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References
There exists a very large literature on “metaphors.” I found very helpful the collection of essays edited by Andrew Ortony, Metaphor and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
F. Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, ed. G. W. Kitchin (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1973). See F. Manuel's Freemantle Lectures of 1973: The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), chap. 2, pp. 27–49.
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray, 1859; reprint ed. with introduction by E. Mayr, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975).
See, for example, J. R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); P. Appleman, A. Madden, and M. Wolff, eds., 1859: Entering an Age of Crisis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959).
The declaration was circulated by Herbert McLeod of the Royal College of Chemistry. It may be found in Charles Daubeny's Miscellanies: Being a Collection of Memoirs and Essays on Scientific and Literary Subjects Published at Various Times, 2 vols. (Oxford and London: James Parker, 1867), II, 129–130. Daubeny's letter to McLeod indicating the reason for his withholding his signature from the declaration is to be found in that volume on pp. 130–133.
Charles Darwin's Natural Selection; Being the Second Part of His Big Species Book Written from 1856 to 1858, ed. R. C. Stauffer (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
For an overview of the life and an assessment of the work of Herschel, see W. F. Cannon, “John Herschel and the Idea of Science,” J. Hist. Ideas, 22 (1961), 215–239; S. F. Cannon, Science in Culture (New York: Science History Publication, 1978). Also G. Buttman, The Shadow of the Telescope (New York: Scribners, 1965); and the prefatory essay in Aspects of the Life and Thought of Sir John Frederick Herschel, ed. S. S. Schweber (New York: Arno Press, 1981), I, 1–158. A complete listing of Herschel's works is given in this volume.
F. E. Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1968; reprint ed. Washington, D.C.: New Republic Books, 1979).
H. E. Gruber, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity (New York: Dutton, 1974; 2nd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
I was clearly influenced in this by Steve J. Heims's sensitive and erudite study, John von Neumann and Norbert Weiner: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980).
M. Hoskin, “William Herschel,” Dict. Sci. Biog., 6: pp 328–336.
N. Annan, “The Intellectual Aristocracy,” in Studies in Social History; a Tribute to G. M. Trevelyan, ed. J. H. Plumb (London, New York: Longmans, Green, 1955), pp. 243–287.
M. A. Hoskin, William Herschel and the Construction of the Heavens (London: Oldbourne, 1963), p. 18.
See the entry for J.F. W. Herschel in Dict. Natl. Biog.
A. Clarke, The Herschels and Modern Astronomy (London: Cassell, 1895).
Quoted from the Dict. Natl. Biog. entry for John Herschel.
The role of schools in fostering independence has been expounded by C. Camic, Experience and Englightenment: Socialization for Cultural Change in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), as a factor to account for the clustering of the talents responsible for the Scottish Enlightenment.
C. Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (London: Longmans, Green, 1864), pp. 1–2.
Quoted from the Dict. Natl. Biog. entry for John Herschel.
Laplace to W. Herschel, July 17, 1814. The letter is on deposit at the Library of the Royal Astronomical Society in London; it is also to be found in the microfilm collection of the papers of William and John Herschel that the RAS and the Royal Society of London have issued.
“Your step has been decided — you plunge deep indeed. ‘I am married, & have quarrelled with my Father’ — Good God Babbage — how is it possible for a man calmly to sit down and write those sentences — add a few more which look like self-justification — and pass off to functional equations” (J. Herschel to C. Babbage, August 7, 1816, Babbage Correspondence, British Museum).
J. Herschel to W. Whewell, August 17, 1826, Add Ms a 20712, Trinity College Library.
These letters are in the archives of the library of St. John's College at Cambridge. I thank the archivist of St. John's for permission to quote from them.
J. Herschel to C. Babbage, April 27, 1818, Babbage Correspondence, British Museum.
Herschel addressed his letter to Babbage “Citizen: Your letter of 20th reached me ...,” and signed it “I remain Citizen; yours sincerely, J. Herschel” (Herschel to Babbage, July 1, 1812, Babbage Correspondence).
Augustus J. C. Hare, ed., The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, 2 vols. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1895), II, 503. Herschel's lighter side is revealed in the following excerpt from Maria Edgeworth's letter: “Have you heard of the live camelopard, ‘twelve foot high if he's an inch, ma'am’? Herschel is well acquainted with him, and was so fortunate as to see the first interview between him and a kangaroo: it stood and gazed for one instant and the next leaped at once over the camelopard's head, and he and his great friend became hand and glove” (II, p. 504).
Maria Edgeworth, Letters from England, 1813–1844, ed. Christina Colvin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 596–597.
The poem can be found in a (rare) book of poetry edited by C. G. B. Daubeny: Fugitive Poems, Collected by the late C. G. B. Daubeny (London: James Parker, 1869).
J. Herschel, “Terrestial Magnetism,” reprinted in John F. W. Herschel, Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Review (London: Longmans, 1857), p. 67.
A. Einstein, “Principles of Research,” in Ideas and Opinion (New York: Laurel, Dell, 1973), p. 222.
Dict. Natl. Biog., quoted in Edgeworth, Letters from England, p. xxiv.
Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), p. 107.
Barbara and Hensleigh Wedgwood, The Wedgwood Circle 1730–1897. Four Generations of a Family and Their Friends (London: Studio Vista, 1980).
E. Meteyard, A Group of Englishmen (1795–1815) (London: Longmans, Green, 1871), p. 253.
E. Meteyard, A Group of Englishmen (1795–1815) (London: Longmans, Green, 1871), p. 260.
E. Meteyard, A Group of Englishmen (1795–1815) (London: Longmans, Green, 1871), p. 261.
Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), pp. 28–29.
Barbara and Hensleigh Wedgwood, The Wedgwood Circle 1730–1897. Four Generations of a Family and Their Friends (London: Studio Vista, 1980), p. 176.
Barbara and Hensleigh Wedgwood, The Wedgwood Circle 1730–1897. Four Generations of a Family and Their Friends (London: Studio Vista, 1980), p. 226.
Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), p. 40.
F. Burkhardt and S. Smith, eds., The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), Appendix III (An Autobiographical Fragment), pp. 438–439.
This point has been stressed by Gruber in his Darwin on Man.
F. Burkhardt and S. Smith, eds., The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), Appendix III (An Autobiographical Fragment), II, 440. See also C. Colp, “‘I Was Born a Naturalist’: Charles Darwin's 1838 Notes about Himself,” J. Hist. Med., 35 (1980), 8–39.
James Bunting, Charles Darwin (Folkeston: Bailey Brothers & Swinfen, 1974), p. 26.
Barbara and Hensleigh Wedgwood, The Wedgwood Circle 1730–1897. Four Generations of a Family and Their Friends (London: Studio Vista, 1980). p. 74.
Barbara and Hensleigh Wedgwood, The Wedgwood Circle 1730–1897. Four Generations of a Family and Their Friends (London: Studio Vista, 1980). p. 118.
Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), p. 22.
F. Burkhardt and S. Smith, (eds.), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), Appendix III (An Autobiographical Fragment), II, 439.
F. Burkhardt and S. Smith, eds., The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), Appendix III (An Autobiographical Fragment), p. 438.
Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), p. 28.
S. S. Schweber, “Some Notes for a Biography of C. Darwin,” in Thought and Action: Essays in Memory of Simon Rawidowicz, ed. A. A. Greenbaum and I. Ivry (Tel Aviv: Tcherikover, 1983), pp. xiii-xlii; see also R. Colp, “The Evolution of Charles Darwin's Thought about Death,” J. Thanatol., 3 (1975), 191–206.
The best and most convincing account of Darwin's illnesses is to be found in Ralph ColpJr., M.D., To Be an Invalid (Chicago: The University Press, 1977).
“To my deep mortification my father once said to me, ‘You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.’ But my father, who was the kindest man I ever knew and whose memory I love with all my heart, must have been angry and somewhat unjust when he used such words” (Darwin, Autobiography, p. 28).
Maria Edgeworth, Letters from England, 1813–1844, ed. Christina Colvin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 596–597.
Carles Darwin, The Auttobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), pp. 79–80.
H. Gruber has written extensively on C. Darwin's affective development and I have profited enormously from his insights. See H. E. Gruber, “Courage and Cognitive Growth in Children and Scientists,” in Piaget in the Classroom, ed. M. Schwebel and J. Raph (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 73–105; H. E. Gruber, “Going the Limit: Toward the Construction of Darwin's Theory (1832–1839),” in The Darwinian Heritage, ed. D. Kohn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 9–34.
By theism I mean the idea of a deity that directly intervenes in the operation of nature. Recall Darwin's second epigram in the Origin: “But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this-we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws” (from Whewell, Bridgewater Treatise).
H. E. Gruber, “The Evolving System Approach to Creative Scientific Work,” in Scientific Discovery: Case Studies, ed. T. Nickles (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980), pp. 113–130; H. E. Gruber, Appendix, “The Many Voyages of the Beagle,” in Darwin on Man, 2nd ed. (1981), pp. 259–299; idem, “On the Relation between ‘Aha Experiences’ and the Construction of Ideas,” Hist. Sci., 19 (1981), 41–59.
H. E. Gruber, “Créativité et fonction constructive de la répétition,” Bull. Psychol. Univ. Paris, 30 (1976/7), 235–239. For Darwin's daily work habit while on the Beagle see Sandra Herbert, “Darwin as a Geologist,” Sci. Amer., 254/5 (1986), 116–124.
Charles Darwin's Diary of the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle, ed. N. Barlow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), p. 14.
, pp..119–120
Quoted in D. Ospovat, The Development of Darwin's Theory: Natural History, Natural Theology and Natural Selection, 1838–1859 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 180.
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. F. Darwin, 2 vols. (New York: Appleton, 1888), I, 418.
For a history of the Analytical Society see Schweber, prefatory Essay in Aspects of the Life and Thought of Herschel (above, n. 7). For a typical review see “Laplace's Méchanique Céleste,” Edinburgh Rev., 11 (1808), 243–284, which was written by Playfair.
M. Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), p. 38.
For a discussion of the nebular hypothesis see J. Greene, The Death of Adam (Ames: University of Iowa Press, 1959); S.G. Brush, “The Nebular Hypothesis and the Evolutionary Worldview,” Hist. Sci., 25 (1987), 247–278.
See Hoskin, Herschel and the Construction of the Heavens (above, n. 13); the relevant parts of William Herschel's original articles are reprinted in this volume.
P. L. Lawrence, “The Central Heat of the Earth. The Relation of the Nebular Hypothesis to Geology: 1811–1840,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1973; idem, “Heaven and Earth,” in Cosmology, History, and Theology, ed. W. Yourgrau and A. D. Breck (New York: Plenum Press, 1977), p. 279.
Brush, “Nebular Hypothesis,” p. 256.
J. Herschel to G. Piazzi, quoted in Constance Lubbock, The Herschel Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), p. 197.
J. Herschel to A. Sedgwick, 1844, Herschel Correspondence, Herschel papers microfilm, Royal Society of London.
Quoted in J. P. Nichol, “State of Discovery and Speculations Concerning the Nebulae,” Westminster Rev., 25 (1836), 390–409.
J. Herschel, Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, June 19, 1845, in Essays, pp. 634–684.
W. F. Cannon, “The Impact of Uniformitarianism: Two Letters from John Herschel to Charles Lyell, 1836–1837”, Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., 105 (1961), 301–314.
J. Herschel to Babbage, 1836, Herschel Correspondence, British Museum.
C. Darwin, The Red Notebook of Charles Darwin, ed. S. Herbert, (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980).
D. S. Evans, T. J. Deeming, B. H. Evans, and S. Goldfarb, eds., Herschel at the Cape. Diaries and Correspondence of Sir John Herschel, 1834–1838 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969).
“He [Herschel] has shewn us innumerable drawings he took at the Cape — 1835 — of the spots in the sun and changes unaccountable! from day to day” (Edgeworth, Letters from England, p. 595).
See, for example, W. T. Ferguson and R. F. H. Immelman, eds., Sir John Herschel and Education at the Cape 1834–1840 (Capetown: Oxford University Press, 1961).
F. Burkhardt and S. Smith, eds., The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) I, 500.
In 1815 W. G. Horner suggested adapting the camera lucida for use with either a microscope or a telescope (Ann. Phil. 6 (1815), 281–282); Babbage independently made the same suggestion in 1836 in Athenaeum (1836), p. 274. Herschel had probably been using a camera lucida with a telescope both at Slough and at the Cape.
J. F. W. Herschel: “On the Hyposulfurous Acid and Its Compounds”, Edinburgh Phil. J., 1 (1819), 8–29;
J. F. W. Herschel: “Additional Facts Relating to the Hyposulfurous Acid”, Edinburgh Phil. J., 1 (1819), pp. 396–400.
Quoted in Buttman, Shadow of the Telescope, p. 131.
For the early history of photography, see H. Gernscheim, The Origins of Photography (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1969, 1982); G. Gilbert, Photography: The Early Years (New York: Harper and Row, 1980).
J. F. W. Herschel, “Note on the Art of Photography; Or, On the Application of the Chemical Rays of Light to the Purpose of Pictorial Representation”, Not. Proc. Roy. Soc., 37 (1839), 131.
L. Schaaf, “Herschel, Talbot and Photography: Spring 1831 and Spring 1839”, J. Hist. Photog., 3 (1980), 181–204. Herschel had invited Talbot to his house at Slough to show him his new process of fixing, or “washing out”, as Herschel called it. The visit is recorded in Herschel's notebook as follows: “Friday, Feb. 1. Mr. Talbot came to Slough. ... Explained to him all my processes - He also showed me his specimens of results but did not explain his process of what he called ‘fixing’ - By way of trial of the power of my process of ‘washing out’ he gave me one of his unfixed specimens. In two minutes I brought him half of it washed the other not and on exposing both the washed half unchanged and the other speedily obliterated and at length grew quite dark”. The two halves are still preserved in the notebook, which is to be found among Herschel's papers in the library of St. John's College.
J. Herschel, “On the Chemical Action of the Rays of the Solar Spectrum on Preparations of Silver and Other Substances, Both Metallic and Non-Metallic, and in Some Photographic Processes”, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., 130 (1840), 1–60. Writing from Herschel's house on November 26, 1843, Maria Edgeworth commented that Herschel showed her “a great number of his Daguerreotypes in all the varied states — where the light was first darkness and then in the next state where after lying by some time the dark turn to light and then where it all fades away and seemingly leaves no trace behind - and then upon certain incantations or applications it all returns. ... he told us of a strange delusion or disease of his sight which comes on at night sometimes when he is sitting up reading. The fartherest part of the room vanishes and by degrees the circuit of the sight diminishes so that he can see only the table before him and just the space occupied by the candles. This should warn him not to overwork and it does warn Lady Herschel to take all means to prevent his overstraining his great faculties” (Edgeworth, Letters from England, p. 594). During February 1839 Talbot tried several fixatives including hypo, but from this date until about April 1842 he continued to fix his photographs with common salt, potasium bromide, or potassium iodide - salts that left silver halides on the paper. An entry in Herschel's notebook dated March 25, 1838, suggests why Talbot was unimpressed by the use of hypo: “Talbot's sensitive paper will not fix well. It is too full of silver for the Hyposuli. soda [hypo]. But the H.S.i. Ammonia will fix it - as the H.S. Ammonia and silver is excessively soluble which that of Soda and silver is not”. Herschel's photogenic drawings from this period are even more faded than Talbot's, apparently because he did not realize the necessity of washing away all traces of hypo from them after fixing. At the beginning of May 1839 Herschel went to Paris. He described to Talbot the daguerreotypes he had seen in Paris in a letter dated May 9, 1839: “It is hardly saying too much to call them miraculous. Certainly they surpass anything I could have conceived as within the bounds of reasonable expectation. The most elaborate engraving falls far short of the richness and delicacy of execution every gradation of light and shade is given with a softness and fidelity which sets all painting at an immeasurable distance. His times also are very short — In a bright day 3m. suffices. ... In short if you have a few days at your disposition I cannot commend you better than to come and see. Excuse this ebullition. P.S. The pictures are on very thin sheets of plated copper, neither expensive nor very cumbersome” (D. B. Thomas, The First Negatives, Science Museum Monograph [London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1964], p. 6).
J. Herschel, “Letter on Processes for Producing Coloured Photographs”, Brit. Ass. Repts., 11 (1841), 40.
J. F. W. Herschel, “Physical Astronomy,” Encyclopedia Metropolitana, 1823, III, 647–729.
J. Herschel, “Terrestial Magnetism,” reprinted in John F. W. Herschel, Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Review (London: Longmans, 1857), p. 469.
J. Herschel, “Terrestial Magnetism,” reprinted in John F. W. Herschel, Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Review (London: Longmans, 1857), p. 66.
J. Herschel, “Terrestial Magnetism,” reprinted in John F. W. Herschel, Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Review (London: Longmans, 1857), pp. 365–465. For an incisive overview of the subject see Theodore M. Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
J. F. W. Herschel to C. Babbage, May 15, 1817, Babbage papers, British Museum.
For a discussion of these illustrations see M. R. Pointon, Milton and English Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970); Helen Gardner, “Milton's First Illustrator,” Essays Stud., n.s., 9 (1956), 27–38; L. B. Kimbrell, “The Illustrations of Paradise Lost in England — 1688–1802,” Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1965; R. Paulson, Book and Painting: Shakespeare, Milton, and the Bible (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982); and Mary D. Ravenhall, “Francis Hayman and the Dramatic Interpretation of Paradise Lost,” Milton Stud., 20 (1984), 87–109.
H. Gardner, A Reading of Paradise Lost (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 36.
Herschel to Babbage, May 15, 1817.
Dionysius the Areopagite, Mystical Theology, with an introduction by Ficino. (Augsburg: Johann Miller, 1519).
J. Herschel, “Terrestial Magnetism,” reprinted in John F. W. Herschel, Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Review (London: Longmans, 1857), pp. 704–707
See Gruber, Darwin on Man; H. E. Gruber, “Darwin's ‘Tree of Nature’ and Other Images of Wide Scope,” in Aesthetics in Science, ed. J. Wechsler (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978), pp. 121–140.
In his Autobiography Darwin indicates that he associated the observed earthquakes with the “elevation of the land”; this “necessarily” led him “to reflect much on the effects of [the associated] subsidence [elsewhere]” (pp. 98–99). See Appendix V of Burkhardt and Smith, Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. I, for Darwin's early notes on coral reef formation. For an insightful account of the young Darwin as a geological theorist, and the role of subsidence and elevation in his theory of atolls, see Herbert, Darwin as a Geologist.
John Lyon and Phillip R. Sloan, From Natural History to the History of Nature (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).
J. F. W. Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (London: Longmans, 1830; reprint ed., New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1966, with a new introduction by Michael Partridge).
Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution and the Triumph of Homology, or Why History Matters,” Amer. Sci., 74 (1985), 60–69; see also idem, “Darwinism and the Expansion of Evolutionary Theory,” Science, 216 (1982), 380–387.
Martin J. Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
, II, 377–378. The letter is dated July 31, 1843, and is listed as number 685 in F. Burkhardt and S. Smith, eds., Calendar of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1821–1882 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1985).
, II, 375–376. The letter is listed as number 684 in the Calendar and is dated July 26, 1843.
pp. 142–143.
p. 197.
Darwin, Origin, p. 116.
Gruber, “Darwin's ‘Tree of Nature’ and Other Images of Wide Scope.”
, p. 108.
See, however, the perceptive remarks in Gillian Beer, Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (London: Routledge, Keegan Paul, 1983), and in her contribution “Darwin's Reading and the Fiction of Development” in Kohn, Darwinian Heritage, pp. 543–589.
Most of my knowledge of Milton and his influence has been gleaned from Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1978). I also found Gardner, Reading of Paradise Lost, a useful study of the poem. There is by now a massive Milton industry. The Milton Studies volumes edited by J. D. Simmonds (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press) offer a ready entry to this vast literature.
F. Burkhardt and S. Smith, eds., The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), I, 479.
While at sea off the coast of Chile on July 23, 1834, Charles wrote his friend Whitley: “I find in Geology a never-failing interest, as it has been remarked, it creates the same grand ideas respecting this world, which Astronomy does for the universe. We have seen much fine scenery, that of the Tropics in its glory and luxuriance, exceeds even the language of Humboldt to describe” (ibid., p. 397).
F. Kermode, The Living Milton (London: Routledge, 1960), p. 100.
It may be of interest to note that in the 1837–39 period, when Darwin reexamined his religious beliefs, one of the books he studied was Burke's Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. This essay contains an extensive analysis of the feelings of the religious experience (e.g., sublimity, terror) and how these are elicited in painting and poetry. Burke held up Milton as the English poet most capable of evoking the sublime and analyzed Hogarth's “Satan Confronting Death” for his visual evocation of terror and confrontation.
“Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of Satan as expressed in Paradise Lost. It is a mistake to suppose that he could ever have intended for the popular personification of evil. ... Milton's Devil as a moral being is ... far superior to his God. ... Milton has so far violated the popular creed ... as to have alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his devil” (P. B. Shelley, Defence of Poetry [Boston: Ginn and Company, 1891], pp. 30–31).
Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), p. 50.
Darwin, Origin, p. 490.
J. Herschel, “Terrestial Magnetism,” reprinted in John F. W. Herschel, Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Review (London: Longmans, 1857), p. 256.
Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), p. 138–139. See also D. Fleming, “Charles Darwin, the Anaesthetic Man,” Vict. Stud., 4 (1961), 219–236.
Charles Darwin, Autobiography and Selected Letters, ed. F. Darwin (New York: Dover, 1958), pp. 194–195.
J. Herschel, “Terrestial Magnetism,” reprinted in John F. W. Herschel, Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Review (London: Longmans, 1857), pp. 683–743.
S. Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. W. D. Robson-Scott; revised and newly edited by James Strachey (New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1961), pp. 75–82.
Athenaeum, (1838), pp. 423–428. In a letter dated May 22, 1822, Maria Edgeworth informed her mother: “At Captain Kater's breakfast yesterday we met Greenough, Captain Beaufort, Warburton, and young Herschel, a man of great abilities, to whom Sir Humphry Davy paid an elegant compliment the other day in a speech as President of the Royal Society ‘His father must be doubly rejoiced in such a son, who secures to him a double immortality?‘“ (Hare, Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, II, 426).
On October 30, 1852, Herschel asked Peacock, who had become the dean of the cathedral at Ely, to officiate at the wedding of his daughter, this “in the double capacity of an old and most valued friend and an ornament of our beloved and venerable church“ (Herschel Correspondence, Royal Society).
Phyllis Greenacre, The Quest for the Father: A Study of the Darwin-Butler Controversy, as a Contribution to the Understanding of the Creative Individual (New York: International Universities Press, 1963).
Robert's letter is in Burkhardt and Smith, Correspondence of Charles Darwin, I, 301; Charles's letter is on pp. 447–448.
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. F. Darwin, 2 vols. (New York: Appleton, 1888), I, 10–11.
Maria Edgeworth, Letters from England, 1813–1844, ed. Christina Colvin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 594.
Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), p. 38.
F. Burkhardt and S. Smith, eds., The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), I, 498.
A Manual of Scientific Inquiry Prepared for the Use of Officers in Her Majesty's Navy and Travellers in Generaled.by Sir John F. W. HerschelBart. (London: John Murray, 1849). The collaboration between Herschel and Darwin was not altogether a happy one. Darwin initially had doubts as to his success; when he finished his MS he feared it was too long and “did not much like it” but felt he could do no better. “[It] cost me some trouble,” Darwin wrote Hooker (More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of His Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters, eds. F. Darwin and A. C. Seward [London: John Murray, 1903], I, 62). The MS was lost in the mail and a second copy needed to be made; and in the first edition of the Manual some of the pages of Darwin's “Geology” section were wrongly set (pp. 171–190). In 1870 Herschel asked Darwin to revise his contribution to the Manual. But Darwin declined, being “unwell and leaving for rest”; he suggested that Professor John Phillips be asked, since Phillips's geological knowledge was more up to date than his (Herschel Correspondence, Royal Society of London). This was in fact done: the 1871 edition lists the “Geology” article as “By Charles Darwin Esq. (revised by Professor J. Phillips).”
Ralph ColpJr.M.D., To Be an Invalid (Chicago: The University Press, 1977). pp. 35–43. The letter from Darwin to Herschel is to be found in the Herschel Correspondence at the Royal Society of London.
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. F. Darwin, 2 vols. (New York: Appleton, 1888), II, 226.
Charles Darwin to Charles Lyell, December 12, 1859, in Darwin, Autobiography and Selected Letters, p. 232.
J. F. W. Herschel, Physical Geography, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, 1861), p. 12.
Darwin to Herschel, May 23, 1861, Herschel Correspondence, Royal Society of London.
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. F. Darwin, 2 vols. (New York: Appleton, 1888), I, 190–192. After reading the speech in which Kelvin stated that “Sir John Herschel, in expressing a favourable judgment on the hypothesis of zoological evolution (with however, some reservations in respect to the origin of man), objected to the doctrine of natural selection, that it was too much like the Laputan method of making books [by random combination of words] and that it did not sufficiently take into account a continually guiding and controlling intelligence. This seems to me a most valuable and instructive criticism. I feel profoundly convinced that the argument of the design has been greatly too much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations,” Darwin wrote Hooker that these remarks by the famous physicist reminded him that Herschel's “sneer” that the doctrine of natural selection is like the Laputan method of making books, made him put in “the simile about Raphael's Madonna when describing in the Descent of Man the manner of formation of the wondrous ball-and-socket ornaments” (Life and Letters, I, 330n2; Kelvin's address, “The Structure of Matter and the Unity of Science,” is reprinted in G. Basalla, W. Coleman, and R. H. Kargon, eds., Victorian Science [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970], pp. 98–128). For an account of Darwin's earlier encounter with Comte see S. S. Schweber, “The Origin of the Origin Revisited,” J. Hist. Biol., 10 (1977), 229–316.
This reference is to the interesting volume Mothering the Mind, ed. Ruth Perry and Martine Watson Brownley (New York: Holmes and Meir, 1984).
C. Darwin's own mother had also been a year older than his father.
The reference is to the penciled notes entitled “This is the Question” that Darwin wrote out in April 1838, which contain his musings on the subject of marriage. The paper is in the form of two columns headed “MARRY” and “Not MARRY” and concludes with “Marry-Marry-Marry Q.E.D.”; see Darwin, Autobiography, pp. 232–233, or Appendix IV of Burkhardt and Smith, Correspondence of Charles Darwin, II, 443–445.
Maria Edgeworth, who met Herschel's wife in 1831, described her at the time as follows: Mrs. Herschel who by the by is very pretty — which does no harm - is such a delightful person - so suited to him, with so much simplicity and so much sense - so fit to sympathise with him in all things, intellectual and moral - without any pretension or thought about herself — tryping only — no not tryping but making all her guests comfortable and happy without any apparent trying or effort or trouble... Of all the people I have seen and of all the society I think the Herschels are the best worth cultivating ... in their ways of living ..., so comfortable and well regulated and neither too much or too little - all managed by a woman of sense and taste, for a man of sense who never meddles nor makes in the matter but takes it all as Heaven sends and his guardian angel. I really think she looks very like an angel as well as I can judge by the most approved pictures of angels (Edgeworth, Letters from England, p. 500). Herschel's mental health, noted: “Lady Herschel, who you may be sure did not tell me any thing of all this - is as we could perceive well aware of the precarious state of health and the delicate dealing necessary with such nerves. She is a most amiable highly cultivated, unpresuming sensible woman who does all that can be done by affection and intelligence and sympathy and care or efforts to divert his mind and draw him from intense application and divert him from all painful thoughts ...” (ibid., p. 597; see also p. 594). In his Autobiography Darwin recorded the following interesting story: “Lady Caroline Bell, at whose house I dined at the C. of Good Hope, admired Herschel much, but said that he always came into a room, as if he knew that his hands were dirty, and that he knew that his wife knew that they were dirty” (Autobiography, p. 107).
Herschel's extensive correspondence with Peacock, W. R. Hamilton, de Morgan, and Boole attests to his mastery of the subject and to the help and encouragement he gave these mathematicians.
Herschel to Whewell, August 17, 1826, Add MS a 20712, Trinity College Library. I thank the Librarian of Trinity College for permission to quote from this MS.
“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the seashore, and diverting myself, in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me!” (I. Newton, quoted in Manuel, Portrait of Isaac Newton [above, n. 8], pp. 388–389). The quotation first appeared in J. Spence's papers in 1728–1730; see his Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men (London: W. H. Carpenter, 1820), p. 54. For later comments by Herschel on Newton, see his review “Whewell on the Inductive Sciences,” in Herschel, Essays, pp. 143–257, esp. pp. 163–165.
S. S. Schweber, “The Young Darwin,” J. Hist. Biol., 12 (1979), 175–192.
S. F. Cannon, “The Whewell-Darwin Controversy,” J. Geol. Soc. London, 132 (1976), 377–384.
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For Frank Manuel-teacher, friend, colleague. With respect and affection.
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Schweber, S.S. John Herschel and Charles Darwin: A study in parallel lives. J Hist Biol 22, 1–71 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00209603
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00209603