Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Encyclopedia
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is a unique work of speculative natural history
published anonymously in England
in 1844. It brought together various ideas of stellar evolution
with the progressive transmutation of species
in an accessible narrative which tied together numerous scientific theories of the age.
Vestiges was initially well received by polite Victorian
society and became an international bestseller, but its unorthodox themes contradicted the natural theology
fashionable at the time and were reviled by clergymen - as well as by scientists who readily found fault with its amateurish deficiencies. The ideas in the book were favoured by Radicals
, but its presentation remained popular with a much wider public. Prince Albert
read it aloud to Queen Victoria in 1845. Vestiges caused a shift in popular opinion which - Charles Darwin
believed - prepared the public mind for the scientific theories of evolution
by natural selection
which followed from the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859.
For decades there was speculation about its authorship. The 12th edition, published in 1884, revealed officially that the author was Robert Chambers, a Scottish journalist, who had written the book in St Andrews
between 1841 and 1844. Originally, Chambers had proposed the title The Natural History of Creation, but friends persuaded him to revise the title in deference to the Scottish geologist James Hutton
, who had remarked of the timeless aspect of geology: "no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end". Some of the inspiration for the work derived from the Edinburgh Phrenological Society
whose influence reached a climax between 1825 and 1840. George Combe
, the leading proponent of phrenological thinking, had published his influential The Constitution of Man
in 1828. Chambers was closely involved with Combe's associates William A.F. Browne and Hewett Cottrell Watson who did much to spell out the materialist theory of the mind. Chambers died in 1871 and is buried in the grounds of St Andrews Cathedral, within the ancient chapel of St Regulus.
and great pains were undertaken to secure the secret of the authorship. After Robert Chambers completed each section of the manuscript, his wife would transcribe it. Because Chambers was already a well-known author, this precaution would prevent anyone from recognizing his handwriting. This copy would then be transferred into the hands of Chambers's friend Alexander Ireland. Because Ireland lived in Manchester
, this would hide the fact that the manuscripts originated from Scotland. Ireland would then deliver the manuscript to the publisher. Proofs were delivered by the printer--a Mr. Savill--back to Ireland, who would then forward them to Chambers, and the process would repeat itself. Because of these measures, the publisher and printer remained clueless as to who the true author was. To further prevent the possibility of any unwanted revelations, Chambers disclosed the secret to only four people: his wife, his brother William, Ireland, and George Combe’s
nephew, Robert Cox. All correspondence to and from Chambers passed through Ireland’s hands first, and all letters and manuscripts were dutifully transcribed in Mrs. Chambers’s hand.
The work puts forward a cosmic theory of transmutation
(which we now call evolution
). It suggests that everything currently in existence has developed from earlier forms: solar system, Earth, rocks, plants and corals, fish, land plants, reptiles and birds, mammals, and ultimately man.
The book begins by tackling the origins of the solar system, using the nebular hypothesis to explain its formations entirely in terms of natural law. It explains the origins of life by spontaneous generation
, citing some questionable experiments that claimed to spontaneously generate insects through electricity
. It then appeals to geology to demonstrate a progression in the fossil record from simple to more complex organisms, finally culminating in man—with the Caucasian European unabashedly identified as the pinnacle of this process, just above the other races and the rest of the animal kingdom. It even goes so far as to connect man’s mental reasoning power with the rest of the animals as an advanced evolutionary step that can be traced backwards through the rest of the lower animals. In this sense, the evolutionary ideas offered in Vestiges aim at being complete and all-encompassing.
It contains several comments worthy of repetition in light of more recent debates, such as regarding Intelligent Design
. For example:
In other words, the fact of extinction
— which can be observed in the fossil
layers —suggests that some designs were flawed. From this, the author concludes:
But the suggestion is not a mechanism, as Darwin would propose fifteen years later. The author merely notes that a continually active God is unnecessary:
He furthermore suggests that this interpretation may be based upon corrupt theology:
And praises God for his foresight in generating such wondrous variety from so elegant a method, while chastening those who would oversimplify His accomplishment:
Following its publication, there was increasing support for ideas of the coexistence of God and Nature, with the deity setting Natural Laws rather than continually intervening with miracles. It is perhaps for this reason that Origin of Species was accepted so readily, upon its eventual publication. On the other hand, the knowledge of the scandal and experience of the reaction of his scientist friends confirmed Darwin's reluctance to publish his own ideas until he had well researched answers to all possible objections (though, in the end, Darwin had to publish earlier than he had wanted to anyway).
. Lamarck had long been discredited among intellectuals by the 1840s and evolutionary (or development) theories were exceedingly unpopular, except among the political radicals, materialists, and atheists. Charles Lyell
had thoroughly criticized Lamarck's ideas in the second edition of his monumental work Principles of Geology
. Thus, it was naturally tempting for some critics to simply dismiss Vestiges as Lamarckian. Chambers, however, tried to explicitly distance his own theory from that of Lamarck's by denying Lamarck's evolutionary mechanism any plausibility.
In an (anonymous) autobiographical preface written in the third person that only appeared in the 10th edition, Chambers remarked that "He had heard of the hypothesis of Lamarck; but it seemed to him to proceed upon a vicious circle, and he dismissed it as wholly inadequate to account for the existence of animated species."
church groups such as Unitarians
. At first scientists ignored the book and it took time before hostile reviews were published, but the book was then publicly denounced by scientists, preachers, and statesmen.
Since around 1800, ideas of evolutionism
had been denounced as examples of dangerous materialism, which undermined natural theology
and the argument from design
, threatening the current moral and social order. Such ideas were propagated by lower class Radical
s seeking to overturn divine justification of the (aristocratic) social order. Chambers supported middle class political interests, and saw laws of progress in nature as implying inevitable political progress. He sought to sanitise the radical tradition by presenting progressive evolution as an unfolding of divinely planned laws of creation as development up to and including the appearance of human species. The political climate had eased as increasing prosperity reduced fears of revolution, and the book was widely considered to be merely scandalous and titillating. It was read not only by members of high society, but also — thanks to the rise of cheap publishing — the lower and middle classes, and continued to sell in large quantities for the rest of the 19th century.
The establishment might have tolerated a predesigned law of creation, but Vestiges presented a progressive law with humanity as its goal, and thus continuity which treated the human race as the last step in the ascent of animal life. It included arguments that mental and moral faculties were not unique to humans, but resulted from expansion of brain size during this ascent. This materialism
was rejected by the religious and scientific establishment, and scientists were incensed that Chambers had bypassed their authority by appealing directly to the reading public and reaching a wide audience.
:
As a result of this publicity the first edition of 1,750 copies sold out in a few days. Among those fortunate enough to have ordered their copy promptly, Tennyson
commented to his bookseller that the review suggested it "seems to contain many speculations with which I have been familiar for years, and on which I have written more than one poem." Having read the book, he concluded "There was nothing degrading in the theory." Benjamin Disraeli told his sister that the book was "convulsing the world, anonymous" and his wife told her that "Dizzy says it does and will cause the greatest sensation and confusion."
The limited number of copies available at first were targeted at a select fashionable readership. The late Autumn literary season was just getting under way as the first reviews appeared, and by early January the book was the subject of conversations at elite literary gatherings. At venues such as Buckingham Palace
and Lady Byron's
parties, cosmic evolution became a topic of discussion for the first time in many years. Reforming medical journals including The Lancet
for 23 November 1844 carried favourable reviews, while criticising specific points. In January the Unitarian
quarterly Prospective gave powerful support, but the influential prestige quarterlies which could determine the long term success of books were still looking for reviewers.
, the Literary Gazette
and The Gardeners' Chronicle
. The most authoritative scientific and literary weekly was the Athenaeum, and its anonymous review of 4 January was by Edwin Lankester
. Churchill had already been alarmed by The Lancet
s report of numerous mistakes, and had been surprised to find that, unlike the medical specialists he usually dealt with, the author of Vestiges lacked first hand knowledge of the subject or the ability to correct proof
s. At the author's request he had quoted for a people's edition, but was unwilling to proceed with this cheap reprint until errors had been corrected. Churchill engaged Lankester to make corrections to terminology to the second edition published in December 1844, and both Lankaster and George Fownes
made further revisions for the third edition.
While the season's fashionable use of Vestiges as a conversation piece in London society avoided theological implications, the book was read very differently in Liverpool
, where it was first made public that men of science condemned the book, and it became the subject of sustained debate in newspapers. The book was attractive to reformers, including Uniformitarians
and William Ballantyne Hodgson
, the principal of the Mechanics' Institution
who, like Chambers, had become a supporter of George Combe
's ideas. In defence of public morals and Evangelical Tory
dominance in the city, the Reverend Abraham Hume, Anglican
priest and lecturer, delivered a detailed attack on Vestiges at the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society on 13 January 1845, demonstrating that the book conflicted with standard specialist scientific texts on nebulae, fossils and embryos, and accusing it of manipulative novelistic techniques occupying "the debatable ground between science and fiction". At the next meeting two weeks later the Unitarian Reverend John Robberds defended the book as well intentioned and based on "deep reflection and extensive research", while noting that he considered it inconsistent in distinguishing miracles from natural law, against Unitarian views. As subsequent debates appeared inconclusive, Hume wrote to leading men of science for authoritative expert opinions, and made the responses public to resolve the dispute. This backfired when a writer in the Liverpool Journal pointed out inconsistencies and contradictions between the various expert opinions. They only agreed on the point that Vestiges was unscientific, and the publication of their letters was considered bad manners as well as tactically unwise. Few of the experts would have allowed any direct reference to the book to be published under their names, and their gentlemanly disagreements to be made public.
Anglican clergymen were usually quick to publish pamphlets on any theological controversy, but tended to excuse themselves from responding to Vestiges as they lacked expertise: men of science were expected to lead the counterattack. The universities of Oxford
and Cambridge
were part of the Anglican establishment, intended to educate Christian gentlemen with half of the students becoming clergymen. Science subjects were optional lectures. The professors were scientific clergymen with strong reputations, and at Cambridge science had developed as natural theology
, but there was no unified scientific establishment. The quarterly review magazines turned to them for commentary on the book, but demonstrating that it was superficial was difficult when its range of topics meant experts being drawn into superficial responses outside their own area of intensive expertise. William Whewell
refused all requests for a review to avoid dignifying the "bold, speculative and false" work, but was the first to give a response, publishing Indications of a Creator in mid February 1845 as a slim and elegant volume of "theological extracts" from his writings. His aim was to inform superficial London society used to skimming books as conversation pieces and lacking properly prepared minds to deal with real philosophy and real science, and he avoided mentioning Vestiges by name. During the crucial early months of the debate this and Hume's lecture distributed as a pamphlet were the only responses to Vestiges published by the established clergy, and there were just two other short works opposing it: a published lecture by the Anabaptist
preacher John Sheppard, and an unorthodox anti-science piece by Samuel Richard Bosanquet.
There was a wide range of readings of the book among the aristocracy interested in science, who assessed it independently without dismissing it out of hand. Sir John Cam Hobhouse
wrote his thoughts down in his diary: "In spite of the allusions to the creative will of God the cosmogony is atheistic—at least the introduction of an author of all things seems very like a formality for the sake of saving appearances—it is not a necessary part of the scheme". While disquieted by its information on embryo
logy implying human origins from animals, he thought its tone was good. He concluded that "It does not meddle with revealed religion—but unless I am mistaken the leaders of revealed religion will meddle with it." Lord Morpeth thought it had "much that is able, startling, striking" and progressive development did not conflict with Genesis more than then current geology, but did "not care much for the notion that we are engendered by monkeys" and objected strongly to the idea that the Earth was "a member of a democracy" of similar planets.
Vestiges was published in New York, and in response the April 1845 issue of the North American Review
published a long review, the start of which was scathing about its reliance on speculative scientific theories: "The writer has taken up almost every questionable fact and startling hypothesis, that have been promulgated by proficients and pretenders in science during the present century...The nebular hypothesis...spontaneous generation
...the Macleay system, dogs playing dominoes, negroes born of white parents, materialism
, phrenology
, - he adopts them all, and makes them play an important part in his own magnificent theory, to the exclusion, to a great degree, of the well-accredited facts and established doctrines of science."
, the Woodwardian Professor of Geology
at Cambridge
, was popular and well regarded, having recently strongly defended modern geology against the Biblical literalism of the Reverend William Cockburn
. He turned down several invitations to review Vestiges, pleading lack of time, but in March read it closely and on 6 April discussed with other leading clergymen the "rank materialism" of the book "against which work he & all other scientific men are indignant". He thought the "hasty jumping to conclusions" indicated an authoress. In a letter to Charles Lyell
about "the foul book", he expressed his disgust: "If the book be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine; our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts! .... I cannot but think the work is from a woman's pen, it is so well dressed and so graceful in its externals. I do not think the 'beast man' could have done this part so well." On 10 April he contacted Macvey Napier
, editor of the Edinburgh Review
, who quickly accepted the offer. Sedgwick was rather disorganised and had not written a review before. To save time batches of his writing were typeset on arrival, so one part was being printed "while the other part was still uncoiling from my brain in Cambridge." Napier did not insist on the usual concise review, but as it was still arriving in mid May stopped it at what became 85 pages, one of the longest reviews the quarterly ever published.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting was held at Cambridge in June 1845, giving its president John Herschel
a platform to counter Vestiges. His presidential address contrasted the "sound and thoughtful and sobering discipline" of the scientific brotherhood with the "over-hasty generalisation" and "pure speculation" of the unnamed book. He had a cold and his words were badly delivered, but they appeared in newspapers across the country as its most prestigious man of science dismissing the book. For the rest of the week attacks on Vestiges continued. In the geology section, Roderick Murchison
used his lecture to clear up the confusion between competing views, and say that "every piece of geological evidence sustained the belief that that each species was perfect in its kind when first called into being by the Creator". Sedgwick set aside his differences with Murchison to summarise his forthcoming Edinburgh review and agree in opposing the evolutionary ideas and the "desolating pantheism" of the book.
Segwick's long, rambling and scathing article was published in the July 1845 edition of the Edinburgh Review. Articles were anonymous, but he ensured that his authorship was well known. He had disregarded William Whewell
's caution about attempting a point by point refutation, and the body of his review followed the structure of Vestiges, packed with current evidence to undermine the supposition of continuous transitions underlying the progressive development hypothesis which he scorned as mere speculation, and pointing out errors showing the inadequate expertise of the author. Vestiges crucially undermined the separation between man and beast, and endangered hopes for the afterlife. Sedgwick expressed concern for "our glorious maidens and matrons .... listening to the seductions of this author; who comes before them with a bright, polished, and many-coloured surface, and the serpent coils of a false philosophy, and asks them again to stretch out their hands and pluck forbidden fruit", who tells them "that their Bible is a fable when it teaches them that they were made in the image of God—that they are the children of apes and breeders of monsters—that he has annulled all distinction between physical and moral", which in Sedgwick's view would lead to "a rank, unbending and degrading materialism" lacking the proper reading of nature as analogy to draw moral lessons from physical truths. That needed the use of reason by great men who believed that "moral truth is the ennobled form of material truth" and that "all nature, both material and moral, has been framed and supported by one creative mind" so that one truth could never be in conflict with another. In presenting natural law as explaining the soul, Vestiges threatened the fine balance between faith and science.
Journals that had already opposed the book welcomed Sedgwick's article, with the Literary Gazette
calling it a "scourging and irrefragable review", as did sections of the church which were suspicious of science and geology. However, its crude vehemence was ill suited to fashionable society, and Whewell wrote "To me the material appears excellent, but the workmanship bad, and I doubt if it will do its work." Aristocrats found its "lengthy inefficiency" heavy going, and John Gibson Lockhart
of the Tory Quarterly Review
suspected that "The savants are all sore at the vestige man because they are likely to be in the same boat as him." The extreme liberal press also thought "a mere anonymous bookmaker might well be sacrificed to evidence the orthodoxy of a Cambridge divine", in the hope of "immunity to their own speculations, by a cheap display of eloquent zeal against all who dare to go beyond their measure."
followed by a pamphlet. On Churchill's advice the response was broadened into a 206 page book bound to match the original work, which was published at the end of 1845 at a price of five shillings under the title of Explanations: A Sequel to the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a "forcible and argumentative work" aimed at "convincing open-minded men", published anonymously "By the author of that work". The revised fifth edition of Vestiges was ready in January 1846, and the two were commonly sold together, catching the publicity from reviews of Explanations.
The North British Review reflected evangelical Presbyterian willingness to consider science in relation to "Reason and not to Faith" and to view natural law as directly guided by God, but warned that "If it has been revealed to man that the Almighty made him out of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, it is in vain to tell a Christian that man was originally a speck of albumen, and passed through the stages of monads and monkeys, before he attained his present intellectual pre-eminence." Many women admired the book, and "It would augur ill for the rising generation if the mothers of England were infected with the errors of Phrenology: it would augur worse were they tainted with materialism."
Chambers planned one more "edition for the higher classes and for libraries", extensively revised to deal with errors and incorporate the latest science, such as the detail of the Orion Nebula
revealed by Lord Rosse's
giant telescope. Use of generous spacing and the additional text extended the book by 20%, and the price had to be increased from 7s.
6d.
to nine shillings. The identical text was used for the long awaited people's edition, which was smaller with cheap bindings, smaller lettering and more closely spaced text. The cheap edition was printed first, but set aside until after the gentlemen's edition was published so that it would appear as a reprint of the expensive 6th edition, and not the other way around. The price was only 2s.6d. and five thousand copies were issued, almost as many as the first four editions combined. It sold well, though sales of the expensive edition were slow.
Sedgwick added a 400+ page preface to the 5th edition of his Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge (1850), including a lengthy attack on Vestiges and theories of development in general.
Among religious criticisms, some maintained that Chambers' use of "natural law" to explain the creation of the planets and the successive creation of new species, including man, excluded the possibility of miracle
s and providential control. In other words, under this scheme, God did not personally interact with His creation after bringing forth these initial Laws. For these critics, this was akin to denying the central miracle of Christianity
and, therefore, Christianity itself.
had conceived his own theory of natural selection
to explain evolution six years earlier, and in July 1844 had written down his ideas in an '"Essay". For a year he had been tentatively discussing his evolutionary ideas in correspondence with Joseph Dalton Hooker
, who wrote to Darwin on 30 December 1844 that he had "been delighted with Vestiges, from the multiplicity of facts he brings together, though I do [not] agree with his conclusions at all, he must be a funny fellow: somehow the books looks more like a 9 days wonder than a lasting work: it certainly is “filling at the price”.— I mean the price its reading costs, for it is dear enough otherwise; he has lots of errors." Darwin had read the book in November, finding that it drew on some of the lines of evidence he had been putting together, and introduced questions that had to be dealt with. He responded that he had been "somewhat less amused at it .... the writing & arrangement are certainly admirable, but his geology strikes me as bad, & his zoology far worse. Darwin had learnt geology from Adam Sedgwick
, and was particularly interested in what his former mentor had to say about evolution. In October 1845 he wrote to his friend Charles Lyell
that Segwick's review was a "grand piece of argument against mutability of species" which he had read with "fear & trembling," but had been "well pleased to find" that he had anticipated Sedgwick's objections and "had not overlooked any of the arguments".
He read Explanations early in 1846 and thought "the spirit of [it], though not the facts, ought to shame Sedgwick", while noting speculation and evidence suggesting that Chambers had written the books. In April 1847, after meeting Chambers then subsequently receiving a presentation of Vestiges, Darwin became convinced that Chambers must have been the author.
In his introduction to On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, Darwin assumed that his readers were aware of Vestiges, and wrote identifying what he felt was one of its gravest deficiencies with regards to its theory of biological evolution:
Chambers took the publication of the Origin as an opportunity to release a new edition of Vestiges and respond to Darwin's comments, lamenting that Darwin had misunderstood the Vestiges. "It seems to the author," Chambers wrote, "that Mr. Darwin has only been enabled by his infinitely superior knowledge to point out a principle in what may be called practical animal life, which appears capable of bringing about the modifications theoretically assumed in the earlier work. His book, in no essential respect, contradicts the present: on the contrary...it expresses substantially the same general ideas." In perhaps a gross simplification, Chambers concludes that "The difference seems to be in words, not in facts or effects." At the very least, Chambers saw in Darwin a much needed ally – one that the former simply could not afford to have against him.
It is probable that Darwin read Chambers's comments, because he removed the offending passage from the 3rd edition of the Origin (1861) and all subsequent editions. In a historical sketch, newly added to the 3rd edition, Darwin softened his language a bit:
Darwin even suggested that Chambers' book helped pave the way for the publication of his theory
of evolution by natural selection
. "In my opinion it has done excellent service in this country in calling attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous views."
The harsh reception that Vestiges received, and the mockery which was made of its evolutionary ideas, has been cited by some historians as a factor leading to Darwin's caution in publishing his own theory of evolution. In a letter to Thomas Henry Huxley in 1854 (five years before his own book on evolution was published but twelve years after its ideas had first been sketched out in an unpublished essay), Darwin expressed sympathy for the (still anonymous) author of Vestiges in the face of a savage review by Huxley: "I must think that such a book, if it does no other good, spreads the taste for Natural Science. But I am perhaps no fair judge, for I am almost as unorthodox about species as the Vestiges itself, though I hope not quite so unphilosophical." However later the same year, in a letter to Hooker, Darwin mentioned Vestiges in a more sober tone: "I should have less scruple in troubling you if I had any confidence what my work would turn out. Sometimes I think it will be good, at other times I really feel as much ashamed of myself as the author of the Vestiges ought to be of himself."
According to the historian James A. Secord, Vestiges outsold The Origin of Species
up until the early 20th century.
to believe that the transmutation of species occurred. It was this belief that would lead him to plan his early field work with the idea of collecting data on the geographic distribution of closely allied species in hopes of finding evidence to support the idea. Wallace made the following comments on the concept of transmutation of species as described in Vestiges in a letter to Henry Bates a few months after first reading it:
("I ought to be much flattered & unflattered"), the geologist Charles Lyell
, the phrenologist George Combe
, as well as many of the people whose work the book often cited. Early on, Sir Richard Vyvyan
, the Tory
leader of the parliamentary opposition to the Reform Bill, was a popular suspect. Vyvyan held interests in natural philosophy, phrenology, and Lamarckian evolution. Only three years earlier he had privately printed his own evolutionary cosmology, a copy of which he sent to the English anatomist Richard Owen
. The latter likely explains the discrepancy between Owen's critical letter to William Whewell
on the Vestiges and his flattering letter to the author, whom he probably thought to be Vyvyan. It was even suggested at one point that Prince Albert might have secretly written it. Adam Sedgwick
, as well as others, initially thought that the work was likely written by a woman, either Harriet Martineau
or the Countess Ada Lovelace
. A feminine authorship was thought to explain all of the book's scientific failings.
Robert Chambers became a prominent suspect as early as the spring of 1845. In 1854, following the publication of the 10th edition of Vestiges along with its anonymous biographical sketch, a former assistant named David Page accused Chambers directly. The accusation was printed in the Athenaeum
, but because Page was an embittered former employee of the Chambers's firm, his testimony was not taken all that seriously. Vyvyan finally denied that he was the author outright and the British Museum
listed the book under George Combe's name as late as 1877.
After Robert's death in 1871 his brother, William
, penned a biography for Robert but refused to reveal the secret. He only mentioned the Vestiges to note that Robert's suspected authorship was used as a means to discredit him when he ran for the office of Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1848. The secret was finally revealed at last in 1884 when Alexander Ireland issued a new 12th edition with Robert's name and an introduction explaining the circumstances behind its publication.
Many of the editions were reprinted in the United States. After 1846, the American editions usually included Explanations.
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...
published anonymously in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in 1844. It brought together various ideas of stellar evolution
Stellar evolution
Stellar evolution is the process by which a star undergoes a sequence of radical changes during its lifetime. Depending on the mass of the star, this lifetime ranges from only a few million years to trillions of years .Stellar evolution is not studied by observing the life of a single...
with the progressive transmutation of species
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...
in an accessible narrative which tied together numerous scientific theories of the age.
Vestiges was initially well received by polite Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
society and became an international bestseller, but its unorthodox themes contradicted the natural theology
Natural theology
Natural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning.Marcus Terentius Varro ...
fashionable at the time and were reviled by clergymen - as well as by scientists who readily found fault with its amateurish deficiencies. The ideas in the book were favoured by Radicals
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...
, but its presentation remained popular with a much wider public. Prince Albert
Prince Albert
Prince Albert was the husband and consort of Queen Victoria.Prince Albert may also refer to:-Royalty:*Prince Albert Edward or Edward VII of the United Kingdom , son of Albert and Victoria...
read it aloud to Queen Victoria in 1845. Vestiges caused a shift in popular opinion which - Charles Darwin
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...
believed - prepared the public mind for the scientific theories of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
by 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....
which followed from the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859.
For decades there was speculation about its authorship. The 12th edition, published in 1884, revealed officially that the author was Robert Chambers, a Scottish journalist, who had written the book in St Andrews
St Andrews
St Andrews is a university town and former royal burgh on the east coast of Fife in Scotland. The town is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle.St Andrews has a population of 16,680, making this the fifth largest settlement in Fife....
between 1841 and 1844. Originally, Chambers had proposed the title The Natural History of Creation, but friends persuaded him to revise the title in deference to the Scottish geologist 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 remarked of the timeless aspect of geology: "no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end". Some of the inspiration for the work derived from the Edinburgh Phrenological Society
Edinburgh Phrenological Society
The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was established in 1820. Phrenology was then claimed to be a science but is now regarded as a pseudoscience. The central concepts of phrenology were that the brain is the organ of the mind and that human behaviour can be most usefully understood in neurological...
whose influence reached a climax between 1825 and 1840. 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:...
, the leading proponent of phrenological thinking, had published his influential The Constitution of Man
The Constitution of Man
The Constitution of Man is the classical exposition of phrenology, written by George Combe and published in 1828. It furthered the popularity of phrenology by finding a pathway to a personal philosophy which was in tune with the scientific understanding of the time. The Constitution bridged the...
in 1828. Chambers was closely involved with Combe's associates William A.F. Browne and Hewett Cottrell Watson who did much to spell out the materialist theory of the mind. Chambers died in 1871 and is buried in the grounds of St Andrews Cathedral, within the ancient chapel of St Regulus.
Publication
The book was published by the famed medical publisher John Churchill in LondonLondon
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...
and great pains were undertaken to secure the secret of the authorship. After Robert Chambers completed each section of the manuscript, his wife would transcribe it. Because Chambers was already a well-known author, this precaution would prevent anyone from recognizing his handwriting. This copy would then be transferred into the hands of Chambers's friend Alexander Ireland. Because Ireland lived in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, this would hide the fact that the manuscripts originated from Scotland. Ireland would then deliver the manuscript to the publisher. Proofs were delivered by the printer--a Mr. Savill--back to Ireland, who would then forward them to Chambers, and the process would repeat itself. Because of these measures, the publisher and printer remained clueless as to who the true author was. To further prevent the possibility of any unwanted revelations, Chambers disclosed the secret to only four people: his wife, his brother William, Ireland, and George Combe’s
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:...
nephew, Robert Cox. All correspondence to and from Chambers passed through Ireland’s hands first, and all letters and manuscripts were dutifully transcribed in Mrs. Chambers’s hand.
Content
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...
(which we now call evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
). It suggests that everything currently in existence has developed from earlier forms: solar system, Earth, rocks, plants and corals, fish, land plants, reptiles and birds, mammals, and ultimately man.
The book begins by tackling the origins of the solar system, using the nebular hypothesis to explain its formations entirely in terms of natural law. It explains the origins of life by spontaneous generation
Spontaneous generation
Spontaneous generation or Equivocal generation is an obsolete principle regarding the origin of life from inanimate matter, which held that this process was a commonplace and everyday occurrence, as distinguished from univocal generation, or reproduction from parent...
, citing some questionable experiments that claimed to spontaneously generate insects through electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
. It then appeals to geology to demonstrate a progression in the fossil record from simple to more complex organisms, finally culminating in man—with the Caucasian European unabashedly identified as the pinnacle of this process, just above the other races and the rest of the animal kingdom. It even goes so far as to connect man’s mental reasoning power with the rest of the animals as an advanced evolutionary step that can be traced backwards through the rest of the lower animals. In this sense, the evolutionary ideas offered in Vestiges aim at being complete and all-encompassing.
It contains several comments worthy of repetition in light of more recent debates, such as regarding Intelligent Design
Intelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
. For example:
Not one speciesSpeciesIn biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
of any creature which flourished before the tertiaryTertiaryThe Tertiary is a deprecated term for a geologic period 65 million to 2.6 million years ago. The Tertiary covered the time span between the superseded Secondary period and the Quaternary...
(EhrenbergChristian Gottfried EhrenbergChristian Gottfried Ehrenberg , German naturalist, zoologist, comparative anatomist, geologist, and microscopist, was one of the most famous and productive scientists of his time.- Early collections :...
's infusoriaInfusoriaInfusoria is a collective term for minute aquatic creatures like ciliates, euglenoids, protozoa, and unicellular algae that exist in freshwater ponds...
excepted) now exists; and of the mammalia which arose during that series, many forms are altogether gone, while of others we have now only kindred species. Thus to find not only frequent additions to the previous existing forms, but frequent withdrawals of forms which had apparently become inappropriate — a constant shifting as well as advance — is a fact calculated very forcibly to arrest attention. A candid consideration of all these circumstances can scarcely fail to introduce into our minds a somewhat different idea of organic creation from what has hitherto been generally entertained. (p.152)
In other words, the fact of extinction
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...
— which can be observed in the fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
layers —suggests that some designs were flawed. From this, the author concludes:
Some other idea must then come to with regard to the mode in which the Divine Author proceeded in the organic creation. (p.153)
But the suggestion is not a mechanism, as Darwin would propose fifteen years later. The author merely notes that a continually active God is unnecessary:
...how can we suppose that the august Being who brought all these countless worlds into form by the simple establishment of a natural principle flowing from his mind, was to interfere personally and specially on every occasion when a new shell-fish or reptile was to be ushered into existence on one of these worlds? Surely this idea is too ridiculous to be for a moment entertained. (p.154)
He furthermore suggests that this interpretation may be based upon corrupt theology:
Thus, the scriptural objection quickly vanishes, and the prevalent ideas about the organic creation appear only as a mistaken inference from the text, formed at a time when man's ignorance prevented him from drawing therefrom a just conclusion. (p.156)
And praises God for his foresight in generating such wondrous variety from so elegant a method, while chastening those who would oversimplify His accomplishment:
To a reasonable mind the Divine attributes must appear, not diminished or reduced in some way, by supposing a creation by law, but infinitely exalted. It is the narrowest of all views of the Deity, and characteristic of a humble class of intellects, to suppose him acting constantly in particular ways for particular occasions. It, for one thing, greatly detracts from his foresight, the most undeniable of all the attributes of Omnipotence. It lowers him towards the level of our own humble intellects. Much more worthy of him it surely is, to suppose that all things have been commissioned by him from the first, though neither is he absent from a particle of the current of natural affairs in one sense, seeing that the whole system is continually supported by his providence. (pp.156–157)
Following its publication, there was increasing support for ideas of the coexistence of God and Nature, with the deity setting Natural Laws rather than continually intervening with miracles. It is perhaps for this reason that Origin of Species was accepted so readily, upon its eventual publication. On the other hand, the knowledge of the scandal and experience of the reaction of his scientist friends confirmed Darwin's reluctance to publish his own ideas until he had well researched answers to all possible objections (though, in the end, Darwin had to publish earlier than he had wanted to anyway).
Vestiges and Lamarck
The book argued for an evolutionary view of life in the same spirit as the late Frenchman Jean-Baptiste LamarckJean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck , often known simply as Lamarck, was a French naturalist...
. Lamarck had long been discredited among intellectuals by the 1840s and evolutionary (or development) theories were exceedingly unpopular, except among the political radicals, materialists, and atheists. 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...
had thoroughly criticized Lamarck's ideas in the second edition of his monumental work Principles of Geology
Principles of Geology
Principles of Geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the Earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation, is a book by the Scottish geologist Charles Lyell....
. Thus, it was naturally tempting for some critics to simply dismiss Vestiges as Lamarckian. Chambers, however, tried to explicitly distance his own theory from that of Lamarck's by denying Lamarck's evolutionary mechanism any plausibility.
Now it is possible that wants and the exercise of faculties have entered in some manner into the production of the phenomena which we have been considering; but certainly not in the way suggested by Lamarck, whose whole notion is obviously so inadequate to account for the rise of the organic kingdoms, that we only can place it with pity among the follies of the wise. (p.231)
In an (anonymous) autobiographical preface written in the third person that only appeared in the 10th edition, Chambers remarked that "He had heard of the hypothesis of Lamarck; but it seemed to him to proceed upon a vicious circle, and he dismissed it as wholly inadequate to account for the existence of animated species."
Reception
The book quickly became a best-seller, and a sensation which was eagerly read in royal circles. Every afternoon for a period early in 1845, Prince Albert read it aloud to Queen Victoria as a suitable popular science book explaining the latest ideas from the continent. It was well received by middle class readers and unorthodox clergymen, particularly of NonconformistNonconformism
Nonconformity is the refusal to "conform" to, or follow, the governance and usages of the Church of England by the Protestant Christians of England and Wales.- Origins and use:...
church groups such as Unitarians
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....
. At first scientists ignored the book and it took time before hostile reviews were published, but the book was then publicly denounced by scientists, preachers, and statesmen.
Since around 1800, ideas of evolutionism
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...
had been denounced as examples of dangerous materialism, which undermined natural theology
Natural theology
Natural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning.Marcus Terentius Varro ...
and the argument from design
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...
, threatening the current moral and social order. Such ideas were propagated by lower class Radical
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...
s seeking to overturn divine justification of the (aristocratic) social order. Chambers supported middle class political interests, and saw laws of progress in nature as implying inevitable political progress. He sought to sanitise the radical tradition by presenting progressive evolution as an unfolding of divinely planned laws of creation as development up to and including the appearance of human species. The political climate had eased as increasing prosperity reduced fears of revolution, and the book was widely considered to be merely scandalous and titillating. It was read not only by members of high society, but also — thanks to the rise of cheap publishing — the lower and middle classes, and continued to sell in large quantities for the rest of the 19th century.
The establishment might have tolerated a predesigned law of creation, but Vestiges presented a progressive law with humanity as its goal, and thus continuity which treated the human race as the last step in the ascent of animal life. It included arguments that mental and moral faculties were not unique to humans, but resulted from expansion of brain size during this ascent. This materialism
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...
was rejected by the religious and scientific establishment, and scientists were incensed that Chambers had bypassed their authority by appealing directly to the reading public and reaching a wide audience.
Early praise
The publisher John Churchill had, as instructed, distributed free review copies to numerous daily and weekly newspapers, and many carried advertisements giving one line quotations or ran excerpts from the book, with even the Scottish evangelical Witness giving it publicity and credence in this way. Several carried substantial reviews, one of the first appearing in mid November 1844 in the weekly reform newspaper the ExaminerExaminer
The Examiner was a weekly paper founded by Leigh and John Hunt in 1808. For the first fifty years it was a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles, but from 1865 it repeatedly changed hands and political allegiance, resulting in a rapid decline in readership and loss of...
:
As a result of this publicity the first edition of 1,750 copies sold out in a few days. Among those fortunate enough to have ordered their copy promptly, Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language....
commented to his bookseller that the review suggested it "seems to contain many speculations with which I have been familiar for years, and on which I have written more than one poem." Having read the book, he concluded "There was nothing degrading in the theory." Benjamin Disraeli told his sister that the book was "convulsing the world, anonymous" and his wife told her that "Dizzy says it does and will cause the greatest sensation and confusion."
The limited number of copies available at first were targeted at a select fashionable readership. The late Autumn literary season was just getting under way as the first reviews appeared, and by early January the book was the subject of conversations at elite literary gatherings. At venues such as Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...
and Lady Byron's
Anne Isabella Byron, Baroness Byron
Anne Isabella Noel Byron, 11th Baroness Wentworth and Baroness Byron was the wife of the poet Lord Byron, and mother of Ada Lovelace, the patron and co-worker of mathematician Charles Babbage.-Name:Her names were unusually complex...
parties, cosmic evolution became a topic of discussion for the first time in many years. Reforming medical journals including The Lancet
The Lancet
The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals...
for 23 November 1844 carried favourable reviews, while criticising specific points. In January the 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....
quarterly Prospective gave powerful support, but the influential prestige quarterlies which could determine the long term success of books were still looking for reviewers.
First criticism
Early in 1845 critical reviews appeared in the AthenaeumAthenaeum (magazine)
The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....
, the Literary Gazette
Literary Gazette
The Literary Gazette was a British literary magazine, established in London in 1817 with its full title being The Literary Gazette, and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences. Sometimes it appeared with the caption title, "London Literary Gazette". It was founded by the publisher Henry Colburn,...
and The Gardeners' Chronicle
The Gardeners' Chronicle
The Gardeners' Chronicle was a British horticulture periodical. It lasted as a title in its own right for nearly 150 years and is still extant as part of the magazine Horticulture Week....
. The most authoritative scientific and literary weekly was the Athenaeum, and its anonymous review of 4 January was by Edwin Lankester
Edwin Lankester
Edwin Lankester MRCS, FRS was an English surgeon and naturalist who made a major contribution to the control of cholera in London: he was the first public analyst in England.- Life :...
. Churchill had already been alarmed by The Lancet
The Lancet
The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals...
s report of numerous mistakes, and had been surprised to find that, unlike the medical specialists he usually dealt with, the author of Vestiges lacked first hand knowledge of the subject or the ability to correct proof
Galley proof
In printing and publishing, proofs are the preliminary versions of publications meant for review by authors, editors, and proofreaders, often with extra wide margins. Galley proofs may be uncut and unbound, or in some cases electronic...
s. At the author's request he had quoted for a people's edition, but was unwilling to proceed with this cheap reprint until errors had been corrected. Churchill engaged Lankester to make corrections to terminology to the second edition published in December 1844, and both Lankaster and George Fownes
George Fownes
George Fownes, FRS was a British chemist.He attended the Palace School in Enfield. He obtained his PhD at Giesen, in Germany. From 1842 he was chemistry professor at the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, and from 1846 at University College, London. He was also secretary of the Chemical...
made further revisions for the third edition.
While the season's fashionable use of Vestiges as a conversation piece in London society avoided theological implications, the book was read very differently in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, where it was first made public that men of science condemned the book, and it became the subject of sustained debate in newspapers. The book was attractive to reformers, including Uniformitarians
Uniformitarianism
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...
and William Ballantyne Hodgson
William Ballantyne Hodgson
William Ballantyne Hodgson was a Scottish educational reformer and political economist.-Life:The son of William Hodgson, a printer, he was born at Edinburgh on 6 October 1815. In 1823 he entered the Edinburgh High School, and, after working for a short time in a lawyer's office, matriculated in...
, the principal of the Mechanics' Institution
Mechanics' Institutes
Historically, Mechanics' Institutes were educational establishments formed to provide adult education, particularly in technical subjects, to working men...
who, like Chambers, had become a supporter of 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 ideas. In defence of public morals and Evangelical Tory
Tory
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...
dominance in the city, the Reverend Abraham Hume, Anglican
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...
priest and lecturer, delivered a detailed attack on Vestiges at the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society on 13 January 1845, demonstrating that the book conflicted with standard specialist scientific texts on nebulae, fossils and embryos, and accusing it of manipulative novelistic techniques occupying "the debatable ground between science and fiction". At the next meeting two weeks later the Unitarian Reverend John Robberds defended the book as well intentioned and based on "deep reflection and extensive research", while noting that he considered it inconsistent in distinguishing miracles from natural law, against Unitarian views. As subsequent debates appeared inconclusive, Hume wrote to leading men of science for authoritative expert opinions, and made the responses public to resolve the dispute. This backfired when a writer in the Liverpool Journal pointed out inconsistencies and contradictions between the various expert opinions. They only agreed on the point that Vestiges was unscientific, and the publication of their letters was considered bad manners as well as tactically unwise. Few of the experts would have allowed any direct reference to the book to be published under their names, and their gentlemanly disagreements to be made public.
Anglican clergymen were usually quick to publish pamphlets on any theological controversy, but tended to excuse themselves from responding to Vestiges as they lacked expertise: men of science were expected to lead the counterattack. The universities of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
and 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...
were part of the Anglican establishment, intended to educate Christian gentlemen with half of the students becoming clergymen. Science subjects were optional lectures. The professors were scientific clergymen with strong reputations, and at Cambridge science had developed as natural theology
Natural theology
Natural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning.Marcus Terentius Varro ...
, but there was no unified scientific establishment. The quarterly review magazines turned to them for commentary on the book, but demonstrating that it was superficial was difficult when its range of topics meant experts being drawn into superficial responses outside their own area of intensive expertise. 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...
refused all requests for a review to avoid dignifying the "bold, speculative and false" work, but was the first to give a response, publishing Indications of a Creator in mid February 1845 as a slim and elegant volume of "theological extracts" from his writings. His aim was to inform superficial London society used to skimming books as conversation pieces and lacking properly prepared minds to deal with real philosophy and real science, and he avoided mentioning Vestiges by name. During the crucial early months of the debate this and Hume's lecture distributed as a pamphlet were the only responses to Vestiges published by the established clergy, and there were just two other short works opposing it: a published lecture by the Anabaptist
Anabaptist
Anabaptists are Protestant Christians of the Radical Reformation of 16th-century Europe, and their direct descendants, particularly the Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites....
preacher John Sheppard, and an unorthodox anti-science piece by Samuel Richard Bosanquet.
There was a wide range of readings of the book among the aristocracy interested in science, who assessed it independently without dismissing it out of hand. Sir John Cam Hobhouse
John Hobhouse, 1st Baron Broughton
John Cam Hobhouse, 1st Baron Broughton GCB, PC, FRS , known as Sir John Hobhouse, Bt, from 1831 to 1851, was a British politician and memoirist.-Background and education:...
wrote his thoughts down in his diary: "In spite of the allusions to the creative will of God the cosmogony is atheistic—at least the introduction of an author of all things seems very like a formality for the sake of saving appearances—it is not a necessary part of the scheme". While disquieted by its information on embryo
Embryo
An embryo is a multicellular diploid eukaryote in its earliest stage of development, from the time of first cell division until birth, hatching, or germination...
logy implying human origins from animals, he thought its tone was good. He concluded that "It does not meddle with revealed religion—but unless I am mistaken the leaders of revealed religion will meddle with it." Lord Morpeth thought it had "much that is able, startling, striking" and progressive development did not conflict with Genesis more than then current geology, but did "not care much for the notion that we are engendered by monkeys" and objected strongly to the idea that the Earth was "a member of a democracy" of similar planets.
Vestiges was published in New York, and in response the April 1845 issue of the North American Review
North American Review
The North American Review was the first literary magazine in the United States. Founded in Boston in 1815 by journalist Nathan Hale and others, it was published continuously until 1940, when publication was suspended due to J. H. Smyth, who had purchased the magazine, being unmasked as a Japanese...
published a long review, the start of which was scathing about its reliance on speculative scientific theories: "The writer has taken up almost every questionable fact and startling hypothesis, that have been promulgated by proficients and pretenders in science during the present century...The nebular hypothesis...spontaneous generation
Spontaneous generation
Spontaneous generation or Equivocal generation is an obsolete principle regarding the origin of life from inanimate matter, which held that this process was a commonplace and everyday occurrence, as distinguished from univocal generation, or reproduction from parent...
...the Macleay system, dogs playing dominoes, negroes born of white parents, materialism
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...
, 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...
, - he adopts them all, and makes them play an important part in his own magnificent theory, to the exclusion, to a great degree, of the well-accredited facts and established doctrines of science."
Scientific gentlemen respond
The Reverend Adam SedgwickAdam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick was one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale...
, the Woodwardian Professor of Geology
Woodwardian Professor of Geology
The Woodwardian Professor of Geology is a professorship held in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge. It was founded by John Woodward in 1728...
at 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 popular and well regarded, having recently strongly defended modern geology against the Biblical literalism of the Reverend William Cockburn
Sir William Cockburn, 11th Baronet
Sir William Cockburn, 11th Baronet was a Church of England clergyman. He was Dean of York and was famously defended on a charge of simony by his nephew Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet in 1841....
. He turned down several invitations to review Vestiges, pleading lack of time, but in March read it closely and on 6 April discussed with other leading clergymen the "rank materialism" of the book "against which work he & all other scientific men are indignant". He thought the "hasty jumping to conclusions" indicated an authoress. In a letter to 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...
about "the foul book", he expressed his disgust: "If the book be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine; our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts! .... I cannot but think the work is from a woman's pen, it is so well dressed and so graceful in its externals. I do not think the 'beast man' could have done this part so well." On 10 April he contacted Macvey Napier
Macvey Napier
Macvey Napier FRS FRSE was a Scottish lawyer and an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica. A hard-working scholar in his youth, he was recruited by Archibald Constable...
, editor of the Edinburgh Review
Edinburgh Review
The Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, was one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century. It ceased publication in 1929. The magazine took its Latin motto judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur from Publilius Syrus.In 1984, the Scottish cultural magazine New Edinburgh Review,...
, who quickly accepted the offer. Sedgwick was rather disorganised and had not written a review before. To save time batches of his writing were typeset on arrival, so one part was being printed "while the other part was still uncoiling from my brain in Cambridge." Napier did not insist on the usual concise review, but as it was still arriving in mid May stopped it at what became 85 pages, one of the longest reviews the quarterly ever published.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting was held at Cambridge in June 1845, giving its president 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...
a platform to counter Vestiges. His presidential address contrasted the "sound and thoughtful and sobering discipline" of the scientific brotherhood with the "over-hasty generalisation" and "pure speculation" of the unnamed book. He had a cold and his words were badly delivered, but they appeared in newspapers across the country as its most prestigious man of science dismissing the book. For the rest of the week attacks on Vestiges continued. In the geology section, Roderick Murchison
Roderick Murchison
Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet KCB DCL FRS FRSE FLS PRGS PBA MRIA was a Scottish geologist who first described and investigated the Silurian system.-Early life and work:...
used his lecture to clear up the confusion between competing views, and say that "every piece of geological evidence sustained the belief that that each species was perfect in its kind when first called into being by the Creator". Sedgwick set aside his differences with Murchison to summarise his forthcoming Edinburgh review and agree in opposing the evolutionary ideas and the "desolating pantheism" of the book.
Segwick's long, rambling and scathing article was published in the July 1845 edition of the Edinburgh Review. Articles were anonymous, but he ensured that his authorship was well known. He had disregarded 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...
's caution about attempting a point by point refutation, and the body of his review followed the structure of Vestiges, packed with current evidence to undermine the supposition of continuous transitions underlying the progressive development hypothesis which he scorned as mere speculation, and pointing out errors showing the inadequate expertise of the author. Vestiges crucially undermined the separation between man and beast, and endangered hopes for the afterlife. Sedgwick expressed concern for "our glorious maidens and matrons .... listening to the seductions of this author; who comes before them with a bright, polished, and many-coloured surface, and the serpent coils of a false philosophy, and asks them again to stretch out their hands and pluck forbidden fruit", who tells them "that their Bible is a fable when it teaches them that they were made in the image of God—that they are the children of apes and breeders of monsters—that he has annulled all distinction between physical and moral", which in Sedgwick's view would lead to "a rank, unbending and degrading materialism" lacking the proper reading of nature as analogy to draw moral lessons from physical truths. That needed the use of reason by great men who believed that "moral truth is the ennobled form of material truth" and that "all nature, both material and moral, has been framed and supported by one creative mind" so that one truth could never be in conflict with another. In presenting natural law as explaining the soul, Vestiges threatened the fine balance between faith and science.
Journals that had already opposed the book welcomed Sedgwick's article, with the Literary Gazette
Literary Gazette
The Literary Gazette was a British literary magazine, established in London in 1817 with its full title being The Literary Gazette, and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences. Sometimes it appeared with the caption title, "London Literary Gazette". It was founded by the publisher Henry Colburn,...
calling it a "scourging and irrefragable review", as did sections of the church which were suspicious of science and geology. However, its crude vehemence was ill suited to fashionable society, and Whewell wrote "To me the material appears excellent, but the workmanship bad, and I doubt if it will do its work." Aristocrats found its "lengthy inefficiency" heavy going, and John Gibson Lockhart
John Gibson Lockhart
John Gibson Lockhart , was a Scottish writer and editor. He is best known as the author of the definitive "Life" of Sir Walter Scott...
of the Tory Quarterly Review
Quarterly Review
The Quarterly Review was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by the well known London publishing house John Murray. It ceased publication in 1967.-Early years:...
suspected that "The savants are all sore at the vestige man because they are likely to be in the same boat as him." The extreme liberal press also thought "a mere anonymous bookmaker might well be sacrificed to evidence the orthodoxy of a Cambridge divine", in the hope of "immunity to their own speculations, by a cheap display of eloquent zeal against all who dare to go beyond their measure."
Explanations: A Sequel
There was renewed debate in correspondence in newspapers. The publisher Churchill advised the anonymous author against meeting attacks by going to the people with a cheap edition, and was told that the author was "writing a defence of the book, with particular reference to the coarse attack of Mr. Sedgfield", with the intention of publishing it as letters to The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
followed by a pamphlet. On Churchill's advice the response was broadened into a 206 page book bound to match the original work, which was published at the end of 1845 at a price of five shillings under the title of Explanations: A Sequel to the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a "forcible and argumentative work" aimed at "convincing open-minded men", published anonymously "By the author of that work". The revised fifth edition of Vestiges was ready in January 1846, and the two were commonly sold together, catching the publicity from reviews of Explanations.
The North British Review reflected evangelical Presbyterian willingness to consider science in relation to "Reason and not to Faith" and to view natural law as directly guided by God, but warned that "If it has been revealed to man that the Almighty made him out of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, it is in vain to tell a Christian that man was originally a speck of albumen, and passed through the stages of monads and monkeys, before he attained his present intellectual pre-eminence." Many women admired the book, and "It would augur ill for the rising generation if the mothers of England were infected with the errors of Phrenology: it would augur worse were they tainted with materialism."
Chambers planned one more "edition for the higher classes and for libraries", extensively revised to deal with errors and incorporate the latest science, such as the detail of the Orion Nebula
Orion Nebula
The Orion Nebula is a diffuse nebula situated south of Orion's Belt. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light...
revealed by Lord Rosse's
William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse
William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, Knight of the Order of St Patrick was an Irish astronomer who had several telescopes built. His 72-inch telescope "Leviathan", built 1845, was the world's largest telescope until the early 20th century.-Life:He was born in Yorkshire, England, in the city of...
giant telescope. Use of generous spacing and the additional text extended the book by 20%, and the price had to be increased from 7s.
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
6d.
Penny (British pre-decimal coin)
The penny of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, was in circulation from the early 18th century until February 1971, Decimal Day....
to nine shillings. The identical text was used for the long awaited people's edition, which was smaller with cheap bindings, smaller lettering and more closely spaced text. The cheap edition was printed first, but set aside until after the gentlemen's edition was published so that it would appear as a reprint of the expensive 6th edition, and not the other way around. The price was only 2s.6d. and five thousand copies were issued, almost as many as the first four editions combined. It sold well, though sales of the expensive edition were slow.
Sedgwick added a 400+ page preface to the 5th edition of his Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge (1850), including a lengthy attack on Vestiges and theories of development in general.
Among religious criticisms, some maintained that Chambers' use of "natural law" to explain the creation of the planets and the successive creation of new species, including man, excluded the possibility of miracle
Miracle
A miracle often denotes an event attributed to divine intervention. Alternatively, it may be an event attributed to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that a god may work with the laws...
s and providential control. In other words, under this scheme, God did not personally interact with His creation after bringing forth these initial Laws. For these critics, this was akin to denying the central miracle of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
and, therefore, Christianity itself.
Darwin and Vestiges
Among the early readers of Vestiges, Charles DarwinCharles 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...
had conceived his own theory 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....
to explain evolution six years earlier, and in July 1844 had written down his ideas in an '"Essay". For a year he had been tentatively discussing his evolutionary ideas in correspondence with Joseph Dalton Hooker
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM, GCSI, CB, MD, FRS was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century. Hooker was a founder of geographical botany, and Charles Darwin's closest friend...
, who wrote to Darwin on 30 December 1844 that he had "been delighted with Vestiges, from the multiplicity of facts he brings together, though I do [not] agree with his conclusions at all, he must be a funny fellow: somehow the books looks more like a 9 days wonder than a lasting work: it certainly is “filling at the price”.— I mean the price its reading costs, for it is dear enough otherwise; he has lots of errors." Darwin had read the book in November, finding that it drew on some of the lines of evidence he had been putting together, and introduced questions that had to be dealt with. He responded that he had been "somewhat less amused at it .... the writing & arrangement are certainly admirable, but his geology strikes me as bad, & his zoology far worse. Darwin had learnt geology from Adam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick was one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale...
, and was particularly interested in what his former mentor had to say about evolution. In October 1845 he wrote to his friend 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...
that Segwick's review was a "grand piece of argument against mutability of species" which he had read with "fear & trembling," but had been "well pleased to find" that he had anticipated Sedgwick's objections and "had not overlooked any of the arguments".
He read Explanations early in 1846 and thought "the spirit of [it], though not the facts, ought to shame Sedgwick", while noting speculation and evidence suggesting that Chambers had written the books. In April 1847, after meeting Chambers then subsequently receiving a presentation of Vestiges, Darwin became convinced that Chambers must have been the author.
In his introduction to On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, Darwin assumed that his readers were aware of Vestiges, and wrote identifying what he felt was one of its gravest deficiencies with regards to its theory of biological evolution:
The author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' would, I presume, say that, after a certain unknown number of generations, some bird had given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to the mistletoe, and that these had been produced perfect as we now see them; but this assumption seems to me to be no explanation, for it leaves the case of the coadaptations of organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life, untouched and unexplained.
Chambers took the publication of the Origin as an opportunity to release a new edition of Vestiges and respond to Darwin's comments, lamenting that Darwin had misunderstood the Vestiges. "It seems to the author," Chambers wrote, "that Mr. Darwin has only been enabled by his infinitely superior knowledge to point out a principle in what may be called practical animal life, which appears capable of bringing about the modifications theoretically assumed in the earlier work. His book, in no essential respect, contradicts the present: on the contrary...it expresses substantially the same general ideas." In perhaps a gross simplification, Chambers concludes that "The difference seems to be in words, not in facts or effects." At the very least, Chambers saw in Darwin a much needed ally – one that the former simply could not afford to have against him.
It is probable that Darwin read Chambers's comments, because he removed the offending passage from the 3rd edition of the Origin (1861) and all subsequent editions. In a historical sketch, newly added to the 3rd edition, Darwin softened his language a bit:
The author apparently believes that organisation progresses by sudden leaps, but that the effects produced by the conditions of life are gradual. He argues with much force on general grounds that species are not immutable productions. But I cannot see how the two supposed "impulses" account in a scientific sense for the numerous and beautiful co-adaptations which we see throughout nature; I cannot see that we thus gain any insight how, for instance, a woodpecker has become adapted to its peculiar habits of life. The work, from its powerful and brilliant style, though displaying in the earlier editions little accurate knowledge and a great want of scientific caution, immediately had a very wide circulation.
Darwin even suggested that Chambers' book helped pave the way for the publication of his theory
Publication of Darwin's theory
The publication of Darwin's theory brought into the open Charles Darwin's ideas of evolution through natural selection, the culmination of more than twenty years of work....
of evolution by 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....
. "In my opinion it has done excellent service in this country in calling attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous views."
The harsh reception that Vestiges received, and the mockery which was made of its evolutionary ideas, has been cited by some historians as a factor leading to Darwin's caution in publishing his own theory of evolution. In a letter to Thomas Henry Huxley in 1854 (five years before his own book on evolution was published but twelve years after its ideas had first been sketched out in an unpublished essay), Darwin expressed sympathy for the (still anonymous) author of Vestiges in the face of a savage review by Huxley: "I must think that such a book, if it does no other good, spreads the taste for Natural Science. But I am perhaps no fair judge, for I am almost as unorthodox about species as the Vestiges itself, though I hope not quite so unphilosophical." However later the same year, in a letter to Hooker, Darwin mentioned Vestiges in a more sober tone: "I should have less scruple in troubling you if I had any confidence what my work would turn out. Sometimes I think it will be good, at other times I really feel as much ashamed of myself as the author of the Vestiges ought to be of himself."
According to the historian James A. Secord, Vestiges outsold The Origin of Species
The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the...
up until the early 20th century.
Influence on A.R. Wallace
It was reading Vestiges in 1845 that first inclined Alfred Russel WallaceAlfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
to believe that the transmutation of species occurred. It was this belief that would lead him to plan his early field work with the idea of collecting data on the geographic distribution of closely allied species in hopes of finding evidence to support the idea. Wallace made the following comments on the concept of transmutation of species as described in Vestiges in a letter to Henry Bates a few months after first reading it:
I have a rather more favourable opinion of the ‘Vestiges’ than you appear to have. I do not consider it a hasty generalization, but rather as an ingenious hypothesis strongly supported by some striking facts and analogies, but which remains to be proved by more facts and the additional light which more research may throw upon the problem. It furnishes a subject for every observer of nature to attend to; every fact he observes will make either for or against it, and it thus serves both as an incitement to the collection of facts, and an object to which they can be applied when collected.
Authorship
Because the book was published anonymously, speculation on the authorship naturally began as soon as it was released. Many people were suspected, including, Charles DarwinCharles 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...
("I ought to be much flattered & unflattered"), the geologist 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...
, the phrenologist 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:...
, as well as many of the people whose work the book often cited. Early on, Sir Richard Vyvyan
Sir Richard Vyvyan, 8th Baronet
Sir Richard Rawlinson Vyvyan, 8th Baronet was an English landowner and Whig and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1825 and 1857.-Early life:...
, the Tory
Tory
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...
leader of the parliamentary opposition to the Reform Bill, was a popular suspect. Vyvyan held interests in natural philosophy, phrenology, and Lamarckian evolution. Only three years earlier he had privately printed his own evolutionary cosmology, a copy of which he sent to the English anatomist Richard Owen
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
. The latter likely explains the discrepancy between Owen's critical letter to 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...
on the Vestiges and his flattering letter to the author, whom he probably thought to be Vyvyan. It was even suggested at one point that Prince Albert might have secretly written it. Adam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick was one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale...
, as well as others, initially thought that the work was likely written by a woman, either Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau was an English social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist....
or the Countess Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace , born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine...
. A feminine authorship was thought to explain all of the book's scientific failings.
Robert Chambers became a prominent suspect as early as the spring of 1845. In 1854, following the publication of the 10th edition of Vestiges along with its anonymous biographical sketch, a former assistant named David Page accused Chambers directly. The accusation was printed in the Athenaeum
Athenaeum (magazine)
The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....
, but because Page was an embittered former employee of the Chambers's firm, his testimony was not taken all that seriously. Vyvyan finally denied that he was the author outright and the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
listed the book under George Combe's name as late as 1877.
After Robert's death in 1871 his brother, William
William Chambers of Glenormiston
William Chambers of Glenormiston or William Chambers was a Scottish publisher and politician, the brother of Robert Chambers...
, penned a biography for Robert but refused to reveal the secret. He only mentioned the Vestiges to note that Robert's suspected authorship was used as a means to discredit him when he ran for the office of Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1848. The secret was finally revealed at last in 1884 when Alexander Ireland issued a new 12th edition with Robert's name and an introduction explaining the circumstances behind its publication.
Vestiges
Chambers made important revisions to the book, refining his arguments, addressing the many criticisms and reacting to new scientific publications. He added and deleted whole sections so that the content of the last edition differs substantially from that of the first.| Edition | Date | Pages | Copies | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1844 Oct | vi, 390 | 750 | |
| 2 | 1844 Dec | vi, 394 | 1000 | Mainly small corrections. |
| 3 | 1845 Feb | iv, 384 | 1500 | Removes most of discussion on quinarian classification. |
| 4 | 1845 May | iv, 408 | 2000 | Many small changes to geological chapters. |
| 5 | 1846 Jan | iv, 423 | 1500 | Introduces experimental evidence for the nebular hypothesis. Corrections to geology. Removes all mention of quinarianism. |
| 6 | 1847 Mar | iv, 512 | 1000 | Many revisions in response to criticism. |
| 7 | 1847 May | iv, 294 | 5000 | Cheap edition with same text as 6th edition. |
| 8 | 1850 Jul | vi, 319 | 3000 | Cheap edition. "Note Conclusory" rewritten. |
| 9 | 1851 Jul | iv, 316 | 3000 | Cheap edition. |
| 10 | 1853 Jun | xii, 325, lxvii | 2500 | Includes autobiographical preface and 107 woodcut illustrations chosen by the physiologist William Carpenter William Benjamin Carpenter William Benjamin Carpenter MD CB FRS was an English physician, invertebrate zoologist and physiologist. He was instrumental in the early stages of the unified University of London.-Life:... . Adds section on fossils in older rocks, deletes "Note Conclusory" and adds appendix containing responses to criticism. |
| 11 | 1860 Dec | iv, 286, lxiv | 2500 | Removes autobiographical preface. Includes a 3 page discussion of Darwin's recently published Origin in an appendix. |
| 12 | 1884 Apr | vi, 418, lxxxii | 5000 | Text as in the 11th edition but includes an introduction by Ireland revealing that Robert Chambers is the author. |
Many of the editions were reprinted in the United States. After 1846, the American editions usually included Explanations.
Explanations
| Edition | Date | Pages | Copies |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1845 Dec | vii, 198 | 1500 |
| 2 | 1846 Jul | vii, 205 | 1500 |
External links
- [Chambers, R.] (1845). Explanations: A sequel to "Vestiges of the natural history of creation." By the author of that work. London: John Churchill. (Darwin Online)
- Vestiges online, in PDF format, scanned from an original text (Electronic Scholarly Publishing)
- Vestiges online, in HTML and TXT format (Project Gutenberg)
- Vestiges online, in HTML format (Stephen Jay Gould Archive)
- Explanations: a sequel to "Vestiges of the natural history of creation" 2nd ed. (1846) from Google Books.