mouthpiece: 'Uncertain as we are about human destiny, the wisest course is to see to it that in making all sorts of hypotheses, one at least avoids being too absurd';39 again: 'Though the universe should prove not serious, science might be serious still. Vast sums of virtue have been expended on chim ras. It is better to take the more virtuous course, even though one may not be sure that virtue is more than a word.'40 Or our own American Henry Adams asks evolution to educate him
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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CHARLES DARWIN The Man and His Warfare BY HENSHAW WARD Author of Evolution for John Doe The Circus of the Intellect Exploring the Universe Illustrated LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET,W. [page ii
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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argument of Volume II of the Principles is to prove that the creation of new species was not evolution. When Professor Judd tells us that Lyell, in 1831, used the word creation, as Darwin often used it, to mean evolved, he denies everything that Lyell tried to teach in Volume II. Judd says that Huxley learned, from reading Lyell's letters, that Lyell had been, at a very early date, convinced that evolution was true of the organic as well as of the inorganic world. Judd refers to the Collected Essays
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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any modern mind feel an interest in the sort of evolution that Leibnitz and Kant philosophized about or Goethe intuited? The St. Hilaires, father and son, were admirable naturalists, whose opinions would be worth recording here if they were known. But the father was so hesitant that the son had to interpret him; and modern commentators can not agree as to whether the interpretation is right or as to the meaning of the son's expression of his own views on evolution. Such exegetic ambiguities
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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A. Gray. Asa Gray strikes me as one of the best reasoners and writers I ever read. He knows my book as well as I do myself. How generous and unselfish Gray has been in all his labor! Are you not struck by his metaphors and similes? I have told him he is a poet and not a lawyer. The poetical botanist had the most simple and hard-headed notion of how to regard evolution: Let's see if it works. More and more as Gray applied evolution in his classifying he found that it worked. Other botanists
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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SECTION 4: LYELL WAS NOT AN EVOLUTIONIST I AM only too conscious that controversy is usually tiresome and petty. I dislike to use space for the following pages of evidence as to Lyell's views on evolution. I should like to aviod arguing against Professor Judd's description of those views in his charming book, very useful to me, The Coming of Evolution. But Judd's verdict so natural and affable and easy to credit tends to destroy any true conception of what Darwin's mind was wrestling with
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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step in which was a definite and peculiar form a species. Three centuries later, in Rome, Lucretius imagined that all nature has been a steady process of development by natural law, and that man has evolved from an early beast-like form. So this theory was sponsored by great names and was a proper speculation in philosophy. The literature of the eighteenth century was dotted with ideas of evolution of some sort. Thus, for one example, Boswell used to enjoy spurring Dr. Johnson by an allusion to
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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which in Weismann's time was declared to be all-sufficient in evolution, may after all be of little real significance. Opinions of this kind have been frankly expressed by such eminent authorities as Bateson in England and Morgan in America, and they reflect the view of the majority of biologists the world over. It is true that Bateson was frank. Morgan was so far from frank that Prof. S. J. Holmes has cited him as one who is making Natural Selection more firmly established. The following
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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It is hard to see how Judd is ingenuous when he says (page 64), speaking of Lyell's work on species in Volume II: He was greatly influenced by the arguments in favor of evolution advanced by Lamarck. To be sure the volume teems with evidence that Lyell was influenced against evolution. But the implication of Judd's paragraph is that Lyell was influenced in favor of evolution. And no sentence can be cited, except some ironical one, which contains a speck of such an influence. Judd quotes what
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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species can not be derived from another, that there is no such process as organic evolution. The most striking, and at first sight convincing, quotation which Judd makes is from a very long postscript which Lyell dictated for the letter to Herschel of June 1, 1836. The second sentence shows that Lyell had hoped that readers like Herschel would infer the opposite of what he wanted theologians to infer. In regard to the origination of new species, I am very glad to find that you think it probable that
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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. His business was to find out whether such a venerable theory was true. The two men were in different fields of mentality. No divination of poetry or philosophy can anticipate the knowledge that comes from dissecting barnacles and observing fossil armadillos and studying the methods of pigeon-breeders and then unlocking all the dissimilar mysteries with one key. Darwin's precursors are not being robbed of any glory. If it is a merit to have originated an evolution theory, then the precursors
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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fail. Only the Darwins are interested in the myriads of clever conjectures that glitter for a time and then are dissipated. A conjecture even a fortunate one by a Lucretius about evolution is quite idle until some Darwin breathes life into it. The theory of evolution that captivated Dr. Grant needs no description here. My readers want a man's career, not abstractions. I will give a brief indication of what the theory was, and then follow the history of our poco curante while he goes round the
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A179
Book:
Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray.
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his spear at Buffon, and of how Buffon kissed the ground in token of surrender to the Philistines. It was probably this fear of Goliath that made Buffon deny his own theory and leave a puzzled world to guess whether or not there was any meaning in his now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't discussion of species. He says that they alter their natures; also he says that their natures can not be altered. There is no one section of his work in which evolution is discussed to some definite conclusion. The
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