Darwin's Origin of Species Read online

  In retrospect, it is also evident that Origin of Species contributed markedly to other fundamental shifts already under way in the West – in particular in religious affairs. The Anglican Church still lay at the heart of the British nation’s daily life and provided the framework in which most people operated, either more or less devoutly according to private inclination. Yet its grip was looser than before. Schisms and fractures appeared, splinter groups broke away, dissatisfaction was expressed. Dissenting and non-conformist groups claimed the right to worship in their own manner, to educate the young, to be represented in parliament, to take public positions and have their views heard. A non-denominational University College was established in London, rapidly filling up with the brightest and best unconventional minds. A number of theologians converted to Catholicism. Prominent men and women among the establishment declared themselves sceptics or critics of traditional doctrine. Even clergymen undermined their own message. One of the authors of Essays and Reviews was the Reverend Baden Powell (grandfather of the scoutmaster), professor of geometry at Oxford University, who once claimed miracles could not occur, praised Darwin’s Origin as ‘a masterly volume’ and pronounced in favour of ‘the grand principle of the self-evolving powers of nature’. A book such as Origin of Species was therefore bound to arouse hot controversy and range more widely than science itself. Discussion was never going to be limited to butterflies or primroses.

  Surprising as it may seem, there was little sustained opposition to Darwin’s book on the grounds that it directly challenged the account of creation in Genesis. Learned biblical study since the Enlightenment had encouraged Christians increasingly to regard the early stories as potent metaphors rather than literal accounts. Biblical fundamentalism is mostly a modern concern, not a Victorian one. The real challenge of Darwinism for Victorians was that it turned life into an amoral chaos displaying no evidence of a divine authority or any sense of purpose or design.

  This was a political and social issue as well as a theological one. The reaction of many respectable middle-class believers was to reject evolution because it threatened the Church’s role in guarding the nation’s morals and social stability. Some freethinkers moved in the opposite direction and used evolution to level varying degrees of criticism at ecclesiastical policy and the state. A few hardliners already well on the way to atheism abandoned religious faith altogether. Equally hard Calvinists managed to accommodate the idea of natural selection by integrating it with humanity’s struggle to overcome sinfulness. But there were also liberal Christians willing to accept evolution as a fact of nature if it could be reconciled with moral principles. Perhaps evolution could be regarded as a purposeful process regulated by God? This compromise soon emerged in Britain. In 1861 the astronomer John Herschel wrote that he could believe in an ‘Intelligence’ that guided the steps of change according to the laws of science. By the end of the century a number of Anglican clergymen, such as Charles Kingsley and Frederick Temple, promoted a similar theology in which the shaping of the earth and its living beings were seen as a continuous process controlled by laws God had instituted in the beginning. Or again, was it possible to replace the mechanical process of natural selection with something else of divine origin? A number of scientists, among them Darwin’s friend Asa Gray, took this route and put back the moral purpose and future goals – the teleology – that Darwin had removed.

  One of the most well-known aspects of the Origin of Species controversy is that Darwin kept out of the limelight. On the face of it, this is completely true. Darwin never enjoyed public debate, hated confrontations in which his honour or honesty might be called into question, preferred to stay quietly at home in the background, and was content to let others wave the flag more vigorously than he felt able to do himself. Privately, he believed that disagreements between scientists were generally fruitless. None the less the underlying story is more complex. Darwin kept in close touch. Even though he stayed put at Down House, a barrage of correspondence was despatched and received daily. His letters were out there in the world of argument: encouraging, supporting, nudging, explaining, politely disagreeing, thanking, consulting and advising. He used letters to persuade and to influence. He used them to get favourable reviews, correct mistakes, arrange translations and produce revised editions. He gathered support, made new contacts, found out things. Without this extraordinary correspondence, rising to a peak of some 500 letters a year after Origin of Species was published, Darwin’s theory would have sunk. In this he was materially helped by the rapid development of the Victorian postal system, brought to heights of efficiency by Rowland Hill from the 1840s and 1850s, and the expanding infrastructure of empire.

  Scholars agree that the course of the Origin controversy was unique in several respects. The book’s wide and immediate impact in Britain was greatly enhanced by an expanding publishing industry and new review journals being produced for rapidly diversifying audiences. It was greatly enhanced, too, by mid-century peace and prosperity, political stability and imperial expansion. The audience for science was the largest and most appreciative that it had ever been, its appetite whetted by the development of local scientific societies, lending libraries, public lectures and exciting practical demonstrations of electricity, chemistry or magnetism, and reinforced by the broadening availability of manufactured goods and obvious achievements in roads, railways, bridges, ships and canals. Writings like Chambers’s Vestiges and Tennyson’s In Memoriam already helped readers explore the big issues of human existence, questions of origin, meaning and purpose.

  Highly characteristic, too, was the personal element. Four of Darwin’s friends carried the brunt of the public storm: each one an acknowledged specialist in his scientific field, independent, clever and far from sycophantic. These four supported Darwin wholeheartedly even while pointing out flaws in his evidence or reasoning. They stood united, gathering their own disciples and followers, engaging in individualized battles on Darwin’s behalf but also moving the debate further and wider, drawing in other thinkers, other topics, other implications, in an incremental process that ultimately generated major transformations in cultural attitudes and scientific thought. With Darwin busy in the background writing letters, these four recruited a standing army, commandeered the journals, invaded the learned societies, monitored the universities, dominated dinner parties and penetrated the byways of empire. The opposition never quite consolidated in the same way. There were of course individual heavyweight opponents who publicly challenged Darwinism, some of them witheringly effective, but no united group rallied to the attack or mustered behind powerful spokesmen. There was never an explicit anti-Darwinian movement, in the same way as there was a pro-Darwinian group held together by intellectual commitment and friendship. The existence of this Darwinian alliance was perhaps the single most important feature of the debate and contributed markedly to the ultimate triumph of evolutionary theory. At its core were Charles Lyell, Joseph Hooker, Asa Gray and Thomas Henry Huxley.

  Inspired by Darwin’s ideas, Lyell focused on human archaeology and prehistory in an impressive text called The Antiquity of Man (1863). In this book he undermined the traditional story of the Creation and Flood, and showed how humans had appeared on the globe much earlier than anyone then thought possible, contemporaneously with animals now only known as fossils. Though he did not coin the expression ‘cave man’, which came later, nor could he claim to be the only one intrigued by discoveries of worked flints and stone arrowheads, Lyell was among the first to write about these early peoples within a broadly evolutionary structure. Since he was one of the most widely respected scientific authors of the century, the effect of extending Darwin’s thesis into the prehistoric world was incalculable. Privately, he felt unable to go as far as Darwin in believing that human beings were entirely natural organisms. To the end of his life he felt that humans possessed a divine soul. Once he told Huxley that he ‘could not go the whole orang’.1 Lyell’s interest in early human cultures was soon extend
ed by a generation of gifted evolutionary anthropological thinkers. John Lubbock, a younger friend and neighbour of Darwin’s, discussed the archaeological evidence of primitive cultures in Europe in his studies Pre-historic Times (1865) and The Origin of Civilisation (1870). This was powerfully followed by the main thrust of high Victorian cultural anthropology in Edward B. Tylor’s evolutionary Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization (1870), Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society (1877) and Sir John Evans’s work. These men codified the late nineteenth- century belief that human development had progressed through a sequence of stages from savagery through barbarism to civilization, and that primitives were relics of the earliest stages that could be studied for insights into the history of mankind.

  While Lyell grappled with early humanity, Joseph Hooker aimed at the empire of botany. Hooker’s father – and then Hooker himself – was director of Kew Gardens, located just outside London, the largest and fastest-growing centre for botanical research in the world, with a special focus on economic botany and colonial expansion. Hooker’s public work at Kew furthered the introduction of plantation crops in far-flung corners of the globe such as tea, coffee, sisal, sugar, mahogany, cinchona, cotton and flax. Much neglected by historians, botany during the nineteenth century was the most significant science of its day, creating and destroying colonial cash crops according to government policy and building the economic prosperity of a nation. Almost singlehandedly Hooker coordinated the activities of British colonial gardens and orchestrated a worldwide correspondence with other botanists. Like Lyell, he was one of Darwin’s closest friends, a man that Darwin trusted and liked. He was the first to show how Darwin’s theories might work in the plant world and supported him loyally in publications, reviews and correspondence. He never wrote a signature book like Lyell, but his influence and scientific position at the centre of imperial science was a key strength on Darwin’s side.

  On the other side of the Atlantic, Asa Gray defended Darwin just as effectively. Based at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gray was also a botanist, a rival professor to Louis Agassiz, the most celebrated naturalist in the United States. Agassiz was no fan of Origin of Species. His belief that the ‘essence’ of every species should reflect God’s divine blueprint guaranteed that he would emphatically reject evolution – how could one hope to classify anything if it was constantly changing? Gray and Agassiz argued fiercely about Darwinism in public meetings in Boston in 1859 and 1860, and perhaps Gray was the only man in America who could (occasionally) get the better of Agassiz in debate. Gray felt, however, that Darwin’s scheme should be modified to help those who sincerely believed in God’s presence in the natural world. To him, natural selection, acting blindly on occasional chance variations, did not seem sufficient to account for so many organisms exquisitely ‘designed’ for their role in life. Gray therefore proposed that God created good and useful variations which natural selection then preserved in a population. While this view was completely antithetical to Darwin’s proposal, Gray promoted it earnestly in several widely distributed reviews. Darwin respected Gray’s opinion, saying that it was the best natural theological commentary he had ever read. He appreciatively declared that every one of Gray’s attacks on opponents ‘tells like a 32-pound shot’. Soon he was convinced that ‘no other person understands me so thoroughly as Asa Gray. If I ever doubt what I mean myself, I think I shall ask him!’2

  Last, and most famous of all, Thomas Henry Huxley, the brilliant zoologist and comparative anatomist, cast himself as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’. Flamboyantly, he defended Darwin on the question of ape ancestry and the close anatomical resemblance between humans and primates, and reigned supreme over what can justly be called the marketing of evolutionary theory – a heady publicity campaign for a new kind of science based on rational thought untainted by religious belief. One important plank of his platform was to wrest education from the hands of the clergy, for schoolchildren and university students were for the most part still educated within traditional Anglican institutions or by dissenting church missions. Another was an increasingly violent feud with the rival comparative anatomist Richard Owen, a man profoundly against evolution, whom Huxley thought was blocking his path to success. Superintendent of the natural history collections at the British Museum (at that time located in the Bloomsbury building), and in many eyes the leading naturalist in Britain, Owen made a brutal attack on Origin of Species in the Edinburgh Review of April 1860 that angered Darwin and supplied the backdrop for much of Huxley’s venom during the early 1860s. Other personal characteristics included Huxley’s intense dislike for religious ‘claptrap’ and zest for public showdowns. Late in life he was credited with having coined the word ‘agnostic’ to describe his position: one who cannot believe without rational evidence for that belief. ‘In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable… That which is unproved today may be proved, by the help of new discoveries, tomorrow.’3 His reputation for wit and coruscating prose was well established.

  In fact, the months immediately surrounding publication of the Origin of Species really belonged to Huxley. As Huxley recalled it, the beauty of Darwin’s theory flashed on him like lightning showing the way home. ‘How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!’ he exclaimed. He composed three magnificent reviews, one in The Times newspaper, the others in well-known literary journals, the Westminster Review and Macmillan’s Magazine.

  In the Westminster Review he issued a battle cry. Origin of Species was a ‘veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism’. It would free the world from theological dogma:

  What is the history of every science but the elimination of the notion of mystery or creative interferences?… Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the stran gled snakes besides that of Hercules, and history records that whenever science and dogmatism have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched if not slain.4

  This opening blow against religion not only made Huxley’s name but served him and Darwinism well in the future.

  Huxley’s first public showdown – now regarded as a famous set-piece in the history of science – took place at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford in June 1860. There are few records left of the occasion. No one even knew for sure who had won. Nevertheless, the occasion meant a great deal in historical terms. It became an enduring symbol of an angry clash between science and religion over the origin of species.

  As was customary, the British Association meeting ran for a week in the summer and made the latest developments in science more widely known to the public. Irresistibly drawn by the prospect of heated exchanges about monkey-ancestors, an unusually large number of people arrived at the session held in the Oxford University Natural History Museum on Saturday 30 June. Darwin did not attend the meeting because he was ill. Huxley and Owen were both there. Earlier in the week there had been several intellectual skirmishes between them, especially when Owen asserted that there was no anatomical evidence in primate brains for evolution. Huxley had jeered at his competence. ‘You and your book forthwith became the topics of the day,’ Joseph Hooker told Darwin.

  The session promised sparks. An American philosopher John William Draper, known for his denunciations of Roman Catholicism, was scheduled to speak on the evolution of human society ‘with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin’. As it turned out, Draper’s talk was dreary. The mood visibly lightened when Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, the current Bishop of Oxford, rose to speak. Wilberforce was a powerful orator, witty and eloquent. As a theologian, he naturally used the occasion to defend the divine creation of humankind. He had just written a damning review of Darwin’s book for the Quarterly Review and his speech repeated many of the points published there, particularly using anatomical information supplied by Owen. How could anyone
seriously believe that mankind had developed from oysters, he asked? At some point he turned to Huxley and facetiously enquired ‘was Huxley related to an ape on his grandfather’s or grandmother’s side?’

  The audience smelled blood. So did Huxley. He answered at length, first repudiating the anatomical arguments used by Wilberforce and then praising the way that Darwin’s theory united previously chaotic data. The exact words he used were not recorded. But his final thrust was to say that he ‘would rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather than… a man who introduced ridicule into a grave scientific discussion’. The audience cheered and went away convinced that Huxley would rather have an ape for a grandfather than a bishop. They felt they had witnessed in miniature a titanic confrontation between the church and science – two utterly incompatible views on the position of mankind in the natural world.

  Afterwards, Huxley made his position clear in a small, vivid volume called Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863), a popular book that addressed audiences primarily wanting to hear about apish ancestors. It included a lucid and favourable exposition of Darwin’s theory. Here Huxley continued his argument with Richard Owen by attacking Owen’s anatomical work on the great apes. For a long time, Owen had insisted there was a small fold in the membranes at the base of the human brain (the hippocampus minor) that could not be found in any of the apes. This, Owen thought, along with other differences such as the human hand and upright posture, indicated the special nature of human beings. Huxley vehemently disagreed. Professional reputations and expertise were at stake here. Simple observation would not be able to resolve the issue because the disagreement rested on questions of judgement, interpretation and scale. In his book Huxley claimed that there were clear continuities in anatomy between gibbons, gorillas and mankind. Visual reinforcement was supplied in an engraving that showed the skeletons of four species of ape lined up in an evolutionary sequence with a human being. This first pictorial representation of evolution has since become as iconic as the double helix of DNA.