Charles Darwin's education
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Charles Darwin
's education gave him a foundation in the doctrine of Creation
prevalent throughout the West at the time, as well as knowledge of medicine
and theology
. More significantly, it led to his interest in natural history
, which culminated in his taking part in the second voyage of the Beagle
and the eventual inception of his theory
of natural selection
. Although Darwin changed his field of interest several times in these formative years, many of his later discoveries and beliefs were foreshadowed by the influences he had as a youth.
Born in 1809, Charles Darwin grew up in a conservative era when repression of revolutionary Radicalism
had displaced the 18th century Enlightenment
. The Church of England
dominated the English scientific establishment. The Church saw natural history as revealing God's underlying plan and as supporting the existing social hierarchy. It rejected Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume
who had argued for naturalism
and against belief in God
.
The discovery of fossil
s of extinct
species was explained by theories such as catastrophism
. Catastrophism claimed that animals and plants were periodically annihilated as a result of natural catastrophes and then replaced by new species created ex nihilo
(out of nothing). The extinct organisms could then be observed in the fossil record, and their replacements were considered to be immutable.
Darwin's extended family of Darwins and Wedgwoods
was strongly Unitarian
. One of his grandfathers, Erasmus Darwin
, was a successful physician, and was followed in this by his sons Charles Darwin
, who died while still a promising medical student at the University of Edinburgh
in 1778, and Doctor Robert Darwin
, Darwin's father, who named his son after his deceased brother.
Erasmus was a freethinker
who hypothesized that all warm-blooded animals sprang from a single living "filament" long, long ago. He further proposed evolution by acquired characteristics, anticipating the theory later developed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
. Although Charles was born after his grandfather Erasmus died, his father Robert found the texts an invaluable medical guide and Charles read them as a student. Doctor Robert also followed Erasmus in being a freethinker, but as a wealthy society physician was more discreet and attended the Church of England
patronised by his clients.
As a young child at The Mount, Shrewsbury
, Charles Darwin avidly collected animal shells, postal frank
s, bird's egg
s, pebbles and mineral
s. He was very fond of gardening, an interest his father shared and encouraged, and would follow the family gardener around. Early in 1817, soon after becoming eight years old, he started at the small local school run by a Unitarian
minister, the Reverend George Case. At home, Charles learned to ride ponies, shoot and fish. Influenced by his father's fashionable interest in natural history
, he tried to make out the names of plants, and was given by his father two elementary natural history books. Childhood games included inventing and writing out complex secret codes. Charles would tell elaborate stories to his family and friends "for the pure pleasure of attracting attention & surprise", including hoaxes such as pretending to find apples he'd hidden earlier, and what he later called the "monstrous fable" which persuaded his schoolfriend that the colour of primula
flowers could be changed by dosing them with special water. However, his father benignly ignored these passing games, and Charles later recounted that he stopped them because no-one paid any attention.
In July 1817 his mother died after the sudden onset of violent stomach pains and amidst the grief his older sisters had to take charge, with their father continuing to dominate the household whenever he returned from his doctor's rounds. To the eight and a half year old Charles this situation was not a great change, as his mother had frequently been ill and her available time taken up by social duties, so his upbringing had largely been in the hands of his three older sisters who were nearly adults by then. In later years he had difficulty in remembering his mother, and his only memory of her death and funeral was of the children being sent for and going into her room, and his "Father meeting us crying afterwards".
As had been planned previously, in September 1818 Charles joined his older brother Erasmus Alvey Darwin
(nicknamed "Eras") in staying as a boarder at the Shrewsbury School
, where he loathed the required rote learning
, and would try to visit home when he could. He continued collecting minerals and insects, and family holidays in Wales
brought Charles new opportunities, but an older sister ruled that "it was not right to kill insects" for his collections, and he had to find dead ones. He read Gilbert White
's The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne and took up birdwatching
. Eras took an interest in chemistry
and Charles became his assistant, with the two using a garden shed at their home fitted out as a laboratory and extending their interests to crystallography
. When Eras went on to a medical course at the University of Cambridge
, Charles continued to rush home to the shed on weekends, and for this received the nickname "Gas". The headmaster was not amused at this diversion from studying the classics, calling him a poco curante (trifler) in front of the boys. At fifteen, his interest shifted to hunting and bird-shooting at local estates, particularly at Maer
in Staffordshire
, the home of his relatives, the Wedgwood
s. His exasperated father once told him off, saying "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."
His father decided that he should leave school earlier than usual, and in 1825 at the age of sixteen Charles was to go along with his brother who was to attend the University of Edinburgh
for a year to obtain medical qualifications. Charles spent the summer as an apprentice doctor, helping his father with treating the poor of Shropshire
. He had half a dozen patients of his own, and would note their symptoms for his father to make up the prescriptions.
Darwin went to Edinburgh University
in October 1825 to study medicine, accompanied by Eras doing his external hospital study. The brothers took lodgings at 11 Lothian Street, near the University. The city was in an uproar over political and religious controversies, and the competitive system where professors were dependent on attracting student fees for income meant that the university was riven with argumentative feuds and conflicts. The monopoly held by established medical professors was challenged by private independent schools, with new ideas of teaching by dissecting corpses giving clandestine trade to bodysnatcher
s (just shortly before the Burke and Hare scandal).
He attended the official university lectures, but complained that most were stupid and boring, and found himself too sensitive to the sight of blood. He was disgusted by the dull and outdated anatomy lectures of professor Alexander Monro tertius, and later regretted his failure to persevere and learn dissection. Munro's lectures included vehement opposition to George Combe
's daringly materialist
ideas of phrenology
. As the exception to the general dullness, the spectacular chemistry lectures of Thomas Charles Hope
were greatly enjoyed by the brothers, but they did not join a student society giving hands-on experience. Darwin regularly attended clinical wards in the hospital despite his great distress about some of the cases, but could only bear to attend surgical operations twice, rushing away before they were completed due to his distress at the brutality of surgery before anaesthetics. He was long haunted by the memory, particularly of an operation on a child.
The brothers kept each other company, and made extensive use of the library. Darwin's reading included novels and Boswell
's Life of Johnson. He had brought natural history
books with him, including a copy of A Naturalist's Companion by George Graves
, bought in August in anticipation of seeing the seaside, and he borrowed similar books from the library. The brothers went for regular Sunday walks on the shores of the Firth of Forth
and Darwin kept a diary recording their finds, which included a sea mouse
and a cuttlefish
.
Darwin wrote home that "I am going to learn to stuff birds, from a blackamoor... he only charges one guinea, for an hour every day for two months". These lessons in taxidermy
were with the freed black slave John Edmonstone
, who also lived in Lothian Street. Darwin often sat with him to hear tales of the South American rain-forest of Guiana
, and later remembered him as "a very pleasant and intelligent man."
During his summer holiday Charles read Zoönomia
by his grandfather Erasmus Darwin
, which his father valued for medical guidance but which also proposed evolution by acquired characteristics. In June he went on a walking tour in North Wales.
and the 19-year-old John Coldstream
both proposed Darwin for membership of the Plinian Society
on 21 November 1826. John Coldstream came from an evangelical background and shared Darwin's fascination with sea life. Darwin was elected to its Council on 5 December, and at the same meeting Browne presented an attack on Charles Bell
's Anatomy and Physiology of Expression (which in 1872 Darwin would target in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
).
Darwin became a keen student of Robert Edmond Grant
, a Lamarckian
anatomist. Grant had cited Erasmus Darwin
in his doctoral thesis and shared the evolutionist
ideas of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
on evolution by acquired characteristics. Charles joined Grant in pioneering investigations of the life cycle of marine invertebrates on the shores of the Firth of Forth
. Darwin and Grant collected tiny animals from the rock pools and walked along the rocky shore at Prestonpans
, where Grant lived during the winter at Walford House. Grant began taking Darwin as a guest to professor Robert Jameson
's Wernerian Natural History Society
. There Charles saw John James Audubon
lecturing on the habits of North American birds. In the April–October 1826 edition of the quarterly Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal edited by Jameson, an anonymous paper praised "Mr. Lamarck, one of the most sagacious naturalists of our day" for having "expressed himself in the most unambiguous manner. He admits, on the one hand, the existence of the simplest infusory animals; on the other, the existence of the simplest worms, by means of spontaneous generation, that is, by an aggregation process of animal elements; and maintains, that all other animals, by the operation of external circumstances, are evolved from these in a double series, and in a gradual manner." – this was the first use of the word "evolved" in a modern sense. Though some have attributed authorship to Jameson, this is hotly contested and others see Grant as having written it, as the first significant statement to relate Lamarck's concepts to the geological record of living organisms of the past.
Darwin made a discovery new to science when he observed cilia moving the microscopic larvae of a species of the bryzoan Flustra. He rushed to tell Grant, confirming Grant's belief that the larvae of these marine animals were free swimming, but was upset when Grant claimed rights to the work. Darwin also made the discovery that black spores often found in oyster
shells were the eggs of a skate leech
, and was disappointed when Grant announced both finds to the Wernerian on 24 March 1827 without giving Darwin credit, though Grant in his publication about the leech eggs in the Edinburgh Journal of Science later that year acknowledged "The merit of having first ascertained them to belong to that animal is due to my zealous young friend Mr Charles Darwin of Shrewsbury", the first time Darwin's name appeared in print. Darwin made a presentation of both discoveries to the Plinian Society on 27 March, his first public presentation. Later in the meeting Browne argued that mind and consciousness were simply aspects of brain activity, not "souls" or spiritual entities separate from the body. A furious debate ensued, and later someone deleted all mention of this materialist
heresy from the minutes. This was Darwin's first exposure to militant freethought and the storm it stirred up.
During their walks Grant expounded his ideas to Darwin, and on one occasion dropped his guard and praised Lamarck's views on evolution. He explained his radical theory of homology
, an extension of the idea of unity of plan in vogue in Paris
at the time. He argued that all animals had similar organs differing only in complexity and, controversially, that this showed their common descent
. Grant had announced to the Wernerian his identification of the pancreas in a pinned-out sea-slug, showing an organ molluscs shared with mammals. He assumed that as the earth cooled, changing conditions drove life towards higher, hotter blooded forms, as shown by a progressive sequence of fossils, and that study of eggs of the simplest creatures would help reveal monad
s, elementary living particles. While this showed that naturalists could try to "lift the veil that hangs over the origin and progress of the organic world", Darwin was troubled by Grant's atheism
and could see that transmutation
was far from respectable. Darwin later recalled "I listened in silent astonishment, and as far as I can judge, without any effect on my mind. I had previously read the Zoönomia of my grandfather, in which similar views are maintained, but without producing any effect on me."
Shortly afterwards Coldstream graduated and went to Paris
for his hospital study, where he suffered a mental breakdown
, struggling with "the foul mass of corruption within my own bosom", held captive to his body by "corroding desires" and "lustful imaginations". The doctor's report was that though Coldstream had led "a blameless life", he was "more or less in the dark on the vital question of religion, and was troubled with doubts arising from certain Materialist views, which are, alas!, too common among medical students".
, learning about stratigraphic
geology
. Jameson was a Neptunian
geologist who taught that strata had precipitated from a universal ocean: he held debates with chemistry professor Thomas Charles Hope
who held that granites had crystallised from molten crust, ideas influenced by the Plutonism
of James Hutton
who had been Hope's friend. Jameson's view was that "It would be a misfortune if we all had the same way of thinking... Dr, Hope is decidedly opposed to me, and I am opposed to Dr. Hope, and between us we make the subject interesting." Darwin liked Hope and found Jameson a boring speaker. It is not known what he made of Jameson's closing lectures on the "Origin of the Species of Animals". Darwin enjoyed practicals in the Museum and course field trips, learning the sequence of strata. The Museum of Edinburgh University was Jameson's preserve and was then one of the largest in Europe. Darwin assisted and made full use of the collections, spending hours studying, taking notes and stuffing animal specimens.
Even medical lectures proved of some use. In January 1826 Darwin had written home complaining of "a long stupid lecture" from Dr. Andrew Duncan secundus about medicine, but the lectures introduced him to Augustin de Candolle's natural system of classification and emphasis on the "war" between competing species. However, he loathed medicine and left in April 1827 without a degree.
He toured Scotland, went on to Belfast
and Dublin and in May made his first trip to London
to visit his sister Caroline. They joined his uncle Josiah Wedgwood II
on a trip to France
. There Charles fended for himself for a few weeks in Paris
with Browne and Coldstream who was recovering having "found joy and peace in believing". Charles rejoined his relations and then returned to his home at Shrewsbury, Shropshire by July.
His father was unhappy that his younger son would not become a physician and "was very properly vehement against my turning an idle sporting man, which then seemed my probable destination." He therefore enrolled Charles at Christ's College, Cambridge
in 1827 for a Bachelor of Arts
degree as the qualification required before taking a specialised divinity course and becoming an Anglican parson
. He enrolled for an ordinary
degree, as at that time only capable mathematicians would take the Tripos
. At that time the only way to get an honours degree was the mathematical Tripos examination, or the classical Tripos created in 1822, which was only open to those who already had high honours in mathematics, or those who were the sons of peers
.
This was a respectable career for a gentleman at a time when most naturalists in England were clergymen in the tradition of Gilbert White
, who saw it as part of their duties to "explore the wonders of God's creation". Charles had concerns about being able to declare his belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England
, so as well as hunting and fishing, he studied divinity
books. He was particularly convinced by the reasoning of the Revd. John Bird Sumner
's Evidences of Christianity. John Bird Summer wrote that Jesus's religion was "wonderfully suitable... to our ideas of happiness in this & the next world" and there was "no other way... of explaining the series of evidence & probability." His Classics had lapsed since school, and he spent the autumn term at home studying Greek with a tutor. Darwin was accepted as a "pensioner", having paid his fees, on 15 October 1827, but did not attend Cambridge until the Lent Term which began on 13 January 1828. Eras returned from Edinburgh ready to sit his Bachelor of Medicine exam, and in the new year he and Charles set out together for Cambridge. Darwin came into residence in Cambridge on 26 January 1828, and matriculated
at the University's Senate House on 26 February.
in January 1828, Darwin found this elitist theological training house governed by complex rules much more congenial than his experiences at Edinburgh. No rooms were available at Christ's College
, so he took lodgings above a tobacconists in Sidney Street, across the road. Extramural activities were important, and while Darwin did not take up sports or debating, his interests included music and his main passion was the current national craze for the (competitive) collecting of beetle
s. Trainee clergymen scoured Cambridgeshire
for specimens, referring to An Introduction to Entomology
by William Kirby and William Spence
. Charles joined his older cousin William Darwin Fox
who was already a skilled collector and like him got a small dog. The two and their dogs became inseparable. They explored the countryside as Darwin learnt about natural history
from his cousin. Darwin became obsessed with winning the student accolade and collected avidly. Once he stripped bark from a dead tree and caught a ground beetle
in each hand, then saw the rare Crucifix Ground Beetle, Panagaeus cruxmajor
. With the habits of an egg-collector, he popped one ground beetle in his mouth to free his hand, but it ejected some intensely acrid fluid which burnt his tongue and Darwin was forced to spit it out. He lost all three. The specimens he did not lose had to be mounted and identified, and his knowledge from Edinburgh of Lamarck proved useful. Fox introduced him for advice on identification to the Revd. John Stevens Henslow
, professor of botany, and Darwin began attending his soirées, a club for budding naturalists. Here he could meet other professors including the geologist
the Revd. Adam Sedgwick
and the new mineralogist
the Revd. William Whewell
.
In the summer Darwin paid visits to Squire Owen, and romance seemed to be blossoming with the squire's daughter Fanny. Darwin joined other Cambridge friends on a three month "reading party" at Barmouth
on the coast of Wales
to revise their studies with private tutors. For Charles it was an "Entomo-Mathematical expedition". Though he badly needed to catch up with his mathematics, the insect collecting predominated along with pleasant diversions such as hillwalking
, boating and fly fishing
. He went on daily walks with his close friend, the older student John Herbert who he dubbed "Cherbury" after Herbert of Cherbury
, the father of English Deism
. Herbert assisted with the insect collecting, but the usual outcome was that Darwin would examine Herbert's collecting bottle and say "Well, old Cherbury, none of these will do." In September Darwin wrote to tell "My dear old Cherbury" that his own catches had included "some of the rarest of the British Insects, & their being found near Barmouth is quite unknown to the Entomological world: I think I shall write & inform some of the crack Entomologists." He described these "extremely rare" insects and asked Herbert to oblige him by collecting some more of them.
. He now had breakfast every day with his older cousin William Darwin Fox
. This was Fox's last term before his BA
exam, and he now had to cram desperately to make up for lost time. At the Christmas holiday Charles visited London with Eras, toured the scientific institutions "where Naturalists are gregarious" and through his friend the Revd. Frederick William Hope
met other insect collectors. These included James Stephens
, author of Illustrations of British Entomology".
The January term brought miserable weather and a struggle to keep up with his studies. Around this time, he had an earnest conversation with John Herbert about going into Holy Orders, and asked him whether he could answer yes to the question that the Bishop would put in the ordination service, "Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Spirit". When Herbert said that he could not, Darwin replied "Neither can I, and therefore I cannot take orders" to become an ordained priest. Even his interest in insect collecting waned. He fell out with one of the two locals he employed to catch beetles when he found that the local was giving first choice to a rival collector. In the doldrums, he joined a crowd of drinking pals in a frequent "debauch". He put in some hard riding. On one night he and three friends saw the sky lit up and "rode like incarnate devils" eleven miles to see the blaze. They arrived back at two in the morning and violated curfew. He was risking "rustication
", temporary expulsion. Such behaviour would be noticed by the Proctor
s, university officials appointed from the colleges who patrolled the town in plain gowns to police the students.
Student resentment against two unpopular Proctors built up, and on 9 April 1829 a tumult broke out. Charles described how the Senior Proctor was "most gloriously hissed.. & pelted with mud", being "driven so furious" that his servant "dared not go near him for an hour." The Proctors had noted some faces in the mob, and four were rusticated and one fined for being out-of-gown and shouting abuse. Outraged by this leniency, the Proctors quit en masse and printed their resignation to post up around the colleges. Though the unpopular Proctors were gone, Charles was jolted into thinking of the consequences of law-breaking
.
In the Spring, Darwin enrolled for John Stevens Henslow
's lectures on botany
. Professor Henslow's first "public herborizing expedition" of the year took place in May, an outing on which students assisted with collection of plants. However, Darwin made no mention of Henslow in his letters to Fox. On 18 May Darwin wrote to Fox enthusing about his success with beetle collecting, "I think I beat Jenyns in Colymbetes", contrasted with his lack of application to studies: "my time is solely occupied in riding & Entomologizing".
Cambridge
was briefly visited on 21 May by the Radicals Richard Carlile
and the Revd. Robert Taylor
, both recently jailed for blasphemy, on an "infidel home missionary tour" which caused several days of controversy. Taylor was later nicknamed "the Devil's Chaplain
", a phrase remembered by Darwin.
Charles had been sending records of the insects he had caught to the entomologist James Francis Stephens
, and was thrilled when Stevens published about thirty of these records in Illustrations of British entomology; or, a synopsis of indigenous insects etc. which was printed in parts, with the first description under Darwin's name appearing in an appendix dated June 15, 1829.
That summer, amongst horse riding and beetle collecting, Charles visited his cousin Fox, and this time Charles was teaching entomology to his older cousin. Home at Shrewsbury, Shropshire, he saw his brother Erasmus whose "delicate frame" led to him now giving up medicine and retiring at the age of 26. The brothers visited the Birmingham
Music Festival for what Charles described as the "most glorious" experience.
's Friday evening soirées. For the exam he slogged away at Greek and Latin, and studied William Paley
's Evidences of Christianity, becoming so delighted with Paley's logic that he learnt it by heart. Later, on the Voyage of the Beagle
, he saw evidence which challenged Paley's rose-tinted view, but at this time he was convinced that the Christian revelation established "a future state of reward and punishment" which "gives order for confusion: makes the moral world of a piece with the natural". As with Cambridge University, God gave authority and assigned stations in life, misconduct was penalised and excellence bountifully rewarded. Charles took the one day verbal examination on 24 March 1830. There were three hours in the morning on the classics and three in the afternoon on the New Testament
and Paley. The next day he was delighted to be informed that he had passed.
Several of his friends celebrated their examination successes by forming a weekly club dining in each other's rooms in rotation, possibly officially called the Gourmet Club but commonly known as the Glutton Club. The latter name was proposed to ridicule another group whose Greek title meant "fond of dainties", but who dined out on "Mutton Chops, or Beans & Bacon". The Glutton Club attempted to live up to their title by experimentally dining on "birds and beasts which were before unknown to human palate" and tried hawk and bittern
, but gave up after eating an old brown owl, "which was indescribable". They had more amusement from concluding each meeting with "a game of mild vingt-et-un
".
Over Easter Charles stayed at Cambridge, mounting and cataloguing his beetle collection. He then became an enthusiastic member of the botany
course which the "good natured & agreeable" professor Henslow taught five days a week in the Botanic Gardens and on field trips. Henslow's outings were attended by 78 men including professor Whewell. Charles became the "favourite pupil", known as "the man who walks with Henslow", helping to find specimens and to set up "practicals" dissecting plants. He became interested in pollen. One day he watched through a microscope and saw "transparent cones" emerge from the side of a geranium pollen grain. Then one burst spraying out "numberless granules". Henslow explained that the granules were indeed the constituent atoms of pollen, but they had no intrinsic vital power – life was endowed from outside and ultimately derived its power from God, whatever more "speculative" naturalists argued regarding self-activating power. Darwin had been taught otherwise by Grant, and reflected quietly on this, biding his time.
For the summer holidays Darwin arranged to meet Fox at The Mount, but Darwin's father had been ill and family tensions led to a row. Charles went off with the Revd. Hope and other friends for three weeks "entomologizing" in North Wales, hunting for beetles and trout fishing. He went partridge shooting at Maer before returning home.
government. In response, radical street protests demanded suffrage
, equality
and freedom of religion
. Then in November the Tory administration collapsed and the Whigs
took over. Paley's text even supported abolition of the Thirty-nine Articles
of the Anglican faith which every student at Cambridge (and Oxford University) was required to sign. Henslow insisted that "he should be grieved if a single word... was altered" and emphasised the need to respect authority. This happened even as campaigns of civil disobedience spread to starving agricultural labourers and villages close to Cambridge suffered riots and arson attacks.
In the third week of January 1831 Charles sat his final exam. There were three days of written papers covering the Classics, the two Paley texts and John Locke
's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
, then mathematics and physics. At the end of the week when the results were posted he was dazed and proud to have come 10th out of a pass list of 178 doing the ordinary degree. Charles shone in theology and scraped through in the other subjects. He was also exhausted and depressed, writing to Fox "I do not know why the degree should make one so miserable."
's Natural Theology which set out to refute David Hume
's argument that "design" by a Creator
was merely a human projection onto the forces of nature. Paley saw a rational proof of God's existence in the complexity and perfect adaptation
to needs of living beings exquisitely fitted to their places in a happy world, while attacking the evolutionary ideas of Erasmus Darwin
as coinciding with atheistic schemes and lacking evidence. Paley's benevolent God acted in nature though uniform and universal laws, not arbitrary miracles or changes of laws, and this use of secondary laws provided a theodicy
explaining the problem of evil
by separating nature from direct divine action. This convinced Charles and encouraged his interest in science. He later wrote "I do not think I hardly ever admired a book more than Paley's Natural Theology: I could almost formerly have said it by heart."
He read John Herschel
's new Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, learning that nature was governed by laws, and the highest aim of natural philosophy
was to understand them through an orderly process of induction
, balancing observation and theorising. This was part of the liberal Christianity
of Darwin's tutors, who saw no disharmony between honest inductive science and religion. Such science was religion, and could not be heretical. Darwin also read Alexander von Humboldt
's Personal Narrative, and the two books were immensely influential, stirring up in him "a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science."
Henslow had taken holy orders only after he married and obtained his first chair. He had previously taken opportunities for reading and travel, but now confided that he still had an unfulfilled ambition to "explore regions but little known, and enrich science with new species." By early April Darwin was hatching a scheme to visit the Canary Islands
. He copied out passages from Humboldt about Tenerife
, and made plans for a month-long visit there to study natural history in the tropics. Only Henslow and three of Henslow's friends showed interest, with the most likely companion being the tutor Marmaduke Ramsay. Darwin rushed home at Easter to get his father's backing, and was given "a 200£ note" to pay his debts as well as permission to cost out the trip. Charles then visited his brother Erasmus in a London excited by the Whig Reform Bill which would redistribute Parliamentary seats and extend the middle class vote.
Darwin "plagued" his friends about the "Canary scheme" and made preparations, studying Spanish language
, and expecting Henslow to "cram me" in geology
. Instead, Henslow introduced Darwin to the great geologist
the Revd. Adam Sedgwick
who had been his own tutor, and shared views on religion, politics and morals. Darwin was fired up by Sedgwick's Spring course of "equestrian outings" with its vistas of the grandeur of God's creation, so much of which was yet unexplored. He exclaimed, "What a capital hand is Sedgewick for drawing large cheques upon the Bank of Time!". When Sedgwick mentioned the effects of a local spring from a chalk hill depositing lime on twigs, Charles rode out to find the spring and threw a bush in, then later brought back the white coated spray which Sedgwick exhibited in class, inspiring others to do the same.
In the summer Charles obtained a clinometer
, and practised mapping strata
in Shropshire
. He investigated ship sailings, but the trip to Teneriffe had to be postponed to the following June, and Henslow was unlikely to come. On 4 August 1831 Sedgwick arrived in his gig at The Mount, Shrewsbury
, to take Charles as his assistant on a short geological expedition mapping strata in Wales
. That evening Charles told of a tropical shell found in a nearby gravel pit and was impressed when Sedgwick responded that it must have been thrown away there, as it contradicted the known geology of the area. This made him realise "that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them." Sedgwick aimed to investigate and correct possible errors in George Greenough
's geological map of 1820, and to trace the fossil record to the earliest times to rebut the uniformitarian
ideas just published by Charles Lyell
.
On the morning of 5 August they went from Shrewsbury to Llangollen
, and on 11 August reached Penrhyn Quarry
. After less than a week of doing hard practical work Charles had learnt how to identify specimens, interpret strata and generalise from his observations. Then he went off on his own to collect samples and investigate the Vale of Clwyd
, looking in vain for the Old Red Sandstone
shown by Greenough. They met up in Colwyn
, and Sedgwick's pleasure at the confirmation that the map was incorrect made Darwin "exceedingly proud". They went on to Capel Curig
where Charles struck out on his own across 30 miles (50 km) of "some strange wild places" to Barmouth
. He had parted from Sedgwick by 20 August, and travelled via Ffestiniog
.
on the evening of 23 August, Charles met up with a "reading party" of Cambridge friends for a time before he left on the morning of 29 August, to go back to Shrewsbury and on to partridge shooting with his Wedgwood relatives at Maer Hall
. He was grieved to have received a message that Ramsay had died. This upset Darwin's plans for a visit in the following year to Tenerife. He arrived home at The Mount, Shrewsbury
, on 29 August, and found a letter from Henslow. The Cambridge Fellow George Peacock
had heard from Francis Beaufort
of plans for the second survey voyage of
HMS Beagle
, and had written to Henslow proposing Leonard Jenyns as "a proper person to go out as a naturalist with this expedition", or if he was unavailable seeking recommendations for an alternative to take up this "glorious opportunity". When Jenyns decided not to leave his parish, he and Henslow thought of Darwin. Henslow's letter, read by Peacock and forwarded to Darwin, expected him to eagerly catch at the likely offer of a two-year trip to Terra del Fuego
& home by the East Indies
, not as "a finished Naturalist", but as a gentleman
"amply qualified for collecting, observing, & noting any thing worthy to be noted in Natural History". The appointment was more as a companion to Captain Robert FitzRoy
, than as a mere collector. Henslow wrote "I assure you I think you are the very man they are in search of".
His father thought the voyage a waste of his son's time and strongly objected. Dejected, Charles declined the offer, and went to Maer for the partridge shooting with a note from his father to "Uncle Jos" Wedgwood
. This contained a prescription for a bowel ailment and a note saying that Charles had quite given up the proposed "voyage of discovery", but "if you think differently from me I shall wish him to follow your advice." Charles' hopes were revived by this unexpected news, and his relatives came out in favour of the voyage. He outlined his father's objections, and sat up that night drafting a reply with his uncle. Jos wrote suggesting that Charles would be likely to "acquire and strengthen, habits of application", and "Natural History... is very suitable to a Clergyman." Though "useless as regards his profession", for "a man of enlarged curiosity, it affords him such an opportunity of seeing men and things as happens to few". The Admiralty would look after him well, but "you & Charles... must decide." Charles begged "one favour... a decided answer, yes or no." This reply was sent post-haste early on the morning of 1 September and Charles went shooting. About 10 o'clock he received word from his uncle that they should go to The Mount at once. When they arrived a few hours later, Charles' father had decided that he would give "all the assistance in my power".
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's education gave him a foundation in the doctrine of Creation
History of creationism
The history of creationism relates to the history of thought based on a premise that the natural universe had a beginning, and came into being supernaturally...
prevalent throughout the West at the time, as well as knowledge of medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
and theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
. More significantly, it led to his interest in natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
, which culminated in his taking part in the second voyage of the Beagle
Second voyage of HMS Beagle
The second voyage of HMS Beagle, from 27 December 1831 to 2 October 1836, was the second survey expedition of HMS Beagle, under captain Robert FitzRoy who had taken over command of the ship on its first voyage after her previous captain committed suicide...
and the eventual inception of his theory
Inception of Darwin's theory
The inception of Darwin's theory occurred during an intensively busy period which began when Charles Darwin returned from the survey voyage of the Beagle, with his reputation as a fossil collector and geologist already established...
of natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
. Although Darwin changed his field of interest several times in these formative years, many of his later discoveries and beliefs were foreshadowed by the influences he had as a youth.
Background and influences
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
had displaced the 18th century Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
. The Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
dominated the English scientific establishment. The Church saw natural history as revealing God's underlying plan and as supporting the existing social hierarchy. It rejected Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
who had argued for naturalism
Naturalism (philosophy)
Naturalism commonly refers to the philosophical viewpoint that the natural universe and its natural laws and forces operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe that we know...
and against belief in God
Theism
Theism, in the broadest sense, is the belief that at least one deity exists.In a more specific sense, theism refers to a doctrine concerning the nature of a monotheistic God and God's relationship to the universe....
.
The discovery of fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
s of extinct
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
species was explained by theories such as catastrophism
Catastrophism
Catastrophism is the theory that the Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. The dominant paradigm of modern geology is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance...
. Catastrophism claimed that animals and plants were periodically annihilated as a result of natural catastrophes and then replaced by new species created ex nihilo
Ex nihilo
Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning "out of nothing". It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning "creation out of nothing"—chiefly in philosophical or theological contexts, but also occurs in other fields.In theology, the common phrase creatio ex...
(out of nothing). The extinct organisms could then be observed in the fossil record, and their replacements were considered to be immutable.
Darwin's extended family of Darwins and Wedgwoods
Darwin — Wedgwood family
The Darwin–Wedgwood family is actually two interrelated English families, descended from the prominent 18th century doctor, Erasmus Darwin, and Josiah Wedgwood, founder of the pottery firm, Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, the most notable member of which was Charles Darwin...
was strongly Unitarian
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
. One of his grandfathers, Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave trade abolitionist,inventor and poet...
, was a successful physician, and was followed in this by his sons Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin (1758–1778)
Charles Darwin was the oldest son of Erasmus Darwin and Mary Howard , and was the uncle of the famous naturalist Charles Robert Darwin...
, who died while still a promising medical student at the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
in 1778, and Doctor Robert Darwin
Robert Darwin
Dr Robert Waring Darwin, F.R.S. was an English medical doctor, who today is best known as the father of the naturalist Charles Darwin. He was a member of the influential Darwin-Wedgwood family.-Biography:...
, Darwin's father, who named his son after his deceased brother.
Erasmus was a freethinker
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
who hypothesized that all warm-blooded animals sprang from a single living "filament" long, long ago. He further proposed evolution by acquired characteristics, anticipating the theory later developed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck , often known simply as Lamarck, was a French naturalist...
. Although Charles was born after his grandfather Erasmus died, his father Robert found the texts an invaluable medical guide and Charles read them as a student. Doctor Robert also followed Erasmus in being a freethinker, but as a wealthy society physician was more discreet and attended the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
patronised by his clients.
Childhood
The Mount, Shrewsbury
The Mount, is the site of a house in Shrewsbury, officially known as Mount House that belonged to Robert Darwin and was the birthplace of his son Charles Darwin.- Overview :...
, Charles Darwin avidly collected animal shells, postal frank
Philately
Philately is the study of stamps and postal history and other related items. Philately involves more than just stamp collecting, which does not necessarily involve the study of stamps. It is possible to be a philatelist without owning any stamps...
s, bird's egg
Egg (biology)
An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...
s, pebbles and mineral
Mineral
A mineral is a naturally occurring solid chemical substance formed through biogeochemical processes, having characteristic chemical composition, highly ordered atomic structure, and specific physical properties. By comparison, a rock is an aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids and does not...
s. He was very fond of gardening, an interest his father shared and encouraged, and would follow the family gardener around. Early in 1817, soon after becoming eight years old, he started at the small local school run by a Unitarian
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
minister, the Reverend George Case. At home, Charles learned to ride ponies, shoot and fish. Influenced by his father's fashionable interest in natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
, he tried to make out the names of plants, and was given by his father two elementary natural history books. Childhood games included inventing and writing out complex secret codes. Charles would tell elaborate stories to his family and friends "for the pure pleasure of attracting attention & surprise", including hoaxes such as pretending to find apples he'd hidden earlier, and what he later called the "monstrous fable" which persuaded his schoolfriend that the colour of primula
Primula
Primula is a genus of 400–500 species of low-growing herbs in the family Primulaceae. They include primrose, auricula, cowslip and oxlip. Many species are grown for their ornamental flowers...
flowers could be changed by dosing them with special water. However, his father benignly ignored these passing games, and Charles later recounted that he stopped them because no-one paid any attention.
In July 1817 his mother died after the sudden onset of violent stomach pains and amidst the grief his older sisters had to take charge, with their father continuing to dominate the household whenever he returned from his doctor's rounds. To the eight and a half year old Charles this situation was not a great change, as his mother had frequently been ill and her available time taken up by social duties, so his upbringing had largely been in the hands of his three older sisters who were nearly adults by then. In later years he had difficulty in remembering his mother, and his only memory of her death and funeral was of the children being sent for and going into her room, and his "Father meeting us crying afterwards".
As had been planned previously, in September 1818 Charles joined his older brother Erasmus Alvey Darwin
Erasmus Alvey Darwin
Erasmus Alvey Darwin , nicknamed Eras or Ras, was the older brother of Charles Darwin, born five years earlier, and also brought up at the family home, The Mount House, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England...
(nicknamed "Eras") in staying as a boarder at the Shrewsbury School
Shrewsbury School
Shrewsbury School is a co-educational independent school for pupils aged 13 to 18, founded by Royal Charter in 1552. The present campus to which the school moved in 1882 is located on the banks of the River Severn in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England...
, where he loathed the required rote learning
Rote learning
Rote learning is a learning technique which focuses on memorization. The major practice involved in rote learning is learning by repetition by which students commit information to memory in a highly structured way. The idea is that one will be able to quickly recall the meaning of the material the...
, and would try to visit home when he could. He continued collecting minerals and insects, and family holidays in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
brought Charles new opportunities, but an older sister ruled that "it was not right to kill insects" for his collections, and he had to find dead ones. He read Gilbert White
Gilbert White
Gilbert White FRS was a pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist.-Life:White was born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He was educated at the Holy Ghost School and by a private tutor in Basingstoke before going to Oriel College, Oxford...
's The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne and took up birdwatching
Birdwatching
Birdwatching or birding is the observation of birds as a recreational activity. It can be done with the naked eye, through a visual enhancement device like binoculars and telescopes, or by listening for bird sounds. Birding often involves a significant auditory component, as many bird species are...
. Eras took an interest in chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
and Charles became his assistant, with the two using a garden shed at their home fitted out as a laboratory and extending their interests to crystallography
Crystallography
Crystallography is the experimental science of the arrangement of atoms in solids. The word "crystallography" derives from the Greek words crystallon = cold drop / frozen drop, with its meaning extending to all solids with some degree of transparency, and grapho = write.Before the development of...
. When Eras went on to a medical course at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, Charles continued to rush home to the shed on weekends, and for this received the nickname "Gas". The headmaster was not amused at this diversion from studying the classics, calling him a poco curante (trifler) in front of the boys. At fifteen, his interest shifted to hunting and bird-shooting at local estates, particularly at Maer
Maer, Staffordshire
Maer is a rural village and civil parish in the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England, to the west of the pottery manufacturing town of Stoke-on-Trent....
in Staffordshire
Staffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...
, the home of his relatives, the Wedgwood
Wedgwood
Wedgwood, strictly speaking Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, is a pottery firm owned by KPS Capital Partners, a private equity company based in New York City, USA. Wedgwood was founded on May 1, 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood and in 1987 merged with Waterford Crystal to create Waterford Wedgwood, an...
s. His exasperated father once told him off, saying "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."
His father decided that he should leave school earlier than usual, and in 1825 at the age of sixteen Charles was to go along with his brother who was to attend the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
for a year to obtain medical qualifications. Charles spent the summer as an apprentice doctor, helping his father with treating the poor of Shropshire
Shropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
. He had half a dozen patients of his own, and would note their symptoms for his father to make up the prescriptions.
University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
in October 1825 to study medicine, accompanied by Eras doing his external hospital study. The brothers took lodgings at 11 Lothian Street, near the University. The city was in an uproar over political and religious controversies, and the competitive system where professors were dependent on attracting student fees for income meant that the university was riven with argumentative feuds and conflicts. The monopoly held by established medical professors was challenged by private independent schools, with new ideas of teaching by dissecting corpses giving clandestine trade to bodysnatcher
Bodysnatcher
Bodysnatcher was a partly finished script that was written but unused for the first series of the BBC sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf. It was said to involve the now intangible Rimmer attempting to construct a body of his own using components of Lister's—such as dandruff and fingernail clippings—before...
s (just shortly before the Burke and Hare scandal).
He attended the official university lectures, but complained that most were stupid and boring, and found himself too sensitive to the sight of blood. He was disgusted by the dull and outdated anatomy lectures of professor Alexander Monro tertius, and later regretted his failure to persevere and learn dissection. Munro's lectures included vehement opposition to George Combe
George Combe
George Combe , was a Scottish lawyer and writer on phrenology and education. In later years, he devoted himself to the promotion of phrenology. His major work was The Constitution of Man .-Early life:...
's daringly materialist
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
ideas of phrenology
Phrenology
Phrenology is a pseudoscience primarily focused on measurements of the human skull, based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions or modules...
. As the exception to the general dullness, the spectacular chemistry lectures of Thomas Charles Hope
Thomas Charles Hope
Thomas Charles Hope was a Scottish physician and chemist. He discovered the element strontium, and gave his name to Hope's Experiment, which shows that water reaches its maximum density at 4°C....
were greatly enjoyed by the brothers, but they did not join a student society giving hands-on experience. Darwin regularly attended clinical wards in the hospital despite his great distress about some of the cases, but could only bear to attend surgical operations twice, rushing away before they were completed due to his distress at the brutality of surgery before anaesthetics. He was long haunted by the memory, particularly of an operation on a child.
The brothers kept each other company, and made extensive use of the library. Darwin's reading included novels and Boswell
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....
's Life of Johnson. He had brought natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
books with him, including a copy of A Naturalist's Companion by George Graves
George Graves
George Graves was the author of a comprehensive instruction guidebook for beginners in natural history at a time when there was a growing interest in collecting animal, plant and geological specimens.-The naturalist's pocket-book:...
, bought in August in anticipation of seeing the seaside, and he borrowed similar books from the library. The brothers went for regular Sunday walks on the shores of the Firth of Forth
Firth of Forth
The Firth of Forth is the estuary or firth of Scotland's River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea, between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh and East Lothian to the south...
and Darwin kept a diary recording their finds, which included a sea mouse
Sea mouse
The sea mouse, Aphrodita aculeata is a marine polychaete worm found in the North Atlantic, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean. The sea mouse normally lies buried head-first in the sand. It can live in muddy sea floors down to around 1000m.Its body is covered in a dense mat of...
and a cuttlefish
Cuttlefish
Cuttlefish are marine animals of the order Sepiida. They belong to the class Cephalopoda . Despite their name, cuttlefish are not fish but molluscs....
.
Darwin wrote home that "I am going to learn to stuff birds, from a blackamoor... he only charges one guinea, for an hour every day for two months". These lessons in taxidermy
Taxidermy
Taxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all vertebrate species of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians...
were with the freed black slave John Edmonstone
John Edmonstone
John Edmonstone was originally a black slave probably born in Demarara . He learned taxidermy from Charles Waterton, whose father in law, Charles Edmonstone had a plantation in Demarara.After he was freed, John came to Glasgow with his former master, Charles Edmonstone...
, who also lived in Lothian Street. Darwin often sat with him to hear tales of the South American rain-forest of Guiana
Guiana
The Guiana Shield is one of the three cratons of the South American Plate. It is a 1.7 billion year old Precambrian geological formation in northeast South America that forms a portion of the northern coast. The higher elevations on the shield are called the Guiana Highlands, which is where the...
, and later remembered him as "a very pleasant and intelligent man."
During his summer holiday Charles read Zoönomia
Zoönomia
Zoonomia; or the Laws of Organic Life is a two-volume medical work by Erasmus Darwin dealing with pathology, anatomy, psychology, and the functioning of the body...
by his grandfather Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave trade abolitionist,inventor and poet...
, which his father valued for medical guidance but which also proposed evolution by acquired characteristics. In June he went on a walking tour in North Wales.
Lamarckian anatomy
In his second year Charles became active in student societies for naturalists. The 21-year-old radical demagogue William A. F. BrowneWilliam A. F. Browne
Dr William A. F. Browne was one of the most significant psychiatrists of the nineteenth century. At Montrose Asylum and, later, at Crichton Royal in Dumfries , Browne introduced activities for patients including writing, art, group activity and drama, pioneered early forms of occupational...
and the 19-year-old John Coldstream
John Coldstream
-Life:Coldstream, only son of Robert Coldstream, merchant, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Phillips of Stobcross, Glasgow, was born at Leith on 19 March 1806, and after attending the Royal High School, Edinburgh, continued his studies at the university...
both proposed Darwin for membership of the Plinian Society
Plinian Society
The Plinian Society was a club at the University of Edinburgh for students interested in natural history. It was founded in 1823. Several of its members went on to have prominent careers, most notably Charles Darwin who announced his first scientific discoveries at the society.-Foundation,...
on 21 November 1826. John Coldstream came from an evangelical background and shared Darwin's fascination with sea life. Darwin was elected to its Council on 5 December, and at the same meeting Browne presented an attack on Charles Bell
Charles Bell
Sir Charles Bell was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, neurologist and philosophical theologian.His three older brothers included John Bell , also a noted surgeon and writer; and the advocate George Joseph Bell .-Life:...
's Anatomy and Physiology of Expression (which in 1872 Darwin would target in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is a book by Charles Darwin, published in 1872, concerning genetically determined aspects of behaviour. It was published thirteen years after On The Origin of Species and is, along with his 1871 book The Descent of Man, Darwin's main consideration...
).
Darwin became a keen student of Robert Edmond Grant
Robert Edmond Grant
Robert Edmond Grant MD FRCPEd FRS was born in Edinburgh and educated at Edinburgh University as a physician. He became one of the foremost biologists of the early 19th century at Edinburgh and subsequently the first Professor of Comparative Anatomy at University College London...
, a Lamarckian
Lamarckism
Lamarckism is the idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring . It is named after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , who incorporated the action of soft inheritance into his evolutionary theories...
anatomist. Grant had cited Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave trade abolitionist,inventor and poet...
in his doctoral thesis and shared the evolutionist
Evolutionism
Evolutionism refers to the biological concept of evolution, specifically to a widely held 19th century belief that organisms are intrinsically bound to increase in complexity. The belief was extended to include cultural evolution and social evolution...
ideas of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories...
on evolution by acquired characteristics. Charles joined Grant in pioneering investigations of the life cycle of marine invertebrates on the shores of the Firth of Forth
Firth of Forth
The Firth of Forth is the estuary or firth of Scotland's River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea, between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh and East Lothian to the south...
. Darwin and Grant collected tiny animals from the rock pools and walked along the rocky shore at Prestonpans
Prestonpans
Prestonpans is a small town to the east of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the unitary council area of East Lothian. It has a population of 7,153 . It is the site of the 1745 Battle of Prestonpans, and has a history dating back to the 11th century...
, where Grant lived during the winter at Walford House. Grant began taking Darwin as a guest to professor Robert Jameson
Robert Jameson
thumb|Robert JamesonProfessor Robert Jameson, FRS FRSE was a Scottish naturalist and mineralogist.As Regius Professor at the University of Edinburgh for fifty years, Jameson is notable for his advanced scholarship in natural history, his superb museum collection, and for his tuition of Charles...
's Wernerian Natural History Society
Wernerian Natural History Society
The Wernerian Natural History Society , commonly abbreviated as the Wernerian Society, was a learned society interested in the broad field of natural history, and saw papers presented on various topics such as mineralogy, plants, insects, and scholarly expeditions...
. There Charles saw John James Audubon
John James Audubon
John James Audubon was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats...
lecturing on the habits of North American birds. In the April–October 1826 edition of the quarterly Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal edited by Jameson, an anonymous paper praised "Mr. Lamarck, one of the most sagacious naturalists of our day" for having "expressed himself in the most unambiguous manner. He admits, on the one hand, the existence of the simplest infusory animals; on the other, the existence of the simplest worms, by means of spontaneous generation, that is, by an aggregation process of animal elements; and maintains, that all other animals, by the operation of external circumstances, are evolved from these in a double series, and in a gradual manner." – this was the first use of the word "evolved" in a modern sense. Though some have attributed authorship to Jameson, this is hotly contested and others see Grant as having written it, as the first significant statement to relate Lamarck's concepts to the geological record of living organisms of the past.
Darwin made a discovery new to science when he observed cilia moving the microscopic larvae of a species of the bryzoan Flustra. He rushed to tell Grant, confirming Grant's belief that the larvae of these marine animals were free swimming, but was upset when Grant claimed rights to the work. Darwin also made the discovery that black spores often found in oyster
Oyster
The word oyster is used as a common name for a number of distinct groups of bivalve molluscs which live in marine or brackish habitats. The valves are highly calcified....
shells were the eggs of a skate leech
Leech
Leeches are segmented worms that belong to the phylum Annelida and comprise the subclass Hirudinea. Like other oligochaetes such as earthworms, leeches share a clitellum and are hermaphrodites. Nevertheless, they differ from other oligochaetes in significant ways...
, and was disappointed when Grant announced both finds to the Wernerian on 24 March 1827 without giving Darwin credit, though Grant in his publication about the leech eggs in the Edinburgh Journal of Science later that year acknowledged "The merit of having first ascertained them to belong to that animal is due to my zealous young friend Mr Charles Darwin of Shrewsbury", the first time Darwin's name appeared in print. Darwin made a presentation of both discoveries to the Plinian Society on 27 March, his first public presentation. Later in the meeting Browne argued that mind and consciousness were simply aspects of brain activity, not "souls" or spiritual entities separate from the body. A furious debate ensued, and later someone deleted all mention of this materialist
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
heresy from the minutes. This was Darwin's first exposure to militant freethought and the storm it stirred up.
During their walks Grant expounded his ideas to Darwin, and on one occasion dropped his guard and praised Lamarck's views on evolution. He explained his radical theory of homology
Homology (biology)
Homology forms the basis of organization for comparative biology. In 1843, Richard Owen defined homology as "the same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function". Organs as different as a bat's wing, a seal's flipper, a cat's paw and a human hand have a common underlying...
, an extension of the idea of unity of plan in vogue in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
at the time. He argued that all animals had similar organs differing only in complexity and, controversially, that this showed their common descent
Common descent
In evolutionary biology, a group of organisms share common descent if they have a common ancestor. There is strong quantitative support for the theory that all living organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor....
. Grant had announced to the Wernerian his identification of the pancreas in a pinned-out sea-slug, showing an organ molluscs shared with mammals. He assumed that as the earth cooled, changing conditions drove life towards higher, hotter blooded forms, as shown by a progressive sequence of fossils, and that study of eggs of the simplest creatures would help reveal monad
Monad
-Philosophy:*Monad a term meaning "unit" used variously by ancient philosophers from the Pythagoreans to Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus to signify a variety of entities from a genus to God....
s, elementary living particles. While this showed that naturalists could try to "lift the veil that hangs over the origin and progress of the organic world", Darwin was troubled by Grant's atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
and could see that transmutation
Transmutation of species
Transmutation of species was a term used by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 for his theory that described the altering of one species into another, and the term is often used to describe 19th century evolutionary ideas that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection...
was far from respectable. Darwin later recalled "I listened in silent astonishment, and as far as I can judge, without any effect on my mind. I had previously read the Zoönomia of my grandfather, in which similar views are maintained, but without producing any effect on me."
Shortly afterwards Coldstream graduated and went to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
for his hospital study, where he suffered a mental breakdown
Mental breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
, struggling with "the foul mass of corruption within my own bosom", held captive to his body by "corroding desires" and "lustful imaginations". The doctor's report was that though Coldstream had led "a blameless life", he was "more or less in the dark on the vital question of religion, and was troubled with doubts arising from certain Materialist views, which are, alas!, too common among medical students".
Geology and Origin of the Species
Darwin also took the popular natural history course of Professor Robert JamesonRobert Jameson
thumb|Robert JamesonProfessor Robert Jameson, FRS FRSE was a Scottish naturalist and mineralogist.As Regius Professor at the University of Edinburgh for fifty years, Jameson is notable for his advanced scholarship in natural history, his superb museum collection, and for his tuition of Charles...
, learning about stratigraphic
Stratigraphy
Stratigraphy, a branch of geology, studies rock layers and layering . It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks....
geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
. Jameson was a Neptunian
Neptunism
Neptunism is a discredited and obsolete scientific theory of geology proposed by Abraham Gottlob Werner in the late 18th century that proposed rocks formed from the crystallisation of minerals in the early Earth's oceans....
geologist who taught that strata had precipitated from a universal ocean: he held debates with chemistry professor Thomas Charles Hope
Thomas Charles Hope
Thomas Charles Hope was a Scottish physician and chemist. He discovered the element strontium, and gave his name to Hope's Experiment, which shows that water reaches its maximum density at 4°C....
who held that granites had crystallised from molten crust, ideas influenced by the Plutonism
Plutonism
Plutonism is the geologic theory that the rocks forming the Earth were formed in fire by volcanic activity, with a continuing gradual process of weathering and erosion wearing away rocks, which were then deposited on the sea bed, re-formed into layers of sedimentary rock by heat and pressure, and...
of James Hutton
James Hutton
James Hutton was a Scottish physician, geologist, naturalist, chemical manufacturer and experimental agriculturalist. He is considered the father of modern geology...
who had been Hope's friend. Jameson's view was that "It would be a misfortune if we all had the same way of thinking... Dr, Hope is decidedly opposed to me, and I am opposed to Dr. Hope, and between us we make the subject interesting." Darwin liked Hope and found Jameson a boring speaker. It is not known what he made of Jameson's closing lectures on the "Origin of the Species of Animals". Darwin enjoyed practicals in the Museum and course field trips, learning the sequence of strata. The Museum of Edinburgh University was Jameson's preserve and was then one of the largest in Europe. Darwin assisted and made full use of the collections, spending hours studying, taking notes and stuffing animal specimens.
Even medical lectures proved of some use. In January 1826 Darwin had written home complaining of "a long stupid lecture" from Dr. Andrew Duncan secundus about medicine, but the lectures introduced him to Augustin de Candolle's natural system of classification and emphasis on the "war" between competing species. However, he loathed medicine and left in April 1827 without a degree.
He toured Scotland, went on to Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
and Dublin and in May made his first trip to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to visit his sister Caroline. They joined his uncle Josiah Wedgwood II
Josiah Wedgwood II
Josiah Wedgwood II , the son of the English potter Josiah Wedgwood, continued his father's firm and was Member of Parliament for Stoke-upon-Trent from 1832 to 1835...
on a trip to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. There Charles fended for himself for a few weeks in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
with Browne and Coldstream who was recovering having "found joy and peace in believing". Charles rejoined his relations and then returned to his home at Shrewsbury, Shropshire by July.
University of Cambridge
Christ's College, Cambridge
Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.With a reputation for high academic standards, Christ's College averaged top place in the Tompkins Table from 1980-2000 . In 2011, Christ's was placed sixth.-College history:...
in 1827 for a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree as the qualification required before taking a specialised divinity course and becoming an Anglican parson
Parson
In the pre-Reformation church, a parson was the priest of an independent parish church, that is, a parish church not under the control of a larger ecclesiastical or monastic organization...
. He enrolled for an ordinary
British undergraduate degree classification
The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading scheme for undergraduate degrees in the United Kingdom...
degree, as at that time only capable mathematicians would take the Tripos
Tripos
The University of Cambridge, England, divides the different kinds of honours bachelor's degree by Tripos , plural Triposes. The word has an obscure etymology, but may be traced to the three-legged stool candidates once used to sit on when taking oral examinations...
. At that time the only way to get an honours degree was the mathematical Tripos examination, or the classical Tripos created in 1822, which was only open to those who already had high honours in mathematics, or those who were the sons of peers
Peerage
The Peerage is a legal system of largely hereditary titles in the United Kingdom, which constitute the ranks of British nobility and is part of the British honours system...
.
This was a respectable career for a gentleman at a time when most naturalists in England were clergymen in the tradition of Gilbert White
Gilbert White
Gilbert White FRS was a pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist.-Life:White was born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He was educated at the Holy Ghost School and by a private tutor in Basingstoke before going to Oriel College, Oxford...
, who saw it as part of their duties to "explore the wonders of God's creation". Charles had concerns about being able to declare his belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
, so as well as hunting and fishing, he studied divinity
Divinity
Divinity and divine are broadly applied but loosely defined terms, used variously within different faiths and belief systems — and even by different individuals within a given faith — to refer to some transcendent or transcendental power or deity, or its attributes or manifestations in...
books. He was particularly convinced by the reasoning of the Revd. John Bird Sumner
John Bird Sumner
John Bird Sumner was a bishop in the Church of England and Archbishop of Canterbury.-Life:Sumner was the elder brother of Bishop Charles Richard Sumner. He was born at Kenilworth, Warwickshire and educated at Eton College and Cambridge University. In 1802 he became a master at Eton and was...
's Evidences of Christianity. John Bird Summer wrote that Jesus's religion was "wonderfully suitable... to our ideas of happiness in this & the next world" and there was "no other way... of explaining the series of evidence & probability." His Classics had lapsed since school, and he spent the autumn term at home studying Greek with a tutor. Darwin was accepted as a "pensioner", having paid his fees, on 15 October 1827, but did not attend Cambridge until the Lent Term which began on 13 January 1828. Eras returned from Edinburgh ready to sit his Bachelor of Medicine exam, and in the new year he and Charles set out together for Cambridge. Darwin came into residence in Cambridge on 26 January 1828, and matriculated
Matriculation
Matriculation, in the broadest sense, means to be registered or added to a list, from the Latin matricula – little list. In Scottish heraldry, for instance, a matriculation is a registration of armorial bearings...
at the University's Senate House on 26 February.
Beetle collecting
Arriving at the University of CambridgeUniversity of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
in January 1828, Darwin found this elitist theological training house governed by complex rules much more congenial than his experiences at Edinburgh. No rooms were available at Christ's College
Christ's College, Cambridge
Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.With a reputation for high academic standards, Christ's College averaged top place in the Tompkins Table from 1980-2000 . In 2011, Christ's was placed sixth.-College history:...
, so he took lodgings above a tobacconists in Sidney Street, across the road. Extramural activities were important, and while Darwin did not take up sports or debating, his interests included music and his main passion was the current national craze for the (competitive) collecting of beetle
Beetle
Coleoptera is an order of insects commonly called beetles. The word "coleoptera" is from the Greek , koleos, "sheath"; and , pteron, "wing", thus "sheathed wing". Coleoptera contains more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known life-forms...
s. Trainee clergymen scoured Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...
for specimens, referring to An Introduction to Entomology
Entomology
Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of arthropodology...
by William Kirby and William Spence
William Spence (entomologist)
William Spence was a British economist and entomologist.Spence was born in Bishop Burton in the East Riding of Yorkshire, the oldest of four children of farmer Robert Spence. He was apprenticed to Russian merchants and shipowners Carhill, Greenwood & Co...
. Charles joined his older cousin William Darwin Fox
William Darwin Fox
The Reverend William Darwin Fox was an English clergyman, naturalist, and a 2nd cousin of Charles Robert Darwin.- Early life :...
who was already a skilled collector and like him got a small dog. The two and their dogs became inseparable. They explored the countryside as Darwin learnt about natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
from his cousin. Darwin became obsessed with winning the student accolade and collected avidly. Once he stripped bark from a dead tree and caught a ground beetle
Ground beetle
Ground beetles are a large, cosmopolitan family of beetles, Carabidae, with more than 40,000 species worldwide, approximately 2,000 of which are found in North America and 2,700 in Europe.-Description and ecology:...
in each hand, then saw the rare Crucifix Ground Beetle, Panagaeus cruxmajor
Panagaeus cruxmajor
The crucifix ground beetle, Panagaeus cruxmajor, is a rare European ground beetle. In England it occurs in a few places only. Panagaeus bipustulatus is a commoner relative, looking very much alike except for being smaller. The crucifix ground beetle is sometimes included in P...
. With the habits of an egg-collector, he popped one ground beetle in his mouth to free his hand, but it ejected some intensely acrid fluid which burnt his tongue and Darwin was forced to spit it out. He lost all three. The specimens he did not lose had to be mounted and identified, and his knowledge from Edinburgh of Lamarck proved useful. Fox introduced him for advice on identification to the Revd. John Stevens Henslow
John Stevens Henslow
John Stevens Henslow was an English clergyman, botanist and geologist. He is best remembered as friend and mentor to his pupil Charles Darwin.- Early life :...
, professor of botany, and Darwin began attending his soirées, a club for budding naturalists. Here he could meet other professors including the geologist
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
the Revd. Adam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick was one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale...
and the new mineralogist
Mineralogy
Mineralogy is the study of chemistry, crystal structure, and physical properties of minerals. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, as well as their utilization.-History:Early writing...
the Revd. William Whewell
William Whewell
William Whewell was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.-Life and career:Whewell was born in Lancaster...
.
In the summer Darwin paid visits to Squire Owen, and romance seemed to be blossoming with the squire's daughter Fanny. Darwin joined other Cambridge friends on a three month "reading party" at Barmouth
Barmouth
Barmouth ; Y Bermo ) is a town in the county of Gwynedd, north-western Wales, lying on the estuary of the River Mawddach and Cardigan Bay.The town is served by Barmouth railway station.- History :...
on the coast of Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
to revise their studies with private tutors. For Charles it was an "Entomo-Mathematical expedition". Though he badly needed to catch up with his mathematics, the insect collecting predominated along with pleasant diversions such as hillwalking
Hillwalking
In the British Isles, the terms hillwalking or fellwalking are commonly used to describe the recreational outdoor activity of walking on hills and mountains, often with the intention of visiting their summits...
, boating and fly fishing
Fly fishing
Fly fishing is an angling method in which an artificial 'fly' is used to catch fish. The fly is cast using a fly rod, reel, and specialized weighted line. Casting a nearly weightless fly or 'lure' requires casting techniques significantly different from other forms of casting...
. He went on daily walks with his close friend, the older student John Herbert who he dubbed "Cherbury" after Herbert of Cherbury
Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury
Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Chirbury was an Anglo-Welsh soldier, diplomat, historian, poet and religious philosopher of the Kingdom of England.-Early life:...
, the father of English Deism
Deism
Deism in religious philosophy is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of an all-powerful creator. According to deists, the creator does not intervene in human affairs or suspend the...
. Herbert assisted with the insect collecting, but the usual outcome was that Darwin would examine Herbert's collecting bottle and say "Well, old Cherbury, none of these will do." In September Darwin wrote to tell "My dear old Cherbury" that his own catches had included "some of the rarest of the British Insects, & their being found near Barmouth is quite unknown to the Entomological world: I think I shall write & inform some of the crack Entomologists." He described these "extremely rare" insects and asked Herbert to oblige him by collecting some more of them.
Second year doldrums
At the start of his second year Charles became the tenant of the rooms at Christ's College which traditionally had been occupied by the theologian William PaleyWilliam Paley
William Paley was a British Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology, which made use of the watchmaker analogy .-Life:Paley was Born in Peterborough, England, and was...
. He now had breakfast every day with his older cousin William Darwin Fox
William Darwin Fox
The Reverend William Darwin Fox was an English clergyman, naturalist, and a 2nd cousin of Charles Robert Darwin.- Early life :...
. This was Fox's last term before his BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
exam, and he now had to cram desperately to make up for lost time. At the Christmas holiday Charles visited London with Eras, toured the scientific institutions "where Naturalists are gregarious" and through his friend the Revd. Frederick William Hope
Frederick William Hope
Frederick William Hope was an English entomologist and founder of the Hope Department of Entomology at the University of Oxford....
met other insect collectors. These included James Stephens
James Francis Stephens
James Francis Stephens was an English entomologist.-Biography:Stephens was born in Shoreham-by-Sea and studied at Christ's Hospital.He was employed in the Admiralty office, Somerset House, from 1807 to 1845...
, author of Illustrations of British Entomology".
The January term brought miserable weather and a struggle to keep up with his studies. Around this time, he had an earnest conversation with John Herbert about going into Holy Orders, and asked him whether he could answer yes to the question that the Bishop would put in the ordination service, "Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Spirit". When Herbert said that he could not, Darwin replied "Neither can I, and therefore I cannot take orders" to become an ordained priest. Even his interest in insect collecting waned. He fell out with one of the two locals he employed to catch beetles when he found that the local was giving first choice to a rival collector. In the doldrums, he joined a crowd of drinking pals in a frequent "debauch". He put in some hard riding. On one night he and three friends saw the sky lit up and "rode like incarnate devils" eleven miles to see the blaze. They arrived back at two in the morning and violated curfew. He was risking "rustication
Rustication (academia)
Rustication is a term used at Oxbridge to mean being sent down or expelled temporarily. The term derives from the Latin word rus, countryside, to indicate that a student has been sent back to their family in the country, or from medieval Latin rustici, meaning "heathens or barbarians"...
", temporary expulsion. Such behaviour would be noticed by the Proctor
Proctor
Proctor, a variant of the word procurator, is a person who takes charge of, or acts for, another. The word proctor is frequently used to describe someone who oversees an exam or dormitory.The title is used in England in three principal senses:...
s, university officials appointed from the colleges who patrolled the town in plain gowns to police the students.
Student resentment against two unpopular Proctors built up, and on 9 April 1829 a tumult broke out. Charles described how the Senior Proctor was "most gloriously hissed.. & pelted with mud", being "driven so furious" that his servant "dared not go near him for an hour." The Proctors had noted some faces in the mob, and four were rusticated and one fined for being out-of-gown and shouting abuse. Outraged by this leniency, the Proctors quit en masse and printed their resignation to post up around the colleges. Though the unpopular Proctors were gone, Charles was jolted into thinking of the consequences of law-breaking
Theory of criminal justice
The theory of criminal justice is the branch of philosophy of law that deals with criminal justice and in particular punishment. The theory of criminal justice has deep connections to other areas of philosophy, such as political philosophy and ethics, as well as to criminal justice in practice.Some...
.
In the Spring, Darwin enrolled for John Stevens Henslow
John Stevens Henslow
John Stevens Henslow was an English clergyman, botanist and geologist. He is best remembered as friend and mentor to his pupil Charles Darwin.- Early life :...
's lectures on botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
. Professor Henslow's first "public herborizing expedition" of the year took place in May, an outing on which students assisted with collection of plants. However, Darwin made no mention of Henslow in his letters to Fox. On 18 May Darwin wrote to Fox enthusing about his success with beetle collecting, "I think I beat Jenyns in Colymbetes", contrasted with his lack of application to studies: "my time is solely occupied in riding & Entomologizing".
Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
was briefly visited on 21 May by the Radicals Richard Carlile
Richard Carlile
Richard Carlile was an important agitator for the establishment of universal suffrage and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom.-Early life :...
and the Revd. Robert Taylor
Robert Taylor (Radical)
Reverend Robert Taylor , was an early 19th century Radical, a clergyman turned freethinker whose "Infidel home missionary tour" was a dramatic incident in Charles Darwin's education, subsequently leaving Charles Darwin with a horrifying memory of "the Devil's Chaplain" as a warning of the dangers...
, both recently jailed for blasphemy, on an "infidel home missionary tour" which caused several days of controversy. Taylor was later nicknamed "the Devil's Chaplain
A Devil's Chaplain
A Devil's Chaplain, subtitled Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love is a 2003 book of selected essays and other writings by Richard Dawkins. Published five years after his previous book Unweaving the Rainbow, it contains 32 essays covering subjects including pseudoscience, genetic...
", a phrase remembered by Darwin.
Charles had been sending records of the insects he had caught to the entomologist James Francis Stephens
James Francis Stephens
James Francis Stephens was an English entomologist.-Biography:Stephens was born in Shoreham-by-Sea and studied at Christ's Hospital.He was employed in the Admiralty office, Somerset House, from 1807 to 1845...
, and was thrilled when Stevens published about thirty of these records in Illustrations of British entomology; or, a synopsis of indigenous insects etc. which was printed in parts, with the first description under Darwin's name appearing in an appendix dated June 15, 1829.
That summer, amongst horse riding and beetle collecting, Charles visited his cousin Fox, and this time Charles was teaching entomology to his older cousin. Home at Shrewsbury, Shropshire, he saw his brother Erasmus whose "delicate frame" led to him now giving up medicine and retiring at the age of 26. The brothers visited the Birmingham
History of Birmingham
The history of Birmingham in England spans 1400 years of growth, during which time it has evolved from a small 7th century Anglo Saxon hamlet on the edge of the Forest of Arden at the fringe of early Mercia to become a major city through a combination of immigration, innovation and civic pride that...
Music Festival for what Charles described as the "most glorious" experience.
Third year, theology and natural history
Back at Cambridge, Charles studied hard for his Little Go preliminary exam, as a fail would mean a re-sit the following year. He dropped his drinking companions and resumed attending HenslowJohn Stevens Henslow
John Stevens Henslow was an English clergyman, botanist and geologist. He is best remembered as friend and mentor to his pupil Charles Darwin.- Early life :...
's Friday evening soirées. For the exam he slogged away at Greek and Latin, and studied William Paley
William Paley
William Paley was a British Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology, which made use of the watchmaker analogy .-Life:Paley was Born in Peterborough, England, and was...
's Evidences of Christianity, becoming so delighted with Paley's logic that he learnt it by heart. Later, on the Voyage of the Beagle
The Voyage of the Beagle
The Voyage of the Beagle is a title commonly given to the book written by Charles Darwin and published in 1839 as his Journal and Remarks, bringing him considerable fame and respect...
, he saw evidence which challenged Paley's rose-tinted view, but at this time he was convinced that the Christian revelation established "a future state of reward and punishment" which "gives order for confusion: makes the moral world of a piece with the natural". As with Cambridge University, God gave authority and assigned stations in life, misconduct was penalised and excellence bountifully rewarded. Charles took the one day verbal examination on 24 March 1830. There were three hours in the morning on the classics and three in the afternoon on the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
and Paley. The next day he was delighted to be informed that he had passed.
Several of his friends celebrated their examination successes by forming a weekly club dining in each other's rooms in rotation, possibly officially called the Gourmet Club but commonly known as the Glutton Club. The latter name was proposed to ridicule another group whose Greek title meant "fond of dainties", but who dined out on "Mutton Chops, or Beans & Bacon". The Glutton Club attempted to live up to their title by experimentally dining on "birds and beasts which were before unknown to human palate" and tried hawk and bittern
Bittern
Bitterns are a classification of birds in the heron family, Ardeidae, a family of wading birds. Species named bitterns tend to be the shorter-necked, often more secretive members of this family...
, but gave up after eating an old brown owl, "which was indescribable". They had more amusement from concluding each meeting with "a game of mild vingt-et-un
Blackjack
Blackjack, also known as Twenty-one or Vingt-et-un , is the most widely played casino banking game in the world...
".
Over Easter Charles stayed at Cambridge, mounting and cataloguing his beetle collection. He then became an enthusiastic member of the botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
course which the "good natured & agreeable" professor Henslow taught five days a week in the Botanic Gardens and on field trips. Henslow's outings were attended by 78 men including professor Whewell. Charles became the "favourite pupil", known as "the man who walks with Henslow", helping to find specimens and to set up "practicals" dissecting plants. He became interested in pollen. One day he watched through a microscope and saw "transparent cones" emerge from the side of a geranium pollen grain. Then one burst spraying out "numberless granules". Henslow explained that the granules were indeed the constituent atoms of pollen, but they had no intrinsic vital power – life was endowed from outside and ultimately derived its power from God, whatever more "speculative" naturalists argued regarding self-activating power. Darwin had been taught otherwise by Grant, and reflected quietly on this, biding his time.
For the summer holidays Darwin arranged to meet Fox at The Mount, but Darwin's father had been ill and family tensions led to a row. Charles went off with the Revd. Hope and other friends for three weeks "entomologizing" in North Wales, hunting for beetles and trout fishing. He went partridge shooting at Maer before returning home.
Fourth year finals
Back at Cambridge, his final exams loomed. A "desperate" Charles focused on his studies and got private tuition from Henslow whose subjects were mathematics and theology. This term he had to learn Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, though this old text was becoming outdated. It opposed arguments for increased democracy, but saw no divine right of rule for the sovereign or the state, only "expediency". Government could be opposed if grievances outweighed the danger and expense to society. The judgement was "Every man for himself". These ideas had suited the conditions of reasonable rule prevailing when the text was published in 1785, but in 1830 they were dangerous ideas. At this time the French king was deposed by middle class republicans and given refuge in England by the ToryTory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
government. In response, radical street protests demanded suffrage
Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply the franchise, distinct from mere voting rights, is the civil right to vote gained through the democratic process...
, equality
Social equality
Social equality is a social state of affairs in which all people within a specific society or isolated group have the same status in a certain respect. At the very least, social equality includes equal rights under the law, such as security, voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, and the...
and freedom of religion
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
. Then in November the Tory administration collapsed and the Whigs
British Whig Party
The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...
took over. Paley's text even supported abolition of the Thirty-nine Articles
Thirty-Nine Articles
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion are the historically defining statements of doctrines of the Anglican church with respect to the controversies of the English Reformation. First established in 1563, the articles served to define the doctrine of the nascent Church of England as it related to...
of the Anglican faith which every student at Cambridge (and Oxford University) was required to sign. Henslow insisted that "he should be grieved if a single word... was altered" and emphasised the need to respect authority. This happened even as campaigns of civil disobedience spread to starving agricultural labourers and villages close to Cambridge suffered riots and arson attacks.
In the third week of January 1831 Charles sat his final exam. There were three days of written papers covering the Classics, the two Paley texts and John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
First appearing in 1690 with the printed title An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke concerns the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. He describes the mind at birth as a blank slate filled later through experience...
, then mathematics and physics. At the end of the week when the results were posted he was dazed and proud to have come 10th out of a pass list of 178 doing the ordinary degree. Charles shone in theology and scraped through in the other subjects. He was also exhausted and depressed, writing to Fox "I do not know why the degree should make one so miserable."
Natural theology and geology
Residence requirements kept Darwin in Cambridge till June. He resumed his beetle collecting, took career advice from Henslow, and read William PaleyWilliam Paley
William Paley was a British Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology, which made use of the watchmaker analogy .-Life:Paley was Born in Peterborough, England, and was...
's Natural Theology which set out to refute David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
's argument that "design" by a Creator
Teleological argument
A teleological or design argument is an a posteriori argument for the existence of God based on apparent design and purpose in the universe. The argument is based on an interpretation of teleology wherein purpose and intelligent design appear to exist in nature beyond the scope of any such human...
was merely a human projection onto the forces of nature. Paley saw a rational proof of God's existence in the complexity and perfect adaptation
Adaptation
An adaptation in biology is a trait with a current functional role in the life history of an organism that is maintained and evolved by means of natural selection. An adaptation refers to both the current state of being adapted and to the dynamic evolutionary process that leads to the adaptation....
to needs of living beings exquisitely fitted to their places in a happy world, while attacking the evolutionary ideas of Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave trade abolitionist,inventor and poet...
as coinciding with atheistic schemes and lacking evidence. Paley's benevolent God acted in nature though uniform and universal laws, not arbitrary miracles or changes of laws, and this use of secondary laws provided a theodicy
Theodicy
Theodicy is a theological and philosophical study which attempts to prove God's intrinsic or foundational nature of omnibenevolence , omniscience , and omnipotence . Theodicy is usually concerned with the God of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, due to the relevant...
explaining the problem of evil
Problem of evil
In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to explain evil if there exists a deity that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient . Some philosophers have claimed that the existences of such a god and of evil are logically incompatible or unlikely...
by separating nature from direct divine action. This convinced Charles and encouraged his interest in science. He later wrote "I do not think I hardly ever admired a book more than Paley's Natural Theology: I could almost formerly have said it by heart."
He read John Herschel
John Herschel
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet KH, FRS ,was an English mathematician, astronomer, chemist, and experimental photographer/inventor, who in some years also did valuable botanical work...
's new Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, learning that nature was governed by laws, and the highest aim of natural philosophy
Natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...
was to understand them through an orderly process of induction
Inductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning, also known as induction or inductive logic, is a kind of reasoning that constructs or evaluates propositions that are abstractions of observations. It is commonly construed as a form of reasoning that makes generalizations based on individual instances...
, balancing observation and theorising. This was part of the liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward...
of Darwin's tutors, who saw no disharmony between honest inductive science and religion. Such science was religion, and could not be heretical. Darwin also read Alexander von Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt...
's Personal Narrative, and the two books were immensely influential, stirring up in him "a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science."
Henslow had taken holy orders only after he married and obtained his first chair. He had previously taken opportunities for reading and travel, but now confided that he still had an unfulfilled ambition to "explore regions but little known, and enrich science with new species." By early April Darwin was hatching a scheme to visit the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
. He copied out passages from Humboldt about Tenerife
Tenerife
Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...
, and made plans for a month-long visit there to study natural history in the tropics. Only Henslow and three of Henslow's friends showed interest, with the most likely companion being the tutor Marmaduke Ramsay. Darwin rushed home at Easter to get his father's backing, and was given "a 200£ note" to pay his debts as well as permission to cost out the trip. Charles then visited his brother Erasmus in a London excited by the Whig Reform Bill which would redistribute Parliamentary seats and extend the middle class vote.
Darwin "plagued" his friends about the "Canary scheme" and made preparations, studying Spanish language
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, and expecting Henslow to "cram me" in geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
. Instead, Henslow introduced Darwin to the great geologist
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
the Revd. Adam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick was one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale...
who had been his own tutor, and shared views on religion, politics and morals. Darwin was fired up by Sedgwick's Spring course of "equestrian outings" with its vistas of the grandeur of God's creation, so much of which was yet unexplored. He exclaimed, "What a capital hand is Sedgewick for drawing large cheques upon the Bank of Time!". When Sedgwick mentioned the effects of a local spring from a chalk hill depositing lime on twigs, Charles rode out to find the spring and threw a bush in, then later brought back the white coated spray which Sedgwick exhibited in class, inspiring others to do the same.
In the summer Charles obtained a clinometer
Inclinometer
An inclinometer or clinometer is an instrument for measuring angles of slope , elevation or depression of an object with respect to gravity...
, and practised mapping strata
Stratum
In geology and related fields, a stratum is a layer of sedimentary rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguish it from other layers...
in Shropshire
Shropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
. He investigated ship sailings, but the trip to Teneriffe had to be postponed to the following June, and Henslow was unlikely to come. On 4 August 1831 Sedgwick arrived in his gig at The Mount, Shrewsbury
The Mount, Shrewsbury
The Mount, is the site of a house in Shrewsbury, officially known as Mount House that belonged to Robert Darwin and was the birthplace of his son Charles Darwin.- Overview :...
, to take Charles as his assistant on a short geological expedition mapping strata in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. That evening Charles told of a tropical shell found in a nearby gravel pit and was impressed when Sedgwick responded that it must have been thrown away there, as it contradicted the known geology of the area. This made him realise "that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them." Sedgwick aimed to investigate and correct possible errors in George Greenough
George Bellas Greenough
George Bellas Greenough FRS , an English geologist, was born in London.-Biography:Greenough was born George Bellas, named after his father, George Bellas, who had a profitable business in the legal profession as a proctor in Doctor's Commons, St Paul's Churchyard Doctors' Commons and some real...
's geological map of 1820, and to trace the fossil record to the earliest times to rebut the uniformitarian
Uniformitarianism (science)
In the philosophy of naturalism, the uniformitarianism assumption is that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It has included the gradualistic concept that "the present is the...
ideas just published by Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Kt FRS was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the earth was shaped by slow-moving forces still in operation...
.
On the morning of 5 August they went from Shrewsbury to Llangollen
Llangollen
Llangollen is a small town and community in Denbighshire, north-east Wales, situated on the River Dee and on the edge of the Berwyn mountains. It has a population of 3,412.-History:...
, and on 11 August reached Penrhyn Quarry
Penrhyn Quarry
The Penrhyn Slate Quarry is a slate quarry located near Bethesda in north Wales. At the end of the nineteenth century it was the world's largest slate quarry; the main pit is nearly long and deep, and it was worked by nearly 3,000 quarrymen. It has since been superseded in size by slate quarries...
. After less than a week of doing hard practical work Charles had learnt how to identify specimens, interpret strata and generalise from his observations. Then he went off on his own to collect samples and investigate the Vale of Clwyd
Vale of Clwyd
The Vale of Clwyd is a tract of low-lying ground in the county of Denbighshire in northeast Wales. The Vale extends south-southwestwards from the coast of the Irish Sea for some 20 miles forming a triangle of low ground bounded on its eastern side by the well-defined scarp of the Clwydian Range...
, looking in vain for the Old Red Sandstone
Old Red Sandstone
The Old Red Sandstone is a British rock formation of considerable importance to early paleontology. For convenience the short version of the term, 'ORS' is often used in literature on the subject.-Sedimentology:...
shown by Greenough. They met up in Colwyn
Colwyn
The Borough of Colwyn was one of six districts of the county of Clwyd, north-east Wales, from 1974 to 1996.It was formed under the Local Government Act 1972 from the following parts of the administrative county of Denbighshire:...
, and Sedgwick's pleasure at the confirmation that the map was incorrect made Darwin "exceedingly proud". They went on to Capel Curig
Capel Curig
Capel Curig is a village and community in Conwy County Borough, in Wales. It lies in the heart of Snowdonia, on the River Llugwy, and has a population of 226...
where Charles struck out on his own across 30 miles (50 km) of "some strange wild places" to Barmouth
Barmouth
Barmouth ; Y Bermo ) is a town in the county of Gwynedd, north-western Wales, lying on the estuary of the River Mawddach and Cardigan Bay.The town is served by Barmouth railway station.- History :...
. He had parted from Sedgwick by 20 August, and travelled via Ffestiniog
Ffestiniog
Ffestiniog is a community in Gwynedd in Wales, containing several villages, in particular the settlements of Llan Ffestiniog and Blaenau Ffestiniog. It has a population of 4,830....
.
Voyage on the Beagle
Arriving at BarmouthBarmouth
Barmouth ; Y Bermo ) is a town in the county of Gwynedd, north-western Wales, lying on the estuary of the River Mawddach and Cardigan Bay.The town is served by Barmouth railway station.- History :...
on the evening of 23 August, Charles met up with a "reading party" of Cambridge friends for a time before he left on the morning of 29 August, to go back to Shrewsbury and on to partridge shooting with his Wedgwood relatives at Maer Hall
Maer Hall
The large 17th century stone built country house and estate of Maer Hall dominates the village of Maer, Staffordshire. Its location in the district of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England, is attractively rural, but fairly close to the pottery manufacturing area around Stoke-on-Trent which...
. He was grieved to have received a message that Ramsay had died. This upset Darwin's plans for a visit in the following year to Tenerife. He arrived home at The Mount, Shrewsbury
The Mount, Shrewsbury
The Mount, is the site of a house in Shrewsbury, officially known as Mount House that belonged to Robert Darwin and was the birthplace of his son Charles Darwin.- Overview :...
, on 29 August, and found a letter from Henslow. The Cambridge Fellow George Peacock
George Peacock
George Peacock was an English mathematician.-Life:Peacock was born on 9 April 1791 at Thornton Hall, Denton, near Darlington, County Durham. His father, the Rev. Thomas Peacock, was a clergyman of the Church of England, incumbent and for 50 years curate of the parish of Denton, where he also kept...
had heard from Francis Beaufort
Francis Beaufort
Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, FRS, FRGS was an Irish hydrographer and officer in Britain's Royal Navy...
of plans for the second survey voyage of
Second voyage of HMS Beagle
The second voyage of HMS Beagle, from 27 December 1831 to 2 October 1836, was the second survey expedition of HMS Beagle, under captain Robert FitzRoy who had taken over command of the ship on its first voyage after her previous captain committed suicide...
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle was a Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 11 May 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames, at a cost of £7,803. In July of that year she took part in a fleet review celebrating the coronation of King George IV of the United Kingdom in which...
, and had written to Henslow proposing Leonard Jenyns as "a proper person to go out as a naturalist with this expedition", or if he was unavailable seeking recommendations for an alternative to take up this "glorious opportunity". When Jenyns decided not to leave his parish, he and Henslow thought of Darwin. Henslow's letter, read by Peacock and forwarded to Darwin, expected him to eagerly catch at the likely offer of a two-year trip to Terra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of a main island Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego divided between Chile and Argentina with an area of , and a group of smaller islands including Cape...
& home by the East Indies
Indies
The Indies is a term that has been used to describe the lands of South and Southeast Asia, occupying all of the present India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and also Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines, East Timor, Malaysia and...
, not as "a finished Naturalist", but as a gentleman
Gentleman
The term gentleman , in its original and strict signification, denoted a well-educated man of good family and distinction, analogous to the Latin generosus...
"amply qualified for collecting, observing, & noting any thing worthy to be noted in Natural History". The appointment was more as a companion to Captain Robert FitzRoy
Robert FitzRoy
Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy RN achieved lasting fame as the captain of HMS Beagle during Charles Darwin's famous voyage, and as a pioneering meteorologist who made accurate weather forecasting a reality...
, than as a mere collector. Henslow wrote "I assure you I think you are the very man they are in search of".
His father thought the voyage a waste of his son's time and strongly objected. Dejected, Charles declined the offer, and went to Maer for the partridge shooting with a note from his father to "Uncle Jos" Wedgwood
Josiah Wedgwood II
Josiah Wedgwood II , the son of the English potter Josiah Wedgwood, continued his father's firm and was Member of Parliament for Stoke-upon-Trent from 1832 to 1835...
. This contained a prescription for a bowel ailment and a note saying that Charles had quite given up the proposed "voyage of discovery", but "if you think differently from me I shall wish him to follow your advice." Charles' hopes were revived by this unexpected news, and his relatives came out in favour of the voyage. He outlined his father's objections, and sat up that night drafting a reply with his uncle. Jos wrote suggesting that Charles would be likely to "acquire and strengthen, habits of application", and "Natural History... is very suitable to a Clergyman." Though "useless as regards his profession", for "a man of enlarged curiosity, it affords him such an opportunity of seeing men and things as happens to few". The Admiralty would look after him well, but "you & Charles... must decide." Charles begged "one favour... a decided answer, yes or no." This reply was sent post-haste early on the morning of 1 September and Charles went shooting. About 10 o'clock he received word from his uncle that they should go to The Mount at once. When they arrived a few hours later, Charles' father had decided that he would give "all the assistance in my power".
External links
- The Complete Works of Charles Darwin OnlineThe Complete Works of Charles Darwin OnlineThe Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online is a freely-accessible website containing the complete print and manuscript works of Charles Darwin, as well as related supplementary material.- Overview :...
– Darwin Online; Darwin's publications, private papers and bibliography, supplementary works including biographies, obituaries and reviews. Free to use, includes items not in public domain.; public domain - Darwin Correspondence Project Text and notes for most of his letters