This Thing Of Darkness (106 page)

The country had been in uproar since the publication, the previous November, of
The Origin of Species
. The expected tide of condemnation had duly swamped its author, led - among others - by Darwin’s former mentor Professor Sedgwick and his former friend Richard Owen, who in his younger days had catalogued the Beagle fossils. But to FitzRoy’s astonishment and distress, once that tide had reached its high-water mark, a ferocious undertow of adulation had begun to pull in the opposite direction, a force exerted in the main by a younger generation whose lives had been cushioned by the prosperity of their age: young men who would never be asked to risk their lives in a roaring sea at the uttermost ends of the earth, who would never come face to face with their God.

The initial print-run of 1250 copies of
The Origin
had sold out before lunchtime on the first day of publication; not all the purchasers, it turned out, had required a copy the better to organize their rebuttals. Copies were being sold as fast as they could be printed, to genuine admirers of Mr Darwin and his ideas. Young couples were naming their children after him. He had even been made into the hero of a romantic novel. As he skulked behind the defensive earthworks of Down House, fanatical supporters and idle tourists camped outside, hoping to catch sight of the great man. Alone among the major European nations, Britain had come through the depressions of the first half of the century without violent revolution; but there was a residual, unfulfilled feeling of iconoclasm in the air, and Darwin had captured it. It was through science, not pikes and muskets, that the old order would be swept away by the young, the confident and the mechanically minded.

Even allowing for the enthusiasm of these new disciples, FitzRoy was stunned by the size of the crowd queuing to get into the museum. The association’s lectures were open to the public, but it was rare indeed for a member of the public to turn up. Today the mere mention of the name ‘Darwin’ in the title of Draper’s lecture had tempted close on a thousand people to attend a dry academic talk. Before long an official emerged and announced that the lecture would be moved to the long West Room, the museum’s as yet unfurnished library, to accommodate the unexpected masses. There was a considerable delay while the West Room was got ready, but the crowd seemed unfussed; indeed, an enjoyable air of expectation was building, as the news spread that Bishop Wilberforce had indeed chosen today to lead the Church’s counterattack against the new heresy. The bishop, too, was not without his supporters. There were knots of priests here and there amid the merry throng of beery students. There were even a number of women present, fanning themselves with their handkerchiefs and filling out the queue with their ample crinolines; it was the first time FitzRoy had seen women at a scientific event. Truly, the world was changing.

At last, the doors opened and the crowd filed into the West Room, until it was filled almost to suffocation. Instinctively, the various tribes present separated out, as if to a predetermined command: journalists at the front, cassocked clergymen grouped at the centre, the rowdier students in one corner at the back, the women lined against the windows of the western wall, their white handkerchiefs fluttering like a flock of disturbed doves. Then, to a round of applause, the speaker emerged on to the dais, followed by the various interested parties: Bishop Wilberforce on one side, flanked by Richard Owen, with Huxley and Hooker taking the opposite corner. There was, of course, no Alfred Russel Wallace: he was still collecting beetles in the Far East, blissfully unaware of the explosion of interest in what was supposedly a joint theory. And there was, of course, no Darwin.

Professor John Henslow, by whose recommendation Darwin had first been appointed to the
Beagle
, was to be in the chair. He shuffled to the front of the dais.

The man who started it all off
, thought FitzRoy.
How fitting
.

Henslow was very old now, a mass of snow-white hair wreathing his drooping face, his sad eyes focused somewhere on the middle distance. He fixed this notional spot with his basset-hound gaze and welcomed it to the association.

‘Regrettably, Mr Darwin himself is unable to be present this afternoon as he is undergoing urgent hydropathic treatment to his stomach. Please will you welcome our speaker today, Mr John W. Draper of the University of New York.’

Draper came forward, to more enthusiastic applause. A hushed silence ensued.

‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen. Philosophically speaking, I believe that the development of classical Greek civilization can be divided into five well-marked periods - the first being closed by the opening of Egypt to the lonians; the second, including the Ionian, Pythagorean, and Eleatic philosophies, was ended by the doubts of the Sophists; the third, embracing the Socratic and Platonic philosophies, was ended by the doubts of the Sceptics; the fourth, ushered in by the Macedonian expedition and adorned by the achievements of the Alexandrian school, degenerated into Neoplatonism ...’

Draper was still speaking to a hushed room, but it was a hush of disbelief. This was, conceivably, the dreariest public speaker that anyone present had ever heard. His nasal monotone rolled and flattened his words into an arid, featureless desert, with no prospect of relief on the horizon. It rapidly became clear that his thesis only drew peripherally upon Darwin’s ideas, in that he was postulating a vague notion of biological process as a contributory factor to the development of Western thought. This was not what the crowd had come to hear. Unfortunately, Draper seemed of the opinion that this was precisely what the crowd had come to hear: he wore a smile of insufferable self-satisfaction throughout. His talk lasted for just over an hour, but it felt like five. Finally he was done, and retired to his seat to the barest smattering of applause. The ladies fanned themselves with their handkerchiefs again: it was quite breathlessly hot in the packed room. Henslow called upon the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, to make his contribution to the debate. A low murmur of anticipation surged through the crowd: this was it. The preamble was over. Now the sparks would fly.

Wilberforce stepped forward, majestically clad in full episcopal robes and gaiters, whorls of disapproval etched into his face like a New Zealander’s tattoo. He clasped his hands together, wrung them and waited for silence. ‘Soapy Sam’, they called him, supposedly because he always wrung his hands as if washing them when sermonizing; but maybe there was more to it than that, for there was indeed something slippery about his ostentatious air of moral cleanliness. He had once been chaplain to the Royal Family, which position had left behind a residue of permanent unctuousness. But he was an experienced orator, was Soapy Sam, with a plummy, booming voice that was well used to reaching the back row of Christ Church Cathedral.

‘The good Lord is many things,’ he fulminated. ‘He is the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, three indivisible parts of the Holy Trinity. But if Mr Darwin’s book is to be believed, He is also the Supreme Pigeon-fancier.’

Soapy Sam’s face cracked into a grim smile. The audience laughed. This was more like it.

‘I am not a scientist, or a pigeon-fancier. But I do have some experience in the teachings of the Lord. That is my area of specialization, if you like. So, I was not unnaturally intrigued to find out whether this book’ - he produced from his robes a green, clothbound copy of Darwin’s work - ‘might give me cause to doubt any parts of that other book which I have studied throughout my entire life. I think you know the one I mean. It has not perhaps sold quite as many copies as has Mr Darwin’s during these past seven months but, then, it has been on sale for two thousand years, and no doubt it will still be on sale two thousand years hence, when Mr Darwin’s volume will have been quite forgotten.

‘So what, then, did I make of
The Origin of Species
? What conclusions did I draw? I am sure you are all agog to hear. Let me tell you, I was most impressed by the assiduousness of Mr Darwin’s scholarship. His writing is unusually attractive. It is a most readable book - indeed, its language is so perspicuous that it sparkles. And it contains a remarkable scientific discovery: the existence of a self-acting power in nature, continuously working in all creation, that Mr Darwin has entitled the Law of Natural Selection. He has identified the principal effect of the struggle of all creatures for life - that the strong will continually tend to extirpate the weak. And he has discovered that this process will encourage positive variation by weeding out the slow and the infirm, much as does a pigeon-fancier by design. I congratulate Mr Darwin upon his discovery!

‘Curiously, Mr Darwin does not regard this process as universally applicable. He is confused, for instance, as to why the young blackbird should be spotted, or the whelp of a lion striped.’ Wilberforce opened the book. ‘According to Mr Darwin, “No one would suppose that these spots and stripes are of any use to these animals, or are related to the conditions to which they are exposed.” Their very prevalence and lack of utility, Mr Darwin believes, are an indication of common descent! But, Mr Darwin, any
observant
field naturalist will tell you that the spotted features of a young blackbird are one of the greatest protections to the bird, imperfect in its flight, sitting unwarily in its bush through which the rays of sunshine dapple every bough to the colour of its own plumage! The Supreme Pigeon-fancier, Mr Darwin, moves in a mysterious way!’

The audience roared its approval. This was good. Although he did not approve of the bishop’s sneering style, FitzRoy had to admire his skill. The scientific content of his speech was Owen’s, of course. Time had not been kind to Owen: he sat at the side of the dais, his long legs folded beneath his chair, smiling his dreadful, red-faced, cadaverous smile, like a latter-day Richard III. Tiers of bags ran down from his eyes to his skeletal cheekbones, wispy white side-whiskers masked his ears, while his pursed mouth was all but concealed behind a large, hooked nose. He was the superintendent of Natural History at the British Museum now, and he knew his subject as well as anyone in the country; it was a pity, really, that he was such an unattractive public speaker that the bishop had to serve as his mouthpiece. Yet Wilberforce brought episcopal prestige to bear on the occasion, as well as oratorical skill. FitzRoy was more than content to see him as the standard-bearer of reason on this occasion.

‘Mr Darwin,’ the bishop was roaring, ‘sees his Law of Natural Selection as proof of the non-existence of God! On the contrary, it is in this very law that we see a merciful provision against the deterioration, in a world apt to deteriorate, of the works of the Creator’s hands! Natural selection
prevents
the deterioration of existing species - it does not effect new ones! Has any pigeon-breeder in the country, for all his efforts, created anything that is not a pigeon? Has any pigeon-breeder created anything that could even survive in the wild? If, as Mr Darwin claims, one animal group can transform itself into a totally separate animal group, then surely we should have discovered animals with shared characteristics, from the group of animals they are evolving from, and the group of animals towards which they are evolving. There should be fossils that link the major animal groups. If mammals evolved from reptiles, where is the beast that has the features of both a reptile and a mammal? Where are these missing links?’

A huge cheer went up from the audience. At the edge of the dais, Owen flexed his fingers together and smiled a ghastly smile.

‘According to Mr Darwin, the fossil record is “incomplete”. Oh, but this is no accident. No! The fossil record is
“necessarily
incomplete”! According to Mr Darwin, transitional forms, precisely because they are transitional, are less likely to leave a fossil record than stabilized species. Is that not clever? The theory itself brilliantly explains why there is no evidence whatsoever to support the theory! There is only one adjective suitable to describe such logic:
unsatisfactory.
Scientists have searched in vain’ - Wilberforce glanced triumphantly across at Owen - ‘for any shred of evidence, any shred of proof, that any one individual species might have varied, be it ever so little, into a different genus. One tiny variation that might validate the conclusion that such variability is progressive and unlimited, so as, in the course of generations, to change the species, the genus, the order and, eventually, the class. That proof has not been found -
and it never will be
.’

The audience was going wild for Wilberforce. FitzRoy quietly clenched his fist. He was excited now, and ideas were coursing through his mind. He wished he could be up on stage himself, leading the onslaught.

‘Each organism which the Creator educed was stamped with an indelible specific character, which made it what it was and distinguished it from everything else. Such character has been, and is, indelible and immutable. The characters which distinguish species from species now were as definite at the first instant of their creation as now, and are as distinct now as they were then. A rock-pigeon is what a rock-pigeon has always been!’ Wilberforce thumped the podium with his fist. A man is what a man has always been!’ He brandished the green book again. ’This hypothesis is so flimsy, so fanciful, that it might be the frenzied inspiration of an inhaler of mephitic gas! When tried by the principles of inductive science, it breaks down completely! The line between man and the lower animals is distinct. There is no tendency on the part of the lower animals to become the self-conscious, intelligent being that is man; nor in man to degenerate and lose the high characteristics of mind and intelligence. Man even possesses a unique lobe of the brain, the hippocampus minor, and cerebral hemispheres so large that they cover the cerebellum. These you will not find in any of the higher apes. But will you find them in Mr Darwin’s book? No! For Mr Darwin’s conclusions are mere hypothesis, nothing more, raised most unphilosophically to the dignity of a causal theory! Is it really, truly credible that a turnip strives to become a man?’