[Chernyshevsky]

Is the harmful beneficial or harmful? As you can see, the question is very puzzling. Thus, it is very easy to make a mistake when choosing between the two options.

This explains why the esteemed authors of the works for which I am writing a preface regard the struggle for existence as a theory of beneficence.

As their basis they have this logically brilliant idea: "the harmful is beneficial."

How should such a theory based on an absurdity inevitably relate to the facts? The conclusions based on an absurdity are absurd: their relation to the facts is an irreconcilable contradiction.

The theory of the beneficial nature of the struggle for existence contradicts all the facts in every branch of science to which it is applied, and, in particular, is in especially sharp contradiction to the facts in botany and zoology, for which it was invented and from which it has spread to the social sciences.

It contradicts the meaning of all the intelligent, worldly labors of man, and, in particular, especially sharply contradicts the meaning of all the facts of agriculture, starting with the first concerns of savages about preserving their domesticated animals from the suffering of hunger and other calamities and with their first efforts to loosen the soil with sharpened sticks for sowing.

From what materials is this theory, which contradicts all worldly and scientific knowledge, composed and by what process was this thinking dragged into science? Its creator good-heartedly gave bits of information to the public about this. With an idyllic naivete rare in our times and therefore all the more touching, many of the esteemed authors, for whose works I am writing a preface, repeat them. In the innocence of their souls they do not even suspect what a sad story of wretched misunderstandings they retell.

In addition to their repeating his scattered bits of thought that serve as the material for weaving this theory, I will give an exposition of the remaining sense of the doctrine which was unknown or incomprehensible both to them and him. A fragment was torn from this doctrine and came to serve as the basis for the theory of the beneficial effects of the struggle for existence.

This doctrine is publicistic in nature. In order to properly understand works of publicism one must know the historical circumstances in which they arose and the political motivations by which they were generated.

One hundred years ago the aristocracy ruled England. It was divided into two parties: the conservative, the Tories, and the liberal, the Whigs. In accord with changes in historical circumstances, one party or the other obtained a majority in the House of Commons and took power. After the end of the war with the rebellious American colonies and France the Whig party declared that great reforms were needed. The Tories did not see any chance of opposing this. Its own leader, Pitt, proposed projects for important transformations. The Tories' tactics were limited to delaying matters. Power was in their hands. Thus, things were delayed. Several years passed in this way. The French Revolution began. The sharp speeches and bloody scenes that accompanied it from the very beginning led the majority of the Whigs to think that it was dangerous to shake the existing order of things at home. They went over to the Tory side. There remained few advocates of reform in the House of Commons. Because of their small numbers they were powerless. Reform projects were cast aside. But among the masses of the English public a multitude of people preserved a liberal mindset. The loss of hope for reform upset them. Indignation gave an increasingly radical shade to their opinions. The coalition of the Tories and the majority of the Whigs began to fear that this would lead the people to armed rebellion. In order to forestall this, the Parliament suspended the Habeas Corpus Act in 1793. That is, it authorized the government to make arbitrary arrests. In such matters an authorization actually means a command. The ministry would have been replaced by the House of Commons if it had not acted so ruthlessly. The persecutions led to the development of a radical tendency in the liberal part of English society.

This was the mood of a very significant part of the English public in 1793.

In that year a man with a very strong mind, a great literary talent, and a completely radical way of thinking, William Godwin, (2) published Enquiry concerning Political Justice, a treatise on the government institutions corresponding to justice. In his exposition, Godwin showed that they are beneficial and that the English institutions which are inconsistent with justice produce poverty among the masses, vices and crimes. It was a scholarly investigation but thanks to the author's talent it was written in a fascinating way.

The impression it made was enormous.

Publicists of the ruling party could not find any practical objections to Godwin's arguments. It continued to dominate the House of Commons and rule the state because of historical circumstances. But its case seemed irretrievably lost before the court of reason and conscience.

Under this yoke of mental and moral defeat, it managed to hold on for five years.

And finally, in 1797 a fighter came to the defense of its dominion who managed to find an argument that took away all significance from all of Godwin's arguments. This triumphant defender of the political system rejecting any sort of reform, even the easiest and most obviously useful for the state, was Malthus. (3) He laid out his argument crushing all Godwin's arguments in An Essay on the Principle of Population.

The enthusiasm with which the ruling party welcomed a book providing a complete justification for its systematic refusal of any reforms is understandable.

The fact that Malthus's theory was compiled in order to refute Godwin's arguments, to justify the systematic refusal of any reforms, was forgotten by economists of the next generation and is rarely remembered by the current ones. In ordinary expositions of it only the argument that served Malthus in preparing his conclusion is conveyed. But the conclusion, which is the whole essence of the matter, is not mentioned. This conclusion was just what was needed to take away the force of Godwin's arguments. It turned out to be impossible to defend English institutions. Malthus figured out that defending refusal to reform should be separated from the question of whether the existing English institutions are good or bad: the only way to justify the policies of the ruling party was by the unconditional denial of the usefulness of improvements in the state structure, regardless of whether it is good or bad. He sought out the argumentation giving the necessary conclusion. It is known to all. Thus, there is no need to repeat it here in detail. It suffices to recall its main features so that it can be seen how the unconditional justification of the unconditional refusal of reforms is derived from it. In itself, it is true. Malthus's departure from the truth consists only in the fact that he took just one aspect of the matter as the basis of his syllogistics, while denying the other aspects. He did not take the argument any further than the point where it was convenient to attach the conclusion he needed. Once we have explicated this conclusion, we will return to the point of the argumentation where Malthus stops. We will bring it to the end and we will see what calculation forced Malthus to interrupt it in the middle.

Organic creatures have the power to multiply. Via this force, each type of organic creature reaches such a large number that the amount of food these creatures can obtain becomes insufficient to feed them all. Therefore, some of them die either directly from hunger, or from diseases caused by lack of food, or from other consequences of a lack of food. The surviving creatures continue to multiply. Thus, the process of some of them dying from insufficient food continues in order to satisfy the feeding of all of them. All living things that are considered unintelligent are subject to this law of nature. Human beings, who behave just like unintelligent creatures regarding reproduction, are also subject to it. This is how the masses of the people in England and in some other countries behave. In each of these countries, the population has long ago expanded to such an extent that the amount of food obtained by agricultural labor and received from other countries in exchange for other products of labor has become insufficient to feed all the people living there. Therefore, its population suffers from a lack of food and part of it is constantly dying from the consequences including vices and crimes. But the surviving population continues to multiply. Thus, excess population occurs over and over again and the process of eradicating this excess via poverty and its consequences continues. As a result, poverty and its consequences (vices and crimes) in England and similar countries are due to a lack of common sense among the masses regarding reproduction. It follows that in England and similar countries, poverty and its consequences cannot be stopped in any other way than by replacing the lack of common sense among the masses in terms of reproduction with reason. No changes in the political institutions of the country can have any impact on the fate of the people in terms of economics. No matter how bad the institutions of such a country are, poverty and its consequences do not come from them, but from the lack of common sense of its people regarding reproduction. Moreover, replacing the bad institutions with good ones cannot improve the fate of its people as long as they keep being stupid in terms of reproduction. Therefore, in such a country, political reforms are useless. Demands for them must be rejected as empty illusions. Wise rulers should not undertake such pointless labor.

The matter is clear: Malthus thought of the then English institutions in the same way as Godwin: they are bad. The only difference is that, according to Godwin, bad institutions should be replaced by good ones, but according to Malthus, they should be preserved.

That's why Malthus's argument breaks off at the point where the desired conclusion is reached: "reforms are useless."

The key part of his argument is the idea that in countries like England, poverty and its consequences stem from the foolishness of the masses regarding reproduction. Indeed, foolishness in this matter is very harmful. But are foolish people, foolish in this alone? No. All people who are foolish in this matter, are also foolish in many other important daily affairs. All foolishness is harmful. Any foolishness leads to a breakdown of health or fortune and, in important cases, to death from poverty or its consequences: diseases, vices, crimes. Therefore, while studying the causes of poverty and its consequences, one should speak not only of foolishness in reproduction, but of all types of foolishness. But that was inconvenient for Malthus, because some types of foolishness, such as laziness, vanity, lust for power, are obviously dependent on institutions. They develop with bad ones, weaken with the good ones.

But let it be as Malthus would have it. Let's suppose that poverty and its consequences are produced solely by foolishness in reproduction. The way a person behaves in this matter depends a lot on how he is accustomed to behaving in daily life in general. A person who is accustomed to acting rationally in general, behaves more rationally in terms of reproduction than a person who is accustomed to acting foolishly in general. The question is: does the injustice experienced by people bother them? The question is: in what state of mind does a person act more judiciously - in an irritated or a calm one? The question is: what does injustice teach people: rationality or imprudence? Thus: unjust institutions, supporting or developing in people the habit of acting foolishly in general, lead them to foolishness in reproduction too. Therefore, when taking even this type of foolishness as the only cause of poverty and its consequences, one should recognize that in order to eliminate poverty and its consequences one needs to replace unjust institutions with just ones.

Thus, Malthus's argument being carried to its end yields the same result as Godwin's argument.

Malthus wanted to justify the political system maintained by the Tory party ruling England, with the approval of most Whigs. To do this, he represented one type of foolishness as producing all evil that is actually produced by all types of foolishness. He also cut off his argument at the halfway point to the correct conclusion in order to replace it with a false one. But on the basis of this far too narrow and incomplete argumentation, he took a true idea: when people do not restrain themselves by the power of reason, they multiply to such an extent that the amount of food that they can obtain becomes insufficient to satisfactorily feed all of them.

The historical circumstances that forced most Whigs to support the Tories lasted for many years. (4) But finally things changed. Then the majority of Whigs returned to their former principles, to which the minority had remained true. One of the leaders of the Tory party, Canning, realized that it could not keep power in its hands except by introducing the reforms that the formidable Whig opposition demanded. In 1827 he pushed aside the other leaders of the Tory party who did not accept his program. A few months later he died. The leaders of the Tory party, Wellington and Robert Peel, whom Canning had ousted from power, came back. (5) But they themselves saw the need to carry out reforms in order to stay in power. Since that time (1828), the Tory party has constantly boasted of its devotion to the cause of improvement. Without this boast, it is impossible for it to attain power, and having gained power, it often sees the need to carry out reforms. The political system, in whose defense Malthus composed his theory, has been irretrievably bankrupt for some sixty years now.

Even before it lost its worldly, political meaning, Malthus's theory had lost its scholarly value. In 1812 Ricardo, (6) a thinker with a great power of mind, published his Principles of Political Economy, a work that remade this field. (7) With his theory of rent and his product distribution formula, he discovered the law of economic life, to which Malthus's theory had vaguely and weakly pointed, albeit with an admixture of falsehood. At that point, economists should have consigned Malthus's theory to the historical archive. But it had made such a fuss that it still rings in the ears of most economists. Therefore, it is still discussed in works on political economy and thanks to this it is known to all.

Now we can move on to the story of why Malthusian theory, composed exclusively to solve one of the special issues of political economy, was transferred to botany and zoology, and what fate it underwent during this transfer.

Until the middle of our century, the efforts of researchers involved in developing botany and zoology were devoted to the work of describing the forms of plants and animals, their internal structure, the activity of their organs, and their development from embryo to full growth. These were tasks of enormous size. Working on them did not give the vast majority of botanists and zoologists any extra time to deal much with the question of the origin of the present species of plants and animals. When researching the present forms of organisms, they saw that these forms existed from the very dawn of our history. Because they lacked the time to devote special study to the question of this constancy of species, they generally made a decision that seemed obvious at first glance: current species of plants and animals are immutable. In the geological layers formed in remote times, there were found the remains of plants and animals unlike present ones. Given the idea of the immutability of current species, it was natural to conclude that the previous, dissimilar species had died without leaving posterity in current flora and fauna. This seemed all the more certain, because it was confirmed by geological theory. According to this theory, the rising and sinking of the continents from and into the sea were thought to take place quickly, producing colossal catastrophes. During such upheavals, the flora and fauna caught up in them would inevitably perish.

The doctrine giving the immutability of species a geological basis was created by the greatest naturalist of the first third of our century, Cuvier, (8)the founder of comparative anatomy, the transformer of zoological classification, and the creator of paleontology. He expounded it with brilliant power of mind in A Discourse on the Revolutions of the Surface of the Globe, and the Changes Thereby Produced in the Animal Kingdom, which formed the introduction to his Studies on Fossil Bones (Recherches sur les ossements fossiles) published in 1812. It was the work that created paleontology. (9)

Cuvier's doctrine establishing the immutability of species via the theory that catastrophes destroyed prior flora and fauna not identical to current ones quickly gained dominion in natural science. This was partly due to the genius of its presentation and to the enormous authority Cuvier had earned via technical works on zoology, comparative anatomy and paleontology. It was also partly because the general character of his system corresponded to the spirit of the times, which sought to restore traditions and rejected everything that did not agree with them. In natural science Cuvier was the representative of the same trend which Napoleon wished to make dominant in intellectual life and which gained rule over it during the Restoration.

Under the influence of Cuvier's teachings, any thought that the origin of present species of plants and animals came from former ones was not only rejected by almost all naturalists, but even forgotten by most of them. This idea has existed since ancient times. While physiology remained very little developed, it was vague and fantastic. As physiological knowledge improved, the idea was freed from these shortcomings and finally received scientific treatment in Lamarck's ingenious work Zoological Philosophy (Philosophie zoologique), published in 1809, three years before Cuvier's work Studies on Fossil Bones. (10) Lamarck, who represented ideas rejected by the spirit of the times, was a 65-year-old man in 1809, and went blind two or three years later. Cuvier was able to disregard him when he was preparing to publish his treatise on global cataclysms. He passed by Lamarck's theory in complete silence as nonsense, not worthy of even a brief objection. In terms of benefit for his theory of catastrophism, he acted prudently. But in terms of scientific interest, it was unfair. Let's assume that Lamarck's theory was completely erroneous. Yet, he deduced it from indisputable truths that were even then unshakably established by natural science: the law of organic life as a chemical process; the law of the organism's dependence on the environment; the law that the volume and composition of an organ change under the influence of whether it is active or inactive. Let's suppose that Lamarck was unable to correctly understand these laws of organic life; let's suppose that the conclusion he drew from them is completely false. It was still necessary to show where he was mistaken: the interests of science demanded this. But Cuvier decided that it would be more convenient to pass Lamarck's theory by in silence, to suppress it via contempt so that it would be soon forgotten. His calculation was correct and achieved complete success. Inconsistent with the spirit of the time, disliked by the vast majority of naturalists, a blind old man's theory was suppressed by Cuvier's contempt and soon forgotten. The new generation of naturalists was raised under Cuvier's dominant ideas. If they knew about Lamarck's theory at all, they knew only that it was an empty fantasy unworthy of attention. Most of them, judging by subsequent events, did not even know about its existence.

In geology, the dominance of Cuvier's concepts lasted twenty to twenty-five years. In his multi-volume work Principles of Geology (1830-33), Lyell revealed the inconsistency of the catastrophic theory with the geological facts. (11) When recreating geology, Lyell demonstrated that since the oldest of the layers containing imprints or remains of a plant or animal began to be deposited, the land surface has not suffered any disasters exceeding the scale of floods, earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions. Thus, previous catastrophes could not have destroyed organic life on the continents or large islands, just as current ones, which are in no way inferior in strength and size, do not destroy it. He demonstrated that there was no sudden decimation of the former flora and fauna, that many of the previous species continued to exist while some others were replaced by new ones. He demonstrated that changes in flora and fauna were, like great geological changes, slow, quiet processes.

If we speak with scientific rigor, then it must be said that the theory of the immutability of species had already been refuted by these conclusions, that specialists in botany and zoology, who accepted the geological history of the earth extrapolated by Lyell, lost the scientific right to doubt the origin of new species from previous ones. But in scientific, as in everyday, affairs, most people do not quickly acquire consistency in their way of thinking. As with the majority of society, which, having mastered the correct concepts on some everyday question, continues to retain for quite a long time old, incongruous thoughts on other everyday matters and questions, so too the majority of specialists, having accepted the correct solution to some scientific question, retains for a more or less long time the usual opinions which are incongruous with it on other scientific issues. At the end of the 1830s, most specialists working in the sciences of organic creatures had already mastered Lyell's concepts on the slow and completely calm (in its general features) course of geological changes since the existence of the most ancient organisms known to us. But twenty years after that it they either continued to adhere to Cuvier's ideas on the immutability of species or did not express their disagreement with them fearing censure for contradicting them, for engaging in fantasy indecent for learned people.

Meanwhile, in the botanical and zoological fields, facts accumulated that testified to the genealogical relationship between species. There was no lack of such facts even much earlier, in the time of Linnaeus, about a hundred years before the middle of our century. But in the last years of the past century and in the first decades of this one, most specialists turned their backs on them or gave them a false explanation, succumbing to the spirit of the times which sought to restore tradition. In the second quarter of our century, this aspect of the desires of the majority of educated society began to weaken and little by little was replaced by its opposite whose influence on specialists in botany and zoology prepared the way for the corresponding change in their understanding of the relationship between species.

And finally, in 1859, twenty-six years after the publication of the last volume of Lyell's Principles of Geology, which destroyed the theory of catastrophes as responsible for the destruction of former flora and fauna, Darwin's book On the Origin of Species was published, destroying the theory of the immutability of species which was bound up with this doctrine. It should have collapsed some twenty years before then because in the thoughts of specialists it had no support other than habit.

The fact that the book producing this belated revolution was published in 1859, and not later, was due to special circumstances forcing the author to hasten the publication of his theory, which would have been delayed for some time, according to the author, "for two or three years." This is a whole story that deserves great attention both for its psychological character and for the importance of the materials explaining the features of the book, which has had a tremendous influence on the course of science. We will tell it on the basis of the information reported by Darwin himself, supplementing it with the necessary biographical data.

In 1831, Darwin, who at the time was still a very young man just beginning his scientific career unknown to anyone except his personal acquaintances, was appointed as a naturalist on a scientific expedition sent by the British government to sail around the world on the ship The Beagle. The expedition sailed from England on December 27, 1831. Darwin was then slightly less than twenty-three years old (he was born on February 12, 1809). The expedition made stops on the eastern and then on the western coast of South America. It then made a stop in the deserted Galapagos Islands, which are located 900 kilometers from the nearest part of the western coast of America, and which was still almost completely unexplored by naturalists. Studying the animals of the archipelago, Darwin saw that they are similar to, but not the same as, animals in the most nearby part of America. He was, in his own words, "much struck" by this. Thinking about this unexpected fact gave him the idea that the Galapagos animals are modified descendants of earlier animals, whose other descendants are those similar animals in the closest part of America. Then he saw the same relationship between other island faunas and floras and the faunas and floras of the nearest parts of the continents. The Beagle returned to England in early October 1836. The expedition lasted over four and a half years. The participation of the young naturalist, who went on it as an unknown, brought him glory. The collection of observations he brought out immediately put him among the leading naturalists of that time. He made many observations that were extremely conscientious: there were hundreds of important ones among them. In a list of authors cited by Lyell in the new editions of Principles of Geology, published between 1845 and 1858, there is not a single naturalist who would have as many references as Darwin. For about six years after returning from the expedition, he was engaged in processing the materials collected on it, enriching the factual part of natural science with new information. During these years he published the Journal of Research in Natural History and Geology (12) which he kept during the expedition, and several monographs, the most important of which is The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle with the last volume published in 1843. After this he published several other monographs. The most important was A Monograph of the Sub-class Cirripedia with volume one appearing in 1851 and volume two in 1853. (13) The investigation published shortly after the second volume, A Monograph on the Fossil Balanidae and Verrucidae of Great Britain serves as a supplement to it. (14) But long before the publication of the research on this class of animals Darwin's main scholarly topic was a treatise whose content was not monographic but broad. It covered all sections of botany, zoology, paleontology and many sections of other areas of natural science. The idea of the genealogical kinship between species aroused in Darwin by studying the animals of the Galapagos Islands and which was confirmed by the study of other island fauna and flora during the expedition seemed so immensely important that Darwin could not resist working on an explication of it even in the first years after returning home, when he should have been working on processing the factual data collected during his travels. He states that starting in 1837 he engaged in "patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it." (15)After "five years' work," that is, in 1842 when he finished the pressing work of describing the factual results of the observations made during the expedition and had prepared the last volume of The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle for publication, he "began more than before" (16) to take up the investigation of the origin of species. When the question seemed explicable to him, he wrote up a small outline of his thoughts on it and in 1844 "enlarged [it] ... into a sketch of the conclusions, which then seemed ... probable." (17) He states, "from that period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object," and continues, "My work is now [That is, in November 1859 when he wrote the introduction to the first edition of On the Origin of Species] nearly finished; but as it will take me two or three more years to complete it, and as my health is far from strong, I have been urged to publish this Abstract." He constantly calls his book On the Origin of Species just an abstract of a treatise that he hopes to publish in two or three years. "I have more especially been induced to do this, as Mr. Wallace, who is now studying the natural history of the Malay archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same general conclusions that I have on the origin of species. Last year he sent to me a memoir on this subject, with a request that I would forward it to Sir Charles Lyell, who sent it to the Linnean Society, and it is published in the third volume of the Journal of that Society. Sir C. Lyell and Dr. Hooker [Joseph Hooker, son of William, and like his father a famous botanist], who both knew of my work—the latter having read my sketch of 1844—honoured me by thinking it advisable to publish, with Mr. Wallace's excellent memoir, some brief extracts from my manuscripts." (18)

Wallace was much younger than Darwin, but the level of his scholarly acumen had already been demonstrated. In 1858 he was thirty-six years old. He had acquired a respectable celebrity via his excellent research but, despite all his conscientiousness, his work showed that he would never become an elite scholar. It is quite likely that calculating the ratio of Darwin's and Wallace's strength and scholarly merit greatly prompted Lyell's and Hooker's insistence that Darwin not reduce his fame as the transformer of the sciences of organic creatures by further delay. It likely seemed to them unjust to allow a second-rank naturalist to obtain it when a great naturalist had the right to it. And in any case, it would be unfair because Darwin already had precedent in drawing up the theory to which Wallace came when studying the animals of the Malay Archipelago. He went there in 1854. Hooker had already read Darwin's account of the same theory ten years earlier.

And so, being persuaded by Lyell and Hooker, Darwin composed an abstract of his work and at a meeting of the Linnean Society on July 1, 1858 there was a joint reading of Wallace's article "On the Tendencies of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type" and Darwin's article "On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties and on the Perpetuation of Species and Varieties by Means of Natural Selection." Both these articles were jointly published in the Journal of the Linnean Society. Darwin's article by far outshone Wallace's in terms of the strength of the development of the basic thoughts and in erudition. Wallace retained that small share of the glory that, in fairness, should have belonged to him. In extolling Darwin as the reformer of the sciences of organic creatures, Wallace was mentioned with respect as a person who came to a theory, the same as Darwin's, independently and applied it to explain quite a few facts about which little or no mention was made in Darwin's article. Darwin began to revise and expand as a separate book the article he had submitted for reading to the Linnean Society and published in its journal. Its volume greatly expanded during this revision process lasting more than a year. In this manner the famous book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection published in November 1859 was compiled.

In the introduction to his book, when talking about why he made an abstract of his treatise to be read at the Linnean Society, Darwin says, as we have seen, that the treatise from which the abstract was taken was almost completed, that he just needed to supplement it, and that he needed about two or three years for this. The time period in question, obviously, is no later than the end of June 1858, because we are talking about the reason why the author decided to make an extract from his work, and on July 1 it had already been read at the Linnaean Society. But let us assume that it only seems to be the case because of an inaccuracy that had crept into Darwin's statement and that, in expressing the hope of finishing the work in two or three years, he had in mind not the beginning of this period as indicated by his words, but the time at which he was writing. That is, not the spring of 1858, when he decided to compose the extract, but November 1859, when the printing of the extract in a new, expanded form was completed. In such a case, the end of the three-year period is not the spring of 1861, as follows from the literal sense of the words, but the end of 1862, as Darwin probably wanted to say. Let us also take into account the fact that very often the authors miscalculate the amount of time needed to finish a work. Three years of work seems to be enough time to prepare for publication a treatise that is already "nearly finished" and which only needs to be "completed." But let us suppose that it would be nothing out of the ordinary if, instead of "two or three" years, it took five or six, and that this delay was no particular reason to think about the course of Darwin's work. That is, if it were finished, for example, in about six years and the treatise were published in 1865.

But what do we see? In 1868, not six years later but ten, Darwin publishes the book The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. Here the first of the fourteen chapters of the "abstract," as Darwin continues to call the book On the Origin of Species even in its later editions, has grown into a whole book. Instead of three years of work to complete the whole thing that was already "nearly finished," ten years of work were spent polishing one of the fourteen chapters, which at the same time grew into a separate book exceeding in scope the entire "abstract," that is, the entire presentation of the theory as a whole. Another three years go by and Darwin publishes the book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871. What is this? Another chapter of the treatise that has grown into a book exceeding the whole exposition of the entire theory in scope? No. Now it was even harder than before for Darwin to restrain the expansion of the work within such limits in order to refine whole chapters. The treatise on sexual selection, one of the ten sections in chapter four of the original work, has now grown into a volume and a half. The treatment of the genealogy of man added to it is an addendum that did not appear at all in the original book. Darwin's work continued in this manner until his death: he refined tiny little pieces of the original work which grew into separate large articles or whole books. He published supplementary investigations that were not part of the original plan on whose refinement he labored. And when he died (in April 1882) twenty-two years after the publication of his "abstract," all the finished bits taken together composed maybe one-tenth of the treatise, which was "nearly finished" in the spring of 1858 and which was supposed to be made ready for publication in two or three years and to be published entirely in 1862, according to the author's assessment made in November 1859.

So just what is this? It is a treatise for which there would never be an end to the work on it even if the author lived another twenty or even fifty years. The work on it started in 1837 by a young, then twenty-eight-year-old man, seemed to its author, now fifty, "nearly finished" twenty-two years later, and after another twenty-two years of labor by the time of his death as an old man at the age of seventy-three had received a refinement of only a few bits barely forming one-tenth of the total. What kind of labor is this that grew and grew without limit and how could it grow to be in such incongruity with the life expectancy of even the longest-lived individual?

The fact is so strange, so much in opposition to the rules of reasonable human activity, that seeing as the question has been posed, we cannot avoid the answer. The method Darwin used in his work for his treatise on the genealogical relationship between species was unsuitable for successful work of this type.

There are scholars who stop at every question piquing their curiosity they come across in their research; they cannot tear themselves away from it until they investigate it. If the basic topic is small, narrow, then the number of such questions is small and the labor needed to answer all of them is easy to perform. Scholars who like this type of work usually write a series of monographs. And when they write monographs, their work goes well, it is thorough and also successful. Darwin loved this method of work and before he turned all his efforts to the question of the kinship of species he wrote many monographs. Due to his conscientiousness, talent, hard work and erudition, they were excellent. With his passion for gazing at everything that caught his eye, he made many accurate, beautiful observations during the Beagle expedition. His recording of them brought him the glory of a great scientist. He fully deserved it: the book he published enriched science. But just what was this book? It was a collection of small-scale monographs, a series of observations on separate facts, united only by the person making them and by the chronological order in which they were recorded. Then Darwin worked on the processing of the collections he brought home. Out of this work, The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle is especially famous. It consists of five volumes. But it is not something whole, coherent, complete; it too is a series of small monographs. The chronological order of the "journal" is replaced here by a breakdown according to zoological classification. However, this is not a unitary classification treatise, but rather a collection of fragments, each of which is a special monograph, and which are separated from one another by many classification gaps: not all animal families are described here, but only the particular species of the genera of the families that the author came across during his travels. Partly before this work, partly after it, Darwin wrote many other monographs that were printed as special books or articles. The most famous of them is A Monograph of the Sub-class Cirripedia, comprising two volumes. Added to it is the study A Monograph on the Fossil Lepadidae, published as a separate article. (19)

All of this was excellent. Each monograph exhausted the topic, as it is called, imparted all information about it that could be obtained by conscientious research, and explained all the questions stemming from studying the topic as far as was possible in the given state of science. But these topics were small; the questions stemming from their study were scarce in each one of them and not at all broad. In the majority of cases they were quite narrow. Hence it was possible to successfully conduct work on them in an exhausting manner.

 Lo and behold, Darwin applied this method of work which is suitable only for monographic labor to a treatise on the genealogical relationships between current and past flora and fauna; that is, to a topic encompassing all of botany, all of zoology, all of paleontology, and many other branches of natural science. To investigate all questions in all the sciences which turn up under your pen – to research each of them via the monographic, exhaustive method of work – is this in keeping with the number of years which even the longest-lived man can spend on the planet? Is it advisable and do the rules of scientific work, which are identical to the laws of intelligence, demand this?

 Let's recall the chronology by which Darwin himself delineated the phases of his work on the genealogical relationships between species. The work began in 1837. In 1842 the theory is ready, an outline is made, in 1844 the theory is conclusively finished and conclusions are made from its basic positions. Thus, the theoretical part of the work is finished. All that remains is to support the theoretical positions with the factual material on which they are based. This material had been collected and studied earlier; it is ready. That is, just what precisely remained to be done? The only thing that remained was to make a clean copy of the prepared work. The work of making a clean copy of the rough draft goes on, it goes on for fourteen years. In the spring of 1858 the author is unexpectedly forced to inform the scientific world of his theory. And it turns out that the "nearly finished" treatise still needs another "two or three" years of work in order to be "completed." But Wallace's article will not give him two years, a year, or even half a year. It forces the prompt publication of the theory set out in the treatise. But in its current state it cannot be published. Why can't it be? It is "nearly finished." All that remains is "to complete" it; that is, in the generally accepted sense of the word to add in the clarification of minor details, which perhaps are curious, but do not have any special significance. The scientific world will gladly wait two or three years for them. And so, he needs to send the treatise to the printer and while reading the proofs make some provisos: "I reserve the right to put off a detailed explanation of this question until I have the free time to study it; it is curious but it does not have any significance for the work I am publishing now." (20) The scientific world is used to such provisos; not a single book on a topic of broad scope gets by without them. Alas, that's not it at all! The treatise cannot be published in its current state because it does not exist. The author just likes to imagine that it exists. There is no treatise; on the author's desk a pile of draft papers is accumulating. "My work is now nearly finished." As we shall see, this means that the author, having made a multitude of monographic researches, assumes that the topic is exhausted by them. He assumes this because at the current moment he does not recall very many questions that seem curious. He thinks that he will not need much time to investigate them. At the same time, he assumes that he will not be presented with any other interesting questions. Up to this point that has not been the case: in the course of fourteen years some interesting questions have constantly given rise to others no less interesting. But at the current moment he thinks this will not happen in the future. The fantasy that the work is almost exhausted is followed by the fantasy that the work will be finished in two, at most, three years. The words "two or three years" mean: "The pile of monographs on my desk consists of dozens of groups of researches. These groups now have a tie between each other only in my thoughts; there is no tie between them on paper. Up to this point I have not had the free time to explicate on paper the correlation between them. Now I will take this up. Very many of the monographs have remained unfinished because the desire to research other curious questions distracted me. I will finish them up. Moreover, I will investigate the curious questions that have not yet been researched but which are the very last ones, and thus no new ones will occur. I hope that I will finish all this in two or three years."

And so, in two or three years the treatise will be finished. But for now it is a heap of drafts, disconnected fragments unsuitable for reading by anyone but the author. However, Wallace's article forces the author to publish his theory set out in a treatise without delay. The previous outline made in 1844 is no longer suitable; fourteen years of work has turned it into tiny pieces spread out over masses of monographs. He needs to make a new outline, or as the author calls this article, to make an "abstract" from the treatise. Having made and published it in the Journal of the Linnean Society, Darwin began to revise and expand it for publication as a separate book. Its volume grew so much that the revision became a book of several hundred pages. This expanded revision of the "abstract" is the famous book that produced a revolution in the science of organic creatures. In the fifth edition published in 1869 the author still calls it an "abstract" from the treatise, on which he continues to work and which ten years before he hoped to finish in two or three years. Even now he still hopes to bring the work to conclusion, continuing to use to the same method. He still does not see that given his method of work the labor is unfinishable. A year before that point, after nine years of work, he prepared for publication, and published the first chapter of his treatise: The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. Nine years of work and one chapter is ready. Only thirteen chapters remain to be produced working in the same way and the man doing the job is just sixty. You must agree: how can he not hope to bring the job to an end by working in the same way?

The rules of scientific work state: if you take on as a topic something very broad and intricate, then concentrate all your forces on explaining the basic questions, and don't get distracted by anything. Otherwise, you won't have enough time or energy to deal with them as you should. The number of questions aroused by work on a topic of broad scope are infinitely large. They arise in countless series and each of these countless series has no end. Chasing after each of these questions that seem curious means transforming scientific work into an amusement for your curiosity, into an empty, pointless game. Consider whether you need to research a question that seems curious to solve the basic task of your work, investigate only the questions you need to research your main task, and research them only insofar as you need to. Remove all other questions as being out of place in your treatise. Otherwise, you will waste all your energy and time, you will get caught up in their constantly and endlessly expanding labyrinth, and your basic questions will remain unsolved. You will accept as undoubted truths any arguments that you have accidentally come across, which you imagine as resolving them, and you will begin to subsume everything under other people's ideas which you have imagined as axioms and falsely interpreted by your misunderstanding. The true meaning of these ideas has remained incomprehensible to you due to your unreadiness to understand them or unnoticed by you in the haste with which you seized upon them and pulled them out of the context of the system determining their meaning.

Did Darwin know about these conditions for success in scientific labor on wide-ranging topics? Perhaps. But in the "abstract" from the treatise on which he had been working from 1844 to 1858, in the famous book On the Origin of Species, there is not the slightest trace that he was familiar with these demands of science. Based on this book it is clear that his career was an uninterrupted violation of them.

For example, he comes across the question: how did animals and plants get to the islands? A clear-thinking answer would be: "Investigating this question has no relation to my work. I will just remark that the matter is clear by itself: geology has shown that all islands settled by land-based plants and animals were parts of the continents. If there are other, particular explanations besides this general one, so much the better. But I don't have the time to search for them now. When I have the time, perhaps, I will be interested in searching for them. But if I take this up at some point, it will be in another work. At present such investigations are out of place." Darwin was completely unfamiliar with the concept that he should answer thus according to the rules of scientific work. He imagines that he is obliged to exhaust a question, without considering whether the question is relevant. He thinks up objections to well-known explanations. They are insignificant but he imagines that they are important. He finds a generally accepted solution having no relevance to be doubtful and considers himself obliged to search for other explanations. Are the seeds of plants carried from the mainland to distant islands by sea currents? The grains soon sink in sea water; they cannot float far. But dry wood does not sink so quickly. So Darwin submerges dried plant branches with ripe pods and other containers of grains into seawater. But is there anything like this in nature? Having come up with an objection that is obviously empty, Darwin also seeks a refutation: the wind breaks a branch with ripe pods or berries. It lies on the ground and dries, but they have not yet fallen off it. A storm casts it into the sea, it floats... What on earth is this? Natural History in Amusing Stories for Children? No, this is the book On the Origin of Species which remade science, a book of which one-fifth or one-tenth is profound; the remaining portions are childish but invariably conscientious and packed with erudition. Let's continue to read. Darwin holds branches with ripe berries or pods in seawater. After some time he takes some of them out, dries the grains, waits to see if they germinate, after still more time he takes out other branches, and so on, and so on. He thinks: these here grains germinated after so many days, but these grains after so many days. He collects the data on similar observations, calculates how many days are needed for branches to be carried by sea current to an island for so many miles. But these explanations are not enough, he needs to find others. Darwin obtains sea-birds, washes off their feet, examines the washed-off dirt. He finds seeds in the dirt and thinks: here is how so many species of plants can appear on islands from seeds carried by birds together with the dirt on their feet. He thinks up an objection: seabirds from America sometimes migrate across the ocean to England, driven by a storm. Why don't American plants from seeds carried by them in the dirt on their feet appear in England? This is because... But read for yourself the refutation of this objection and also further investigations on the question of how plants and animals could get to islands, which has no relevance. However, it goes without saying, that Darwin thinks the question is relevant. He even shows the connection of research into it with the basic task of his work. You can find a tie between anything and anything if you want to. It is not difficult to show that a research on Alexander the Great's campaign into Bactria should include a description of London: Newton spent the last years of his life in London. One of the predecessors of Newton was Eratosthenes, and Eratosthenes lived in Egypt under the Ptolemies. Egypt was acquired by the Ptolemies because it was conquered by Alexander. But if Alexander had been killed in Bactria, then the Egyptians with the help of the Greeks would have driven out the Macedonians from their land. Thus, it is clear that an investigation into the reasons for the success of Alexander's campaign into Bactria should form an indispensable part of a description of London. And how much time did Darwin waste on research into branches floating on the sea and into the dirt on bird's feet?

Another example. The word instinct turns up under Darwin's pen. He comes across the question: How did instincts develop? The answer required by the rules of scientific work is self-evident: "This is a question, pointless for someone whose full strength should be focused on the topic of his work, on the explanation of the origin of species. Instincts are not used as criteria for classification. Therefore, all questions about them should be removed from work whose goal is to explain the modifications of forms." But the question of instincts is curious and Darwin delves into the study of it. The further he goes, the more curious it is. And Darwin dives so deeply into this question, which he had no business studying in the first place when working on his treatise, that the research on the development of instinct grows to such a point that it far exceeds the size of his research on the development of organs. It forms a whole chapter in a treatise where it is completely out of place; this is chapter seven. But the investigation on the development of organs, one of the most important questions of the basic topic of the work, forms only one-third of chapter five.

Thus, fascinated by questions irrelevant to the basic topic or indulging in trifles, Darwin wasted year after year in research useless for explaining the main task. And overwhelmed by this mass of unnecessary labor, he did not have the free time to penetrate into the essential questions of his work with the necessary attention. Finally, he is forced by external circumstance, Wallace's article, to suspend his endless wanderings for a time, to make an "abstract" from the constantly expanding heap of drafts, which he considered to be a treatise on the genealogical kinship of current species with former ones. Having revised this "abstract," having published it as a separate book, he again dives into research on trifles, the greater part of which is irrelevant to the matter. In the course of haphazard pursuits, transferring his work from one part of the treatise to another, little by little he brought some secondary or completely irrelevant questions to such a broad development that he considered them exhausted and published these parts of his treatise in special books or articles, or supplements to it. Let's list the most important of those published in the first sixteen years before the appearance of the book On the Origin of Species. As monographs they are excellent, like his previous monographs, and each of them greatly advanced the study of the question treated in it. But they did not have the slightest influence on the general course of the concepts on the genealogical relationships between species. The revolution in science was produced exclusively by the "abstract" published in the Journal of the Linnean Society and its expanded edition as a book, On the Origin of Species. The works subsequently published by Darwin in no way contributed to the replacement of old mistaken opinions on the history of organic creatures with new ones. The naturalists adhering to the doctrine of the immutability of species who abandoned it for the doctrine of their genealogical kinship, did so under the influence of the book On the Origin of Species. The aspiring naturalists studied it, not Darwin's subsequent books. Thus, we will deal with these monographs only to explain his method of work on the treatise on the kinship between species.

After the book On the Origin of Species he published the monograph On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects. This is a part of section five of chapter six of the treatise. Orchid flowers are built so that the pollen of the stamens cannot be transferred by the wind to the stigmas of the pistils. Insects transfer it on their feet, heads, and backs by creeping into male orchid flowers to suck the nectar and smearing themselves with the pollen of the stamens and then creeping into the female flowers for the nectar and smearing the stigmas of the pistils with the pollen of the stamens. So just how does this clarify the question of the origin of species? The investigation continues. It turns out that the brightness of the color and the great size of the flower help the insects to detect it. Does it help a lot? Is this the point? Isn't the smell of the nectar much more noticeable to the insects? Don't insects come to suck it from flowers that are not brightly colored and are very small? This is a major fact. Darwin forgets about it being carried away by research into a minor peripheral item. But so be it that the flower's size and brightness of color are what particularly attracts insects to orchids. So what? Here's what: the plants of the orchid family whose flowers are a bit bigger and brighter than others of the same species, the same genus, or family, better attracted insects. Thus, their reproduction was stronger; they crowded out plants of their species or genus, or family which had smaller and less bright flowers. Thus, the orchid flowers grew more and more magnificent. This turns out to be, according to Darwin, one of the clearest and strongest proofs in favor of his basic idea that the development of an organization was caused by natural selection. That's wonderful, if, delving into research on orchids, you forget about all other plants, then it really will turn out thus. But if you remember that other plants exist whose fertilization proceeds by methods simpler and more reliable than the transfer of stamen pollen from male flowers to the pistils of female ones by insects, then it will be clear that the development of orchid flowers cannot be the result of natural selection. If the course of things depended on it, then plants with such a flower construction like orchids could not exist. They would have been crowded out by plants whose fertilization is accomplished by simpler and more reliable means and whose reproduction, therefore, is incomparably more potent. And so, if you forget about major facts, then you can explain the development of orchid flowers by the action of natural selection. But if you remember major facts, then it is clear that the very existence of orchids refutes the idea of the predominance of natural selection in the process of developing an organization, that its elevation is caused by the action of some other forces overcoming its action. If it was predominant, then not only orchids in particular, but even plants having organizations any higher than those that reproduce like moss and mushrooms generally could not exist.

We do not have at hand the data on which year the monograph on climbing plants was published. It seems that it was after the research on the fertilization of orchids but before the research on the modification of animals and plants under domestication. (21) If our memory is faulty on this, it takes us away from the chronological order we had intended to observe. But let's get to it.

On the Movement and Habits of Climbing Plants is a part of section four of chapter six of the treatise. The quality of a plant being a climbing one is not criterion for classification. Thus, research into the quality of some plants being climbers was a pointless waste of time for a man laboring over the explanation of the genealogical relationships between species.

The monograph on the fertilization of orchids was published in 1862. In 1868 an investigation appeared exceeding in scope the book On the Origin of Species.

The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication is the first chapter of Darwin's treatise. Darwin thought that this book would give his theory a firmer foundation than could be given in the short exposition in chapter one of On the Origin of Species. It seemed to him that the importance of the matter is in the details he is now providing, that they will convince a significant portion of naturalists who had held to their former beliefs after the publication of On the Origin of Species of the mutability of species. The book about the modification of domestic animals and cultivated plants produced precisely no effect in this sense. And the expectation that it would convince someone who had not been convinced by the "abstract" as Darwin called the book On the Origin of Species, was only the naivete of a man who attached too much importance to trifles. Everything of any importance for people knowing how to distinguish the important from trifles had already been reported in the "abstract" of this part of the treatise. In its full explication thousands of details were added which were valuable for the clarification of minor questions. But these additions have only a technical importance; they could not have any influence on the way of thinking on the question of the mutability or immutability of species. Whomever a map of England does not convince that the Thames flows from the west to the east and empties in the North Sea, likewise will not be convinced of this by a topographic map of the banks of the Thames. This map has a very great importance, but only technical. The general understanding of the flow of the Thames in no way depends on such details it adds to the outline of the Thames given by a general map of England. Darwin in his passion for the monographic exhaustion of questions constantly forgot that minutiae are nothing more than minutiae, that the major questions are solved on the basis of a few, essentially important facts or broad ideas, and that thousands of trivial details cannot have any perceptible weight in the balancing of arguments on major questions. Darwin's mistaken hope that a detailed development of the first chapter of his treatise would convince anyone who had not been convinced by his "abstract" was simply the naivete of a simple-hearted man. But he made a huge scientific mistake in having taken the results produced by artificial selection made by man as the basis for his understanding of the character of natural selection. The owner of a herd, when killing the worst animals, does not subject the best animals he spares to the same process by which he kills the worst. If, for example, he beats the cows he is killing with an axe-head on the forehead, he does not inflict the same blows on the foreheads of the cows he spares. Natural selection subjects each animal in a herd of gazelles to the same process which results in the death of some of them. The most common form of natural selection is the dying off of excessive population due to a lack of food. Are only the dying creatures subjected to hunger in this case? No, all of them are. Is this how an owner acts with his herd? Would his herd be improved if he restrained reproduction by subjecting all the animals to starvation? The surviving animals would be weakened, ruined, the herd would become worse.

In 1871 Darwin published two investigations that were combined into one book: on sexual selection and on the genealogy of man.

The research into sexual selection was section two of chapter four of his treatise. In placing natural selection as the main cause of the replacement of former species by new ones, Darwin accepted sexual selection as one of the secondary forces modifying organisms. Since he himself considered its influence secondary, there was no need for him to say a whole lot about the action of this force. But in the meantime, his investigation of it grew to such a degree that it exceeded On the Origin of Species in scope, where it formed only one section, the smallest, out of ten in a single chapter, with the addition of a few remarks in one small section in the eleven sections of another chapter (Chapter Five, Section 9: Secondary Sexual Characters Variable). What was Darwin's goal in researching the action of sexual selection? Did he want to make a full, systematic survey of the so-called secondary sexual differences produced by this selection according to all classes, families, genera, and species of animals? This would be a huge catalog, similar to the so-called Genera et species animalum. No, he didn't want to do anything of the sort because he knew that such work is possible only as a corpus of individual catalogs of separate classes of animals, but there still was not a single catalog of that type (and it seems there still isn't). When undertaking his research Darwin had a quite reasonable goal achievable without such work, whose length would exceed the comparative insignificance of the topic in his system of understanding the reasons for the change of forms. He just wanted to show that sexual selection exists and that in some cases the action of this force produces rather significant results. To achieve this it would have been enough to introduce some of the best and clearest examples. He attributes to sexual selection, for example, the development of horns in the males of certain mammals, the development of tusks among certain others, the development of bright coloring and decorating feathers in the males of some birds. And it would have been enough to confirm these ideas by reminding the reader of the horns of deer, the tusks of elephants and the feathers of a peacock's tail. The work could have been finished in a few days, if not a few hours. But, the topic is interesting, and Darwin was lured far, far beyond the limits he should have observed given by his own concepts of the comparative insignificance of the topic with regard to the kinship between current species and past ones. He analyzes sexual (properly speaking, so-called secondary ones, having no relation to the organs of reproduction) differences of a multitude of animals of different classes, starting from the rather low. Those instances in which it is most difficult to discern the method of action by sexual selection especially attract him. This is a collection of curiosities, similar to those collected by lovers of rarities. The labor and time wasted are a hundred times greater than were necessary and yet, there is no full, integral survey. Later, if someone begins to compose it, he certainly will find in Darwin's research much useful material. But from the point of view of the needs of Darwin's theory, the mass of work on research into sexual differences was a complete waste of time. And what sexual characteristics does the fragmentary survey on which Darwin applied the greater part of his wasted labor concern? They concern differences in coloring, that is, those that deserve the least attention in a treatise whose goal is to explain the origin of species, the differences between organic creatures in terms of form. We will recall one more example. A peacock differs from a peahen by various decorations, the most striking of which is the long tail that unfolds into a vertical fan with a magnificent rim formed by the bright multicolored ends of the feathers. It is clear that the acquisition of such a tail by the peacock had as it main causes some sort of increase in the activity of the glands feeding the tail feathers and some physiological change in the nutrition of the ends of the tail feathers. For these reasons, the feathers lengthened and acquired a thickness at the end and brightness of coloring. A change in the muscles controlling the movement of the tail giving the peacock the possibility of unfolding the tail as a vertical fan was also of great importance. Unfolded, it produces a much bigger effect than folded. The greatest attention should have been turned to questions about these glands, muscles and nutrition in the ends of the tail feathers. But they don't interest Darwin. He struggles exclusively with the question of how one central spot was formed from two lateral ones at the end of a tail feather. Okay, so be it: this comparatively insignificant question is more important than all the others. But before indulging in research on how sexual selection produced a fusion of two lateral spots into one, he should have considered an obvious question: Can this fusion be explained as the result of sexual selection? Did these two spots really produce a less effective impression on the peahen than the current single one? Did the peacock's tail really become more magnificent as a result of their fusion? Their marking was, according to Darwin himself, just as bright, and the distribution of the bright colors in it was exactly the same as in the current spot. But the sum of their area was greater than the area of the current spot. When they merged, very large segments of the sides, which had faced the midline of the length of the feather, were cut off. Therefore, the rim of the fan with the separation of the lateral spots was more magnificent than it became after their merger. This is the case if we take the ideas on the coloring and size of the lateral spots, on which Darwin bases his research, as reliable facts. Therefore, from his own point of view, he should have decided that the convergence of the two lateral spots into one could not be produced by sexual selection, that some other force produced it, which shifted the coloring towards the roots of the tail feather's end. This was some change in the nutrition of the feather-end acting independently of sexual selection and in spite of it. Darwin's fascination with minutiae constantly leads him to both these mistakes. Because of minutiae he forgets more important facts, and when diving into concocting an explanation for how a given force produced a given result, he constantly forgets to consider preliminary questions. These are: whether one can ascribe the production of this result to the action of this force, whether the character of this result is not opposed to its character, and whether, therefore, one should decide that it is produced by the action of some other force? Does this mean rejecting a search for explanations which by necessity will be false and taking up research into what other force produced the given result?

The research into the genealogy of man published together with that on sexual selection is an addition to the treatise of which On the Origin of Species forms an abstract. In the book there is not the slightest mention of whether or not, in the opinion of the author, the concept of the kinship of current organic creatures with former ones should be applied to man. The simpleton wanted to be clever. And he was clever to the extent that simpletons can be. All those people whom he wanted to fool by his silence raised a ruckus upon the appearance of On the Origin of Species, all shouted in unison that he was producing man from a monkey. He started to ardently assure everyone that he could not have such a thought, that in his opinion such a thought was absurd. None of those complaining believed the disgraced do-gooder. Everyone attributed the idea to him, which he denied as an absurdity that had never crossed his mind. It would have been a thousand times easier for him if he had just straight out expressed his ideas on the genealogy of man in On the Origin of Species. But talking about this was not part of the plan of the treatise of which it was an abstract. Having seen that his cleverness had brought him woe and being emboldened by the example of other naturalists who expressed their ideas on the relationship between man and former creatures with a similar organization, he wrote an investigation on the topic which he had not wanted to touch when composing the plan for his treatise. A man less naive would have known from the beginning that it was unavoidable to decide between one of two things: either, include an investigation of the genealogy of man when composing a plan for a treatise on the genealogical kinship of certain organic creatures with past ones, or reject the very idea of such a treatise.

In 1872 Darwin published an investigation into the expression of feelings in humans and animals and in 1875 one on insectivorous plants. (22) Both of them were related to the second section of chapter five of his treatise, which spoke about the use and disuse of organs. But not only in the first edition of the "abstract" but even in the fifth which came out in 1869 there is not a single word corresponding to them. That is, not only in 1859 but also in 1869, Darwin still had not foreseen that he would find it necessary to "complete" his treatise with these explorations. And truly, it was difficult to foresee that it would happen thus. The insectivorous nature of some plants does not belong among their classificatory criteria. There is nothing to say about whether changes in facial expression or in the state of muscles of other parts of the body during outbursts of feeling are ranked among species differences. Thus the exploration of these topics were things completely out of place in a work whose goal was to explain the relationship between species. And, in particular, should a man older than sixty, who has already been laboring over his treatise for dozens of years and who has not managed to move its refinement further than the first chapter, have wasted time on such unnecessary explorations? It seems that he needed to remember that he should value his time, not waste month after month, year after year on digressions from the basic topic of his work. But out-of-place questions turned up, they seemed interesting and distracted him from the topic of his work. However, no, they didn't distract him: he attempts to show that via these explorations he is explaining the kinship between species. Well, of course, you can tie anything to anything, if you want.

We will stop at the year 1875 because we don't have handy a chronological list of the parts of the treatise Darwin published in the following years. That's a pity. But even a survey of those parts he published in the first sixteen years after finishing On the Origin of Species is enough to show how successfully and systematically the tireless laborer's refinement of his basic concepts on the kinship between species proceeded.

He put the finishing touches on the first chapter of the treatise which served as the foreword to the explication of his theory. At this point, the systematic treatment ended. After this, that is starting in 1868, he just wandered in the labyrinth of his rough drafts, the mass of which grew and grew and became more and more chaotic. From time to time he stopped at some group of these papers and put the finishing touches on some tiny bit of the treatise which dealt with either a trivial question or something unrelated to the main task. He then published this little piece which had no tie with those published earlier nor with the one to which he turned next.

The theory should have been set out in the second, third and fourth chapters of the treatise. The second chapter was earmarked for an exploration of the changes in the forms of plants and animals in their natural state independent of man. It was supposed to serve as preparation for an explication of the most essential parts of the theory, for solving the question of which force produced the development of organic forms. The solution of this question should have formed the content of the third chapter (which had as its heading: The Struggle for Existence) and of the fourth chapter (whose heading was: Natural Selection, the Result of the Struggle for Existence). Out of the twenty-two sections of these three chapters Darwin managed to refine only one section by the end of his life. Namely, the second section of Chapter Four which lays out the doctrine on sexual selection. One section out of twenty-two, moreover, a section dedicated to an explication of the action not of the struggle for existence but a different force–that of the competition between males for possession of females or between females for possession of a male. But with regards to the doctrine of the struggle for existence, whose action forms, according to Darwin's theory, the basic element in the history of the development of organic forms and about natural selection produced by it, about this most essential feature of his theory, the poor man didn't manage to refine a single bit before his death. He died–let's recall the dates–he died in 1882, he had the theory ready in 1844. The work, tirelessly conducted for thirty-eight years, went either to trivial or to irrelevant explorations so that in the course of thirty-eight years not a single one of the basic suppositions of the theory had been subjected by the author to an attentive analysis, due to a lack of time, and the solutions of the basic questions which had occurred to him at the beginning of his work remained unverified.

Thirty-eight years of a futile waste of forces on digressions from the main topic: in the history of science there is hardly another example of such a violation of the rules of scholarly work to offer.

Meanwhile, it is customary to extoll Darwin's method of working on his treatise. The source is the fact that this never-ending, irrational work has a very striking quality. The author's moral merits reflected in his work contribute much to the fervor: the tireless diligence, the undoubted conscientiousness, the quite sincere modesty, the considerate readiness to recognize the merits of others and to give full justice to the works of competitors, the meekness of a gentle soul unshakeable by any enemy attacks. These beautiful qualities of the man arouse respect for his work in any decent person. Nevertheless, the essential reason for the praise of his method of work is due not to its moral merits, but to the fact that its result is very effective: gathering detail after detail and analyzing all sorts of trivia, Darwin suppresses a person's thought with a mass of erudition. This person doesn't know how to or has forgotten to consider: 1) to which category of knowledge belong the materials, from which exclusively all the mass of erudition producing the effect via their size, are composed; 2) according to which norms analyses are produced and what are the peculiarities of the mind which piles up these heaps and makes these analyses.

In Darwin, several qualities of a great scientist were combined with qualities of a very good, unquestionably honorable, extremely noble person: a strong mind, a vast store of knowledge, and, despite all its vastness, a fascination to increase it which didn't weaken up to the end of his life, to study and study. But we saw that this mind, although a strong one, had tendencies incompatible with successful work on explaining broad, complex questions: with irresistible passion it plunged into investigations which were either trivial or irrelevant to the main topic; it wasted endless time on collecting long lists which didn't add anything new to the explanation given by a few examples and on the elaboration of irrelevant questions; losing itself in a mass of trivia and in distant digressions, it let major facts slip from its view and thus didn't have the time to research the essential questions. There was another peculiarity in Darwin's mind that was incompatible with successful work on explaining the complex and convoluted laws of life: childish naivete. The norms according to which Darwin produced his analysis of the facts of life were bits of optimistic philosophy in popular adaptation which subsumes all facts without exception under the popular saying: "everything in the world is for the best." A man who is guided in his judgements by such thoughts does not have the scientific preparation for understanding the laws of life, no matter how extensive his specialized knowledge is. But even in Darwin's specialized knowledge there were gaps which he made no attempt to address, since in his naivete he did not realize that in addition to the knowledge necessary for monographic research, there is a different category of specialized knowledge which the monographer doesn't need but without it a fundamental exploration of the big questions is impossible. We will take a look at these gaps by turning attention to several features of Darwin's story of how he got the idea for the mutability of species and of how he sought an explication of the history of the changes in form in organisms.

The naturalist, who, it is true, was still very young, had not yet managed to acquire such a quantity of specialized knowledge like first-class scientists at age 35 or 40 have, but nevertheless a naturalist, moreover, already capable of enriching science with excellent observations and very substantial conclusions based on them, – consequently, already having a very specialized knowledge, sails from England to the eastern coast of South America, visits  several locations making observations and, incidentally, studying the animals, then makes the same observations on the western coast of South America, arrives finally in the Galapagos Islands and is not even simply "struck," but is "much struck" when he saw that the animals of this archipelago are similar to the animals of the nearest shore of South America, but are not identical to them. How was it possible that he was surprised by this? Let's suppose that he had the greatest plausible lack of specialized knowledge. Nevertheless, it is strange that in his knowledge there could be such a gap which left room for such surprise at the sight of what he saw. It is true, zoological geography at that time was much less developed than now. But nevertheless even then it was already a generally known fact that the fauna of islands located far from the continents usually consists of species similar to but not identical with species of the closest parts of the continents. And not only was he "much struck" then; twenty-five years later when he had already become a first-class naturalist, when talking about this fact in his "Introduction" to the book, On the Origin of Species, he doesn't find anything strange in it. The same ignorance about its strangeness remains even after ten years, in the fifth edition of the book. How should this ignorance be understood? Evidently, Darwin's ideas on what knowledge a naturalist needs remained one-sided both in 1859 and in 1869, just as his concerns for the acquisition of knowledge before setting off from England at the end of 1831 were one-sided: he valued only the data needed by a monographer. The poor familiarity with the areas of knowledge dealing with broad facts continued not to seem strange to him because it continued to be poor, and he did not even notice that it remained poor, considering that this branch of knowledge was insignificant.

The unexpected fact which amazed the young naturalist in the Galapagos Islands brought him to the idea that the animals of this archipelago are modified descendants of ancestors, whose other descendants, presumably also modified, live in the closest parts of South America. The idea was correct. But again the strange gap in knowledge: the young naturalist did not remember that there were great naturalists who had spoken about a genealogical kinship between species. How could he have left England without knowing this? Okay, so he didn't know. Let's suppose, that he, who intended to be a monographer, was correct in considering it unnecessary to familiarize himself with the works of naturalists, outdated in their minor details, and thus unsuitable for a monographer for whom the latest books should serve as aids. But then he returned to England and, although forced to work mainly on preparing the factual results of his trip for publication, also works on an explication of his thoughts on the genealogical kinship between species. This is not a monographic task. One of the basic rules of scientific work says that a man who wants to formulate a correct understanding for himself of a very broad question, on which contemporary specialists have mistaken opinions, needs to inquire about the opinions of former great specialists. But this rule for scientific work on an explication of broad questions is unknown to the young, now, however, no longer young, twenty-eight-year-old, naturalist, who had taken it into his head to remake the science of organic creatures. He doesn't know that he should inquire into the opinions of previous great naturalists, whose ideas on the kinship between species were declared to be unworthy of attention by his teachers, Cuvier's pupils. He came to the conclusion that the theory of the immutability of species expounded by Cuvier was mistaken. But he doesn't consider that for him, as an opponent of Cuvier, the remarks by the latter's students about his opponents' ideas should not be authoritative. He continues to believe his teachers that the ideas of these naturalists on the kinship between species were unworthy of attention, and, year after year, he works on seeking an explanation for the changes in the forms of organisms, not knowing that it would not hurt him to inquire into the opinions of the previous transformists. But he doesn't find an explanation, he wanders in the dark. And suddenly — Oh, joy — an explanation is found. It is found — Oh, wonder of wonders! — in a treatise on political economy, — in a treatise written with the goal of justifying the Tory ministry with the support of the Whig majority in rejecting projects of political reform, proposed by the Whig minority. How was it possible to find what was necessary for the remaking of the science on the relationships between a rose, a pine and moss, between an elephant, an eagle and a herring in a book of such content? The case is amazing in its incongruity with the rules of common sense, but, besides this quality, it is very simple, quite natural. If a man, wishing to become a painter, doesn't know that he needs to study painting from painters, then in his search for a teacher, having come upon a joiner he will start learning painting from this craftsman. A joiner isn't a painter, it's true; but he does know how to draw figures of chairs and tables with a pencil; he will teach this; well, that's good. Isn't this painting?

And so, it is necessary to remake natural science on the basis of a political pamphlet. Lovely. But if you need to borrow from Malthus a theory explaining the changes in the forms of plants and animals, then you should at least delve into the meaning of Malthus's doctrine. But Darwin made no effort on that score. He didn't consider looking into what is the meaning of the Malthusian idea beckoning to him, a man worn out by his wandering in the dark. If he had correctly understood his teacher's idea that so enraptured him, the theory built on it would have been mistaken only in the fact that it would have ascribed the predominant influence on the course of changes in organic forms to the action of a force having only a secondary significance in this regard. It would have ignored other forces, whose influence on the change in the forms of organisms is much more powerful. It would have given too narrow an explanation of the facts, but it would not have distorted the small grain of truth grasped with it by the addition of a lie mixed in by mistake. It turned out otherwise. Delighted with the sudden illumination of his mind, Darwin pulled from Malthus's argumentation the idea that had fascinated him, without bothering to consider the ideas his teacher attached to it and which determined its meaning. He presupposed in it a meaning corresponding to his customary views on things, not realizing that this meaning was incongruous with his teacher's views, and he constructed a theory of the development of organic nature on a wrongly understood fragment of the publicistic defense of the Tory ministry, supported by the Whig majority. Such is the source of the theory of the beneficial nature of the struggle for existence; it is a crude misunderstanding.

Malthus says that each species of organic creatures has the power to reproduce; that due to the action of this force the quantity of creatures of each species becomes and remains greater than the quantity of food that can be found by these creatures; that therefore some of them are subject to hunger and perish directly from it or from diseases and other calamities produced by it.

All of this is correct. But why does Malthus put it forward? He wants to show that calamities occur because of it, to which people are subject if they reproduce excessively, and he shows that in this case the cause of their woes is excessive reproduction. They breed like dumb creatures and are subject to the calamities to which dumb animals are subject via reproduction. What does Malthus say about this? About calamities and the cause of calamities? Just what, in his view, are calamities? According to his views, they are calamities and nothing more; evil and nothing more. Does he see anything good in the cause of the calamities about which he speaks, excessive reproduction? [No], he doesn't see anything good in it: it is the cause of calamities and nothing more; it is the source of evil and nothing more.

That's how it is according to Malthus. And in fact it is so. It is incorrect only in that it produces all calamities from a single cause – from excessive reproduction. There are other causes quite distinct from it. They exist not only among humans but also among intelligent animals and among plants. For example, when young land-based mammals forget to look under their feet while playing, they run into a swamp and drown; or when a storm breaks a tree. These are calamities occurring from causes having nothing in common with a lack of food, or with excessive reproduction.  But, based on the evidence of the physiology of animals and plants and its applied sciences of their pathology and therapeutics, Malthus is correct regarding the fact that excessive reproduction produces only calamities and that calamities are calamities and nothing more.

And so, for Malthus, the calamities produced by excessive reproduction are calamities, and nothing more, an evil and nothing more, and the cause producing them, excessive reproduction, is the cause of calamities, and nothing more, the cause of evil and nothing more. But Darwin was not prepared to understand this view of things. He didn't even have an inkling that such a view of things was possible because his customary views of things were completely different and he was so accustomed to them that they seemed to him the only ones possible. These views on things which seemed to be the only ones possible were those by which calamities are not considered calamities but blessings, or, in cases of extreme difficulty in calling them blessings, they are considered the sources of blessings. This manner of understanding things is called optimistic. Holding this way of thinking and not suspecting the possibility of any other, Darwin was convinced that Malthus thinks about calamities like he does, that he considers them to be blessings or the sources of blessings. The calamities about which Malthus speaks — hunger, diseases, and fights produced because of hunger, murders committed to alleviate hunger, death from hunger, — in and of themselves, obviously, are not blessings for those subjected to them. And since they, obviously, are not blessings, then according to Darwin's views, it followed that they should be considered the sources of blessings. Thus, it occurred to him that the calamities of which Malthus speaks must produce good results, and the root cause of these calamities, excessive reproduction, must be considered the root cause of everything good in the history of organic creatures, the source of the perfection of organization, the force which from single-cell organisms produced plants like the rose, the linden, and the oak, and animals like the swallow, the swan and eagle, the lion, elephant and gorilla. On the basis of such a successful guess regarding the meaning of the idea borrowed from Malthus, the theory of the beneficial nature of the struggle for existence was built in Darwin's fantasy. Such are its essential features.

The history of organic creatures is explained by Malthus's idea that they, by excessively multiplying, are subject to a lack of food and part of them perish either from hunger or from its consequences, two of which are especially important in this regard: the struggle for food between creatures living off the same food; and the struggle between two kinds of creatures, predators and prey. The totality of the facts produced by hunger and its consequences, we will call the struggle for existence, but the result of the struggle for existence, that is, the perishing of the creatures not able to withstand this struggle and the survival of only those creatures capable of bearing it, we will call natural selection. When comparing previous flora and fauna amongst each other and with current flora and fauna, we see that at one time only plants and animals with a low level of organization existed, that plants and animals of a high-level of organization arose later and that the perfection of organization proceeded gradually. And taking into consideration the data of comparative anatomy and embryology, we find that all plants and animals having an organization higher than single-cell organisms came from single-cell organisms.

And since the root cause for the change in organic forms is the struggle for existence and natural selection, then: the cause for the perfection of the organization, the source of progress of organic life is the struggle for existence, that is, hunger and the other calamities produced by it, but the means by which it produces the perfection of the organization is natural selection, that is, suffering and perdition.

And this theory, worthy of Torquemada, (23) was produced by a good soul who had to abandon study of medicine because of his inability to bear the sight of an operation in a surgery clinic, where all measures were taken to alleviate the suffering of the patients. Boys growing up in a group of people who have been made coarse due to poverty, that is, mainly due to a lack of food, these crude, ignorant, malicious boys do not think that they are benefitting mice when they torture a mouse, but Darwin teaches us to think this. For instance: the mice run from these boys. Owing to this fact speed and dexterity develop in mice, the muscles develop, the energy of breathing develops, the whole organization is perfected. Yes, malicious boys, cats, hawks, and owls are the benefactors of mice. That's all there is to it, right? But, is this running good for the development of the muscles and the energy of breathing. Isn't the strength exhausted by such running? Don't the muscles weaken from excessive exertion? Aren't the lungs damaged? Isn't there shortness of breath? According to physiology, yes: the result of such running is damage to the organism. And is running all there is to the matter? Don't mice sit, hiding in their burrows? Is sitting motionless in stuffy holes good for mice, who are mammals, that is, creatures with a full need of motion and a very strong need of breathing? According to physiology it's not good, but harmful. But does it matter what physiology says? After all, there's Malthus's book. You just need to take a few lines from it and, voila, a theory explaining the history of organic creatures is ready.

That, which ignorant boys would be ashamed to say in justification of their malicious pranks, was thought up and proclaimed to the world by a smart man, a very good man, and – a naturalist, who, it seems, should have recalled the basic truths of physiology. A scientific fantasy developing a mistaken guess about the meaning of another's misunderstood words can cause such clouding of memory and reason!

Malthus said much that was bad; he could not avoid this. He wanted to defend the policy of the coalition of the Tories and the Whig majority caused by historical circumstances. It is true, but, nonetheless, this policy was harmful for them and the country. Malthus himself knew that it was unjust and harmful. He wrote a bad book, a dishonest one, and he deserves condemnation for it. But he is not to blame for what his grateful disciple imputed to him; he did not instill such abominations. Darwin was wrong to imagine himself as his disciple: he was a distorter of Malthus. In vain Darwin calls his theory an application of Malthus's theory to the question of the origin of species. This is not an application of Malthus's theory but a perversion of the meaning of his words, a crude perversion because the true meaning of his words is clear. He thinks excessive reproduction is a source of calamities and nothing more. He considers calamities to be calamities and nothing more. In this he was faithful to the truth, faithful to natural science. Darwin labels the totality of the results of excessive reproduction as the struggle for existence. Okay, just what is the struggle for existence from the point of view that Malthus places before his readers? It is the totality of calamities and nothing more. Darwin labels the result of the struggle for existence as natural selection. Okay, just what is natural selection according to Malthus's views? In no way is it a blessing, but definitely something bad because excessive reproduction does not, in his opinion, produce anything good, it produces only bad.

That's how it is according to Malthus. Exactly as in physiology. We don't like Malthus and he is not authoritative. But one shouldn't disregard physiology.

Let's recall just what is, according to the physiology of plants and animals, a calamity in the life of an individual creature and the influence, according to physiology, that the calamities of parents have on their children.

Physiology says: a calamity in the life of an individual organic creature is a disturbance of the organism's proper course of functions, and in organisms that possess the capability of sensation it is a disturbance combined with a sensation of pain when it touches the parts of the organism in which this capability is located. If the disturbance is severe and prolonged, it results in death in some cases, in all others in damage to the health, damage to the organism. Likewise, even if it is not severe and prolonged but is repeated often.

According to physiology, what influence does damage to the health, damage to the organization of the parents have on the organization of descendants? Organisms that have damaged health give birth to organisms that have an innate deprivation of health. Creatures that have a damaged organization give birth to creatures that have an innate deformity of organization. And if the course of life continues in this direction for a series of generations, then with each new generation the extent of the result increases because it is the sum of the damages of the previous generations, in each of which the innate deformity was increased by the damage produced by the calamities of its own life.

What is the damage to an organism arising after a series of generations called in the language of physiology? It is called degeneration. And what is degeneration called which consists of not only the worsening of the health of the organism but also a change in the organism itself? It is called the lowering of the organism, degradation.

This is what, according to physiology, is the result of the struggle for existence: the lowering of the organization. This is what, according to physiology, natural selection is: it is a force diminishing organization, a degrading force.

But why bother to remember the laws of physiology when you have Malthus? Okay, so Malthus is more important than physiology, let him be more important. But even Malthus's idea which is recommended to us in place of physiology, leads to the same understanding of natural selection. The inference is simple and clear.

Excessive reproduction produces only calamities. Natural selection is the result of excessive reproduction. The question is, what is natural selection, good or evil? It seems that it isn't hard to understand that it is evil. What is evil as applied to the concept of organization? A lowering of the organization, degradation.

As far as organisms are modified by the action of natural selection, they are degraded. If it had been the predominant influence on the history of organic creatures, there could not have been any elevation of organization. If the ancestors of all organisms were single-cell organisms, then given the predominance of natural selection no organisms even somewhat higher than single-cell ones could ever have arisen. But if single-cell organisms are not the primordial forms of organic life, that is, if the first phase of the existence of life which subsequently became organic, was the existence of microscopic bits of an organic, but still unorganized substance now called protoplasm, then no organisms could have arisen, not even the very lowest kinds of single-cell creatures, from these unorganized bits of protoplasm in the event of the predominance of natural selection. And it is not enough to say that no organisms could arise from them. No, not even these bits of protoplasm could have continued their existence: each of them at the very moment of their formation would have been destroyed by the action of natural selection, it would have decomposed into an inorganic combination of chemical elements which were more stable in the struggle than protoplasm. But if the primordial forms were not formless bits of protoplasm, but single-cell organisms, then it must be said that given the predominance of natural selection not only could they not be elevated in organization, but they could not even have continued to exist: it would have taken away their organization, it would have turned them into bits of formless organic matter, and then turned it into inorganic compounds.

But that was not the case. Plants and animals with a very high organization developed from primordial creatures that had a low organization or even had no organization being formless bits of protoplasm. This means that the history of these bits of protoplasm or single-cell organisms, which were the first ancestors of highly organized creatures, and the history of the next series of ancestors of these creatures went in the direction opposite to the action of natural selection, under the influence of some force or combination of forces opposed to it and outweighing it.

Was this force the only one or was there a combination of several forces? The earlier transformists found that the increase in organization was produced not by the action of a single force, but of several forces, and some of these forces were identified by them. Today's transformists supplement the discoveries of their predecessors. One should think that the series of these discoveries is far from finished, that the list of the forces increasing organization is still incomplete. But based on the laws of physiology, the general character of all of them can be clearly outlined: all forces increasing organization are forces that have a beneficial effect on the life of an individual organic creature, that promote a good course of functions of its organism, and, if this creature has the capability of sensation, via their action they awaken a sensation of physical and moral welfare, contentment with life and joy.

Dear reader, I have worn you out with the length of my article. Please forgive me.

[Editor's Notes:]

(1) Staryi transformist, "Proiskhozhdenie teorii blagotvornosti bor'by za zhizn'," Russkaia mysl' 9, #9 (1888), 79-114. Reprinted in N. G. Chernyshevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii X (Moscow, 1951), 737-72.

(2) William Godwin (1759-1836) was also the author of the novel The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794). He was the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and the father of Mary Shelley.

(3) Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834). English economist.

(4) Chernyshevsky has in mind the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era.

(5) George Canning (1770-1827). British statesman. Robert Peel (1788-1850). British statesman. Arthur Wellington (1769-1852). British commander famous for his victory over Napoleon at Waterloo.

(6) David Ricardo (1772-1823). English economist.

(7) The full title is: On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. The publication date Chernyshevsky provides is an error. Ricardo's book was published in 1817.

(8) Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier (1769-1832). French naturalist.

(9) The title of Cuvier's book used here is translated from Chernyshevsky's Russian version. The full title of Cuvier's book in French is: Recherches sur les ossements fossils de quadrupèdes: où l'on rétablit les caractères de plusieurs espèces d'animaux que les révolutions du globe paroissent avoir détruites. The French title of Cuvier's introduction is: Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe, et sur les changemens qu'elles ont produits dans le règne animal. The title used in English for the latter is taken from the translation of 1831.

(10) Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet Lamarck (1744-1829). French naturalist. The full title Lamarck's book in French is: Philosophie zoologique, ou, Exposition des considérations relative à l'histoire naturelle des animaux.

(11) Charles Lyell (1797-1875). British geologist.

(12) The title used here is a literal translation of that used in Russian by Chernyshevsky. The full title in English: Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle.

(13) Chernyshevsky is in error with regard to the publication of volume two which is 1854.

(14) The title Chernyshevsky uses in Russian is Ob ispokaemikh usonogikh which seems to refer to A Monograph on the Fossil Balanidae and Verrucidae of Great Britain (1854). The editors of his collected works decline to provide any annotation on this matter.

(15) Chernyshevsky translated Darwin's statement from the introduction of On the Origin of Species into Russian. Here and elsewhere, I have inserted Darwin's English original as it appears in the Introduction to the 1859 edition.

(16) I have been unable to identify the exact statement by Darwin that Chernyshevsky has in mind and have translated from Chernyshevsky's Russian translation.

(17) I have taken the quotation as it appears in Darwin's Introduction but eliminated material marked by ellipses to make it conform to Chernyshevsky's text.

(18) Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911). English botanist. Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). English naturalist.

(19) The title Chernyshevsky uses in Russian is Ob ispokaemykh usonogikh which could refer to either A Monograph on the Fossil Lepadidae or A Monograph on the Fossil Balanidae and Verrucidae of Great Britain. It is also possible that Chernyshevsky has in mind both items.

(20) This is not an exact quotation from Darwin but Chernyshevsky's attribution.

(21) Chernyshevsky's memory is correct: On the Various Contrivances by Which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects was first published in 1862. On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants was first published in the Journal of the Linnean Society in 1865. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication was published in 1868.

(22) The Expression of the Emotion in Man and Animals and Insectivorous Plants.

(23) Tomás de Torquemada (1420-1498). A grand inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition infamous for his use of torture.