Midland Naturalist/Volume 01/Erasmus Darwin

by anon

Erasmus Darwin.

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In the published address of the President of the British Association, at the meeting for 1874, we read that the late Sir Benjamin Brodie had often called his (Professor Tyndall's) attention to the fact that at the end of the last century the philosopher and poet, Erasmus Darwin, who may be especially claimed by the Midlands as their own, was the forerunner of these biologists of the present epoch who have wrought so great a change in vital dynamics. How far this is true may be worth enquiring into, as well as profitable, and we shall probably come to the same conclusion as Sir Benjamin, but at the same time be far from believing that the doctrine of Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest, and the Origin of Species by such simple means, is not the offspring of the thought of our own days. The older philosopher was, indeed, the precursor of the illustrious biologists of our present times, as he was the progenitor of the greatest of them; but it will be seen that in some cases the old and modern theories are just the antitheses of each other. Still it remains a subject of interest to observe philosophers of the last and present centuries, with such relationship, pursuing the investigation of the same identical subjects, whether we attribute the circumstance to the hereditary transmission of the same tastes, a subject well dwelt upon in the writings of both, or simply to the force of precept and example.

Till the year 1781 Erasmus Darwin, M.D., F.R.S., (though he had been previously a short time stationed at Nottingham,) was in practice at Lichfield, but he afterwards resided in Derby. To judge from the "Zoonomia," and from what his literary friend, Miss Seward, tells us, his practice must have been pretty extensive. Indeed, he was an example showing that the life of even a rural disciple of Esculapius, from the natural tendency of his art and of scientific pursuits to mutual diffusion, need not, nay, should not be alienated from the latter; and such an alluring tendency of science towards medicine is happy, for the liaison is not always profitable in the vulgar sense. Dr. Johnson, the lexicographer, was in the "sere and yellow leaf' when Dr. Darwin left Lichfield. They had met, but what was the sentence of the Colossus upon the "Botanic Garden," published about three years before Johnson's death, we are not in a position to say. There was no deficiency of other society in and around the little city, such as Darwin estimated, and such as could estimate him—Watt, Boulton, Edgeworth, Day, Wedgwood, Brindley, Dr. Small, of Birmingham,) and others. No doubt it was at Lichfield, where, taking advantage of some natural capabilities presented by a parcel of land which he had purchased, he had formed a little botanical paradise, that he composed his poems. He was instrumental, too, with Sir B. Boothbey and Mr. Jackson in publishing there part of the works of Linnæus.^[1]

It has been observed that Darwin was entitled to he called "the poet of art and science," but "whose taste for philosophy, perhaps, in some measure, spoiled the poet, whilst his powers of imagination were almost incompatible with the cool investigations of science." For the last, however, he himself apologises, by observing that theorising, when our knowledge is imperfect, is not without use; neither is the theoretic distribution of natural objects, as it develops some of their analogies. His poetry few read now, though it is often distinguished by great taste and elegance of description; in fact, it is the very embarras de richesses which is its fault. Though scientific thoughts or pleasing natural objects, sparsely introduced, became giants in poetry in the hands of a Tennyson or a Browning, yet too prodigally used they ave worse than ineffective.

Darwin's poems are annotated by copious remarks which display learning, research, and many of them original views to which we have already alluded. His prophecies of future scientific triumphs have often been noticed as marvellous, and they certainly are remarkable, as, for instance, of steamships and railways; but then he ventured upon other predictions—as of subaqueous and controllable aerial locomotion, end many other things which at present are not likely to come to pass. His medical and physiological work, "Zoonomia," 1793-6, contains much that was new at the date of its publication, much that has been developed in our age—for instance, in medicine the recommendation of ovariotomy, and more explicitly of lithotrity; but, at the same time, it displays much of the fanciful and some little of the absurd, though on the whole entitled to a more frequent study. His later poem, entitled "The Temple of Nature, or Origin of Society," unnoticed in same of the biographies, was, we think, published only a few mouths before his death, in 1802, and has, like the "Botanic Garden," copious philosophical notes.

Taking his works generally, the "Botanic Garden," the "Temple of Nature," "Phytologia," and the "Zoonomia," for we do not think it necessary to specify the particular work, volume, or page, we shall find that, though Erasmus Darwin considers the earth to be still in its juvenile stage (!) he insists upon a vast antiquity, millions of years, for it; and observes, in accordance with our present geological ideas, that those parts of it which contain the highest mountains are often the newest raised, because they have nob existed long enough to be worn down by external agents; he also teaches that there has been a constant development and differentiation going on in the world, even in the sidereal system; as of stars out of nebulæ, quoting the authority of Sir W. Herschel on this subject. He studied the formation of coral-rocks, and of limestone and chalk, by organic agencies. He observes that inland seas, such as the Mediterranean, would soon become freshwater lakes by a slight change of level, as the rivers flowing through them would wash out the salt. He is a friend to the doctrine of heterogenesis, and argues far it at length in the notes to the "Temple of Nature," us well as elsewhere—

Hence without parent by spontaneous birth.
Rise the first specks of animated earth.

He further argues for a formation by apposition, and against the emboitement of germs, and supposes all organic beings to have originated in simple plasm, and, where continued through generation, by filaments and molecules or organic particles, derived from every region of the parent (pangenesis.)

He believes it to be shown by the existence of rudimentary or useless parts, such as the nipples of male animals, or the useless toes of swine, that animals have undergone changes—that monsters prove the same thing, but that in some cases monstrosities may be progressive rather than retrogressive, and aim at something to come. Species are nob permanent, but may be transmuted—the tendency being in increasing perfection. Animals are first aquatic, then amphibious, and finally aerial; and this is more or less seen in embryology. With respect to the Origin of Species in plants, he quotes Linnæus's opinion that at first there were only as many species as there are true natural orders. He discusses the theory of man's quadumanous descent.

He gives due influence to a Struggle for Existence as regards the extinction and modification or improvement of animals. With respect to Sexual Selection, he observes "the final cause of this contention amongst the males seems to be that the strongest and most active animal should propagate the species, which should hence become improved." He lays stress on the effect of the natural or artificial cultivation of animals, hence the changes brought about in the horse, dog, sheep, rabbit, and pigeon. He also attributes an influence towards the gradual production of species to the nisus to obtain food and ensure security. This last is rather Lamarckian than Darwinian, and it may perhaps be seen that even in respect to the effects of cultivation and sexual selection we have not lucidly expressed the salient point of the modern hypothesis—the certain but gradual effect in the production of species of slight, favourable variation, when developed by Natural Selection, rendered sufficiently efficient by length of time and unlimited numbers of the individuals. The elder philosopher does not tell us that the changes are so inevitable and undirected. He saw in the colouration of birds and their eggs, in the habits of insects, and in the modes of vegetable fertilisation, &c., as well as in physical nature in general, signs of design or extraneous intelligence. Nature, he says, is subject "to immutable laws impressed on matter by the Great Cause of Causes, Parent of Parents, Ens Entium." He is more generally correct in attributing some modification of species to climate and season, than to hybridity, which appears to have, on the whole, the reverse effect.

He seems to have taken an interest in the modes of fertilisation of flowers, but was thoroughly ignorant of the participation of insects in that act. The corella for him was » thing of beauty, and also for the respiration of the sexual organs; the nectar nourished the seeds, and was curiously guarded from the injurious depredation of insects, a superabundance of it only being, in a few instances, as in Cacalia suaveolens, acceded to them. He noticed the curios mechanism of the flowers of the broom, but did not discover that this mechanism is generally brought into play by the visits of bees. He gives curious examples of contrivances to effect ordinary fertilisation, mentions the ripening of different sets of anthers at different times, and the different length of sets of stamens in the same species, in Lythram and Lychnis for instance; as well as the great appetency of the stigma in some flowers, as Collinsonia, for foreign pollen, which he calls vegetable adultery: he say the injurious effect of breeding by buds alone, and instances disease of the potato as such a result; yet on most of these paints he has been left far behind by the observations of his gifted and laborious descendant. He explains the similitude of the flowers of Ophrys apifera to the bee, us designed to keep olf the insect, the latter supposing that the flower is already appropriated. He was the first to point cut the many close analogies of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. He studied climbing-plants, bulbs, and buds, and the affects of grafts on the stock; and he alludes to the admixture of parts of two kinds of fruit in one. He notices the irritability of the leaves and their glandular hairs in the Drosera, though not from his own observation, and attributes such actions very strangely to vegetable sensation, ideas, and volition.

He considers instinct to be but an imperfect reason—a gradation to mind; that the race of bees is older than man, because the intelligence of the hive bee is unchangeable and arrived at perfection; that the singing of birds is more like artificial language than a naturel expression of passion, as the young bird only learns its song from its parent, or from its own kind. Man has attained his pre-eminence principally by reason of his touch and developed powers of volition, as dwelt upon in our times by Herbert Spencer and Dr. Carpenter. In "Zoonomia" we have an interesting dissertation on Instinct, of seventy-nine pages, rich in fact. (Ed. 3rd, 8vo., 1801, vol. 1, sec. 16.)

He, more or less probably, endeavours to account for the origin of some of our facial or bodily expressions. He supposes that infants acquire the smile from the pleasure of relaxing the facial muscles after the action of suckling, and associates other pleasant feelings, as the sense of beauty, with the remembrance of the fount of infantile enjoyment. His remarks on hereditary acquirements are numerous and worthy of regard. He considers the acquired or inherited love of drink to be the frequent cause of the extinction of families, and of more than half of our chronical diseases; and even in his time, when the poorer classes could less afford to spend money In the pernicious stuff, as the curse of Christendom: like Prometheus, we take fire in our bosom, and sometimes suffer his punishment, even literally as respects the seat of injury. Darwin combated the gout in his own person at the age of forty by totally renouncing fermented drinks, and continued quite free from it till his death, though he was a gourmand in fruit and non-spiritiuous drinks of several sorts. From the hereditary tendency to disease arises the observation that "it is hazardous to marry an heiress."

We think that upon the whole we have now traced in the philosopher of the eighteenth many of the germs of thought which have been developed in the present century. But with respect to these more modern doctrines We say little in this article. Few have been more interested in Mr. Darwin's writings than ourselves, but it is not in us te say bow far his theory is adequate to the requirements, or whether some primus mobile, which the vitalists should supply, is wanting—some doctrine of Life as antecedent to, yet wonderfully influenced by, the simple operation of Natural Selection.

All men have not the same cast of mind. What may appear essential to one may seem impertinent to the question to another. Erasmus Darwin, though in his day branded with the name of atheist, and consigned to the infernal shades in the pages of the "Methodists' Magazine," &c., was eminently the reverse, and must be ranked with the teleologists; he certainly was not without the mistakes which are sometimes attributed to the school. Had he lived now he might have appeared in another phase: but whether so or not, we believe that he would have been a bright luminary in biology; that he would have been a popular poet may not be so certain.

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1. A Miss Jackson, of the same city, published a botanical volume, with numerous drawings of plants, which are far from contemptible. 1840: Longmans and Co.