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Darwin Evolutionary writings 1ST Edition Charles
Darwin Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Charles Darwin, James A. Secord
ISBN(s): 9780199208630, 0191549142
Edition: 1ST
File Details: PDF, 5.97 MB
Year: 2009
Language: english
 Evolutionary Writings

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This page intentionally left blank
 CHARLES DARWIN

Evolutionary
Writings
Edited by
JAMES A. SECORD

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 1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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ISBN 978–0–19–920863–0

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 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vi
Introduction vii
Note on the Texts xxxviii
Select Bibliography xl
A Chronology of Charles Darwin xlvi

EVOLUTIONARY WRITINGS
journal of researches 1
Map of the Beagle voyage, 1831 – 1836 2
Journal of Researches into the Natural History and
Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage of
H.M.S. Beagle Round the World (1845) 3
Reviews and Responses 96
origin of species 105
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) 107
Reviews and Responses 212
descent of man 231
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) 233
Reviews and Responses 334
autobiographies 349
Life (1838) 351
Recollections of the Development of My Mind and
Character (1876 – 1881) 355
The Making of a Celebrity 426

Explanatory Notes 437

Biographical Index 455
General Index 477

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This anthology stems from my involvement with the Darwin

Correspondence Project, which is editing all the letters to and from
Charles Darwin. The Project receives essential and very generous sup-
port from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, British Ecological
Society, Isaac Newton Trust, John Templeton Foundation, National
Endowment for the Humanities, and National Science Foundation.
I wish to thank William Huxley Darwin for permission to publish the
Recollections and 1838 ‘Life’, and the Syndics of Cambridge University
Library, the Geological Society of London, Special Collections and
Archives of Knox College Library, Galesburg, Illinois, Trustees of the
National Library of Scotland, and Trustees of the Natural History
Museum, London, for permission to publish manuscripts in their pos-
session. Permission to publish material from the Correspondence of
Charles Darwin, ed. F. Burkhardt et al. (1985– ) has been granted by
the Syndics of Cambridge University Press. Heather Brink-Roby pro-
vided invaluable assistance throughout, and the biographical index is
largely her work. Many individuals mentioned in the early pages of the
Recollections were identified by Donald F. Harris. Paul White offered
excellent suggestions and references for the Introduction, which was
also much improved after discussion by the Past versus Present project
of the Cambridge Victorian Studies Group, funded by the Leverhulme
Trust. John van Wyhe has been unfailingly generous in sharing infor-
mation, particularly through his remarkable Darwin website. I espe-
cially wish to thank Marwa Elshakry, who with the assistance of Ahmed
Ragab has provided fresh translations from Arabic; Adriana Novoa and
Alex Levine, for access to their forthcoming collection of Argentine
responses; and Shelley Innes, for help with Russian and German trans-
lations. The capable support of Alison Pearn made it possible to finish
this in time. I am also grateful to Janet Browne, Rosy Clarkson, Diana
Donald, Samantha Evans, Nicola Gauld, Melanie Keene, Sam Kuper,
Randal Keynes, David Kohn, David Livingstone, Peter Mandler, Clare
Pettitt, Kees Rookmaaker, Liz Smith, and many other friends. Judith
Luna has been an exemplary editor: patient, accommodating, and
enthusiastic. I am most indebted to Anne Secord, whose encourage-
ment and constructive criticism have been vital at every stage.

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 INTRODUCTION

If the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century was dominated

by Marx, Freud and Darwin, it is clear that the reputation of only one
of that heroic triumvirate has survived intact into the twenty-first.
With so-called ‘Darwinian’ views on economic and social competi-
tion in the ascendant, the international pre-eminence of Darwin is
more marked than ever, his books more widely read and discussed
than at any time since they first appeared. Darwin’s views on human
origins, the beginnings of life, and the nature of the fossil record play
key roles in controversies about religion and science, particularly in
relation to the teaching of evolution in schools. His account of the
human mind has proved central in the development of psychology.
His subtle analyses of the interconnectedness of life and environment
are reference points in debates about species extinction and climate
change. He is hailed as a visionary in fields as diverse as linguistics
and global geology. His theory of evolution by natural selection is the
coping stone of the modern life sciences.
Darwin’s fame grew out of the reception of his books, and although
he wrote thousands of letters and hundreds of scientific articles and
occasional pieces, reading Darwin means reading books. Of these,
three were instrumental in establishing his reputation during his
lifetime: the revised edition of the Journal of Researches (1845), an
account of his voyage around the world on HMS Beagle, which
touched implicitly on evolutionary themes; On the Origin of Species
(1859), which outlined his novel theory of evolution by natural selec-
tion; and The Descent of Man (1871), which applied his ideas to the
study of humans. In terms of his personal reputation, the central text
is Recollections of the Development of My Mind and Character, pub-
lished in 1887 as the opening chapter in a memoir edited by one of
his sons.
Darwinism is a global phenomenon. Origin has been translated
into over thirty languages, more than any scientific work other than
Euclid, while the Recollections and Descent of Man are each available
in twenty. The power of Darwin’s writings derives from their ability
to challenge, surprise, and inspire readers in the widest possible
range of circumstances. It is because these books have been read in

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 viii Introduction
so many ways that it is vital to confront the texts in the originals and
not just as pithy quotations or through piecemeal searches on the
internet. Yet with the collected works occupying twenty-nine vol-
umes, this is not an easy task. Existing selections often leave out
Darwin’s most controversial and innovative ideas, and have been
edited with an eye towards current evolutionary biology. Reading
a single work, although an obvious starting point, is only a partial
solution. Even the 500-plus pages of Origin say almost nothing about
humans and give a tactically skewed view of what its author is trying
to do.
So much has been at stake in reading Darwin’s deceptively simple
prose that understanding his books has proved elusive. Darwin is
often presented as believing in natural selection as the sole mechan-
ism for evolution, but this was never the case, not even in the Origin’s
first edition. His views on heredity are still typically seen as a blank
waiting to be filled in by the discoveries of Gregor Mendel, the rise
of laboratory-based genetics, and the discovery of the DNA struc-
ture; yet nothing could be further from the truth. Darwin was
intensely interested in variation, reproduction, and inheritance, as is
clear from the early chapters of Origin. To take another example, his
views on the status of women and the extinction of races are often
minimized or misunderstood. Darwin did not, as was long thought
to be the case, turn to these issues only towards the end of his life;
they were there from the first. And finally, it is only through reading
a range of his works, and reactions to them, that we gain an idea of
his complex and ambiguous attitudes towards religion. He was cer-
tainly not an atheist. Darwin may say in his Recollections that
Christianity is a ‘damnable doctrine’ (p. 392),1 but his ideals of moral
virtue in Descent are carefully grounded in the golden rule preached
by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount (p. 255).
Darwin’s writings still hold the power to shock. His pages include
scenes of surpassing beauty in nature, described in passages of
glowing prose; but we are to understand these as outcomes of war,
conquest, invasion, and extermination. A raw sense of the violence of
nature is combined with an appreciation for its interconnectedness
and fragility. The energy of life is possible only through the hovering
presence of death. The coral reefs of the Indian Ocean grow on

1 Page numbers in the text refer to this edition.

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 Introduction ix
miles-high cemeteries of dead ancestors. Parasitic grubs eat the
bodies of their hosts from the inside out. Patrician landowners dwell
in luxury by means of a hidden economy of slave labour. The living
world of animals and plants, for all its apparent order and design, is
the outcome of a multitude of individual acts of casual violence. The
face of nature is bloodied by a force like that of a hundred thousand
wedges. These are not rhetorical set pieces or concluding flourishes;
rather, they appear in the context of a cumulative weight of examples
expressed in plain and simple prose. The occasional awkwardness in
construction and the tendency of the later works to mirror Darwin’s
self-conception as ‘a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of
large collections of facts’ gives a sense of an author concerned about
substance (p. 422). Readers are invited to observe closely, even
obsessively: to share a fascination for the instinctual habits of ants,
the finer points of pigeon fancying, and the sexual antics of barnacles.
Although the books are only intermittently autobiographical, the
reader gains a strong sense of their author, whose self-deprecating
enthusiasm is infectious. In detailing the courtship rituals of the
Australian bower bird, the intelligence of earthworms, or the fertil-
ization mechanisms of orchids, Darwin’s appreciation of nature in all
its aspects is evident.
A remarkable number of Darwin’s books have remained continu-
ously in print, and they occupy a unique status in the canon. Not
only are they almost the only scientific books from the past three
centuries which attract a non-specialist readership decades after pub-
lication, but the number of readers across the world is growing. How
have Darwin’s writings achieved this? On his death in 1882 Darwin
was already heralded as a great man, and his significance was
acknowledged even as his theories were widely challenged at the end
of the nineteenth century. But it is only in the fifty years since the
centenary of the publication of Origin in 1959 that Darwin has
emerged as the epitome of the scientific celebrity. His bearded image
is everywhere from television documentaries to postage stamps, bank-
notes, magazine covers, religious tracts, advertisements, caricatures,
and cereal packages. Creative genius, racist, opponent of slavery,
murderer of God, patient observer, engineer of western imperialism,
apologist for capitalism, gentle prophet of evolution: there is poten-
tial validity, to a larger or lesser degree, in each of these readings.
The multiplicity of images point to Darwin’s books as fault-lines for

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 x Introduction
controversy, opening new questions and fresh lines of enquiry. Their
power derives from an ability to express simultaneously the expan-
sive confidence of the century in which he lived, and the ambiguity,
uncertainty, and fragility of the place of humans in nature.

An Imperial Voyage
When the writer Elizabeth Gaskell needed a model for a young trav-
eller-naturalist in her last great novel Wives and Daughters (1864 – 6)
there was one figure familiar to all: Darwin, whose narrative of his
travels around the world her readers could be expected to know. His
Journal of Researches closely followed the conventions of the expedi-
tion narratives produced by naturalists writing in the wake of the
explorer James Cook and the Prussian naturalist Alexander von
Humboldt, combining lively adventure with scientific observations,
accounts of encounters with indigenous peoples, and evocations of
exotic scenery. Publication of the Journal secured Darwin’s reputa-
tion as a noted man of science and literary lion in the London salons.
It was thus in the context of the burgeoning programme of European
imperial exploration that Darwin first came to public attention.
Darwin’s status on the Beagle had been highly unusual, for he was
not the ship’s naturalist, but a gentleman companion to the captain,
Robert FitzRoy. Darwin had special privileges, including first choice
of natural history specimens and a place at the captain’s table. Not
surprisingly, the surgeon officially appointed as naturalist left in dis-
gust almost as soon as the Beagle docked in South America. Darwin
claimed to be a novice in natural history at the start of the voyage, but
this is misleading. Born in February 1809, he had come from gentry
stock at the heart of the English scientific enlightenment. His
mother, who died when Charles was only 8, was a daughter of Josiah
Wedgwood, the celebrated founder of the pottery manufacturing
dynasty. His father, Robert Darwin, was a successful physician and
son of the poet Erasmus Darwin, a renowned author of evolutionary
speculations and erotic botanical verse. Young Charles, like his
father and grandfather, studied medicine. Disinclined to practise
after training in Edinburgh (he couldn’t stand the sight of blood), he
proceeded to Cambridge to prepare for a career as an Anglican priest.
Throughout his education, however, his real passion was for nat-
ural history, and he became acquainted with leading men of science.

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 Introduction xi
Darwin may have dismissed the Edinburgh naturalist Robert
Jameson as ‘that old brown, dry stick’, but attended dozens of his
lectures and spent hours in his fabulous museum.2 By the summer
after graduating from Cambridge in 1831, Darwin was at 22 probably
the best-educated naturalist of his age in Britain, particularly skilled
in invertebrate zoology and with some knowledge of geological sur-
veying and natural history collecting. Inspired by Humboldt’s mag-
nificent travel writings, he was plotting an expedition to the
mid-Atlantic island of Tenerife.
But larger prospects loomed. The sciences were tied to global
trade, with European governments supporting large-scale expedi-
tions and surveys. The Beagle’s aim was to provide better charts
of the South American coasts, including economically significant
harbours and the treacherous straits around Tierra del Fuego. The
continent was just opening up to English trade after centuries of
domination by Spain and Portugal. FitzRoy, who came from one
of the oldest aristocratic families in England, was a keen supporter of
this enterprise, and had asked the Cambridge scientific men to sug-
gest someone to travel with the Beagle, who could contribute to its
scientific aims, pay for his passage, and provide much-needed gen-
teel company. The trip, as Darwin acknowledged, was the most
important event of his life. He learned to hunt wild rheas (a kind of
South American ostrich) on horseback, witnessed the mass killing
of aboriginal peoples, and saw slaves beaten by their masters. He col-
lected the gigantic bones of extinct sloths and armadillos, walked
through tropical jungles, climbed high peaks in the Andes, and
observed the effects of an earthquake on a great city. He kept
meticulous notebooks and collected thousands of specimens, each
carefully numbered and tagged in preparation for description by
specialist naturalists back home. As his father noted on Darwin’s
return, the years of concentrated scientific observation had extended
even the ridge of his eyebrows.3
Of all the extraordinary things Darwin gathered, the most strik-
ing were visual impressions of human diversity. Wherever he went,
Darwin categorized racial types: the tall Tehuelches of Patagonia; the

2
C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker, 29 [May 1854], in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin,
ed. F. Burkhardt et al., v (1989), 195. Hereafter referred to as Correspondence.
3
L. A. Nash, ‘Some Memories of Charles Darwin’, Overland Monthly and Out West
Magazine, 16 (Oct. 1890), 404 – 8, at 405.

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 xii Introduction
meat-eating Gauchos of the Pampas; Spanish ladies with their great
combs and dark hair; Australian aboriginals; and Malay peoples of
the Indian Ocean. From his first landing on the mid-Atlantic island
of St Jago, he had focused on the aesthetics of race, noting how ‘black
skins and snow-white linen’ were set off by ‘coloured turbans and
large shawls’ (p. 6). The Beagle itself displayed in microcosm a range
of human variation among the crew, and most clearly in three natives
of Tierra del Fuego (one Alakaluf man, and a Yamana man and
young woman) who had been captured during the previous voyage.
After several years in England, the adaptation of the three to their
new circumstances was reflected in their European clothes and abil-
ity to speak some English. In the early weeks of the voyage, o’run-
del’lico (named Jemmy Button by the crew) consoled Darwin on his
seasickness, who considered him sympathetic, intelligent, almost
civilized. It was encountering ‘Fuegians’ in the very different cir-
cumstances of their homeland in the southernmost part of South
America that gave Darwin a shock that would last to the end of his
life. Their culturally rich, although hard life of hunting and fishing
appeared to him as little better than wretched misery; their complex
languages seemed an undifferentiated primitive babble; their cus-
toms and body painting were signs of demonic bestiality.4 An ardent
believer in the unity of the human race and a passionate opponent of
racial oppression, Darwin was barely able to define these ‘savages’ as
members of his own species.
In terms of self-perception, Darwin’s greatest discovery on the
voyage was his vocation for science. Among the new disciplines
which came into being in the early nineteenth century, the most
exciting was geology, which had been freshly confected from mineral
surveying, biblical chronology, and the study of fossils. Upon his
first landing, Darwin began to write of himself as a geologist, and his
notebooks reveal that he was already thinking of global subsidence
and uplift on a global scale. He was especially indebted to Charles
Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830 – 3), the first volume of which
was a gift from FitzRoy just before the Beagle set sail. Darwin’s
most successful and audacious speculation answered one of the

4 N. Hazelwood, Savage: The Life and Times of Jemmy Button (New York, 2001),

offers an accessible overview; important parts of the main anthropological work are
translated in J. Wilbert (ed.), Folk Literature of the Yamana Indians: Martin Gusinde’s
Collection of Yamana Narratives (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1977).

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 Introduction xiii
government’s chief desiderata for the voyage — a convincing explan-
ation of coral reefs. Darwin suggested, before he ever saw a reef, that
they grew up over thousands of years, millimetre by millimetre, as the
ocean floor submerged. Although this theory overturned Lyell’s belief
that coral reefs grew upwards from the rims of underwater volcanoes,
in another way it illustrated just how deeply Darwin had come to see
the world with Lyellian eyes, for it relied on Lyell’s belief in the cumu-
lative effects of tiny processes over long periods of time. It was also the
outcome of his interest, present since his student days in Edinburgh,
in invertebrate zoology and the microscopic study of living matter.
For Darwin, the voyage offered the opportunity to secure a place
among the leading men of science in London, and his main work
after returning was to produce three volumes on the geology of the
places visited during the voyage, as well as writing several important
scientific papers. With the help of a generous Treasury grant, he also
edited a sumptuous set of folios illustrated with colour plates on the
voyage’s zoological findings. These were reference works targeted at
specialists, which secured his credibility as a man of science. The
unexpected publishing triumph was Darwin’s Journal of Researches.
Based on his informal voyage diary, the book combined engaging
incidents of travel with scientific observation and speculation. This
genre, epitomized by Humboldt’s celebrated Personal Narrative, had
attracted Darwin to scientific voyaging in the first place. The title
under which it commonly appears today, The Voyage of the Beagle, is
a twentieth-century invention and rightly belongs to FitzRoy’s book
about the voyage. Initially Darwin’s Journal had a limited circulation,
as the third volume of an expensive set of publications dominated by
FitzRoy’s Narrative. Early in the voyage the captain had praised the
quality and interest of Darwin’s diary, and he generously offered to
include it in the final reports. Only a wealthy readership could be
expected to consult this kind of work, although the publisher Henry
Colburn also issued it as a stand-alone volume, and it was widely
reviewed. Its long-term future was secured when the adventurous
London publisher John Murray decided to include it in his Colonial
and Home Library series in 1845. Darwin had revised heavily,
streamlining his text and adding expert opinions from the naturalists
who had contributed to the Beagle zoology. The chapter on the
indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego was expanded, and his coral
reef theory was given in more detail.

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 xiv Introduction
The most significant change, however, was in format and readership,
for Murray advertised his series as ‘cheap literature for all classes’, and
in three inexpensive paper-covered parts at half the original price,
it could now be afforded by professional families, merchants, and
working-class libraries. It became, for example, one of the books that
the fictional tailor in Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke (1850) could rea-
sonably have been expected to have read. With its small type and nar-
row margins, this version of the Journal of Researches made Darwin’s
reputation as a writer and introduced his ideas to a wider public in the
English-speaking world. Crucial to this process was the transformation
of printing, publishing, and bookselling in the mid-nineteenth century,
which made it possible to produce and distribute books far more
cheaply than before. The book was widely acclaimed, and there were
cheap pirated editions in the United States, beginning with a two-
volume version from Harper in New York. From the 1870s it began to
appear in other languages; the only early one, an 1844 German transla-
tion of the original edition, had been instigated by Humboldt. Widely
read in the late nineteenth century, Darwin’s Journal had a second life
as the archetype of a ‘boy’s own’ imperial adventure, all the more attrac-
tive as the romantic setting for a great discovery.

The Mystery of Mysteries

Although Darwin was convinced of the truth of evolution when the
second edition of his Journal appeared in 1845, he only hinted at his
beliefs in public. Yet this revised version, with its expanded discus-
sions of geographical distribution and the succession of animals in
the fossil record, was effectively his first evolutionary book. It asked
the right questions and posed the appropriate puzzles. For the first
time, the Galapagos were recast into a laboratory for the study of
how one species might change into another. ‘Hence, both in space
and time,’ he wrote, ‘we seem to be brought somewhat near to that
great fact — that mystery of mysteries — the first appearance of new
beings on this earth’ (p. 44). Darwin here recalled a famous discus-
sion of the problem of species by the imperial astronomer John
Herschel, with whom he had dined at the Cape of Good Hope on the
final leg of the Beagle’s return home.
We will probably never know if Herschel and Darwin discussed
the mystery of species at this crucial juncture, but there can be no

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 Introduction xv
doubt that both men recognized that the issue was best canvassed in
private conversation rather than in publication. The marginal status
of theorizing about the evolution of new species — or ‘transmutation’,
as it was generally called — at the time Darwin wrote up his Beagle
results can only be understood in relation to the extraordinary trans-
formation of the sciences in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. This involved the greatest change in the organization and
practice of knowledge since the early Middle Ages, when the cathe-
dral schools and universities had introduced the scientific learning of
Islam and the Greeks (particularly Aristotle) into Christian educa-
tion. At that time an understanding of nature was divided into nat-
ural philosophy, which investigated the causes of things, and natural
history, which offered description and inventory. The ultimate
aim of studying nature, as Thomas Aquinas had shown in his great
theological synthesis, was to understand God. The culmination of
this approach appeared in the seventeenth and early eighteenth cen-
turies, in the physical theologies of René Descartes, Isaac Newton,
and John Ray.
This synthesis achieved a late expression in the poetry of Erasmus
Darwin, Charles’s grandfather, whose works from the end of the
eighteenth century began from the sexuality of plants to show that
nature was ascending an evolutionary ladder through laws sustained
by a benevolent deity. To ‘darwinize’ in Regency England was to
write verses like these:
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet and wing.5

In Protestant Europe and America, a belief that God’s attributes

and existence could be inferred from the natural world retained excep-
tional potency, as indicated by sales of the Revd William Paley’s
Natural Theology for decades following its publication in 1802. Paley
argued that the natural world, like the watch in the book’s celebrated
opening, displayed intelligent design in every aspect of its construction.
The anatomy of the eye, for example, demonstrated complete mastery

5
E. Darwin, The Temple of Nature (London, 1803), ll. 295 – 302.

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 xvi Introduction
of the same optical laws that an instrument maker used for design-
ing telescopes. Lenses of different shapes and sizes had been pro-
vided for creatures with different ways of life, while focusing was
managed by exquisitely delicate muscles.6 Paley’s God was the ideal
utilitarian engineer, whose creations were so perfect that transmuta-
tion was unnecessary. Even poverty, illness, and other trials of
human existence were part of the divine plan; if we were too happy,
we might not look to Christ for salvation. Evidence of adaptation was
everywhere.
Around the time that Paley and Erasmus Darwin wrote, the
centuries-old system of organizing knowledge about the natural
world was being transformed. The division between natural philoso-
phy and natural history began to break down, replaced by a focus on
new fields such as geology, physiology, and physics that aimed to
analyse the workings of nature. The new disciplines created a cadre
of experts, important for the state and economy. The jars in cabinets
of curiosities were broken open, with specimens dissected to show
how they functioned to produce the totality of a living organism. The
classification of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, which
employed a self-confessedly ‘artificial’ method based on sexual char-
acters, was gradually replaced by ‘natural’ systems using a combin-
ation of features. New theories stressed the location of organisms in
space and time, showing how their internal workings meshed with
the external environment. Above all, enquiry into nature began to be
distinguished from the overall goal of understanding God. Beginning
in the eighteenth century, it began to be possible to pursue the study of
the natural world without reference to an understanding of the divine.
Theology, once the ‘queen of the sciences’, could be seen as separate
and distinct.
In the wake of the French Revolution, the politics of knowledge
became acutely sensitive, especially in Britain where an Evangelical
revival of Christianity was in progress. The terror of the guillotine
and the destruction of the Church were attributed to the misuse
of rational learning, and the notion that organisms somehow evolved
into other forms was condemned not only as dangerous but incred-
ible. Erasmus Darwin’s versifying was ridiculed and the late-
Enlightenment Parisian transmutationist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was
dismissed as a wild speculator; as Lyell damningly said, Lamarck’s
6 W. Paley, Natural Theology (1802; Oxford 2006), esp. pp. 7 – 26.

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 Introduction xvii
Zoological Philosophy (1809) read more like a fashionable novel
than serious science. Evolution was the province of godless radicals,
dissolute Frenchmen, and lecturers at the cut-price London medical
schools. In Edinburgh, Darwin had heard the invertebrate specialist
Robert Edmond Grant ‘burst forth in high admiration of Lamarck &
his views on evolution’ (p. 371). But this was not a path Darwin
wanted to follow; the practitioners he admired pushed questions
about origins to the margins.
In this constrained situation, one of the pleasures for readers of
Darwin’s post-Beagle publications was the way in which speculation
could be managed within the context of genres usually limited to
description and narration. What was not apparent, even between
the lines, was just how very much further their author had gone. The
journals that Darwin had used during the voyage to jot down ideas on
geology and zoology, began to record one of the most extraordinary
intellectual inquiries ever undertaken. ‘Origin of man now proved’,
he wrote triumphantly in one of his secret notebooks, ‘ — Metaphysic
must flourish. — He who understands baboon would do more
towards metaphysics than Locke’. Darwin revelled in his audacity:
‘love of the deity effect of organization, oh you Materialist! . . . Why
is thought, being a secretion of brain, more wonderful than gravity a
property of matter? It is our arrogance, it our admiration of our-
selves. — ’ What Darwin called his ‘mental rioting’7 had led him to
question not only the stability of species, but an entire structure of
belief.
Species transmutation had been a slowly dawning conviction,
expressed in vague doubts as Darwin sorted his collections on the
final boring months of the Beagle’s return to England. But it was
after his arrival home, when London specialists had a chance to work
out the complex affinities of his specimens, that Darwin began to
believe that species evolved. He became obsessed by the geological
and geographical distribution of certain species in South America.
Organisms living at the present time shared many characteristics
with those buried beneath them as fossils; animals and plants in one
province had affinities with their neighbours. A pattern of relationships
7
C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker, 6 May 1847, in Correspondence, iv (1988), 40. The citations
are from Notebook M: 84 and C: 166 in Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1836 – 1844: Geology,
Transmutation of Species, Metaphysical Enquiries, ed. P. H. Barrett, P. J. Gautrey,
S. Herbert, D. Kohn, and S. Smith (Ithaca and London, 1987), 539, 291.

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 xviii Introduction
could thus be traced both in time and space. A good example of geo-
graphical affinity was provided by the inhabitants of the islands off
the coast of South America, notably in the bizarre fauna and flora of
the Galapagos. Although Darwin recognized relationships with spe-
cies he had seen on the continent, he had no flash of inspiration while
he was there, certainly nothing that would lead him to become an
evolutionist. In the case of the finches, which later became a textbook
case of how varieties could become species through geographical
isolation, he even failed to notice that the birds varied from island to
island. The labels on his specimens, still preserved in the Natural
History Museum in London, make almost no mention of the specific
islands on which they were collected.8 As the 1845 Journal of
Researches admitted (p. 59), Darwin realized his mistake only after
specialists such as the expert ‘bird man’ John Gould examined his
collections.
At its heart, Darwin’s earliest evolutionary theorizing combined
a microscopic understanding of living matter with a vision of large
global processes. Early in the summer of 1837 he opened his first
notebook on species with the bold heading ‘Zoonomia’ — the laws
of life. There had been plenty of works advocating the develop-
ment of one species into another, not least by his grandfather under
that very title. What made Darwin’s attempt different is that he
approached evolutionary speculations with the full empirical fervour
of the new sciences. He believed that generation, reproduction, and
inheritance — subjects that became the foundation for what we today
would call genetics — would provide the key to the way in which new
species came into being. Arguments from Paley and other scientific
works in natural theology underlined the significance of adaptation,
the way that organisms were fitted to their circumstances and to each
other. Paley’s book also brought home lessons about literary struc-
ture and the nature of explanation.
As an independently wealthy gentleman, Darwin enjoyed the free-
dom to speculate, imagining himself as a ‘devil’s chaplain’ —a term
that had been used to condemn a notorious atheist radical. But he
also knew he was expected to act responsibly in an era when mem-
ories of the French Revolution remained vivid. As he self-mockingly
8 F. Sulloway, ‘Darwin and his Finches: The Evolution of a Legend’, Journal of the

History of Biology, 15 (1982), 1 – 53.

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 Introduction xix
confided in 1844 to his friend, the botanist Joseph Hooker, to admit
to being an evolutionist was a bit like confessing a murder.9
Convinced that evolution was a fact, his first explanation had involved
organic germs, or monads, which developed through a process of
generation into higher forms. He pored over manuals of stock breed-
ing and gooseberry growing, elaborating his theory to explain the full
range of reproductive phenomena. He also read widely in contem-
porary debates about philosophy, aesthetics, and political economy.
In the latter field — a new science focused on the creation, distribution,
and consumption of wealth — controversy centred on Britain’s adap-
tation to the early stages of a transformation in manufacturing that
would replace human labour with machines. Each new invention,
each encroachment of the factory system, had the potential to throw
thousands out of work. The ideals of a social order based on hier-
archy and deference was being replaced by a belief in individual
competition. God worked through the iron laws of scientific eco-
nomics, which ensured the best possible outcome for society. It was
in reading the founding work of this tradition of political economy,
Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (6th edn.,
1826), that Darwin came to see the potential of his reproductive
theory in a new way. Malthus had argued that populations, unchecked,
reproduced geometrically. But resources, especially food, were
scarce, and increased only arithmetically. Targeting utopian philoso-
phers who believed in human perfectibility, Malthus argued there
were limits to growth, that war, famine, plague were necessary to
keep the population in check.
The battle between different species of animals and plants, what
the poet Tennyson would call ‘nature red in tooth and claw’, was
already familiar both from Lyell’s Principles and the writings of
the French naturalist Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle. In reading
Malthus, Darwin identified the crucial issue as competition for
resources between individuals of the same species. The first expres-
sion of the new idea was scribbled in his notebook on 28 September
1838:
We ought to be far from wondering of changes in number of species, from small
changes in nature of locality. Even the energetic language of Decandoelle does
not convey the warring of the species as inference from Malthus.—in Nature

9 C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker [11 Jan. 1844], Correspondence, iii (1987), 1 – 2.

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 xx Introduction
production does not increase, whilst no checks prevail, but the positive check
of famine and consequently death . . population in increase at geometrical ratio
in FAR SHORTER time than 25 years — yet until the one sentence of Malthus no
one clearly perceived the great check amongst men. — take Europe on an aver-
age, every species must have same number killed, year with year, by hawks, by,
cold &c — . . even one species of hawk decreasing in number must effect
instantaneously all the rest. — One may say there is a force like a hundred
thousand wedges trying force every kind of adapted structure into the gaps in
the œconomy of Nature, or rather forming gaps by thrusting out weaker
ones.10

It was an image of terrible, mechanical violence, embodying all the

waste and destruction of individual competition. Reproduction,
which in Darwin’s pre-Malthus theory was the mechanism for spe-
cies change, now became a source for the tiny variations that led one
group of individuals towards reproductive success and others to die.
Only a few wedges, those sharpest, hardest, best adapted — would
thrust their way to survival. The others would perish. As Darwin
would later recall, ‘being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for
existence . . . it at once struck me that under these circumstances
favourable variations would tend to be preserved & unfavourable
ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of
new species.’ ‘I had at last’, he wrote, ‘got a theory by which to work’
(p. 411).

Evolution in Public
Almost two decades later, virtually the same idea occurred to the
naturalist and collector Alfred Russel Wallace. Like Darwin, Wallace
had travelled extensively and was engrossed in questions of the dis-
tribution of animals and plants in time and space. And like Darwin,
his thoughts about a mechanism for the origin of species crystallized
around Malthus, whose ideas he recalled on a tropical island during
a bout of fever. As soon as he was able to get out of bed, Wallace
drafted his theory and sent it to Darwin, who was known to be sym-
pathetic to theoretical views and had good contacts in the scientific
world.
Darwin, who was writing up his own theory, was appalled by the
prospect of an ugly priority squabble. A ‘delicate arrangement’ was

10 Notebook D: 134 – 5 in Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 374.

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 Introduction xxi
soon agreed among his friends, whereby both Wallace’s and Darwin’s
manuscripts were read at the Linnean Society in July 1858 and pub-
lished in its proceedings. Although there were significant differences
between the two, the resemblance was indeed striking, with Wallace’s
key phrases almost matching the headings in a sketch Darwin had
composed in 1842. As he told Lyell, ‘Your words have come true
with a vengeance that I shd. be forestalled.’11 Busy with his Beagle
publications and in poor health, fearful about being condemned as
a dangerous materialist, Darwin had kept his speculations private.
In 1854 he had started writing on species in earnest, but in the inter-
vening period had told only a handful of friends and family about
his continuing evolutionary speculations. He was clearly anxious
about the delay, especially after a little paper on barnacles grew
uncontrollably into a project that took eight years and four published
volumes to complete. Even Lyell, among his closest scientific associ-
ates, did not know the specifics of Darwin’s Malthusian theory until
the 1850s.
More than anyone else, Wallace recognized that the real work was
not coming up with a theory of species change, but making it con-
vincing. As he explained a decade later to the novelist Charles
Kingsley:
As to C Darwin, I know exactly our relative positions, & my great inferiority
to him. I compare myself to a Guerilla chief, very well for a skirmish or
for a flank movement, & even able to sketch out the plan of a campaign, but
reckless of communications & careless about Commissariat; — while Darwin is
the great General, who can manœuvre the largest army, & by attending
to his lines of communication with an impregnable base of operations,
& forgetting no detail of discipline, arms or supplies, leads on his forces to
victory.

‘I feel truly thankful’, Wallace concluded, ‘that Darwin had been

studying the subject so many years before me, & that I was not left
to attempt & to fail, in the great work he has so admirably per-
formed.’12 It should be no surprise that their joint papers at the
Linnean Society had little impact, for the question could not be
solved by a few pages in a journal. Although the Linnean Society’s
president has been mocked for announcing that 1858 had been one
of those years in which nothing particularly significant had happened
11 C. Darwin to C. Lyell, 18 [June 1858], in Correspondence, vii (1991), 107.
12 A. Wallace to C. Kingsley, 7 May 1869, Knox College Library, Galesburg.

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 xxii Introduction
in natural history, in fact he was entirely correct. Tactics, as in the
American Civil War to which Wallace’s letter implicitly referred,
were everything.
The tactical problem at the end of the 1850s was very specific.
Species transmutation had been widely debated in public since Vestiges
of the Natural History of Creation, an anonymous work that had created
a huge sensation on both sides of the Atlantic on its publication in
1844. This was the one evolutionary book that all English-speaking
readers could be expected to know. In striking and readable prose,
Vestiges narrated a cosmic epic beginning with the formation of the
solar system from a condensing fire-mist and ending with the emer-
gence of the human mind. The underlying principle was a law of
progressive development, with all nature giving birth to the next
higher form through a ‘universal gestation of nature’. In its narrative
connections, use of particulars, and assumption of progress in history,
it was deeply indebted to the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott. At
the same time, the general argument of Vestiges was also based on the
latest scientific findings, and had some affinity with Darwin’s pre-
Malthus reproductive model for transmutation. Most men of science,
however, guessed that there were too many mistakes for it to have been
written by one of their own (it was, in fact, from the pen of the Scottish
journalist and author Robert Chambers). Yet Vestiges was most defin-
itely not a work of popular science, for that would imply that there was
a secure body of evolutionary knowledge to simplify and elucidate.
Rather, it embodied a democratic vision of science directed against the
canons of elite practitioners in the laboratory and field.
If the advocates of specialist science were to fight back, some form
of credible naturalistic explanation for species origins was vital.
Europe’s leading comparative anatomist, Richard Owen, advocated
reopening the question, and others clearly agreed. For his part, by
June 1858 Darwin had already completed substantial portions of a
multi-volume evolutionary treatise on the model of Lyell’s Principles,
a philosophical natural history bringing together all the facts he had
gathered from correspondence and reading since the Beagle voyage.
Wallace’s bombshell forced a rethinking of his publication strategy.
His aim was unchanged, but at this juncture he attempted a series
of articles that would get the main aspects of his views into print
as quickly as possible. Realizing that this would be open to criticism

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 Introduction xxiii
for lack of supporting facts, he produced an ‘abstract of an essay’,
a shorter version of his unfinished manuscript.
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was published by
John Murray in November 1859. It is a very unusual book. Unlike most
other works of its kind, Origin unfolds no story of geological progress or
evolutionary development. Moreover, the book, as the novelist George
Eliot lamented, was ‘ill-written’ (p. 213). Its attractions were as unlike
those of a novel as could be, being centred on extended argument and
analytical exposition rather than narrative continuity of the kind found
in Vestiges. Thus the origins of the universe, the standard opening of the
evolutionary epic, are reduced in Origin to a tantalizing reference to
planetary gravitation in the final sentence (p. 211). Developmental
embryology, the traditional starting place for discussions of transmuta-
tion, was likewise placed in a late chapter. Instead Darwin started —
most unexpectedly — with an analogy between the actions of domestic
breeders in selecting stock, and the way in which certain individuals
were preserved in nature. The violent metaphor of competitive wedg-
ing was replaced by gentle references to the farmyard, garden, and
aviary, a rhetorical transformation of his theory that had taken place in
the months after reading Malthus. Nature, Darwin could now explain,
was like a pigeon fancier, aware of the tiniest differences that led one
bird towards success and another towards failure.
Darwin’s story of his experience in breeding pigeons is only one of
dozens of captivating bits of autobiography scattered throughout his
books. He describes watching ants and aphids, his success in proving
the crossing of hermaphrodite barnacles, and his dissections of the
rudimentary eyes of a blind burrowing rodent from South America.
There are stories about nature, too, although these had to be handled
carefully lest they be read as fantasy. For example, Origin explains
how an aquatic bear, catching insects with its open mouth, could be
transformed into a creature ‘as monstrous as a whale’ (p. 181). Such
stories, although scarcely disrupting the flow of argument, offered
ways of hinting at larger narratives of evolutionary transformation.
These were so familiar to readers from Vestiges and other evolution-
ary epics that they scarcely needed elaborating. In this particular
case, however, Darwin had gone too far and failed to avoid being
classed as a cosmic speculator.

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 xxiv Introduction

Mind, Morals, and Man

Just as Darwin had delayed publishing until his theory had the pos-
sibility of a good reception, so did he wait to comment on human
origins. The evolutionary manuscript interrupted by Wallace had
featured a chapter on man, but this was left out of Origin as
too speculative. But by the late 1860s the debate had become much
more open. Rather than providing further instalments of his fully
documented work (as in his Variation of Animals and Plants under
Domestication, published in 1868), Darwin felt confident enough to
publish on human evolution. As he admitted in the opening pages of
Descent, human evolution was old news by 1871: books by naturalists
such as John Lubbock, Ernst Haeckel, Carl Vogt, and T. H. Huxley
had already demonstrated the continuity between apes and humans.
What mattered was that Darwin was saying it too, and that he
focused on religion, music, language, the moral sense, and other
characteristics traditionally identified as uniquely human.
Darwin’s naturalized system of morals went back to his theoretical
work of the 1830s, which tackled the problem of evil in the world that
had been at the heart of post-Malthusian political economy and
theological discussion in England. This tradition, which has been
identified by historians as ‘Christian political economy’, had targeted
revolutionary optimism on the one hand and the imposition of moral
codes by the state on the other. As a succession of Anglican clerics
had asked in the wake of Malthus’s Principle of Population, what
was the purpose of shortages, starvation, and overpopulation among
humans?13 For Darwin, the answer was that scarcity explained adap-
tation. As Darwin wrote in his notebook immediately after reading
Malthus, ‘the final cause of all this wedgings, must be to sort out
proper structure & adapt it to change’.14 In Darwin’s reformulation
of Christian political economy, which drew especially on Paley’s
stress on adaptation, all of nature became subject to the scarcity that
had previously been seen to govern human affairs.
Darwin, however, went further in recasting the tradition. Malthus
and his followers had argued that the only way that humans could
avoid the disaster of overpopulation (other than immigration) was
through moral restraint. In Darwin’s view, however, morals were no
13 On this tradition, see A. M. C. Waterman, Revolution, Economics and Religion:

Christian Political Economy, 1798 – 1833 (Cambridge, 1991).

14 D: 135, Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 375.

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 Introduction xxv
more a special characteristic of humans than was the tendency
towards overpopulation. Morals were not unique, he argued in the
early chapters of Descent, but existed in rudimentary form through-
out the animal kingdom as instincts. (‘Our descent, then, is the origin
of our evil passions!! — ’, he had scribbled in his notebook. ‘The
Devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather!’)15 Even the noblest
aspects of humanity derived from the social instincts found in the
higher apes. The theological basis of Christian political economy
had been turned on its head. If God was manifest in the creation,
it was not through caring design, but through the dearth and death
that led the fittest to survive. Morals and instincts alike had to work
in conjunction with Malthusian principles, not against them. In
effect, Darwin advocated Christian political economy without the
Christianity.
The greatest novelty of Descent was in explaining the relation
between sex and race. Here Darwin enlarged upon the mechanism of
sexual selection that had been broached in Origin. Why did men have
beards and women not? Why were women (as most male contempor-
aries agreed) less intelligent and creative but more patient, selfless,
and intuitive than men? To explain these differences — in fact differ-
ences between the sexes of any species — Darwin postulated a strug-
gle among males to obtain the females. Those successful in this
competition would leave progeny sharing their characteristics, gradu-
ally leading to more and more strongly marked characters differ-
entiating the sexes. Much of Descent is a vast catalogue of these
distinctions as they can be found throughout the animal kingdom,
especially in birds. By analogy, Darwin argued, sexual selection was
largely responsible for human racial distinctions, through the long-
continued exercise of particular aesthetic preferences. There was one
important difference: in most animals, female choice was paramount,
but in humans males did the selecting.
Even in the changed climate of England in the 1870s, discussions
of sex were potentially open to accusations of impropriety, particu-
larly in a book that based religion and morals on instinct rather than
revealed truth. Darwin’s publisher, for example, advised against
using the adjective ‘sexual’ in the title, guidance that resulted in
the anodyne The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.16
15
D: 123, Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 550.
16
G. Dawson, Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability (Cambridge, 2007), 35.

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 xxvi Introduction
Contemporary caricatures show how readily Darwinism could be
equated with racial mixing, miscegenation, and promiscuity. Yet it is
striking how muted such criticisms were. Darwin’s lively anecdotes
and coy talk of ‘choosing’ encouraged readers to associate his writing
not so much with the murderous revolutions and moral dissolution
feared by a reviewer in The Times (pp. 335 – 6), but with popular
romantic fiction and contemporary travel literature.

An Evolutionary Self-Analysis
After Descent and its sequel, The Expression of the Emotions in Man
and Animals (1872), Darwin avoided publishing on controversial topics,
focusing instead on less contentious subjects related to his theory,
such as the movement of plants and the intellectual abilities of earth-
worms. But in private he renewed the ambitious programme of self-
observation and reflection on the human mind first pursued in his
notebooks of the 1830s. The first of the autobiographical texts
included here (pp. 351 – 4) was part of this original programme. In
August 1838, at the height of his evolutionary theorizing, Darwin
jotted down fragmentary notes on the emergence of his memories.
The earliest was being cut accidentally by a knife when a cow ran
past the dining room window, one of several recollections inspired by
fear. He explored the origins of his fascination with natural history
collecting; other traits, such as a love of pictures and music, were (or
so Darwin claimed) not really ‘natural’ to him. Not only were par-
ticular mental qualities inherited, but so too were tendencies towards
different kinds of memories. His younger sister, for example, recalled
scenes ‘where others were chief actors’, while Darwin remembered
events chiefly relating to himself and almost nothing of his mother’s
early death. These differences, Darwin believed, were innate. As he
wrote with satisfaction, ‘I was born a naturalist’ (p. 353).
Concerns about evolution and heredity were very much to the fore
as Darwin sat down in 1876 to recall the events of his life. Three
years earlier, his cousin Francis Galton, researching the mental
attributes of prominent men of science and their fathers, had sent a
questionnaire which Darwin filled out fully and enthusiastically. He
would shortly publish ‘A Biographical Sketch of an Infant’ — his
observations on the early behaviour of his first child — in the recently
founded journal Mind. The Recollections of the Development of My

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 Introduction xxvii
Mind and Character are thus as much a contribution to evolution-
ary psychology as they are a traditional biographical narrative. For
Darwin, the crucial category was the ‘development of mind and
character’. (Tellingly, the ‘my’ was left out of the title in the first
draft, and inserted only later.) To understand cognition, Darwin
had long examined those minds closest around him: his sisters, his
children, his father, and himself. The engaging sense of personality
that comes across so strongly in Darwin’s Recollections resulted, at
least in part, from his fascination in the origins of human qualities.
Nothing was outside the explanatory agenda of evolution.
Darwin concluded that his special qualities of mind were not
added throughout life, but were present in potential from birth. He
denied any substantive intellectual role for his father, brother, sis-
ters, and most of his teachers. Learning classics at Shrewsbury
school, he claimed, had been a complete waste of time. Yet, although
an exposure to Latin and Greek may not have given him much love
for Caesar and Cicero, it proved vital to his sensitivity to language
and his skills as a writer. Similarly, Darwin downplayed advantages
gained from medical school in Edinburgh and his degree at
Cambridge. Instead, everything turned on the Beagle voyage, not
because of help from captain and crew, but because solitude in wild
nature had allowed the discovery of his true self. What Darwin did
claim to acquire through experience were qualities of industry,
patience, and attention, habits that stood him in good stead after the
ship’s return. His stress on progress and improvement throughout
all his writing on his life is very much of a piece with his views on
human evolution more generally. As he noted in the Recollections,
‘The primeval instincts of the barbarian slowly yielded to the
acquired tastes of the civilised man’ (p. 388). His individual story
recapitulated the development of the race.
At once superficial and revealing, compelling yet discursive and
anecdotal, Darwin titled his work Recollections because they were
precisely that, rather than a formal Autobiography (although that title
is commonly and incorrectly used). Behind the undoubted charm
and informality of the memoir are the same intellectual concerns that
motivated all Darwin’s later work. That these ambitions for the
memoir are rarely acknowledged has to do with the fact that the
Recollections, alone among Darwin’s later writings, were not intended
for publication during his lifetime. Commenced soon after Darwin

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 xxviii Introduction
learned of the impending birth of his first grandchild, the text was
written in the first instance for his family, providing a way of speaking
to future generations. During the following months he added inci-
dents and memories as they occurred to him, and in 1881 he brought
the story up to date. The longest addition was fourteen pages about
his father, Robert Darwin, which completed the (male) intellectual
genealogy he had undertaken two years earlier in publishing a short
life of his famous grandfather Erasmus.
Would Darwin have been upset to see his autobiographical reflec-
tions in print? Writing to a German colleague, he had declared that
he would never publish his own life.17 But posthumous publication
was a very different thing, and given his fame there is every likeli-
hood that he knew that the manuscript might appear in print in some
form. Darwin chose to hand over responsibility to his survivors:
he wrote for his descendants, and it was up to them to judge the
suitability of his family memoir as a public document. In particular, he
knew that his condemnation of Christianity would be deeply distress-
ing to his wife Emma, for whom it would mark the decisive proof that
they would never meet in heaven.18 By leaving a clear manuscript,
Darwin could both have his last word to the family, but allow them to
determine how much it was appropriate to make public. This had so
many advantages that to do otherwise would have been odd. It allowed
Darwin’s story to go before the public, thereby enhancing his reputa-
tion and furthering the evolutionary cause, but simultaneously main-
tained his character for modesty, avoiding any appearance of
self-aggrandizement or self-importance. It sidestepped the kind of
unseemly scandals that had been precipitated by other contemporary
memoirs, most notoriously that of Thomas Carlyle. Almost no one of
Darwin’s status published an autobiography during his or her lifetime,
while many (such as the philosopher John Stuart Mill, the geologist
Roderick Murchison, and the mathematician Mary Somerville) left
manuscript recollections as the basis for a public memoir.
When Darwin’s Recollections were published in 1887 as a chapter
in The Life and Letters compiled by his son Francis, they crowned his
17
C. Darwin to J. V. Carus, 17 July 1879, cited in J. Browne, Charles Darwin: The
Power of Place (London, 2002), 427.
18 The delicate problem of dealing with the religious passages in the manuscript led

to a difficult family quarrel: see J. Moore, ‘Of Love and Death: Why Darwin “gave up
Christianity” ’, in id. (ed.), History, Humanity and Evolution (Cambridge, 1989),
195 – 229, esp. 199 – 209.

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 Introduction xxix
lifelong attempt to create a new scientific persona for the evolutionist.
Understandably, the family exercised its prerogative to cut out
passages — especially about religion — that would appear too raw or
revealing. (These passages were not restored until the 1950s, first
in a Russian language edition and then in an English version edited
by Darwin’s granddaughter.) Darwin had himself already put con-
siderable work into establishing a respectable image. He did every-
thing possible to make it clear he was no closet speculator, no
‘Mr. Vestiges’, and not even the intellectual heir of his grandfather.
This was by no means a simple matter, especially as evolutionary
ideas had traditionally been associated with questionable morals,
atheism, and sexual promiscuity. The work Darwin had done to
establish his credentials as a gentleman of science paid off. By the
time of Origin’s publication he could speak as the author of three
major works on geology and four on zoological and palaeontological
classification. The title page announces him as a ‘Fellow of the Royal,
Geological, Linnæan, etc. societies’, and reminds readers of the ever-
popular Journal of Researches, which is also recalled in the first sen-
tence of the introduction. Both Origin and Descent testify to their
author’s cautious empiricism in research (‘patiently accumulating
and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any
bearing’) and in coming to conclusions. The strategic silences on
evolution in the 1845 Journal of Researches, and Origin’s cautiously
worded references to man, both spoke eloquently of the author’s
unwillingness to offend. The same caution appears in the Recollections,
the document that has served more than any other to establish
Darwin’s public image.

Darwin among the Machines

The strategies employed in Darwin’s texts were, by any standard,
extraordinarily successful. Thomas Henry Huxley hailed Origin as ‘a
veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism’.19 It was an
appropriate analogy, for Joseph Whitworth’s invention, a replace-
ment for the much-criticized Enfield rifles used during the Crimean
War of the 1850s, was proving so accurate that Queen Victoria had
hit a bull’s eye at a range of 400 yards.
19
[T. H. Huxley,] ‘The Origin of Species’, Westminster Review, NS 17 (1860),
541 – 70, at [541].

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 xxx Introduction
Darwin may not have been quite so precise a marksman, but
there can be little doubt that his works transformed the terms of the
international evolutionary debate, which was far less violent and
ill-tempered than it is often depicted. Within Britain, Origin did not
so much initiate a crisis as conclude a major piece of unfinished busi-
ness from the 1830s. With significant exceptions, as Darwin acknowl-
edged, reviewers treated his argument patiently and in good faith.
Out of a first edition of 1,250 copies, no less than 500 were bought by
Britain’s leading circulating library,20 and the sixth edition of 1872
was an attractively priced ‘people’s edition’, printed with stereotyped
plates for inexpensive reissues. In Darwin’s view, men of science — who
had for the most part failed to be convinced by previous evolutionary
works — were the key to the public debate. By the second half of the
nineteenth century this meant reaching potential converts from
across much of Europe and eastern North America, as well as colo-
nial and trading outposts throughout the rest of the world. Towards
this end, Darwin maintained a monumental correspondence, debat-
ing theology with Harvard professors, encouraging young collectors
in Africa and India, cajoling leading naturalists throughout the world
to change their views. He engineered translations of his books into
the main European languages, pleased when they were satisfactory,
working for better ones when they were not. The first German trans-
lator, the palaeontologist Heinrich Bronn, burdened Origin with an
afterword combating its main thesis; in France, the philosophical
writer Clémence Royer gave the book a new subtitle and a fiery preface
advocating secular progress.
As Darwin had hoped, convincing scientific men of the validity of
evolutionary questions proved crucial in winning a fair hearing for
his theories. Few agreed, however, that his novel mechanism was
likely to be as important as Origin had claimed. Some, like Huxley,
argued that natural selection needed experimental proof to be a valid
explanation, but still kicked themselves for failing to think of it. The
source and size of the variations needed for a process based on selec-
tion was much debated. Many physicists, following the lead of
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), pointed out that Darwin’s theory
required a timescale far longer than that indicated by contemporary
theories of the sun’s heat. Still others applied natural selection theory
to exciting new problems, such as the evolution of horses and birds,
20 Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, 88 – 9.

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 Introduction xxxi
and the way in which certain organisms mimicked the appearance of
others to obtain an evolutionary advantage. Within a few months
Darwin was compiling lists of supporters and opponents, keeping
score to show opinion tipping in his favour. By the end of the 1860s,
virtually all practising naturalists thought Origin had demonstrated
that the problem of species origins would be resolved. Natural selec-
tion opened the door to a possible mechanism for evolutionary
change, but was not seen as the final answer; what really mattered
was that species — and even human morals and religion — might be
brought within the realm of scientific explanation.
The reception of Origin and Descent benefited from the growing
status of science, which opened up a wide range of paid professional
careers in laboratories, museums, botanical gardens, and field sta-
tions around the world. Managing a vast network of correspondents
from his home in the village of Downe in Kent, Darwin cultivated
expert practitioners in these new institutions supported by govern-
ments and industry. That his works — unlike most science at this
time — could be understood by a broader audience as well opened up
the possibility of a shared discussion in general quarterly journals,
literary weeklies, and newspapers. In Britain, the most important
notice of Origin was in The Times, by this time approaching its later
role as the imperial newspaper of record. A journalist had been asked
to provide a review, but after a few sentences he demurred and sent
the job on to Huxley, who penned a positive notice which set the
tone for much of the rest of the debate. The quarterly Edinburgh
Review featured an anonymous essay by the leading comparative
anatomist Richard Owen, who was irritated by Darwin’s belittling of
other mechanisms for evolutionary change, but simultaneously con-
demned ‘sacerdotal revilers’ who would repress scientific debate
on theological grounds. On this latter point the Edinburgh expressed
a view that had become increasingly prevalent from the 1850s. With
a few exceptions, notably Darwin’s old geology teacher Adam
Sedgwick, Anglican divines followed Charles Kingsley in believing
that a naturalistic explanation of species origins could readily be
accommodated with a belief in God. For most — as indeed for
Wallace, Lyell, and many others — the only exception was the origin
of man’s moral and spiritual qualities. Yet even here, there was a
willingness to discuss which was encouraged by the absence of strong
statements on the issue in the Origin. There were criticisms of the

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 xxxii Introduction
more forthright positions taken in Descent, notably scathing accusa-
tions in The Times of gross moral culpability; but generally reviewers
were serious and respectful, reflecting the tone of debate set by
Darwin himself.
The Darwinian dispute offered the Established Church in England,
scarred by decades of theological conflict, an opportunity to demon-
strate liberal virtues of accommodation and compromise. In the
United States, the presence of a host of competing sects and the
comparatively decentralized scientific community meant that evolu-
tionary discussion was both more diverse and more vocal. Although
some Protestants agreed with the Presbyterian Charles Hodge that
‘atheism’ was the answer to the title of his book, What is Darwinism?,
most agreed with the Harvard botanist Asa Gray that Christianity
could be accommodated with Darwinism. Advocates for causes from
the rights of women to reform of Judaism saw in Darwin’s books a
natural justification of change. Even campaigners for racial equality
such as Frederick Douglass did not oppose Darwinism in anything
like the way that might be expected.21 Progress was equated with
evolution, and evolution was equated with Darwinism.
As part of an expanding international network of communications,
Darwinism became a symbol of the virtues of open discussion and
modern ways of life. This was the case whether natural selection
was thought to license cooperation and the ‘peace biology’ of the
Russian anarchists, the rapacious competition of American monop-
oly capitalism, or the concordance of evolution with Japanese Shinto
or Hindu reincarnation. Liberal values, progress among the hier-
archy of nations, and a tendency to seeing a divine hand in invariant
laws rather than miracles: this summed up the dominant meanings of
Darwinism.
The evolutionary epic, leading the reader from cosmic chaos to
technological civilization, emerged as one of the global publishing
phenomena of the modern age. This genre had a long history, going
back to Vestiges, the universal histories of the Enlightenment, and
even to Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things; but in the late nineteenth
century it spawned a host of global best-sellers, ranging from
Haeckel’s Natural History of Creation (1868) and Herbert Spencer’s
21 On these issues, see the essays in R. L. Numbers and J. Stenhouse (eds.),

Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion and Gender (Cambridge,
1999).

00-Darwin-EW-Prelims.indd xxxii 9/18/08 1:45:00 PM

 Introduction xxxiii
Synthetic Philosophy (1862 – 96), to Arabella Buckley’s Winners in
Life’s Race (1883) and Wilhelm Bölsche’s Love-Life in Nature
(1898 – 1902).22 Books of this kind, with their monad-to-man stories
of progress and stress on alternative mechanisms for species change
(often involving embryological development), depended relatively
little on the specific contents of Darwin’s writings but heavily upon
their reputation. Such works enjoyed extraordinary sales in the
newly reunited Germany, where rapid industrialization was built
upon an impressive corps of university-trained scientists and engin-
eers. In many countries newly emerging onto the world scene, the
classic evolutionary works were taken up with enthusiasm. In Japan
under the Meiji regime, evolutionary discussion was an integral part
of rapid scientific modernization, with Herbert Spencer’s philosophy
being especially popular.
In traditional societies such as China, evolutionary works were
advocated by oppositional political movements. Writing in an ultra-
reforming journal printed in Japan and smuggled into China through
the treaty ports, Liang Qichao attacked three thousand years of des-
potic monarchy. The Manchu dynasty was only the latest regime to
evolve the human political equivalent of the blind cave fish discussed
in Origin, which had lost its sight through lack of use. This put the
Chinese people, all four hundred million of them, at risk of extinc-
tion in the global competition for power. ‘Alas,’ he wrote, ‘to pit such
people against the races of Europe in this world of struggle and
survival of the fittest — What hope is there?’23 Such views, which
quickly became known as ‘Social Darwinism’, were widely canvassed
throughout the industrialized world. Capitalist entrepreneurs, espe-
cially in the United States, argued that their success reflected the
laws of individual competition, and preached a ‘gospel of wealth’
based on evolutionary science. It was not difficult to find support for
such positions in Darwin’s own writings. As one of his books put it,
‘Hard cash, paid down over and over again, is an excellent test of
inherited superiority.’24 Darwin encouraged research into eugenics,
opposed the passing on of wealth solely to eldest sons, and assumed
the inevitable extinction of supposedly ‘inferior’ races.
22 B. Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences

(Chicago, 2007), 219 – 94, discusses this tradition in Britain.

23
Cited in J. R. Pusey, China and Charles Darwin (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 185.
24
C. Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 2 vols.
(London, 1868), ii. 3.

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 xxxiv Introduction
In the global marketplace for knowledge, evolutionary science was
news. To open a discussion about Darwinism was to argue that new
technologies of communication ought to go hand in hand with new
ways of thinking. The growth of literacy and middle-class reader-
ships, combined with mechanized printing and fast distribution,
encouraged the emergence of cheap periodicals as a worldwide pub-
lishing phenomenon. Weekly science magazines and newspaper col-
umns, sprouting up everywhere from Stockholm to Calcutta, offered
lively forums for debate about the wider meanings of Darwinism. In
these periodicals, local contributions could appear alongside extracts
from the writings of leading men of science, who could (and did)
contribute their views directly. The same passage read very differ-
ently in an Argentine newspaper or a French popular science monthly,
a colonial literary weekly in South Africa or a quarterly journal from
New England. Controversy was often heated. Notably, many reli-
gious writers welcomed industrial progress, and believed that cheap
periodicals, steam-powered printing, machine-made paper, and other
science-based innovations were only the latest and greatest contribu-
tions of a creator god towards the advance of civilization. From this
perspective, disseminating Darwinism was no way to give thanks for
providential gifts.
Certainly there was (and is) no inherent conflict between faith and
reason, but evolution — particularly as applied to humans — offered
the potential for real difficulty in a number of theological traditions,
particularly those that stressed the unique role of a creator and the
special status of humans. Most Catholics, particularly in the con-
servative theological atmosphere engendered by Pope Pius IX, con-
demned naturalistic evolution in the strongest terms, although it was
never formally subject to papal sanction. In England, successive
Catholic archbishops pointed out contradictions with the doctrines
of miracles and the human soul. At the other end of the theological
spectrum, some Evangelical Protestants believed that Darwinism was
allied to religious doubt, materialism, even atheism. In this they
were encouraged by the tiny but vocal corps of freethinkers, who
welcomed Origin and Descent as scientifically credible replacements
for earlier evolutionary classics, but deplored their ambiguities and
compromises. The first edition of Origin, for example, implied the
possibility for a divine origin for life, speaking of life being ‘breathed’
into a single or several forms (p. 211); the second edition strengthened

00-Darwin-EW-Prelims.indd xxxiv 9/18/08 1:45:01 PM

 Introduction xxxv
this by specifying ‘breathed by the Creator’. Freethinkers around the
world accused their hero of masking his real character as an atheist.
Darwin privately regretted that he had ‘truckled’ and removed the
phrase from one place in the book, but he left it in the final sentence,
where it remained in all subsequent editions as a lifeline to readers
hoping to reconcile evolutionary naturalism with a belief in God.25
The possibility of such an accommodation was crucial to Darwin’s
success.
These discussions, first played out in north-west Europe and the
eastern United States, were repeated in many other countries. What
was the relation between industrial modernization and religious
revival? How were migrants to the large urban centres to retain their
traditions of faith? In many regions, the appearance of Origin and
Descent injected scientific life into long-standing debates about mate-
rialism. The founding act of these exchanges was often the publica-
tion of books by Darwin or his followers in a local language. The
appearance of Origin in Russian in 1864 offered the radical intelli-
gentsia the basis for a philosophical materialism that would renew
the nation in the wake of defeat in the Crimean War. Facing an
apathetic peasantry on the one hand, and an increasingly repressive
aristocracy on the other, the new generation read Darwin’s books as
the epitome of progressive change and a way of attacking the power
of the Orthodox Church. The palaeontologist Vladimir Kovalevsky
fought on several fronts, diffusing scientific knowledge to the public
as well as researching the evolution of the horse. Among similarly
minded reformers in Spain, the translation of Origin in 1877 was
welcomed as ‘a most happy symbol of our progress’,26 though in fact
most readers continued to consult both it and Darwin’s other works
in French. Here, as throughout the Spanish-speaking world, the con-
troversy was polarized, with conservative politicians and clerics con-
fronting radical positivists about the moral issues raised in Descent.
The problem of introducing the economic benefits of modern
technology and science, while avoiding the secularizing tendencies
that could follow in their wake, was most acutely faced in the Arabic-
speaking world. The Lebanese physician Shiblī Shumayyil argued
25 C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker, 29 Mar. 1863, Correspondence, xi (1999); C. Darwin, The

Origin of Species: A Variorum Text, ed. M. Peckham (Philadelphia, 1959), 753, 759.
26 Revista Contemporánea, cited in T. F. Glick, ‘Spain’, in Glick (ed.), The

Comparative Reception of Darwinism (Austin, Tex., 1974), 307 – 45, at 311.

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 xxxvi Introduction
for the wholesale adoption of evolutionary ideas, viewing Darwin
through the lens of German freethinkers such as Ludwig Büchner.
In contrast, the Persian modernizer Jamal al-Din al-Afgani advocated
the need to industrialize, but warned against the temptations of
evolutionary philosophy. His Refutation of the Materialists (1880 – 1),
widely read in Arabic translation, ridiculed Darwin as a ‘wretch’
who claimed that a mosquito could become an elephant in a few
centuries.27 In later writings, however, Afgani was willing to praise
Darwin’s writings as offering more than mere evolutionary materialism.
.
A leading Islamic theologian, Husayn al-Jisr, accepted that key pas-
sages in the Qur’an might need to be re-examined if evolution could
be proved unequivocally true. The strongest backlash against Darwin
was among Christian missionaries who had embraced the sciences as
part of their evangelizing. During the early 1880s, the professor of
geology and chemistry at Beirut’s Protestant College, the Harvard
graduate Edwin Lewis, delivered a speech in Arabic praising Darwin
as the exemplar of a man of science patiently conducting empirical
research. Although censured by the college’s American Evangelical
administrators, who dismissed Lewis forthwith, the lecture was pub-
. where it led to a vigorous and fruit-
lished in the weekly al-Muqtataf,
ful debate. The journal became a leading forum for the discussion of
new ideas.28
In the Arabic-speaking world, as elsewhere across the globe, the
commencement of evolutionary debates was taken to signal the arrival
of the modern age, involving the recasting of social relations, an indus-
trializing economy, intellectual innovation, and a rethinking of ancient
systems of patronage and belief. Any discussion of evolution was ne-
cessarily entangled with questions of free trade, imperial expansion,
and mass communication. With the introduction of electric lighting,
cheap illustrated newspapers, and an international telegraph network,
technologies based on science began to shape expectations for future
progress among millions of people. Through the application of elec-
tricity and steam, the intellectual distance from London to Calcutta,
Budapest to San Francisco, Beirut to Philadelphia, could effectively
disappear. In discussing evolution, people contemplated what these

27 N. R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of

Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn ‘al-Afghāni’ (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), 136.
28 M. Elshakry, ‘The Gospel of Science and American Evangelism in Late Ottoman

Beirut’, Past and Present, 196 (2007), 173 – 214, esp. 207 – 14.

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 Introduction xxxvii
unprecedented powers for understanding, destroying, and control-
ling nature were going to mean. Darwinism came to symbolize the
way in which all aspects of human existence, for better or worse,
would be brought within the realm of scientific explanation.
Whatever side of the debate was aired, discussing Darwinism was
part of the global rush towards the future so widely canvassed in the
later nineteenth century. This is the period that witnessed the birth
of prophetic fiction by Samuel Butler, Camille Flammarion,
Jagadananda Roy, and H. G. Wells, in novels that employed evolu-
tionary science to predict ‘things to come’. In an anonymous letter to
a colonial New Zealand newspaper in 1863 entitled ‘Darwin among
the Machines’, Butler argued that the instruments of industrial civil-
ization were evolving faster then their human masters and would
eventually inherit the earth. ‘Day by day. . .’, he wrote, ‘the machines
are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more sub-
servient to them . . . Our opinion is that war to the death should be
instantly proclaimed against them’ (p. 221). Ironically, it was only
through those machines that news of Darwin’s work could spread so
quickly across the globe, to reach the pages of a Christchurch daily.
It is entirely appropriate that one of the originating points of modern
science fiction is a response to Darwin’s writing, published just about
as far from Darwin’s home in Kent as it was possible to go.

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 NOTE ON THE TEXTS

This book has three aims: to encourage further exploration of the

writings of Charles Darwin; to offer the complete text of his most
engaging work, the autobiographical Recollections, in a reliable text as
free as possible from editorial intervention; and finally, to encourage
an understanding of Darwin’s works informed by their reception,
especially in a global context.
As the focus is on Darwin as a public figure, in dealing with writ-
ings published during his lifetime I have chosen those editions in
which his work first reached a wide audience. Wherever possible
I have included complete chapters, unabridged except for the omis-
sion of Darwin’s notes. All passages omitted from the text have been
briefly summarized in passages marked off with square brackets.
The chapters from the Journal of Researches are taken from the
first issue of the second edition of his Beagle book, entitled Journal of
Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries
Visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World, under the
Command of Capt. Fitz Roy, R.N. (London: John Murray, 1845).
This included important new material that reflected Darwin’s still
largely secret views on the transmutation of species. (Darwin’s pref-
ace to the 1845 edition, which thanked his shipmates and listed the
voyage publications, is here omitted.) The selections from 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)
and The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 vols.
(London: John Murray, 1871) are from the first issue first editions.
The review extracts and letters are taken from the sources as indi-
cated; where possible these are from the first printings (e.g. in news-
papers and periodicals) rather than later reissues. Ellipses (. . .) in
these ancillary texts are the editor’s; those in the texts by Darwin are
his own.
The text of the Recollections of the Development of my Mind and
Character is complete, unabridged, and edited for the first time to the
standards of modern scholarship. For the past fifty years, the stand-
ard text has remained Nora Barlow’s pioneering edition of 1958,
which regularized spelling, expanded abbreviations, italicizied titles,

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 Note on the Texts xxxix
and made other changes that tend to reduce the informality and
immediacy of a document which Darwin wrote without thought of
style. The aim here is to provide an accurate and complete transcrip-
tion of Darwin’s final text. For the first time in any edition of the
Recollections, all original spellings, abbreviations, and underlinings
have been preserved, following the conventions of The Correspondence
of Charles Darwin. Unlike the Correspondence, however, no attempt
has been made to record systematically in textual notes evidence of
the process of composition, although the more substantial of
Darwin’s later additions have been noted. The text has been estab-
lished by Anne Secord from the original manuscript (DAR 26) in
Cambridge University Library (henceforth CUL).
The Recollections were first published in an expurgated form in
Francis Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, includ-
ing an Autobiographical Chapter, 3 vols. (London: John Murray,
1887), i. 11 – 20, 21 – 2, 26 – 107, 307 – 13. Significant passages, espe-
cially on religion, were left out and first became available in Nora
Barlow’s edition. As the cut-down version was crucial in establishing
Darwin’s reputation for over seventy years, the major omissions in
the Life and Letters abridgement have been here signalled in endnotes.
The autobiographical fragment of 1838 was first published in
More Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin and Alfred C.
Seward, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1903), i. 1 – 5. The version
here is reproduced by permission, and is from The Correspondence of
Charles Darwin, ed. Frederick Burkhardt et al., ii (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 438 – 42, based on a fresh tran-
scription from the manuscript (DAR 91: 56 – 62). The exten-
sive records of Darwin’s alterations and annotations have not been
reproduced here.

00-Darwin-EW-Prelims.indd xxxix 9/18/08 1:45:02 PM

 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Editions of Works by Darwin

Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary, ed. R. D. Keynes (Cambridge, 1988).
Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1836 – 1844: Geology, Transmutation of Species,
Metaphysical Enquiries, ed. P. H. Barrett, S. Herbert, D. Kohn, and
S. Smith (Ithaca and London, 1987).
Charles Darwin’s Shorter Publications, ed. J. van Wyhe (Cambridge, 2009).
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871; rpt. Princeton,
1981).
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, ed. J. Moore and
A. Desmond (2nd edn., 1879; Penguin, 2004).
Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries
Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, ed. R. D. Keynes (1860;
London, 2003).
On Evolution: The Development of the Theory of Natural Selection, ed.
T. F. Glick and D. Kohn (Indianapolis, 1996).
On the Origin of Species (1859; rpt. Cambridge, Mass., 1964).
On the Origin of Species, ed. J. Endersby (1859; Cambridge, 2009).
The Works of Charles Darwin, ed. P. H. Barrett and R. B. Freeman,
29 vols. (London, 1986).
Darwin’s Correspondence
The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, ed. F. Burkhardt et al., 16 vols. and
continuing (Cambridge, 1985 – ); hereafter abbreviated Correspondence.
Charles Darwin: The Beagle Letters, ed. F. Burkhardt (Cambridge, 2008).
Origins: Charles Darwin’s Selected Letters, 1821 – 1859, ed. F. Burkhardt
(Cambridge, 2008).
Evolution: Charles Darwin’s Selected Letters, 1860 – 1870, ed. F. Burkhardt,
S. Evans, and A. Pearn (Cambridge, 2008).
Recommended Websites
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/: authoritative annotated transcriptions
and summaries of thousands of letters to and from Darwin, with exten-
sive supporting materials.
http://darwin-online.org.uk/: Darwin’s complete publications from
reliable editions, with thousands of manuscripts and a comprehensive
bibliography.

00-Darwin-EW-Prelims.indd xl 9/18/08 1:45:02 PM

 Select Bibliography xli
http://darwinlibrary.amnh.org/: authoritative editions of Darwin’s
manuscripts and many other materials.
Biography and Bibliography
Browne, J., Charles Darwin, 2 vols. (London, 1995 – 2002).
—— Darwin’s Origin of Species: A Biography (London, 2006).
Desmond, A., and Moore, J., Darwin (London, 1991).
Freeman, R. B., The Works of Charles Darwin: An Annotated Bibliographical
Handlist (Folkestone, Kent, 1977).
Gruber, H., Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity
(2nd edn., Chicago, 1981).
Herbert, S., Charles Darwin, Geologist (Ithaca, 2005).
Keynes, R., Annie’s Box: Charles Darwin, his Daughter and Human
Evolution (London, 2001).
Keynes, R. D., Fossils, Finches and Fuegians: Charles Darwin’s Adventures
and Discoveries on the Beagle, 1832 – 1836 (London, 2002).
Quammen, D., The Kiwi’s Egg: Charles Darwin and Natural Selection
(London, 2007).
Critical Studies
Beer, G., Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot
and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (London, 1983).
Dawson, G., Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability (Cambridge,
2007).
Desmond, A., and Moore, J., Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the
Quest for Human Origins (London, 2009).
Donald, D. (ed.), Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the
Visual Arts (New Haven, 2009).
Gagnier, R., Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain,
1832 – 1920 (Oxford, 1991).
Hodge, J., and Radick, G. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin
(Cambridge, 2003).
Kohn, D. (ed.), The Darwinian Heritage (Princeton, 1985).
Landau, M., Narratives of Human Evolution (New Haven, 1991).
Neve, M., ‘Introduction’, in C. Darwin, Autobiographies, ed. M. Neve and
S. Messenger (London, 2002), pp. ix – xxiii.
Ospovat, D., The Development of Darwin’s Theory: Natural History, Natural
Theology, and Natural Selection (Cambridge, 1981).
Richards, E., ‘Darwin and the Descent of Woman’, in D. Oldroyd
and I. Langham (eds.), The Wider Domain of Evolutionary Thought
(Dordrecht, 1983), 57 – 111.
Richards, R. J., and Ruse, M. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin’s
Origin of Species (Cambridge, 2009).

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 xlii Select Bibliography
Richardson, A., Love and Eugenics in the late Nineteenth Century: Rational
Reproduction and the New Woman (Oxford, 2003).
Smith, J., Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual Culture (Cambridge, 2006).
Sulloway, F., ‘Darwin and his Finches: The Evolution of a Legend’,
Journal of the History of Biology, 15 (1982), 1 – 53.
—— ‘Darwin’s Conversion: The Beagle Voyage and its Aftermath’,
Journal of the History of Biology, 15 (1982), 325 – 96.
—— ‘Darwin and the Galapagos’, Biological Journal of the Linnaean
Society, 21 (1984), 29 – 59.
Young, R. M., Nature’s Metaphor: Darwin’s Place in Victorian Culture
(Cambridge, 1985).
Evolution
Bowler, P. J., Evolution: The History of an Idea, 3rd edn. (Berkeley and
Los Angeles, 2003).
Burrow, J., Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory
(Cambridge, 1966).
Corsi, P., The Age of Lamarck: Evolutionary Theories in France, 1790 – 1830
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988).
Desmond, A., The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform
in Radical London (Chicago, 1989).
Larson, E. J., Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory
(New York, 2004).
Radick, G., The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language
(Chicago, 2007).
Richards, R. J., Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind
and Behavior (Chicago, 1987).
Ruse, M., The Darwinian Revolution (Chicago, 1979).
Secord, J., Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception,
and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
(Chicago, 2000).
Contexts
Bayly, C. A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780 – 1914 (Oxford, 2004).
Bowler, P. J., and Pickstone, J. V. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Science,
vi. The Modern Biological and Earth Sciences (Cambridge, 2009).
Brooke, J. H., Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge,
1991).
Dixon, T., Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2008).
Hazelwood, N., Savage: The Life and Times of Jemmy Button (New York,
2001).
Hilton, B., A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783 – 1846
(Oxford, 2006).

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Hoppen, K. T., The Mid-Victorian Generation, 1846 – 1886 (Oxford, 1998).
Jardine, N., Spary, E. C., and Secord, J. A. (eds.), Cultures of Natural
History (Cambridge, 1997).
Lightman, B., Victorian Science in Context (Chicago, 1997).
—— Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences
(Chicago, 2007).
McKitterick, D. (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain,
vi. 1830 – 1914 (Cambridge, 2009).
Rudwick, M. J. S., Worlds before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in
the Age of Reform (Chicago, 2008).
Russett, C. E., Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood
(Cambridge, Mass., 1989).
Stocking, G. W., Victorian Anthropology (New York, 1987).
Topham, J. R., ‘Scientific Publishing and the Reading of Science in
Nineteenth-Century Britain: A Historiographical Survey and Guide
to Sources’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 31 (2000),
559 – 612.
Waterman, A. M. C., Revolution, Economics and Religion: Christian Political
Economy, 1798 – 1833 (Cambridge, 1991).
White, P., Thomas Huxley: Making the ‘Man of Science’ (Cambridge,
2003).
Reception
Appleman, P. (ed.), Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, 3rd edn. (New
York, 2001).
Bowler, P., The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical
Myth (Baltimore, 1988).
Cantor, G., and Swetlitz, M. (eds.), Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of
Darwinism (Chicago, 2006).
Crook, P., Darwinism, War and History: The Debate over the Biology of
War from the ‘Origin of Species’ to the First World War (Cambridge,
1994).
Ellegård, A., Darwin and the General Reader: The Reception of Darwin’s
Theory of Evolution in the British Periodical Press, 1859 – 1872
(1958).
Elshakry, M., ‘The Gospel of Science and American Evangelism in Late
Ottoman Beirut’, Past and Present, 196 (2007), 173 – 214.
Engels, E. M., and Glick, T. F. (eds.), The Reception of Charles Darwin
in Europe, 2 vols. (The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe,
series ed. E. Shaffer) (London, 2009).
Finney, C., Paradise Revealed: Natural History in Nineteenth-Century
Australia (Melbourne, 1993).

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 xliv Select Bibliography
Glick, T. F. (ed.), The Comparative Reception of Darwinism (Austin,
Tex., 1974).
—— Puig-Samper, M. A., and Ruiz, R. (eds.), The Reception of Darwinism
in the Iberian World: Spain, Spanish America and Brazil (Dordrecht,
2001).
Hawkins, M., Social Darwinism in European and American Thought,
1860 – 1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat (Cambridge, 1997).
Hull, D. L., Darwin and his Critics: The Reception of Darwin’s Theory of
Evolution by the Scientific Community (Chicago, 1973).
Kelly, A., The Descent of Darwin: The Popularization of Darwinism in
Germany, 1860 – 1914 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981).
Kevles, D. J., In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human
Heredity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985).
Moore, J. R., The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Struggle
to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870 – 1900
(Cambridge, 1979).
Novoa, A., and Levine A., ¡Darwinistas! Evolution, Race, and Science in
Nineteenth Century Argentina (forthcoming).
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Role of Place, Race, Religion and Gender (Cambridge, 1999).
Pancaldi, G., Darwin in Italy: Science across Cultural Frontiers
(Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1983).
Pusey, J. R., China and Charles Darwin (Cambridge, Mass., 1983).
Vucinich, A., Darwin in Russian Thought (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
1988).
Ziadat, A. A., Western Science in the Arab World: The Impact of Darwinism,
1860 – 1930 (Basingstoke, Hampshire, 1986).
Implications
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Dembski, W., and Ruse M. (eds.), Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA
(Cambridge, 2004).
Dennett, D., Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
(London, 1995).
Gayon, J., Darwinism’s Struggle for Survival (Cambridge, 1998).
Kitcher, P., Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith
(Oxford, 2007).
Levine, G., Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the Re-Enchantment
of the World (Princeton, 2006).
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Ruse, M., Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? The Relationship between
Science and Religion (Cambridge, 2000).

00-Darwin-EW-Prelims.indd xliv 9/18/08 1:45:03 PM

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 „Achtung! Präsentieret’s G’währ! Halt! Schtüll schtanden! Front!“
Ein Mordsspektakel, Präsentiermarsch, Kommando, einer brüllt
lauter wie der andere; bloß der Bader ist mäuserlstill und macht ein
Gesicht, als tät man ihm am ganzen Leib Schröpfköpf setzen.
Ich will es kurz machen und berichte nur, wer alles gekommen
ist.
Also zuerst die Huglfinger Veteranen, hernach die Zeidelfinger
Veteranen. Dann die Zeidelhachinger Feuerwehr, die
Hintermochinger Feuerwehr, der Gesellenverein von Kraßling, die
Bachinger, Feichtelhauser, Simmertshofer, Grublinger, Roglinger
Feuerwehren, die Watschenbacher, Bratlhauser, Obermoorer
Veteranen, die Zimmerstutzenschützen von Glaching, Lackelhofen
und Wutzling, und zuletzt der Aloisiusverein von Winzing, 17 Vereine
mit 22 Fahnen, denn mehrere haben eine alte und eine neue gehabt.
Nach dem Festprogramm mußte jetzt ein Zug arrangiert werden
zum Lamplwirt, wo der Festplatz hergerichtet war und die feierliche
Uebergabe der Fahne durch die Ehrenjungfrauen erfolgen sollte.
Das ist aber leichter gesagt als getan. Denn bis fünfhundert
Mannerleut in Ordnung stehen und jeder Verein einen Platz hat, der
ihm paßt, nicht zu weit vorn und nicht zu weit hinten, geht es lang
her.
Endlich war alles so weit, daß es losgehen konnte.
An der Spitze marschierten die Ehrenjungfrauen, dann kam der
Rauchklub hinterdrein, der neugewonnene Kartell- oder
Bruderverein, die Zimmerstutzenschützen von Wutzling; die andern
folgten in wohlbedachter Ordnung.
Dreimal ging es um Kraglfing herum, dann hielt der Zug beim
Lamplwirt.
Auf dem Podium stellten sich die Ehrenjungfrauen in ihren
frischgewaschenen weißen Kleidern auf; ihre Anführerin, die
Hofbauern Cenzl, hielt das Band, welches die Frau Badermeisterin
für die neue Fahne gestiftet hatte.
 So war alles bereit, und der feierliche Akt konnte beginnen.
Unter der Haustür des Lamplwirtes erschien der Nazi mit dem
verhüllten Banner. Seine riesigen Hände krampften sich um den
Schaft, seine Blicke waren nach vorne gerichtet, und er ging unter
den Klängen des Mussinanmarsches auf das Podium so ängstlich zu,
als trüge er einen ebenvollen Teller Suppe und dürfe kein Tröpferl
verschütten. Weil er den Antritt nicht sah, kam er ins Stolpern und
fiel streckterlängs auf das Podium hinauf. Zum Glück passierte der
Fahne nichts; es war so Aerger und Schand genug für den Nazi, wie
die dummen Leute lachten und schrien. Er putzte sich die Knie ab
und merkte sich in der Geschwindigkeit ein paar Huglfinger, die am
lautesten taten.
Allmählich wurde es wieder still, und man wartete darauf, was
jetzt kommen würde. Und lang kam gar nichts.
Die am nächsten beim Podium standen, konnten sehn, wie der
Hofbauer den Lippel am Aermel zog und in ihn hineinredete; hie und
da verstand man auch ein paar Brocken.
„Lippl, Du kimmst dro. Mach, daß D’ auf kimmst.“
„I ko net.“
„Du muaßt.“
„Na! sag zu die Leut, ich bin krank worn, oder mir hat’s d’ Red
verschlag’n. Mir is alles gleich.“
„Dös geht net. Da schaug zu Deiner Frau num, de wart’ aa scho
auf Di. Was moanst denn, daß de sagen tat?“
„Hofbauer, geht’s gar net anderst?“
„Na,“ sag i, „Du muaßt Dei Red halt’n.“
„In Gott’s Nam!“
Und mit einem tiefen Seufzer, der bis zuhinterst aus dem Magen
herauskommt, steigt der Bader auf das Podium.
 Das Aussehen ist so, als müßt er seinem besten Freund die
Leichenred halten, und könnt nicht anfangen vor lauter Wehmut und
Trübsal.
„Hochansehnliche Festversammlung! Indem... wo wir uns heite
versammelt haben..., ja, gesammelt haben, ah..., indem daß wir ein
Fest feiern. Es ist ein seltenes Fest, es ist ein erhabenes Fest, es ist
ein großes Fest..., es ist ein Fest und eine erhabene Trophöe, die wo
wir in Händen halten. Blicket hinauf, wo unser Rausch dem Banner
folgt.., ah, wo unser Banner, wo der Rausch..., jetzt kon i nimmer...!“
Sternelement! Kreuzbirnbaum und Hollerstaud’n, ist das zuwider!
Jetzt steht das Häuferl Elend da droben auf dem Podium und
schnappt nach Luft wie ein geangelter Karpfen! Sonst hat er jeden
Abend auf der Bierbank eine solche Bratlgoschen, daß man meint, er
könnt alle Politiker niederreden, wann er bloß möcht, und jetzt
blamiert er ganz Kraglfing und bringt nicht einmal die Pamperlred
fertig. Was bloß die Auswärtigen daheim erzählen werden!...
Aber gottlob, da steht schon der Helfer in der Not bei ihm, der
Hofbauer.
„Hochgeehrte Festversammlung,“ schreit er, „liebe Gäste und
Kameraden! Unserm Herrn Fürstand is a Malheur passiert; er hat mir
gestern scho gesagt, daß er ein fettes Schweinern’s derwischt hat
und jetzt hat er a Fieber kriagt. Aber dös macht nix. D’ Hauptsach is
die Meinigung, und dös, was er sagen hat w o l l e n. Und drum der
Rauchklub soll leben; füfat hooch! hooch! hooch!“
Das soll dem Hofbauer ins Wachs’l druckt werden, daß er die
Geschichte noch so herausgerissen hat, das soll ihm schon keiner
vergessen.
Indes hat das Fest doch nach dem Programm weitergehen
können; der Nazi enthüllt die Fahn, die Cenzl hängt das neue Band
hin und halt dann die Fahn so lang, bis die Leixenbauern Nannl ihren
Vers hergesagt hat.
 Noch gleichet eier kleiner Kreis
Dem leicht bewegten schwachen Reis,
Doch wird er wachsen immerdar
Und größer werden Jahr für Jahr,
Wenn ihr, wie jetzt in Einigkeit,
Nur pfleget die Geselligkeit,
Drum, daß ihr immer tut desgleichen,
Des sei die neue Fahn ein Zeichen,
Weil Freindschaft steht auf dem Panür,
Drum leb der R a u c h k l u b für und für.

Gemacht hat das Gedicht der Herr Hilfslehrer, und ich behaupte,
daß es schön war. Auch muß ich sagen, daß die Nannl ihr Sach brav
machte; sie legte jedesmal den Ton auf die letzte Silbe, damit man
hören könnte, daß sich die Versl auch reimen, und mit der Hand fuhr
sie so schön auf und ab, als tät sie G’sott schneiden.
Den Zuhörern hat es gut gefallen, und jedenfalls wäre der
Eindruck noch besser gewesen, wenn nicht viele Leute auf den
Bader Obacht gegeben hätten, der seit einer Viertelstunde alleweil
Leibschneiden markierte, damit jeder an seine Krankheit glauben
möcht.
Mit der Nannl ihrem Gedicht war der Festakt beim Lamplwirt gar.
Der Zug stellte sich wieder auf, nachdem der Nazi die Fahne von
den Ehrenjungfrauen zurückbekommen hatte, und man marschierte
lustig zur Kirche hinunter.
Ich denk aber, wir gehen nicht mit, weil doch noch mehreres zu
beschreiben ist, und schauen lieber zum Oberwirt hinauf, wo für den
Frühschoppen und das Mahl schon alles hergerichtet ist.
Der Saal ist bald betrachtet. Er schaut so farbenprächtig aus wie
ein Karussel auf der Oktoberfestwiesen; lauter rote und blaue Tüchel
hängen an der Wand, und zwischen zwei Fenstern ist allemal ein
Spiegel. Die Fenster sind gut zugeschlossen, daß „der Sommerluft“
nicht herein und der Fliegenschwarm nicht hinaus kann. Es ist
deswegen schon jetzt recht angenehm warm in dem Tanzsaal. In
fünf langen Reihen stehen die Tische, alle sauber gedeckt, was einen
freundlichen Anblick gewährt.
In der Kuchel erfragen wir bei der Frau Wirtin, die einen
brennroten Kopf auf hat und mit sehr vernehmlicher Stimme ihre
Trabanten kommandiert, was es heut für gute Sachen gibt.
Zum Frühschoppen: Lüngerl mit Knödel, hernach Bratwürst und
Stockwürst.
Zum Mahl: Leberknödel, Gansjung, Rindfleisch, Gänse und Enten,
hernach Schweinernes und Kälbernes, und zum Draufsetzen
Schmalznudeln mit Sauerkraut.
„Moanens, daß dös Menü g’langt?“ fragt die Frau Wirtin, da hört
man schon um das Eck herum einen schmetternden Marsch blasen.
Das ruft in der Kuchel eine schreckhafte Aufregung hervor.
„Cenzl, Gretl, Nannl, d’Würscht ei’toa! Moni, wo steckst denn?
Den großen Hafen her. D’Würscht umrühren! D’Teller herrichten...
Ratsch, pum! Jessas, Marei! Jetzt laßt das Weibsbild einen Arm voll
Teller fallen! Glaubst, i hab’s g’stohlen?“...
Das Wasser zischt auf dem Herd, Dampfwolken steigen aus den
Kesseln auf, Teller klirren, Befehle ertönen, und dazu blasen jetzt
ohrenzerreißend die ersten Musiker schon im Hausgang. Immer neue
Scharen drucken herein, und in kurzer Zeit ist der Saal gesteckt voll.
Die Kellnerinnen laufen hin und her, stellen da einen riesigen
Hafen voll Lüngerl hin, dort einen Schanzkorb voll Knödel, bringen
im Geschwindschritt die gefüllten Krügel und Gläser, hören da auf
eine Frag, geben dort eine Antwort, kurz, eine Viertelstund lang ist
alles in Aufregung und Bewegung, bis jene Ruhe eintritt, die
bezeugt, daß gottlob jeder Gast sein Sach hat, und die nur von dem
behaglichen Schlürfen und Löffelklappern unterbrochen wird.
In diese Idylle hinein blast auf einmal der C-Trompeter das
bekannte Signal, und es erhebt sich am mittleren Tisch die lange
Gestalt des Hofbauern, welcher die erste von seinen vorhabenden
drei Reden losschießen will.
„Meine Herrna! Lübwerte Festgenossen! Wür kommen von einer
erhebenden Feuer, und die zindenden Worte unseres Fürschtandes,
des Herrn Lippl, sind noch in unserer Erinnerung. (Murmeln und
Gelächter.) Aber indem unser Fest so schön geworden ist, müssen
wir nachdenken, wer schuld daran ist. Das sünd die Verein, die wo
mitgewürkt haben, das sünd die Gäste, die wo gekommen sünd.
(Bravo!)
Lübe Vereinsbrider! Das ist ein schönes Zeichen von
Briderlichkeit, indem daß von weit her die Leut gekommen sünd, und
das dürfen wir nicht vergessen, indem sie so große Opfer gebracht
haben und heite noch bringen werden. (Bravo!)
Die Fahnenweuhe ist wie eine Kindstauf, wo die Hauptsach der
Göd (Pate) ist. Unsere Göden, das sind die Gäst, und wür missen
ihnen versprechen, daß wir brave Godeln sein wollen (Heiterkeit),
jawohl! und daß wir überall hinkommen wollen, wo sie ein Fest
feuern, und uns durch gar nichts abhalten lassen, indem, daß auch
wir briderlich sind. (Bravo!)
Lübe Vereinsbrider! Die Göden sollen leben hooch, hooch, hooch!
Mit gedämpfter Schtümme hooch!“
Eine gute Red ist mehr wert als zehn Musikstück; sie macht mit
einem Schlag eine freundliche Stimmung, und jeder wird lustig,
wenn er sieht, daß das Richtige gesagt worden ist. Freilich meinen
dann viele, sie müssen noch ein bisserl was dazu tun, damit ja nichts
mehr fehlt, und deswegen kriegt überall, in Kraglfing so gut wie
anderswo, eine gute Red so viele Junge.
Wenn die Festgäste jedesmal mit Essen aufgehört hätten, sobald
der C-Trompeter verkündigte, daß wieder einem eine Red not sei,
dann wären alle Schüsseln kalt geworden. Sie paßten nicht mehr auf
und säbelten ruhig weiter, und so ist wohl manches richtige Wort vor
Tellerklappern und Messerklirren überhört worden.
 Nach dem Hofbauern stand der Vorstand der Wutzlinger
Schützen auf und feierte den jungen Verein, hernach kam der
Feuerwehrkommandant von Zeidelhaching mit einem Hoch auf die
Veteranenvereine, der Loibl von Watschenbach ließ dafür die
Feuerwehr leben, und so ging es weiter, bis alle siebzehn Vereine
wenigstens einmal zum Wort gekommen waren.
Dazwischen wurde auf das Trinken nicht vergessen, und als das
Mahl seinem Ende zuging, war die Stimmung schon recht gehoben.
Bald stand dort und da einer von seinem Platz auf, um am
benachbarten Tisch einen Besuch zu machen und Bescheid zu
trinken, alte Freunde rückten näher zusammen und begannen einen
wichtigen Diskurs über das heurige Jahr und den miserabligen
Wachstum, und an den Tischen, wo die Jungen saßen, probierte
schon hie und da einer seine Singstimme.
Die Temperatur war gut warm geworden und an der Decke
erstickten die Fliegen langsam im Zigarrenrauch.
Der letzte Gang war vorbei, die meisten hatten schon von dem
Bratl nichts mehr gegessen, sondern ihr Teil säuberlich mit ein bissel
Sauce und Salat eingewickelt für Weib und Kind; jetzt hieß es
aufbrechen zum Lamplwirt, wo mit Gartenfest und Ball das Fest
seinen Abschluß finden sollte. Die Jungen waren rasch
verschwunden, mit Ausnahme der Fahnenträger, die sich jetzt über
ihre bevorzugte Stellung ärgerten, weil sie nicht so schnell zu den
Mädeln kommen konnten und langsam mit ihren Fahnen nachgehen
mußten. Die Aelteren blieben noch ein wenig beim Oberwirt sitzen;
besonders der Bader konnte sich nicht entschließen, das Lokal zu
verlassen; es grauste ihm ein bissel vor seiner besseren Hälfte
wegen der Festrede, und um sich möglichst gut für daheim
vorzubereiten, erklärte er jetzt seinen Tischnachbarn Art und
Ursache seines Leidens.
„Also,“ sagt er, „i steig aufs Podium, und wia ’r mit’n rechten
Fuaß nachtritt, spür i scho so a spassige.. wia muaß i glei sag’n.. so
a, so a.. Oes versteht’s mi scho..“
 „Jawohl,“ sagt der Hofbauer.
„Also i denk mir, auweh, Lippl, da hat’s was, und richtig, wia ’r i ’s
Maul aufmach, is mir grad, als wenn ma oana mit an glühenden
Eisenstangel in Mag’n neistechet und drahet ’s drin a paarmal um...
es hat mei ganze Geisteskraft dazu g’hört, daß i überhaupts red’n
hab kinna, an anderer war umg’fallen...“
„Ah, ah, dös is a merkwürdige G’schicht,“ sagt der Loibl von
Winzing, „aba jetzt is da wieda bessa?“
„No, wia ma’s nimmt,“ meint der Lippl, „ma muaß halt an Energie
hamm...“
„Aba dös Schweinerne, wo Dir de Beschwerden g’macht hat,“
fällt jetzt der Hofbauer ein, „dös hast do ziemli guat zuadeckt. Drei
Paar Stockwürscht und von jedem Gang a halb’s Pfund hat Di wieder
aufg’richt.“
„Gel,“ schreit jetzt der Lippl, „gel Hofbauer, Du moanst, Du bist
jetzt der Grasober, weilst Dei alte Veteranared aufg’warmt hast. So a
Red ko oana mit dem größten Leibschneiden halt’n, da wer’n
höchstens dö andern Leut krank, aba m e i Red’...“
Wir wollen den Disputat, der immer heftiger wird, verlassen und
auch schön langsam durch das Dorf zum Lamplwirt hinuntergehen.
Die Fröhlichkeit im Garten bleibt nicht lange aus, denn die
Mannerleut haben schon vom Mahl her angerauchte Köpfe, und die
Weiberleut sind leicht zufrieden, wenn sie auch einmal beim Bier
sitzen dürfen.
Aus dem oberen Stockwerk des Wirtshauses rauscht die
Tanzmusik; also ist da die Lustigkeit auch schon im Gang, sie
entwickelt sich jetzt unten und oben gleichmäßig weiter.
Herunten wird die Unterhaltung mit jeder Viertelstunde lauter.
Die Einigkeit in den Meinungen schwindet, und alte Feindseligkeiten
werden aufgefrischt im Bierdusel.
 „Moanst, i woaß net, daß D’ im Auswarts (März) ’s March verruckt
host,“ fangt einer an, „aber moring laß i de Feldg’schworna kemma,
da werd si Dei Schlechtigkeit ausweisen.“
„Wos hob i?“
„Jawohl host as. Und in Roan host einig’ackert. Aba jetzt kimm i
Dir advikatisch.“
„Seid’s doch staat, Leut! Zum Streiten seid’s do heunt net do,“
mahnt ein Vernünftiger ab und bewirkt für diesmal Ruhe.
Aber schon hört man unfreundliche Laute von einem andern
Tisch her.
„Wos bin i? Wos host g’sagt? A schlechta Mensch bin i?“
„Bst! Staat! D’Musik spielt.“
Noch hat sie Macht über die Gemüter und verkehrt den
aufflammenden Zorn in Heiterkeit. Die männlichen Zuhörer begleiten
mit Fingerschnackeln und Pfeifen den lustigen Marsch. Besonders
der Loibl von Huglfing ist völlig ein Virtuos in der Kunst, denn er
bringt auch die tiefen Töne fertig, indem er das Maul zuspitzt wie
einen Schweinsrüssel und mit der Hand drauf schlagt.
Wer das Landleben nicht kennt, hätte jetzt meinen können, der
Friede sei endgültig hergestellt, denn die Lustigkeit dauerte jetzt an
und kam schon in das zweite Stadium, das Singen nämlich. In
Gruppen zu drei und vier tut sich an jedem Tisch eine
Sängergesellschaft zusammen. Einer schaut dem andern unverwandt
auf den Mund, bis ein hoher Ton heraus muß; dann drückt jeder die
Augen zu und schreit, so laut als er kann. Von links und rechts, aus
jedem Eck heraus johlt die Sängerschar, unaufhörlich und mit einem
Eifer, als tät jeder ein Spielhonorar dafür kriegen. Der alte
Pfundmaier von Huglfing ist ganz glückselig, weil ihn die andern an
seinem Tisch vorsingen lassen, und einmal über das andermal sagt
er:
„Ja, wann i no dreiß’g Jahr alt war! Do hob i g’sunga! Wie a
Zeiserl! Aba es geht heint no. Paßt’s auf, jetzt singa ma das Liad vom
Jägersmann:“

Es wollte ein Jägerlein jagen

Dreiviertel Stunden vor Tag,
Wohl in dem grünen Wald, jaaa! jaaa!
Wohl in dem grünen Wald!

Das Lied hat sechzehn Strophen und braucht eine gute Stimm,
denn bei dem „jaa“ muß der Pfundmaier schreien, daß ihm die
Augen naß werden. Aber er hat recht, es geht noch, und er singt
den Schluß so laut wie den Anfang:

Kein Kränzigen darfst du nicht tragen

Auf deinen goldenen Haar,
Ein Weißhäublein mußt du jetzt haben
Wie andere Jägersfraun jaaa! jaaa!
Wie andere Jägersfraun.

„Brafo! brafo, Pfundmoar! Setz no oos drauf!“

Da Leberknödel und da Fastenknödel

Hamm sie mit anand z’trag’n,
Da hat da Leberknödel an Fastenknödel
Uebern Tisch obi g’schlag’n.

Bitt Di gor schea, bitt Di gor schea,

Zoag mar an Weg an d’Mühl oi,
Kost net irr gea, kost net fei gea,
Wat no mitt’n an Boch oi.

„Brafo! Jui! Da Pfundmoar soll leben!“ Wie an dem Tisch, so geht

es an allen anderen zu; immer lauter wird der Gesang, und immer
schneller werden die Maßkrüge leer.
 Wer sich auskennt, der weiß, daß die Luft jetzt mit Zündstoff
geschwängert ist, und nicht umsonst geht der Wirt jetzt im Garten
herum und gibt auf den kleinsten Streit scharf Obacht. Zwei
Metzgerburschen stehen an der Bierschenke mit aufgekrempelten
Aermeln und warten auf den Befehl, daß sie einen hinauswerfen
müssen.
Da winkt der Wirt. „Halt, Loibl, was gibt’s da? G’rafft werd nix.“
Der Loibl und sein Nachbar, der Reischelbauer, liegen sich aber
schon in den Haaren, und jeder zieht aus Leibeskräften den Gegner
bei der Stirnlocke hin und her „Ausanand sog i! Schorschl, tua’s
aussi.“
In einem Augenblick liegt der Loibl unter dem Tisch, und der
Reischl wird aus dem Garten hinausgekugelt wie ein Bierbanzen.
Aber schon spektakelt es wieder ein paar Schritt weiter daneben.
„Du Haderlump, Du stehltst Dei Sach, und i muaß ma’s vodean!
Du begehst ja Dei’s Nächsten Guat!“
„Sag’s no’ mal,“ schreit der andere. Diesmal macht die Kellnerin
Frieden; sie haut mit dem Abwischhadern in den Tisch hinein, daß
jeder von den zwei Streithanseln einen spanischen Nebel in das
Gesicht bekommt, und nimmt ihnen resolut das Bier weg. Die
Nachbarn legen sich dazwischen, und so gelingt es nochmal die
Ruhe herzustellen. Auf das offene Pulverfaß ist Wasser geschüttet.
Der Wirt traut dem Landfrieden nicht mehr und geht an den Tisch,
wo die Vorstandschaft und das Komitee sitzt. „Hofbauer,“ sagt er, „ös
müßt’s was toa, sunst hab i in oaner halben Stund koan ganzen
Stuhl mehr. Am Tanzboden hab i scho fünf rausschmeißen lassen,
und herunt fangen’s aa schon o. Schau no hi, do stengan scho
enkere Burschen bei der Haustür beinand. Dös bedeut nix Guats.“
„Halt!“ sagt der Bader, „dös wern ma glei hamm, dös mach i; i
halt a Red...“
„Dös gibt’s net,“ fallt seine Frau ein, „Du haltst gar nix als wia Dei
Maul. Moanst, i mag nomal so dasteh’ wia heint vormittag?...“
 „Eine solchene Sprach verbitt i mir, was fallt denn Dir ei?
Vorstand bin i, und Punktum!“
„Oho!“
„Frau Lippel, lassen’s eahm sei Red halt’n,“ interveniert der
Hofbauer, „vielleicht gibt’s a Gaudi, dös war dös beste Mittel.“
Die Gattin läßt sich endlich herbei, und ein paar Minuten später
steht der Herr Lippel in seiner ganzen Größe auf dem Stuhl und
wartet darauf, daß sich der Lärm legt.
Nach vielen Bemühungen gelingt es den Musikern und den
Komiteemitgliedern, die allgemeine Aufmerksamkeit auf den Redner
zu lenken.
„Meine Herren,“ beginnt dieser, „Hochansehnliche
Föstversammlung! Indem ich umherblücke und indem ich den
heintigen Tag anschaue, kommt es mir traurig vor, daß ein solchenes
Fest aufhören muß. Aber alles hat ein End, und dieses muß ich jetzt
bereiten. Aber bevor wir allmählich auseinandergehen, schauen wir
noch einmal zurück auf die Freiden, die wo wir gehabt haben. Und
wir fragen uns zuerst, warum wir ein solches Fest und eine solchene
Freid gehabt haben. Nur deswegen, weil wir uns alle lieb haben, weil
Friede und Eintracht unter uns wohnen....“
Die letzten Worte verklingen in einem gräulichen Lärm, der sich
vom Tanzboden her erhebt. Fensterscheiben klirren, die Mädel
stoßen gellende Schreie aus, und über die Stiege herunter poltert
und rumpelt unter wütenden Rufen ein dichtgedrängter Haufen.
Kaum sind die vordersten im Garten angelangt, ertönt schon das
verhängnisvolle Patschen und Klatschen, das jeder Eingeborene
kennt. Vergeblich stürzt sich der Wirt mit seiner Hilfsschar unter sie;
der Haufen wird immer größer, der Knäuel immer dichter. Der uralte
Haß zwischen den Huglfingern und den Kraglfingern ist zum
Ausbruch gekommen, und die Zeidelfinger benützten die günstige
Gelegenheit, um an den Ansiedlern von Lackelhofen ihre Wut
auszulassen. Und so auch die andern. Im Nu ist der Garten in einen
Kampfplatz verwandelt. Durch Pfeifen und Zurufen finden sich die
Dorfschaften zusammen, und nun beginnt eine homerische Schlacht.
Wütendes Schnaufen, Stampfen, Schreien; Tischfüße knaxen,
Köpfe krachen, da und dort fliegen klirrend die Scherben von Krügen
und Tellern. Im dichtesten Haufen ficht die streitbare Jugend, weiter
abseits steht das ehrwürdige, aber doch kampfbegierige Alter und
entsendet mit sicherer Hand die Wurfgeschosse. Der Hofbauern Nazi
hat seine Aufgabe erkannt; er ergreift die Fahne mit der Linken und
stürzt sich in das Gewühl; seine ledernen Handschuhe erweisen sich
ebenso tauglich zur Parade wie zum Hieb. Das flatternde Panier
weist den Kraglfingern den Weg zur Ehre, und so wogt der Kampf
hin und wider.
Allmählich jedoch ermatten die Kräfte; immer mehr Kämpfer
verlassen das Blachfeld, um an den Brunnen und in den Teichen des
Dorfes die brennenden Wunden auszuwaschen. Jetzt gelingt es dem
Wirt und der Gendarmerie, durchzudringen und die Völker zu
trennen. Aber wie sieht der Festplatz in der Abenddämmerung aus!
Kein Tisch steht mehr auf seinen Füßen, kein Stuhl kann sich
mehr gerade halten; Fetzen von Kleidungsstücken liegen auf dem
Boden neben Hüten und ehemaligen Halstüchern; in den Bierlachen
liegen die Scherben der Maßkrüge, und da, wo der Kampf am
heftigsten war, wo der Kies am stärksten aufgewühlt ist, liegt der
zerbrochene Schaft und die zerstückelte Fahne des Rauchklubs
Kraglfing.
 Die Richter
Aus: Agricola. Verlag Albert Langen, München

ohann Feichtl, Hüter und Schäfer der Gemeinde

Kraglfing, wäre einmal fast „Hüter der staatlichen
Gesetze“ gewesen und hätte um ein Haar über seine
Brotgeber und Herren zu Gericht sitzen müssen. Das
ist aber so gekommen: An einem abgeschafften
Feiertag trank sich der Feichtl den landesüblichen Rausch an. Und
weil das bei ihm leider eine Seltenheit sein mußte, und außerdem,
weil sein Kolleg von Huglfing mit dabei war, nützte er die
Gelegenheit aus und sang mit erhobener Stimme alle Lieder, welche
ihm seit seiner Kindheit erinnerlich waren.
Allein hiebei begnügte er sich nicht, wie der Stationskommandant
in seinem Berichte schrieb, sondern er schlug auch mit einem
Halbliterglase den Takt auf dem Tische und verursachte, daß die
Kleidung des Gemeindebevollmächtigten Rupfenberger mit Bier
bespritzt wurde.
Der Huglfinger Schäfer hingegen steckte Mittel- und Zeigefinger
einer jeden Hand in den hiezu geöffneten Mund und ließ schrille
Pfiffe ertönen, welche weniger wegen ihrer Beschaffenheit, als
wegen ihres Urhebers von den anwesenden Gästen sehr mißliebig
bemerkt wurden.
Das Fest endete für die beiden mit einem Mißklange.
Der Gastwirt nahm Partei für die Besitzenden und entfernte die
Sänger, nicht ohne, wie der Herr Stationskommandant ebenfalls
meldete, nicht ohne daß es zu einem erheblichen Widerstande
seitens der Rubrikaten geführt hätte.
 Als Feichtl sich auf den notgedrungenen Heimweg machte und
mit seinen Kollegen ernste Gespräche sozialpolitischen Inhaltes
austauschte, da wußte er nicht, daß sein Gehaben Vergeltung
erheischte. Er blieb sich noch zwei weitere Tage hierüber im
unklaren, bis der Herr Gendarmeriestationskommandant von
Zeidlfing ihm einen Besuch abstattete und sich angelegentlich nach
Ort und Datum seiner Geburt, sowie nach dem Namen der verehrten
Eltern erkundigte.
Nunmehr erfuhr Feichtl mit Erstaunen, daß er an dem bewußten
Feiertage das Gesetz beleidigt hatte.
Nicht lange darauf erhielt er ein Schreiben, in welchem ihm diese
befremdende Tatsache urkundlich bestätigt wurde.
Feichtl las dieses Schriftstück des öfteren durch, dann schüttelte
er bedenklich den Kopf.
Zunächst schien es ihm sonderbar, daß ein so großmächtiger
Herr, wie Gnaden der Landrichter, sich eine solche Müh geben und
drei Seiten voll schreiben mochte wegen dem Pfifferling.
Sodann sah er mit Betrübnis, daß seine Schulbildung ihn nicht
befähigte, die Darstellung eines Ereignisses zu verstehen, welches er
miterlebt, ja sogar verursacht hatte.
Aber es half ihm alles nichts; so oft er auch die Sätze
wiederholte, sie blieben ihm so unklar, als wären sie lateinisch
gewesen.
In seiner Not wollte er sich eben an den Schullehrer wenden, als
sein Kollege Vitalis Glas von Huglfing ihn aufsuchte.
Nach kurzer Begrüßung holte Vitalis aus seiner Tasche ein
fettiges Exemplar des „Amperboten“ hervor, entfaltete es und
brachte einen beschriebenen Bogen Papier zum Vorschein.
„Da schau her, Feichtl,“ sagte er, „da hab i a Leset’s kriagt.“
„I woaß scho,“ sagte der Feichtl.
„Ja, wia ko’st denn Du dös wissen?“
 „Weil i aa r oas hab, und weil da Postbot g’sagt hat, für di hätt er
aa a kloans Präsent.“
„So? Du, Feichtl, vastehst des Du?“
„I nöt,“ sagte Feichtl, „vielleicht bring ma’s mitanand außa. Paß
auf, i les Dir des meinige für.“
Und dann buchstabierte er: „In Erwägung, daß Johann Feichtl
und Genosse...“
„Bei mir hoaßt’s Glas und Genosse.“
„Aha! da is allaweil der ander der „Genosse“. Sei no staad, jetzt
geht’s weiter: ... hinreichend vadächtig erscheinen... Host as g’hört,
Glas?“
„Jawohl hab i’s g’hört. Dös hamm uns dö G’schwollköpf vom
Ausschuß eibrockt. Mir erscheinen verdächtig!“
„Moanst net, daß dös a Beleidigung is? Nacha klag’n m’as aa.“
„Dös werd kam geh’, Glas, weil’s der Amtsrichter selber
g’schrieben hat.“...
„Moanst? Nacha tua weiter!“
„... am 27. September l. J.... l. J., dös kenn i net... in der
Gastwirtschaft des Hohenreiner in Kraglfing ungebührlicherweise
ruhestörenden Lärm erregt und die anwesenden Gäste belästigt zu
haben.. Sie’gst, Glas, mir hamm die Herrn Bauern belästigt.“
„Ja, weil dene ihre Ohrwaschel was eigen’s san. Woaßt, am
Sunntag hamm da Hofbauer und sei Nazi so plärrt, daß s’ Viech im
Stall rebellisch wor’n is. Des hat koan was scheniert. Wia da
Bürgermoasta vom Schandarm g’fragt wor’n is, ob dös G’schroa wen
g’ärgert hat, sagt er: Ah, wia werd denn dös oan ärgern, dös is g’rad
lustig g’wen.“
„Ja, no,“ sagt der Feichtl, „jetzt is scho, wias is. Paß auf, da
kimmt’s no dicker... in der ferneren Erwägung, daß Feichtl und
Genosse sich trotz der Aufforderung des Wirtes nicht aus der
Wirtschaft entfernten, daß diese Tathandlungen...“
„Wia hoaßt dös?“
„Tat...handlungen...“
„So? Tua weiter!“
„... je eine Uebertretung des groben Unfuges in sachlichem Zu—
sammenflusse mit einem Vergehen des Hausfriedensbruches
bilden...“
„Ah, ah,“ sagte Glas, „jetzt hör’ aber auf, ich kenn mi nimmer
aus...“
„Gel’, Schlaucherl,“ meint der Feichtl, „des hätt’st net denkt, daß
ma mit die vier Finger im Maul an solchen Haufa Verbrecha begeh’
kuntt? Da schaugst? Hätt’st da’s herauslassen! Was brauchst denn
Du pfeifa?“
„Was brauchst denn Du nacha singa? Moanst, des hat vielleicht
schöner to? Aba dös siech ich, verspielt san mir zwoa alleweil. Wann
i nur wüßt, was i toa soll?“
„Des is des leichtest,“ sagt der Feichtl, „in d’Vahandlung geh tean
ma, g’straft wern tean ma, ei’g’sperrt wern tean ma.“
„So siecht’s eam scho aus,“ brummt Vitalis Glas, „wegen dena
G’schwollköpf, wegen dena Großkopfeten. Am Deanstag is
d’Vahandlung?“
„Ja, um neuni. Ich geh über Huglfing, da wart’st beim Unterwirt
auf mi. Pfüat di daweil!“
Der Dienstag kam.
In der beträchtlichen Menge von Landbewohnern, welche sich
vor dem Gerichtsgebäude versammelt hatte, befanden sich auch
unsere zwei Schäfer. Sie standen ziemlich weit vorne und waren in
eifrigem Gespräche begriffen.
 „I hab mir an Pack Nudeln mitg’numma,“ sagt Feichtl. „Wann d’
Hofbäurin ’s Zählen o’fangt, wern’s ihr weniga fürkemma.“
„Hast d’as draht?“ fragt Glas.
„Freili! Woaßt, i laß mi glei ei’sperrn. Mit’n Appellirn gib i mi net
lang ab, da werd’s g’rad mehra. De Nudln iß i nacha in der
Fronvest.“
„Herrschaft Seiten! Wenn i nur aa dro denkt hätt! Beim
Roglbauern hamm’s gestern bacha, des waar grad recht g’wen.
Woaßt, dö Schundnickeln ziag’n uns ja do an Lohn ab für de Zeit, wo
ma eing’sperrt san.“
„Des is g’wiß. Du, da schau hin, da is ja der Rupfenberger. Der
macht an Zeugen gegen uns. Aber selber is er aa klagt, weil er an
Scheiblhuber beleidigt hat. Der werd sie wieda g’scheidt macha.“
So ging draußen das Gespräch fort. Im Gerichtssaal war es noch
leer, weil die Türen gesperrt blieben bis zum Beginn der Sitzung. Der
Gerichtsvorstand war der Ansicht, daß die Atmosphäre im Saale nicht
gewänne durch die Anwesenheit von einigen Dutzend mit
Lederhosen bekleideten Zuhörern, und hatte deshalb dem
Gerichtsdiener gemessenen Auftrag erteilt, die Pforten niemals
früher zu öffnen.
Der Befehl war ein Labsal für den Gerichtsdiener Schneckel. Er
bot ihm erwünschte Gelegenheit, seiner Herzensneigung
nachzugehen und den „Geselchten“ oder „Engländern“, wie er die
Bebauer unseres heimatlichen Bodens benamste, mit
Liebenswürdigkeiten aufzuwarten.
Schneckel war noch ein Prachtexemplar der leider aussterbenden
Rasse, einer der letzten jenes Geschlechtes von Gerichtsdienern, die
ehemals durch den „Haselnussenen“ Schrecken um sich verbreiteten
und auch späterhin, nach Abschaffung dieses heilsamen Institutes,
durch eine ungeheuerliche Grobheit den Respekt wacherhielten. Er
war Soldat gewesen, hatte sogar einen Feldzug mitgemacht und den
Bronzeller Schimmel erschießen helfen. Später in der langen
Friedenzeit hatte er dann in einer kleinen Garnison Gelegenheit
gefunden, sich jene Umgangsformen anzueignen, die ihm in seinem
nunmehrigen Posten so trefflich zustatten kamen. —
Die Bauern kannten und ehrten ihn; wenn er mit seiner tiefen,
durch häufiges Schnupfen undeutlich gewordenen Stimme
dazwischen fuhr, gab es keinen, der sich auflehnte oder gegen einen
ehrenden Beinamen Beschwerde erhob. Sie wußten alle, daß
Schneckel aus dem Vollen schöpfte und daß es ihm ein leichtes war,
jeden Widerspruch durch seinen unglaublichen Reichtum an
Schlagwörtern unmöglich zu machen. Diese Nachgiebigkeit rührte
aber unsern Schneckel durchaus nicht. Er geriet beim Anblick einer
Lederhose oder eines seidenen Kopftüchels stets in gereizte
Stimmung und gab ihr Luft, wo er konnte.
Darum bereitete es ihm ein grimmiges Vergnügen, wenn an den
Sitzungstagen die Kanadier zuerst die Saaltüre öffnen wollten, dann,
wenn sie nicht aufging, das Schloß probierten, anklopften, wieder
das Schloß probierten, um endlich kopfschüttelnd weiter zu gehen.
Oder wenn ein ungestümer Sohn des Landes mit Kopf und Knien
zugleich an die Tür anrannte, weil sie wider Erwarten geschlossen
war. Dann fand Schneckel Anlaß zu bitterem Hohne:
„Oeha! Muh! Is der Stall zu? Renn ma fei an Türstock net um! Mit
dem Kopf! Braucht’s Fräulein a Kanapee zum Warten?“ usw.
Auch an dem bewußten Dienstag gab sich Gelegenheit zu
verschiedenen Redewendungen, bis der Herr Oberamtsrichter
Schneckel rufen ließ und in sehr übler Laune fragte:
„Was is denn das heut mit den Schöffen? Jetzt is es schon neun
Uhr und noch ist keiner da. Wahrscheinlich stehen’s draußen bei den
andern rum. Schließen’s die Saaltür auf und lassen’s die Schöffen mit
den anderen gleich eintreten. Die Schöffen rufen’s mir aber gleich
vor; net, daß ich auf die Herren warten muß. Ueberhaupt,
Schneckel, wenn Sie auch zu was gut wären, dann könnten’s Ihnen
die Namen von den Schöffen aufschreiben und jedesmal Umfrag
halten, ob sie da sind. Für heut is das schon zu spät. Die Sitzung
muß angehen. Also etwas rasch, wenn ich bitten darf...“
 Als Schneckel abtrat, spie er Gift und Galle. Das ging ihm gerade
noch ab! Er, der alte gediente Soldat und Beamte, mußte sich
Vorwürfe machen lassen, weil so ein paar... so ein paar bocklederne
Hinterwäldler zu faul waren, um sich beim Oberamtsrichter
anzumelden. Himmel—stern Laudon! Fuchsteufelswild rasselte er mit
seinen Schlüsseln durch den Gang und sperrte die Saaltüre auf.
Dann schrie er in den Menschenhaufen hinein: „So, d’ Sitzung is
oganga. Z’erscht sollen amal d’ Schöffa reikemma. Moant’s vielleicht,
mir warten no lang auf de Hammeln?“
Feichtl stieß den Vitalis Glas an und sagte: „Hast g’hört, mir
kemma z’erscht dro. Geh zua!“
Und sie schoben sich langsam an der Spitze des nachdrängenden
Haufens in den Saal. Am Eingang empfing sie noch einmal
Schneckel: „Seid’s O e s d’ Schöffa?“
„Ja,“ sagte Feichtl.
„Nachher nur a bißl g’schwinder! Oes geht’s ja daher, als wenn S’
Kraut treten tat’s. Der Herr Oberamtsrichta wart schon seit a
g’schlag’ne Viertelstund auf Enk...“
„Auf ins?“ fragte Feichtl.
„Natürli! Eigens auf Enk.“
„Dös werd guat wern,“ wisperte Glas seinem Kollegen zu.
„Also g’schwind nauf!“ kommandierte Schneckel wieder.
„Wo nauf?“ fragte Glas.
„Da nauf! Auf de zwoa Sessel da nauf! Für Enk hätt ma
wahrscheinli Ofenbänk reistellen sollen!“ knurrte Schneckel.
Kopfschüttelnd und bedenklich stiegen die Zwei auf die Tribüne
und setzten sich auf die Stühle hinter dem Gerichtstische. Da saßen
sie nun und schauten verwundert in die Zuschauermenge hinab, die
ebenso verblüfft hinaufschaute.
 Der Rupfenberger besonders, der in der vordersten Reihe stand,
riß Mund und Augen so weit auf, daß Schneckel sich eben
teilnehmend an ihn wenden wollte, als der Herr Vorsitzende, der
Amtsanwalt und der Gerichtsschreiber eintraten und ihn so am
Fragen verhinderten.
Der Vorsitzende wandte sich kurz an unsere zwei Freunde und
fragte:
„Sie sind heute zum ersten Male da?“
„Ja,“ sagte Feichtl, „dös hoaßt na! Oamal bin i wegen
Körperverletzung...“
„Ach was! Körperverletzung? Ob Sie schon einmal Schöffe
waren?“
„G’wiß net!“ sagte Feichtl.
Und Glas schüttelte nur den Kopf und sah mit seinen
wasserblauen Augen darein, als wenn er aus den Wolken gefallen
wäre.
„Dann muß ich Sie vereidigen,“ fuhr der Herr Oberamtsrichter
rasch fort, „erheben Sie sich von Ihren Sitzen.“
Die Vereidigung erfolgte, und wenn auch Feichtl den Drang
verspürte, den Vorsitzenden zu unterbrechen, so kam er doch nicht
dazu, weil es zu schnell ging, und weil er überhaupt nicht mehr aus
noch ein wußte.
Die zwei Hüter setzten sich auf Geheiß wieder und warteten in
Gottes Namen ab, was noch geschehen werde.
„Wir nehmen als erste Sache die Anklage gegen die zwei Schäfer
wegen groben Unfugs und anderem,“ erklärte jetzt der Vorsitzende.
„Schneckel, rufen Sie die Angeklagten und die Zeugen vor.“
„De zwoa Schäfa vortreten!“ kommandierte Schneckel.
Im Zuschauerraum machte sich eine starke Bewegung
bemerklich, aber niemand trat vor oder meldete sich.
 „Das ist doch stark,“ rief der Vorsitzende, „um Viertel über neun
Uhr sind die Angeklagten noch nicht da. Wahrscheinlich saufen die
Kerls in den Wirtshäusern herum.“
Er wollte noch weiter reden, als ihn der Gerichtsschreiber
aufmerksam machte, daß hinter ihm die beiden Schöffen sich
erhoben und ihm offenbar etwas zu sagen hätten.
„Was wollen Sie denn?“ herrschte der Vorsitzende die zwei an,
„wissen Sie etwas von den Angeklagten?“
„Erlaubens, verzeihens, Herr Ambsrichta, der Angeklagte war i,“
stotterte Feichtl.
„Was? Wie heißen Sie denn?“
„Johann Feichtl, Schäfer von Kraglfing..“
„Jaa! Was..? Und wer sind denn Sie?“
„I war der Glas...“
„Da hört sich doch alles auf! Wie können Sie sich unterfangen,
unter falschem Vorgeben hier als Schöffen aufzutreten...“
„.. Erlaubens, Herr Ambsrichta, mir hamm ja net reden derfa. Der
Herr Gerichtsdeana hat g’sagt, de Schäfa soll’n z’erscht reikemma,
und wia ma hering’wen san, hat er nimma auslassen, bis ma uns da
rauf g’setzt hamm...“
Die Heiterkeit, welche sich inzwischen aller Anwesenden mit
Ausnahme Schneckels und unserer Freunde bemächtigt hatte,
steckte nun auch den Herrn Vorsitzenden an, so daß er Mühe hatte,
nicht zu lachen.
Er ließ die zwei Angeklagten rasch von ihrem erhöhten Platze
abtreten und erfuhr nun von den zwei wirklichen Schöffen, die sich
inzwischen meldeten, daß sie sich auch nicht ausgekannt hätten,
weil Schneckel die zwei Schäfer gleich mitgenommen und auf die
Plätze hinaufbefohlen hätte.
 „Natürlich!“ sagte jetzt der Vorsitzende. „Mein lieber Schneckel,
ich habe Ihnen schon oft gesagt, daß Sie nicht so viel Schmalzler
schnupfen sollen. Ihre Aussprache ist auch so noch miserabel genug.
Außerdem sollten Sie die Leute nicht so anschreien. Dann wäre
Ihnen diese einfältige Verwechslung nicht passiert.“
In Schneckels Seele ging ein schmerzlicher Kampf vor; der
langgewöhnte Respekt vor den Vorgesetzten rang mit der Furcht, für
immer die Autorität bei den „Erzengeln“ zu verlieren, wenn er jetzt
schwieg. Er wußte, daß die Zuhörerschar mit innigem Vergnügen die
Standrede des Vorsitzenden vernahm, und daß heute noch in allen
Wirtshäusern des Bezirks dieses Ereignis besprochen wurde.
Aber er schwieg doch und tröstete sich mit dem Gedanken, daß
er den „Geselchten“ schon wieder die nötige Ehrfurcht einblasen
werde, falls sich einer von den Himmelherrgott... vergessen würde;
das wollte er schon fertig bringen, er, der alte Feldwebel vom 12.
Regiment. —
Zudem, die Uebeltäter, die Hauptspitzbuben, welche ihm die
Suppe eingebrockt hatten, sollten ja vielleicht auf einige Tage in
seine väterliche Obhut kommen, da wollte er ihnen schon die
Ohrwaschel aufknöpfen, daß sie ihn trotz des Schmalzlerschnupfens
verstehen sollten.
Aber der Himmel meinte es besser mit Feichtl und Genossen.
Jeder erhielt nur einen Tag Haft, und der Herr Oberamtsrichter
sagte, er würde sich verwenden, daß sie den Tag erst im Winter
abzusitzen brauchten. Derweil war zu hoffen, daß die Wut
Schneckels sich legte.
Als Feichtl und Glas das Amtsgericht verließen, sagte der letztere:
„Du, Feichtl, schö war’s do g’wen, wann der Herr Amtsrichter
z’erscht an Rupfenberger dro g’numma hätt. Den hätt’ i schö
einitaucht, den Großkopfeten.“
 Der Bader
Aus: Agricola. Verlag Albert Langen, München

s ist in der ganzen Welt bekanntgeworden, durch

Zeitungsartikel und Reden in der Kammer, daß
unsere bayerischen Truppen im heurigen Manöver so
schreckliche Anstrengungen haben durchmachen
müssen.
Ein jeder Mensch hat Mitleid gehabt, und das Volk ist in der
größten Unruhe gewesen.
Fünf Tage sind unsere Söhne angeregnet worden, und zuvor hat
ihnen die Sonne hinaufgebrannt, als wenn sie Neger, aber keine
Christenmenschen wären.
Das will schon etwas heißen, und wer unsere Altbayern kennt,
der wird die großen Besorgnisse leicht begreifen.
Ein Lichtblick in der trüben Zeit war, daß man daheim hie und da
etwas Tröstliches vernommen hat, so z. B., daß einer vom
Leibregiment in Fürth zehn Leberknödel und zwei Pfund Fleisch in
sich aufnahm, oder daß in Hanau ein braver Bayer schon um 5 Uhr
in der Früh mit der ersten Cervelatwurst anfing.
Aber auch andere Strapazen muß es genug gegeben haben, denn
sonst wäre es keinem Menschen eingefallen, in der Kammer darüber
zu reden. Ich bin um die Zeit, als die abgematteten Krieger
heimkehrten, bei meinem Freunde, dem Förster in Kraglfing,
gewesen und habe also von den Manövern selbst nichts gesehen.
Aber die Heimkehr habe ich beobachtet, und ich kann mit gutem
Gewissen bestätigen, daß bei derselben eine große Beunruhigung
des steuerzahlenden Volkes eintrat, und daß von der
Eisenbahnstation Weilbach bis Kraglfing und dort selbst manche
Leute, sogar eine Respektsperson, durch den Militarismus bedrückt
wurden.
Und davon will ich jetzt erzählen.
Es war an einem Sonntag, und wir sind in der Wirtsstube
gesessen, der Förster, der Pfarrer, der Lehrer und ich. Es ist von der
hohen Politik geredet worden; ich habe aber nicht viel davon
verstanden, weil an den Nebentischen die Gütler und Bauern eine
recht vernehmliche Unterhaltung geführt haben.
Mit einem Mal geht die Türe auf, und der Herr Bader Lippl kommt
herein, im Geschwindschritt, wie alleweil, daß die Rockschöße
geflogen sind.
„Servus! schön gut’n Abend! Is erlaubt? Hochwürden, i hab die
Ehr’!“
Mit den Worten setzt er sich zu uns, und noch vor ihm der Wirt
das Bier gebracht hat, haben wir schon gewußt, wo er gewesen ist.
„In Huglfing drent. An sehr an komplizierten Fall g’habt, meine
Herren! A Gaul hat den Schacherl so am Kopf hin g’haut mit’n Huaf,
daß er an Riß kriegt hat.“
„Wer? Der Huaf?“ fragt der Förster.
„Na, der Schacherl.“
„Vom hintern Stirnbeinknochen sechs Zentimeter nach vorne
verlaufend über dem Auge mit einer Verletzung von der Frontalis.“
„Is aber doch hoffentlich net g’fährlich?“ fragt jetzt der Pfarrer.
„Gefährli? Wer kann das mit einer absolut sicheren Bestimmtheit
konstatier’n? Hochwürden: Sie wissen selber. Die menschliche Natur
geht oft ihre eigenen Wege.“
„Ja, ja,“ sagt der Förster und gibt mir unter dem Tisch einen
Renner, „d’ Hauptsach is, daß Sie glei da war’n, Herr Doktor.“
 „In dieser Beziehung hamm Sie recht, Herr Gierster! Bei solchen
Wunden is die ärztliche Hilfe von großer Bedeutung. Mor’ng hamm
mir das Konzilium, i und da Herr Bezirksarzt. Da wer’n mir uns über
das weitere befinden.
Uebrigens, meine Herren, da fallt mir g’rad ein, mir wer’n heut
abends einen sehr einen unangenehmen B’such kriegen.“
„Oho! Was is denn los?“
„D’ Reservisten und d’ Urlauber san los. Wie ich mich von
meinem schwer krank’n Patienten ins Wirtshaus hinüber begeben
hab’, is de ganze Rotte Kora beinander g’sessen. Mehr als zwanzig;
unser Hofbauern Peter natürli mitten drin. Einen solchenen Lärm
hamm’s vollführt, daß sich kein anständiger Mensch nicht hat halten
können.
Ich bin glei wieder umkehrt; im Hausgang hab i an Kramer
troffen. Der hat mir verzählt, daß die Burschen von der Stadt raus
sich in die Eisenbahnwägen so unzivilisiert benommen hamm, daß
man nicht mehr gewußt hat, ob man in einem Viehwagen oder in
einem anständigen Coupé is. Sie kennen ja die Büldung unserer
heitigen Jugend, Hochwürden...“
Der Herr Pfarrer ist nicht mehr dazu gekommen, seine Meinung
abzugeben, denn in dem Augenblick sind in gleichem Schritt und
Tritt, daß der Boden gezittert hat, die Burschen hereinmarschiert.
Voran einer mit der Ziehharmonika, hinterher der Hofbauern
Peter in der blitzblauen Uniform der schweren Reiter, dann noch drei
oder vier Infanteristen, und die andern in Zivil mit der
Soldatenmütze.
Der Spektakel, der jetzt anging, ist nicht zum Beschreiben. Der
Peter hat so geschrien, daß sein Gesicht angelaufen ist und beinahe
die Farbe von der Uniform bekommen hat; und auch die andern
haben pfeifend, brüllend und mit den Händen patschend die Musik
begleitet.
„Seid’s wieder do, Bua’m?“ fragt der Bürgermeister. „Wia geht?“
 „Guat geht’s!“ schreit der Peter. „Teat’s nur grad a Bier her! Sitter
daß mir vo Huglfing furt san, hamm ma koan Tropfen nimmer
kriagt.“
„Setzt’s Enk z’samm, Buam!“ schreit der Wirt, „’s Bier kimmt
scho.“
„Is scho wohr! Leuteln, singt’s!“

„Jetzt Brüder stoßt’s die Gläser an,

Es lebe der Reservemann!
Der treu gedient hat seine Zei-a-eit,
Ihm sei ein volles Glas geweiht!“

„Es is do a rechte Freud, wia g’sund unsere Burschen san; net

wahr, Herr Dokta?“
„In dieser Beziehung is mir die Büldung lieber,“ antwortete der
Bader; „die heutige Jugend...“
Seine Worte gehen in dem dröhnenden Gesang der Burschen
verloren.

„Da drob’n auf da Höh

Schteht die bayrisch Armee.
Soldaten sollen leben!
Schöne Mädigen daneben!
Tapfre Bayern sein’s mir,
Tapfre Bayern sein’s mir!“

„Herrschaftseiten! Andredl, spiel amol an auf! Teat’s de Tisch

weg! Jetzt werd tanzt! Wo san denn die Kuchelmenscher? Eina
damit!“
Im Nu sind ein paar Tische weggeräumt, und jetzt geht’s dahin,
schnackelnd und schleifend im Walzertakt. Aus der Nachbarschaft
kommen noch einige Dirnen, und bald ist in der Wirtsstube die
schönste Tanzerei im Gang.
Der Hofbauern Peter beteiligt sich nicht daran; ich glaube schon
deswegen, weil er sich von seinem Säbel nicht trennen mag. Er
macht sich an unsern Tisch und setzt sich neben den Bader, der sehr
entrüstet zum Förster hinüberblinzelt, weil ihn der Peter gelassen in
die Bank hineinschiebt.
„S’ Good, Herr Gierschter! Heunt is zünfti!“
„Ja, guat seid’s beinander. An Herrn Pfarrer habt’s scho
vertrieben. Wo kommt’s denn her?“
„Vo Hanau her. Gestern san ma verladen worn, und heunt fruah
san ma auf Weilbach kemma. Da hamm ma an Abschiedstrunk
g’halten, und nacha san ma auf Redlbach. Da hamm ma Bier
ausg’spielt.
Nacha san ma auf Freidlhausen ummi, da hamm ma an etla
Stehmaß trunken. Und nacha san mar auf Huglfing.“
„So? Da habt’s ja scho a schöne Roas g’macht! Da Herr Dokta hat
verzählt, daß es in Huglfing so an Unfug trieben habt’s.“
„Wos? Da hat’s koan Unfug überhaupts net geben. Der Vitus hat
selm a’gefangt.“
„Was für a Vitus? Da woaß i ja no gar nix.“
„No, der Schacherl Vitus. I hab mir denkt, Es habt’s es scho
g’hört. Mir hamm in Huglfing drent a paar Maß trunk’n und da hab i
zum G’spaß de Kellnerin g’fragt, ob sie sein Reiterschatz nicht sein
mag. Da schreit der Vitus über’n Tisch rum: Mog net, Cenzl! Dos
kunnt’st net damacha, alle Tag an Brat’n zahl’n! Wos? sog i. Ja, sagt
er. Nacha hab i eam mit’n Sabel oana umig’haut.“
„So? Da hamm Sie jetzt Ihre Freud an der Jugend, Herr Gierster!
Hat man schon eine solchene Roheit g’sehen?“
„Geh, drah net so auf,“ sagt der Peter; „wann der Vitus net zu an
g’wissen Baderwaschl kimmt, is er morng wieda g’sund.“
 „Wie? was? wia? Redst Du a so mit mir? I will Dir amal was sag’n,
Du...“
Aber der Peter hat ihm schon den Rücken zugekehrt und ist
breitspurig und säbelklirrend zu den Kameraden hinüber, die gerade
einen dröhnenden Rundgesang anstimmten.

„Mir Bayern hamm Muat,

Mir fürchten’s kein Bluat,
Mir haben’s Kuraschi,
Wenn das Blut fließt auf der Straße,
Tapfere Bayern sein’s mir,
Tapfere Bayern sein’s mir.“

Und auf den Gesang folgt wieder ein lustiger Landler und
Jauchzen und gellende Pfiffe.
An meinem Tisch war die Stimmung geteilt.
Der Förster lacht, daß ihm die Tränen über die Augen kommen,
und der Bader ärgert sich bei jedem Gelächter, daß er zitronengelb
wird.
„Ich weiß überhaupt nicht,“ sagt er zu mir, „wie ich in diese
Bevölkerung hineingekommen bin. Aber i will derer Bande schon
zeigen, ob’s mich beleidigen tun dürfen. Lachen’s net, Herr Gierster!
Sie werden’s seh’gn. Jawoll! Bis heunt hab i fürs Zähn ziehn bloß a
Fufzgerl verlangt. Von morg’n an kost’s a Mark. I bin der Lippl.“ Der
Zorn und das Bier sind jetzt dem Bader so in den Kopf gestiegen,
daß er auf einmal den schönsten Rausch gehabt hat.
„Führ’n ma’n hoam,“ sagt der Förster; „der Spektakel werd do
alleweil größer, i bin selber froh, wann ma draußen san; also hü!
Herr Dokta, net einschlaf’n, hoam geh’ ma!“
Wir nehmen ihn rechts und links unter die Arme und führen ihn
an den johlenden Burschen vorbei.