The coming of evolution : the story of a great revolution in science / by John W. Judd.

  • Judd, John W. (John Wesley), 1840-1916.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The coming of evolution : the story of a great revolution in science / by John W. Judd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    162/196 (page 142)
    Owing to delays caused by the preparation and publication of these books and frequent interruptions from sickness, the work on variation did not appear till 1868. It was a very extensive piece of work in two volumes, and, at its end, Darwin tentatively propounded a hypothesis to account for the facts of Heredity and Variation to which he gave the name of ‘ pangenesis. ’ Charles Darwin had reached the age of fifty, when he wrote the Origin of Species. At a very early period in his career, he had resolved that he would never start a new theory or revise an old one after he was sixty ; as he used laughingly to say, 41 have seen too many of my friends make fools of themselves by doing that.’ But as he approached this ‘ fatal age/ one more subject of a theoretical and highly con- troversial nature remained to be dealt with, namely, the question of the application of the theory of natural selection to man, both as regards his physical structure and his intellectual and moral charac- teristics. Darwin tells us that in 1837 or ’38, as soon as he had become ‘convinced that species were mutable productions/ he ‘ could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law140/ From that time, he began collecting facts bearing on the question. As each of his children was born, he examined closely the signs of dawning intelligence, and made notes of