0:00:03 > 0:00:08In the late summer of 1859, Charles Darwin finally completed the last
0:00:08 > 0:00:12paragraph of his greatest work on The Origin Of Species.
0:00:12 > 0:00:16But he wasn't drawing his inspiration from the exotic islands
0:00:16 > 0:00:19that he'd visited on his famous voyage on HMS Beagle.
0:00:19 > 0:00:22A chalk bank in Kent, near his house at Downe,
0:00:22 > 0:00:25provided his metaphor for the laws
0:00:25 > 0:00:28that explain the diversity of life on our planet.
0:00:30 > 0:00:36It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds,
0:00:36 > 0:00:40with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about,
0:00:40 > 0:00:44and with worms crawling through the damp earth,
0:00:44 > 0:00:47and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms,
0:00:47 > 0:00:49so different from each other,
0:00:49 > 0:00:53and dependent on each other in so complex a manner,
0:00:53 > 0:00:57have all been produced by laws acting around us.
0:00:58 > 0:01:01Darwin was unleashing a new vision of nature,
0:01:01 > 0:01:06where species evolved independently from the guiding hand of a creator.
0:01:06 > 0:01:09The established vision of a harmonious world, divinely ordained
0:01:09 > 0:01:14to serve God's noblest creation, mankind, would be shattered.
0:01:16 > 0:01:18He was very aware
0:01:18 > 0:01:22that what he was dealing with was effectively intellectual dynamite,
0:01:22 > 0:01:25and he kept most of his thoughts about what he was doing
0:01:25 > 0:01:27in terms of where man might come from,
0:01:27 > 0:01:30where new species might arise, effectively secret.
0:01:32 > 0:01:36It was a secret with which Darwin had wrestled for 20 years.
0:01:36 > 0:01:4120 years of unflinching support from his wife Emma, who feared that
0:01:41 > 0:01:44her beloved husband might be consigned to eternal damnation
0:01:44 > 0:01:47for challenging traditional beliefs.
0:01:47 > 0:01:52Together they would endure two decades of debilitating illness,
0:01:52 > 0:01:54self-doubt, and family tragedy.
0:01:59 > 0:02:02It was a life struggle that Darwin also saw
0:02:02 > 0:02:06among the animals and plants in the fields and tangled banks
0:02:06 > 0:02:08of the Kentish countryside.
0:02:08 > 0:02:12A struggle that is a founding principle of his theory of natural selection.
0:02:12 > 0:02:18And the last paragraph of the Origin Of Species really goes out with a perfect bang.
0:02:18 > 0:02:22The whole book has been about the struggle for existence
0:02:22 > 0:02:25and what Tennyson had called nature red in tooth and claw.
0:02:25 > 0:02:28The last paragraph gives, to me, a sense of hope.
0:02:28 > 0:02:31It sort of shows that this war of all against all,
0:02:31 > 0:02:36actually has a result and the result is the living world we see around us.
0:02:36 > 0:02:38The beauties of the tangled bank,
0:02:38 > 0:02:42the worms and the butterflies and the grass and the orchids,
0:02:42 > 0:02:48all of these beauties of nature emerge from Darwin's simple idea.
0:02:48 > 0:02:51There is grandeur in this view of life,
0:02:51 > 0:02:55with its several powers having been originally breathed into a few forms
0:02:55 > 0:02:59or into one, and that whilst this planet has gone cycling along
0:02:59 > 0:03:01according to the fixed laws of gravity,
0:03:01 > 0:03:04from so simple a beginning
0:03:04 > 0:03:10endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful
0:03:10 > 0:03:12have been, and are being, evolved.
0:03:12 > 0:03:16Just as beauty and wonder emerge out of a war of nature,
0:03:16 > 0:03:21so too did Charles Darwin's great book evolve out of years
0:03:21 > 0:03:24of painstaking research and inner conflict.
0:03:40 > 0:03:41At the age of 33,
0:03:41 > 0:03:47Charles Robert Darwin was already an established gentleman naturalist.
0:03:47 > 0:03:49His substantial private income
0:03:49 > 0:03:51enabled him to pursue his particular interest,
0:03:51 > 0:03:55solving what had been called "the mystery of mysteries".
0:03:55 > 0:04:00How animals and plants might transmute or evolve.
0:04:02 > 0:04:04It was to find a quiet place to write
0:04:04 > 0:04:09that in 1842 he and his burgeoning family had moved to a house
0:04:09 > 0:04:12just outside London near the village of Downe, in Kent.
0:04:14 > 0:04:18After several fruitless searches in Surrey and elsewhere,
0:04:18 > 0:04:20we found this house and purchased it.
0:04:20 > 0:04:23I was pleased by the diversified appearance
0:04:23 > 0:04:25of the vegetation proper to a chalk district,
0:04:25 > 0:04:29and so unlike what I had been accustomed to in the Midland counties.
0:04:29 > 0:04:33And still more pleased with the extreme quietness
0:04:33 > 0:04:36and rusticity of the place.
0:04:39 > 0:04:45Darwin knew in the country there was space to expand his experiments,
0:04:45 > 0:04:48to walk, to observe nature.
0:04:48 > 0:04:52There was plenty of information there for him to draw on
0:04:52 > 0:04:56and then there was a very important factor for Darwin
0:04:56 > 0:04:59of getting into a space where he felt safe,
0:04:59 > 0:05:04with his secret theory of transmutation.
0:05:04 > 0:05:11In the early 1840s, transmutation or evolution was still a radical idea,
0:05:11 > 0:05:14associated with social revolution.
0:05:14 > 0:05:17It was a secret that he shared with his wife and first cousin
0:05:17 > 0:05:21Emma Wedgwood, whom he had married three years earlier.
0:05:21 > 0:05:26I marvel at my good fortune that Emma, so infinitely my superior
0:05:26 > 0:05:32in every single moral quality, should have consented to be my wife.
0:05:32 > 0:05:36Emma was the precondition for everything that he did.
0:05:36 > 0:05:40She...created a love-shaped space
0:05:40 > 0:05:47where he felt safe to work obsessively without fearing
0:05:47 > 0:05:50the loss of love and damaging their relationship.
0:05:52 > 0:05:56She was to nurse him through years of recurrent bouts of illness,
0:05:56 > 0:05:59the nature of which remains unclear to this day.
0:05:59 > 0:06:03Possibly damage caused by a South American parasite,
0:06:03 > 0:06:06inflamed by anxiety and nervous tension.
0:06:06 > 0:06:1225 years' extreme spasmodic daily and nightly flatulence.
0:06:12 > 0:06:16Vomiting preceded by shivering, hysterical crying,
0:06:16 > 0:06:21dying sensations or half-faint and copious and very pallid urine.
0:06:21 > 0:06:27Air fatigues bring on head symptoms, nervousness when Emma leaves me.
0:06:27 > 0:06:31I think she was always concerned about his health.
0:06:31 > 0:06:34She was constantly trying to persuade him
0:06:34 > 0:06:38to have a day off here, go on a trip there,
0:06:38 > 0:06:40not because she wanted his company,
0:06:40 > 0:06:43but because she felt if he carried on working at the pace
0:06:43 > 0:06:45at which he was going, then he would become more ill.
0:06:47 > 0:06:52Emma was to provide Charles with ten children, seven of whom survived to adulthood.
0:06:54 > 0:06:57As a father, Charles Darwin did not conform
0:06:57 > 0:06:59to the standard Victorian stereotype
0:06:59 > 0:07:02of the distant and stern pater familias.
0:07:02 > 0:07:05Darwin was very much a family man.
0:07:05 > 0:07:07He writes rather wryly one year
0:07:07 > 0:07:10that his wife hadn't been doing very well last year
0:07:10 > 0:07:11because she hadn't had a baby,
0:07:11 > 0:07:14which is pretty rude for a Victorian, I have to say.
0:07:14 > 0:07:18But what's fascinating is that he used his children
0:07:18 > 0:07:20as experimental animals.
0:07:20 > 0:07:24He noted their expressions when they were crying, when they were angry
0:07:24 > 0:07:27and he saw how similar they were to the expression of a dog.
0:07:30 > 0:07:33He saw his family as part of the human family,
0:07:33 > 0:07:36the human family as part of the mammal family,
0:07:36 > 0:07:40the mammal family as at one with the primroses.
0:07:40 > 0:07:43And that really shows that he saw humankind
0:07:43 > 0:07:48as an intrinsic part of the living world and not apart from it.
0:07:48 > 0:07:52This was radically different from the established Christian view
0:07:52 > 0:07:57of the time, where mankind was God's special and separate creation.
0:07:59 > 0:08:02He kept his real opinions in a private notebook.
0:08:04 > 0:08:08Man in his arrogance thinks of himself as a great work,
0:08:08 > 0:08:11worthy of the interposition of a deity.
0:08:11 > 0:08:14More humble and I believe true,
0:08:14 > 0:08:17to think him created from animals.
0:08:20 > 0:08:24And Charles and Emma did what animals do,
0:08:24 > 0:08:27only they had a bed to do it in, upstairs.
0:08:27 > 0:08:29But then because Darwin believed strongly in analogy,
0:08:29 > 0:08:33it's not only animals that do what people do, but it's also plants
0:08:33 > 0:08:36that do what people do in strange and complicated ways.
0:08:36 > 0:08:40So from the marriage bed to the flower bed was only 100 yards
0:08:40 > 0:08:43and Darwin would go downstairs,
0:08:43 > 0:08:45out the back door, down to his flower beds
0:08:45 > 0:08:50where experiments were being performed and how these creatures,
0:08:50 > 0:08:54he even regarded some plants as simple animals,
0:08:54 > 0:08:56also reproduced themselves.
0:09:04 > 0:09:06Just over a year after he arrived at Downe,
0:09:06 > 0:09:10he felt bold enough to tentatively raise the issue of species change
0:09:10 > 0:09:13with his botanist friend Joseph Hooker.
0:09:14 > 0:09:17At last gleams of light have come
0:09:17 > 0:09:22and I'm almost convinced that species are not immutable.
0:09:22 > 0:09:25It is like confessing a murder.
0:09:27 > 0:09:30Hooker's response was noncommittal.
0:09:30 > 0:09:32Darwin retreated into his shell.
0:09:32 > 0:09:37If Hooker wouldn't buy it, then his old teachers at Cambridge certainly wouldn't.
0:09:38 > 0:09:45Even the most progressive members of the Anglican clergy still saw nature's beauty and abundance
0:09:45 > 0:09:50as divinely ordained for the benefit of the Lord's highest creation, man.
0:09:50 > 0:09:55The fundamental idea around nature for many people during the early part of the 19th century,
0:09:55 > 0:09:58particularly in Cambridge, but throughout Anglican Britain,
0:09:58 > 0:10:00was that of design.
0:10:00 > 0:10:03The world was made for man and probably the best way
0:10:03 > 0:10:07of explaining this is just to think about the 24 hour day.
0:10:07 > 0:10:11We think of that of course as just an outcome of astronomical chance,
0:10:11 > 0:10:13in the way that the planets work and so forth.
0:10:13 > 0:10:16For people who were sitting in Cambridge,
0:10:16 > 0:10:19the idea was basically the 24 hour day is...
0:10:19 > 0:10:23that's because humans need to sleep for eight hours.
0:10:23 > 0:10:27And everything around them is organised from that fact,
0:10:27 > 0:10:29from human need going outwards.
0:10:31 > 0:10:35To suggest that mankind was merely a product of nature risked attack
0:10:35 > 0:10:39from the black robed priests, the black beasts, as Darwin called them.
0:10:41 > 0:10:45But what he possibly feared even more was the loss of respect
0:10:45 > 0:10:49from the Cambridge dons who had taught and inspired him.
0:10:49 > 0:10:53Men such as the straight spoken Yorkshireman
0:10:53 > 0:10:57the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, professor of geology,
0:10:57 > 0:10:59who saw God's design in nature.
0:10:59 > 0:11:01"Denying this..."
0:11:01 > 0:11:03"..Might brutalise it and sink the human race
0:11:03 > 0:11:08"into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen
0:11:08 > 0:11:10"since records tell us of its history."
0:11:15 > 0:11:20Sedgwick represents a union, an uneasy union of science and religion
0:11:20 > 0:11:26that had prevailed since the 17th century, in Britain particularly.
0:11:26 > 0:11:30A division of labour in which those who study nature
0:11:30 > 0:11:32offer to those who study God,
0:11:32 > 0:11:36evidence of God's greatness and goodness and wisdom
0:11:36 > 0:11:41in the world about us and those who study God's revelation in the Bible
0:11:41 > 0:11:46offer reasons for believing in God that he has revealed to us
0:11:46 > 0:11:48and how to go to heaven.
0:11:48 > 0:11:51Nature doesn't tell us how to go to heaven,
0:11:51 > 0:11:53but it tells us that there is a God in heaven,
0:11:53 > 0:11:57who has revealed himself and how to get there in the Bible.
0:11:59 > 0:12:03It was with these traditional views in mind that in early 1844,
0:12:03 > 0:12:05Darwin began to prepare a manuscript
0:12:05 > 0:12:09that he hoped would eventually show even men like Sedgwick
0:12:09 > 0:12:11that evolution was a reality,
0:12:11 > 0:12:14and that he had found the mechanism that made it happen.
0:12:16 > 0:12:19But as a punctilious and cautious man,
0:12:19 > 0:12:21he needed to marshal his evidence.
0:12:21 > 0:12:24What he does there at Downe
0:12:24 > 0:12:28is really create a living laboratory.
0:12:28 > 0:12:32You know, a laboratory to go along with his career, as it were.
0:12:32 > 0:12:35It's not just Darwin sitting alone, looking out the window.
0:12:37 > 0:12:42Darwin didn't just use his house and gardens to observe and learn from nature.
0:12:42 > 0:12:46He bred pigeons and orchids, raised 50 varieties of gooseberry,
0:12:46 > 0:12:48and to counter the creationists,
0:12:48 > 0:12:49he became a beekeeper
0:12:49 > 0:12:54in order to show that the near perfect hexagons in honeycombs
0:12:54 > 0:12:57were made by instinct rather than divine design.
0:12:59 > 0:13:01My habits are methodical,
0:13:01 > 0:13:04my love of natural science has been steady and ardent.
0:13:04 > 0:13:06I have the strongest desire
0:13:06 > 0:13:10to understand or explain whatever I have observed.
0:13:10 > 0:13:13To group all facts under some general laws.
0:13:15 > 0:13:18He would also create a place to think.
0:13:18 > 0:13:21A rough oval shaped path of gravel was laid down and trees planted
0:13:21 > 0:13:24to provide him with a half kilometre walking circuit.
0:13:24 > 0:13:26He called it the Sand Walk.
0:13:30 > 0:13:33Darwin called the Sand Walk his thinking path.
0:13:33 > 0:13:37He watched the trees grow and many of them are still there...
0:13:38 > 0:13:42..in the knowledge and hope that he would be able to pace
0:13:42 > 0:13:48around this plot and escape the pressure
0:13:48 > 0:13:50of sitting in one place
0:13:50 > 0:13:55and writing and squeezing one's ideas out the point of a pen.
0:14:05 > 0:14:08Darwin would lose himself in thought on the Sand Walk,
0:14:08 > 0:14:13so much so that the only way he could keep track of the time he spent there
0:14:13 > 0:14:18was to keep track of the laps and he kept track of the laps
0:14:18 > 0:14:19by a pile of flints,
0:14:19 > 0:14:24one of which he would kick to the side after a lap
0:14:24 > 0:14:27and when the whole pile had been moved across the path,
0:14:27 > 0:14:32he knew he had completed his exercise, that was your thinking time for the day.
0:14:32 > 0:14:38We, the subsequent generation, love the Sand Walk
0:14:38 > 0:14:41because we can imagine Darwin on it and think about
0:14:41 > 0:14:44what he can see from the sand... in the Sand Walk.
0:14:44 > 0:14:48He can see these climbing plants, the bryony
0:14:48 > 0:14:50in the hedge for example.
0:14:50 > 0:14:54He can see Great Puckland's field where he will, you know,
0:14:54 > 0:14:58formulate a concept of biodiversity.
0:15:03 > 0:15:11Secluded in his rural laboratory, Darwin's manuscript on what he was already calling natural selection
0:15:11 > 0:15:15developed into an essay, suitable for publication.
0:15:15 > 0:15:21Some of his text drew on the experiences he had on his round the world Beagle expedition.
0:15:21 > 0:15:24Out of the five years he spent on the voyage,
0:15:24 > 0:15:27he'd stayed just five weeks on the Galapagos Islands,
0:15:27 > 0:15:33collecting specimens of plants and different species of mockingbirds and finches.
0:15:33 > 0:15:39The significance of his Galapagos experience in the development of his theory has been overstated.
0:15:41 > 0:15:46Just as I think it's very common to imagine
0:15:46 > 0:15:51that great theories appear in a rush, through inspiration, all at once,
0:15:51 > 0:15:55as though every scientist is like Archimedes
0:15:55 > 0:15:59streaking along a street from his bath somewhere in Syracuse.
0:15:59 > 0:16:03So, we want the place where the inspiration hits
0:16:03 > 0:16:08to be glamorous and exotic and the Galapagos does that perfectly,
0:16:08 > 0:16:13but that's completely to get the origin of the origin entirely wrong.
0:16:13 > 0:16:19It was only back in London after his Galapagos visit that Darwin realised
0:16:19 > 0:16:23that the species of birds and plants he collected were subtly
0:16:23 > 0:16:26different from island to island,
0:16:26 > 0:16:30yet were closely similar to species on the South American continent.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33In the 1844 manuscript, he used this as evidence
0:16:33 > 0:16:35that new species had evolved
0:16:35 > 0:16:40as continental birds and plants adapted to the different island habitats.
0:16:40 > 0:16:42The Galapagos of course are a fantastic
0:16:42 > 0:16:44place to go and...there's a way
0:16:44 > 0:16:48in which they're inevitably going to be associated with Darwin.
0:16:48 > 0:16:51But I think their importance I think is easy to misunderstand.
0:16:51 > 0:16:55For one thing, his collections from it are really not that great.
0:16:55 > 0:16:57He mislabelled most of his specimens,
0:16:57 > 0:17:00he didn't identify which of the particular islands,
0:17:00 > 0:17:04his various finches and other organisms were actually from.
0:17:04 > 0:17:07The main thing about it is not so much about natural selection
0:17:07 > 0:17:11at that stage, it's the Galapagos are much more important
0:17:11 > 0:17:13in terms of helping Darwin be convinced
0:17:13 > 0:17:16that evolution might have been taking place.
0:17:17 > 0:17:21The Galapagos evidence was just part of Darwin's awakening.
0:17:21 > 0:17:24Only a way mark on the twisting path
0:17:24 > 0:17:26to his completed theory of evolution.
0:17:29 > 0:17:34Now at Downe, he was able to draw on nine years of intellectual struggle.
0:17:34 > 0:17:38He'd set down some of his most brilliant insights
0:17:38 > 0:17:42in what would become known as the transmutation notebooks.
0:17:43 > 0:17:47It was in these pocketbooks that he first drafted the idea
0:17:47 > 0:17:50that the vast range of living species
0:17:50 > 0:17:53must have all evolved from a shared common ancestry.
0:17:53 > 0:17:58Twigs and branches, stemming from one tree of life.
0:18:00 > 0:18:07He is brainstorming with total abandon, totally unorthodox,
0:18:07 > 0:18:11unacceptable to philosophers in his day.
0:18:11 > 0:18:15Maybe there were a few enlightenment rationalists in France
0:18:15 > 0:18:20who would do that, but no-one in Britain would countenance someone
0:18:20 > 0:18:24seriously trying to find out about the world by doing what Darwin did.
0:18:27 > 0:18:30And he wasn't just tapping physics and theology,
0:18:30 > 0:18:32he was going to economics,
0:18:32 > 0:18:37he was going to animal breeding, he was reaching out in every direction
0:18:37 > 0:18:40for evidence of intuitions
0:18:40 > 0:18:45to build up the world as he sensed it existed.
0:18:45 > 0:18:49Yet that vision of the world was changing all the while,
0:18:49 > 0:18:51he was testing what he thought might be the case,
0:18:51 > 0:18:55this is the brainstorming with what people were saying was the case.
0:18:56 > 0:19:00Darwin's 1844 manuscript was based on wide reading
0:19:00 > 0:19:02from Milton's Paradise Lost
0:19:02 > 0:19:07to the evolutionary speculations of his grandfather Erasmus
0:19:07 > 0:19:11and the radical French biologist, Jean Baptiste Lamarck.
0:19:11 > 0:19:14His great geologist mentor Charles Lyell taught him
0:19:14 > 0:19:17that the Earth's surface had been formed
0:19:17 > 0:19:19gradually over countless ages.
0:19:20 > 0:19:24But it was the political economist, Thomas Malthus who would stimulate
0:19:24 > 0:19:29the closest parallel to a eureka moment that Darwin would ever have.
0:19:30 > 0:19:36In October 1838, 15 months after I had begun my systematic inquiry,
0:19:36 > 0:19:41I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population.
0:19:41 > 0:19:43In terms of natural selection,
0:19:43 > 0:19:45there's a crucial moment in Darwin's discovery
0:19:45 > 0:19:48and that is I think when he reads Thomas Malthus's essay
0:19:48 > 0:19:50on the Principle Of Population.
0:19:50 > 0:19:53Now, this was an incredibly controversial book.
0:19:53 > 0:19:55It was controversial basically
0:19:55 > 0:19:58because it argued that there were limits to growth.
0:19:58 > 0:20:01A lot of philosophers in the 18th century had said,
0:20:01 > 0:20:05"Mankind can progress indefinitely, everything's gonna be great."
0:20:05 > 0:20:07Malthus says, "No, that's not the case.
0:20:07 > 0:20:10"In fact we've got limited food supply,
0:20:10 > 0:20:16"and effectively what happens is you're going to get this population exploding exponentially,
0:20:16 > 0:20:20"and it's going to be cut off by the need for food."
0:20:22 > 0:20:26What Darwin does is turn this into a creative principle in nature.
0:20:26 > 0:20:29Death becomes the way of explaining life.
0:20:29 > 0:20:34And so what happens is you get this incredible idea that all
0:20:34 > 0:20:38of these thousands of forms, all these slightly different species
0:20:38 > 0:20:42are competing for these tiny spaces on the Earth and in nature.
0:20:42 > 0:20:47Each one trying to live and only those that are most fit,
0:20:47 > 0:20:51only those that are really going to match in to that little spot,
0:20:51 > 0:20:55those are the ones that are going to survive and all the thousands,
0:20:55 > 0:20:58the millions, the billions, the rest are going to die.
0:21:11 > 0:21:14It at once struck me that under these circumstances,
0:21:14 > 0:21:17favourable variations would tend to be preserved
0:21:17 > 0:21:20and unfavourable ones destroyed.
0:21:20 > 0:21:24The result of this would be the formation of new species.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work.
0:21:30 > 0:21:34He says that this population growth
0:21:34 > 0:21:40is like 100,000 wedges pounding into the face of nature.
0:21:43 > 0:21:48You know, pushing in stronger ones and throwing out weaker ones.
0:21:48 > 0:21:53Therein capturing the essence of struggle for existence,
0:21:53 > 0:21:55of survival of the fittest.
0:22:26 > 0:22:29He had a moment, where he got very excited,
0:22:29 > 0:22:32you definitely can tell the excitement
0:22:32 > 0:22:35because it's very, very tight, very, very careful.
0:22:35 > 0:22:41It's controlled thrill I would say, very, very detailed writing,
0:22:41 > 0:22:46layer upon layer really, of a reaction to this thing.
0:22:50 > 0:22:55By 1844, Darwin had placed Malthus's ideas on population
0:22:55 > 0:22:58at the core of his theory of natural selection,
0:22:58 > 0:23:01as a mechanism by which evolution occurred.
0:23:05 > 0:23:08The war of nature destroyed the weaklings.
0:23:08 > 0:23:12Only the best adapted went on to reproduce,
0:23:12 > 0:23:16passing on their successful characteristics
0:23:16 > 0:23:18to succeeding generations.
0:23:18 > 0:23:25In having so many children, Charles and Emma were effectively conducting their own Malthusian experiment.
0:23:25 > 0:23:27By the time he had finished the manuscript,
0:23:27 > 0:23:32one baby child had died and Emma was about to be pregnant with a fifth.
0:23:32 > 0:23:36William and Annie, their first two were thriving.
0:23:36 > 0:23:42Anne Elizabeth Darwin was born in March 1841.
0:23:42 > 0:23:48She became indispensable to her mother by the time she was that wonderful age, eight or nine.
0:23:48 > 0:23:51She showed her parents great tenderness.
0:23:51 > 0:23:55And I think that that increased Emma and Charles's love for Annie.
0:23:55 > 0:23:59She would pet them and stroke their hands and stroke their hair
0:23:59 > 0:24:02and take her father's hair and plait it and fix it just so.
0:24:02 > 0:24:07Then take his hand and walk around the Sand Walk and skipping ahead.
0:24:07 > 0:24:11And she had her own little flower patch in the back, all these endearing things
0:24:11 > 0:24:14as they watched their eldest daughter become a young woman.
0:24:16 > 0:24:21Her joyousness and animal spirits radiated from her whole countenance,
0:24:21 > 0:24:25and rendered every movement elastic and full of life and vigour.
0:24:25 > 0:24:29It was delightful and cheerful to behold her.
0:24:29 > 0:24:33Her dear face now rises before me, as she used to sometimes come
0:24:33 > 0:24:36running down the stairs with a stolen pinch of snuff for me.
0:24:36 > 0:24:40Her whole form radiant with pleasure of giving pleasure.
0:24:42 > 0:24:48And as these children grew up, these were not only loved children,
0:24:48 > 0:24:51but they were creatures, they were little developing organisms.
0:24:51 > 0:24:57They were like the orang-utan in the London zoo and Darwin would compare
0:24:57 > 0:25:03his son, William and Annie growing up, with the orang-utan in the zoo.
0:25:08 > 0:25:12At Downe, Annie and her siblings provided an emotional relief
0:25:12 > 0:25:16from the constant struggle with his new and contentious theory.
0:25:16 > 0:25:20But there was another long-term source of unease.
0:25:20 > 0:25:23Emma read his completed manuscript.
0:25:23 > 0:25:27Darwin must have known that she would find it uncomfortable reading.
0:25:27 > 0:25:31In a strong and loving relationship, his rejection of traditional
0:25:31 > 0:25:35religious teachings made her anxious about his salvation.
0:25:35 > 0:25:40Although the manuscript acknowledged the existence of a creator,
0:25:40 > 0:25:43Emma felt it undermined the belief
0:25:43 > 0:25:46that man was specially created by God.
0:25:46 > 0:25:50If you put yourself in the mind of a 19th century reader,
0:25:50 > 0:25:54the notion that species had evolved, that humans had evolved,
0:25:54 > 0:26:00would be deeply upsetting because of this presumption
0:26:00 > 0:26:05that humans are at the top of the ladder of the hierarchy,
0:26:05 > 0:26:08perfect formed, noble, all of those things.
0:26:08 > 0:26:14To suggest that we had evolved from apes and before that from primitive sea creatures,
0:26:14 > 0:26:17must have seemed deeply heretical.
0:26:19 > 0:26:24Darwin's very aware that he needs to tell his wife the general tenure
0:26:24 > 0:26:26of the work that he's actually doing,
0:26:26 > 0:26:30but he's also quite aware too that she's going to be upset.
0:26:30 > 0:26:34I mean, Emma's quite liberal in her general outlook,
0:26:34 > 0:26:38but she also is a practising Christian and a strong believer.
0:26:38 > 0:26:42Emma feared that her husband's religious doubts would mean
0:26:42 > 0:26:45that he might not be saved and join her in the afterlife.
0:26:45 > 0:26:50When I am with you all melancholy thoughts keep out of my head,
0:26:50 > 0:26:53but since you are gone some sad ones have forced themselves in,
0:26:53 > 0:26:57of fear that our opinions on the most important subject
0:26:57 > 0:27:00should differ widely. My reason tells me
0:27:00 > 0:27:04that honest and conscientious doubts cannot be a sin,
0:27:04 > 0:27:07but I feel it would be a painful void between us.
0:27:07 > 0:27:11The big question for Emma was were they going to spend eternity together?
0:27:11 > 0:27:14Or when she died and then he died
0:27:14 > 0:27:17was that something where they were going to be apart,
0:27:17 > 0:27:20and I think that was a terrible kind of burden for her
0:27:20 > 0:27:23and it remained a burden right up till the end of their lives.
0:27:25 > 0:27:28I do not wish for any answers about all this.
0:27:28 > 0:27:31It is a satisfaction for me to write it.
0:27:31 > 0:27:36Don't think it's not my affair and does not signify much to me.
0:27:36 > 0:27:38Everything that concerns you concerns me.
0:27:38 > 0:27:44And I would be most unhappy if I thought that we would not belong to each other forever.
0:27:48 > 0:27:53That became an item of unfinished business in their relationship.
0:27:53 > 0:27:55It was buried perhaps many times,
0:27:55 > 0:28:01but when a child was sick and dying or when Darwin, as so often the case,
0:28:01 > 0:28:04fell ill and she had to care for him,
0:28:04 > 0:28:08it was the spectre of being eternally without her beloved,
0:28:08 > 0:28:12that haunted Emma and made her bring it up to him.
0:28:12 > 0:28:14We don't know how many times in private.
0:28:14 > 0:28:21We do know that the issue weighed heavily on Darwin from a note he later added to Emma's letter.
0:28:23 > 0:28:30When I am dead, know how many times I have kissed and cried over this.
0:28:32 > 0:28:34Whatever her personal misgivings,
0:28:34 > 0:28:37Emma loyally read and commented on the essay.
0:28:37 > 0:28:41Darwin was still not confident enough to have it published
0:28:41 > 0:28:49and his anxieties about hostile attitudes to evolutionary ideas were soon to be confirmed.
0:28:49 > 0:28:54He finishes this essay, and I think any decision that he had
0:28:54 > 0:28:57that he was thinking about publishers
0:28:57 > 0:29:00is certainly knocked on its head in October of 1844,
0:29:00 > 0:29:04when he learns through an advertisement in the London Times
0:29:04 > 0:29:06that a book has been published
0:29:06 > 0:29:10called the Vestiges Of The Natural History Of Creation.
0:29:11 > 0:29:17This is an anonymous book. Who its author was subject of great guessing and uncertainty
0:29:17 > 0:29:21and it's a book which even the advertisements say,
0:29:21 > 0:29:25deals with the whole range of natural phenomena and explains it
0:29:25 > 0:29:27through a natural law of development.
0:29:27 > 0:29:30In other words, there's some sort of evolution
0:29:30 > 0:29:34that will explain how everything in the universe came in to being.
0:29:34 > 0:29:37It becomes one of the great sensations of the 1840s.
0:29:37 > 0:29:42Everybody reads it, from Queen Victoria to the poet Tennyson,
0:29:42 > 0:29:43most of Darwin's friends.
0:29:43 > 0:29:48It's discussed very extensively by a whole range of different people.
0:29:48 > 0:29:50The whole train of animated beings,
0:29:50 > 0:29:55from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent,
0:29:55 > 0:29:58are then to be regarded as a series of advances
0:29:58 > 0:30:01of the principle of development.
0:30:01 > 0:30:03It has pleased providence to arrange
0:30:03 > 0:30:06that one species should give birth to another
0:30:06 > 0:30:09until the second highest gave birth to man.
0:30:11 > 0:30:15The identity of the author, Robert Chambers, a Scottish journalist,
0:30:15 > 0:30:18was not revealed for another 40 years.
0:30:18 > 0:30:20He had feared the inevitable backlash.
0:30:20 > 0:30:25In the vanguard of the attack was Darwin's old Cambridge teacher,
0:30:25 > 0:30:27the Reverend Adam Sedgwick.
0:30:27 > 0:30:30He detected the "serpent coils of false philosophy"
0:30:30 > 0:30:33in the book's vision of transmutation.
0:30:35 > 0:30:38People came down on it very hard.
0:30:38 > 0:30:40His professor Sedgwick here at Cambridge,
0:30:40 > 0:30:45referred to it as a filthy abortion, whose head ought to be crushed.
0:30:45 > 0:30:49Now of course that's consistent with seeing it as the offspring
0:30:49 > 0:30:53of a frail, female mind, this book, this filthy abortion.
0:30:53 > 0:30:56That's hard talk from the Reverend Adam Sedgwick,
0:30:56 > 0:30:58Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
0:30:59 > 0:31:03I cannot but think the work is from a woman's pen.
0:31:03 > 0:31:08It's so well dressed and so graceful in its externals.
0:31:08 > 0:31:11This mistake was woman's from the first.
0:31:11 > 0:31:14She longed for the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
0:31:14 > 0:31:17And she must pluck it, right or wrong.
0:31:17 > 0:31:21And Sedgwick absolutely loathes Vestiges.
0:31:21 > 0:31:27For him as for many evangelical Christians, Vestiges is, which was bound in red, is the scarlet harlot.
0:31:27 > 0:31:31It's a book that has the beautiful attraction of a woman.
0:31:31 > 0:31:34What you need to do, he says, is rip off the pretty clothes
0:31:34 > 0:31:38and reveal underneath the foul mass of corruption within.
0:31:39 > 0:31:44If the book be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain.
0:31:44 > 0:31:49Religion is a lie, human law is a mass of folly and a base injustice,
0:31:49 > 0:31:51morality is moonshine.
0:31:51 > 0:31:56Our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen,
0:31:56 > 0:31:59and men and women are only better beasts.
0:31:59 > 0:32:03And Darwin reads this, as he says, in fear and trembling.
0:32:03 > 0:32:07It also, I think, serves a very useful role for Darwin though,
0:32:07 > 0:32:09because when he reads the review,
0:32:09 > 0:32:11when he looks at what Sedgwick has to say,
0:32:11 > 0:32:14in many ways he's able to start ticking off the kinds of things
0:32:14 > 0:32:16that he needs to look into,
0:32:16 > 0:32:18the kinds of questions he needs to answer,
0:32:18 > 0:32:20in order to make sure that his theory is safe,
0:32:20 > 0:32:22it has the right kind of armour around it,
0:32:22 > 0:32:25so that it can go forward in the world without having
0:32:25 > 0:32:28the same kind of reaction against it that Vestiges has.
0:32:31 > 0:32:34Still reeling from the savage response to Vestiges,
0:32:34 > 0:32:37Darwin seems to have gone into a period of self doubt.
0:32:37 > 0:32:42His fears of being regarded as a lightweight speculator were possibly
0:32:42 > 0:32:47raised by some words of advice from his botanist friend, Joseph Hooker.
0:32:47 > 0:32:51Hooker said to him that he thought that no-one had the right
0:32:51 > 0:32:55to pronounce on species unless they had examined many.
0:32:55 > 0:33:01A throwaway line in a letter from Hooker to his friend,
0:33:01 > 0:33:04and yet, clearly a remark
0:33:04 > 0:33:07that haunted Darwin, that he knew, absolutely that Hooker was right.
0:33:07 > 0:33:11That if anyone was going to believe this enormous claim
0:33:11 > 0:33:12that he was going to make,
0:33:12 > 0:33:16then he really had to do the examining of many.
0:33:16 > 0:33:19He had to really do the work with the microscope
0:33:19 > 0:33:22and with the dissection tools, and once he'd done that,
0:33:22 > 0:33:25and once people admired him for the detail of that work,
0:33:25 > 0:33:29then he would have a better chance with the big ideal.
0:33:29 > 0:33:33Darwin decided to embark on a comprehensive description
0:33:33 > 0:33:36of an entire subclass of marine organisms, barnacles.
0:33:36 > 0:33:40It was a project he anticipated would take a matter of months.
0:33:40 > 0:33:43It was to take him eight years.
0:33:43 > 0:33:48There are two types of barnacles, mainly. There's the coned barnacles.
0:33:48 > 0:33:54They're little white volcanic, tiny cones that cover every rock.
0:33:54 > 0:33:58Inside the cone there's a little creature,
0:33:58 > 0:34:03which is cemented to the rock by its head and which fishes with its feet.
0:34:03 > 0:34:08So, when the tide comes in, the feet come out through the little hole,
0:34:08 > 0:34:12and there's this wonderful pulsing movement, like feathers almost,
0:34:12 > 0:34:15as the feet fish for tiny plankton.
0:34:19 > 0:34:23They also, barnacles, the coned barnacles, have the largest penises
0:34:23 > 0:34:27proportionate to size in the entire animal kingdom,
0:34:27 > 0:34:30so every now and again you can also see,
0:34:30 > 0:34:34coming out of one of the tops of these cones, an enormous penis,
0:34:34 > 0:34:41which will come out the top and then go in to the top of another valve,
0:34:41 > 0:34:44maybe four or five barnacles away.
0:34:44 > 0:34:52So he quite quickly comes to see and express this sense of wonder.
0:34:52 > 0:34:56That here they were, seemingly ordinary, you know,
0:34:56 > 0:35:01covering every shoreline of the temperate world,
0:35:01 > 0:35:04and yet when you go in really, really close,
0:35:04 > 0:35:08what seems like a simple organism becomes a very sophisticated one
0:35:08 > 0:35:12and you see that pattern over and over again in Darwin's early work,
0:35:12 > 0:35:15that sense of, we must stop talking
0:35:15 > 0:35:17about higher animals and lower animals.
0:35:17 > 0:35:22That actually the lower animals are often very sophisticated,
0:35:22 > 0:35:26almost fantastic in the way that they've adapted to their conditions.
0:35:26 > 0:35:33You can almost hear him gasp, you know, as he goes further and further in at the beauty of these things.
0:35:33 > 0:35:35There was another pay-off.
0:35:35 > 0:35:41Darwin's barnacle research relied on people sending him specimens from all over the world.
0:35:41 > 0:35:45Downe House developed into the hub of a network of contacts
0:35:45 > 0:35:50which would supply vital evidence for writing The Origin Of Species.
0:35:50 > 0:35:53Darwin's communication networks are absolutely remarkable.
0:35:53 > 0:35:58They're partly a tribute to the sophistication
0:35:58 > 0:35:59of the Victorian postal service,
0:35:59 > 0:36:03without which most 19th century science would have collapsed.
0:36:03 > 0:36:06Pigeon breeders and orchid fanciers,
0:36:06 > 0:36:12colonial physicians and Royal Naval officers were badgered
0:36:12 > 0:36:16by Darwin from his study in Downe,
0:36:16 > 0:36:22so that flowing on to that desk were piles and piles of paper.
0:36:25 > 0:36:28It was while he was still laboriously dissecting his way
0:36:28 > 0:36:31through hundreds of barnacle specimens
0:36:31 > 0:36:34that one more of Darwin's own children was struck down
0:36:34 > 0:36:38with what is now thought to have been tuberculosis.
0:36:38 > 0:36:43When Annie was about nine years old, she began to have tummy troubles,
0:36:43 > 0:36:45which isn't surprising in a house
0:36:45 > 0:36:49where the father was periodically throwing up in his study
0:36:49 > 0:36:53and doing all kinds of odd things to keep himself from becoming violently physically ill.
0:36:53 > 0:36:57It was one of the ways one got attention at Downe House,
0:36:57 > 0:36:59was to be sick, very sick preferably.
0:36:59 > 0:37:02And finally her illness became so acute
0:37:02 > 0:37:05that while Emma was seriously pregnant,
0:37:05 > 0:37:07she was having her ninth child,
0:37:07 > 0:37:10Charles put Annie under his own doctor
0:37:10 > 0:37:13and the doctor immediately diagnosed
0:37:13 > 0:37:16a grave situation that was bound to get worse
0:37:16 > 0:37:20and finally over the Easter weekend, she died.
0:37:22 > 0:37:27Her eyes sparkled brightly, she often smiled.
0:37:27 > 0:37:30Her step was elastic and firm.
0:37:30 > 0:37:33She held herself upright and often threw her head backwards
0:37:33 > 0:37:36as if she defied the world in her joyousness.
0:37:36 > 0:37:41A week after Annie died, this is what's most remarkable,
0:37:41 > 0:37:48Charles sat down and in a single draft, you can tell by reading it,
0:37:48 > 0:37:54wrote a magnificent threnody for this loved and sorely missed child,
0:37:54 > 0:38:02in which he describes Annie's human nature in all of its physicality.
0:38:02 > 0:38:06This is not just a struggle for existence
0:38:06 > 0:38:10in which a vulnerable life is crushed,
0:38:10 > 0:38:14this is a loved person who is their offspring.
0:38:17 > 0:38:19We have lost the joy of the household
0:38:19 > 0:38:21and the solace of our old age.
0:38:21 > 0:38:24She must've know how we loved her.
0:38:24 > 0:38:29Oh, that she could now know how deeply, how tenderly we do still
0:38:29 > 0:38:35and shall forever love her dear joyous face, blessings on her.
0:38:35 > 0:38:40Annie's death came just three years after Darwin's father had died, an unbeliever.
0:38:40 > 0:38:44With his own belief in a Christian God already shaken,
0:38:44 > 0:38:49Darwin now severed his ties with traditional faith.
0:38:49 > 0:38:52Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate,
0:38:52 > 0:38:55but it was at last complete.
0:38:55 > 0:38:58I indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity can be true,
0:38:58 > 0:39:08for if so, the plain language seems to show that men who do not believe will be everlastingly punished.
0:39:08 > 0:39:11And this is a damnable doctrine.
0:39:11 > 0:39:15There it seems to me is the quintessence
0:39:15 > 0:39:22of any anger that he felt at Annie's being torn away at Easter, focused into a single moral statement.
0:39:24 > 0:39:28And it's the statement of a non believer.
0:39:28 > 0:39:32A non Christian, but still a believer in God.
0:39:32 > 0:39:36Just a god who will not punish ten year olds.
0:39:40 > 0:39:43Death in the war in nature had been the driving force
0:39:43 > 0:39:46of Darwin's theory of evolution from the time he read Malthus.
0:39:48 > 0:39:50Eight years after her death,
0:39:50 > 0:39:53Darwin would weave his daughter into that vision.
0:39:55 > 0:40:02Annie is in chapter three of The Origin Of Species where Darwin talks about the struggle for existence.
0:40:02 > 0:40:05And, in that chapter, Darwin,
0:40:05 > 0:40:11he's now writing five, six years, seven years after Annie's death.
0:40:11 > 0:40:15He describes for us nature as it appears
0:40:15 > 0:40:19and then nature how it really is.
0:40:19 > 0:40:21He refers to the smiling face of nature.
0:40:21 > 0:40:24He refers to the nature that we look out upon
0:40:24 > 0:40:28and is so celebrated, the green and pleasant land of England,
0:40:28 > 0:40:31the insects flitting through the air, the birds sporting themselves.
0:40:31 > 0:40:35We do not see, he says, beneath the surface.
0:40:35 > 0:40:38It's a continual state of war.
0:40:38 > 0:40:40Under this surface of nature,
0:40:40 > 0:40:44the young are dying young
0:40:46 > 0:40:49and the rest of the animal life struggles to survive.
0:40:53 > 0:40:58And then he says that this struggle for existence is like,
0:40:58 > 0:41:03and he uses the old notebook figure, wedges being driven into the face.
0:41:06 > 0:41:10We behold the face of nature bright with gladness.
0:41:10 > 0:41:17Every single organic being around us may be seen to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers,
0:41:17 > 0:41:20that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life,
0:41:20 > 0:41:25that heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old
0:41:25 > 0:41:29during each generation or at recurrent intervals.
0:41:29 > 0:41:35The face of nature may be compared to a yielding surface with 10,000 sharp wedges
0:41:35 > 0:41:38packed close together and driven inwards by incessant blows.
0:41:38 > 0:41:43Sometimes one wedge being struck and then another with greater force.
0:41:46 > 0:41:49And there's this nature with a smiling face
0:41:49 > 0:41:52and then there are wedges being driven...
0:41:52 > 0:41:57It's the most horridly anthropomorphic figure.
0:41:57 > 0:42:00When I first read that, after studying Annie's death,
0:42:00 > 0:42:02I thought, "Could it be her face?"
0:42:02 > 0:42:07And, of course, when you read his account of her, a week after she died,
0:42:07 > 0:42:10over and over again, it's her brilliance face,
0:42:10 > 0:42:13her beaming face, her smiles that he remembers
0:42:13 > 0:42:16with the picture of the daguerreotype sat next to him.
0:42:17 > 0:42:23In writing this chapter in the struggle for existence in The Origin of Species
0:42:23 > 0:42:27he's portraying Annie's fate in falling victim
0:42:27 > 0:42:34to a remorseless struggle that gives rise to higher forms of life.
0:42:34 > 0:42:37She suffered at Easter that others may live.
0:42:42 > 0:42:49Darwin now lost himself in barnacles again, taking three more years to finish his huge study.
0:42:49 > 0:42:54At last he now felt able to return to his big theory but, for some time,
0:42:54 > 0:42:56something had been nagging him.
0:42:56 > 0:43:01How did a group, like barnacles, evolve consisting as they did of
0:43:01 > 0:43:06thousands of slightly different species, many living side by side?
0:43:06 > 0:43:09Was his idea of natural selection enough by itself
0:43:09 > 0:43:12to explain the extraordinary diversity of living things?
0:43:12 > 0:43:18At that time, I overlooked one problem of great importance.
0:43:18 > 0:43:21The problem is the tendency in organic beings
0:43:21 > 0:43:25descended from the same stock to diverge in character
0:43:25 > 0:43:27as they become modified.
0:43:27 > 0:43:32There's a place in the autobiography where he talks about
0:43:32 > 0:43:33the moment of discovery
0:43:33 > 0:43:36of the principle of divergence.
0:43:36 > 0:43:40You can see a...small piece of paper among many
0:43:40 > 0:43:43that are dated the same date, November '54,
0:43:43 > 0:43:47in which his handwriting is extremely jagged
0:43:47 > 0:43:49in pencil.
0:43:49 > 0:43:52And I can remember the very spot in the road,
0:43:52 > 0:43:57whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me.
0:43:57 > 0:44:03The solution, as I do believe, is that the modified offspring
0:44:03 > 0:44:07of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become adapted
0:44:07 > 0:44:12to the many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature.
0:44:12 > 0:44:16What Darwin realised was that the more individuals differed from each other,
0:44:16 > 0:44:21the better able they would be to take advantage of the particular environment in which they lived.
0:44:21 > 0:44:23Just as importantly,
0:44:23 > 0:44:28species would diverge even more as they adapted to each other.
0:44:28 > 0:44:30This interdependence had a parallel
0:44:30 > 0:44:34in what would eventually become the Victorian factory system.
0:44:34 > 0:44:38He uses, I would call it more like the Adam Smith phase
0:44:38 > 0:44:41of Darwin's encounter with the political economists,
0:44:41 > 0:44:45because, you know, Adam Smith had this idea of the division of labour,
0:44:45 > 0:44:50that you can produce more wealth if you have people who are specialists,
0:44:50 > 0:44:53you know, instead of everybody being a farmer.
0:44:53 > 0:44:58If some people become tailors and some people become leather workers,
0:44:58 > 0:45:00you can produce more wealth.
0:45:00 > 0:45:02Darwin uses the essentially the same idea
0:45:02 > 0:45:06and applies it to these little plots of ground
0:45:06 > 0:45:10and his view is that more life can be sustained
0:45:10 > 0:45:17on a square plot if the organisms use different parts of the environment.
0:45:17 > 0:45:22If you think about this in terms of this kind of lawn plot experiment.
0:45:22 > 0:45:27You've got grasses and other plants growing and its roots might go down to a certain depth,
0:45:27 > 0:45:30so it can take nutrients from that level,
0:45:30 > 0:45:32but another might grow to a deeper depth,
0:45:32 > 0:45:37You can sustain more life that way than if they are all growing to the same depth.
0:45:37 > 0:45:39If they were all one kind.
0:45:39 > 0:45:43And he's seeing that as a process of divergence.
0:45:45 > 0:45:49Darwin set up innovative trials to test out his ideas.
0:45:49 > 0:45:52Leaving a few square feet of his lawn unmown for three years,
0:45:52 > 0:45:57he regularly noted the change in composition in the struggle for life
0:45:57 > 0:46:02among 20 plant species, recording 11 winners and nine losers.
0:46:02 > 0:46:04In Great Puckland's meadow
0:46:04 > 0:46:10he counted 142 different species, the first ever survey of its kind.
0:46:10 > 0:46:14The chalk fields and banks around Downe support
0:46:14 > 0:46:18as many as 40 different species per square metre.
0:46:18 > 0:46:25An abundance explained by natural selection and the principle of divergence.
0:46:34 > 0:46:38And his applications of Adam Smith's ideas of capitalist manufacture
0:46:38 > 0:46:43were not lost on the inventor of the idea of class struggle, Karl Marx.
0:46:43 > 0:46:51Darwin discovers among the beasts and plants the society of England, with its division of labour,
0:46:51 > 0:46:56competition, opening up of new markets, inventions
0:46:56 > 0:47:00and the Malthusian struggle for existence.
0:47:00 > 0:47:04And certainly Darwin, when he looks at those tangled banks,
0:47:04 > 0:47:07where new varieties
0:47:07 > 0:47:12and eventually new species are preferentially being produced
0:47:12 > 0:47:16by competition and the physiological division of labour,
0:47:16 > 0:47:19Darwin calls those "manufactories of species."
0:47:21 > 0:47:24The very phrase "factory system" is about 30 years old
0:47:24 > 0:47:28and it had first been applied to this new system of economy,
0:47:28 > 0:47:31based on industrial production,
0:47:31 > 0:47:35ferocious division of labour, automation and mechanisation.
0:47:35 > 0:47:39Now Darwin was using those principles
0:47:39 > 0:47:43to try and make sense of what was happening
0:47:43 > 0:47:46when competition was particularly vigorous
0:47:46 > 0:47:50and therefore adaptations peculiarly intensely favoured.
0:47:52 > 0:47:58It was at this time that Darwin began to feel confident enough to come out in public with his theory.
0:47:58 > 0:48:02He started to prepare a master work where every possible criticism could
0:48:02 > 0:48:05be anticipated and every assertion backed up by evidence.
0:48:05 > 0:48:09He wanted to win over his Victorian readers
0:48:09 > 0:48:12with striking and familiar examples.
0:48:12 > 0:48:16Understanding their fascination with domestic animals,
0:48:16 > 0:48:19he chose a particularly popular species, the pigeon,
0:48:19 > 0:48:21in order to make an analogy.
0:48:21 > 0:48:24Fancy pigeon breeding by artificial selection
0:48:24 > 0:48:27showed how natural selection worked in the wild.
0:48:27 > 0:48:32He was especially concerned with just the sheer diversity of pigeons,
0:48:32 > 0:48:36all the different forms, the amazing types of pigeons
0:48:36 > 0:48:39and how those related then to a single ancestor.
0:48:39 > 0:48:41On the one hand you had fantails,
0:48:41 > 0:48:45really beautiful birds with beautiful feathers
0:48:45 > 0:48:48down to the almond tumblers, very small birds with beaks so small
0:48:48 > 0:48:51that they could hardly get out of their egg shells.
0:48:51 > 0:48:56Carrier pigeons were very large, had these kind of big ugly beaks.
0:48:56 > 0:48:58They showed this incredible diversity.
0:48:58 > 0:49:02How could they all come from one ancestor?
0:49:02 > 0:49:05Just as pigeon breeders bred different varieties,
0:49:05 > 0:49:09so nature acted in the same way over longer periods of time,
0:49:09 > 0:49:11naturally selecting different varieties,
0:49:11 > 0:49:15each passing on their own inherited characteristics.
0:49:15 > 0:49:20So in some sense what Darwin was saying was just as the pigeon fanciers had a fancy,
0:49:20 > 0:49:22nature had a fancy and that fancy
0:49:22 > 0:49:25was to produce these incredible varieties,
0:49:25 > 0:49:27all these different kind of forms
0:49:27 > 0:49:30and types of animals and plants that we see around us.
0:49:30 > 0:49:37That diversity could actually be explained by looking at something as simple as pigeons.
0:49:38 > 0:49:41Pigeons were to be one example amongst many
0:49:41 > 0:49:45in a work that might have amounted to three heavy volumes,
0:49:45 > 0:49:48had Darwin not been interrupted.
0:49:48 > 0:49:49My plans were overthrown.
0:49:49 > 0:49:53For early in the summer of 1858 Mr Wallace,
0:49:53 > 0:49:56who was then in the Malay Archipelago, sent me an essay
0:49:56 > 0:50:02on the Tendency Of Varieties To Depart Indefinitely From The Original Type,
0:50:02 > 0:50:06and this essay contained exactly the same theory as mine.
0:50:13 > 0:50:17Alfred Russel Wallace had been supplying Darwin, and other rich collectors
0:50:17 > 0:50:20with animal and plant specimens from the Indonesian archipelago.
0:50:20 > 0:50:25Now, Darwin, one has to say, was a toff, there's no question of it.
0:50:25 > 0:50:27Wallace was exactly the opposite.
0:50:27 > 0:50:29He had a few years of schooling, he was kicked out,
0:50:29 > 0:50:33and he went to the university of life, that's all he could afford,
0:50:33 > 0:50:35and he decided to set up shop as a collector of animals
0:50:35 > 0:50:38and he had an extraordinarily adventurous life.
0:50:38 > 0:50:43He went to Indonesia and had a tremendously challenging and difficult time.
0:50:43 > 0:50:46I mean, he was living out in the jungle for year after year after year
0:50:46 > 0:50:49and then suddenly one day, he had a good idea.
0:50:49 > 0:50:51Like Darwin,
0:50:51 > 0:50:56Wallace had been struck by Thomas Malthus's essay on population.
0:50:56 > 0:51:01His theory came to him while he was lying incapacitated with malaria struggling for life.
0:51:01 > 0:51:05So he wrote with a certain amount of trepidation to the grand
0:51:05 > 0:51:09and already famous fellow of the Royal Society, Charles Darwin,
0:51:09 > 0:51:13with this idea and, of course, it landed on Darwin's breakfast table,
0:51:13 > 0:51:16here in Downe, with the force of an hand grenade.
0:51:19 > 0:51:23So all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed.
0:51:23 > 0:51:29Though my book, if it will ever have any value, will not be deteriorated
0:51:29 > 0:51:33as all the labour consists in the application of the theory.
0:51:35 > 0:51:39Darwin was distraught. Also his daughter, Henrietta, was sick
0:51:39 > 0:51:42and his infant son, Charles, gravely ill.
0:51:42 > 0:51:46He put his trust in his friends Joseph Hooker and Charles Lyell,
0:51:46 > 0:51:49to decide the fate of his theory.
0:51:49 > 0:51:53With Wallace far away in Indonesia, they resolved to have papers
0:51:53 > 0:51:55by both naturalists presented
0:51:55 > 0:51:58at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London.
0:51:58 > 0:52:03Remarkably, the joint presentation stirred up little interest.
0:52:03 > 0:52:06Darwin too was absent from the event.
0:52:06 > 0:52:09His infant son had died.
0:52:09 > 0:52:11Once recovered, he resolved
0:52:11 > 0:52:15to publish his book as soon as possible.
0:52:15 > 0:52:19The great thing that Wallace did, I think in many ways, was to make
0:52:19 > 0:52:23sure that Darwin basically finished his book and wrote it in such a way
0:52:23 > 0:52:27that it was readable to a much wider audience than it would have otherwise been.
0:52:27 > 0:52:32Darwin was basically writing a three volume treatise on natural selection,
0:52:32 > 0:52:37with all the evidence, pigeons, bees, ants, everything, all put in.
0:52:37 > 0:52:40There was going to be a chapter on man, it was everything.
0:52:40 > 0:52:42What Wallace did would galvanise Darwin.
0:52:42 > 0:52:45He recaptured much of the energy he had when he was working
0:52:45 > 0:52:49in the Beagle voyage and he suddenly started writing with a real passion.
0:52:51 > 0:52:57In September 1858, I set to work on the strong advice of Lyell and Hooker
0:52:57 > 0:53:00to prepare a volume on the transmutation of species.
0:53:00 > 0:53:04It cost me 13 months' and ten days' hard labour.
0:53:04 > 0:53:07It was published under the title of
0:53:07 > 0:53:11The Origin Of Species in November 1859.
0:53:12 > 0:53:16Darwin was to describe his book of nearly 500 pages
0:53:16 > 0:53:18as one long argument.
0:53:18 > 0:53:21He gently and tentatively coaches his reader
0:53:21 > 0:53:25through a developing series of observations and examples.
0:53:25 > 0:53:29Throughout the same pattern is repeated
0:53:29 > 0:53:35of moving from specific details to grand overarching conclusions.
0:53:35 > 0:53:39I often think that the theory of evolution of natural selection
0:53:39 > 0:53:42is a bit like the grammar of biology.
0:53:42 > 0:53:47You can't learn a language without understanding at least something about its grammar,
0:53:47 > 0:53:49and you couldn't be a biologist before 1859
0:53:49 > 0:53:52because none of the facts seem to fit together.
0:53:52 > 0:53:55You could be studying flowers, or earthworms,
0:53:55 > 0:54:00you could be collecting birds on the Galapagos but they were sort of independent discoveries.
0:54:00 > 0:54:04But suddenly The Origin Of Species made it all make sense.
0:54:04 > 0:54:08It gave you a framework onto which you could bolt all these facts.
0:54:08 > 0:54:10So it really was, and still is,
0:54:10 > 0:54:13the central book of the science of biology.
0:54:16 > 0:54:21The book appealed to a new breed of professional men of science who were prepared to accept
0:54:21 > 0:54:25that all nature was governed by fixed laws, The Origin Of Species
0:54:25 > 0:54:28as much as the motions of the planets.
0:54:28 > 0:54:31But Darwin had invested so many years developing the book
0:54:31 > 0:54:35because he also hoped to win over his old Anglican mentors.
0:54:38 > 0:54:44On The Origin Of Species only twice refers to the origins of mankind
0:54:44 > 0:54:47but for old naturalists,
0:54:47 > 0:54:52such as his respected teacher Professor Adam Sedgwick,
0:54:52 > 0:54:55the implications were obvious and odious.
0:54:56 > 0:54:59Adam Sedgwick wrote him a letter.
0:54:59 > 0:55:03This old man sat down and sorrowfully
0:55:03 > 0:55:07told his geological student
0:55:07 > 0:55:14how much he disapproved of this book, The Origin Of Species,
0:55:14 > 0:55:17which in places Sedgwick said,
0:55:17 > 0:55:20"attempts to break the link
0:55:20 > 0:55:24"between the world of nature and the reality of God."
0:55:26 > 0:55:30I have read your book with more pain than pleasure.
0:55:30 > 0:55:33Parts of it I admired greatly,
0:55:33 > 0:55:37parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore,
0:55:37 > 0:55:40parts I read with absolute sorrow
0:55:40 > 0:55:45because I think them utterly false and grievously mischievous.
0:55:47 > 0:55:51Sedgwick hoped that they would see each other in heaven
0:55:51 > 0:55:53and that said it all, didn't it?
0:55:53 > 0:55:56Sedgwick realised perfectly well what was at stake
0:55:56 > 0:55:59and what Darwin himself always knew was at stake.
0:55:59 > 0:56:04Sedgwick saw the fabric tottering and falling.
0:56:04 > 0:56:07That is the fabric of salvation and eternal life.
0:56:07 > 0:56:11If you make a man out of a monkey that all comes down.
0:56:14 > 0:56:18The family was really quite upset about this. I think it's probably
0:56:18 > 0:56:22for Darwin the most upsetting letter he gets about The Origin Of Species
0:56:22 > 0:56:25because it represents the kind of, on some level,
0:56:25 > 0:56:27his failure in a certain way to be able to reach
0:56:27 > 0:56:30the kind of person that Sedgwick actually was.
0:56:30 > 0:56:33And it's particularly upsetting, I think also for Emma,
0:56:33 > 0:56:40because Sedgwick is somebody that she particularly admired and whose views she respected quite heavily.
0:56:40 > 0:56:45And so there's quite a lot of sense that there's upset in the household
0:56:45 > 0:56:48as a result of Sedgwick's intervention in the debate.
0:56:50 > 0:56:54Whatever the personal set-backs, Emma steadfastly supported Charles
0:56:54 > 0:56:57throughout the years of controversy that followed
0:56:57 > 0:57:00enabling him to write nine more books,
0:57:00 > 0:57:03despite further breakdowns and mounting exhaustion.
0:57:03 > 0:57:06But he was later to call The Origin Of Species
0:57:06 > 0:57:08the chief work of his life.
0:57:08 > 0:57:11The book has never been out of print.
0:57:11 > 0:57:14In it he immortalised a chalk bank at Downe to illustrate
0:57:14 > 0:57:19the extraordinary diversity and interdependence of living beings
0:57:19 > 0:57:22that result from the process of natural selection.
0:57:22 > 0:57:26It might also serve as a metaphor for his struggle to write the book.
0:57:28 > 0:57:34And, of course, the entangled bank that he describes at the end is also a vision of his own life, you know,
0:57:34 > 0:57:38the entangled bank that he sees, central to his vision of nature
0:57:38 > 0:57:40is also the world that he's lived in.
0:57:40 > 0:57:43There's a sense of worship in that,
0:57:43 > 0:57:46a worship of nature as he sees it fully.
0:57:46 > 0:57:49That he accepts the war, the destruction, the famine,
0:57:49 > 0:57:53the pain, the suffering, the loss of children
0:57:53 > 0:57:56but nonetheless you put all of that together,
0:57:56 > 0:58:01the death and the suffering and the beauty and the miracle of it
0:58:01 > 0:58:03and you end with wonder.
0:58:07 > 0:58:11There is grandeur in this view of life with its several powers
0:58:11 > 0:58:15having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one,
0:58:15 > 0:58:19and that whilst this planet has gone cycling along,
0:58:19 > 0:58:22according to the fixed laws of gravity,
0:58:22 > 0:58:26from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful
0:58:26 > 0:58:30and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.
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