DARWIN RECALLED 



but did not intend to publish it until he had made further 

 investigations. Circumstances, however, made it imperative 

 for him to present his findings to the scientific world. It so 

 happened that in the summer of 1858 Darwin received a short 

 essay from Alfred Russel Wallace, an English naturalist then 

 working at Ternate in the Dutch East Indies. In this essay, 

 entitled: "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely 

 from the Original Type," Darwin recognized his own ideas. 

 Friends of Darwin suggested that he send a short abstract 

 of his theory to be read together with Wallace's paper at the 

 meeting of the Linnaean Society in 1858. And within a year, 

 in 1 859, Darwin published The Origin of Species. The work 

 was shorter than intended, and he deferred the presentation 

 of his huge accumulation of additional facts until 1868, 

 under the title: The Variation of Plants and Animals under 

 Domestication. 



But is was not only the fact that Darwin had not yet 

 completed his research that made him hesitate to publish his 

 findings. He was fully aware of another fact, namely, that 

 these findings contradicted the orthodoxy of his time. The 

 doctrine of "creationism' 'or "fixism" was the current dogma; 

 it maintained that all species had come into existence by 

 special acts of creation. This fixism was formulated as follows 

 by the Swedish biologist Linnaeus: "Tot sunt genera et species 

 quot ab initio creatae sunt'' (There are as many genera and 

 species as there have been created from the beginning). 

 Darwin wanted least of all to hurt the feelings of his fellow 

 men and to shatter their religious beliefs. In fact, his dis- 

 coveries even offended his own personal feelings; as he wrote 

 to his friend Sir Joseph Hooker, "At last gleams of light have 

 come, and I am almost convinced (quite contrary to the 

 opinion I started with) that species are not (it is hke con- 

 fessing a murder) immutable." 



Indeed the controversy started immediately after the publi- 

 cation of The Origin o[ Species, at the famous British 

 Association Meeting on June 30, 1860, where Thomas Huxley 

 entered into public debate with the Anglican Bishop Wilbur- 

 force. Wilburforce asked the biologist sarcastically whether 

 he was descended from an ape by way of his grandfather or 

 by way of his grandmother. Huxley retorted that he did not 



