Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin was born in 1809 at Shrewsbury in the west of England. His father, Robert Waring Darwin, was the son of the physician and natural philosopher Erasmus Darwin and was himself a physician. He was married to Susannah Wedgwood, daughter of the famous procelain manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood, who, from being a poor and ignorant apprentice to a potter had made a successful career, acquiring a splendid fortune and a famous name in the history of ceramics. Charles was the sixth out of eight children. He went through a school of the usual English type, his education consisting almost exclusively of the classical languages, and was afterwards sent to Edinburgh in order to study medicine in the family tradition. The Latin he learnt at school did not interest him very much and he was utterly bored by the anatomy lectures. Darwin broke off his medical studies after a couple of years, so that he never became an anatomist, to his own great loss. He now decided to try his hand at theology at Cambridge, where he spent three years and took his degree of bachelor of arts, but he spent most of his time pursuing the usual occupation of the well-to-do English undergraduate — sport, especially shooting. He also collected insects and plants for his own amusement, but he chiefly interested himself in geology, receiving a sound elementary training in that subject under the guidance of the eminent professor Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873), whom he accompanied on several expeditions. On the recommendation of a friend he was offered in 1831 the unsalaried post of naturalist on board the cruiser Beagle, which was to circumnavigate the world for mainly cartographical purposes. This voyage, which lasted five years, gave him, as he himself says, his real training as a naturalist, as it also determined the direction that his future work was to take. He worked with zeal and sent home from the various stopping-places on the way both notes and collections. Of these the geological possessed the greatest value; the zoological and botanical were regarded by contemporary judges as nothing extraordinary. This persevering activity was so much the more praiseworthy as Darwin suffered throughout the journey from incurable seasickness, which gradually irremediably impaired his health. On his return home he devoted himself for years to the working up of the natural objects and the material for ideas that he had gathered in the course of the voyage. During that period there 462slowly developed in his mind the theory which bears his name. In 1839 he married his cousin Hannah Wedgwood. Her wealth added to his own made it possible for him during his remaining years to lead the quiet life of a private scholar, which in fact became in time an absolute necessity, owing to his increasing ill health. Three years after his marriage he left London and settled in Down, a small town in Kent, where he spent the rest of his life in his own comfortable house, with a delightful garden. Even in these circumstances, however, his health did not improve; he suffered from a nervous stomachic trouble, which occasioned constant vomitings and frequent insomnia. It was only through living a painfully regular life under the self-sacrificing care of his wife that he was able to hold out as long as he did. His days passed with brief but intensively concentrated periods of work, alternating with medical attention, walks, and literary diversion; journeys and social life were restricted to a minimum. During this period there was given to the world that unique production — considerable even in its extent — which made his name immortal. His bodily existence, so full of suffering, was compensated for throughout his life by a rare spiritual poise; complete freedom from passion, from hate, envy, and ambition, and an almost tender amiability, which certainly found it difficult to refuse a petition, however unreasonable, but which also made it easy for him to enjoy and find childlike pleasure in the narrow life to which his ill health restricted him. His was no critical character; towards the statements of others he used to show, as Johannsen says, "an amiable credulity," and his own experiments were often consciously childish. His sensitiveness, however, was in no way associated with weakness of character; on the contrary, few students of nature have striven with such unbending determination for years and years towards a given goal, and adhered to a point of view when once adopted with such firm conviction. His ideas were, as is well known, both unreservedly praised and violently vituperated; attacks were met by him with unfailing steadfastness and a noble calm, so that he never allowed himself to be involved in personal polemics, but he always took note of and parried material objections. Thanks to these qualities, Darwin came in the course of years to enjoy personal esteem such as seldom falls to the lot of scientists. Occupied in constant work, his life moved quietly towards its close. He died in 1882. and was buried in Westminster Abbey, not far from Newton, followed to the grave by the most distinguished men in the country both in the social and in the scientific world. Shortly before his death he had written down in some notes on his own life the oft-quoted words: "As for myself, I believe that I have acted rightly in steadily following and devoting my life to science. I feel no remorse from having committed any great sin, but have often and often regretted that I have not done more direct good to my fellow creatures."