Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, and 'Vestiges of the Natural ... Darwin - New...Darwin, Wallace, and...

Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, and "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation"Author(s): Joel S. SchwartzSource: Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 127-153Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4331120 .

Accessed: 02/06/2013 19:43

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the History ofBiology.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.165 on Sun, 2 Jun 2013 19:43:39 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=springer

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4331120?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, and Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

JOEL S. SCHWARTZ

Department of Biology College of Staten Island of the City University of New York

INTRODUCTION

Robert Chambers, in the preface to the tenth edition (1853) of his anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, seized the opportunity to answer criticism of the controversial and much-debated work. He asserted:

... the fate of the book was not to rest in obscurity or oblivion, but to be extensively read, and become the subject of much animadversion. It has never had a single declared adherent - and nine editions have been sold. Obloquy has been poured upon the nameless author from a score of sources - and his leading idea, in a subdued form, finds its way into books of science, and gives a direction to research. Professing adver- saries write books in imitation of his, and, with the benefit of a few concessions to prejudice, contrive to obtain the favour denied to him.'

Thus Chambers presented a vigorous defense directed toward those critics of his work who, in his opinion, should have been more active in their support of his evolutionary ideas. In addition, because he was a self-taught amateur naturalist who knew his own limitations, he used the preface to express disappointment that his work was not taken up by the more-established investigators in the field at the time.

Chambers's prefaced remarks may have had some influence, because subsequently naturalists tempered some of their harsher criticism of the book. But his work never gained the acceptance

1. Robert Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Tenth edition with Extensive Additions and Emendations (London: John Churchill, 1853), p. ix.

Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 23, no. I (Spring 1990), pp. 127-153. C 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.



128 JOEL S. SCHWARTZ

among professional scientists that Chambers wished. After the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, the Vestiges became a largely forgotten work with little impact. However, its initial popularity with the public, and the controversy that accompanied its publication, helped to generate lively discussion about evolution. The ventilation of evolutionary ideas in the 1840s and 1850s shaped the debate that followed the appearance of Darwin's work in 1859. It may also have helped prepare the public to accept evolutionary doctrines more readily.

In order to properly assess the history and significance of the debate over Darwinian evolution and its aftermath, it is important to consider how prominent evolutionists of the period regarded Chambers's earlier contribution to evolutionary thought, and how it may have affected their intellectual development. Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace are an important part of this discussion because of their central role in the development of evolutionary theory - particularly its key mechanism, natural selection. Thomas Henry Huxley also has been included because he was Darwin's leading advocate for many years, seeking opportunities to defend Darwin's ideas vigorously. Darwin himself, as is well known, tried to avoid confrontation.

ROBERT CHAMBERS AND THE VESTIGES

Robert Chambers was born in 1802 in the small Scottish village of Peebles. Although he was not born into poor circumstances, his family soon suffered financial reverses. As a consequence, both Robert and his older brother William were forced to make their way in the world and to help provide for their own education. They then set out for Edinburgh, where, after enduring exceed- ingly harsh conditions of poverty in their late teens and early twenties, they established a successful antiquarian book business and a publishing concern that printed books of general knowledge, mainly written by Robert. These efforts led the brothers to establish their periodical, the successful Chambers Edinburgh Journal, and from then on, both Robert and William played a central role in the intellectual life of Edinburgh during a very exciting period in its history.

Robert, although his area of expertise was in Scottish history and folklore, became keenly interested in geology and biology, and he quite successfully taught himself the fundamental concepts of these nineteenth-century scientific disciplines. He was already a successful, popular writer when he decided to devote himself to this study. Although he had no practical experience in the scientific field, he nevertheless became fully versed in its literature, and



Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, and Vestiges 129

his scientific writing reveals the strong influence of Buffon and Lamarck on his thinking. His knowledge of the fossil record, and his understanding that it contradicted scripture, led him to undertake his major work on evolution.2 He wrote Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in St. Andrews, Scotland, away from the Edinburgh intellectual community, in a self-imposed exile. The book was anonymously published in 1844, and his authorship was kept secret for the rest of his life in order to avoid controversy and protect the family business.

In the Vestiges, Chambers proposed that environmental changes helped produce large alterations in the structure of embryos. In his view, evolution took place when new types formed from the old in rapid, discrete steps, rather than by a process of slow, gradual change and a "Malthusian struggle" for survival. Chambers's motivation was to develop an evolutionary theory that would be more firmly supported by scientific evidence than were Lamarck's ideas. He also wanted to tie his theory of evolution to the fundamental laws that governed the development of the universe. In his preface to the tenth edition, he explained:

The author of this work - a private person with limited opportunities of study - first had his attention attracted to the early history of animated nature, on becoming acquainted with an outline of the Laplacian hypothesis of the solar system. Having previously been convinced that the Divine Governor of the world conducts its passing affairs by a fixed rule, . . . he was much impressed on finding reason to believe that the physical arrangements of the universe had been originated in the same manner.... After this point was attained, he was not long in perceiving that the commencement of life and organization was very unsatisfactorily accounted for by "fiats," "special miracles," "interferences," and other suggestions and figures of speech in vogue amongst geologists.3

Unfortunately, due to Chambers's limited practical scientific experience, he rested his theory upon muddled concepts and fallacious theories, such as spontaneous generation. These aspects

2. Charles Gillispie has suggested that Chambers had "taken up the challenge which Adam Sedgwick, William Whewell, and the catastrophists had presented to Lyell: how to explain the progression of organic forms in view of the uniformitarian requirement of an unvarying natural law" (Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and .Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850 {Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 195 1 1, p. 149).

3. Chambers, Vestiges, pp. v-vi.




of his work naturally offered a convenient target for his detractors. Critics also commented adversely on his abrupt transitions from scientific reasoning to religious sentiment.4 Apparently, Chambers intended his work to be the opening salvo in a serious discussion of evolution, and he hoped that the better-trained and more- experienced naturalists of his day would participate in the debate. As it turned out, he had to wait fifteen years for this to occur. In the interim, his work was subjected to harsh attacks, often from the very people he most wanted on his side in support of evolution.

CHARLES DARWIN'S RESPONSE TO THE VESTIGES

The issue of how Darwin viewed the leading ideas in the Vestiges and how he may have been influenced by the book is a complicated one. Darwin's attitude is often described as being hostile toward the work. His correspondence with other naturalists reveals that he had reservations about the book when it was first published in 1844, but he was guarded in his criticism and did not show much interest in the work despite considerable discussion among other naturalists. Joseph Hooker, noted botanist and a colleague of Darwin, wrote him on December 30, 1844:

I have been delighted with Vestiges for the multiplicity of facts he brings together, though I do [not] agree with his conclusions at all, he must be a funny fellow: somehow the book looks more like a 9 days wonder than a lasting work: it certainly is "filling at the price." I mean the price its reading costs, for it is dear enough otherwise; he has lots of errors. Have you read "McCullochs Proofs & Attributes"? After all what is the great difference between Vestiges & Lamarck, whom he laughs at.5

A week later, on January 7, 1845, Darwin answered Hooker: "I have also read the 'Vestiges,' but have been somewhat less amused at it than you appear to have been: the writing and arrangement are certainly admirable, but his geology strikes me as bad, and his zoology far worse." Hooker's letter, however, helped make Darwin

4. Chambers's belief in spontaneous generation arose from his strong deism. He believed in a universe based on design, and his support of spontaneous generation was necessary when he attempted to explain how life originated. See Milton Millhauser, Just Before Darwin: Robert Chambers and "Vestiges" (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1959), pp. 92-93.

5. Darwin Papers, Cambridge University Library, vol. 100, fol. 33.




more aware of the work, and, as a result, he carefully examined the book.6

Several months later (April 1845), Hooker wrote to Darwin and again referred to the Vestiges while making observations about different plant species. He suggested that the Tasmanian fungus, Cyttaria, belonged in the same species as a fungus Darwin had discovered in Tierra del Fuego, and he speculated to Darwin about where and how this species had originated: "I suppose Vestiges would call it a case of parallel development and arresta- tion in each country. McCulloch and others a double creation.... Lamarck would be nonplussed as I am amongst them all." 7

Hooker's observations may have prompted Darwin to write more favorably about Chambers's book. In a subsequent letter to his cousin, William Darwin Fox, Darwin asked: "Have you read that strange, unphilosophical, but capitally-written book, the 'Vestiges': it has made more talk than any work of late, and has been by some attributed to me - at which I ought to be much flattered and unflattered." 8

Later that year (September 10), Darwin reported to Hooker that he also was interested in studying the variability of species:

How painfully (to me) true is your remark, that no one has hardly a right to examine the question of species who has not minutely described many. I was, however, pleased to hear from Owen (who is vehemently opposed to any mutability in species), that he thought it was a very fair subject, and that there was a mass of facts to be brought to bear on the question, not hitherto collected. My only comfort is (as I mean to attempt the

6. Charles Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter, ed. Francis Darwin (London: John Murray, 1 887), 1, 333. Darwin probably read a borrowed copy of the first edition of the Vestiges, because there are no early editions preserved in the Darwin collection. Francis Darwin reported that his father's own copy of the Vestiges was the sixth edition (published in 1847), which contains a long list of marked passages, including annotations such as: "The idea of a fish passing into a Reptile, (his idea) monstrous ... I will not specify any genealogies - much too little known at present" (Darwin Library 151, Cambridge University Library, annotations on overleaf ).

7. Darwin Papers, Cambridge University Library, vol. 104, fol. 220. Hooker's comments to Darwin about the Vestiges are not included in Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, even though the Hooker-Darwin correspondence contains numerous references to Chambers and to his possible authorship of the Vestiges and of Explanations (a work written by Chambers a year after the Vestiges was published, as a reply to this critics).

8. Darwin, Life and Letters, 1, 333.




subject), that I have dabbled in several branches of Natural History, and seen good specific men work out my species, and know something of geology (an indispensable union); and though I shall get more kicks than half-pennies, I will, life serving, attempt my work. Lamarck is the only exception, that I can think of, of an accurate describer of species, at least in the Invertebrate Kingdom, who has disbelieved in permanent species, but he in his absurd though clever work has done the subject harm, as has Mr. Vestiges, and, as (some future loose naturalist attempting the same speculations will perhaps say) has Mr. D... .

Although Darwin was rather harsh in his remarks about Lamarck and the Vestiges, he also recognized here that he would be vulnerable to similar attacks when he finally published his ideas about the modification of species.

Darwin was more explicit in stating the reasons for his ambiva- lence toward the Vestiges in his letter of October 8, 1845, to Charles Lyell:

I have been much interested with Sedgwick's review lof Vestiges]; though I find it far from popular with our scientific readers. I think some few passages savour of the dogmatism of the pulpit, rather than of the philosophy of the Professor's Chair.... Nevertheless, it is a grand piece of argument against mutability of species, and I read it with fear and trembling, but was well pleased to find that I had not overlooked any of the arguments, though I had put them to myself as feebly as milk and water.'IO

Darwin was afraid that Adam Sedgwick's attack would not only be effective against the Vestiges but could also be an effective

9. Ibid., II, 39. 10. Ibid., 1, 344. Frank N. Egerton emphasizes the effect of Sedgwick's

review of the Vestiges on Darwin and suggests that Darwin learned more from the review than from the book itself. He does not note Darwin's letter to Lyell showing concern about the effect of such strong attacks on evolution, and relief that his different view of evolutionary change could stand up to such scrutiny. Egerton suggests, instead, that Darwin was relieved that Chambers had not developed natural selection as a mechanism for evolution, but there is no evidence for this assertion ("Refutation and Conjecture: Darwin's Response to Sedgwick's Attack on Chambers," Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 1 119701, 179-181). However, Sedgwick's review made Darwin further aware of the issues raised by Chambers. Several years later, when the sixth edition of the Vestiges was published, Darwin carefully read and annotated this edition.



Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, and Vestiges 1 33

argument against the entire notion of evolution, because of Sedgwick's great prestige as a geologist. Darwin repeated his concern about the effect of such criticism nine years later, when he commented to Huxley on September 2, 1854, with perhaps additional "fear and trembling," after Huxley's unfavorable review of the Vestiges had appeared:

I have just been reading your review of the Vestiges, and the way you handle a great Professor [Richard Owen] is really exquisite and inimitable. I have been extremely interested in other parts, and to my mind it is incomparably the best review I have read on the Vestiges; but I cannot think but that you are rather hard on the poor author. I must think such a book, if it does no other good, spreads the taste for Natural Science. But I am perhaps no fair judge, for I am almost as unorthodox about species as the Vestiges itself, though I hope not quite so unphilosophical. I

Darwin's comments to Huxley amply demonstrate how he viewed the Vestiges and the issues raised by the debate that followed the book's publication. He understood that while creating a more favorable climate for new ideas on the development of species, Chambers's book would also make it more difficult for his own "unorthodox" views on species to get an objective and unemotional hearing because of Chambers's "unphilosophical" reasoning and mistakes. He wrote to Hooker the same week: "I am very glad you wish for Huxley's review it is exquisite and most clever, all about Owen - the Review part strikes me as the best I have seen, on poor Vestiges, but I think he is too severe, - you may say 'birds of a feather flock together,' and therefore I sympathize with the author." 12

11 Charles Darwin, More Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin and A. C. Seward (London: John Murray, 1903), I, 75. Evelleen Richards suggests that Huxley's purpose in reviewing the Vestiges was not only to critically analyze the Vestiges but also to use the opportunity to "attack Richard Owen's paleontology." Richards maintains that Owen's views were close to the Vestiges: "Owen was neither theoretically nor historically opposed to a theory of organic descent based on the Vestiges . . ." ("A Question of Property Rights: Richard Owen's Evolutionism Reassessed," Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 20 119871, 131). For a different view of Owen's attitude toward the Vestiges, see John Hedley Brooke, "Richard Owen, William Whewell and the Vestiges," Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 10 (1977), 132-145. Darwin's letter of September 10, 1845, to Hooker (see n. 9 above) illustrates that Darwin believed Owen to be "vehemently opposed to any mutability in species."

12. Darwin to Hooker, letter of September 7, 1854, Darwin Papers, Cambridge University Library, vol. 100, fol. 124.




As Darwin had suggested, the discussion of evolutionary theories that followed Chambers's work was beneficial to Darwin because it made the public more receptive to further presentations of evolutionary theories. Publication of the Vestiges represented the first thorough presentation of evolutionary theory in Britain and thereby served as the only fully developed challenge to the prevailing belief in the immutability of species. On the other hand, Chambers's lack of formal biological training, which led to errors of fact and interpretation, made Darwin's task more formidable when he sought to challenge the conventional thinking of the time. Darwin felt be would be forced to defend Chambers's mistakes. His own work would be unavoidably linked to Chambers's efforts even though there was little that the Vestiges and the Origin had in common outside the fact that they both advocated the evolution of new species.'3

Apart from the errors in the Vestiges, Darwin may have been predisposed against Chambers's work because of its view of evolutionary change as occurring by large leaps. Early in his career, particularly in his 1842 and 1844 sketches on species, Darwin had advocated a more rapid rate of evolutionary change; soon afterwards, however, his view of evolutionary change began to more closely resemble the Victorian idea of change - that is, all change, not just organic, took place gradually and at the same pace. It is possible that these two opposing views about the rate of change resulted from the different backgrounds of Chambers and Darwin. Chambers spent his formative years in pre-Victorian Scotland (the end of the "Scottish Enlightenment"), and Darwin, although only seven years younger than Chambers, was influenced much more by the liberal ideas shared by the privileged class in nineteenth-century English society. Also, because Chambers's approach to evolutionary change was developmental, Darwin regarded Chambers's views on the subject as having a negligible impact on his own.

Darwin was further troubled by Chambers's vitalistic approach to evolution, particularly his use of the term "inherent." Darwin underlined the word in his personal copy of the sixth edition of the Vestiges; for example, the passages ". . . the result, of an inherent impulse in the forms of life to advance . . ." and "... of another inherent impulse connected with the vital forces....." He added in

13. For example, both men read William S. MacLeay's Horae Entomologicae, with its quinary system of classification; however, while Chambers leaned on this taxonomic scheme quite heavily in the Vestiges, it played a negligible role in Darwin's thinking when he formulated his theory.




the margin, "quote to show difference; V. [idel Whewells remarks against this." '4

Darwin's attitude toward the Vestiges and Chambers may also have been influenced by another matter, not directly connected with this work - namely, the exchange between the two men over Darwin's "Glen Roy" paper and Chambers's subsequent book, Ancient Sea Margins (1848). In 1839 Darwin published a paper in which he attributed the "Parallel Roads" phenomenon in Glen Roy, Scotland (beaches above sea level), to the action of the sea. He argued that the sea was the only force capable of forming the unusual terraces, and he stated that he could not allow that any other action, including glaciers, had been responsible for this phenomenon. He was not secure about his views on the subject, however, and consequently he was somewhat defensive about this paper, despite support from Lyell. Although Chambers basically agreed with Darwin's conclusions, he annoyed Darwin by claiming that he himself had solved the problem of Glen Roy; a further annoyance was that, in Darwin's opinion, he had not read very carefully Darwin's work on the subject. Darwin wrote to Lyell on March 7, 1847:

I got R. Chambers to give me a sketch of Milne's Glen Roy views, [because Chambers had accompanied Milne to Glen Roy] and I have re-read my paper. ... It is provoking and humiliating to find Chambers not only had not read with any care my paper on this subject, or even looked at the coloured map, so that the new shelf described by me had not been searched for, and my arguments and facts of detail not in the least attended to.' s

A year later, when Chambers's Ancient Sea Margins was published, Darwin again wrote Lyell (June 16, 1848):

I find Smith, of Jordan Hill, has a much worse opinion of R. Chambers's book than even I have. Chambers has piqued me a little; he says I "propound" and "profess my belief" that Glen Roy is marine, and that the idea was accepted because the " mobility of the land was the ascendant idea of the day." ... I have indirectly told him I do not think he has quite claims to

14. Darwin Library 151, Cambridge University Library, annotations on p. 209 of the sixth ed. of the Vestiges; italics added by Darwin.

15. Darwin, Life and Letters, 1, 362.




consider that he alone (which he pretty directly asserts) has solved the problem of Glen Roy.'6

In a subsequent letter to Lyell (June 21?, 1848), Darwin tempered his harsh comments about Chambers having used his material from the Glen Roy paper without sufficient attribution:

Out of justice to Chambers I must trouble you with one line to say, as far as I am personally concerned in Glen Roy, he has made the amende honorable, and pleads guilty through inadvertency of taking my two lines of arguments and facts without acknowledgement. He concluded by saying he "came to the same point by an independent course of inquiry, which in a small degree excuses this inadvertency." . . . I am heartily glad I was able to say in truth that I thought he had done good service in calling more attention to the subject of the terraces.... I hope that you may think better of the book than I do.' 7

Critical to the problem of deciding if their discussion about "Glen Roy" influenced Darwin's opinion of Chambers's work, particularly the Vestiges, is how strongly Darwin believed that Chambers was the author of the Vestiges. In a letter of February 1846 he told Hooker:

I have been amused by Chambers v. Hooker on the K. [erguelen] Cabbage. I see in the Explanations (the spirit of which, though not the facts, ought to shame Sedgwick) that Vestiges considers all land-animals and plants to have passed from marine forms; so Chambers is quite in accordance. Did you hear Forbes, when here, giving the rather curious evidence (from a similarity in error) that Chambers must be the author of the Vestiges: your case strikes me as some confirmation.18

About a year later (April 18, 1847), in another letter to

16. Ibid., pp. 362-363. 17. Ibid., pp. 363-364. Frederick Burkhardt has informed me that this

letter was probably written on the Wednesday after June 16 (June 21), a date he established by the postmark on the previous letter (see n. 16 above). Darwin also referred to Chambers's Ancient Sea Margins, in a letter to the American geologist James D. Dana. Darwin wrote Dana on December 5, 1849: "I lately read a paper of yours on Chambers' book, and was interested by it - I really believe the facts of the order described by Chambers; occur in S. America, which I have described in my Geology Volume" (Yale University Library; letter also included in Darwin, More Letters, 11, 228, with a few minor alterations).

18. Darwin, More Letters, I, 48-49. The date of this letter has been




Hooker, Darwin remarked: "I think I have only made one new acquaintance of late, that is, R. Chambers; and I have just received a presentation copy of the sixth edition of the 'Vestiges.' Somehow I now feel perfectly convinced he is the author. He is in France, and has written to me thence."19 Darwin also referred to the possibility that Chambers was the author of the Vestiges in his June 16, 1848, letter to Lyell, where he was quite critical of Chambers. He asserted: "If he [Chambers] be, as I believe, the author of the Vestiges this book [Ancient Sea Margins] for poverty of intellect is a literary curiosity."2"' It is apparent that by at least 1847 or 1848, Darwin believed Chambers to be the author of the Vestiges. Furthermore, he was still annoyed with Chambers over Glen Roy, in spite of Chambers's attempt to make amends for any unintended slight. It is possible that this matter may have influenced Darwin's overall appraisal of Chambers's contributions. Although Darwin had some positive things to say about the Vestiges in his 1854 letter to Huxley (mainly due to the improve- ments in the tenth edition), he did not refer very much to the subject between the time of publication of Chambers's Ancient Sea Margins (1848) and his own Origin of Species (1859). Perhaps Darwin felt that he had commented sufficiently on the subject.

An exception to his reticence about Chambers and his work during this period was the rather uncharitable remark Darwin made to Hooker about Chambers on December 11, 1854: "I should have less scruple in troubling you if I had any confidence what my work would turn out. Sometimes I think it will be good; at other times I really feel as much ashamed of myself as the author of the Vestiges ought to be of himself."2' This gratuitous comment

established as February 10, 1846, not 1845, by A Calendar of the Correspon- dence of Charles Darwin, 1821-1882, ed. Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith (New York: Garland, 1985).

19. Darwin, Life and Letters, 1, 355-356. In the early part of 1847, Darwin and Chambers began to correspond with one another. The letters between the two men were quite cordial in tone and were concerned with the phenomenon of the "Glen Roy" beaches. They are a marked contrast to Darwin's comments to Lyell about Chambers (Darwin Papers, volumes 50, 143, 161; Darwin, More Letters, II, 177).

20. Darwin to Lyell, June 16, 1848, American Philosophical Society Library, fol. 73. This critical passage is not included in Darwin, Life and Letters, 1, 362, where the rest of the letter appears.

21. Darwin, More Letters, 1, 85. The date in More Letters is incorrect; the Calendar gives the correct date as December 11, 1854. It is also noteworthy that there is no evidence of any Darwin-Chambers correspondence during this period, 1848-61.




is so uncharacteristic of Darwin that it suggests he was still quite upset with Chambers.

After publication of the Origin in 1859, Darwin had additional reasons to feel that the evaluation of his work would be influenced by Chambers's earlier effort. An article in the Daily News (of London) accused Darwin of taking his ideas from the Vestiges. On New Year's Day in 1860, he wrote Huxley: "Have you seen the slashing article of December 26th in the Daily News against my stealing from my 'master,' the author of the Vestiges?"22 Several weeks later, on January 18, 1860, he wrote a note of regret to the Reverend Baden Powell apologizing for having failed to give Powell sufficient credit for his work on species:

... I just alluded indeed to the Vestiges and I am now heartily sorry I did so. No educated person ... could suppose that I meant to arrogate to myself the origination of the doctrine that species had not been independently created. The only novelty in my work is the attempt to explain how species became modified, & to a certain extent how the theory of descent explains certain large classes of facts; & in these respects I received no assistance from my predecessors.... Had I alluded to those authors ... I should have felt myself bound to have given some account of all; . .. Buffon (?) Lamarck (by the way his erroneous views were curiously anticipated by my grand- father), Geoffr[oly St. Hilaire & especially his son Isidore; Naudin; Keyserling; an American, ... [Haldeman] I believe some Germans; [Goethel Vestiges of Creation; Herbert Spencer; & yourself ... your work must have had a great effect with philosophical minds in removing prejudices on the subject; in the higher degree but in nearly the same manner as the Vestiges has had with a less highly-endowed class of readers. I have had to make by letter the same acknowledgment to the author (as I believe) of the Vestiges.23

There is no record that Darwin ever wrote his note of "acknowledgment" to Chambers. On the same day, however, he wrote Powell again to tell him that he did not consider Powell's essay on species in the same category as the Vestiges. Darwin explained to Powell, "... I should be very sorry that anyone should suppose that I ranked your Essay & the Vestiges in the

22. Ibid., p. 136. 23. Sir Gavin de Beer, "Some Unpublished Letters of Charles Darwin,"

Notes Rec. Roy. Soc. London, 14 (1959), 52-53.




same class. I coupled them merely in relation to both having produced a good effect on the public mind; the Vestiges probably on a greater number but on a very inferior class."24 Thus Darwin had acknowledged his debt to the Vestiges, but his compliment here was less than a ringing endorsement.

A year later, Darwin's opinion of Chambers became more favorable. After paying Chambers a visit at this home in London, he reported to Hooker (in April 1861): "I called on R. Chambers at his very nice house in St. John's Wood, and had a very pleasant half-hour's talk - he is really a capital fellow."25 The two men may have discussed evolutionary ideas, and Darwin possibly used this opportunity to personally acknowledge Chambers's contributions (previously referred to in his letter to Powell). The subject of their conversation remains an intriguing source of speculation. It is unlikely that the matter of the Glen Roy raised sea beaches was discussed. Darwin already had misgivings about his theory of their origin, and perhaps this also had helped change his view of Chambers.26 Darwin probably thanked Chambers for his favorable review of the Origin, which appeared in the Chambers Journal in December 1859 and in which Chambers said of Darwin, "It should not, therefore, surprise us very much that a naturalist of the highest reputation has now come forward with an attempt to solve the question [of the origin of species] on purely scientific grounds."27 Certainly Darwin's April visit to Chambers's home was very helpful in repairing any possible strain in their relationship. Several weeks after his visit (April 30, 1861), Darwin wrote Chambers: "'... you fulminate against the scepticism of scientific men. You would not fulminate quite so much if you had had so many wild-goose chases after facts stated by men not

24. Ibid., p. 54. 25. Darwin, More Letters, 1, 186. Perhaps Darwin's warmer attitude toward

Chambers was also due to Chambers's support of Darwin's work at the 1860 Oxford meeting of the British Association.

26. Darwin had suggested to the Scottish geologist Thomas Francis Jamieson that he should visit Glen Roy in order to check on Darwin's hypothesis. Jamieson did so and totally demolished Darwin's theory, supporting instead the view that glaciers had been instrumental in the formation of the terraces. Darwin wrote Jamieson on September 6, 1861, when he received news of the geologist's findings: "I thank you sincerely for your long & very interesting letter. Your arguments seem to be conclusive. I give up the ghost. My paper is one long gigantic blunder" (de Beer, "Some Unpublished Letters," p. 38). On the same day, Darwin wrote Lyell: "I think the enclosed is worth your reading. I am smashed to atoms about Glen Roy. My paper was one long gigantic blunder from beginning to end. Eheu! Eheu!" (Darwin, More Letters, 1, 188).

27. Robert Chambers, "Charles Darwin on the Origin of Species," Chambers Edinburgh J, 32 (1859), 388.




trained to scientific accuracy. I often vow to myself that I will utterly disregard every statement made by any one who has not shown the world he can observe accurately."28 Darwin may have made these curious remarks as a way of expressing regret for his earlier treatment of Chambers, and he offered it to serve as an explanation of why he reacted strongly to inaccurately posed ideas. There is no further record of communication between the two men.

After Chambers's death in 1871, Darwin wrote to Chambers's daughter, Mrs. Annie Dowie, and paid him tribute:

I have always felt a most sincere respect for your father, and his society, the few times I enjoyed it, was most pleasant to me. Several years ago I perceived that I had not done full justice to a scientific work which I believed and still believe he was intimately connected with, and few things have struck me with more admiration than the perfect temper and liberality with which he treated my conduct.29

Darwin perhaps best summarized what he believed was the contribution of Chambers's work to evolution, several years before he wrote his gracious note to Mrs. Dowie. In his "Historical Sketch," which served as a preface to the second through sixth editions of the Origin (1860-1872), Darwin described the Vestiges as follows:

The work, from its powerful and brilliant style, though display- ing in the earlier editions little accurate knowledge and a great want of scientific caution, immediately had a wide circulation. In my opinion it had done excellent service in this country in calling attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous views.:"

HOW THE VESTIGES HELPED SHAPE WALLACE'S EARLY IDEAS

Wallace always had a more favorable view of the Vestiges than

28. Darwin, More Letters, 11, 443-444. 29. Lady Eliza Priestley, The Story of a Lifetime (London: Kegan, Paul,

Trench, Trubner, 1908), pp. 41-42. Darwin wrote this note on March 24, 1871, before Chambers was publicly acknowledged as the author of the Vestiges.

30. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, 4th ed. (London: John Murray, 1866), p. xvii.




Darwin, and he remained a steadfast supporter of the work throughout his career. In his autobiography, My Life, Wallace wrote of the Vestiges: i. . . a book which, in my opinion, has always been undervalued, and which when it first appeared was almost as much abused, and for very much the same reasons, as was Darwin's 'Origin of Species,' fifteen years later." 31 In a letter to Henry Walter Bates, a colleague with whom he would soon travel to the Amazon, he asked, "Have you read 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,' or is it out of your line."32 Apparently Bates did not share Wallace's enthusiasm for this work. Wallace wrote to Bates again the following month (December 28, 1845) and spelled out why he supported the book:

I have rather a more favourable opinion of the "Vestiges" than you appear to have. I do not consider it a hasty generalization, but rather as an ingenious hypothesis strongly supported by some striking facts and analogies but which remains to be proved by more facts & the additional light which future researches may throw upon the subject. It at all events furnishes a subject for every observer of nature to turn his attention to; . . . it thus furnishes both an incitement to the collection of facts & an object to which to apply them when collected. I would observe that many eminent writers give great support to the theory of the progressive development of species in animals and plants.... Now I shlouljd say that a permanent peculiarity not produced in any way by external causes is a distinction of species & not of mere variety & thus if the theory of the "Vestiges" is carried out the "Negro" and the red Indian & the European are distinct species of the genus Homo. .. . As a further support to the "Vestiges" I have heard that "Cosmos" the celebrated work of the venerable Humboldt supports in almost every particular its theories not excepting those relating to animal & vegetable life.33

By 1845, then, the young Wallace already believed in the mutability of species. He recalled, years later, that his letter to

31. Alfred Russel Wallace, My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions (London: Chapman and Hall, 1905), I, 255.

32. Alfred Russel Wallace, Letters and Reminiscences, ed. James Marchant (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1916), p. 73. H. Lewis McKinney gives the correct date of this letter as November 9, 1845 ("Wallace's Earliest Observations on Evolution: 28 December 1845," Isis, 60 119691, 370-373).

33. McKinney, "Wallace's Earliest Observations," pp. 372-373. McKinney was able to examine the original letter, courtesy of Wallace's grandson, and thus




Bates had contained "some very crude ideas," but it established that "I was already speculating upon the origin of species, and taking note of everything bearing upon it that came in my way."34 The publication of the Vestiges acted as a spur for Wallace to concentrate on the question of how species changed from one form to another. Initially, he viewed the regular process of sexual reproduction, an important source of variation, as the mechanism for speciation. In his Wonderful Century, he recollected:

I well remember the excitement caused by the publication of the Vestiges, and the eagerness and delight with which I read it. Although I saw that it really offered no explanation of the process of change of species, yet the view that change was effected, not through any unimaginable process, but through the known laws and processes of reproduction, commended itself to me as perfectly satisfactory, and as affording the first step towards a more complete and explanatory theory.35

Wallace now sought to discover the "explanation." He was not satisfied with Chambers's notion that development accounted for this change in form and structure in living things. In My Life, he recalled:

These extracts from early letters to Bates suffice to show that the great problem of the origin of species was already distinctly formulated in my mind; that I was not satisfied with the more or less vague solutions at that time offered; that I believed the conception of evolution through natural law so clearly formulated in the "Vestiges" to be, so far as it went, a true one; and that I firmly believed that a full and careful study of the facts of nature would ultimately lead to a solution of the mystery.36

The Vestiges did more than help Wallace sift through rudimen- tary evolutionary theories: the discussion between Bates and

has provided a more accurate text than that in Letters and Reminiscences. Edmund Clodd, in his memoir of Bates, reported that "Bates had not formed a favourable opinion of that unsatisfactory, though useful, book - useful as opening people's eyes to problems of the modifiability of species" (Henry Walter Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, rev. ed. [London: John Murray, 18921, p. xx).

34. Wallace, My Life, 1, 255. 35. Alfred Russel Wallace, The Wonderful Century. Its Successes and Its

Failures (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898), p. 137. 36. Wallace, My Life, 1, 257.




Wallace over the issues raised in the Vestiges motivated them to travel to the tropics. Their purpose in undertaking this trip was to determine whether species were capable of significant change, and if they were, how these changes took place. Wallace went as an advocate of Chambers's theories, and he sought to collect data that supported them. Bates likely was interested in finding contradic- tory evidence, because he was not particularly well disposed toward Chambers's ideas. Bates recalled (in 1863):

In the autumn of 1847 Mr. A. R. Wallace,. . . proposed to me a joint expedition to the river Amazons, for the purpose of exploring the Natural History of its banks; the plan being to make for ourselves a collection of objects, dispose of duplicates in London to pay expenses, and gather facts, as Wallace expressed it in one of his letters, "towards solving the problem of the origin of species," a subject on which we had conversed and corresponded much together.:17

It seems rather unlikely that two young Englishmen of such modest means would plan so difficult a trip in the 1840s. How- ever, they shared a burning curiosity and a desire to travel to distant lands that were quite different from their highly developed and cultivated country. They became friends because of their similar interests and circumstances. Bates had a rather unsatisfactory desk job in Leicester and, as a consequence, relished the opportunity to get outdoors. Wallace was the English master in the Collegiate School in Leicester, and also enjoyed field work. In addition, he avidly read works on natural history and exploration. He indicated that it was his reading of Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative of Travels in South America that first gave him "'a desire to visit the tropics."-38

Bates and Wallace spent the early years of their friendship (1843-1847) discussing insect collecting, collecting insects on field trips, and exchanging insect specimens. Wallace mentioned in his memoirs that they decided to go to the tropics while they were on a beetle collecting trip, probably during the summer of 1847.11 He recalled that the publication of W. H. Edwards's Voyage Up The Amazon was the key that "decided our going to Para and the Amazon rather than to any other part of the tropics." I

37. Henry Walter Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons (London: John Murray, 1863), 1, iii.

38. Wallace, My Life, I, 232. 39. Ibid., p. 254. 40. Ibid., p. 264.




Wallace's reminiscences (written years after his travels), his species notebook, and his letters to Bates demonstrate how keenly he devoted himself to solving the species question. The record of Wallace's correspondence for the years 1845-1855 is not complete, and Bates's letters and papers have never been uncovered. In spite of this, it is clear from Wallace's memoirs and letters, as well as from his notebook and journals, that a controversial and anonymously published work, containing rather startling ideas about how living things evolved, helped inspire two young naturalists to undertake an ambitious adventure. They used this opportunity to explore the Amazon Basin, to study its natural history, and to collect as many different species as possible in order to help resolve their different ideas about the possibility of speciation. Their expedition was not successful from Wallace's point of view because the issue of the mutability of species was not resolved, and Wallace's entire collection of specimens was lost in a ship's fire at sea. However, this setback did not deter him: he continued to study the basic ideas on the evolution of living things. His desire to solve the problem of how species were modified was the spur for him to undertake his hazardous journey to the Malay Archipelago, and as a result, he made important contributions to natural history - for example, the determination of the geographical distribution of animals of the region, the development of the discipline of zoogeography, and the solution to the problem of how evolution occurs. His latter contribution, that of having helped develop the theory of evolution by means of natural selection, enabled him to share some of the acclaim received by Darwin.

Wallace's 1855 paper on variation - a prelude to his more polished 1858 study, in which the concept of selection was more fully developed - shows the impact of the Vestiges on his thinking. In the 1855 paper he wrote: "It is about ten years since the idea of such a law [mutability of species] suggested itself to the writer of this paper, and he has since taken every opportunity of testing it by all the newly ascertained facts with which he has become acquainted, or has been able to observe himself. These have all served to convince him of the correctness of his hypothesis."4'

The species notebook begun by Wallace in 1855, while he was in the Malay Archipelago, again demonstrates the strong influence of the Vestiges on the development of his thinking. He noted:

41. Alfred Russel Wallace, "On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduc- tion of New Species," Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., 2nd ser., 16 ( 1855), 185.




Now Vertebrated animals are universally allowed to be the highest form of animal life. They appear Geologically after the Mollusca & Radiata - Fishes are universally declared the lowest of the vertebrata - They appear first - Reptiles are universally considered as higher than fishes but lower than Birds & Mammalia - They are found next in succession - The Marsupiata [Marsupials] are generally allowed to be one of the lowest forms of the Mammalia & it is one of them which appears first, while, the highest form the Quadrumana appears considerably later. Thus not one fact contradicts the progression - The supposed contradictions all arise from considering it necessary that the highest forms of one group should appear [in the fossil record] before the lowest of the next succeeding, not considering that each group goes on progressing after other groups have branched from it. They then go on in parallel or diverging series & may obtain their max[imal together.42

Earlier, Chambers had made substantially the same observation in his chapter on "The Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms":

It is certainly very remarkable that, corresponding generally to these progressive forms in the development of individuals, has been the succession of animal forms in the course of time. Our earth ... bore crinoidea before it bore the higher echinodermata. It presented crustacea before it bore fishes, and when fishes came, the first forms were those ganoidal and placoidal types which correspond with the early foetal condition of higher orders. Afterwards there were reptiles, then mammifers, and finally, ... came man.... The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, then, to be regarded as a series of advances of the principle of development, which have depended upon external physical circumstances, to which the resulting animals are appropriate.43

Wallace's 1855 paper illustrates how he incorporated the ideas in his species notebook into published material. He concluded his paper:

42. Alfred Russel Wallace, Species Notebook, Linnaean Society of London, pp. 37-39.

43. Robert Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, 2nd (American) ed. from the 3rd London ed. (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1945), pp. 153-154; italics in original.




It has now been shown, ... how the law that "Every species has come into existence coincident both in time and space with a pre-existing closely allied species," connects together and renders intelligible a vast number of independent and hitherto unexplained facts. The natural system of arrangement of organic beings, their geographical distribution, their geological sequence, the phaenomena of representative and substituted groups in all their modifications, and the most singular pecu- liarities of anatomical structure, are all explained and illustrated by it, in perfect accordance with the vast mass of facts which the researches of modern naturalists have brought together, and it is believed, not materially opposed to any of them.44

This conclusion is almost identical to Chambers's discussion on the progression of living things, a central idea in his chapter on plants and animals:

The idea, then, which I form of the progress of organic life upon our earth - and the hypothesis is applicable to all similar theatres of vital being - is, that the simplest and most primitive type, under a law to which that of like-production is subordi- nate, gave birth to the type next above it, that this again produced the next higher, and so on to the very highest, the stages of advance being in all cases very small - namely, from one species only to another; so that the phenomenon has always been of a simple and modest character.45

However, Wallace's work was different from that of Chambers in crucial ways. Wallace had considerable experience in the field in areas quite varied and different from nineteenth-century England, and by 1855 he was an accomplished naturalist. He was able to avoid repeating the serious errors in the Vestiges. His theory was mechanistic, free of the vitalism in Chambers's book. When he read Malthus's essay "On Population," this event had a great impact on his thinking, as it had on Darwin's, while it never made a significant impression on Chambers. Wallace was very

44. Wallace, "On the Law," p. 196; italics in original. McKinney has pointed out that Lamarck made the same observation years earlier. He also supplies many other passages from both Wallace's and Chambers's work that demonstrate the extent to which Wallace was influenced by the Vestiges; H. Lewis McKinney: "Alfred Russel Wallace and the Discovery of Natural Selection," J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 21, no. 4 (1966), 333-357; and Wallace and Natural .Selection (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1972).

45. Chambers, Vestiges, 2nd ed. (1845), p. 170; italics in original.




well aware of the problems in the Vestiges: his copy of the "1 2th edition" (a reprint of the 11th edition, published in 1884 well after the author's death) contains his annotations. Next to a passage describing how "unusually numerous rodents larosel from the aquatic birds," Wallace noted "Oh!" and added "wretched logic" in the margin.4" Years later, after he had carefully formulated his ideas on evolution, he wrote about the early influence on his work: ". . . I thought over the deficiencies in the theories of Lamarck and of the author of the 'Vestiges,' and I saw that my new theory supplemented these views and obviated every important difficulty."47

HUXLEY VS. THE VESTIGES

In 1854 the publisher of the Vestiges, John Churchill, in an attempt to quiet the hostile criticism that still surrounded the book, hired Thomas Henry Huxley, a young and still relatively obscure naturalist at the time, to write a review or critique of the work. Huxley, a physician by training, had spent the latter part of the 1840s in the British Navy; as a surgeon in the Navy he had enjoyed the opportunity to travel to many places in the world, including Australia and the Falklands. Aboard H.M.S. Rattlesnake, which was conducting an extensive surveying expedition, Huxley was able to study, in his spare time, the natural history of the many different places he visited during this four-year voyage. He made good use of his opportunity. He studied planktonic life and conducted shipboard dissections of the organisms collected from the land in addition to the marine forms caught at sea. This experience influenced him to pursue a career in zoology rather than continue in medicine, and he sent a number of scientific papers off to various scientific societies while aboard ship; after some initial disappointment, his work in invertebrate taxonomy received acclaim. After quitting the Navy, he began to establish his reputation in natural science, and in the years that followed (1850-1854) he became accepted as a new member of the London scientific scene.

In 1854, Huxley believed in a limited form of evolution that took place within large, structurally related groups - that is, microevolution, not from one group to another. He had aban-

46. Robert Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, 12th ed. (London and Edinburgh: W. and R. Chambers. 1884). Wallace's personal copy with his annotations is preserved in the library of the Linnaean Society, London.

47. Wallace, My Life, 1, 362.




doned creationism but was not able to accept evolution completely until someone could advance a mechanism to explain how this process took place. He viewed the natural world as a place free from struggle and competition, as opposed to the Darwinian view. His world was not one where utility was important, but a place where beauty existed for its own sake. His 1854 review of the tenth edition of the Vestiges, which appeared in the British and Foreign Medico-chirurgical Review, was very much a distillation of these ideas. In addition, Huxley used this forum to employ the polemical skills that always served him well, and he used them here to good effect. The review was noteworthy particularly for its savagery. He attacked the philosophical underpinnings of the work while he also questioned its biological and geological observations and conclusions. His argument was conducted on a personal level as well. He stated:

We grudge no man either the glory or the profit to be obtained from charlatanerie, and we can hardly expect that those who are so ignorant of science as to be misled by the "Vestiges" will read what we have to say upon the subject; but a book may, like a weed, acquire an importance by neglect, which it could have attained in no other mode; and, therefore, it becomes our somewhat unpleasant duty to devote a few of our pages to an examination of some of the leading points of this once attractive and still notorious work of fiction.48

Huxley most strongly objected to the notion in the Vestiges that laws, ideals, or abstractions act as material or physical forces. He asked: "What, then, is this real proposition of the 'Vestiges'? It is simply exhibited in all its naked crudeness, the belief that a law is an entity - a Logos intermediate between the Creator and his works - which is entertained by the Vestigiarian in common with the great mass of those who, like himself, indulge in science at second-hand and dispense totally with logic."4" He then provided examples from the plant and animal kingdoms to demonstrate that the "progression theory" in the Vestiges was deeply flawed. The carboniferous ferns, which so closely resemble those of the present day, were cited, and also "the lycopodiceae Iclub mossesj and equistaceae Ihorsetails] of those days, were much more highly organized plants than any of their present representatives; so that

48. Ihomas Henry Huxley, "Review VIl. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Tenth Edition," Brit. For. Med-C/hr. Rev., 13 (1854), 333.

49. Ibid., p. 334; italics in original.




we can definitely say . . . that since the carboniferous epoch, there has been no advance in some respects, and a very decided falling off in others." 5 He found that similar points could be made about the "lowest discovered remains of animals": he observed that the cystidae, graptolites, trilobites, and lingulae were not the most primitive in their scale of organization because they had a well-developed intestine, circulatory and nervous systems, and "long, pec- uliarly organized arms."5'

Huxley also pointedly questioned the claim by the author of the Vestiges that the theory of the progression of animal forms had been only feebly disputed by one or two geologists. He suggested that this assertion on the part of the author was disingenuous, since the two geologists who most vigorously opposed the ideas in the Vestiges were Professor Edward Forbes (who earlier had written a rather harsh review of the Vestiges) and Lyell - two of the most influential geologists of the day.52

The prose in Huxley's review reached a fever pitch when he discussed the preface to the tenth edition. As an answer to the disappointment expressed by the author that there was not more support from other naturalists, Huxley suggested:

... as a man sensitive to criticism, and particular about the preservation of his own incognito, our Vestigiarian conducts himself somewhat oddly. . . . he ventures to sneer at Professor Sedgwick ... and at Dr. Clark, of Cambridge, ... should the author of the "Vestiges" ever be so ill advised as to let his name be known, it will be found prominent neither in the mechanical nor any other department of even one science. . . . Not less remarkable than the infelicitousness of his sarcasm is the want of knowledge of the etiquette usual among authors displayed by this unfortunate scientific parvenu.53

He concluded his essay with the observation that "In the popular mind the foolish fancies of the 'Vestiges' are confounded with science, to the incalculable diminution of that reverence in which true philosophy should be held; and we should be unjust to our readers, and false to our own belief, if we commented upon them in any terms but those of the most unmitigated reprobation." 54

Huxley later regretted the tone of his review but not its

50. Ibid., p. 336. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., p. 337. 53. Ibid., pp. 342-343; italics in original. 54. Ibid., p. 343.




substance. He was always steadfast in his opinion that the work did not serve the cause of evolution and, if anything, actually did it harm. Years later, he looked back on this episode:

I think I must have read the "Vestiges" before I left England in 1846; but, if I did, the book made very little impression upon me, and I was not brought into serious contact with the "Species" question until after 1850.... However, I had studied Lamarck attentively and I had read the "Vestiges" with due care; but neither of them afforded me any good ground for changing my negative and critical attitude. As for the "Vestiges," I confess that the book simply irritated me by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific habit of mind manifested by the writer. If it had any influence on me at all, it set me against Evolution; and the only review I ever have qualms of conscience about, on the ground of needless savagery, is one I wrote on the "Vestiges" . . .

Chambers never showed any resentment toward Huxley for his review. He was always very careful about discussing the issues raised by his work in order to protect his anonymity. He very likely wrote his preface to the tenth edition to convince critics like Huxley that his evolutionary scheme had merit, and perhaps to win some of them over to his side. Although he was unsuccessful in gaining new support, he continued to hope that his work would eventually receive the recognition he felt it deserved, even after Huxley's review had appeared. Until the publication of the Origin, Chambers waited for proper acknowledgment; with the publicity and notoriety surrounding the Origin, he finally realized that there would be no further support for his views as his most important work slipped into obscurity. In 1860, the eleventh and final edition of the Vestiges was published.

In spite of the treatment he received at the hands of his critics, Chambers remained magnanimous. His generosity of spirit was amply illustrated by a remarkable episode that took place in 1860 between Huxley and Chambers at the famous Oxford meeting of the British Association. Both men had attended the meeting, which was convened to consider the burning question of the day - evolution and Darwin's Origin - before a jury of experts. The sessions of this meeting were held in a circus-like atmosphere, and reports about them have become part of the folklore of the period. What has been less widely reported is that the historic

55. Thomas Henry Huxley, chap. 5, in Darwin, Life and Letters, II, 187- 189.



Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, and Vestiges 1 51

confrontation between Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce of Oxford probably would not have taken place if it had not been for the intervention of Chambers. Huxley, although he attended earlier sessions, had not planned to attend the last session, where the bishop was scheduled to speak against evolution and the Origin. He happened to meet Chambers, and when Chambers learned that Huxley was going to leave Oxford and avoid this last session, he implored Huxley "not to desert us" (meaning the cause of evolution). Years after, Huxley referred to this event in a letter dated June 27, 1891, to Darwin's oldest son, Francis. He recalled:

The odd part of the business is, that I should not have been present except for Robert Chambers. I had heard of the Bishop's intention to utilise the occasion. I know he had the reputation of being a first-rate controversialist . . . we should have little chance, with such an audience, of making an efficient defence. Moreover, I was very tired. ... On the Friday I met Chambers in the street, and in reply to some remarks of his, about his going to the meeting, I said that I did not mean to attend it - did not see the good of giving up peace and quietness to be episcopally pounded. Chambers broke out into vehement remonstrances, and talked about my deserting them. So I said, "Oh! if you are going to take it that way, I'll come and have my share of what is going on.""

This passage reveals that despite Huxley's feeling of remorse over his harsh review of Vestiges, he always regarded his first reaction to the book as a lapse of manners rather than judgment. He repeated some of his criticism in his essay on "Science and Pseudoscience" (1887), although his tone was less strident; here the Vestiges was cited as a work "which had a great vogue in its day. ... It is full of apt and forcible illustrations of pseudo- scientific realism."57 In truth, Huxley was never able to accept Chambers as a colleague or fellow evolutionist. He always maintained that Chambers's work set back the development and acceptance of evolutionary ideas because of its errors in biology and geology and its faulty logic."X As the natural historian and

56. Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley (New York: Appleton, 1900), , 202.

57. Thomas Henry Huxley, "Science and Pseudoscience," in Science and Christian Tradition (New York: Appleton, 1899). p. 108.

58. Huxley found the vitalistic approach of the Vestiges disturbing - it seemed to him too reminiscent of Owen's views on the subject. Therefore, Huxley's strong attack on the Vestiges may have represented, in his mind, an assault on Owen's ideas.




evolutionist who was considered by the public to be the chief spokesman and defender of Darwinian evolution - in effect, Darwin's public relations man - Huxley feared that a badly developed and ill-conceived theory was worse than no theory at all.59 He failed to appreciate that Chambers's work had served as a lightning rod during the early ferment of evolutionary ideas; that is, it drew off some of the attacks that might otherwise have been directed at Darwin exclusively. Indeed, it may have helped prepare the public's acceptance of new ideas about how species are formed.

The effect of Huxley's negative views on Chambers and the Vestiges lasted after his death. Huxley's Life and Letters, edited by his son Leonard, contains one reference to Chambers, which is an account of the 1860 Oxford meeting, and a single reference to the Vestiges, which is in a reprint of the chapter he originally wrote for Darwin's Life and Letters. Leonard Huxley also edited Joseph Hooker's letters, and this work does not cite the Vestiges at all; it contains only a brief account of how Chambers persuaded Huxley to remain at the Oxford meeting. In the complete Hooker-Darwin correspondence, however, there are frequent references to the Vestiges, with favorable comments; many of these letters are included in Hooker's Life and Letters, but the passages that mention the Vestiges and Chambers are omitted. It is possible that Leonard Huxley felt he was carrying out the wishes of his father in avoiding discussion of a work that the elder Huxley viewed as harmful, or at best inconsequential. Whatever the son's motives for this omission, it is clear that his father never changed his opinion of the Vestiges and was unable to find any value in the work.

CONCLUSION

Publication of the Vestiges and the rather primitive theory of evolution it expounded thus played a significant role in the careers of Darwin and Wallace. In addition, in spite of his poor opinion of the Vestiges, it presented Huxley with a convenient topic for critical discussion and the opportunity to focus more attention on the subject of evolution. The dynamic interactions among these leading figures of nineteenth-century natural science helped spur the development of more sophisticated models of evolution.

Darwin had a proper appreciation of Chambers's contribution

59. Ironically, although Huxley remained a staunch evolutionist, in later years he became skeptical about natural selection serving as the key mechanism in evolution.



Darwin, Wallace. and Huxley, and Vestiges 153

to evolutionary thought, although he fully recognized the short- comings of this work. He understood the importance of allowing fresh ideas about organic change to be ventilated. However, he was primarily concerned with his own theory and viewed all developments in evolutionary biology from this perspective. If he did not give full consideration to Chambers and his book early on, it was due mainly to his feeling that the concepts in the Vestiges were very different from his own; he was therefore reluctant to embrace them as the forerunners of his own theory. As a scholar, he was also troubled by the scientific errors in the book. However, the record demonstrates that he attempted to make amends for any oversight on his part. His generous letter to Chambers's daughter, and his gracious treatment of Chambers during the brief time the latter lived in London, are ample proof of that.

The attacks of Huxley, Sedgwick, and other prominent natural historians and geologists at the time, the problems inherent in Chambers's evolutionary theory, and the publication of the Origin, are the major reasons why the Vestiges became a neglected work. Nevertheless, Chambers's contribution will always stand out because, together with those of other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century predecessors of Darwin, it laid the foundations of modern evolutionary thought and, more importantly, helped prepare the scientific community for the more fully developed ideas of Darwin and Wallace.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Cambridge University Library and Peter J. Gautrey, Assistant Under-Librarian, for his hospitality and assistance. I am also grateful to the American Philosophical Society Library in Philadelphia and to Elizabeth Carroll-Horrocks, Assistant Librarian and Manuscripts Librarian, and Martin L. Levitt, Assistant Manuscripts Librarian, for their help.



Date post:	31-Mar-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	hoangquynh
View:	221 times
Download:	0 times

Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, and 'Vestiges of the Natural ... Darwin - New...Darwin, Wallace, and...

Documents