4 DARWINISM AND HUMAN LIFE 



should be absent from scientific discourse, it may 

 be said that no other man of science has influenced 

 the framework of human thought as Darwin has 

 done. We propose, first of all, to recall very briefly 

 the leading facts of his life. 



Darwin's inheritance must have given him a 

 scientific bent. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, 

 the author of " Zoonomia " (1794) was a thoughtful 

 evolutionist ; his father, Robert Waring Darwin, 

 also a physician, had an unusually keen faculty 

 of observation ; his mother was a daughter of 

 Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of the famous 

 pottery works ; and it may be further noted that 

 Sir Francis Galton is Darwin's cousin. In addi- 

 tion to actual inheritance, there was another 

 influence which would tend to direct Darwin's 

 mind towards science, namely, the scientific atmo- 

 sphere and tradition of his home. 



As a boy Darwin was strong and active ; he 

 was fond of open-air life, and he made nothing 

 of the classical school to which he was sent. In 

 1825 he went with his brother to Edinburgh with 

 the purpose of studying medicine ; but he found 

 the lectures " intolerably dull " and made little 

 of them. He got to know several naturalists, 

 however, and made his first discovery — in regard 

 to the development of the sea-mat {Flustra). After 

 two sessions at Edinburgh he went to Cambridge 

 with the vague view of becoming a clergyman ; but 

 of this period he writes : " During the three years 

 which I spent at Cambridge my time was wasted, 

 so far as academical studies were concerned, as 

 completely as at Edinburgh and at school." 



During his stay at Cambridge he kept up his 

 boyish beetle-collecting and indulged his fondness 



