THE DARWIN PAPERS
VOLUME
1
NUMBER 1
THE UNTOLD STORY
of
CHARLES DARWIN
“There
will always be a shadowy web surrounding
the real
Charles Darwin”
Loren Eiseley(1)
From The Nebulous Hypothesis:
A
Study of the Philosophical and
Historical Implications of Darwinian Theory
© 1996 by James M. Foard
Editor and Publisher James M.
Foard.
Still Life of Dead Birds
and Hunting
Weapons
Willem van Aelst 1660
Courtesy of WEB GALLERY OF ART
Emil Kren
and Daniel Marx
The Darwin Papers may be
freely
copied and distributed for non profit use
provided acknowledgement
is made
for material written by the author.
The Darwin Papers © 2004 James
Foard
As human beings have wandered over the face of the earth for thousands of years and gazed up in wonder at the stars in the heavens, we have looked back into our primaeval past and pondered over the meaning of our existence: From whence did life originate, what kind of creature is man, where did he come from, and what lies in his future?
In seeking to find answers to
our origins, men throughout the ages have proposed various theories to solve
these universal questions. Over the past century it would seem that one theory
that has gained the most prominence is the evolutionary theory. Evolutionists
believe that the various diverse forms of life that we find on the earth today
all descended from some common ancestor through a process of gradual adaption to
environmental conditions. They claim that man is descended from apes, and that
all apes were in turn descended from some common mammalian ancestor, while the
mammals in turn descended from some common ancestor along with the rest of the
vertebrates, and that this process continued back through millions of years
until in some remote pocket of time the common ancestor of all life first
appeared.
This
was supposed to have been accomplished simply by random chemicals mixing
together, helped along a little bit by natural laws.
Among
other explanations, there is the concept that states that man was created
supernaturally by an infinite, immaterial, all powerful, intelligent Being; that
in some unique way man was created in His image, out of the dust of the ground,
and that God breathed into man the breath of life, a divine gift, and that man
was made a living soul.
We
find vestiges of this tradition preserved within ancient legends from among
various cultures throughout the world, as well as in the pages of the Bible, (2)where the Creator is referred to as the First
Cause by the philosophers of antiquity, El Shaddai by the ancient Semitic
peoples of the near east, and whom we in the English world refer to as the Lord
God, while elsewhere he is called the Great Spirit among North American Indians,
and Brahman (the uncreated Creator) by the Hindus.
(3)
But which story is true? Are these ancient stories merely
primitive man's attempts to explain life through fables and storytelling, or is
there perhaps something of relevance to their ideas? Is man indeed the creation
of a superior, supernatural, all-wise Intelligence who created him with inherent
moral and spiritual qualities, or is man simply an animal dwelling among other
denizens in this vast eco-system called planet earth?
Can
we discover some clues to this mystery by sifting through the evidence, and if
so, then where should we start our enquiry to find answers to this set of
intriguing questions?
It
would perhaps be appropriate to begin our search for man's origin by taking a
look at the most notable exponent of the first viewpoint stated above, the
evolutionary theory.
No study
of the science of human origins
would be in any
sense complete without mention being made of Charles Darwin. He has drawn
ovations for over a century from the highest realms of academic, civic, and
cultural establishments as the man singularly responsible for originating or at
least developing the theory of evolution.
World
famous paleontologist Richard F. Leakey of the National Museums of Kenya, and
Glynn Isaac of the University of California,
Berkeley, write in the preface to their book Human Ancestors: "Charles Darwin's
'Origin of Species' articulated an alternative to the myths and allegories that
had hitherto been all but universal. This opened a new epoch in human thinking
about humanity and established a new realm of scientific
endeavor."
In
their introduction to the book, the editors state: "Just as the voyage of
Columbus opened up a new continent for European exploration, so the insight of
Charles Darwin made science aware of an uncharted realm. Darwin showed that the
living organisms of the modern world were each the end product of a long, long
process of change."(4)
He
has indeed been regarded as the man who opened up a new era in our understanding
of ourselves and the universe by many if not most anthropologists and by
scientists in various other fields of discipline as well.
Another typical description
of Darwin comes from a noted Encyclopedia article: "The most important figure in
the history of the theory of evolution, and one of the most important in the
history of Human culture was Charles Darwin."
(5)
This
type of lavish praise for Darwin is not unusual. He is generally associated with
scientific thinking, however cloudy the actual basis for this may be. For many,
influenced as they are by this association of ideas, they are reminded of Darwin
whenever they meet with concepts that correspond to some extent with Darwin's
thoughts on natural and scientific topics. Whether or not this association is
actually warranted may be debatable.
In
the estimation of some he has nearly reached the status of a philosopher-sage,
while his followers almost regard him as a modern day prophet, like Moses of
old, who brought down to mankind his two tablets, The
Origin of Species and The Descent of Man,
as a new revelation on the history of life.
But
how many people are familiar with the real Charles Darwin, and does he deserve
such ovations as the preceding tributes would suggest? In as much as no small
amount has been spoken and written on the topic of evolution for well over the
past one hundred years, let us find out something about Darwin himself.
To
take a look then at the life of this remarkable individual we must turn back the
pages of history a little bit, to a rural English village in the early part of
the nineteenth century, where the wife of a country doctor was to give birth to
her second son.
* . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . .*
Charles
Robert Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, the
same date that Abraham Lincoln was born, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. He
was the grandson of the noted Erasmus Darwin, a prominent English physician, who
had close ties with the Wedgwoods, a prosperous clan of merchants and potters
into which both Charles Darwin and his own father eventually married into.
Unfortunately, Darwin's
family tree was marred by infidelity, untimely deaths, and drug abuse. Erasmus'
first wife,
Mary, was Darwin's paternal grandmother. She died in 1770 at the age of thirty
from cirrhosis of the liver brought on by acute alcoholism, combined with a
massive overdose of opium administered by Erasmus himself while she was
intoxicated. (6)
Darwin's maternal uncle,
Thomas Wedgewood, abandoned a formal career in 1792 and became an opium addict,
dying from an overdose of the drug in 1805.
Erasmus' oldest surviving
son, Erasmus ll, an uncle on Charles Darwin's paternal side, committed suicide,
possibly due in part to depression and grief over the deaths of his mother and
older brother (the first Charles Darwin), and from, as historian John Bowlby put
it, "his father's lack of sympathy, impatience, and frequent unfavorable
comparisons with his brilliant older brother."(7)
Within four years after his
wife's death Erasmus had sired two illegitimate children by a maid-servant with
whom he lived. Later he began an affair with a married woman who eventually
became his second wife after the untimely death of her husband. Thus in Darwin's
grandfather's practice we find unhappy wives dying while being administered vast
quantities of opium, and unnecessary husbands dying to make room for Erasmus.
The result of this was a large family over which Erasmus ruled, in the words of
Anna Seward, like a "tyrant."
In
her biography of Darwin, Janet Browne also paints a rather unflattering
picture of how the Darwin and Wedgwood families accumulated their wealth, which
according to her, almost amounted to slave labor: (8) "His [Charles Darwin's] fathers' fortune was built
on the backs of entrepreneurial companies that exploited cheap labor-a family
business sense which continued unabated in his own later endorsement of
joint-stock railway companies.
"Both
grandfathers also belittled the role of human labor in advancing British
prosperity. Though Wedgwood's employees were in principle free to come and go,
they were in practice tied to his cottages, to his insurance societies, and to
his wages. In truth, with more than fifteen thousand people living at the Etruia
works at the time of Wedgwood's death in 1795, the site resembled nothing so
much as a displaced plantation town with its big house and separate worker's
quarters . . The money-making
classes of Britain perpetuated forms of human bondage which seemed to many
critics merely a var
iant of slavery . ."
Charles Darwin's father,
Robert Darwin, was also a physician of note who built up a personal fortune as a
shrewd money-broker and mortgage loan specialist. He married Susannah Wedgwood,
the daughter of the same prosperous family of merchant potters with whom his own
father, Erasmus, had close relations with.
One biographer, (9)
in discussing Robert Darwin's business acumen, did describe him as
"ruthless."
He
had a prodigious appetite, often carrying provisions of food for a fortnight's
journey stuffed under the seat of his buggy while driving about the countryside
as he visited patients, and it is in this capacity that we may gain an insight
into the elder Darwin's personality. Even though he apparently neglected his own
family, nevertheless during the course of his rounds as a doctor, Bowlby relates
that, "He was keenly alive to the emotional problems of his patients, especially
ladies, for whom he became, according to Charles, 'a sort of Father Confessor.'"
(10)
Darwin's father apparently
struck a chord of discomfort among the young girls of the Wedgwood family.
Bowlby wrote of a young girl who had fallen ill during a combined family holiday
of the Darwin and Wedgwood families and had been left behind alone with Dr.
Robert, quoting one of the Wedgwood girls in relating the event: "Bessy knew all
too well how she would feel in that situation and was anxious lest she might
risk her health by returning to Maer precipitately: 'but as I believe she would
be left tete a tete with the Doctor she certainly will come away as soon as she
can' (11). . . Dread of being left alone with
Dr. Robert was shared by all the Wedgwoods and Allens."(12)
One
of the Wedgwood girls, in a later recollection of those early years, wrote:
"Sad, sad Shrewsbury! which used to look so bright and sunny; though I did dread
the Dr. a good deal." (13)
Susannah Wedgwood was to
become Charles Darwin's mother. She was often to suffer the blunt of her
husband's frequent outbursts of rage, and she died under slightly mysterious
circumstances when Charles was eight years old; circumstances strikingly similar
to those under which Charles Darwin's grandmother had died years before.
In a
scene eerily reminiscent of Darwin's grandmother's passing, his
mother's last fortnight on earth was characterized by vomiting and severe
gastro-intestinal pain while being tended to by her husband, Dr. Robert, as he
administered vast quantities of the opium derivative laudanum to her.
More
than one writer has commented on the enigmatic "wall of silence" built up around
the memory of Darwin's mother by his family.
(14) Although his younger sister remembered their mother vividly,
Charles seems to have remembered next to nothing about her, and was strangely
unaffected by her loss. In fact, he remembered the funeral of a total stranger
but did not recall anything about his mother's funeral. (15)
Within a day of Susannah's
death the dutiful Dr. Robert was fifty miles away attending one of his
patients,(16)which seems rather odd for the
grieving widower, since he actually detested the practice of medicine, only
becoming a doctor at his own father's insistence lest he lose his portion of the
family inheritance.
He is
on record as saying that the sight of blood sickened him.
(17)
After Susannah's passing, the Doctor threw himself into his practice, and was frequently depressed and quite irritable, while Bowlby reported that " the Atmosphere at the Mount was one of never-ending gloom," with Dr. Robert's treatment of his household being characterized by "sarcasm and bullying." (18)
Charles Darwin once described a rather disturbing portrait of his father, where he referred to a woman possibly driven insane by an encounter with Dr. Robert, or at the very least reduced to a state of abject terror at the mere mention of his name.
We find recorded in his Autobiography: "My father possessed an extraordinary memory, especially for dates . . . and thus the deaths of many friends were often recalled to his mind . . . . Many persons were much afraid of him . . As a boy, I went to stay at the house of Major B- whose wife was insane; and the poor creature, as soon as she saw me, was in the most abject state of terror that I ever saw, weeping bitterly and asking me over and over again, 'Is your father coming?' but was soon pacified. On my return home, I asked my father why she was so frightened, and he answered he [was] very glad to hear it, as he had frightened her on purpose, feeling sure that she could be kept in safety and much happier without any restraint, if her husband could influence her, whenever she became at all violent, by proposing to send for Dr. Darwin." (19)
Darwin's father also managed
the financial accounts of many of his patients, and this leads us to yet another
odd tale in the Darwin saga. Darwin related a strange story that was widely
circulated around Shropshire of an incident that, though later denied by his
father, and supposedly denied by the managing partner of the firm involved, at
least according to Dr. Robert, was apparently corroborated by a great many eye
witnesses:
"Mr. E-, a squire of one of the oldest families in Shropshire, and
head partner in a Bank, committed suicide. My father was sent for as a matter of
form, and found him dead . . . no inquest was held over his body. My father, in
returning home, thought it proper to call at the Bank (where he had an account)
to tell the managing partner of the event, as it was not improbable it would
cause a run on the bank."
"Well the story was spread far and wide, that my father went into the bank, drew out all his money, left the bank, came back again, and said, 'I may just tell you that Mr. E- has killed himself,' and then departed." (20)
Although in retrospect Darwin's father seems akin to some sort of macabre, spectral figure lurking within the pages of a gothic, horror novel, perhaps it would be unfair to leave the impression in the readers mind that he was nothing short of a human monster. He did encourage the education of his children, and some writers have even fondly attempted to portray him as a sort of Robin Hood among English physicians, riding throughout the countryside equally loved by rich and poor alike.
After the death of his
motherCharles' eldest sister took
charge of raising him. 
Early accounts of young Charles Darwin during this time describe him as
a pudgy, rather thick-set, passive boy. He was afraid to fight the other
schoolboys, much given to idle fancies, laziness, and desperate for the
attention of his surrounding peers.(21)
Darwin also had a penchant for stretching the truth when relating some of his childhood discoveries. Sir Gavin de Beer, former Director of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote: ". . . The boy [Darwin] developed very slowly: he was given, when small, to inventing gratuitous fibs and to daydreaming; and he was passionately fond of collecting seals, franks (equivalents of postage stamps), pebbles, and minerals-an important trait in his future as a naturalist." (22)
Which
of these traits was important to his future as a naturalist, telling fibs or
collecting pebbles or both, is
In the biographical note on Charles Darwin attached to the publication of his Origin of Species and Descent of Man, the editors state: "His childhood fantasies were concerned with fabulous discoveries in natural history; to his schoolmates he boasted that he could produce variously colored flowers of the same plant by watering them with certain colored fluids." (23)
Browne further informs us: "Lies-and the thrills derived from lies-were for him indistinguishable from the delights of natural history or the joy of finding a long-sought specimen." (24)
So we
see that the boy who was later to distinguish himself with the theory of
evolution had a very inauspicious beginning One can only
speculate why, if the puppy was not injured, was Darwin so haunted by the
incident for many years afterward, and why he referred to it
as a "crime". Was it the prompting of a guilty conscience that betrayed a
more serious incident than he was ready to admit? Darwin entered Shrewsbury
school in 1818, where he was anything but an outstanding scholar. De Beer
informs us: "He was a poor student,
and in 1825 his father reproached him, saying, 'You care for nothing but
shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all
your family." (26) This
is corroborated in other biographies of him, and in his own autobiography he
stated that he felt incapable of learning languages and never understood algebra
or mastered higher mathematics. (27) Darwin's college educational
career was not much better than his early school years. De Beer states that
Darwin "was then sent to Edinburgh University to study Medicine, but that also
was a failure . . ." Perhaps like Einstein though,
he had a more productive intellectual career in later years. It is
interesting that Darwin could not bear to watch an operation being preformed
while in medical school, and for the rest of his life, like his father, he
couldn't stand the sight of blood, nearly becoming hysterical if one of his
children accidently cut themselves, (28) and yet
while attending school at this time, Browne mentions a strange irony to this:
"He took up shooting in earnest. The
resulting bloodbath of animals-partridges, pigeons, rabbits, rats-which he
killed with violent pleasure certainly put medicine into perspective . . . He
could wield his own kind of power over life and death with a smoking gun.
" (29) De
Beer writes: "As there was no future for Darwin in medicine, he left Edinburgh
in 1827 and was sent to Cambridge to prepare for Holy Orders in the Church of
England,"(Enc. Britt, op. cit.) not, by the way, because he had any particular
interest in the subject, but his father felt that this would be at least an
honorable vocation for him, thus avoiding the scandal of becoming an idle rake.
It was widely known during that time in England that studying for the clergy was
a last refuge for affluent scoundrels. Browne relates:
"Every summer and autumn was
dedicated to killing birds . . . Dull non-shooting months were passed in
studying handbooks about guns and in writing down useful information about the
diameter of shot needed for different animals . . . . By 1828, his ambitions had
well overrun his elderly equipment. He yearned for a more powerful
double-barreled gun with percussion caps ." (32) We
must not be too harsh in our judgement of Darwin on this account, for it has
been reported that in later years Darwin once found a bird that had been
maimed from a previous days' shooting but was still alive, and he was so
stricken in conscience by the suffering of the poor creature that he renounced
hunting from that day forth. (34) There
is debatable evidence that Darwin ever fully finished his studies in college, he
certainly had never matriculated with anything approaching a degree in medicine
or any of the strict sciences, but he had somehow managed to obtain the
equivalent of a four year college degree in the theology.
At first Darwin's
father objected to his going on the voyage, fearing that this would slow down
his sporadic at best academic education, but he was persuaded by a relative to
give his consent and at last he relented. As
far as Darwin's educational attainments before he set sail on his journey, de Beer writes: "A few weeks before he served on the"Beagle"
he did not even know what science was . . . It was therefore no experienced
scientist who sailed on the Beagle but an undistinguished candidate for Holy
Orders." (35) Darwin was seasick during
much of the early part of the Beagle voyage, where we get some account of his
feelings for sea life from a letter he wrote to his cousin: "This is to me so
much existence obliterated from the page of life,-I hate every wave of the ocean
with a fervor which you . . . can never understand." (36) Much has been said
by historians of
Darwin's observations of the finches on the Galapagos islands while sailing on
the Beagle, but little is mentioned of another incident Darwin had with some
less fortunate birds on a different island during his voyage. We
have three accounts of an excursion made by Darwin and the Captain from the
Beagle to St. Paul's Rocks between the Cape Verde Islands and the coast of
Brazil. First
we shall read Darwin's version of the episode: "We found on St. Paul's only two kinds of birds-the
booby and the noddy. The former is a species of Gannet, and the latter a tern.
Both are of a tame and stupid disposition, and are so unaccustomed to visitors,
that I could have killed any number of them with my geologic
hammer." (37) Browne mentioned the
appalling incident in her biography of Darwin: "Uninhabited except for dense flocks of seafowl, and
previously unvisited by any scientific recorder, they were an alluring target
for a restless naval man and an eager friend . . . Darwin and Fitzroy had a
marvelous time of it, whooping and killing birds with
abandon". (38) Fitzroy recorded the bloody
scene in his personal narrative as well. According to him, one of the seamen
Darwin's disregard for the
sacredness of life was not merely confined to animals. We get an unnerving
insight into Darwin's character from an entry he made in his personal ledger
during his voyage on the Beagle. While he was journeying through the Argentine
pampas in South America there was a bloody slaughter of the indigenous natives
taking place, conducted by the rogue General Juan Manuel de Roses, a self
proclaimed despot, in 1833. Indian women and children were thrust through with
saber and shot down like hunted animals. Darwin traveled through the
territory as a guest of the General, and he wrote of the war in his diary:
". . . women who
appear over twenty years of age are massacred in cold blood while the children
are sold into slavery . . ." however he also noted benignly:
"This war of extirmination
(sic), although carried on with the most shocking barbarity, will certainly
produce great benefits, it will at once throw open four or five hundred miles in
length of fine country for the produce of cattle." (40) Desmond and Moore wrote that
"Darwin shook a hand soaked in blood" (41) when he struck up his acquaintance with
General Rosas, whom he admired as "a
perfect gaucho." While
Darwin was a guest of the General, who had loaned Darwin some of his horses to
go exploring on during his sojourn in Argentina, he recieved a correspondence
from Fitzroy back on the ship, who desired to know how Darwin's "campaign with General Rosas "was
going. Desmond and Moore report: "Well armed, with fresh horses and ruthless
companions, he had little to fear from the hostiles. Indeed he was beginning to
appreciate the 'great benefits' of General Rosas' 'war of
extermination." (Ibid, pp. 141) I am
not stating specifically here that Darwin took part himself in the slaughter of
the Indians (although my personal view is that the evidence tends to support
it), I will leave this for the reader to judge; however the evidence is rather
conclusive that he did indeed condone it, and there is absolutely no excuse for
his justification for it on the grounds that it would open up "four or five
hundred miles in length of fine country for the produce of cattle." Apparently the slaughter of
the Indians didn't weigh too heavily on his conscience, for Darwin boasted when
describing his living conditions while riding with Rosas' men: Darwin further wrote of the
natives of Tierra Del Fuego, who lived at the tip of South America:
"I believe if the world was
searched, no lower grade of man could be found." (43) To be
fair to Darwin, as in the case with his father, it would not be right to leave
the impression in the readers mind that he was the devil incarnate. He was by
all accounts a devoted father and husband, and seems to have been a likeable
fellow who won friends easily. It
would also be improper to give the reader too bleak an impression of Darwin's
feelings for his fellow man. After his return home to England, when he published
the account of his voyage for public consumption, he did express shock and
dismay that such events as he found in South America could take place during the
auspices of a Christian culture and age. Darwin seemed to be a walking
contradiction at times. Apparently there was a struggle taking place within him
between the cold, methodological champion of "the survival of the fittest" and a
man whom A.E. Wilder Smith said should be admired for having strong enough
character to have renounced his favorite sport, hunting, when he found a wounded
bird, and who supported vivisection on the grounds that (44)"senseless, unnecessary suffering was
unthinkable, but that suffering, if there was a reason behind it, must be
permissible." Wilder-Smith goes on to say
that "One understands and respects him too for having supported vivisection on
the grounds that the total community would profit thereby in helping man to
reduce pain by the physiological knowledge gained."
(45) There
were times when he was genuinely sensitive to human injustice and suffering, yet
his materialistic views of survival of the fittest ultimately seemed to
predominate over his more humanitarian sensibilities. After
Darwin's return to England from his trip on the Beagle, he who had formerly
enjoyed great, good health, began to show within the space of a year recurrent
illnesses that nearly reduced him to the state of a semi-invalid for the
remainder of his life. Doctors tried a variety of
diagnosis for his illness without finding any specific physical cause, but de
Beer mentions the following interesting fact: (46) "Recently, psychiatrists have claimed to
account for Darwin's condition by advancing diverse (and contradictory)
explanations: that he had 'poor nervous heredity on both sides,' or 'depressive
obsessional anxiety and hysterical symptoms' due to 'a distorted expression of
aggression, hate and resentment felt at an unconscious level by Darwin towards
his tyrannical father'; that his work on evolution had killed the Heavenly
Father and given him an Oedipus complex; and that his shunning of social life
and acceptance of his wife's ministering care was evidence of his being a
neurotic." This
is an interesting sidelight into the mind of the man who replaced "creation
myths" with objective truth, so we're led to believe. Others have said that
Darwin's chronic illness was related to his being attacked by an assassin bug on
his travels, the Triatoma, which causes a disease known as Chaga's disease,
which is similar in it's advanced stages to lime disease, and there is good
evidence that this was indeed responsible for much of his chronic illnesses, but
the above opinions as to his mental state are telling. Perhaps it may also be of
some significance to mention that his cabin-mate for the five year voyage, the
Captain of the Beagle, Robert Fitzroy, had been a promising and successful young
naval officer before they set off, and even though he enjoyed a distinguished
career afterward, during the course of their journey he had the first of his
mental breakdowns which eventually led to his suicide. When
Darwin returned home he married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood. A few years
into the marriage, Desmond and Moore comment on Darwin's fears of genetic
imbalance in his family tree: "Family inbreeding had long worried him. There
were now four first-cousin marriages between the Darwins and Wedgwoods, with his
and Emma's own. Of the ten Darwin children, two had died young from natural
causes, and the signs were ominous for the rest. George was sick and home from
school, Etty languished in bed every morning, Lizzy still behaved strangely, and
the baby was not normal." His fears proved groundless though, seven of his
children lived long lives and did quite well for themselves. (47) We
have just read a brief survey of the man whom many call the father of
evolutionary theory. Some of the facts presented here may shock those who have
put their trust in him as a guide for a philosophy of life. Can we separate the
character of a man from his ideas and beliefs? I will leave this for the reader
to judge. From
his theories that he claimed were developed during his voyage, Darwin eventually
wrote his Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, which exploded into the
world market over twenty years after his return home. World
Book noted, (48)". . .The study of the specimens
from the voyage of the Beagle convinced Darwin that modern species had evolved
from a few earlier ones. He documented the evidence and first presented his
theories on evolution to a meeting of scientists in 1858 . . . Darwin's theories
shocked most people of his day, who believed that each species had been created
by a separate divine act. His book, which is usually called simply The Origin of
Species presented facts that disputed this belief. It caused a revolution in
biological science and greatly affected religious thought." There
has been a persistent rumor concerning Darwin that has been repeated by some
Christians for over a century, which is that Darwin had a "deathbed repentance"
and conversion to Christianity during his last few days or hours on earth.
This
was circulated by a traveling evangelist during the latter part of the
nineteenth century, and has been debunked by historian James Moore. His friend
Huxley as well as all the surviving members of his immediate family swore to the
fact that Darwin never had a conversion in his final hours.(49) This
does not mean that Darwin did not repent-he may have indeed repented.
Huxley and Darwin's family
all had a vested interest in keeping the Darwin legend and legacy alive. Huxley
was known for his vicious anti-Christian attitude and statements throughout his
career. To have admitted to Darwin's repentance would have discredited nearly
everything that he had written in life. It is very telling that evolutionists
virtually to a man all vociferously deny Darwin's repentance, and that should
speak volumes in itself. Lady
Hope did describe details of his room at Down, as well as the position of a
summer house seen from Darwin's window. She also did not claim to have seen him
literally on his deathbed, but during the last year of his life while he was in
a state of convalescence. James Moore is a secular historian who might have
simply discounted the rumor, but he gives credible evidence that she might have
indeed visited Darwin. She claimed that Darwin was reading the book of Hebrews,
and that was in fact the book in Darwin's Bible that was left with a bookmark in
it. Since
the Bible says to judge nothing before the time, Christians should refrain from
judging Darwin's eternal state, since Christ died for the greatest as well as
for the least of sinners. One
last rumor that has been circulated about Darwin is that he died a "peaceful
death" in his home at Down. For the truth concerning Darwin's last day on earth,
Desmond and Moore, in their excellent historic work on Darwin, describe his last
twenty four hours in excruciating detail. Beginning late Tuesday night,
April 18-19, 1882, they write: "The pain came on just before midnight. It was
brutal, gripping him like a vise, tightening by the minute. He awoke Emma and
begged her to fetch the amyl from the study . . . Charles, in agony, felt that
he was dying but unable to cry out. As he slumped unconcious across the bed,
Emma and Bessy returned. They rang for a servant and, propping him up, gave the
brandy. It trickled through his beard and down his nightdress on to the quilt .
. . Seconds later he sputtered and retched; his eyes flickered open . . .She
sent for Dr. Allfrey, who arrived at two o'clock . . .The doctor left at eight .
. .Immediately Charles started vomiting. It was violent and prolonged. When
there was nothing left the nausea kept on in waves, overpowering him. His body
heaved and shuddered, as if possessed by an outside force [italics mine].
An hour passed, then two. Still he gagged and retched. 'If I could but die,' he
gasped repeatedly, 'If I could but die.' Emma clung to him, his skin grey and
ghostlike. Blood spewed out, running down his beard. She had never seen such
suffering . . .Charles awoke in a daze, and asked to be propped up . . .But the
pain was excruciating in any position . . . Rising, he began to faint again . .
. He lost conciousness . . .His life ended at four o'clock in the afternoon,
Wednesday 19 April, 1882."(Desmond and Moore, Darwin pp. 662-663) Thus
ended the life of the author of The Origin of Species. But did the theory of
evolution through natural selection really begin with Charles Darwin, as has
been stated in the preceding tributes to him, or were there others before him
who had already developed it? Let
us now find out if the theory of evolution itself is as "modern" as most of it's
proponents have claimed it is. We
will attempt to answer some of these questions in the next two issues of
The Darwin Papers.
1.
Loren Eiseley, Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X., E.P. Dutton, New York, 1979,
pp.93 2. I am not equating
Jehovah God of the Old Testament with the gods of the surrounding nations, but I
am making a point. Although many evolutionists and skeptics, dating all the way
back to the 18th century skeptic Hume, have attempted to postulate
that monotheism was simply a development from more primitive polytheistic
beliefs that grew out of nature worship, rather than being a direct revelation
from God, historically we find that just the opposite was the case. Research
shows that instead of the endless speculations that evolutionists love to tell
of early man seeking to find out what the sources of various natural phenomena
were, and then deifying these natural elements, which in turn became a primitive
form of religion that finally developed into monotheism, we find that all
ancient races and cultures had an original high, lofty notion of one God, the
Creator of all things, invisible and omniscient, and that only after the course
of many generations did this belief become corrupted and debased into the
worship of natural forces under the guise of many gods. Hence polytheism was not
the father of monotheism, monotheism was at least as ancient, and probably far
older, than polytheism, and indeed probably beginning as a direct Revelation
from God, as a quote from Isaac Newton later in this work reveals. Even the Hindus, with
their polytheistic worship of many hundreds of gods, once had this concept of
one, universal, supreme, invisible God, whom they called Brahman. We find that
three hundred years before Christ, Megasthenes, a Greek envoy to the court of
the Hindu Mauryan Empire, described the early Hindu belief in one invisible
Creator, which sounded remarkably like a passage from the Book of Acts, wherein
Paul addressed the Greeks concerning the "unknown" God. style="FONT-SIZE:
13pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'ACaslon Regular'">Megasthenes wrote: "In many points
their [the Hindu's] teaching agrees with that of the Greeks-for instance that
the world has a beginning and an end in time, and that its shape is spherical;
that the Deity, who is its Governor and Maker, interpenetrates the whole . . ."
(H.G. Rawlinson, India; A Short Cultural History, New York: D. Appleton-Century
Co., Inc., 1938, pp.72; quote from Civilization: Past and Present, T. Walter
Wallbank and Alastair M. Taylor, Scott Foresman and Company, 1960, pp.
168. Only later did the
Hindu's fall into pantheism and polytheism. The Greeks had also fallen into
rampant polytheism, yet still retained the knowledge of the one God when St.
Paul addressed the Athenians on Mars Hill: "Now while Paul waited for them at
Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw that the city was wholly
given over to idolatry . . . Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and
said, "You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too
superstitious, for as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an alter
with the inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD." "He whom you worship in
ignorance will I now declare unto you. God who made the world and everything in
it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with
hands, neither is worshipped by [the work of ] mens hands, as though he should
be in need of anything, since He gives life and breath to all, and all things,
and has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell in the face of the earth,
and the appointed beforehand the times and the boundaries of their habitation,
that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might seek after Him, and find
Him, though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live, and move, and
have our being, as also certain of your own poets have said, for we are also His
offspring." (Acts, 17:16; 17:22-28) Paul preached to them on
the errors of idolatry, and then of the resurrection of Christ: "Forasmuch then
as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godheaad is like
unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's devices, and the times
of this ignorance God winked at; but now commands all men every where to repent:
Because he has appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in righteousness
by that Man whom He has ordained, in that He has given assurance to all men, in
that He has raised Him from the dead." (Acts, 17:29-31, The Holy
Bible) Psalm 96 states that the
gods of the nations are idols, i.e. devils, the various lesser deities in later
Hindu pagan worship and in the corrupted worship of other nations. After the
sons of Noah and their descendants spread throughout the entire earth, the
various cultures that developed gradually lost the original Revelation carried
down from Adam through Seth and his offspring, and then through Noah and his son
Shem and their descendants. Even before the South American Indians worshipped
their bloodthirsty sun god, they had the knowledge of an invisible God Who
created all things, whom they called Viracocha. style="FONT-SIZE:
13pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'ACaslon Regular'">Apparently Balaam was a member of a
pagan nation who knew and communed with God, and God appeared and spoke to
Abimelech in a dream during Abrahams sojourn in Ge'rar. Gradually though, as has
been stated, all of the pagan nations lost the knowledge of God as Creator and
Father, except the Hebrew nation, through whom the Messiah came. There is no
other way to come to know God since the advent of Christ's birth anyhow, except
through Jesus Himself. Christ said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No man comes unto the Father but by Me." Other religions can be stepping stones
to Christ. While some of them have a partial revelation of God's truth, only in
Christ can it be said "In Him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily".
The heroes and founders
of other religious traditions, however noble sounding and however lofty their
philosophical and theological positions may sound, shall all bend their knees
someday to the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world. Scripture
states "For there is one God, and one mediator between man and God, the man
Jesus Christ." Christ, the Son of God, and God the Son, the Second Person of the
Trinity, is the only hope for a lost and sinful mankind. 3. Some have made the
assertion that since modern science has supposedly proven that the earth and the
universe are billions of years old, then this would somehow discredit a
religious outlook as a viable paradigm for contemporary, rational man, since
some Christians hold to the view that the earth is only six thousand to ten
thousand years old. There are more than a few problems with this line of
thought. For one thing, there are many devout Christians who believe in an old
earth, and there are also many credentialed scientists who believe in a young
earth (for a list of some of these scientists, see Answers In Genesis on the
internet, as well as The Institute For Creation Research). The idea that the
universe is perhaps billions of years old is not always opposed to a religious
outlook, and is not necessarily a new concept at all, nor is it solely the
province of modern science either. The sixth century Christian St. Maximus
stated as Orthodox tradition that there are a large number of past, present and
future world ages, with some larger ages, or aeons, encompassing the
consummation of smaller ages (Philokalia, Vol. 2, Faber and Faber, London, 1981)
The ancient Greeks and Mayans also believed in a vast number of different ages,
or cycles of creation and destruction for the universe, with the entire Mayan
time cycle covering many millions of years. Cuvier, the founder of the science
of paleontology, believed in the Biblical flood but also believed that there had
been a series of different ages of the earth ended by great catastrophes that
caused the great extinctions that have occurred on earth. Cuvier was a devout
Christian who flatly rejected the evolutionary ideas floating around in his day,
years before Darwin took these same evolutionary ideas and put them into his
Origin. Thousands of years before modern telescopes and radiometric dating, the
ancient legends of the Hindus and Buddhists stated that our universe is simply
one of countless universes that exist throughout infinite space, which the Hindu
scriptures describe as a vast ocean of existence, and that many of these
universes have planets with life on them, even intelligent life. According to
the ancient Hindu texts, our universe has gone through many vast ages of
creation and destruction, called kalpas, stretching out over billions of years.
Every kalpa is further divided up into smaller cycles of time called yugas,
lasting for hundreds of thousands of years, with each yuga being eventually
brought to a close by a world-wide catastrophe caused by fire, wind, earthquake
or water that destroys most of the living things on the earth. At the end of
each great kalpa there is a larger destruction, or, more accurately, a
consummation, that encompasses the universe as well. Then after many billions of
years there is the beginning of a new kalpa, when mankind and the rest of the
living species on earth are recreated by a Supreme Being, according to Hindu
legends. Interestingly enough, the last yuga was brought to a close during a
great war on the earth as described in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, which
corresponds to Genesis mentioning that just before the Flood of Noah the earth
was filled with violence. It must be remembered that at the same time that the
Greeks, Mayans, and Hindus had developed their creation legends, they also had
achieved rather highly developed sciences of astronomy and mathematics. As far
as life existing elsewhere in the universe, many Seventh Day Adventist
Christians believe in a multiplicity of worlds with life on them also, all
created by a Supreme Being. A few centuries ago some Catholic writers speculated
on the existence of numerous worlds with living creatures on them. It would be
perhaps a trifle egotistic to believe that God had created these numberless vast
galaxies, each consisting of billions or trillions of stars, only to create life
on planet earth and nowhere else. The Bible does not affirm nor deny this
possibility of life on other worlds; it merely concerns itself with the creation
and history of life on this earth. The Bible does describe at least three time
cycles that could be compared to yugas. These would be the world prior to the
Flood of Noah, the present age of the earth, and the millennium age after
Christ's return. It is also rather interesting that the beginning of this
current yuga or age in Hinduism, called the Kali yuga, or Age of darkness, began
at 3011 B.C., roughly the same date as the beginning of Egyptian civilization,
the flood of Noah according to the Bible, and nearly the exact same date as the
beginning of the ancient Maya calender for the present sun, or age of the earth,
3014 B.C. 4. Richard F. Leakey and
Glynn Isaac Ed., Human Ancestors, W.H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, Ca.
5. Colliers
Encyclopedia, Vol. 9, pp. 4813, MacMillan Educational Co., New York, P.F.Collier
Inc., New York, 1984 6. Nora Barlow, The
Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882, pp.223-225, 1959 Edition, London,
Collins; John Bowlby, Charles Darwin: A New Life, p. 40. 7. John Bowlby, Charles
Darwin: A New Life, pp.51, by W.W.. Norton & Co., New York, 1991, RPL
Bowlby, RJM Bowlby & Gatling. 8.
(ibid, pp.245) Browne's sources for this are Neil McHendrick, Josiah Wedgwood
and Factory Discipline, Historical Journal 4:30-35, and John Mackenzie, The
Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism, Manchester
University Press, Manchester, England, 1988, and Maureen Macneil on Erasmus
Darwin, Manchester University Press and London, Free Association Books, 1986 and
1987. 9. Janet Browne, Charles Darwin, Alfred A.
Knopf Pub., New York, 1995, pp.8. 
As far as the early development of his
character, we get an interesting glint of what his personality may have been
like from his autobiography, where Darwin tells us: "Whilst at the day school, or before that time, I
acted cruelly, for I beat a puppy I believe, simply from enjoying the sense of
power; but the beating could not have been severe, for the puppy did not howl,
of which I feel sure as the spot was near to the house."
(25) He did admit though that the act “lay
heavily on my conscience, as is shown by my remembering the exact spot where the
crime had been committed.”(Ibid)
Darwin did little to distinguish himself
at Cambridge
University either, where de Beer tells us: "At Christ's College he paid little
attention to his official studies and fell in with a set of sporting young men
as keen on shooting, riding, and hunting as he was." (30)
Although he was not a noted scholar during his
college years, he did have an absolute passion for shooting birds during this
period of his life. In his autobiography he wrote:
"I
do not believe that anyone could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause
than I did for shooting birds. . .How I did enjoy shooting . . .If there is
bliss on earth, that is it." (31)
He was to have his new gun; a
gift from his father and his sisters meant to be used for his University career
was spent on it. Browne informs us: "The same eagerness flowed into compiling an
elaborate game book-a record system subdivided into partridges, hares, and
pheasants, in which Darwin kept a running total of everything he killed through
the season. This sporting ledger was as emotionally important to him as shooting
itself . . . The game book, however, had the beginnings of an obsession about
it. There was little point in shooting, he thought, if the tally was not
taken." (33) In 1831 Darwin embarked on his now famous five year voyage
on the H.M.S. Beagle, having been recommended by Professor Henslow whom he
befriended while at college, and it is from his observations of various living
things during this trip, particularly from his visit to the Galapagos Islands,
that he is supposed to have derived his evolutionary theories about the descent
of man and all
other forms of life from common ancestors.
asked if he
could borrow Darwin's hammer to kill some of the birds with, to which Darwin
replied, "No, no, you'll break the
handle." Then, apparently struck by the novelty of this idea,
Darwin himself picked up his hammer and began killing the peaceful birds in this
manner, as Fitzroy related "away went the hammer, with all the force of his own
right arm." (39)
"I . . .drink
my Mattee & smoke my cigar, & then lie down & sleep as comfortably
with the Heavens for a canopy as in a feather bed."
(42)
All other religions, up to the time of Christ, or up until the time and
the place the Gospel has been preached somewhere, were provisional teachings;
they were merely meant to prepare the way for Him. Buddhism, with it's high
ethical ideals and moral tradition, has no remedy for those who transgress it's
precepts; they are bound by the inexorable "law" of karma to suffer the ill
consequences of their misdeeds. In the Buddha's parable of the raft he said that
his teaching should be used as a raft to get from one side of a stream to
another, however once the raft had served it's purpose and the man continued on
his journey the raft should be left by the river. It would be useless for the
man to carry the raft with him as he continued over the land. So when one comes
to Jesus Christ one no longer needs the teachings of the Buddha.
10. Bowlby, pp. 44-45.
11. Bowlby, pp. 70. His quotation is taken from the unpublished Wedgwood archives in the library of the University of Keen.
13. Emma Darwin: A Century of Family Letters, 1792-1896, 2 Vols, edited by Henrietta Litchfield, 1915, Vol. 2, pp.184.
14. Bowlby, pp. 60. Historian Janet Browne also mentioned this mysterious silence on the death of Charles Darwin's mother.
16. The Wedgwood Circle, 1730-1897, pp.181
17. Charles Darwin, Autobiography, pp.30
19. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, pp. 39-40, edited by Nora Barlow, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, , 1993.
20. Autobiography of Charles Darwin, Barlow, pp.41
22. Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 16, pp.1026, 1986.
23. Darwin, Biographical Note, Great Books of the Western World Series, Vol. 49, Published by William Benton Co., under the auspices of Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952.
25. Charles Darwin, Autobiography, pp.26-27.
26. Biographical note attached to Darwin's Origin of Species, Benton edition, also Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 16, 1986.
27. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters, pp. 18, Dover Publications, New York, 1958.
30. Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 16, pp.1026, 1986.
31. Darwin, Autobiography and Letters.
32. Browne, pp.109-110. In light of the very damaging evidence given by Browne concerning the development of Darwin's character, it should be born in mind that she is not usually counted among his severest critics.
34. Wilder-Smith, A.E., Man's Origin, Man's Destiny, Bethany House Publishers, 1975, pp.197.
35. Encyclopedia Britannica, Vo. 16, 1986.
36. The Complete Correspondence of Charles Darwin, edited by F. Burkhardt and S. Smith, Vol. 1, pp.491, 1985-1988.
37. The Voyage of Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin, pp.10, The American Museum of Natural History, The Natural History Library, Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., Inc., Garden City New York, 1962.
38. Browne, pp.204. See also the original, Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of H.M.S. Adventure and Beagle, Vol. 2:56.
39. Narrative of the Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, by Admiral Fitzroy, 1839. See also Amabel Williams Ellis, "The Voyage of the Beagle, Adapted from the Narratives and letters of Charles Darwin and Captain Fitzroy, pp. 26, J.B. Lippencott Co., Philadelphia and London, 1931.
40. Beagle Diary, by Charles Darwin, edited by R.D. Keynes, 1988, pp.180-181, pp177; and The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Vol. 1, pp.326, 1821-1861, F.H. Burkhardt and S. Smith ed., Cambridge University Press, University Library, Cambridge, 1983-1984
41. Desmond and Moore, Darwin, pp. 141.
42. Charles Darwin, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Vols.. 1-9, (1821-1861), Cambridge University Press, See also Browne, pp. 256-257 and Desmond and Moore, pp.141.
43. Beagle Diary, R.D. Keynes Ed., 1988.
44. Wilder-Smith, Man's Origin, Man's Destiny, pp.197.
46. Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 16, 1986.
47. Darwin, by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Warner Books, 1991, pp.447
48. World Book Encyclopedia, Vol. 5, pp. 33, 1983, Scott Fetzer Co.
49. James Moore, The Darwin Legend, Baker Books Grand Rapids Michigan, 1994. Huxley also dispelled this rumor, writing on February 12, 1887: "I have the best authority for informing you that the statement which you attribute to the Revd. Mr. Mutch of Toronto that 'Mr. Darwin, when on his death bed, abjectly whined for a minister and renouncing evolution, sought safety in the blood of the Saviour' is totally false and without any kind of foundation." Ibid, pp.117, The Darwin Legend, taken from The Huxley Papers, 8;135-137, 138-139.
[I] Desmond King-Hele, Doctor of Revolution: The Life and Genius of Erasmus Darwin, Faber and Faber, London, 1977, pp.299-300