DARWIN RECALLED 



Duquesne University has seized the opportunity of Pitts- 

 burgh's bicentennial celebration to sponsor this international 

 symposium on evolution in commemoration of Darwin's The 

 Origin o[ Species, published one hundred years ago. This 

 book immediately caused a scientific and cultural earthquake, 

 and was sold out on the very first day of its publication. 



It is my privilege to open this symposium with a brief sketch 

 of Darwin's life and to describe the historical impact of his 

 book The Origin of Species on the modern world of thought. 

 I merely want to set the stage and leave the actual discussion 

 of specific problems of evolution to my distinguished col- 

 leagues. 



Charles Darwin, the son of a successful country doctor, 

 Robert Darwin, was born at Shrewsbury, England, exactly 

 one hundred and fifty years ago, in 1809. He received his 

 elementary education at a boarding school in Shrewsbury. 

 Darwin professed to have found the classical curriculum 

 "incredibly dull," and his main interest at the time was 

 watching the habits of the birds, shooting them, and collecting 

 minerals and insects. 



In 1825 his father sent him to the medical school at Edin- 

 burgh University. Here, again, he found the lectures "in- 

 credibly dull." He hated the abstractions of the lecture hall 

 as much as he loved nature and man. A schoolfellow of his 

 at the time characterizes Darwin as follows. He was "the 

 most genial, warm-hearted, generous, and affectionate of 

 friends; ... his sympathies were with all that was good and 

 true; and ... he had a cordial hatred for everything false, or 

 vile, or cruel, or mean, or dishonourable. He was not only 

 great, but pre-eminently good, and just, and loveable." This 

 authentic picture of Darwin the man is the very opposite of 

 the monkey-like caricature created by the anti-evolutionists. 



Darwin, however, did not complete his medical studies. 

 "My father," he says, "perceived that I did not like the 

 thought of being a physician, so he proposed that I should 

 become a clergyman." So he enrolled at Cambridge and 

 graduated three years later. But, once more, he found the 

 studies "incredibly dull," and felt, in fact, that he had com- 

 pletely wasted his time. 



Then followed his famous Voyage of the Beagle. In 1831 



