Charles Darwin , livre ebook

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After a career in the academy, Canadian-born Grant Allen struck out on his own to make his name as a writer. His early focus was on scientific topics, though he later expanded into fiction, as well. Allen was an early proponent of Darwin's theory of evolution and helped to popularize the idea through his writing. His biography Charles Darwin is an engaging and comprehensive look at the scientist's life and work.
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01 juillet 2014

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9781776581832

Langue

English

CHARLES DARWIN
* * *
GRANT ALLEN
 
*
Charles Darwin First published in 1885 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-183-2 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-184-9 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Preface Chapter I - The World into Which Darwin was Born Chapter II - Charles Darwin and His Antecedents Chapter III - Early Days Chapter IV - Darwin's Wander-Years Chapter V - The Period of Incubation Chapter VI - 'The Origin of Species' Chapter VII - The Darwinian Revolution Begins Chapter VIII - The Descent of Man Chapter IX - The Theory of Courtship Chapter X - Victory and Rest Chapter XI - Darwin's Place in the Evolutionary Movement Chapter XII - The Net Result Endnotes
Preface
*
In this little volume I have endeavoured to present the life and work ofCharles Darwin viewed as a moment in a great revolution, in due relationboth to those who went before and to those who come after him.Recognising, as has been well said, that the wave makes the crest, notthe crest the wave, I have tried to let my hero fall naturally into hisproper place in a vast onward movement of the human intellect, of whichhe was himself at once a splendid product and a moving cause of thefirst importance. I have attempted to show him both as receiving thetorch from Lamarck and Malthus, and as passing it on with renewedbrilliancy to the wide school of evolutionary thinkers whom his work wasinstrumental in arousing to fresh and vigorous activity along a thousandseparate and varied lines of thought and action.
As Mr. Francis Darwin was already engaged upon a life of his father, Ishould have shrunk from putting forth my own little book if I had notsucceeded in securing beforehand his kind sanction. That sanction,however, was at once so frankly and cordially given, that all myhesitation upon such a score was immediately laid aside; and as I havenecessarily had to deal rather with Darwin's position as a thinker andworker than with the biographical details of his private life, I trustthe lesser book may not clash with the greater, but to some extent maysupplement and even illustrate it.
Treating my subject mainly as a study in the interaction of organism andenvironment, it has been necessary for me frequently to introduce thenames of living men of science side by side with some of those who havemore or less recently passed away from among us. For uniformity's sake,as well as for brevity's, I have been compelled, in every instancealike, to omit the customary conventional handles. I trust those whothus find themselves docked of their usual titles of respect will kindlyremember that the practice is in fact adopted honoris causâ ; they arepaying prematurely the usual penalty of intellectual greatness.
My obligations to Professor Huxley, to Professor Fiske, to Mr. HerbertSpencer, to Professor Sachs, to Hermann Müller, to Dr. Krause, toCharles Darwin himself, and to many other historians and critics ofevolutionism, will be sufficiently obvious to all instructed readers,and are for the most part fully acknowledged already in the text. Itwould be absurd to overload so small and popularly written a book withreferences and authorities. I hope, therefore, that any other writers towhom I may inadvertently have neglected to confess my debts will kindlyrest satisfied with this general acknowledgment. There are, however,three persons in particular from whom I have so largely borrowed factsor ideas that I owe them more special and definite thanks. From Mr.Woodall's admirable paper on Charles Darwin, contributed to the'Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society,' I have takenmuch interesting information about my hero's immediate ancestry andearly days. From Mr. Samuel Butler, the author of 'Evolution Old andNew,' I have derived many pregnant suggestions with regard to the trueposition and meaning of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and the earlyessentially teleological evolutionists—suggestions which I am all themore anxious to acknowledge since I differ fundamentally from Mr. Butlerin his estimate of the worth of Charles Darwin's distinctive discoveryof natural selection. Finally, to Mr. Bates, the 'Naturalist on theAmazons,' I am indebted for several valuable items of information as tothe general workings of the pre-Darwinian evolutionary spirit.
In a book dealing so largely with a contemporary movement, the historyof which has never yet been consecutively written down in full, orsubjected as a whole to searching criticism, there must probably be manyerrors of detail, which can hardly be avoided under such circumstances.I have endeavoured to minimise them as far as possible. For those whichmay have escaped my own scrutiny I must trust both for correction andfor indulgence to the kindness of my readers.
Chapter I - The World into Which Darwin was Born
*
Charles Darwin was a great man, and he accomplished a great work. TheNewton of biology, he found the science of life a chaotic maze; he leftit an orderly system, with a definite plan and a recognisable meaning.Great men are not accidents; great works are not accomplished in asingle day. Both are the product of adequate causes. The great mansprings from an ancestry competent to produce him; he is the finalflower and ultimate outcome of converging hereditary forces, thatculminate at last in the full production of his splendid and exceptionalpersonality. The great work which it is his mission to perform in theworld is never wholly of his own inception. It also is the last effectof antecedent conditions, the slow result of tendencies and ideas longworking unseen or but little noticed beneath the surface of opinion, yetall gradually conspiring together towards the definitive revolution atwhose head, in the fulness of time, the as yet unborn genius is destinedto place himself. This is especially the case with those extraordinarywaves of mental upheaval, one of which gave us the Italian renaissance,and another of which is actually in progress around us at the presentday. They have their sources deep down in the past of human thought andhuman feeling, and they are themselves but the final manifestation ofinnumerable energies which have long been silently agitating the soulsof nations in their profoundest depths.
Thus, every great man may be regarded as possessing two distinct linesof ancestry, physical and spiritual, each of which separately demandselucidation. He owes much in one way to his father and his mother, hisgrandfathers and his grandmothers, and his remoter progenitors, fromsome or all of whom he derives, in varying degrees and combinations, thepersonal qualities whose special interaction constitutes his greatnessand his idiosyncrasy; he owes much in another way to his intellectualand moral ancestors, the thinkers and workers who have preceded him inhis own department of thought or action, and have made possible in thecourse of ages the final development of his special revolution or hisparticular system. Viewed as an individual, he is what he is, with allhis powers and faculties and potentialities, in virtue of the brain, theframe, the temperament, the energy he inherits directly from his actualancestors, paternal and maternal; viewed as a factor or element in agreat movement, he is what he is because the movement had succeeded inreaching such and such a point in its progress already without him, andwaited only for such and such a grand and commanding personality inorder to carry it yet a step further on its course of development.
No man who ever lived would more cordially have recognised these twoalternative aspects of the great worker's predetermining causes thanCharles Darwin. He knew well that the individual is the directcumulative product of his physical predecessors, and that he works andis worked upon in innumerable ways by the particular environment intowhose midst he is born. Let us see, then, in his own case what werethese two main sets of conditioning circumstances which finally led upto the joint production of Charles Darwin, the man and the philosopher,the thinking brain and the moving energy. In other words, what was thestate of the science of life at the time when he first began to observeand to speculate; and what was the ancestry which made him be born aperson capable of helping it forward at a single bound over its greatrestricting dogmatic barrier of the fixity of species?
Let us begin, in the first place, by clearing the path beforehand of apopular misconception, so extremely general and almost universal that,unless it be got rid of at the very outset of our sketch, much of thereal scope and purport of Darwin's life and work must, of necessity,remain entirely misunderstood by the vast mass of English readers. Inthe public mind Darwin is, perhaps, most commonly regarded as thediscoverer and founder of the evolution hypothesis. Two ideas areusually associated with his name and memory. It is believed that he wasthe first propounder of the theory which supposes all plant and animalforms to be the result, not of special creation, but of slowmodification in pre-existent organisms. It is further and moreparticularly believed that he was the first propounder of the theorywhich supposes the descent of man to be traceable from a remote and moreor less monkey-like ancestor. Now, as a matter of fact, Darwin was notthe prime originator of either of these two great cardinal ideas. Thoughhe held both as part of his organised theory of things

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