Charles Darwin: Origins and Literary Legacies

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Charles DarwinOrigins and Literary Legacies
Born 1809 Died 1882
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I. Darwins Origins
His paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a
poet and botanist who had his own ideas about
evolution.
His maternal grandfather, Josiah Wedgewood,
revolutionized ceramics, making safe dishes
widely available.
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Erasmus Darwin

• Organic life beneath the shoreless wavesWas born
  and nurs'd in ocean's pearly cavesFirst forms
  minute, unseen by spheric glass,Move on the mud,
  or pierce the watery massThese, as successive
  generations bloom,New powers acquire and larger
  limbs assumeWhence countless groups of
  vegetation spring,And breathing realms of fin
  and feet and wing.
• Erasmus Darwin. The Temple of Nature. 1802.
• Note to The Temple of Nature there is more
  dignity in our idea of the supreme author of all
  things, when we conceive him to be the cause of
  causes (Note I).

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Charles Lyell

• Lyell a renowned geologist and author of
  Principles of Geology (1830-33)
• Darwin had a copy of the first volume of
  Principles on board The Beagle

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Lyells Key Principles

• Expanded time scale 100,000,000 gt 6000
• Biblical chronology of earth (Creation took
  place in 4004 BC) replaced by geological
  understanding of earth as millions of years old.
• John McPhee offers a useful analogy
• if we think of all known time as a calendar
  year, then Dinosaurs appear in the middle of
  December and are gone the day after Christmas.
  The last ice sheet melts on December 31st at one
  minute before midnight, and the Roman Empire
  lasts five seconds

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• Uniformitarianism
• Processes observable in the present are identical
  to those in action in the past.
• Small, gradual actions cause great change over
  great periods of time.
• Example

50 million years
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Lyells Impact

• Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Ch. 9
• He who can read Sir Charles Lyells grand work
  on the Principles of Geology, which the future
  historian will recognize as having produced a
  revolution in natural science, yet does not admit
  how incomprehensibly vast have been the past
  periods of time, may at once close this volume.
• Lyell was overwhelmingly the most important
  single influence on Darwins work (Joseph
  Carroll).

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Other Influencesfrom Loren Eiseley, Darwins
Century

• James Hutton (1788) preceded Lyell in expanding
  the time scale
• William Smith (1815) strata represent
  different epochs
• Georges Cuvier (1798) comparative anatomy
  reveals extinction

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Thomas Malthus, Essay on Population (1798)

• Joseph Carroll describes Darwins reading of
  Malthus as a crucial, crystallizing experience.
• Darwin himself describes the experience in his
  Autobiography
• In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after
  I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to
  read for amusement Malthus on Population, and
  being well prepared to appreciate the struggle
  for existence which every where goes on from
  long-continued observation of the habits of
  animals and plants, it at once struck me that
  under these circumstances favourable variations
  would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones
  to be destroyed. The result of this would be the
  formation of new species.

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Voyage of the Beagle, 1831-36
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The Journey of The Beagle
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Work on the Beagle

• The commission was to chart the coastal waters of
  southern South America.
• Darwin came along as ships naturalist.
• Collected fossils and observed animals.
• As far as I can judge of myself, I worked to
  the utmost during the voyage from the mere
  pleasure of investigation, and from my strong
  desire to add a few facts to the great mass of
  facts in Natural Science (Darwin, Autobiography)

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From Voyage of the Beagle

• Galapagos Archipelago The natural history of
  these islands is eminently curious, and well
  deserves attention. Most of the organic
  productions are aboriginal creations, found
  nowhere else. Hence, both in space and time, we
  seem to be brought somewhat near to that great
  factthat mystery of mysteriesthe first
  appearance of new beings on this earth.
• Clearly, Darwin is formulating the idea of
  evolution.

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Meanwhile

• Literary discourse is rife with reflections on
  developments in science that anticipate Darwins
  Origin.
• Most of these come from the impact of Lyell but
  also others, like Robert Chambers Vestiges of
  the Natural History of Creation (1842).

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Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (1851)

• The sea is calm tonight,
• The tide is full, the moon lies fair
• Upon the straits on the French coast the light
  Gleams and is gone the cliffs of England
  stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil
  bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
  Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea
  meets the moon-blanched land,
• Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles
  which the waves draw back, and fling, At their
  return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease,
  and then again begin, With tremulous cadence
  slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.
• Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Agean, and
  it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
  Of human misery we Find also in the sound a
  thought, Hearing it by this distant northern
  sea.

• The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full,
  and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a
  bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its
  melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating,
  to the breath Of the night wind, down the vast
  edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
• Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for
  the world, which seems To lie before us like a
  land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so
  new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor
  light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for
  pain And we are here as on a darkling plain
  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and
  flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

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John Ruskin, a letter 1851

• My faith is being beaten into mere gold
  leaf, and flutters in weak rags from the letter
  of its old forms. If only the Geologists would
  let me alone, I could do very well, but those
  dreadful hammers! I hear the clink of them at the
  end of every cadence of the Bible verses.

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Geology Challenged Faith

• Darwin is paying attention to this discourse and
  is aware of the implications of his work.
• He has a completed manuscript of Origin in 1844
  but waits 15 years to publish. WHY?
• To better prepare his scientific argument.
• For fear of the implications.
• Wrote to J. Hooker in January 1844
• At last gleams of light have come, I am
  almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I
  started with) that species are not (it is like
  confessing a murder) immutable.

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Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850)

• An elegy for the death of Tennysons best friend,
  but also an elegy for a way of thinking about
  nature and faith.
• Tennyson influenced by Lyell and Chambers, but
  notably comes 9 years before Origin.

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In Memoriam, 54

• LIVOh yet we trust that somehow goodWill be the
  final goal of ill,To pangs of nature, sins of
  will,Defects of doubt, and taints of
  bloodThat nothing walks with aimless
  feetThat not one life shall be destroy'd,Or
  cast as rubbish to the void,When God hath made
  the pile completeThat not a worm is cloven in
  vainThat not a moth with vain desireIs
  shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,Or but subserves
  another's gain.Behold, we know not anythingI
  can but trust that good shall fallAt lastfar
  offat last, to all,And every winter change to
  spring.So runs my dream but what am I?An
  infant crying in the nightAn infant crying for
  the lightAnd with no language but a cry.

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In Memoriam, 55

• LVThe wish, that of the living whole No life
  may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from
  what we have The likest God within the
  soul?Are God and Nature then at strife,That
  Nature lends such evil dreams?So careful of the
  type she seems,So careless of the single
  lifeThat I, considering everywhereHer secret
  meaning in her deeds,And finding that of fifty
  seedsShe often brings but one to bear,I
  falter where I firmly trod,And falling with my
  weight of caresUpon the great world's
  altar-stairsThat slope thro' darkness up to
  God,I stretch lame hands of faith, and
  grope,And gather dust and chaff, and callTo
  what I feel is Lord of all,And faintly trust the
  larger hope.

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In Memoriam, 56

• LVI'So careful of the type?' but no.From
  scarped cliff and quarried stoneShe cries, A
  thousand types are goneI care for nothing, all
  shall go.'Thou makest thine appeal to meI
  bring to life, I bring to deathThe spirit does
  but mean the breathI know no more.' And he,
  shall he,Man, her last work, who seem'd so
  fair,Such splendid purpose in his eyes,Who
  roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,Who built him
  fanes of fruitless prayer,Who trusted God was
  love indeedAnd love Creation's final lawTho'
  Nature, red in tooth and clawWith ravine,
  shriek'd against his creed

• Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,Who
  battled for the True, the Just,Be blown about
  the desert dust,Or seal'd within the iron
  hills?No more? A monster then, a dream,A
  discord. Dragons of the prime,That tare each
  other in their slime,Were mellow music match'd
  with him.O life as futile, then, as frail!O
  for thy voice to soothe and bless!What hope of
  answer, or redress?Behind the veil, behind the
  veil.

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Into this discourse, Darwin enters with
straightforward diction and clarity of purpose
(finally).

• Chapter 1 begins When on board H.M.S. Beagle,
  as naturalist, I was much struck with certain
  facts in the distribution of the organic beings
  inhabiting South America, and in the geological
  relations of the present to the past inhabitants
  of that continent. These facts, as will be seen
  in the latter chapters of this volume, seemed to
  throw some light on the origin of species--that
  mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by
  one of our greatest philosophers. On my return
  home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something
  might perhaps be made out on this question by
  patiently accumulating and reflecting on all
  sorts of facts which could possibly have any
  bearing on it. After five years' work I allowed
  myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up
  some short notes these I enlarged in 1844 into a
  sketch of the conclusions, which then seemed to
  me probable from that period to the present day
  I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope
  that I may be excused for entering on these
  personal details, as I give them to show that I
  have not been hasty in coming to a decision.

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II. Darwins Language

• I am fully convinced that species are not
  immutable but that those belonging to what are
  called the same genera are lineal descendants of
  some other and generally extinct species, in the
  same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any
  one species are the descendants of that species.
  (Origin, Introduction).
• At last gleams of light have come, I am
  almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I
  started with) that species are not (it is like
  confessing a murder) immutable (Letter to
  Hooker, 1844).
• NOTE The language is the same, after 15 years
  and much further thought.

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Gillian Beer, Darwins Plots (1983)

• Darwin did not invent laws. He described them
  (46).
• It is thus incumbent upon us to attend to
  Darwins language.
• I will consider use of simile and emphasis on
  enchantment.

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Tree Simile
First Sketch of the tree of life from 1837
notebook
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And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow
every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and
good for food the tree of life also in the midst
of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good
and evil. Genesis 28-9
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Simile is like Analogy

• Analogy seemed to provide evidence for a
  teleological order (Beer 76).
• That is, using analogy or simile reveals Darwins
  sense that there is an order and a logic to the
  natural world.

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Tree of Life (Ch. 4)

• The affinities of all the beings of the same
  class have sometimes been represented by a great
  tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the
  truth. The green and budding twigs may represent
  existing species and those produced during each
  former year may represent the long succession of
  extinct species. At each period of growth all the
  growing twigs have tried to branch out on all
  sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding
  twigs and branches, in the same manner as species
  and groups of species have tried to overmaster
  other species in the great battle for life. The
  limbs divided into great branches, and these into
  lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once,
  when the tree was small, budding twigs and this
  connexion of the former and present buds by
  ramifying branches may well represent the
  classification of all extinct and living species
  in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many
  twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere
  bush, only two or three, now grown into great
  branches, yet survive and bear all the other
  branches so with the species which lived during
  long-past geological periods, very few now have
  living and modified descendants.

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Tree of Life, cont.

• From the first growth of the tree, many a limb
  and branch has decayed and dropped off and these
  lost branches of various sizes may represent
  those whole orders, families, and genera which
  have now no living representatives, and which are
  known to us only from having been found in a
  fossil state. As we here and there see a thin
  straggling branch springing from a fork low down
  in a tree, and which by some chance has been
  favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we
  occasionally see an animal like the
  Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in some
  small degree connects by its affinities two large
  branches of life, and which has apparently been
  saved from fatal competition by having inhabited
  a protected station. As buds give rise by growth
  to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out
  and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch,
  so by generation I believe it has been with the
  great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and
  broken branches the crust of the earth, and
  covers the surface with its ever branching and
  beautiful ramifications.

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Stop Being Passive!

• Talk for a few minutes with the person next to
  you about what you notice in Darwins language.
• What surprises you?
• What strategies does he use to communicate
  information and ideas?
• What is the effect of those strategies?

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Analysis

• Note that this whole central passage is a simile.
  Darwin acknowledges as much and then repeats the
  word represents and the structure of analogy,
  just as the tree so do species.
• This particular simile enables him to call upon
  familiar and comfortable associations of nature
  and rebirth.
• He also rewrites the Biblical tree.
• The tree simile is an occasion to celebrate
  Beautiful ramifications.

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Language of Beauty and Wonder

• From ch. 3, The Struggle for Existence
• How have all those exquisite adaptations of one
  part of the organisation to another part, and to
  the conditions of life, and of one distinct
  organic being to another being, been perfected?
  We see these beautiful co-adaptations most
  plainly in the woodpecker and missletoe and only
  a little less plainly in the humblest parasite
  which clings to the hairs of a quadruped or
  feathers of a bird in the structure of the
  beetle which dives through the water in the
  plumed seed which is wafted by the gentlest
  breeze in short, we see beautiful adaptations
  everywhere and in every part of the organic world.

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Language of Beauty and Wonder, cont.

• From ch. 14, Recapitulation and Conclusion
• There is a grandeur in this view of life, with
  its several powers, having been originally
  breathed into a few forms or into one and that,
  whilst this planet has gone cycling on according
  to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a
  beginning endless forms most beautiful and most
  wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

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Analysis

• The grandeur is meant to combat with the
  melancholy long withdrawing roar of receding
  faith written of by Arnold and others.
• Evolution itself is offered as a force
  beautiful and wonderful no less so than a
  Romantic, non-scientific view of nature.

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George Levine, Darwin Loves You (2006)

• A literary attention to his language suggests
  the possibility of an enchantment that never has
  to reach beyond nature itself (xv).
• For Darwin, the project of establishing the
  theory of evolution by natural selection was not
  so much the affirmation of a mindless and godless
  world, as the revelation that we walk in the
  midst of wonders it was an act of loving
  engagement with the natural world that allows and
  fosters, even without gods and traditional forms
  of consolation, enchantment (26).

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Enchantment and Altruism One Response

• Thomas Hardy Few people seem to perceive fully
  as yet that the most far-reaching consequence of
  the establishment of the common origin of all
  species is ethical that it logically involved a
  re-adjustment of altruistic morals by enlarging
  as a necessity of rightness the application of
  what has been called The Golden Rule beyond the
  area of mere mankind to that of the whole animal
  kingdom (quoted in Levine).

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A second response

• Arabella Buckley, The Winners in Lifes Race
  (1883 an introduction to evolution for
  children)
• Thus we arrive at the greatest and most
  important lesson that the study of nature affords
  us. It is interesting, most interesting, to
  trace the gradual evolution of numberless
  different forms, and see how each has become
  fitted for the life it has to live. It gives us
  courage to struggle on under difficulties when we
  see how patiently the lower animals meet the
  dangers and anxieties of their lives, and conquer
  or die in the struggle for existence. But far
  beyond all these is the great moral lesson taught
  at every step in the history of the development
  of the animal world, that amidst toil and
  suffering, struggle and death, the supreme law of
  life is the law of SELF-DEVOTION AND LOVE.
• Altruistic Principle.

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III. Reactions to Darwin
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(No Transcript)
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Literary Responses 1

• Tennyson, Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After
  (1886)
• Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
• And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the
  mud. (198-199)

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Literary Responses 2

• Other late nineteenth-century writers that focus
  on degeneration
• Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Wells, The Time Machine
• Stoker, Dracula

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Literary Responses 3

• Nineteenth-century realist novelists, i.e. George
  Eliot and Charles Dickens.
• Complex webs of interconnected characters and
  plots, as well as themes of inheritance,
  knowledge and experimentation, and structure (of
  society as of narrative.)
• Beer even argues that Darwin was able to see the
  complexity of the natural world because of his
  reading of Dickens.
• SO, realism enables Darwin just as Darwins
  writing enriches realism.

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Literary Responses 4, and conclusions

• May Kendall, The Lay of the Trilobite (1887)
• A mountain's giddy height I sought,Because I
  could not findSufficient vague and mighty
  thoughtTo fill my mighty mindAnd as I wandered
  ill at ease,There chanced upon my sightA native
  of Silurian seas,An ancient Trilobite.So calm,
  so peacefully he lay,I watched him even with
  tearsI thought of Monads far awayIn the
  forgotten years.How wonderful it seemed and
  right,The providential plan,That he should be a
  Trilobite,And I should be a Man!

• And then, quite natural and freeOut of his
  rocky bed,That Trilobite he spoke to meAnd this
  is what he said'I don't know how the thing was
  done,Although I cannot doubt itBut Huxley - he
  if anyoneCan tell you all about it
• 'How all your faiths are ghosts and dreams,How
  in the silent seaYour ancestors were Monotremes
  -Whatever these may beHow you evolved your
  shining lightsOf wisdom and perfectionFrom
  Jelly-Fish and TrilobitesBy Natural Selection.

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• But gentle, stupid, free from woeI lived among
  my nation,I didn't care - I didn't knowThat I
  was a Crustacean.I didn't grumble, didn't
  steal,I never took to rhymeSalt water was my
  frugal meal,And carbonate of lime.'Reluctantly
  I turned away,No other word he saidAn ancient
  Trilobite, he layWithin his rocky bed.I did not
  answer him, for thatWould have annoyed my
  prideI merely bowed, and raised my hat,But in
  my heart I cried -'I wish our brains were not
  so good,I wish our skulls were thicker,I wish
  that Evolution couldHave stopped a little
  quickerFor oh, it was a happy plight,Of
  liberty and ease,To be a simple TrilobiteIn the
  Silurian seas!'

• 'You've Kant to make your brains go round,Hegel
  you have to clear them,You've Mr Browning to
  confound,And Mr Punch to cheer them!The native
  of an alien landYou call a man and brother,And
  greet with hymn-book in one handAnd pistol in
  the other!'You've Politics to make you fightAs
  if you were possessedYou've cannon and you've
  dynamiteTo give the nations restThe side that
  makes the loudest dinIs surest to be right,And
  oh, a pretty fix you're in!'Remarked the
  Trilobite.