6th Edition of The Origin
Mivart wrote wishing "with all my heart that we did not differ so widely", but challenging Darwin to debate the basic metaphysics underlying science, from his Roman Catholic position writing that "while combatting (as duty compels me to do) positions you adopt, I am not so much combatting you as others to whose view your scientific labours give additional currency." Darwin took this personally, feeling that Mivart's Genesis of Species was "producing a great effect against Natural Selection, and more especially against me." After completing a rough draft of Expressions in April 1871 he set it aside and turned to revising the Origin to meet Mivart's arguments and counter the claim that some divine inner force was driving evolution. Darwin told Murray of working men in Lancashire clubbing together to buy the 5th edition at fifteen shillings, and he wanted a new cheap edition to make it more widely available.
In June Edward L. Youmans, over from the United States to seek authors for his International Scientific Series, told Darwin about lecturing on the Descent of Man to a "clerical club" in Brooklyn. Darwin burst out "What! Clergymen of different denominations all together? How they would fight if you should get them together here!" He was cheered by a damning analysis of Mivart's Genesis of Species by Chauncey Wright (one of Gray's students) for the North American Review, and thought of importing it, but Wallace thought it too heavy and obscure.
Next Mivart's anonymous Quarterly Review article claimed that the Descent of Man would unsettle "our half educated classes" and talked of people doing as they pleased, breaking laws and customs. The author was obvious to a furious Darwin who thought "I shall soon be viewed as the most despicable of men". He wrote to ask Wright for permission to reprint his article as a pamphlet, then feeling "giddy and bad" was taken by Emma to recuperate at the nearby hamlet of Albury. His head remained "rocky and wretched" and for two months he suffered giddiness and inability to work. They returned for Henrietta's marriage after a whirlwind courtship to Richard Litchfield. She departed, leaving behind her fox terrier "Polly" who now became Darwin's dog.
Murray sent out copies of Wright's pamphlet in September 1871. Only fourteen sold, but by then Huxley had already written a cutting review of Mivart's book and article. A relieved Darwin told him "How you do smash Mivart's theology... He may write his worst & he will never mortify me again". Hooker thought he surely would not be the happier for Mivart's humiliation, but an unrepentant Darwin responded that '"I am not so good a Christian as you think me, for I did enjoy my revenge".
In December Darwin completed extensive revisions of the Origin, using the word "evolution" for the first time and adding a new chapter to refute Mivart's guided jumps, tackling the argument of uselessness of part-evolved organs with myriad examples of gradual development or organs changing function. As 1872 began, Mivart politely inflamed the argument again, writing "wishing you very sincerely a happy new year" while wanting a disclaimer of the "fundamental intellectual errors" in the Descent of Man. This time Darwin ended the correspondence.
Read more about this topic: Darwin From Descent Of Man To Emotions
Famous quotes containing the word edition:
“I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house, but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. He bought, for example, a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, read them first, and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina: this was so much time fairly gained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)