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The Preface to Darwin's Origin of Species: The Curious History of the "Historical Sketch"Author(s): Curtis N. JohnsonSource: Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 2007), pp. 529-556Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29737500 .

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Journal of the History of Biology (2007) 40:529-556 ? Springer 2007 DOI 10.1007/ s 10739-006-9118-0

The Preface to Darwin's Origin of Species: The Curious History of

the "Historical Sketch"*

CURTIS N. JOHNSON Lewis and Clark College Portland, OR 97219, USA E-mail: Johnson @ Iclark. edu

Abstract. Almost any modern reader's first encounter with Darwin's writing is likely to

be the "Historical Sketch," inserted by Darwin as a preface to an early edition of the

Origin of Species, and having since then appeared as the preface to every edition after

the second English edition. The Sketch was intended by him to serve as a short "history of opinion" on the species question before he presented his own theory in the Origin

proper. But the provenance of the "Historical Sketch" is somewhat obscure. Some

things are known about its production, such as when it first appeared and what changes were made to it between its first appearance in 1860 and its final form, for the fourth

English edition, in 1866. But how it evolved in Darwin's mind, why he wrote it at all,

and what he thought he was accomplishing by prefacing it to the Origin remain ques?

tions that have not been carefully addressed in the scholarly literature on Darwin.

* How Darwin came to settle on the title "Historical Sketch" for the Preface to the

Origin is not certain, but a guess may be ventured. When he first submitted the text to

Asa Gray in February 1860 he called it simply "Preface Contributed by the Author to this American Edition" (Burkhardt et al., eds., vol. 8, 1993, p. 572; the collected cor?

respondence is hereafter cited as CCD). In fact he had thought of it as being properly called a Preface much earlier, perhaps as early as 1856, as will be seen in what follows. It

came to be called "An Historical Sketch of the Recent Progress of Opinion on the

Origin of Species" only in the third English edition, April 1861. This is the title it retained thereafter, with the exception of an addition to the title in the sixth English

edition, "Previously to the Publication of the First Edition of this Work" (Peckham, 1959, pp. 20, 59). The word "sketch," on the other hand was one of two words Darwin

commonly used in private correspondence to refer to the book that would later become

the Origin, the other word being "Abstract," and both signifying that Darwin thought of the work as being a resume rather than a full-fledged study (e.g., letter to J.D.

Hooker, May 9 1856, CCD vol. 6 p. 106; letter to Baden Powell January 18 1860, CCD vol. 8 p. 41; letter to Lyell 25 June 1858, CCD v. 7, 1991, pp. 117-8; letter to Lyell May 1856, CCD, v. 6 p. 100). The most likely source of the title "Historical Sketch" for

Darwin's Preface is Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology in which, beginning with the third edition (1834), Lyell added titles to his chapters, calling chapters 2-A "Historical Sketch of the Progress of Geology" (Secord, in Lyell [1997], p. xlvii; for other uses by Lyell of this expression, cf. Porter, 1976, p. 95; idem 1982, p. 38; and Lyell, 1830 [1990], p. 30). Further parallels between Lyell's Introduction and Darwin's "Historical Sketch"

in terms of content and strategy are suggested below.



530 CURTIS N. JOHNSON

I attempt to show that Darwin's various statements about the "Historical Sketch,"

made primarily to several of his correspondents between 1856 and 1860, are somewhat

in conflict with one another, thus making problematic a satisfactory interpretation of

how, when, and why the Sketch came to be. I also suggest some probable resolutions to

the several difficulties.

Keywords: abstract, Baden Powell, "big species book", Charles Lyell, Darwin's

priority, Historical Sketch, J.D. Hooker, plagiarism, T.H. Huxley

Any modern reader of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species will almost

surely encounter, before getting into the "one long argument" of the

book, his "Historical Sketch," which has appeared in one version or

another as a preface to every authorized edition of the Origin ever

published after the second English edition in I860.1 The purpose of the sketch was to give a brief history of opinion about the species question as a prelude to Darwin's own independent contribution to the subject. But its provenance is somewhat obscure. Some things are known about

its production, such as when it first appeared and what changes were

made to it between its first appearance in 1860 and its final form, for the

fourth English edition, in 1866.2 But how it evolved in Darwin's mind,

why he wrote it at all, and what he thought he was accomplishing by

1 Although the Sketch was prepared for the first authorized American edition, pub?

lished in May 1860, it actually appeared before that, in April 1860, as a preface to the first German edition, translated by H.G. Bronn. The first English edition in which it

appeared was the third, published in 1861. My assumption in stating "any modern

reader" is that most accessible editions of the Origin are reprints of the sixth English

edition (or translations thereof) and so, unlike the first English edition, include the "Historical Sketch" at the beginning. It is true that some modern reprints (e.g., the

facsimile edition of Mayr, 1964, no. 602 in R.B. Freeman [1977]) are of the first English edition and omit the Sketch, but even some of these (e.g., the Penguin Books edition of

1968, no. 612 in R.B. Freeman [1977] and the Random House edition of 1979, found in

many bookstores) include the "Historical Sketch" as it appeared in the sixth English edition. The bibliographic details of the various editions of Darwin's Origin are no

doubt of subordinate interest to the general reader, but in view of the numerous changes

Darwin made to successive editions it behooves those working in Darwin studies to be

attentive to these subtleties. The Darwin bibliography has been compiled by R.B.

Freeman (with a useful introduction and notes). A variorum edition of the Origin,

showing all changes through the several English editions was prepared in 1959 by Morse Peckham.

2 The first English-language version of the "Historical Sketch" has been reproduced

in CCD v. 8, 1993, pp. 572-76. Subsequent changes to this essay, which continued to be

made by Darwin through the fourth English edition, may be traced in the variorum edition of the Origin published by Peckham, 1959, pp. 59-70.



THE PREFACE TO DARWIN'S ORIGIN OF SPECIES 531

prefacing it to the Origin remain questions that have not been carefully addressed in the scholarly literature on Darwin.3

In what follows I will suggest that an adequate answer to why Darwin wrote the Sketch depends on a satisfactory understanding of

how and when the Sketch came to be, and so I focus mainly on private

correspondence between Darwin and several of his closest friends be?

tween 1856 and 1860. The private side of Darwin's thinking about a

historical preface is much more illuminating about these questions than

what may be gathered from his published work. It should be noted,

however, that the addition of a historical survey to a major scientific

work in mid-19th century Europe would not be unusual and perhaps would even be expected, in view of prevailing conventions in science

writing. Historical prefaces to such works were commonplace, if not

universal.4 Perhaps the best example of this strategy in setting the stage for a major new proposal in science is Charles Lyell's Principles of

Geology, the first four chapters of which treat the history of opinion in

geology as a preface to his own original contributions. Lyell in fact came

in time to call his historical survey a "Historical Sketch," beginning with

the third edition (1834; cf. n. *). Darwin was intimately familiar with

this work, especially volume I in which the historical survey appears, as

it accompanied him throughout his voyage on the Beagle. But Lyell's was certainly not the only work in this mold. The practice was fairly

3 Somewhat surprisingly, little systematic attention has been paid to the Historical

Sketch in the literature, as far as I can tell. The best histories and biographies make

mention of it and note when it first appeared in print, but even the most careful of

these say little about the genesis and various transformations of and motivations for

the Sketch. Works that have ventured at least some way down the path of the Sketch

are Browne, 1995, 2002; CCD vol. 8, 1993, p. 572-76; Freeman, 1977, pp. 78-9;

Peckham, pp. 20, 59-70; and Desmond and Moore, 1991, p. 502. 4

The "historical preface," if it constituted a sort of genre of 19th century science

writing (e.g., I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's Histoire Naturelle General [1854-62], chapters

1-3; the same author's Histoire . . . des Anomalies [1832], Introduction; and his Essais

de Zoologie General [1844], also with a historical introduction; A.P. De Candolle's

Theorie El?mentaire de la Botanique [1813], and his Elements of the Philosophy of Plants [1821], to name a few), was far from universally employed. One finds plenty of

works with which Darwin was quite familiar in which no formal history of the treated

subject is given, including Cuvier's Le Regne Animal (1829), Carpenter's Principles of Comparative Physiology (1854), Lamarck's Philosophie Zoologique (1809) and his Histoire Naturelle des Animaux sans Vertebres (1815). The point is only that a his?

torical preface was common enough for Darwin to have seen including one in the

Origin to be nothing unusual, and perhaps even expected in view of the revolutionary

implications of his own theory.




common, and new contributors especially may have been expected to

follow7 it. In that regard Darwin, in writing his own "Historical Sketch,"

may be seen simply to be doing what any good scientist would do, and

about which, therefore, nothing more need be said.5

Yet, in the case of Darwin more does need to be said. For one thing, Darwin was, by his own admission, not a historian and not very much

inclined toward historical studies. He understood himself to be what he in

fact was, a naturalist, not a historian. To add a historical survey would, he confessed in 1860, have strained him beyond endurance and ability.6 In addition, it is likely that Darwin was not as familiar with the historical

5 This formulation glosses over a number of complexities that deserve a much fuller

account than can be offered here. In particular, a large question looms about the origin of this convention and what purposes it served. Secord (in Lyell, 1997, p. xxxv) describes

a "gentlemanly form of publication" in Victorian science writing, and a historical

preface may well have been one important component, as exemplified by Lyell. It seems

likely, however, that Lyell's aim in his historical preface was more than, indeed different

than, merely to present a history of the subject. It was, as various scholars (including

Secord) have shown, a polemic against earlier geological writers and a means of

establishing at once Lyell's originality and his place in history as the culmination of

centuries of thought (e.g., Porter, 1976, 1982; Rudwick [in Lyell], 1990, pp. xvi-xvii; and

Secord, [in Lyell], 1997, p. xxv). Darwin followed Lyell's example only to an extent. By

adding his "Historical Sketch" Darwin did situate himself within the context of late 18th and early 19th century evolutionary theory (choosing mostly the great figures of his time for inclusion) and did thereby implicitly stake a claim to his own originality. But for all of that his Sketch lacks the sweep and grandeur of Lyell's (8 pages in its final form

compared to Lyell's 75), and also is much more inclined to give credit where credit was

due to previous thinkers than to condemn them, even if with faint praise, for their errors

and shortcomings. A complete account of the Sketch would need to concern itself with

an understanding of why Darwin chose to include (and omit!) the authors he did, and

with a careful analysis of his representations of their views -

both of which lie beyond the scope of this essay. These questions belong to a larger issue about "strategies in

exposition," and particularly Darwin's strategy in crafting his entire work, not just the

sketch. Other authors who have addressed aspects of this larger issue, though not with

respect to the sketch, include Secord (in Kohn, ed., 1985); Beatty (in Kohn, ed., 1985); S.J. Gould (2002); Hodge (1977); and Mayr (1991).

6 Cf. CCD vol. 8, 1993, p. 39: "The task [of writing a historical preface] would have

been not a little difficult, and belongs rather to the Historian of Science than to me." He

repeats the idea in the second letter to Powell, CCD vol. 8, 1993, 41. See also letter to

Lyell of July 5 1856, in CCD v. 6, p. 169.




evolution of his subject as, say, Lyell was of his.7 While he knew enough as early as 1838 to be fairly certain that he had a theory of his own, he was

uncertain enough about how to make a convincing public case for it that

he postponed the commencement of writing it up for the public until

1856, when he was finally persuaded to do so by Charles Lyell. At the same time, however, Darwin should have felt a strong incentive

to produce a history of the subject as a preface to his own work. His great desire was not only to bring forward a powerful new theory about the

origin of species in nature, but to establish his own priority and originality in finding it.8 How better to do so than to preface his work with an account

7 I document this claim more fully in what follows. (How familiar Lyell actually was with the history of his subject is open to debate, as he apparently took much of his

history from Brocchi's work on fossil conchology; cf. Secord, in Lyell, 1997, p. xx; and

Rudwick, in Lyell, 1990, p. xvi.) In this regard, however, it is of some interest to follow

Darwin's several different attempts in successive editions of the Origin to explain his

unwillingness in the "Historical Sketch" to treat of any authors prior to Lamarck.

Although the question is complicated and deserves a more extended discussion, we can

sum up the revisions to the Historical Sketch (or in any case the first part of it) as follows.

The first version, written specifically for the first authorized American edition, referred to

Buffon, Demaillet, and authors of the classical period, and also indicated that Darwin

would not discuss their views because of his lack of familiarity with some or all of them.

Passing over authors from the classical period, and likewise Demaillet and BufTon,

with whose writings I am not familiar, Lamarck was the first man whose views that

species undergo change excited much attention.

The ambiguity is even more pronounced in the second version. In this version he will

"pass over authors from the classical period to that of Buffon with whose writings I am

not familiar," a statement that could mean, and literally does mean, that he claims no

familiarity with any author from classical times down to Lamarck! Perhaps sensing what

a large confession of ignorance this would have been, Darwin reworked the sentence one

more time for the fourth (and all subsequent) English editions. In it he removed the confession of ignorance altogether and inserted a sentence on Buffon's fluctuating

opinions -

thus at one blow suggesting familiarity with that author and dispensing with

him -

and a long, essentially dismissive footnote on Aristotle: "Passing over allusions to

the subject in the classical writers,* [signaling the footnote on Aristotle's views] the first

author who in modern times who has treated [the subject] is . . . Buffon [etc.] 8

Darwin's originality and priority are, strictly speaking, separate questions. One can be

original and yet fail to achieve priority if, for example, someone else comes forward first in

print with the same theory without one's knowledge. Such, in fact, is more or less the case

with A.R. Wallace. No one, least of all Darwin, doubted that Wallace arrived at his theory

independently of Darwin, but Darwin was proven by history to have brought the theory into print

- if not exactly publication

- first. Nevertheless, Darwin often conflated the two

issues in his private correspondence, referring to his originality and priority almost as if

they were interchangeable ideas. A nice example is in Darwin's letter to Hooker of 23

December 1859 (CCD vol. 7, 1991, p. 444). After some fretting about Naudin's possible priority Darwin adds, "I shd. rather like Lyell to see this note; though it is foolish work

sticking up for independence [i.e., originality] or priority." See notes 12 and 13 below.




of previous authors who had maintained descent with modification but

had missed the crucial insight of natural selection as the mechanism by which favorable variations are preserved and modified into new species and less favorable ones ruthlessly destroyed? Moreover, several of

Darwin's earliest critics after the Origin first appeared in 1859 had faulted

him for failing to show continuities between his work and those of his

predecessors who, like Lamarck and his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, had maintained some version or another of descent with modification.9 It

would not be surprising that Darwin would have wished to set the record

straight about his own contribution and originality. And yet, the first

edition of the Origin omits any such discussion. Was Darwin merely shy, and only provoked into writing the historical introduction under the

pressure of his earliest critics' suggestions that his theory was not original? This seems to be the accepted view among modern historians who have

addressed the issue.10 But a deeper look suggests that Darwin had in fact

prepared at least much of the historical sketch well before the Origin first

appeared. It is this claim (and the resolution of some particular puzzles that follow from it) that I attempt to substantiate in what follows.

Shortly after the Origin originally appeared in November, 1859,

Darwin received a letter from Baden Powell, Savilian Professor of

Geometry at Oxford (1827-60), apparently suggesting (from what may be inferred from Darwin's response

- the Powell letter unfortunately has

not been found) - that Darwin's "theory" had been at minimum

anticipated well prior to Darwin's publication, and perhaps, more

strongly, that Darwin had been scooped altogether, by Powell and

perhaps by others. In the first letter of response to Powell Darwin

asserts that not even the "most ignorant [educated person]" could

possibly suppose that Darwin "meant to arrogate to myself the origi? nation of the doctrine that species had not been independently created," and that "if I have taken anything from you, I assure you it has been

unconsciously" - words that sound very much as though directed to

someone who had suggested some unacknowledged borrowing. "To the

best of my belief," he insists, "I have acknowledged with pleasure all the

chief facts and generalizations I have borrowed."11

Darwin's apparent concern with his own priority in establishing the

theory of modification of species by means of natural selection was

9 For a transcription (with translations) of early reviews of Origin and a commentary,

see Hull, 1973. 10

J. Browne, 2002, p. 133; Desmond and Moore, 1991, pp. 439, 469; cf. also CCD

v. 8, 1993, pp. 571-6; and R.B. Freeman, 1977, p. 78. 11

CCDw. 8, 1993, p. 39.




nothing new.12 Indeed, it was A.R. Wallace's announcement that he had

hit upon a similar theory to Darwin's that prompted Darwin to set aside

the completion of the "big species book" and to concentrate instead on

bringing out quickly a shorter "abstract" that would become the Origin. As it turned out, Darwin's priority to Wallace was finally settled by the

revelation that Darwin had already in 1844 written out an "Essay"

describing his theory and had also sent a short written account of his

views to Asa Gray in September 1857, before he had heard about

Wallace's work. But the episode with Wallace does demonstrate that the

issue of priority was one that weighed on Darwin's mind, and also on

12 Darwin evinced concern about his originality even before he had fleshed out the

important details of the natural selection theory. One finds a notebook reminder in the

second transmutation notebook (C-267), written in 1838, before the encounter with

Malthus, to "read Aristotle to see whether any my views very ancient?" (Barrett et al.

[eds.], 1987, p. 325. The Barrett edition of the notebooks is hereafter referred to as

CDN). Other entries in the Notebooks from 1837 and 1838 show clearly that Darwin

regarded some theory as "my theory," different from those of previous transmuta

tionists' (e.g., B 214: "my theory very different from Lamarck's," in CDN p. 224 and

note 214-1). The phrase "my theory," often contrasting Darwin's theory with some?

one else's, occurs repeatedly throughout the Notebooks. In 1856 and again in 1858,

when worries started to surface among Darwin's inner circle, especially Lyell, that

someone else might beat Darwin to the punch in publishing a new theory on the origin

of species, Darwin again expressed concern that he did not wish to have "his doc?

trines" published first by someone else. To Lyell on May 3 1856 he wrote, "I rather

hate the idea of writing for priority, yet I certainly should be vexed if any one were to

publish my doctrines before me" {CCD, v. 8, 1993, p. 100; see also letters to J.D.

Hooker of 9 and 11 may 1856, in CCD. v. 8, 1993, pp. 106-110). Darwin's anxieties

reached an even higher pitch when Wallace's manuscript appeared in mid-1858, at

which time Darwin complained to Lyell (June 18 1858) that "my originality has been smashed" {CCD v. 7, 1991, p. 107 and nn. 2-3). Although he felt inner conflict about

caring at all for priority (see following note) there is little doubt that he in fact did care a great deal, as he confessed in a letter to Hooker on July 13 1858: "I always thought

it very possible that I might be forestalled, but I fancied that I had grand enough soul not to care; but I found myself mistaken and punished" {CCD v. 7, 1991, p. 129; see

also Darwin's letter to Lyell sent on July 18, CCD v. 7, 1991, p. 137). Darwin's

reaction to the anonymous publication in 1844 of the very popular Vestiges of Natural

Creation, betrays a similar concern, e.g., at CCD v. 3 (letters to J.D. Hooker 7 January

1845 and 10 September 1845) and v. 8, 1993, p. 5 and n. 10 in a letter to T.H. Huxley, 1 January 1860; see discussions by Janet Browne, Charles Darwin Voyaging (hereafter

CDV), Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 461; and Marjorie Greene and David

Depew, The Philosophy of Biology, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 190.




those of his friends who were aware of the "race" with Wallace and who

urged Darwin to move forward quickly with publication.13 Powell's letter, whatever it said, must have struck a chord with

Darwin, because within a month he had produced his "Historical

Sketch" for the Origin, the stated purpose of which was to give a brief

account of "the progress of opinion on the Origin of Species," partic?

ularly with a view toward reviewing opinions of those naturalists who

had preceded Darwin in maintaining some version or another of the

thesis that "species undergo modification."14 But how the "Historical

Sketch" and Darwin's response to Powell - two letters, actually, sent on

the same day, 18 January 1860 - are related raises an interesting

question. What is obvious is that the two "sketches," that outlined in

the letter to Powell and that, which became the "Historical Sketch," are

remarkably similar in content and even at times in precise wording. This

fact raises at least the possibility that Darwin, in composing one, drew

directly from the other. Based on the dating of the letters to Powell

(January 18 1860) and the completion of the sketch (February 8 or 9 1860 - see below), it would seem that the letter preceded the "Historical

Sketch," and in fact that Powell's letter provoked, or helped provoke,

13 Darwin did not have unalloyed enthusiasm for winning this race at any cost. If it

could be won only by appearing greedy and acting dishonorably he would not do it. In a

letter to Lyell on 25 June 1858, after receipt of Wallace's paper, he wrote: "I should be

extremely glad now to publish a sketch of my general views in about a dozen pages or so.

But I cannot persuade myself that I can do so honourably... I would far rather burn my

whole book than that he [viz., Wallace] or any man should think that I had behaved in a

paltry spirit [by being concerned about priority]" (CCD v. 7, 1991, pp. 117-8). In late

June (29 June 1858) Darwin lamented to Hooker that "it [viz., claiming priority over

Wallace] is too late. ... It is miserable in me to care at all about priority" (CCD v. 7,

1991, p. 122). On July 5th 1858 Darwin again (to Hooker) expresses "shame" that Hooker and Lyell, in insisting upon presenting Darwin's views alongside those of

Wallace at the Linnaean Society meeting of July 1 "should have lost time on a mere

point of priority" (CCD v. 7, 1991, p. 127). It is worth noting that Wallace never did

challenge Darwin on the point of priority for discovering natural selection, and in fact

later in life, both in public and private, went further than perhaps was necessary to give

Darwin the lion's share of credit for discovering and articulating the theory. See

Wallace, 1905, vol. 1 p. 374; and Janet Browne's discussion with additional references,

2002, pp. 139-40, 317. 14

Darwin, 1872, p. 3. It should be noted that this is a reference to the 6th English edition, the one most commonly found in modern English reproductions of the Origin.

However, the "Historical Sketch" had appeared in earlier editions, and Darwin changed

the wording throughout subsequent editions, though not with respect to this particular

quote. See note 1 for more detail on this point.




Darwin's desire to produce that document.15 But that conclusion is

undermined by Darwin's second letter to Powell, in which he now

recalls having already written a Preface to the larger work, one in which

he had in fact included a mention of Powell's earlier writing. Thus, the

evidence about the relation between the "Historical Sketch" and the

letters to Baden Powell is ambiguous and somewhat confusing. We

should explore this further because the right account will have further

implications for what Darwin was trying to achieve in his "Historical

Sketch."16

As to the "Historical Sketch," it first appeared in the first German

edition in April 1860, then shortly thereafter in the first authorized U.S.

edition (Appleton & Co.) in May 1860 (several unauthorized printings of the Origin, based on the first English edition, had come out in the

United States earlier in 1860 from Appleton prior to this edition, without the "Historical Sketch"). But from Darwin's correspondence we can identify the actual date of completion of the "Historical Sketch," at least in its first published form, with some precision. The first letter to

Baden Powell (18 January 1860) explicitly states that Darwin had decided against writing a historical survey of his subject for the original edition of Origin due to ill health:

My health was so poor, whilst I wrote the Book, that I was

unwilling to add in the least to my labour; therefore I attempted no

history of the subject; nor do I think that I was bound to do so

(CCD v. 8, p. 39).

The second letter, sent on the same day, changes that picture dramati?

cally. Darwin continues to maintain his disinclination, based on the

difficulty of the task, to write a historical survey of other authors who

15 This seems to be the conclusion reached by the editors of the Darwin correspon?

dence: "Although at first skeptical of Baden Powell's suggestion that he prefix to Origin a list of authors who had maintained the modification of species,

. . . Darwin subse?

quently changed his mind" (CCD v. 8 1993, p. 571). 16 It is true that other letters written by Darwin in 1859 and 1860 make reference to

particular authors that came to find a place in the "Historical Sketch" (e.g., letters to

Hooker of 23 December 1859 [CCD vol. 7, 1991, p. 444] and 31 January 1860 [CCD vol.

8, 1993, p. 60] in regard to Naudin), so that to single out the letters to Baden Powell as

of particular importance may be seen as in need of justification. What is unique about

the Powell letters, particularly the first, is that in it alone does Darwin give a list of

authors who would need to be treated. Other letters typically make reference to only a

single author and give little hint about what Darwin thought a historical survey would

need to look like. The dating of the Powell letters is also important: both were sent a

mere three weeks prior to the completion of the first version of the Sketch sent to Gray on Februarys or 9, 1860.




had maintained some version of descent with modification prior to

Darwin's published views. But now he also adds that he had in fact

some time earlier already begun to compose a "Preface" to the larger work (viz., the "big species book," published in 1975 under the

editorship of R.C. Stauffer as Charles Darwin's Natural Selection) that

was intended to discuss previous authors, and that in this Preface he had

acknowledged the work of Powell himself. In a postscript to the second

letter to Powell Darwin wrote:

I have just bethought me of a Preface which I wrote to my larger

work, before I broke down and was persuaded to write the now

published Abstract [i.e., the Origin]. In this Preface I find the fol?

lowing passage, which on my honour I had as completely forgotten as if I had never written it. "The 'Philosophy of Creation' has lately been treated in an admirable manner by the Revd. Baden Powell in

his Essay &c &c 1855. Nothing can be more striking than the

manner in which he shows that the introduction of new species is 'a regular and not a casual phenomenon,' or as Sir John

Herschel expresses it 4a natural in contradistinction to a miraculous

process"' (CCD, v. 8, p. 41).

Now, there is a question about how to interpret this information. The

statement, "a Preface which I wrote to my larger work," the only mention by Darwin, incidentally, that I have been able to trace any? where to a "Preface" matching this description (with one small excep? tion discussed below), suggests that Darwin had already composed

something resembling the "Historical Sketch" by as early as 1856 when

he started the "big species book". (R.C. Stauffer points out that the very first entry for the preserved ms. of the "big species book" is folio 16, and surmises, plausibly, that the preceding 15 folios formed Darwin's

Preface alluded to in the postscript to Powell's letter cited above [in

Stauffer, ed. p. 22]. The editors of the CCD state that this "Preface has

not been preserved" [v. 8, p. 41, n. 4], and Stauffer also claims not to

have found any further trace of the document.) But if such a document

did exist, when was it written, and what did it say? It is difficult to know because of the extreme paucity of evidence. One

tantalizing clue does show up, however, in the correspondence, in a

letter Darwin wrote to Charles Lyell on July 5 1856. Recall that Lyell in

early May 1856, worrying about Darwin's ability to claim priority for

his ideas, had urged Darwin to set aside further research on the species

question in favor of bringing his views to publication as soon as possible

(CCD v. 6 p. 522; letter of 1-2 May 1856 from Lyell to Darwin, CCD




v. 6 p. 89-90; and letter to Lyell from Darwin of May 3 1856, CCD v. 6

pp. 99-100). At first Darwin was very hesitant to take this advice, but

after consulting with Hooker in May he decided to go ahead with the

writing. In the July 5 letter to Lyell, Darwin acknowledged his gratitude to Lyell for the suggestion, then gave a small hint that the work would

be preceded, not with a full-fledged historical survey, but with some

acknowledgments to his predecessors:

I am delighted that I may say [i.e., when my book comes out] (with absolute truth) that my essay [viz., the Species Book] is published at

your suggestion.... I shall not attempt a history of the subject, but

in one page devoted to two or three leading and opposed author?

ities, I had already, after a few remarks on the Principles [i.e.,

Lyell's Principles of Geology], ventured on the words - "and with a

degree of almost prophetic caution which must excite the admira?

tion &c &c" {CCD v. 6, p. 169, emphasis in the original).

Although the matter is somewhat obscure, what appears to have hap?

pened is that when Lyell first urged Darwin to publish on the species

question in April and May 1856 Darwin reacted with surprise and great

uncertainty. As he said to Lyell in early May, to write a short work on

the subject "goes against my prejudices." He added, "To give a fair

sketch [i.e., a short essay] would be absolutely impossible, for every

proposition requires such an array of facts" {CCD, v. 6 p. 100). Yet he

was sufficiently struck by the suggestion that he consulted with Hooker,

making much the same point to him:

If I publish anything it must be a very thin & little volume, giving a sketch of my views & difficulties; but it is really dreadfully unphilosophical to give a resume, without exact references, of an

unpublished work.... It will be simply impossible for me to give exact references.... Eheu, eheu, I believe I shd sneer at anyone else

doing this, & my only comfort is, that I truly never dreamed of it, 'till Lyell suggested it, & seems deliberately to think it advisable

(letter to J.D. Hooker, May 9 1856, CCD v. 6 p. 106; see also letter

to Hooker of 11 may 1856, CCD v. 6 p. 109).17

17 The "exact r?f?rences'' to which Darwin here alludes are no doubt in reference to

citations of supporting evidence for his own theory compiled by other authors (as is

evident from the Natural Selection manuscript, not published until 1975), not to the

"Historical Sketch." In other words, the passage does not show anything about

Darwin's concern to produce a historical preface for his work, only that he was under

some pressure from Lyell at this time to get his theory written out and published, and so

is important for dating Darwin's commencement of writing out his theory.




That was Darwin's state of mind in May. But by July something had

changed. In a letter to Lyell on July 5th, as we have seen, Darwin had

resolved to undertake publication, but had decided to make it a larger

work, preceded by a short historical preface. The work, he hopes, "will

not need so much apology as I at first thought; for I have resolved to

make it nearly as complete as my present materials allow" {CCD, v. 6

p. 169). In other words, by this time he had decided to undertake the

"big species book," a plan that he faithfully pursued until it was

derailed by the appearance of the Wallace manuscript in mid-1858. But

even in the earliest stages Darwin had made two decisions respecting a

history of the subject: the first, that he would not write any compre? hensive history for the big book; and the second, that he would write -

in fact already had written - a very short preface that was devoted to

"two or three leading and opposed authorities [on the subject of spe?

cies]," including Lyell himself. Is it possible that one of the other

"leading authorities" Darwin had mentioned was Baden Powell?18 In

any case, the July 5th 1856 letter to Lyell does seem to show that as

early as that date Darwin had produced the core idea for a historical

sketch, with some amount of text that would later blossom into the

"Historical Sketch."

How, then, do we explain Darwin's statement to Baden Powell and

others in early 1860 that he had not written a history of the subject? The evidence is somewhat puzzling and deserves a careful look.

On 17 January 1860 Asa Gray, who was negotiating on Darwin's

behalf the publication by Appleton & Co. of the first authorized American edition of the Origin, wrote to Darwin urging him to "send at

once any corrections you are making for your 2nd ed." as well as a

"preface - a few words - to identify it as your ed." (emphases in the

original; Gray was not yet aware that the second English edition with

corrections had already been published on January 7th). Despite some

apparent opinion to the contrary, Gray's letter seems clearly not to be a

request for the "Historical Sketch," since he is very clear that the desired

18 It is to be noted that Darwin's mention of other "leading authorities" is ambiguous,

since he says he will discuss "two or three leading and opposed authorities." Thus, he

could mean two or three on each side or two or three total. It is also an interesting

question as to who these authorities may have been. A partial answer is suggested by

something Darwin wrote in the now-famous letter that he sent to Asa Gray on 5

September 1857 (in CCD, v. 6, 1991, pp. 447-9) outlining his theory of natural selection. In it he mentions the elder de Candolle, W. Herbert, and Lyell as important forerunners

of his own theory, especially as regards competition and war in the state of nature.

Somewhat surprisingly, of these three only W. Herbert wound up in any of the versions

of the "Historical Sketch".




preface is to be a few words only and is to serve the purpose not of

treating the history of the subject but only to identify the first autho?

rized American edition as Darwin's edition, so as to secure a copyright

against other unauthorized editions (CCD v. 8, p. 38).19 Then, on 28

January Darwin wrote to Gray, saying that, on the strong advice of

Charles Lyell and others, he had decided against making any substantial

changes to the Origin for the American edition, save a few corrections

"of small importance, or rather of equal brevity [to those already made

for the second English edition]." He then adds that he does "intend to

write a short Preface with brief history of the subject." He further says that he will undertake this work, "as they [viz., the corrections and the

Preface] must some day be done & I will send them you in a short time"

(CCD, v. 8 p. 54). One plainly infers from this letter that Darwin has not

yet composed much if any of the "Historical Sketch," but that he is

about to do so.

The next we hear about the "Historical Sketch" comes in a letter

from Darwin to his close friend J.D. Hooker, sent on 31 January 1860:

My dear Hooker

I have resolved to publish a little sketch of the progress of opinion on the change of species.... Asa Gray, I believe, is going to get a 2nd

Edit, of my Book, & I want to send this little preface over to him

soon (CCD, v. 8, p. 60).

In this letter Darwin also asks Hooker to send a copy of "one sentence"

to him from a work by Charles Victor Naudin in which that author had

much earlier (1852) brought forward in publication a theory that bore

some similarity to Darwin's idea that species "are formed in an anal?

ogous manner as varieties are under cultivation" (CCD v. 8, p. 60, n. 2). The sentence in question was in fact included in the "Historical Sketch,"

19 E.g., Janet Browne, in her biography of Darwin says the "Historical Sketch" was

encouraged by Asa Gray and was prompted by the skeptical reaction of some of the

early reviewers of the book who had "cynically noted . . . the absent acknowledgements

[of prior evolutionary work]," 2002, p. 133. Gray's letter, in asking Darwin for a preface

of a "few words" only shows that Gray saw no need for a historical introduction to

identify the work as Darwin's edition for copyright purposes.




showing again Darwin's concern to address the issue of his own priority in a preface to later editions of the Origin.20

The following day, 1 February 1860, Darwin sent another letter to Gray,

including an enclosure that showed some corrections that Darwin wished to

have included in the American edition. He also announced that "I will send

in a fortnight a Preface giving a short History of opinion on origin of

species" (CCD v. 8 p. 63). The impression continues to be that Darwin had

not yet written, or at any rate completed, the "Historical Sketch," but that

he anticipated completing it within a fortnight, or 2 weeks.

Yet on the very next day, 2 February 1860, Darwin gave a very

different impression, in a letter to Herbert Spencer. In it he repeated the

explanation that poor health kept him from providing a historical

introduction to the first edition to the Origin, but that now he has

repaired that deficiency:

I was so much out of health when I was writing my Book, that I grudged

every hour of labour, & therefore gave no sort of history of progress of

opinion. I have now written a Preface for the foreign Editions and for

any future English Edit (shd there be one) in which I give a very brief

sketch, & have with much pleasure alluded to your excellent essay on

Development in your general Essays {CCD, v. 8 p. 66).

The letter does go on to suggest that Darwin is still putting the finishing touches on the Sketch, because he asks Spencer if he may in the Sketch

represent his (Spencer's) views on psychological development as being

generally in tune with Darwin's transmutationist theory. (The editors of

Darwin's correspondence surmise that Spencer must have assented to

this, for Darwin's suggested phrasing does appear in the "Historical

Sketch" as in the letter to Spencer: CCD, v. 8 p. 67 n. 9.) But the letter

also seems to show that by this time, early February, the Sketch was all

but complete.

20 Darwin's concern about Naudin's possible priority in articulating a theory of natural

selection is well reflected even in the first weeks after the first edition of Origin appeared.

Both Lyell and Hooker advised Darwin late in 1859 of Naudin's 1852 work that seemed to

them to anticipate Darwin, and one of these men informed him that Joseph Decaisne also

had found Naudin to "give my [Darwin's] whole theory" {CCD v. 7,1991, p. 442 and nn. 6

7, letter to C. Lyell 22 December 1859). Darwin quickly read or reread Naudin, for the

following day he wrote to Hooker, in apparent relief, "I am surprised that Decaisne shd say

it [viz., the theory given by Naudin] is the same as mine. ... I cannot see much closer

approach to Wallace & me in Naudin than in Lamarck - we all agree in modification &

descent" (CCD, v. 7, 1991, p. 444). The letter confirms what his first letter to Powell

(quoted above) also showed, that Darwin's concerns about originality and priority were

centered on the specific issue of natural selection as the mechanism of change, not on

descent with modification per se.




Any doubt on that score is removed in Darwin's letter to Gray of 8 or

9 February 1860. In this letter Darwin announced that he is now sending

"my short Historical Preface and one page more of corrections" (CCD v. 8 p. 74). The date of this letter is uncertain, but the editors of the

correspondence have surmised 8 or 9 February by referring to a letter

sent by Darwin to Hooker on February 8th in which he tells Hooker

that he has just completed his Sketch (CCD, v. 8 p. 74 and p. 75 n. 1). Putting together these pieces, one may construct the following

account of the history of the "Historical Sketch." Darwin's second letter

to Baden Powell indicates that Darwin had contemplated, indeed begun and perhaps made significant headway on, a historical introduction as

early as 1856, no later than mid-1858. This indication receives additional

support from the fact that the first 15 folio pages of the "big species

book," appearing before the table of contents, are missing, but belong in

a position in that book exactly corresponding to the place the "Historical

Sketch" eventually came to occupy in the Origin. On the other hand, Darwin was clearly not ready or willing to attach any sort of "Historical

Sketch" to the first edition of the Origin, telling both Powell and Spencer in early 1860 that poor health had prevented him from writing any such

document. The letters to Gray in late January and early February 1860

seem to confirm this latter reading, since in the earlier letters he is

"intending" to write the Sketch, and not until February 8th or 9th has he

put it in a sufficiently complete form to send to Gray for the first

authorized American edition. The question is, plainly, did he, or did he

not, have a "Historical Sketch" in reasonably complete form when the

first English edition of the Origin went to press in November 1859? The answer would seem to be, yes and no. Unless he was simply fab?

ricating something to soothe Powell's evident concerns about priority, which in view of any plausible portrait of Darwin is not credible, he did

have at least part of a historical survey of opinion in some state of written

form before he turned in 1858 from the "big species book" to the Abstract

that became the Origin. This is confirmed by his letter of 3 May 1856 to

Lyell in which he briefly mentioned a "history of subject..., one page devoted to leading and opposed authorities" (CCD v. 6 p. 169). It is

impossible to know whether the "one page" of 1856 had expanded into

something longer by 1859. Although 15 folio ms. pages are missing from

the beginning of the "species book" manuscript, there is no way to know

whether and how much of this space was filled with writing, or even

strictly speaking, whether any of it was filled. The letters to Powell,

Spencer, and Gray written in late 1859 and early 1860 shed only a little

light on this subject because in none of them did Darwin chart in any detail




the progress of the "Historical Sketch", only that he "intended" to write

one in early January, and that he finished writing it in early February. All

these comments are compatible with the idea that he had prepared at least

part of a historical survey much earlier (including a reference to Powell's

1855 work), but that it was not sufficiently complete, in his opinion, for it

to be included in the first edition of the Origin. In view of this reconstruction, we may now return to consider the first

letter to Baden Powell, sent on 18 January 1860. I observed earlier that

this letter tracks so closely with the "Historical Sketch" that one is al?

most certainly indebted to the other for its contents. This contention is

supported not only by the similarity in the list of names mentioned in the

letter and the people discussed in the Sketch, but also by some of the

wording. Let me give two instances:

I. Letter to Powell:

Had I alluded to those authors who have maintained, with more or

less ability, that species have not been specially created, I should

have felt myself bound to have given some account of all; namely,

passing over the ancients, [I should have had to give some account

of] Buffon (?) Lamarck... [etc.] {CCD v. 8 p. 39).

"Historical Sketch", first version:

The great majority of naturalists have believed that species were

immutable productions and have been separately created.... A few

[others] believe, on the other hand, that species undergo modifica?

tion.... Passing over authors from the classical period to that of

Buffon with whose writings I am not familiar, Lamarck was the

first man whose conclusions excited much attention on this subject

(reprinted in CCD v. 8, pp. 572-6).

II. Letter to Powell:

(by the way his [viz., Lamarck's] erroneous views were curiously

anticipated by my Grandfather [Erasmus Darwin])...

"Historical Sketch", first version:

It is curious how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin,

anticipated the erroneous grounds of opinion, and the views of

Lamarck, in his 'Zoonomia' (vol. I, p. 500-510), published in 1794.

Some of the phrasing here suggests strongly direct copying or

borrowing: "specially/separately created," "passing over ancient/classical




[authors];" "erroneous views;" "curious anticipation." But to rule out the

possibility that the words from the letter were permanently suspended in

Darwin's mind, and descended independently first into the Powell letter

and then into the Sketch (or the reverse), it is worth taking note of the list of

authors Darwin thinks fit to mention in the two documents.211 reproduce them here side by side to permit a close comparison. (It should be noted

that Darwin added additional authors to subsequent editions of the Origin as he became familiar with them. The first version of the Sketch would

show his thinking on this subject up to late January 1860.)

List in first letter to Baden Powell,

January 18 1860

List from "Historical Sketch" as in first

authorized American Edition

The ancients [that he will pass over] Buffon [with a question mark after his name] Lamarck

My Grandfather [Erasmus Darwin]

[Etienne] Geoffry [sic] St. Hilaire

Isidore [Geoffroy St. Hilaire] Naudin

Keyserling An American (name this minute forgotten),

[remembered in second letter as Haldeman]

Vestiges of Creation [i.e., Robert Chambers] Some Germans

Herbert Spencer

Yourself [i.e., Baden Powell]

Authors of the classical period [to be passed over] Demaillet and Buffon [to be passed over] Lamarck

Erasmus Darwin [mentioned in a footnote

as one who anticipated "the erroneous

views" of Lamarck] Etienne Geoffroy Saint Hilaire (based on his

"Life" written by his son Isidore Geoffroy Saint Hilaire) Rev. W. Herbert

Prof. Haldeman

Vestiges of Creation [Robert Chambers] M.J. d'Omalius d'Halloy

Isidore Geoffroy Saint Hilaire

Mr. Herbert Spencer M. Naudin (with a footnote entry to

"M. Lecoq, another French botanist") Count Keyserling Baden Powell

Alfred Russell Wallace

Huxley Hooker

21 It is certainly possible that Darwin had mulled over the "curious anticipation" of

Lamarck by Erasmus Darwin, quite independently of the letter to Powell or of the

"Historical Sketch." In a letter to Huxley on 9 January 1860 he wrote: "The History of

Error is quite unimportant, but it is curious to observe how exactly and accurately my

Grandfather (in Zoonomia V. I p. 504 1794) gives Lamarck's theory." Darwin had

marked this passage in his own copy of Zoonomia with the word "Lamarck!!" A slip

pasted on the same page of his copy reads: "504 Lamarck precisely forestalled by my

Grandfather" {CCD v. 8 p. 26 and n. 3). The only word that stands out as common

(apart from the names of Lamarck and Erasmus) to all three passages (letter to Powell,

"Historical Sketch", and letter to Huxley) is "curious," but the sentiment in all three is

identical, strongly suggesting that Erasmus' "anticipation" of Lamarck was a settled

conviction in Darwin's mind.




How, then, do the lists compare? We note, first, that every single author identified either by name or in some other way in the Powell

letter shows up in the "Historical Sketch," and, with a couple of

exceptions described below, in precisely the same relative position in

which he appears in the letter to Powell. The "Historical Sketch" does

contain more names: 18 (or 19 counting the footnote) as compared with

13 in the letter, if we include the classical authors as one and "Demaillet

and Buffon" as one. (I attempt to account for this discrepancy below.) But the overlap between the two lists, including the similarity of

wording about special creation, the treatments of the ancients, Buffon, and Erasmus Darwin (noted above), and the order in which names

appear, again gives credence to the thought that Darwin was borrowing from one document in composing the other. In other words, despite statements to the contrary made to his friends in early 1860 that he had

not composed a historical sketch for the species book, the two letters to

Powell, for different reasons, suggest strongly that he had.

If that is so, how much more can we learn about this now lost

"Preface" from examining the two lists in greater detail? From the

second letter to Powell one learns only that the Sketch was either

partially or completely written but was not at hand (or even in memory) when Darwin wrote the first letter to him. But the first letter to Powell

shows, first of all, that the list at the time Darwin wrote the letter, is

both shorter (by four or five authors) and more abbreviated, in terms of

the amount of discussion Darwin gives to each author. (The names

added to the "Historical Sketch" but not in the letter are Demaillet

[passed over], d'Omalius d'Halloy, Lecoq [mentioned in a short foot?

note], Wallace, Huxley, and Hooker.) Indeed, in the letter Darwin

for the most part merely lists names, with no commentary (with the exception of the sentence about Erasmus Darwin anticipating

Lamarck). The Sketch, by contrast, devotes some amount of com?

mentary to each author, ranging in length from a short paragraph to a

full page, depending evidently upon how significant Darwin regarded the contribution of the author to be. None of this is surprising in itself.

In a letter one would expect a mere listing, in a Sketch, well, a sketch!

But, putting the letter side by side with the sketch does strongly suggest that much of the Sketch was composed by the time Darwin received

Powell's letter, and that he was simply recalling it, even if unconsciously, when he wrote his letter to Powell. Or, to state it the other way round, it

would not be likely for Darwin to create a Sketch, intended to serve as a

formal preface to his masterpiece (with the assured huge reading audi




ence) based upon a private note of correspondence hastily crafted to a

man he did not know well.

This interpretation, that Darwin had already completed much of the

sketch by the time the Origin first appeared, has the further advantage of comporting well with Darwin's second letter to Powell, in which

he states explicitly that he had already included Powell among those

authors treated in the "Preface" that he had started to prepare for the

"big species book" but had set aside along with the book itself for the

sake of producing quickly an Abstract (which came to be the Origin). The passage from that "Preface" that he duplicates in the letter

(regarding Powell's 1855 book) is just that, an almost exact duplicate, word for word, and included in quotation marks, giving the strongest

possible impression that Darwin was transcribing in the letter from an

already existing document. From this it seems a strong likelihood that

Darwin, in composing his letter to Powell, merely summarized what was

already written out as the "Preface" to the big book. Indeed, from the

second letter to Powell one might be so bold as to infer what the now

lost "Preface" looked like: something much like the "Historical Sketch"

sent to Gray on February 8 or 9 1860, with four or five other authors

added to the latter based on reading or recollections of Darwin between

the time he wrote to Powell and when he wrote to Gray (i.e., just under

3 weeks).22 Attractive as this reconstruction is, it leaves some puzzling ques?

tions. One has to do with the relative positioning of names in the two

sketches: they are somewhat different. Specifically, Isidore Geoffroy St.

Hilaire, Naudin, and Keyserling, appear earlier, relative to other

authors, in the letter than in the Sketch, whereas Herbert Spencer

appears later. If the Sketch had already been largely written out when

Darwin wrote to Powell and Darwin was merely replicating it, how

might we account for this? The easiest way out would be simply to say that Darwin, in drawing from subconscious memory, misrecalled the

exact positioning of some names when he wrote the letter. But since

he was right in his recollection of the great majority of authors

treated and in other details of wording and sentiment (described

above), we might wish to consider alternate hypotheses before settling on that one.

22 This interpretation helps resolve another difficulty: how Darwin could have com?

posed a "Historical Sketch," treating 18 or 19 different authors, in the 3 weeks between

the Powell letters and February 8th or 9th when he sent the completed Sketch to Asa

Gray. That is not very much time -

unless all but five or six of these authors already had

been written up in the months or years prior to this period.




The positioning of Isidore in the letter, right after Etienne (his father) is easy enough to explain. In discussing Etienne Darwin drew, as he says in the Sketch, on the "Life" of Etienne composed by the son. In the

letter it would have been natural for Darwin to put these two men

together in a single thought, as in fact he does. But Isidore made his own

independent contributions to the species question that Darwin wanted

to acknowledge in the Sketch, and because the Sketch treats authors

chronologically - that is, in the historical order of their written

contributions as known to Darwin23 - Isidore's contributions would

need to appear after Herbert, Haldeman, Vestiges, and d'Omallius

d'Halloy, whereas Etienne's contributions were noted in the "Life" to

have been made as early as 1795, that is, before these men. Such

assiduous attention to dating would have been unnecessary in a short

letter.24

The case of Herbert Spencer requires a different explanation. In the

Sketch he does appear in the proper chronological order, after Isidore

(1850-51) and before Naudin (late 1852). (The work of Spencer to which Darwin makes reference was published in March 1852.) Why,

then, does he appear out of order in the letter? An answer is suggested

by a letter Darwin sent to Spencer on 2 February 1860 to ask him when

precisely his work in the Leader appeared, as he wanted to include

mention of it in the "Historical Sketch" (CCD v. 8, 1993, p. 66). This

was 2 weeks after he sent his letters to Powell and 1 week before he

completed the first version of the "Historical Sketch." It thus seems

plausible to assume that Darwin in fact did not know the correct

chronological position of Spencer's work when he wrote to Powell, and

learned it only after he wrote to Spencer and presumably heard back

some days later.25 On this reading, Darwin would have included

Spencer in the "Historical Sketch" prior to writing to Powell, but would

not have known his precise chronological location until after February 2

1860.

2o In a letter sent to Spencer on 2 February 1860 Darwin, seeking a particular date of

publication of one of Spencer's works, noted that "I arrange my notices chronologi?

cally" (CCD v. 8, 1993, p. 66). See also Darwin's letter to Hooker of 8 February 1860

(CCD v. 8, 1993, p. 74). 24

If Etienne's contribution was made in 1795, why would he then not appear in the

Sketch before Lamarck, whose Philosophie zoologique appeared in 1809? The answer is

that Etienne did not publish his views until 1828, as Darwin observes in the Sketch. 25

Spencer's written reply, if there was one, has not been located, but the editors of the

correspondence surmise he must have approved of Darwin's mentioning him as a

forerunner because he is represented in the "Historical Sketch" just as Darwin requested in his letter to Spencer of 2 February (CCD v. 8 1993, p. 66 and 67 n.9).




That leaves only Naudin and Keyserling, the final two authors who

in the letter are out of proper chronological order. In the letter they

inexplicably have been moved up to a position just after Etienne (and

Isidor) Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1828), whereas properly they belong, as in

the Sketch, after Haldeman (1843-4) and Vestiges of Creation (1844). One notes, first of all, that in both the letter to Powell and the Sketch

they show up together, Naudin (1852) first, immediately followed by Keyserling (1853). This suggests that the two hung together in Darwin's

mind, and the reason would be, judging from the chronology of the

Sketch, that their contributions came one right after the other (1852 and

1853) in history. This is further evidence that Darwin had made some

progress on the chronologically ordered Sketch before he wrote to

Powell. But why he would have gotten them out of proper order in the

letter remains a question. Very little is known about Darwin's famil?

iarity with the 1853 Keyserling work. It does not show up in his reading notebooks or his library, and I can find no mention made to this work in

any of Darwin's correspondence.26 In view of all this silence it is almost

surprising that Keyserling made it into the Sketch at all. On the other

hand, it would be hard to argue that Darwin was unclear about

Naudin's proper place in the chronology when he wrote to Powell in

January 1860, for in December 1859, just a month earlier, Hooker had

drawn Darwin's attention to the similarity between Darwin's theory and

the 1852 essay by Naudin. Darwin immediately went back to reread this

essay (he had sometime earlier twice entered this work into his "Books

to be Read" section of his Reading Notebooks and later recorded that

he had read it27), because on December 23, 1860, just days after Hooker

reminded Darwin about Naudin's contribution, Darwin wrote back to

say that, upon reviewing Naudin's argument, he finds it to be no more

similar to Darwin's theory than Lamarck's was {CCD v. 7, 1991, p. 444

and nn. 2-3). If Naudin was this fresh in Darwin's mind when he wrote

to Powell (and if we assume that he associated Naudin and Keyserling as chronologically close together), why would Naudin and Keyserling be out of proper position in the Powell letter?

26 Darwin was, by contrast, quite familiar with the geological work of Keyserling

carried out with Sir Roderick Murchison in the Urals in the 1840's. Not only does this work show up in the Reading Notebooks {CCD v. 4, 1988, p. 545), but Darwin

made reference to it and to Keyserling periodically in his correspondence. He even

sent Keyserling a presentation copy of the Origin when it first appeared, and received

a letter in reply {CCD v. 7 p. 350 and 351 n. 4 [where reference is made to CCD v. 8 letter to Charles Lyell of 4 May

- incorrectly given in CCD as 4 January

- 1860]).

27 CCD v. 4, 1988, p. 546; and v. 7, 1991, p. 442 and n. 6.




One possible answer is that it was not Naudin and Keyserling whose

positions Darwin misrecalled, but rather Haldeman's and Vestiges. In

other words, one can as well regard the latter two out of proper position as the former two: in effect their positions in the two lists have been

simply reversed. Moreover, recall that Haldeman's name in the first

Powell letter was "this minute forgotten," showing Darwin's faulty

memory about him.28 This nevertheless seems unlikely. For one thing, the distance in time separating Naudin and Keyserling from the author

who preceded them in the letter (Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire) is much

greater (1828-1852/3, or 24/5 years) than the authors who actually

preceded them in chronology (Isidore G. St. H. and Herbert Spencer), 1850 and 1852 respectively, or 2 years. On the supposition that Darwin

was more likely to misrecall the proper chronology when two authors

were close in time than when they were separated by two and a half

decades, the error in the arrangement of the authors in the Powell letter

would be more likely to be a result of misplacing Naudin and Keyserling than Haldeman and Vestiges. Moreover, one work was perhaps more

familiar to Darwin than any other that he named in either list, Robert

Chambers' Vestiges, and it seems very unlikely that Darwin would have

forgotten his date. Again, the best inference is that Darwin, when

composing his first letter to Powell, got Naudin and Keyserling out of

order rather than Haldeman and Vestiges. But this account, whether

correct or not, still does not explain why Darwin would have made this

particular mistake of memory but virtually no others.

Another mystery is yet more puzzling than the incorrect placement of

Naudin and Keyserling. In the first letter to Pow;ell Darwin mentions

among those authors deserving to be treated "some Germans." It is

notable that among authors treated in the first version of the Sketch no

Germans appear (Keyserling, who in any case appears in the letter also, was Russian). Germans began to appear only in the third English edition of the Origin, mainly in a footnote appended to the paragraph on Naudin, but also in a separate paragraph on Schaffhausen, and, in

the fourth English edition, in a paragraph on Von Baer (who was

28 On any reading Darwin's forgetfulness about Haldeman's name and date is some?

what surprising, for in June 1859 Darwin wrote to Lyell (in response to a letter from

Lyell reminding Darwin of Haldeman's 1843-4 essay in the Boston Journal of Natural

History that Darwin had read in May 1845), claiming that he had abstracted the work and that he "well rememberjs] thinking it a very clever paper," and even recalling some

particulars of Haldeman's views (CCD v. 7, 1991, p. 307 and 308 n. 2). On the other

hand. Darwin was strong enough to admit that he sometimes had a very poor memory

of such things.




actually Estonian, not German, although he published in German).29 Since there were no German authors discussed or mentioned in the

original Sketch, Darwin's mention of "some Germans" in the letter to

Powell seems odd. In every other case of a named author in the letter a

paragraph devoted to that author can be found in the Sketch. If Darwin

was drawing from an already composed Sketch in writing his letter to

Powell, why did he add to the latter "some Germans," altogether

missing from the Sketch? At this point I think we need to confront the possibility that the

hypothesis is flawed, in other words, that Darwin had not yet composed

anything resembling the complete "Historical Sketch" when he wrote

the letters to Powell. Now, it could be, on this supposition, that he in

fact had not written the Sketch at all (or very little of it), but had only contemplated what a Sketch might look like. This possibility comports

well with what Darwin insisted in letters to Gray and Spencer in late

January, namely that he "intend[s]" to write a historical preface, and

that he has "resolved" to undertake this work. If in fact he had already written the Sketch or most of it, these statements would make little

sense. On the other hand, if he had not written the Sketch or something like it by the time of the Powell letter, his statement in the second Powell

letter that he had written a Preface would be a deliberate lie - and it is

hard to believe Darwin would have done that.

A second possibility is that he had composed part of the Preface

when he wrote to Powell, that he truly had forgotten the existence of

this document until after he sent the first letter, then located it (where he

discovered Haldeman's name) and sent the second Powell letter. On this

view, Darwin, in rereading the Preface, realized he would need to add

more names to it (especially Wallace, Huxley, and Hooker, all of whom

Darwin was particularly concerned to acknowledge) and so undertook

this work in the 3 weeks between sending the letters to Powell and

sending the original version of the Sketch to Gray. In this case, "intend

to write" is better rendered as "intend to complete," although why

29 One of the anonymous reviewers of the ms. of this article pointed out that Darwin

was not always clear on German names or nationalities -

having once not understood,

for example that Wien is Vienna, and that because of this, both Keyserling and von Baer

would no doubt have been regarded by Darwin as Germans. This may certainly be true,

but it does not solve the "some Germans" problem in the Powell letter, first because

Keyserling is mentioned separately in the letter, so the "some Germans" would not

include him, and second because von Baer did not appear until the fourth English

edition of Origin, that is, after several other genuinely German authors were included in

the third English edition.




Darwin would not have put it that way would remain unexplained. But it does make more sense to think that Darwin's work in the 3 weeks

between January 18 and February 9 involved only adding four or

five paragraphs to an already existing document, than that he would

have composed the entire Sketch treating 18 or 19 names in that short

period. In many ways this last hypothesis is the most attractive. It permits us

to understand that Darwin had in fact composed much of what would

become the "Historical Sketch" prior to January 18th 1860 - perhaps,

even, as early as 1856 or 1857, and that in this work (i.e., the "Preface"

to the planned "big species book") he had devoted an adulatory para?

graph to the work of Baden Powell. It also gives a satisfactory account

of some of the puzzles mentioned above. The "American" whose name

was "this minute forgotten" would have also been in the Preface, but

only recollected by name when Darwin rediscovered the document after

sending the first Powell letter. Spencer is out of place in the letter, relative to other authors and his own chronological priority, because

Darwin did not know at the time he wrote to Powell where precisely

Spencer fit in, and would only learn this sometime after February 2

when he asked Spencer for this information. The "some Germans" in

the letter would reflect an intention that Darwin had at the time he

composed the Preface to include a few German scientists into his his?

torical account, but that he had not yet consummated. (As it turns out

he did not get around to this group of authors until the third English edition of the Origin, published in 1861.)

But the hypothesis is far from perfect. The "solutions" to the puzzles described above are, in the end, purely conjectural (although this would

be the case of any putative solutions that might be brought forward, in

view of the imperfect record of evidence). The question about the

placement of Naudin and Keyserling is not answered on this account,

except to say that Darwin in the letter uniquely forgot where they

belonged. But more troubling is the fact that this last hypothesis

requires us to believe that Darwin could have recalled from memory

many details from the Preface that he wished to include in the first letter

to Powell, down to specific wording about Erasmus Darwin and authors

from the classical period and the precise order in which these authors

were to be treated, even though he had composed the Preface as early as

3 years prior to writing to Powell. This is a lot to ask of anyone, and it

becomes even more difficult to ask it of Darwin when he admitted (in the second Powell letter) that, on his honor, he had entirely forgotten

when he wrote the first letter that he had ever even written about




Powell's contributions to the origin of species in a "Historical Sketch",

let alone that he recalled any other details about it!30

Perhaps we may gain additional insight by returning to our earlier

question, why Darwin thought it necessary to write a "Historical

Sketch" (or a Preface to the "big species book") in the first place? What

were the sources of his motivation for undertaking this task? Again, the

record of evidence is imperfect, but what there is of it does help. We have

already mentioned the 19th century convention for scientific innovators

to preface their works with a historical preface, and that no doubt is an

important factor. Another clue is what Darwin himself states in several

letters written to his closest friends in 1858, when Wallace's manuscript first showed up. At this point Darwin was urged by Lyell and Huxley in

particular to set aside the big species book in favor of producing as

quickly as possible an "Abstract." Darwin at first strongly resisted, on

the grounds that an abstract could not possibly do full justice to the

subject. In particular, what would be missing from an abstract would be

the quantity and quality of evidence - including the massive amount of

scientific literature that Darwin had spent two decades wading through -

to substantiate his claims. In other words, Darwin was sensitive to the

importance for the acceptance of his theory of showing the compatibility of his arguments with the data that had been gathered by other natu?

ralists and of showing how his theory could account for and explain those data in a way that other theories could not.31 This sensitivity, I

30 Strictly speaking, Darwin claims in the second letter to Powell to have "completely

forgotten" only the passage alluding to Powell himself, not that he had composed a

Preface at all. But the inference from the first Powell letter remains that he had forgotten

about the draft of the Sketch altogether when he received Powell's letter. 31 It is clear from his correspondence and published writings that Darwin regarded the

worth of his theory to hinge crucially upon the question of how many "classes of facts" it

helps to explain. By itself, he understood, the theory might seem to be nothing more than a

pipe dream. But if it could account for a large range of indubitable empirical phenomena it

would, at minimum, need to be taken seriously. One important source of his conviction in

the truth of natural selection, then, was that it could explain such facts, whereas other

transmutationist views could not. Very typical in this regard is what Darwin wrote to Lyell

on October 11 1859 on the eve of the appearance in print of the first edition of the Origin: "But I entirely reject as in my judgment quite unnecessary any subsequent addition 'of

new powers and attributes of forces'; or of any 'principle of improvement' except insofar

as [advantageous] natural characters are naturally selected.... If I were convinced I

required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish.... I

cannot believe that if false it would explain so many whole classes of facts" (CCD v. 7,

1991, p. 345). He makes much the same point to Baden Powell in the first letter (CCD v. 8, 1993, p. 39), and to several other correspondents. For fuller treatments of Darwin's

understanding of the relation between theory and fact, and of scientific method more

generally, seeGhiselin, 1969,passim; Ospovat, 1981, pp. 87-190; and Hull, 1973, pp. 3-36.




surmise, is another significant element that lay behind his wish from the

outset of giving some historical background of his work.

But what some scholars believe also played a role was the early criticism of the Origin that Darwin received. While most of the criticism

was directed at the theory of natural selection, pointing out its inade?

quacies, some of it suggested that Darwin was not original, that his

views had been anticipated, that his theory was in fact borrowed, or at

best derivative, of ideas that were already in circulation and well

known.32 This charge was apparently first leveled in print by H.G.

Bronn, the translator of the first German edition of Origin, but was

repeated by several other naturalists, including W.B. Carpenter and FJ.

Pictet, both of whom Darwin admired and respected. Bronn even

claimed that his review of Origin, that appeared in Neues Jahrbuch fuer

Mineralogie in I860,33 prompted Darwin to undertake the "Historical

Sketch" (first German edition, footnote 1 to the translator's introduc?

tion).34 It is clear that Darwin had a longstanding concern about this

issue that predated the 1859 publication of the Origin, but it was cer?

tainly exacerbated by the first reviews that classed him together with

previous transmutationists such as Lamarck and Erasmus. This clearly

stung, and would no doubt have helped fuel his interest in setting the

record straight. Darwin was at this point walking a tightrope.35 He certainly hoped

his theory would be well-received by the scientific community, and he

knew it would have to overcome a great deal of predictable resistance

from both within science and without. But he also did not want to see

others getting credit for his idea - despite his disclaimers to the

contrary (see footnotes 12 and 1.3). Thus, the "Historical Sketch" can

be read as an attempt to ensure that the theory contained in the

32 This criticism has resurfaced in modern times in several works, but has apparently

won few adherents. For a brief summary and defense of Darwin's originality, see

Ghiselin, 1969, pp. 46-9. 33

English translation in Hull, 1973, pp. 120-25. 34

See F. Darwin (ed.). 1959, v. 2, p. 149, fn. 1. 35 The "tightrope" metaphor has also been employed by Roy Porter in describing

Lyell's motivation for writing the historical introduction to the Principles, but in

LyelFs case it was a different tightrope, or actually two: wishing to appeal to a broad

popular audience without descending into scientific vulgarity; and wishing to con?

demn Mosaic and speculative accounts of the earth's history without at the same time

offending contemporary Victorian sensitivities that were resistant to accounts of

geological history that could not be reconciled with Christian and Biblical doctrines

(Porter, 1982, pp. 33-4, and passim).




Origin, assuming its eventual acceptance by the scientific community, would at the same time be seen to be Darwin's creation -

perhaps indebted in some minor particulars to others, but ultimately the

product of his own mind.36 Otherwise Darwin could be assured of

nothing more than a footnote in the history of science, whereas his

aspirations were of a different order.

This seems to be the accepted view of the Sketch by modern histo?

rians (see footnote 10). It does, however, seem to be inaccurate in one

respect. If Darwin's second letter to Powell is to be trusted, as I think it

must, Darwin had begun and even made substantial progress on the

Sketch well before the Origin first appeared and so well before Darwin

could have known with any certainty how it would be received. In other

words, the second Powell letter appears to establish as beyond question the fact that Darwin felt a need to address the issue of his priority in

discovering his theory even before his critics started to challenge him on

this point. Thus, Bronn's claim that his review of the Origin is what

prompted Darwin to undertake the Sketch seems like wishful thinking on Bronn's part, and there is no other evidence that Bronn's review had

this effect other than his own say-so. Janet Browne's claim that Asa

Gray encouraged Darwin to write the Sketch after the appearance of the

first edition of Origin, as well as the claim of the editors of the Corre?

spondence that Powell's (now lost) letter to Darwin in January 1860 was

responsible (see notes 11 and 16) both appear to lack sufficient sup?

porting evidence to be fully accepted. Darwin appears to have seen the

need himself, and to have begun to address the need well before his

views were widely known or publicized. The only curious things, on this

reading, are why Darwin would have failed to remember his "Preface"

when he first submitted the manuscript of the Origin to John Murray in

the fall of 1859, and how he could have recalled so much of its contents

when he first wrote to Powell in January 1860 while having forgotten he

had ever written it.

36 It is thus somewhat difficult to accept as valid the characterization of the "Historical

Sketch" by Desmond and Moore (1991, p. 502) as "perfunctory, a cursory list of'pre? cursors.'" Darwin evidently saw some challenges from other possible claimants to "his

theory" that he needed to take seriously.




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pp. 265-282.

Browne, Janet. 1995. Charles Darwin: Voyaging. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Browne, Janet. 2002. Charles Darwin: Power of Place. New York: Knopf.

Burkhardt, F.H. et al. (eds.). 1985-present. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Darwin, Charles. 1872 [1997]. Origin of the Species, 6th edition. Lightbinders, Inc.

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Books.

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tionist. New York: Norton.

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Hodge, M.J.S.. 1977. "The Structure and Strategy of Darwin's "long argument"."

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Press.

Lyell, Charles. 1830-32 [1990]. Principles of Geology, 3 vols, with a new introduction by Martin J.S. Rudwick. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

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Porter, Roy. 1982. "Charles Lyell: The Public and Private Faces of Science." Janus 69:

29-50.

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Stauffer, R.C. (ed.). 1975. Charles Darwin's Natural Selection. Cambridge: Cambridge

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