Section 7 of 9 - Table of Contents
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 everywhere 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. Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work;
but I was so anxious to avoid prejudice, that I determined not
for some time to write even the briefest sketch of it. In June
1842 I first allowed myself the satisfaction of writing a very
brief abstract of my theory in pencil in 35 pages; and this was
enlarged during the summer of 1844 into one of 230 pages, which I
had fairly copied out and still possess.
But at that time I overlooked one problem of great importance;
and it is astonishing to me, except on the principle of Columbus
and his egg, how I could have overlooked it and its solution.
This problem is the tendency in organic beings descended from the
same stock to diverge in character as they become modified. That
they have diverged greatly is obvious from the manner in which
species of all kinds can be classed under genera, genera under
families, families under sub-orders and so forth; and I can
remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when
to my joy the solution occurred to me; and this was long after I
had come to Down. The solution, as I believe, is that the
modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to
become adapted to many and highly diversified places in the
economy of nature.
Early in 1856 Lyell advised me to write out my views pretty
fully, and I began at once to do so on a scale three or four
times as extensive as that which was afterwards followed in my
'Origin of Species;' yet it was only an abstract of the materials
which I had collected, and I got through about half the work on
this scale. But my plans were overthrown, for early in the
summer of 1858 Mr. Wallace, who was then in the Malay
archipelago, sent me an essay "On the Tendency of Varieties to
depart indefinitely from the Original Type;" and this essay
contained exactly the same theory as mine. Mr. Wallace expressed
the wish that if I thought well of his essay, I should sent it to
Lyell for perusal.
The circumstances under which I consented at the request of Lyell
and Hooker to allow of an abstract from my MS., together with a
letter to Asa Gray, dated September 5, 1857, to be published at
the same time with Wallace's Essay, are given in the 'Journal of
the Proceedings of the Linnean Society,' 1858, page 45. I was at
first very unwilling to consent, as I thought Mr. Wallace might
consider my doing so unjustifiable, for I did not then know how
generous and noble was his disposition. The extract from my MS.
and the letter to Asa Gray had neither been intended for
publication, and were badly written. Mr. Wallace's essay, on the
other hand, was admirably expressed and quite clear.
Nevertheless, our joint productions excited very little
attention, and the only published notice of them which I can
remember was by Professor Haughton of Dublin, whose verdict was
that all that was new in them was false, and what was true was
old. This shows how necessary it is that any new view should be
explained at considerable length in order to arouse public
attention.
In September 1858 I set to work by the strong advice of Lyell and
Hooker to prepare a volume on the transmutation of species, but
was often interrupted by ill-health, and short visits to Dr.
Lane's delightful hydropathic establishment at Moor Park. I
abstracted the MS. begun on a much larger scale in 1856, and
completed the volume on the same reduced scale. It cost me
thirteen months and ten days' hard labour. It was published
under the title of the 'Origin of Species,' in November 1859.
Though considerably added to and corrected in the later editions,
it has remained substantially the same book.
It is no doubt the chief work of my life. It was from the first
highly successful. The first small edition of 1250 copies was
sold on the day of publication, and a second edition of 3000
copies soon afterwards. Sixteen thousand copies have now (1876)
been sold in England; and considering how stiff a book it is,
this is a large sale. It has been translated into almost every
European tongue, even into such languages as Spanish, Bohemian,
Polish, and Russian. It has also, according to Miss Bird, been
translated into Japanese (Miss Bird is mistaken, as I learn from
Prof. Mitsukuri.--F.D.), and is there much studied. Even an
essay in Hebrew has appeared on it, showing that the theory is
contained in the Old Testament! The reviews were very numerous;
for some time I collected all that appeared on the 'Origin' and
on my related books, and these amount (excluding newspaper
reviews) to 265; but after a time I gave up the attempt in
despair. Many separate essays and books on the subject have
appeared; and in Germany a catalogue or bibliography on
"Darwinismus" has appeared every year or two.
The success of the 'Origin' may, I think, be attributed in large
part to my having long before written two condensed sketches, and
to my having finally abstracted a much larger manuscript, which
was itself an abstract. By this means I was enabled to select
the more striking facts and conclusions. I had, also, during
many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a
published fact, a new observation or thought came across me,
which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of
it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that
such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the
memory than favourable ones. Owing to this habit, very few
objections were raised against my views which I had not at least
noticed and attempted to answer.
It has sometimes been said that the success of the 'Origin'
proved "that the subject was in the air," or "that men's minds
were prepared for it." I do not think that this is strictly
true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never
happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about
the permanence of species. Even Lyell and Hooker, though they
would listen with interest to me, never seemed to agree. I tried
once or twice to explain to able men what I meant by Natural
Selection, but signally failed. What I believe was strictly true
is that innumerable well-observed facts were stored in the minds
of naturalists ready to take their proper places as soon as any
theory which would receive them was sufficiently explained.
Another element in the success of the book was its moderate size;
and this I owe to the appearance of Mr. Wallace's essay; had I
published on the scale in which I began to write in 1856, the
book would have been four or five times as large as the 'Origin,'
and very few would have had the patience to read it.
I gained much by my delay in publishing from about 1839, when the
theory was clearly conceived, to 1859; and I lost nothing by it,
for I cared very little whether men attributed most originality
to me or Wallace; and his essay no doubt aided in the reception
of the theory. I was forestalled in only one important point,
which my vanity has always made me regret, namely, the
explanation by means of the Glacial period of the presence of the
same species of plants and of some few animals on distant
mountain summits and in the arctic regions. This view pleased me
so much that I wrote it out in extenso, and I believe that it was
read by Hooker some years before E. Forbes published his
celebrated memoir ('Geolog. Survey Mem.,' 1846.) on the subject.
In the very few points in which we differed, I still think that I
was in the right. I have never, of course, alluded in print to
my having independently worked out this view.
Hardly any point gave me so much satisfaction when I was at work
on the 'Origin,' as the explanation of the wide difference in
many classes between the embryo and the adult animal, and of the
close resemblance of the embryos within the same class. No
notice of this point was taken, as far as I remember, in the
early reviews of the 'Origin,' and I recollect expressing my
surprise on this head in a letter to Asa Gray. Within late years
several reviewers have given the whole credit to Fritz Muller and
Hackel, who undoubtedly have worked it out much more fully, and
in some respects more correctly than I did. I had materials for
a whole chapter on the subject, and I ought to have made the
discussion longer; for it is clear that I failed to impress my
readers; and he who succeeds in doing so deserves, in my opinion,
all the credit.
This leads me to remark that I have almost always been treated
honestly by my reviewers, passing over those without scientific
knowledge as not worthy of notice. My views have often been
grossly misrepresented, bitterly opposed and ridiculed, but this
has been generally done, as I believe, in good faith. On the
whole I do not doubt that my works have been over and over again
greatly overpraised. I rejoice that I have avoided
controversies, and this I owe to Lyell, who many years ago, in
reference to my geological works, strongly advised me never to
get entangled in a controversy, as it rarely did any good and
caused a miserable loss of time and temper.
Whenever I have found out that I have blundered, or that my work
has been imperfect, and when I have been contemptuously
criticised, and even when I have been overpraised, so that I have
felt mortified, it has been my greatest comfort to say hundreds
of times to myself that "I have worked as hard and as well as I
could, and no man can do more than this." I remember when in
Good Success Bay, in Tierra del Fuego, thinking (and, I believe,
that I wrote home to the effect) that I could not employ my life
better than in adding a little to Natural Science. This I have
done to the best of my abilities, and critics may say what they
like, but they cannot destroy this conviction.
During the two last months of 1859 I was fully occupied in
preparing a second edition of the 'Origin,' and by an enormous
correspondence. On January 1st, 1860, I began arranging my notes
for my work on the 'Variation of Animals and Plants under
Domestication;' but it was not published until the beginning of
1868; the delay having been caused partly by frequent illnesses,
one of which lasted seven months, and partly by being tempted to
publish on other subjects which at the time interested me more.
On May 15th, 1862, my little book on the 'Fertilisation of
Orchids,' which cost me ten months' work, was published: most of
the facts had been slowly accumulated during several previous
years. During the summer of 1839, and, I believe, during the
previous summer, I was led to attend to the cross-fertilisation
of flowers by the aid of insects, from having come to the
conclusion in my speculations on the origin of species, that
crossing played an important part in keeping specific forms
constant. I attended to the subject more or less during every
subsequent summer; and my interest in it was greatly enhanced by
having procured and read in November 1841, through the advice of
Robert Brown, a copy of C.K. Sprengel's wonderful book, 'Das
entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur.' For some years before 1862 I
had specially attended to the fertilisation of our British
orchids; and it seemed to me the best plan to prepare as complete
a treatise on this group of plants as well as I could, rather
than to utilise the great mass of matter which I had slowly
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