On a cold and blistery day in December of 2001, Julie Geissler, a resident of New Hampshire, walked hesitatingly and with slight trepidation into the Boston public library ( one of the finest libraries in America) to return a book. The act of returning a book by itself is not an uncommon occurrence in any library, and more so in the Boston public library, where thousands do so each day, many of them overdue by several months or even years sometimes. But the book Geissler was about to return to the library was checked out eighty years ago, a long time by any standards, and was marked as lost/stolen in the library catalog. It was a first edition copy of Charles Darwin’s pivotal book “ The origins”. The staff was stunned, and when they enquired how this book came into Geissler’s hands, she explained that decades ago, a scholarly relative of hers had bought the book in a garage sale, and it was passed along through generations. A few years ago, Geissler’s mother, while cleaning her attic found this book and gave it to Geissler, who saw the library tag, realized the value of this edition, and thought it right to return to the library from where it was originally taken out. Surprisingly the book was in good condition. The library carefully rebound the book, took it off circulation, and placed it in the rare books section, where it now remains for others to see and admire, but never again to touch. Just a year before the unexpected return of this copy, a first edition copy of the “origins” had sold for $194,500. Yes, Darwin’s epic work is precious in more ways than one.
We know for a fact that John Murray, the faithful publisher of Darwin’s numerous books and dissertations, printed 1250 copies of the “Origins” when it was published on November 24th, 1859. Within a year, Darwin made some edits and revisions to the original, and Murray printed a run of 3000 copies of the second edition. When the second edition flooded the market, the first edition waned in popularity ( even today that is the case with any book). We also know for a fact that the first edition sold out in a few days. Darwin wrote the book for a mass audience and not just for scholars, and therefore it is likely that many copies of the book could have ended up on the shelves of an average educated reader interested in science and theology, and not all of them necessarily in the vaults of libraries and universities where it would have been cataloged and traced. In the year 2009, the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the “origins”, a massive effort was launched to identify all the 1250 copies of the first edition, if it still existed somewhere. A website was launched, and a plea was made to the public to report if anyone possessed a copy of the first edition. There was a surprisingly large number of positive responses, and quickly many copies came to light. As of today the provenance of nearly 900 copies of the first edition has been established and traced.
The question is how can one be sure that the copy is indeed a first edition. The answer is simple. Angus Caroll, a leading Darwin historian, points out that there was a glaring typographical error in the first edition, which was not repeated in the six that followed during Darwin’s lifetime. On the 11th line of Page 20 of the first edition, the word “species” was incorrectly rendered as “speceies.” And of course, a first edition copy printed in 1859 should also be an old, green-colored, hard-bound book, and if lucky, still in decent condition. For Bibliophiles, the hunt is still on for the remaining copies. Libraries and private book collectors would pay anything to lay their hands on it. But the task looks impossible because Origins was sold as a general book, and distributed through circulating libraries ( For instance, Mudie’s, a popular library channel in London acquired 500 copies of the first edition to mail to its subscribers). Unlike Copernicus’s work “On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres” – another epochal book that established the heliocentric view of the solar system – of which, all 276 first edition copies have been identified, we may never find all the copies of Darwin’s first edition. For all we know, it must be lying in a corner of someone’s home as a decrepit old book with no one to spot its value.
So much for the bibliophilia excitement and hunt for the first edition of Darwin’s origins, a book that he eventually wrote in a hurry after twenty years of procrastination. What about the book itself? Is it readable? Was it convincing? did it make an impact on science during his lifetime? Let’s try and answer these questions in order. There is no doubt that “origins” is a work of literature. Perhaps, no other work of science, except Humboldt’s “ Views of nature” captured the beauty and seriousness of deep scientific questions in a language that was at once captivating, facile, and interesting. Darwin was not a classical writer, but a journalist, in the sense that he loved taking notes which he later arranged into coherent paragraphs. His study at his Shropshire home, where he did the bulk of his research, was filled with notebooks containing his thoughts, ideas, and references to books he read. He knew where to find information when he needed it. In the origins, he brought together all strands of research and thinking into one powerful streamlined argument for natural selection and descent by modification. Each sentence is carefully crafted, often running into several lines, punctuated with colons and semicolons, unraveling his thought and evidence like the rolling of a mental carpet for his readers to intellectually walk with him. There is deep humility in his writing as well. He understood that his book was contrary to the worldview of the society he lived in, and the religion he subscribed to. That was the reason why he postponed the writing of the book in the first place. When the time came, Darwin was extra cautious not to overstep the line. He appealed to common sense, and in the daily observations of life and species on the farm and the field. He gently nudged his readers to question how species evolved. Did it need a designer, a God? Or did nature follow its incontrovertible laws that applied without morality or sentimentality to all life found on the planet?
Darwin did not claim to know all the answers. For instance, he was unsure how the changes were propagated in a species from one generation to another, or how such changes could lead to completely different branches in a lineage. He did not know anything about genes, or chromosomes. On such matters, he speculated with caution and largely drew upon the work of his predecessors. Though the book raised an intense debate – both in the scientific and religious circles – when it was published in 1859, the initial enthusiasm died down after a few years because many things that Darwin had written about remained open to challenge for want of more conclusive proof, to make it an acceptable scientific proposition. It was only after Darwin’s death, the discovery of the gene, and the understanding of the mechanism of genetic mutations that Darwin’s hypothesis once again took center stage. Darwin was fortunate that men like Julian Huxley – a wonderful writer and charismatic debater, and champion of Darwinism – took on the challengers who doubted evolution. Darwin himself would have never taken a tough stand against anyone. It was against his nature. Throughout his life, he was open to any new evidence that was brought to bear upon his theory. One of Darwin’s greatest strengths as a scientist was his capacity to keep an open mind and revise his theory based on what was factually proved. He was never dogmatic about his ideas, which is why he thought it fit to revise the Origins six times during his lifetime, in each edition, he incorporated additional material and evidence to substantiate his theory.
It is also important to note that Origins was not the only book that Darwin wrote. Before 1859, Darwin had eight books to his name already, beginning with the beautifully written “ The voyage of the beagle” – which is a must-read for anyone attempting to understand how Darwin’s intellect was shaped during the Beagle voyage – followed by three volumes on geology and four comprehensive treatises on barnacles. After the publication of the Origin in 1859, Darwin further published ten more books and monographs. In 1876, he finally found time to write his autobiography tracing his intellectual journey and the men who shaped the methods of his scientific endeavors. By the time Darwin died in 1881, at the age of seventy-two, he was one of the most respected scientists in the world, not just for his views on the evolution of life, but on a whole range of biological interests.
What stands out in Darwin’s life is his industry, commitment, ability to synthesize his knowledge, and most importantly, his diligence in pursuing a problem till the very end, no matter where it took him, or what revisions he had to make in his theories. A statement in his autobiography stands out for me, and in a way, epitomizes the life of Darwin. He wrote: “ I always attempted to bring a habit of energetic industry and concentrated attention to whatever I was engaged in. Everything I thought or read was made to bear directly on what I had seen or was likely to see. I feel sure that it was this training that has enabled me to do whatever I have done in science”.
One hundred forty years after Darwin’s death, evolution is no more a mere theory. It is a fact. Anyone arguing against evolution, or the need for a God or designer in the origins and diversification of species can only be pitied and sympathized with. There is grandeur in this idea of evolution as well, as Darwin himself noted in the last paragraph of Origins. He wrote: “Several powers, having been originally breathed into few forms or one; and that, whilst the planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, are being, evolved”.
We don’t need a creator or a God to stand in awe of life. Life itself, in its ever-evolving and splendid forms, is breathtaking enough to send a tingle down our spines.