When writing his "Different Forms of Flowers," he said, "I am all on
fire at the work;" and of "Insectivorous Plants," "I have been working
like a madman at Drosera. Here is a fact for you which is certain as you
stand where you are, though you won't believe it, that a bit of hair,
1/78000 of one grain in weight, placed on gland, will cause _one_ of the
gland-bearing hairs of Drosera to curve inwards, and will alter the
condition of the content of every cell in the foot-stalk of the gland."
But he was growing tired with his constant and multifarious labors. He
wrote to Hooker: "You ask about my book, and all that I can say is that
I am ready to commit suicide; I thought it was decently written, but
find so much wants rewriting that it will not be ready to go to printers
for two months, and will then make a confoundedly big book. Murray will
say that it is no use publishing in the middle of summer, so I do not
know what will be the upshot; but I begin to think that every one who
publishes a book is a fool."
In 1871 the "Descent of Man" was published. He worked on this book three
years, and he wrote to his friend, Sir J. D. Hooker, that it has "half
killed" him. For the first edition Darwin received over seven thousand
dollars. It had an immense circulation in England and America, and
created a furor in Germany.
Darwin believed "that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished
with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an
inhabitant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole structure had
been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed among the
quadrumana, as surely as would the common and still more ancient
progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys.
"The quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived from an
ancient marsupial animal, and this, through a long line of diversified
forms, either from some reptile-like or some amphibian-like creature,
and this again from some fishlike animal. In the dim obscurity of the
past, we can see that the early progenitor of all the vertebrata must
have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchiæ, with the two sexes
united in the same individual, and with the most important organs of the
body (such as the brain and heart) imperfectly developed. This animal
seems to have been more like the larvæ of our existing marine Ascidians
than any known form."
Most naturalists believe, with Darwin, that man has developed from some
lower form, but many urge that at some stage of development he received
the gift of speech, and mental and moral powers, from an omnipotent
Creator.
Darwin received much abuse and much ridicule for his views. Mr. James D.
Hague tells in "Harper's Magazine" of a visit paid to the great
scientist, when a picture in the "Hornet" was shown; the body of a
gorilla, with the head of Darwin. The latter laughed and said, "The head
is cleverly done, but the gorilla is bad; too much chest; it couldn't be
like that."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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