He desired them to send to Derby for his surgeon, Mr. Hadley. They did so, but all was over before he could arrive.

"It was reported at Lichfield that, perceiving himself growing rapidly worse, he said to Mrs. Darwin, ‘My dear, you must bleed me instantly.' 'Alas! I dare not, lest 'Emma, will you? There is no time to be lost. Yes, my dear father, if you will direct me.' At that moment he sank into his chair and expired.'

Dr. Dowson gives the letter to Mr. Edgeworth, which is as follows:

"DEAR EDGEWORTH,

"I am glad to find that you still amuse yourself with mechanism, in spite of the troubles of Ireland.

"The use of turning aside or downwards the claw of a table, I don't see; as it must then be reared against a wall, for it will not stand alone. If the use be for carriage, the feet may shut up, like the usual brass feet of a reflecting telescope.

"We have all been now removed from Derby about a fortnight, to the Priory, and all of us like our change of situation. We have a pleasant house, a good garden, ponds full of fish, and a pleasing valley, somewhat like Shenstone's-deep, umbrageous, and with a talkative stream running down it. Our house is near the top of the valley, well screened by hills from the east and north, and open to the south, where at four miles distance we see Derby tower.

"Four or more strong springs rise near the house, and have formed the valley which, like that of Petrarch, may be called Val Chiusa, as it begins, or is shut at the situation of the house. I hope you like the description, and hope farther that yourself and any part of your family will sometimes do us the pleasure of a visit.

"Pray tell the authoress" (Miss Maria Edgeworth) "that the waternymphs of our valley will be happy to assist her next novel.

"My bookseller, Mr. Johnson, will not begin to print the 'Temple of Nature' till the price of paper is fixed by Parliament. I suppose the present duty is paid

At these words Dr. Darwin's pen stopped. What followed was written on the opposite side of the paper by another hand.

*Memoirs,' &c., p. 426.

CHAPTER XIII.

PHILOSOPHY OF DR. ERASMUS DARWIN.

CONSIDERING the wide reputation enjoyed by Dr. Darwin at the beginning of this century, it is surprising how completely he has been lost sight of. The 'Botanic Garden' was translated into Portuguese in 1803; the Loves of the Plants' into French and Italian in 1800 and 1805; while, as I have already said, the 'Zoonomia' had appeared some years earlier in Germany. Paley's 'Natural Theology' is written throughout at the Zoonomia,' though he is careful, more suo, never to mention this work by name. Paley's success was probably one of the chief causes of the neglect into which the Buffonian and Darwinian systems fell in this country. Dr. Darwin is as reticent about teleology as Buffon, and presumably for the same reason, but the evidence in favour of design was too obvious; Paley, therefore, with his usual keen-sightedness seized upon this weak point, and had the battle all his own way, for Dr. Darwin died the same year as that in which the 'Natural Theology' appeared. The unfortunate failure to see that evolution involves design and purpose as necessarily and far more intelligibly than the theological view of creation, has retarded our

perception of many important facts for three-quarters of a century.

However this may be, Dr. Darwin's name has been but little before the public during the controversies of the last thirty years. Mr. Charles Darwin, indeed, in the "historical sketch" which he has prefixed to the later editions of his 'Origin of Species,' says, "It is curious how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. pp. 500510, published in 1794."* And a few lines lower Mr. Darwin adds, " It is rather a singular instance of "It the manner in which similar views arise at about the same time, that Goethe in Germany, and Geoffroy St. Hilaire (as we shall immediately see) in France, came to the same conclusion on the Origin of Species' in the years 1794-1796." Acquaintance with Buffon's work will explain much of the singularity, while those who have any knowledge of the writings of Dr. Darwin and Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire will be aware that neither would admit the other as "coming to the same conclusions," or even nearly so, as himself. Dr. Darwin goes beyond his successor, Lamarck, while Étienne Geoffroy does not even go so far as Dr. Darwin's predecessor, Buffon, had thought fit to let himself be known as going. I have found no other reference to Dr. Darwin in the Origin of Species,' except the two just given from the same note. In the first edition I find no mention of him.

The chief fault to be found with Dr. Darwin's trea

* Origin of Species,' note on p. xiv.

tise on evolution is that there is not enough of it; what there is, so far from being "erroneous," is admirable. But so great a subject should have had a book to itself, and not a mere fraction of a book. If his opponents, not venturing to dispute with him, passed over one book in silence, he should have followed it up with another, and another, and another, year by year, as Buffon and Lamarck did; it is only thus that men can expect to succeed against vested interests. Dr. Darwin could speak with a freedom that was denied to Buffon. He took Buffon at his word as well as he could, and carried out his principles to what he conceived to be their logical conclusion. This was doubtless what Buffon had desired and reckoned on, but, as I have said already, I question how far Dr. Darwin understood Buffon's humour; he does not present any of the phenomena of having done so, and therefore I am afraid he must be said to have missed it.

Like Buffon, Dr. Darwin had no wish to see far beyond the obvious; he missed good things sometimes, but he gained more than he lost; he knew that it is always on the margin, as it were, of the self-evident that the greatest purchase against the nearest difficulty is obtainable. His life was not one of Herculean effort, but, like the lives of all those organisms that are most likely to develop and transmit a useful modification, it was one of well-sustained activity; it was a long-continued keeping open of the windows of his own mind, much after the advice he gave to the Nottingham weavers. Dr. Darwin knew, and, I imagine, quite in-, stinctively, that nothing tends to oversight like over

seeing. He does not trouble himself about the origin of life; as for the perceptions and reasoning faculties of animals and plants, it is enough for him that animals and plants do things which we say involve sensation and consciousness when we do them ourselves or see others do them. If, then, plants and animals appear as if they felt and understood, let the matter rest there, and let us say they feel and understand-being guided by the common use of language, rather than by any theories concerning brain and nervous system. If any young writer happens to be in want of a subject, I beg to suggest that he may find his opportunity in a Philosophy of the Superficial.'

Though Dr. Darwin was more deeply impressed than Buffon with the oneness of personality between parents and offspring, so that these latter are not "new" creatures, but "elongations of the parents," and hence "may retain some of the habits of the parent system," he did not go on to infer definitely all that he might easily have inferred from such a pregnant premiss. He did not refer the repetition by offspring, of actions which their parents have done for many generations, but which they can never have seen those parents do, to the memory (in the strict sense of the word) of their having done those actions when they were in the persons of their parents; which memory, though dormant until awakened by the presence of associated ideas, becomes promptly kindled into activity when a sufficient number of these ideas are reproduced.

This, I gather, is the theory put forward by Professor Hering, of whose work, however, I know no more