DARWIN'S LIFE 9 



Charles Darwin was born in 1809 and died in 1882. Both 

 his father and his paternal grandfather were physicians; the 

 grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was also a naturalist and phi- 

 losopher of note, who anticipated many of the evolutionary 

 ideas of Lamarck and some of those of his own illustrious 

 grandson. 



On his mother's side, Darwin's grandfather was Josiah 

 Wedgwood, the famous manufacturer of pottery. Francis 

 Galton, the founder of Eugenics, was his cousin. Those who 

 consider special tastes and talents hereditary find significance 

 in these relationships. Thus one biographer, after noting 

 that Darwin's father had originally intended him for the 

 Church, continues "but hereditary tendencies toward nat- 

 ural history led him in another direction." It may fairly be 

 questioned whether ** tendencies toward natural history " 

 are hereditary in the strict sense of the word any more than 

 tendencies toward pottery, which Darwin does not seem to 

 have manifested though his grandfather was Josiah Wedg- 

 wood. Such language as I have quoted is quite permissible 

 on the part of a literary biographer (indeed Darwin speaks in 

 like vein in his autobiography) but the student of eugenics 

 must be on his guard against accepting it at its face value. 



What Darwin probably inherited was not a " tendency 

 toward natural history " but a good mind; what subjects 

 engaged it was probably determined not by inheritance but 

 by the subjects which came to his attention at the period of 

 life when men do their best creative thinking. In Darwin's 

 case, the thing which centered his attention upon the prob- 

 lem of the origin of species and held it there for the rest of 

 his lifetime was the famous voyage of the Beagle. 



In school Darwin was not a distinguished student. He 

 attended Edinburgh University for two sessions and then the 

 University of Cambridge, where he took the B.A. degree in 

 1831. Shortly after graduation he seized the opportunity to 

 go as naturalist on the ship Beagle of the English navy, which 

 was detailed on a voyage of exploration round the world. 

 This voyage lasted almost five years, from December 27, 



