How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [184]
From 1831 to 1836 the Beagle voyaged in Southern waters.
Lyell's researches into the changes wrought by natural processes, set forth in Principles of Geology, gave direction to Darwin's own observations of the geological structure of the Cape Verde Islands.
He also made extensive examinations of coral reefs and noted the relations of animals on the mainland to those of the adjacent islands, as well as the relation of living animals to the fossil remains of the same species.
Darwin described the voyage of the Beagle as "by far the most important event in my life." Besides making him one of the best qualified naturalists of his day, it developed in him the "habit of energetic industry and of concentrated attention." This new purposefulness on the part of his son was succinctly noted by Dr. Darwin, who remarked upon first seeing him after the voyage: "Why, the shape of his head is quite altered."
Mter his return, Darwin settled in London and began the task of organizing and recording his observations. He became a close friend of Lyell, the leading English geologist, and later of Hooker, an outstanding botanist. In 1839 he married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and toward the end of 1842, because of Darwin's chronic ill-health, rhe family moved to Down, where he lived in seclusion for the rest of his days. During the six years in London, he prepared his Journal from the notes of the voyage and published his carefully d.1cumented study of Coral Reefs.
The next eight years were spent in the laborious classification of barnacles for his four-volume work on that subject. "I have been struck," he wrote to Hooker, "with the variability of every part in some slight degree of every species." Mter this period of 394 HOW TO READ A BOOK
detailed work with a single species, Darwin felt prepared to attack the problem of the modification of species which he had been pondering for many years.
A number of facts had come to light during the voyage of the Beagle that Darwin felt "could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified." Later, after his return to England, he had collected all the material he could find which "bore in any way on the variation of plants and animals under domestication." He soon perceived "that selection was the keystone of man's success. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some time a mystery." One day, while reading Malthus on Population, it suddenly occurred to him how, in the struggle for existence, which he had everywhere observed, "favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species. Here then I had at last a theory by which to work."
He confided this theory to Hooker and Lyell, who urged him to write out his views for publication. But Darwin worked deliberately; he was only half through his projected book, when in the summer of 1858, he received an essay from A. R. Wallace at Temate in the Moluccas, containing exactly the same theory as his own. Darwin submitted his dilemma to Hooker and Lyell, to whom he wrote:
"Your words have come true with a vengeance-that I should be forestalled." It was their decision to publish an abstract of his theory from a letter of the previous year together with Wallace's essay, the joint work being entitled: On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.
A year later, on November 24, 1859, The Origin of Species appeared. The entire first edition of 1,250 copies was sold on the day of publication. A storm of controversy arose over the book, reaching its height at a meeting of the British Association at Oxford, where the celebrated verbal duel between T. H. Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce took