 Section 5 of The Autobiography of Charles Darwin. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Adam Marcicic, Alexandria, Virginia, June 2009. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, edited by his son Francis Darwin. Section 5. Residents at Down from September 14, 1842 to the present time, 1876. After several fruitless searches in Surrey and elsewhere, we found this house and purchased it. I was pleased with the diversified appearance of vegetation proper to a chalk district, and so unlike what I had been accustomed to in the Midland countries, and still more pleased with the extreme quietness and rusticity of the place. It is not, however, quite so retired a place as a writer in a German periodical makes it, who says that my house can be approached only by a mule track. Our fixing ourselves here has answered admirably in one way, which we did not anticipate, namely by being very convenient for frequent visits from our children. Few persons can have lived a more retired life than we have done. Besides short visits to the houses of relations, and occasionally to the seaside or elsewhere, we have gone nowhere. During the first part of our residence, we went a little into society and received a few friends here, but my health almost always suffered from the excitement, violent shivering and vomiting attacks being thus brought on. I have therefore been compelled for many years to give up all dinner parties, and this has been somewhat of a deprivation to me, as such parties always put me into high spirits. From the same cause, I have been able to invite here very few scientific acquaintances. My chief enjoyment and sole employment throughout life has been scientific work, and the excitement from such work makes me, for the time forget, or drives quite away my daily discomfort. I have therefore nothing to record during the rest of my life, except the publication of my several books. Perhaps a few details, how they arose, may be worth giving. End of Residence at Down The success of this, my first literary child, always tickles my vanity more than that of any of my other books. Even to this day, it sells steadily in England and the United States, and has been translated for the second time into German, and into French and other languages. This success of a book of travels, especially of a scientific one, so many years after its first publication, is surprising. Ten thousand copies have been sold in England of the second edition. In 1846, my geological observations on South America were published. I record in a little diary, which I have always kept, that my three geological books, quarrel-recent-cluded, consumed four-and-a-half years steady work, and now it is ten years since my return to England. How much time have I lost by illness? I have nothing to say about these three books, except that, to my surprise, new editions have lately been called for. Geological observations, second edition, 1876, quarrel-recent-second edition, 1874. In October, 1846, I began to work on syrupedia. When on the coast of Chile, I found the most curious form, which burrowed into the shells of concholapas, and which differed so much from all other syrupedies that I had to form a new suborder for its sole reception. Lately, an allied burrowing genus has been found on the shores of Portugal. To understand the structure of my new syrupedia, I had to examine and dissect many of the common forms, and this gradually led me on to take up the whole group. I worked steadily on this subject for the next eight years, and ultimately published two thick volumes, published by the Ray Society, describing all the known living species, and two thin quartos on the extinct species. I do not doubt that Sir E. Litten-Bowler had me in his mind when he introduced in one of his novels a Professor Long, who had written two huge volumes on limpets. Although I was employed during eight years on this work, yet I record in my diary that about two years out of this time was lost by illness. On this account, I went in 1848 for some months to Melbourne for hydropathic treatment, which did me much good so that on my return home I was able to resume work. So much was I out of health that when my dear father died on November 13, 1848, I was unable to attend his funeral or act as one of his executors. My work on the seripidia possesses, I think, considerable value, as besides describing several new and remarkable forms, I made out the homologies of the various parts. I discovered the cementing apparatus, though I blundered dreadfully about the cement glands, and lastly I proved the existence in certain genera of minute males, complementary to and parasitic on the hermaphrodites. This latter discovery has at last been fully confirmed, though at one time a German writer was pleased to attribute the whole account to my fertile imagination. The serepides form a highly varying and difficult group of species to class, and my work was of considerable use to me, when I had to discuss the origin of species, the principles of a natural classification. Nevertheless, I doubt whether the work was worth the consumption of so much time. From September 1854, I devoted my whole time to arranging my huge pile of notes, to observing, and to experimenting in relation to the transmutation of species. During the voyage of the Beagle, I had been deeply impressed by discovering in the Pampian formation great fossil animals covered with armor, like that on the existing armadillos. Secondly, by the manner in which closely allied animals replace one another in proceeding southwards over the continent. And thirdly, by the South American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos archipelago, and more especially by the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of the group, none of the islands appearing to be very ancient in a geological sense. It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified, and the subject haunted me. But it was equally evident that neither the action of the surrounding conditions, nor the will of the organisms, especially in the case of plants, could account for the innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully adapted to their habits of life. For instance, a woodpecker or a tree frog to climb trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes. I had always been much struck by such adaptations, and until these could be explained, it seemed to me almost useless to endeavor to prove by indirect evidence that species have been modified. After my return to England, it appeared to me that by following the example of Lyell in geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and nature, some light might be perhaps thrown on the whole subject. My first notebook was opened in July 1837. I worked on true Bajonian principles, and without any theory, collected facts on a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed inquiries, by conversation with skillful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I see the list of books of all kinds which I read and abstracted, including whole series of journals and transactions, I am surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that selection was a keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some time a mystery to me. In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence, which everywhere goes on from long continued observation of the habits of animals and plants. It at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work, but I was so anxious to avoid prejudice that I determined not for some time to write even the briefest sketch of it. In June 1842, I first allowed myself the satisfaction of writing a very brief abstract of my theory in pencil in 35 pages, and this was enlarged during the summer of 1844 into one of 230 pages, which I had fairly copied out and still possessed. But at that time I overlooked one problem of great importance, and it is astonishing to me, except on the principle of Columbus and his egg, how I could have overlooked it and its solution. The problem is the tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in character as they become modified. That they have diverged greatly is obvious from the manner in which species of all kinds can be classed under genera, genera under families, families under suborders, and so forth. And I can remember the very spot in the road, while in my carriage went to my joy the solution occurred to me, and this was long after I had come to down. The solution, as I believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature. Early in 1856, Liel advised me to write out my views pretty fully, and I began at once to do so on a scale three or four times as extensive as that which was afterwards followed in my origin of species, yet it was only an abstract of the materials which I had collected, and I got through about half the work on this scale. But my plans were overthrown. For early in the summer of 1858, Mr. Wallace, who was then in the Malay Archipelago, sent me an essay on the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type, and this essay contained exactly the same theory as mine. Mr. Wallace expressed the wish that if I thought well of his essay, I should send it to Liel for perusal. The circumstances under which I consented at the request of Liel and Hooker to allow an abstract from my manuscript, together with the letter to an Asa Gray, dated September 5th, 1857, to be published at the same time with Wallace's essay, are given in the Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society, 1858, page 45. I was at first very unwilling to consent, as I thought Mr. Wallace might consider my doing so unjustifiable, for I did not then know how generous and noble was his disposition. The extract from my manuscript, and the letter to Asa Gray, had neither been intended for publication and were badly written. Mr. Wallace's essay, on the other hand, was admirably expressed and quite clear. Nevertheless, our joint productions excited very little attention, and the only published notice of them, which I can remember, was by Professor Houghton of Dublin, whose verdict was that, at all, that was new in them was false, and what was true was old. This shows how necessary it is, that any new view should be explained at considerable length, in order to arouse public attention. In September 1858, I set to work by the strong advice of Lyle and Hooker to prepare a volume on the transmutation of species, but was often interrupted by ill health in short visits to Dr. Lane's delightful hydropathic establishment at Moore Park. I abstracted the manuscript, begun on a much larger scale, in 1856, and completed the volume on the same reduced scale. It cost me 13 months and 10 days hard labor. It was published under the title of The Origin of Species in November 1859. Though considerably added to and corrected in the later editions, it has remained substantially the same book. It is no doubt the chief work of my life. It was from the first, highly successful. The first small edition of 1,250 copies was sold on the day of publication, and a second edition of 3,000 copies soon afterwards. 16,000 copies have now, 1876, been sold in England. And considering how stiff a book it is, this is a large scale. It has been translated into almost every European tongue, and even into languages as Spanish, Bohemian, Polish, and Russian. It is also, according to Ms. Byrd, been translated into Japanese. Editors note, Ms. Byrd is mistaken, for I learned from Professor Mitsukuri, Francis Darwin. And there it is much studied. Even an essay in Hebrew has appeared on it, showing that the theory is contained in the Old Testament. The reviews were very numerous. For some time I collected all that appeared on The Origin, and on my related books. And these amount, excluding newspaper reviews, to 265. But after a time I gave up the attempt in despair. Many separate essays and books on the subject have appeared. And in Germany, a catalogue or bibliography on Darwinismus has appeared every year or two. The success of The Origin may, I think, be attributed in large part to my having long before written two condensed sketches, and to my having finally abstracted a much larger manuscript, which was itself an abstract. By this means I was enabled to select the more striking facts and conclusions. I had also, during many years, followed a golden rule. Namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it, without fail, and at once. For I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favorable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views, which I had not at least noticed, and attempted to answer. It has sometimes been said that the success of The Origin proved that the subject was in the air, or that men's minds were prepared for it. I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species. Even Liel and Hooker, though they would listen with interest to me, never seemed to agree. I tried once or twice to explain to able men what I meant by natural selection, but signally failed. What I believe was strictly true is that innumerable well-observed facts were stored in the minds of naturalists, ready to take their proper places, as soon as any theory which would receive them was sufficiently explained. Another element in the success of the book was its moderate size, and this I owe to the appearance of Mr. Wallace's essay. Had I published on the scale in which I began to write in 1856, the book would have been four or five times as large as The Origin, and very few would have had the patience to read it. I gained much by my delay in publishing from about 1839, when the theory was clearly conceived, to 1859, and I lost nothing by it, for I cared very little whether men attributed most originality to me or Wallace, and his essay no doubt aided in the reception of the theory. I was forestalled in only one important point, which my vanity has always made me regret, namely, the explanation by means of the glacial period of the presence of the same species of plants, and of some few animals on distant mountain summits, and in the Arctic regions. This view pleased me so much that I wrote about it in extentso, and I believe that it was read by Hooker some years before E. Forbes published his celebrated memoir, Geological Survey Memoirs, 1846, on the subject. In the very few points in which we differed, I still think I was in the right. I have never, of course, alluded in print to my having independently worked out this view. Hardly any point gave me so much satisfaction when I was at work on the origin, as the explanation of the wide difference in many classes between the embryo and the adult animal, and of the close resemblance of the embryos within the same class. No notice of this point was taken, as far as I remember, in the early reviews of the origin, and I recollect expressing my surprise on this head in a letter to Asa Gray. Within late years, several reviewers have given the whole credit to Fritz Müller and Hackle, who undoubtedly have worked it out much more fully, and in some respects, more correctly than I did. I had materials for a whole chapter on the subject, and I ought to have made the discussion longer, for it is clear that I failed to impress my readers, and he who succeeds in doing so deserves, in my opinion, all the credit. This leads me to remark that I have almost always been treated honestly by my reviewers. Passing over those without scientific knowledge is not worthy of notice. My views have often been grossly misrepresented, bitterly opposed and ridiculed, but this has been generally done, as I believe, in good faith. On the whole, I do not doubt that my works have been over and over again greatly overpraised. I rejoice that I have avoided controversies. And this I owe to Liel, who many years ago, in reference to my geological works, strongly advised me never to get entangled in a controversy, as it rarely did any good and caused a miserable loss of time and temper. Whenever I have found out that I have blundered, or that my work has been imperfect, and when I have been contemptuously criticized, and even when I have been overpraised, so that I have felt mortified, it has been my greatest comfort to say hundreds of times to myself that I have worked as hard and as well as I could, and no man can do more than this. I remember when in Good Success Bay, in Tierra del Fuego, thinking, and I believe, that I wrote home to the effect, that I could not employ my life better than in adding a little to natural science. This I have done to the best of my abilities, and critics may say what they like, but they cannot destroy this conviction. During the two last months of 1859, I was fully occupied in preparing a second edition of The Origin, and by an enormous correspondence, on January 1st, 1860, I began arranging my notes for my work on the variation of animals and plants under domestication, but it was not published until the beginning of 1868. The delay having been caused partly by frequent illnesses, one of which lasted seven months, and partly by being tempted to publish on other subjects, which at the time interested me more. On May 15, 1862, my little book on the fertilization of orchids, which cost me ten months' work, was published. Most of the facts had been slowly accumulated during several previous years. During the summer of 1839, and I believe, during the previous summer, I was led to attend to the cross fertilization of flowers by the aid of insects, from having come to the conclusion in my speculations on the origin of species, that crossing played an important part in keeping specific forms constant. I attended to the subject, more or less, during every subsequent summer, and my interest in it was greatly enhanced by having procured and read in November 1841. Through the advice of Robert Brown, a copy of C.K. Springles' wonderful book, Das Indechte Geheimnis der Nature, for some years before 1862, I had specially attended to the fertilization of our British orchids. And it seemed to me the best plan to prepare as complete a treatise on this group of plants as well as I could, rather than to utilize the great mass of matter which I had slowly collected with respect to other plants. My resolve proved a wise one, for since the appearance of my book, a surprising number of papers and separate works on the fertilization of all kinds of flowers have appeared, and these are far better done than I could possibly have affected. The merits of poor old Springles, so long overlooked, are now fully recognized many years after his death. During the same year, I published in the Journal of the Linnaean Society a paper on the two forms, or Dimorphic Condition of Primula, and during the next five years, five other papers on Dimorphic and Trimorphic plants. I do not think anything in my scientific life has given me so much satisfaction as making out the meaning of the structure of these plants. I had noticed in 1838 or 1839 the dimorphism of Linnum flavum, and had at first thought that it was merely a case of unmeaning variability, but on examining the common species of Primula, I found that the two forms were much too regular and constant to be thus viewed. I therefore became almost convinced that the common cow slip and primrose were on the high road to become dioecious, that the short pistol in the one form and the short stamens in the other form were tending towards abortion. The plants were therefore subjected under this point of view to trial, but as soon as the flowers with short pistols fertilized with pollen from the short stamens were found to yield more seeds than any other of the four possible unions, the abortion theory was knocked on the head. After some additional experiment, it became evident that the two forms, though both were perfect hermaphrodites, bore almost the same relation to one another as do the two sexes of an ordinary animal. With Leithrom, we have the still more wonderful case of three forms standing in a similar relation to one another. I afterwards found that the offspring from the union of two plants belonging to the same forms presented a close and curious analogy with hybrids from the union of two distinct species. In the autumn of 1864, I finished a long paper on climbing plants and sent it to the Linnaean Society. The writing of this paper cost me four months, but I was so unwell when I received the proof sheets that I was forced to leave them very badly and often obscurely expressed. The paper was little noticed, but when, in 1875, it was corrected and published as a separate book, it sold well. I was led to make up this subject by reading a short paper by Asa Gray, published in 1858. He sent me seeds, and on raising some plants, I was so much fascinated and perplexed by the revolving movements of the tendrils and stems, which movements are really very simple, though appearing at first sight very complex, that I procured various and other kinds of climbing plants and studied the whole subject. I was all the more attracted to it, from not being at all satisfied with the explanation which Henslow gave us in his lectures about twining plants, namely, that they had a natural tendency to grow up in a spire. This explanation proved quite erroneous. Some of the adaptations displayed by climbing plants are as beautiful as those of orchids for ensuring cross fertilization. My variation of animals and plants under domestication was begun, as already stated, in the beginning of 1860, but was not published until the beginning of 1868. It was a big book, and cost me four years and two months hard labor. It gives all my observations, and an immense number of facts collected from various sources, about our domestic productions. In the second volume, the causes and laws of variation, inheritance, etc., are discussed as far as our present state of knowledge permits. Toward the end of the work, I give my well abused hypothesis of pangenesis. An unverified hypothesis is of little or no value, but if anyone should hear after be led to make observations by which some such hypothesis could be established, I shall have done good service, as an astonishing number of isolated facts can be thus connected together and rendered intelligible. In 1875, a second and largely corrected edition, which cost me a good deal of labor, was brought out. My dissent of man was published in February 1871. As soon as I had become, in the year 1837 or 1838, convinced that species were mutable productions, I could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law. Accordingly, I collected notes on the subject for my own satisfaction, and not for a long time with any intention of publishing. Although in the origin of species, the derivation of any particular species is never discussed, yet I thought it best, in order that no honorable man should accuse me of concealing my views. To add that by the work, light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. It would have been useless and injurious to the success of the book to have paraded, without giving any evidence, my conviction with respect to his origin. But when I found that many naturalists fully accepted the doctrine of the evolution of species, it seemed to me advisable to work up such notes as I possessed, and to publish a special treatise on the origin of man. I was the more glad to do so, as it gave me an opportunity of fully discussing sexual selection, a subject which had always greatly interested me. This subject, and that of the variation of our domestic productions, together with the causes and laws of variation, inheritance, and the intercrossing of plants, are the sole subjects which I have been able to write about in full, so as to use all the materials which I have collected. The Descent of Man took me three years to write, but then as usual some of this time was lost by ill-health, and some was consumed by preparing new editions and other minor works. A second and largely corrected edition of The Descent appeared in 1874. My book on the expression of the emotions in men and animals was published in the autumn of 1872. I had intended to give only a chapter on the subject in The Descent of Man, but as soon as I began to put my notes together, I saw that it would require a separate treatise. My first child was born on December 27, 1839, and I at once commenced to make notes on the first dawn of the various expressions which he exhibited, for I felt convinced, even at this early period, that the most complex and fine shades of expression must all have a gradual and natural origin. During the summer of the following year, 1840, I read Sir C. Bell's admiral work on expression, and this greatly increased the interest which I felt in the subject, though I could not at all agree with his belief that various muscles had been specially created for the sake of expression. From this time forward, I occasionally attended to the subject, both with respect to man and our domesticated animals. My book sold largely 5,267 copies, having been disposed of on the day of publication. In the summer of 1860, I was idling and resting near Hartford, where two species of drosera abound, and I noticed that numerous insects had been entrapped by the leaves. I carried home some plants, and on giving them insects saw the movements of the tentacles, and this made me think it probable that the insects were caught for some special purpose. Fortunately, a crucial test occurred to me, that of placing a large number of leaves in various nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous fluids of equal density, and as soon as I found that the former alone excited energetic movements, it was obvious that here was a fine new field for investigation. During subsequent years, whenever I had leisure, I pursued my experiments, and my book on insectivorous plants was published in July 1875, that is, 16 years after my first observations. The delay in this case, as with all my other books, has been a great advantage to me, for a man after a long interval can criticize his own work almost as well as if it were that of another person. The fact that a plant should secrete, when properly excited, a fluid containing an acid, and ferment closely analogous to the digestive fluid of an animal, was certainly a remarkable discovery. During this autumn of 1876, I shall publish on the effects of cross and self-fertilization in the vegetable kingdom. This book will form a compliment to that on the fertilization of orchids, in which I showed how perfect were the means for cross-fertilization, and here I shall show how important are the results. I was led to make, during 11 years, the numerous experiments recorded in this volume, by a mere accidental observation, and indeed it required the accident to be repeated before my attention was thoroughly aroused to the remarkable fact that seedlings of self-fertilized parentage are inferior, even in the first generation, in height and vigor, to seedlings of cross-fertilized parentage. I hope also to republish a revised edition of my book on orchids, and hereafter my papers on dimorphic and trimorphic plants, together with some additional observations on allied points, which I never have had time to arrange. My strength will then probably be exhausted, and I shall be ready to exclaim, Nunk Dimitis. End of Section 5. Section 6 of the Autobiography of Charles Darwin. Written May 1st, 1881. The effects of cross and self-fertilization was published in the autumn of 1876, and the results there arrived at explain, as I believe, the endless and wonderful contrivances for the transport of pollen from one plant to another of the same species. I now believe, however, chiefly from the observations of Herman Mueller, that I ought to have insisted more strongly than I did on the many adaptations for self-fertilization, though I was well aware of many such adaptations. A much enlarged edition of my Fertilization of Orchids was published in 1877. In the same year, the different forms of flowers, etc., appeared, and in 1880 a second edition. This book consists chiefly of the several papers on hetero-styled flowers, originally published by the Linnaean Society, corrected, with much new matter added, together with observations on some other cases, in which the same plant bears two kinds of flowers. As before remarked, no little discovery of mine ever gave me so much pleasure as the making out of the meaning of hetero-styled flowers. The results of crossing such flowers in an illegitimate manner, I believe to be very important, as bearing on the sterility of hybrids, although these results have been noticed by only a few persons. In 1879, I had a translation of Dr. Ernst Krause's Life of Erasmus Darwin, published, and I added a sketch of his character and habits from material in my possession. Many persons have been much interested by this little life, and I am surprised that only 800 or 900 copies were sold. In 1880, I published, with my son Frank's assistance, Our Power of Movement in Plants. This was a tough piece of work. The book bears somewhat the same relation to my little book on climbing plants, which cross fertilization did to the fertilization of orchids. For, in accordance with the principle of evolution, it was impossible to account for climbing plants having been developed in so many widely different groups, unless all kinds of plants possessed some slight power of movement of an analogous kind. This I proved to be the case, and I was further led to a rather wide generalization, visibly that the great and important classes of movements, excited by light, the attraction of gravity, etc., are all modified forms of the fundamental movement of circumnutation. It has always pleased me to exalt plants in the scale of organized beings, and I therefore felt a special pleasure in showing how many, and what admirably well-adapted movements, the tip of a root possesses. I have now, May 1st, 1881, sent to the printers the manuscript of a little book on the formation of vegetable mold through the action of worms. This is a subject of but small importance, and I know not whether it will interest my readers. Between November 1881 and February 1884, 8,500 copies have been sold. But it has interested me. It is a completion of a short paper read before the geological society, more than 40 years ago, and has revived old geological thoughts. I have now mentioned all the books which I have published, and these have been the milestones in my life, so that little remains to be said. I am not conscious of any change in my mind during the last 30 years, accepting in one point presently to be mentioned. Nor, indeed, could any change have been expected, unless one of general deterioration. But my father lived to his 83rd year with his mind as lively as it ever was, and all his faculties undimmed, and I hope that I may die before my mind fails to a sensible extent. I think that I have become a little more skillful in guessing read explanations and in devising experimental tests, but this may probably be the result of mere practice, and of a larger store of knowledge. I have as much difficulty as ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely, and this difficulty has caused me a very great loss of time. But it has had the compensating advantage of forcing me to think long and intently about every sentence, and thus I have been led to see errors in reasoning and in my own observations, or those of others. There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind, leading me to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down, but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words, and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribble down are often better ones than I could have written deliberately. Having said thus much about my manner of writing, I will add that with my large books I spend a good deal of time over the general arrangement of the matter. I first make the rudest outline in two or three pages, and then a larger one in several pages, a few words or one word standing for a whole discussion or series of facts. Each one of these headings is again enlarged, and often transferred before I begin to write it in extenso. As in several of my books, facts observed by others have been very extensively used, and as I have always had several quite distinct subjects in hand at the same time, I may mention that I keep from thirty to forty large portfolios in cabinets with labeled shelves, into which I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum. I have bought many books, and at their ends I make an index of all the facts that concern my work, or, if the book is not my own, write out a separate abstract, and of such abstracts I have a large drawer full. Before beginning on any subject, I look to all the short indexes and make a general and classified index, and by taking the one or more proper portfolios, I have all the information collected during my life ready to use. I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure. And even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the other hand, novels which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me. And I often bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me. And I like all, if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily, against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman, all the better. This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all the odder as books on history, biographies, and travels, independently of any scientific facts which they may contain, and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organized, or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered. And if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry, and listen to some music at least once every week, for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. My books have sold largely in England, and have been translated into many languages, and passed through several editions in foreign countries. I have heard it said that the success of a work abroad is the best test of its enduring value. I doubt whether this is at all trustworthy, but judged by this standard my name ought to last for a few years, therefore it may be worthwhile to try to analyze the mental qualities and the conditions on which my success has depended, though I am aware that no man can do this correctly. I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit, which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance, Huxley. I am therefore a poor critic. A paper or a book, when first read, generally excites my admiration, and it is only after considerable reflection that I perceive the weak points. My power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought is very limited, and therefore I could never have succeeded with metaphysics or mathematics. My memory is extensive, yet hazy. It suffices to make me cautious by vaguely telling me that I have observed or read something opposed to the conclusion which I am drawing. Or, on the other hand, in favor of it, and after a time I can generally recollect where to search for my authority. So poor, in one sense, is my memory that I have never been able to remember for more than a few days, a single date or a line of poetry. Some of my critics have said, oh, he is a good observer, but he has no power of reasoning. I do not think that this can be true, for the origin of species is one long argument from the beginning to the end, and it has convinced not a few able men. No one could have written it without having some power of reasoning. I have a fair share of invention, and of common sense or judgment, such as every fairly successful lawyer or doctor must have, but not, I believe, in any higher degree. On the favorable side of the balance, I think that I am superior to the common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully. My industry has been nearly as great as it could have been in the observation and collection of facts. What is far more important, my love of natural science, has been steady and ardent. This pure love has, however, been much aided by the ambition to be esteemed by my fellow naturalists. For my early youth, I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed, that is, to group all facts under some general laws. These causes, combined, have given me the patience to reflect or ponder for any number of years over an unexplained problem. As far as I can judge, I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men. I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free, so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved, and I cannot resist forming one on every subject, as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it. Indeed, I have had no choice but to act in this manner, for with the exception of the coral reefs, I cannot remember a single first formed hypothesis which had not after time to be given up or greatly modified. This has naturally led me to distrust greatly deductive reasoning in the mixed sciences. On the other hand, I am not very skeptical, a frame of mind which I believe to be injurious to the progress of science. A good deal of skepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met with not a few men who, I feel sure, have often thus been deterred from experiment or observations, which would have proved directly or indirectly serviceable. In illustration, I will give the oddest case which I have known. A gentleman, who as I afterwards heard, is a good local botanist, wrote to me from the eastern countries that the seed or beans of the common field bean had this year everywhere grown on the wrong side of the pod. I wrote back, asking for further information, as I did not understand what was meant, but I did not receive any answer for a very long time. I then saw in two newspapers, one published in Kent and the other in Yorkshire, paragraphs stating that it was a most remarkable fact, that the beans this year had all grown on the wrong side. So I thought there might be some foundation for so general a statement. Accordingly, I went to my gardener, an old Kentish man, and asked him whether he had heard anything about it, and he answered, Oh no sir, it must be a mistake, for the beans grow on the wrong side only on leap year, and this is not a leap year. I then asked him how they grew in common years, and how on leap years, but soon found that he knew absolutely nothing of how they grew at any time, but he stuck to his belief. After a time I heard from my first informant, who, with many apologies, said that he should not have written to me had he not heard the statement from several intelligent farmers, but that he had since spoken again to every one of them, and not one knew in the least what he had himself meant. So that here a belief, if indeed a statement with no definite idea attached to it, can be called a belief, had spread over almost the whole of England without any vestige of evidence. I have known in the course of my life only three intentionally falsified statements, and one of these may have been a hoax, and there have been several scientific hoaxes, which, however, took in an American agricultural journal. It related to the formation in Holland of a new breed of oxen by the crossing of distinct species of bows, some of which I happen to know are sterile together, and the author had the impudence to state that he had corresponded with me, and that I had been deeply impressed with the importance of his result. The article was sent to me by the editor of an English agricultural journal, asking for my opinion before republishing it. A second case was an account of several varieties raised by the author from several species of primula, which had spontaneously yielded a full complement of seed, although the parent plants had been carefully protected from the access of insects. This account was published before I had discovered the meaning of hetero-stylism, and the whole statement must have been fraudulent, or there was neglect in excluding insects so gross as to be scarcely credible. The third case was more curious. Mr. Hooth published in his book on consanguinious marriage some long extracts from a Belgian author, who stated that he had interbred rabbits in the closest manner for very many generations, without the least injurious effects. The account was published in a most respectable journal. That of the Royal Society of Belgium. But I could not avoid feeling doubts. I hardly know why, except that there were no accidents of any kind, and my experience in breeding animals made me think this very improbable. So with much hesitation, I wrote to Professor von Benedin, asking him whether the author was a trustworthy man. I soon heard an answer, that the society had been greatly shocked by discovering that the whole account was a fraud. The falseness of the published statements, on which Mr. Hooth relied, has been pointed out by himself in a slip inserted, in all the copies of his book, which then remained unsold. The writer had been publicly challenged in the journal, to say where he had resided, and kept his large stock of rabbits while carrying on his experiments, which must have consumed several years, and no answer could be extracted from him. My habits are methodical, and this has been of not a little use for my particular line of work. Lastly, I have had ample leisure from not having to earn my own bread. Even ill health, though it has annihilated several years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of society and amusement. Therefore, my success as a man of science, whether this may have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, by complex and diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these, the most important have been, the love of science, unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject, industry in observing and collecting facts, and a fair share of interest. With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that I should have influenced, to a considerable extent, the belief of scientific men on some important points. End of Section 6 End of The Autobiography of Charles Darwin End of Section 6 End of The Autobiography of Charles Darwin