Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 1925 THE PERSONALITY OF CHARLES DARWIN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 17 January 1925, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 1925 THE PERSONALITY OF CHARLES DARWIN

IT is only natural that a man with a great idea should be a great fighter. When, to a mind competent to receive it, a new light breaks in, illuminating brightly some field of thought and making clear former obscurities, the desire to see the idea accepted by all men induces a militant missionary

spirit, a combative eagerness to meet opposition and crush it.

In Darwin’s case it. was not so. Originator of an idea that changed the whole outlook of science—more than that, the whole outlook of human thought—ho was yet singularly diffident as to forcing it into prominence. During his voyage round the world in the “Beagle” lie began to have doubts

as to the generally accepted dogma of the lix.ily of species, and soon after returning to England he opened his iirst notebook on the subject winch was to be his life-work. For more

than twenty years he was content to work patiently at the accumulation of facts, discussing occasionally with sympathetic friends the hearing of such facts, but never venturing into print till there seemed to him no possibility of doubt as to the correctness of his views. And when, on the publication of the famous “Origin- of Sjiecies,” a storm of criticism and vituperation broke out he was undisturbed. Fair-minded criticism he met with fairminded reply; objections lie met with evidence selected from his twenty years’ gathering, misconceptions lie patiently explained away, but for polemic and rhetoric he laid neither inclination nor skill. Where Huxley or Haeckel would have flung themselves like whirlwinds into the opposing ranks, Darwin sat quietly in his home at Down, observing, experimenting, comparing and testing each aspect of his work, and thereby daily buttressing and. strengthening the structure that lie had raised.

From the lirst Darwin’s views met with sympathetic reception from bioiologists in general though there were a number of tlie older men, like Sir Richard Owen, who would have none of it. But apart from such opposition, an opposition to be expected among those who had done tlieir lives’ work on the Linneau doctrines, there was a solid body of objectors and denunciators whose antagonism rested on that all too common basis, complete ignorance of the subject. Typical of such was the stubborn perversity of Carlyle, who roundly condemned Darwin’s book while naively admitting that he “could never read a page of it.” To this uninformed and “gregarious” criticism Darwin made no reply. He knew that he had done his work as carefully and thoroughly as possible, and he left it to speak for itself; if his conclusions were false the sooner they were refuted the better; if they were true nothing could stop tlieir eventual acceptance. The outstanding quality of Charles Darwin was his modesty’; lie was his own severest critic. That this modesty was genuine and not a mere aping of tlie virtue is proved by the fact that it comes out conspicuously in writings of liis which were never intended for publication, for instance, in his autobiography’, written solely for his children’s information and entertainment, also, in his letters to intimate friends. While he was writing hooks which stirred the whole intellectual world, while the most eminent men of science were eager to meet him, while learned societies regarded it as an honour to bestow distinctions upon him, he remained utterly unspoiled, diffident of his own powers, and quick to rGCO£niisp. Ilia inf 1 ini if

limitations, often, which others were not prepared to admit. Five or six years before his death, when opposition to liis views had been practically overcome, when only ignorance and bigotry l ' refused, as ever, to he reasoned with, when success had crowned a life’s work, when science had revised her chronology, and knew no date hut before and after the “Origin of Species” we find this man writing an account of his life for his children in which lie gravely wonders how, with his limited mental powers lie had been able to influence the world of thought so much. He has “no great quickness of apprehension or wit,” “a very limited power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought,” a hazy though extensive memory and only a fair share

of invention, commonsense, and judgment. That is the negative estimate of his intellectual assets and on the positive side he only enumerates “an unusual power of noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully’,” also “the strongest desire to understand and explain whatever he observed, that is, to group all facts under some general laws.”

No consideration of Darwin’s wqrk can disregard tlxe conditions under which , it was carried out. From the ■iLmumj of Hie he came home

remainder of his life he had few day’s which were entirely free from pain or discomfort. lie might justifiably have subsided into an idle invalid, but instead he methodically’ arranged the short working day that his health allowed him so as to obtain the maximum of accomplished work. But the Jack of time never caused him to work hastily’; everything he did was done thoroughly’. He was the embodiment of tno perfect scientific spirit. Caring nothing; for honours, free alike from vanity and jealousy, working only for the sake of increasing human knowledge, following the facts wherever they’ might lead him, Charles Darwin would still be one of the race’s worthies if lie had discovered nothing, or if the majestic theory which he established were to be abandoned to-morrow.