Between 1868 and 1872, the life and work of Charles Darwin from Descent of Man to Emotions continued with aspects of his intended "Big Book" on evolution through natural selection. He had by then hurriedly published an "abstract" of this work as On the Origin of Species in 1859, and following the immediate reaction to Darwin's theory his earlier work included demonstrating the utility of the flowers of Orchids in directing insect pollination to achieve cross fertilisation, and a summing up of thirteen years of experiments in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication which went on sale on 30 January 1868. He now published his ideas on human evolution and on how beautiful but apparently impractical features could have evolved in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. After revising The Origin of Species as the definitive 6th edition, his major works on species culminated in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. This period was followed by extensive work on insectivorous plants and research into worms.
Family and research Despite Darwin's concerns that his children were weakened as his wife Emma Darwin was his cousin or had inherited his own illness, around early 1868 his sons had successes with William Darwin doing well as a bank manager, Leonard Darwin coming second in the entrance exam for the Royal Military Academy and George coming runner-up in his mathematics degree class at the University of Cambridge, getting offered a science mastership at Eton College but choosing to make his career in law.
Sexual selection Darwin turned his attention to sexual selection, writing to scientist friends for information. He got commercial breeders to experiment with altering the appearance of their stock and recording the subject's sexual prowess. He thought that exotic creatures like hummingbirds and peacocks owed their appearance, not to divine design to please man, but to the cumulative effect of the female preferring minute differences in choosing a mate, writing that "A girl sees a handsome man, and without observing whether his nose or whiskers are the tenth of an inch longer or shorter than in some other man, admires his appearance and says she will marry him. So, I suppose, with the pea-hen."
To meet a lack of books supporting the Origin on natural selection, Darwin arranged with John Murray to publish a translation of Für Darwin, written by Fritz Müller exiled in Brazil. Darwin provided £100 subsidy and arranged the translator, and Facts and Arguments for Darwin. sold well.
In the spring of 1868 Darwin got information on newts from St George Mivart, a brilliant anatomist and one of Huxley's protégés who had dropped law for zoology after hearing Owen lecture. He assured Darwin that "As to "natural selection" I accepted it completely" but added that he had "doubts & difficulties.. first excited by attending Prof. Huxley's lectures".
The Descent of Man The book The Reign of Law by the Duke of Argyll argued that beauty with no obvious utility, such as exotic birds' plumage, proved divine design. Darwin had to show how this was explained by his theory of sexual selection, and was now working to include this with ape ancestry and evolution of morality and religion in a new book which he now decided to call The Descent of Man.
Sources Darwin found many ideas in the quality magazines. Wallace argued that group co-operation increased fitness for survival. Darwin's cousin Francis Galton wrote Hereditary Talent and Character for Macmillan's Magazine emphasising the inheritance of traits, and their extension to races and classes, and calling for better breeding to ensure that the "nobler varieties of mankind" prevailed, with civilisation being saved from "intellectual anarchy" by scientific "master minds" rising to power. These views were shared by Darwin's old friend W. R. Greg whose Fraser's Magazine article about natural selection in society raised fears of the "unfit" and of the prudent middle classes being out-bred by the idle rich and the feckless poor.
These ideas raised a dilemma, of evolution working against progress. Darwin found help in Walter Bagehot's essays on Physics and Politics in the Fortnightly Review which argued that progress depended on the command structure of society. Civilisation came from obedience, respect for law and a "military bond". Through tribal and imperial battles new racial and national types would emerge, selected as "The characters which do win in war are the characters which we should wish to win in war". Darwin added his comment "nations which wander & cross would be most likely to vary" in the face of wider competition, and commended to Hooker Bagehot's analysis of "prehistoric politics".
British Association
Hooker became the first Darwinian to become president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. While Hooker was working on his initial address, Darwin with his wife Emma and daughter Henrietta went on holiday to the Isle of Wight on 16 July 1868, and rented a cottage from the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron who took Darwin's portrait. Hooker joined them and the Irish poet William Allingham described "Dr. Hooker in lower room writing away at his Address... Upstairs Mrs. Darwin, Miss D. and Mr. Charles Darwin himself–, yellow, sickly, very quiet. He has his meals at his own times, sees people or not as he chooses, has invalid's privileges in full, a great help to a studious man."
Hooker's address to the Norwich British Association was a great success for the X Club (a dining club formed in November 1864 to support the evolutionary "new reformation" in naturalism, including Huxley, Hooker, John Tyndall, Busk, Spencer, and Spottiswoode). Darwin arrived home on 21 August with a clutch of the day's newspapers carrying the address and editorial comments. The Guardian said Darwinism's "reign was triumphant", and it was generally said that the disciples were "ready to push their consequences more fearlessly than the master himself". Darwin enjoyed John Tyndall's lecture in which the physicist widened the application of his theory.
Ernst Haeckel's Darwinismus was even more universal, incorporating life, mind, society, politics and knowledge itself, though Darwin had struggled with reading his book and his efforts to get it translated were thwarted as the book proved too controversial. Haeckel, the "indomitable worker", quickly produced his History of Creation. An impressed Huxley adopted Haeckel's approach, and did what he had told Darwin was impossible and wrong, drawing up a genealogical tree for the ancestry of partridges and pigeons which traced them back to the dinosaurs. Huxley also arranged audiences for Germans arriving to pay their "devotions at the shrine of Mr. Darwin".
That autumn, the botanist Asa Gray came to England with his wife for a long rest from "drudgery" at Harvard. He spent the time with Hooker at Kew, visiting the Darwins at weekends. There were many other visitors at this time, including Gray's friend Charles Eliot Norton who brought his wife and her sister Sara Sedgwick, who caught William Darwin's eye. Gray was theologically uncomfortable with the implications of Variation, and returned home wanting to avoid further "Darwinian discussions" or become "mixed up" with the Huxley set.
Parish affairs Ever since moving to Downe, Darwin had supported the parish church's work and had been a friend of the Revd. John Innes since he had taken over in 1846. Darwin continued to help, though he stopped attending church after his daughter Annie died in 1851. By 1864 Innes had retired to a property he had inherited in the Scottish Highlands, changing his name to Brodie Innes and leaving the parish in the dubious hands of his curate, the Revd. Stevens, while still remaining the patron. The meagre "living" and lack of a vicarage made it hard to attract a priest of quality. Innes made Darwin treasurer of Downe village school and they continued to correspond, with Innes seeking help and advice on parish matters. The Revd. Stevens proved lax, and departed in 1867. His successors were worse, one absconding with the school's funds after Darwin mistakenly shared the treasurer's duties with him. The next was rumoured to have disgraced himself by "walking with girls at night". Darwin now became involved in helping Innes with detective work, subsequently advising him that the gossip that had reached Innes was not backed up by any reliable evidence.
Thomson and Mivart Concerned about Thomson's calculations giving a young age for the Earth, Darwin asked his mathematical son George to check the figures, disbelieving the "brevity of the world... else my views would be wrong, which is impossible – Q.E.D.". Darwin modified the 5th edition of the Origin, speeding up the process of variation and reviving the Lamarckian "useful inheritance" notion. In February 1869 Huxley at the Geological Society argued that '" Biology takes her time from geology...[even] if the geological clock is wrong, all the naturalist will have to do is to modify his notions of the rapidity of change accordingly".
Huxley was charged with heresy after giving a Sunday "lay sermon" in Edinburgh "on the physical basis of life". In April the "Metaphysical Society", a group of liberal churchmen of all denominations and even atheists, attempted to reach a consensus and Huxley coined a new label for his position – agnostic. Wallace was now arguing that human brains were an over-endowment created by "spiritual forces" rather than natural selection, leading Darwin to write "I differ grievously from you, and I am very sorry for it".
Mivart gained his Fellowship of the Royal Society on 3 June with Huxley's help, then surprised him by announcing that he was going to publish his objections to Darwinian views of human nature and morality. Mivart placed anonymous articles criticising natural selection in the Catholic Month. The Duke of Argyll published his Primeval Man arguing that man could not rise unaided from "utter barbarism", and that "savages" were degenerates forced out by fitter races. Argyll claimed that "Man must have had the human proportions of mind before he could afford to lose bestial proportions of body", contrasting a gorilla with an elder of the British Association, but Darwin noted that without remains of ancestors there was no evidence for this, and that man's vulnerability would have encouraged social cohesion and moral sense.
Holiday in Wales