This Thing Of Darkness (81 page)

‘But, FitzRoy, I have the mechanism now.
I have the mechanism.
I read Malthus’s
Essay on the Principle of Population
, and it came to me, as clear as day. Why is the world not overrun with rabbits, or flies, when they can breed at such an incredible rate? Why is the world not overrun with poor people? Answer: the weakest die off. Death, disease, famine, all take their toll. Only the best-adapted survive. It is why the lower races, such as the Fuegians and the Araucanians, will be eliminated, and why the higher, civilized white races will vanquish their territory. It is why Christianity conquers heathenism, because Christianity better meets the demands of life. Death is a creative entity! It preserves the most useful adaptations in animals, and plants, and people, and weeds out the least useful ones. So the favourable adaptations become fixed. That is how a species adapts.’

‘All this does not explain how one species could possibly transmute into another.’

‘Suppose six puppies are born. Two have longer legs, and can run faster. They are the only two of the litter that survive. The next generation - their children - shall
all
have longer legs. Species adapt by throwing up random variants - a process of trial and error — which persist if they are advantageous. They are selected, if you like, by nature herself, into winners and losers!’

‘You are assuming that nature acts but externally on every creature. Yet the two are indivisible. Do not creatures define their own environment just as it defines them? Does not mankind, for instance, cut down the forests?’

‘But this is where Malthus, God bless him, has given me so much! Mankind works
against
nature! We civilized men do our utmost to check the natural process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, we treat the sick, we institute poor laws. Vaccination has preserved thousands who would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. What we are doing is highly injurious to the race of man!’

‘You speak of Christian mercy as if it were somehow reprehensible. Malthus saw the expanding numbers of mankind as symptomatic of man’s fall, not his rise through some brutal competition! He saw such a competition as one that must be halted, not celebrated!’

‘But do you not see, FitzRoy?
Every single
organic being is in competition, striving to the utmost to increase in numbers! The birds that sing around us live on insects, or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life. They in turn, and their eggs, are constantly destroyed by beasts of prey. Nature is not the creation of a benevolent God! The only order in God’s universe is a coincidental side-product of the struggle among organisms for reproductive success.’

‘What of co-operation in nature? Beetles that feed on dung? Birds that live on the backs of hippopotamuses?’

‘Mere parasites.’

‘What of beauty? What of the origin of life itself? What of something as beautiful and complicated as the human eye, which can adjust itself a million times faster than any spyglass? How did such a mechanism come into being through accidental modification? Only the Creator Himself could have designed such a thing.’

‘Maybe the eye developed gradually, as man gradually designed the spyglass.’

‘The gradual design of the spyglass was the product of God-given reason.

‘Must a contrivance have a contriver?’

‘Yes, by definition! I cannot believe I am hearing you speak in this blasphemous fashion!’

‘Come, FitzRoy, the design of a man is far from perfect. We must rest for eight hours a day. We must feed ourselves three times a day. We eat and we breathe through the same orifice. We fall prey to every illness. We are not so wonderfully designed.’

‘Tell me, then, about consciousness. How do your long-legged puppies account for the creation of consciousness? How is it that we are even having this conversation, are even aware of our own existence, if God has not given us the power of rational thought? How does your all-embracing theory explain generosity, kindness to strangers, self-sacrifice — qualities that I shall admit you seem to possess in short supply - unless man is created by God in His own image?’

Darwin, effervescing, sidestepped the insult. ‘Man is arrogant indeed to think himself created by God in His image. Our image of God is merely human egotism made flesh. Whoever or whatever God is, He is more than merely mankind writ large. Humility leads me to the inescapable conclusion that we are merely animals.’

‘Humility? You?’ FitzRoy could barely splutter out the words. ‘“Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, what makest thou?”’

‘Think about it - human and animal consciousness are not so dissimilar. Is our smile not our snarl? Are we so far from Tommy the chimpanzee? Is the black man, whose reasoning powers are only partly developed, not closer to the higher apes than the white man? Black and brown children look less like human beings than I could have fancied any degradation might have produced. Charles White has postulated an intermediate but taxonomically separate sub-group of dark-skinned people. Your Fuegians are living proof that Christian civilization is ephemeral, a mere gloss on the biologic facts — see how quickly they reverted to savagery! I tell you, FitzRoy, our Christian society is no more than an arm of nature - a Malthusian struggle for existence. Hobbes’s
bellum omnium contra omnes
. We are riding a wave of chaos!’

‘I will not have this - this
nonsense
in my house! The civilized universe is fashioned by divine wisdom. It is a machine, and God is the mechanic!’

‘If the universe is a machine, then life exploits only its stutters.’

‘But this theory of yours, this
perversion
of Malthus, is a mathematical absurdity. Any single variation in any creature would be blended back into the species through breeding, being halved and halved again in successive generations until it disappeared. A marooned white sailor on an African shore could never blanch a nation of negroes!’

‘Oh come, FitzRoy, it is patently obvious that there is much inherited variation. Successful characteristics are somehow dominant, otherwise every generation would be more uniform than the previous one. And those characteristics are passed down to both sexes by inheritance. Man would be as superior in mental endowment to a woman as the peacock is in ornamental plumage to the peahen, if the beneficial characteristics of the male sex were not equally transmitted between both sexes at the point of conception. That, my friend, is how one species of finch arrived at the Galapagos Islands, and transmuted itself gradually into a number of entirely separate species. Not variations, but separate species.’

‘It is ironic — is it not? - that you make so much of the absolute barriers between species being supposedly thus vaulted, yet by your own argument, one species gradually transmutes into another without any impediment or barrier whatsoever.’

‘You must help me, FitzRoy. You must give permission for Mr Gould to access those specimens.’

‘You gave me your word that you would not publish any transmutationist argument! Your manuscript is complete — do you intend to rewrite it?’

‘No — of course not. I shall adhere to my word. But I have to know. I must know the truth.’

‘Why then should I help you? Why should I help you when you have delivered
this
to my house and to the publisher?’

FitzRoy angrily lifted the proof sheets of Darwin’s manuscript from his desk and brandished them in the air.

‘Aha! Now we are getting to the nub!’ shouted Darwin. ‘I could tell by your very demeanour upon my entrance that you were harbouring some ridiculous grievance at my work.’

FitzRoy began to read quotes scornfully from his blotter. “‘No possible action of any flood could thus have modelled the land.” “Geologists formerly would have brought into play the violent action of some overwhelming débâcle, but in this case such a submission would have been quite inadmissible.”’

‘I tell you, FitzRoy, no reputable geologist believes in the flood any more! Buckland has disavowed it! Sedgwick has disavowed it! Lyell’s new volume entirely discredits the idea that there has ever been a major catastrophe on this earth! Lyell’s volume, incidentally, which laments the delay to
my
book on account of your tardiness. Mr Lyell agrees with me that some part of your brain wants mending, for nothing else will account for your manner of viewing things!’ Darwin was purple-faced with rage now, and FitzRoy not much better. Their argument could be heard all round the house.

‘How dare you discuss me in such terms, or any terms, with Mr Lyell? Have you told your
new
friend of your transmutationist theories? I doubt it! For I, too, have read his latest volume, which makes it abundantly clear that although varieties may change a great deal, they can
never deviate far enough to be called separate species.
’

‘Of course I have not discussed such matters with Mr Lyell! I have discussed my most private thoughts with you and you alone, because I was confined in a cabin with you for five years, and because I trusted you as my companion and as a gentleman to keep such confidences to yourself! Although, God knows I regret those confidences now. You gave me your word
as a gentleman
that you would have no objection to my casting doubt upon the Biblical flood in my account of the voyage, although now it seems that you have reneged upon that understanding.’

‘On the contrary. You are quite entitled to print whatever nonsense you wish concerning the flood, although I believe our understanding was that you should do so discreetly. My objection to this volume is of an entirely different nature, and concerns the disgraceful remarks, or lack of them, on the title page.’

‘On the title page? Remarks? What are you talking about?’

‘Your page of acknowledgements, or lack of them, in which you ascribe your place on the voyage to the
wish
of Captain FitzRoy, and to the
kindness
of Captain Beaufort.’

‘What of it?’

‘I am further astonished at the total omission of any notice of the ship’s officers, either particular or general. What of Sulivan? What of Stokes? What of Bynoe? Officers who assisted you in the furtherance of your views, and who gave you preference in the collection of specimens. A plain acknowledgement, never mind a word of flattery or fulsome praise, would have been slight return due from you to those who held the ladder by which you mounted to your current position. Or were you not aware that the ship which carried
you
safely round the world was first employed in exploring and surveying, and that her officers were not ordered or obliged to collect anything for you at all? To their honour, they gave you the preference. To your dishonour, you make no mention of them.’

‘I shall write to them.’

‘It is not enough. This page must be altered at the publisher’s. I do not trust you to write to them.’

‘You have the most consummate skill in looking at everything and everybody in a perverted manner! All this is about a simple oversight! You would do better to concentrate your energies upon finishing your part of the manuscript - which I would remind you was due for publication at the end of this month - than upon such petty matters. What in God’s name is taking you so long? This delay is holding up my efforts to prosecute a successful scientific career.’

‘You forget that I have two volumes to contend with,’ said FitzRoy, coldly. ‘My own and the editing of Captain King’s. A total of more than half a million words — ’

‘Half a million words? I read some of King’s journal on the
Beagle.
No pudding for schoolboys was ever so heavy. It abounds with natural history of the most trashy nature. I trust that your own volume will present an improvement. Half a million words! No wonder the three volumes are to cost two pounds eighteen shillings!’

‘The publisher Mr Colburn tells me that the high price derives from a shortage of rags to make paper. And, of course, your friends in the Liberal government continue to tax paper at a penny-halfpenny a pound.’

‘Henry Colburn is a villain of the worst sort! I have had to pay him no less than twenty-one pounds ten shillings — in advance - for the copies I intend to distribute to my friends and family. That is more than I am receiving for my contribution! I am writing this book at a considerable loss. You, on the other hand, are on a full surveyor’s salary.’

‘On the contrary. As I am able to dedicate only part of my time to the surveying work, I have written to Sir Francis Beaufort offering to return half of my salary. And if the work continues beyond the end of 1838, I shall complete it unpaid.’

‘Unpaid? Return half your salary? When you have found yourself in financial difficulties? You are quite mad!’

‘No — I am not mad. I simply have ideas of money, and ideas of duty, which are different from persons such as yourself. A gentleman should always place duty and public service ahead of all other things. I am sure that it is a gesture that Sir Francis will properly appreciate, as being undertaken from the best of motives.’

Darwin sneered across the study. ‘A gesture that has precipitated such universal admiration that you have not been reappointed to command the
Beagle’
s next voyage.’

‘What?’

FitzRoy’s blood had turned to ice.

‘What did you say?’ he repeated.

‘It is nothing . . . just a rumour . . . Beaufort . . .’ Darwin realized, uncomfortably, that he had gone too far.

FitzRoy was pressing him, desperate to know more: ‘What do you know of the
Beagle
sailing again? What do you mean, “Beaufort”? You have met him?’

‘He is a frequent guest at Mr Babbage’s
soirées
,’ confessed Darwin, weakly. ‘He has lately become a considerable friend of mine. He has read my manuscript and given it his unqualified approval. He mentioned that the
Beagle
was sailing again, under Wickham, to survey the coast of Australia. I supposed that you knew . . .’