CHARLES DARWIN
1809–1882
On the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection
Five out of ten college students, queried about the title of Darwin’s book, respond, “The Origin of the Species.” The implication, apparently, is that Darwin wrote the book about man and his long evolution from the lower animals. Darwin did, it is true, write such a book: it is titled The Descent of Man. It is a fine, but not a famous, book. His very famous book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, dealt with “that mystery of mysteries,” as Darwin called it in his Introduction.
Why was the origin of species such a mystery? Two hundred years ago many of the enlightened, and almost all of the unenlightened, believed that the Biblical account of Creation was strictly true, that God had made the world and all the things in it in six days, then rested on the seventh. In principle there is nothing impossible about this: God could have done it if He had wanted. In practice there were many problems. The geological record was confusing, but it seemed to suggest that the Earth was much older, and had been subjected to much more far-reaching modification, than the Biblical account appeared to allow for. Living things, furthermore, revealed a truly astonishing variety and diversity when you got down to looking at them. There were not hundreds but hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of separate species. In addition, many of them seemed so closely related to each other that it was hard to conceive the purpose of their separate creation by the Divinity.
Finally, man had been able to produce extensive modifications in species by means of his experiments with controlled breeding. Had new species come into being as a result of such experiments? No one was absolutely sure, but it seemed likely. If so, however, species now existed that man and not God had created. What was the truth of this mystery of mysteries? Was there a truth that could be discovered by man?
Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809—the same day as Abraham Lincoln, although in markedly different circumstances. Darwin’s grandfather was the famous physician and naturalist, Erasmus Darwin. His father was a prosperous surgeon. The boy grew up slowly and cared most for collecting things—rocks, butterflies, it didn’t matter what. He tried to study medicine but became ill at his first operation. He then went to Cambridge to prepare for a career as a country parson. By the kind of accident that changes the world, he was nominated by his professor of biology at Cambridge to sail as naturalist on the government experimental ship, H.M.S. Beagle. He left England on December 27, 1831, knowing almost nothing about science; he returned five years later a tough and expert biologist with radical ideas that he was not very willing to make public.
He had contracted more than ideas on his journey, the most famous, perhaps, in the history of science. A brave adventurer, he had saved the ship on one occasion and had also struck out on his own on long treks through the South American wilderness. Once, crossing the Andes, he was attacked by a swarm of vicious mosquitoes. Apparently at that time he contracted Chagas’s disease (a debilitating recurrent fever that weakens the heart), from which he suffered for the rest of his life and from which he died in 1882. The disease could be controlled today; then, it could not even be diagnosed.
Darwin’s journal of his voyage on the Beagle was published, together with three other monographs, during the period from 1839 to 1846. These books gave him a reputation, and his sweetness and charm attracted many friends, both in and outside of science. Meanwhile he was always thinking about the great problem, as he called it. Clearly, as it seemed to him, species underwent modification, most certainly under domestication, less certainly in nature, but by what great mechanism did the changes come about? One day, while reading Thomas Malthus on population, it suddenly occurred to him how, in the struggle for existence—which he had everywhere observed—“favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species. Here then I had at last a theory by which to work.”
It was 1844; he confided his theory to Charles Lyell and William Hooker, two close scientist friends. But he still published nothing on it, although he continued to produce other work. Suddenly, in 1858, he received word that a rival biologist, A.R. Wallace, had written a treatise proposing the very same theory. Darwin asked Lyell and Hooker what to do; they counseled joint publication of some notes he had written earlier together with Wallace’s paper. Darwin then set to work in earnest. The Origin of Species was published late in 1859. Every copy of the first edition was sold on publication day.
No book, perhaps, has ever been so immediately, and so explosively, controversial. Darwin saved both “time and temper” by ignoring the battles and letting men like T.H. Huxley, his friend and intellectual disciple, defend the thesis publicly. Darwin returned to his comfortable retirement at Down and wrote more books about biology and evolution. He knew he was right; why waste time in public broils and turmoil?
His disease wore him down but he managed to write for a few hours each day. The Descent of Man appeared in 1871. Other notable works both preceded and followed it. He had neither time nor energy to devote to poetry, art, and music, which he loved; his mind had become, he wrote in his Autobiography, “a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.” In what spare time he had he read light fiction and averred that “a law ought to be passed” against unhappy endings of novels. He was loved by everyone who knew him for his gentleness, and he loved them in return.
His great book is not gentle. It is severe, strong, and rock-hard in its certainties; it never wavers in its steady motion to its conclusions. It is a pleasure to read—more so, probably, than any other famous scientific book. It is so well organized that it requires no major effort to understand it; and it is so well written that one moves through it rapidly, without pain. I say this in full awareness that there are millions of people who simply could not read this book. I can only say they are missing something wonderful.
JOHN STUART MILL
1806–1873
On Liberty
Considerations on Representative
Government
The peculiar circumstances of John Stuart Mill’s early life and education are well known. Born in London in 1806, the son of James Mill, a noted English utilitarian philosopher, John Stuart was from the age of three subjected to a strict course of study in ancient languages, history, mathematics, and philosophy that resulted in his possessing, by the time he was thirteen, the equivalent of an excellent university education. He began with Greek and arithmetic, and by the age of eight had read all of Herodotus, several dialogues of Plato, and much other history. Before he was twelve he had studied Euclid and algebra, the Greek and Latin poets, and had read some English poetry. At twelve he was introduced to Aristotle’s Organon, and he studied logic for the next year or so. From thirteen on he read law, history, and political science. At nineteen he had a nervous breakdown.