Darwin and the Theory of Evolution/Chapter 5

by Carroll Lane Fenton

CHAPTER V

THE PERSONALITY OF DARWIN

Throughout "Darwin as a Naturalist," No. 567 in this series, we considered Charles Darwin primarily as a man—a boy, a youth, a father, a friend, as well as a scientist. In the present book we considered him rather as a worker, a philosopher, a student, and have for the time ignored, or at least slighted, the human side of him. And now, having viewed the more material angles of the man—for even natural philosophy is, to a considerable extent material, we may well consider him as a personality, and a personality alone. Just what kind of a man was Charles Darwin? How did he respond to praise and react to opposition? What was there about him that made friends and, on the other hand, occasionally made bitter enemies? How might he have impressed us, had we been able to meet him?

Appearance—feature, action, and even dress—plays a considerable part in personality, even if it serves as little more than a handy index for the casual observer. Darwin's face, however, is too well known to need description, and so we may pass at once to his action. He was a large man, about six feet in height, but looked less because of a stoop which increased much with age. He walked with a loose, swinging step that often was maintained with a good deal of effort, and used a heavy, iron-tipped stick when outside. Indoors, however, his step was often slow and weak, with the feet planted heavily, as though each movement was an effort. "When interested in his work he moved about quickly enough, and often in the middle of dictating he went eagerly into the hall to get a pinch of snuff, leaving the study door open, and calling out the last words of his sentence as he went."

In spite of his natural activity and youthful strength, he had throughout life a clumsiness of movement. His hand was too unsteady and awkward to permit him to make usable drawings, and bothered him much in dissection of small animals and in sectioning plants. "When walking he had a fidgeting movement with his fingers, which he has described in

DARWIN'S STUDY

one of his books as the habit of an old man. When he sat he often took hold of one wrist with the other hand; he sat with his legs crossed, and from being so thin they could be crossed very far, as may be seen in one of the photographs. He had his chair, in the study and in the drawing-room, raised so as to be much higher than ordinary chairs; this was done because sitting on a low or even an ordinary chair caused him some discomfort." The family "used to laugh at him for making his tall drawing-room chair still higher by putting footstools on it, and then neutralizing the result by resting his feet on another chair."

Although his illness prevented Darwin from attending scientific meetings, or devoting much time to visits from other workers, he was a capable conversationist. His son says of him that when he was "excited with pleasant talk his whole manner was wonderfully bright and animated, and his face shared to the full in the general animation. His laugh was a free and sounding peal, like that of a man who gives himself sympathetically and with enjoyment to the person and the thing which have amused him. He often used some sort of gesture with his laugh, lifting up his hands or bringing one down with a slap. I think, generally speaking, he was given to gesture, and often used his hands in explaining anything . . . .in a way that seemed rather an aid to himself than to the listener. He did this on occasions when most people would illustrate their explanations by means of a rough pencil sketch.

"He wore dark clothes, of a loose and easy fit. Of late years he gave up the tall hat even in London, and wore a soft black one in winter, and a straw hat in summer. His usual out-of-doors dress was a short cloak in which Elliot and Fry's photograph represents him leaning against the pillar of the verandah. Two peculiarities of his indoor dress were that he almost always wore a shawl over his shoulders, and that he had great loose cloth boots lined with fur which he could slip on over his indoor shoes. Like most delicate people he suffered from heat as well as from chilliness; it was as if he could not hit the balance between too hot and too cold; often a mental cause would make him too hot, so that he would take off his coat if anything went wrong in the course of his work."

Such, then was the appearance of the man who dominated the science of biology for three decades—tall, awkward, eager, and a little eccentric, but without pose or desire to be singled out from a crowd. His mental attitude was in keeping with his physical. Few men could do more, and call less attention to their achievements; few men so consistently belittled their own virtues and enlarged those of others. Darwin was one of those people who go to extremes in modesty; he refused to admit any special excellence in himself or his work, or to consider that he was above the run of scientific workers. Printed or spoken praise of the material set out in his books pleased him, but extravagant commendation of those books, or praise of himself rather than his work often caused him actual pain. Even recognition when in public distressed him; he regretted that the abundance of magazine illustrations and photographs made his face known throughout England and Scotland. Even when he went to a water-cure establishment for a relief from illness he could not escape being gazed on, pointed at, and whispered of, as the great Mr. Darwin, who had done many fine things, but who nevertheless held the wicked belief that man was descended from apes and monkeys.

This modesty, coupled with an almost boundless generosity, made him almost a patron saint to those younger botanists and zoologists whose work lay in the same channels as his. He would learn of their work, and give them praise; he would ask for small favors and reproach himself for causing them so much trouble. Perhaps the next week he would take the work of one of these beginners, edit or even rewrite it, and then spend many of his precious work hours seeing the paper through the whole tedious process of publication. Of course, such acts put the enthusiasm of the younger men at the highest pitch, and gave them confidence in the value of the work they were doing. They would search their hardest for new facts to record for Darwin, and new specimens to send to him, even from such remote regions as South Africa and India. They felt that they were being cf some use in the world of science, and they took long strides forward on the path that leads to achievement.

All this does not mean that Darwin was without critical ability, or inclined to accept everything as good. On the other hand he grasped readily the defects of a piece of work, and resented unfair treatment at the hands of those who had little right to pass judgment. Thus when the Bishop of Oxford made a brilliant but intolerant address against evolution, and published an article containing the substance of his speech, Darwin wrote, "These very clever men think they can write a review with a very slight knowledge of the book reviewed or the subject in question"; another and favorable review he characterized as a well-done hash of his own words. Yet even when opposed to the ideas set forth in an article, he retained an even temper, and appreciated whatever of good there might be in the attack. Thus, in speaking the Bishop's criticism he wrote a friend, "If you have not seen the last 'Quarterly,' do get it; the Bishop of Oxford has made capital fun of me and my grandfather."

This same freedom from prejudice, and ability to exercise his control over his ideas, even when in conflict with his own emotions is well shown in his attitude toward the anti-vivisectionists, who wished to prevent experimentation with living animals. Throughout all of his mature life Darwin had a horror of blood-shed; even a slight cut on the hand of one of his youngsters gave him pain. Naturally, the anti-vivisectionists sought to enlist his sympathies—an attempt that was capable of little but harm. To one friend Darwin wrote, in regard to the case, "It is a subject which makes me sick with horror, so I will not say another word about it, else I shall not sleep tonight." Yet he saw clearly the reasons why vivisection is necessary to the science of physiology, and so he took a firm stand against those who would prevent scientists from experimenting with living animals. He was willing to conciliate, to speak as softly as possible in an argument, yet he would not confuse policy and prejudice. He could not fight for his stand because of the limitations imposed by illness, but he was not prevented from holding his own opinions.

The constant claim of ill health must have exerted a strong control over Darwin's personality. It prevented him from doing continuous work, yet work was essential for his health and rental balance. So for the sake of health all other activities were subordinated to work, while for the sake of the work which would make health possible, his physical condition was watched with endless care and anxiety.

In this connection we may return to a matter touched upon before—Darwin's loss of interest the arts. It was a matter of great concern to him, and he made much of it in the autobiography. The passage is worth quoting, if only to show what the man thought of himself, and how he analyzed his condition.

"Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it," runs the autobiography, "poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare. … But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry; I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. … On the other hand, novels which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily—against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better.

"… My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for the grinding of general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organized or better constituted th>n mine would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."

It is doubtful if a man ever gave a plainer diagnosis of his own failings than did Darwin in this passage. He does not reproach himself, nor does he make excuses. There are plenty of the latter to be made—the pressure of work, the enthusiasm for things other than the arts, and the constant strain of ill health. As Poulton says, "Professor Bradley has spoken of the errors of interpretation due to the reading of Shakespeare with a slack imagination; and any literature worth calling literature demands effort on the part of the reader. Effort was the one thing Darwin could not give." The whole group of factors formed a vicious ring which was bound to exclude everything but work—a ring not very different from that which forms about the average graduate student in our modern colleges.^[1] Perhaps had Darwin never given up literature it would have required less strain of him in later years, but that he did so was no sign, as he seemed to think, of a mind not highly organized.

A little farther on is another piece of self-analysis of equal candor, and perhaps even greater value as substantiating the claim that Darwin, though a great naturalist, was not a genius in the proper sense of that term. He says:

I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance, Huxley. I am therefore a poor critic: a paper or book, when first read, generally excites my admiration, and it is only after considerable reflection that I perceive the weak points. My power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought is very limited; and therefore I could never have succeeded with metaphysics or mathematics. My memory is extensive, yet hazy; it suffices to make me cautious by vaguely telling me that I have observed or read something opposed to the conclusion which I am drawing, or on the other hand in favor of it; and after a time I can generally recollect where to search for my authority. So poor in one sense is my memory, that I have never been able to remember more than a few days a single date or a line of poetry.

Some of my critics have said, "Oh, he is a good observer, but he has no power of reasoning!" I do not think that this can be true, for the "Origin of Species" is one long argument from the beginning to the end, and it has convinced not a few able men. No one could have written it without having some power of reasoning. I have a fair share of invention, and of common sense or judgment, such as every fairly successful lawyer or doctor must have, but not, I believe, in any higher degree.

On the favorable side of the balance, I think that I am superior to the common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully. My industry has been nearly as great as it could have been in the observation and collection of facts. What is far more important, my love of natural science has been steady and ardent.

That is Darwin's opinion of himself—an opinion so moderate, so obviously made without regard to anyone but himself, and without prejudice on one side nor the other, that one must venture much to disagree with it. Those who will compare the accomplishments of the man with his estimate of himself will see that there is but slight discrepancy. As Carlyle admitted, Charles Darwin was honest and hard-working, and had an unbreakable allegiance to facts. He was not greatly gifted in some respects, and lost some of the gifts which he did possess in youth. On the other hand, he possessed in abundance certain talents which are scanty in the average run of men, and often nearly absent in those of genius. He was a tireless worker, with boundless enthusiasm for his labor. He was patient and fair, willing to see every side of every question, even though it caused delays that ran into years. He had a boundless curiosity along those lines in which he was interested, and an irrepressible desire to theorize. He believed in the efficiency of the human mind to solve great problems, yet he realized only too clearly the errors into which the human mind may fall when it becomes over-hasty in drawing conclusions. He worked carefully and honestly, without thought of the cheaper fame or the practical value of his discoveries. As he wrote his old teacher, Henslow, "I believe there exists, and I feel within me, an instinct for truth, or knowledge, or discovery, of something the same nature as the instinct of virtue, and that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical value ensuing from them." It was in this spirit, and with these abilities, that Charles Darwin labored, and it was because of them that his labors endured. Comparisons with other men or his own or earlier days are pointless; it makes little difference whether Darwin was greater than Newton or Newton greater than Darwin. What does count is the fact that Darwin was great, and that his work has increased in value and benefit to mankind with the passing of years.

1. Few people realize the approximate illiteracy of the American graduate student, just as they fail to understand the similar failing among the undergraduate body. I well remember that, even as a freshman, I was astonished at the slight knowledge of literature and painting shown by graduate students at the University of Chicago. Not only are they ignorant of the better modern artists, but they do not even know the names of many leaders of the last century. In music they are nearly as bad; they form their judgments in accordance with the Victrola advertisements; such music as that of Russia, which calls for thought as well as feeling. is beyond most of them. Yet the student is matched by some, at least, of the professors. Just this year (1923) a department head in one of the country's foremost universities confused Eugene O'Neill, America’s leading playwright, with Edgar Rice Burroughs, of "Tarzan" fame.—C. L. F.