Word: darwins
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...great names of Victorian science, philosophy and theology find a place in Biographer Irvine's brilliant study. Thomas Henry Huxley, who was Darwin's right-hand man and champion, actually takes up half the book. And yet, as Huxley himself readily admitted, it is Charles Darwin who dominates the scene...
Terror of Error. Psychologists have played with Darwin's psyche like happy children with an entrancing toy. Raised by a stern and awesome father, Darwin spent his whole life trying to be a well-behaved little gentleman deserving of love and approval; no great man was ever more prone to anxiety and apology, more terrified of being caught in error...
...impregnable fortresses. Author Irvine is a shade sharp with Novelist Samuel Butler, who, like Shaw after him, quarreled with the theory of natural selection because it attributed the survival and development of species more to luck than cunning and paid no tribute to the power of the will. Yet Darwin's own calculated struggle is like a confirmation of Butler's criticism. Genius, Darwin himself insisted, is essentially "unflinching, undaunted perseverance...
Unenthusiastic about becoming a clergyman (which his father proposed), too "pathologically sensitive" to become a doctor, Darwin devoted his mammoth perseverance to becoming Darwin, i.e., an authority on matter rather than mind. For eight years he studied barnacles: his "patient dissection of thousands of smelly little sea animals" so impressed his children that they assumed that everyone in the world was similarly occupied. "Then where does he do his barnacles?" asked a little Darwin about a neighbor...
Nurse for the Patient. The only casualty in Darwin's struggle was Darwin himself. His ailments included "weakness, fatigue, headache, insomnia, sinking feelings and dizziness." Actually, sickness was a vast help to him. "A half-hour's conversation with a stranger could give him a sleepless night"-so Darwin happily avoided strangers. "An hour in church could produce dizziness and nausea"-so Darwin had time for his barnacles even on Sundays. He paid tribute to the very heaviest tomes by reclining in a chair to read them with numerous cushions under him. As this made his legs uncomfortable...