قراءة كتاب Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters
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Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters
[—led to comprehend two affinities. [illeg] My theory would give zest to recent & fossil Comparative Anatomy, it would lead to study of instincts, heredity & mind heredity, whole metaphysics — it would lead to closest examination of hybridity & generation, causes of change in order to know what we have come from & to what we tend — to what circumstances favour crossing & what prevents it; this & direct examination of direct passages of [species (crossed out)] structures in species, might lead to laws of change, which would then be main object of study, to guide our [past (crossed out)] speculations]
CHARLES DARWIN.
CHAPTER I. THE DARWINS.
Charles Robert Darwin was the second son of Dr. Robert Waring Darwin, of Shrewsbury, where he was born on February 12, 1809. Dr. Darwin was a son of Erasmus Darwin, sometimes described as a poet, but more deservedly known as physician and naturalist. Charles Darwin's mother was Susannah, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the well-known potter of Etruria, in Staffordshire.
If such speculations are permissible, we may hazard the guess that Charles Darwin inherited his sweetness of disposition from the Wedgwood side, while the character of his genius came rather from the Darwin grandfather.[2]
Robert Waring Darwin was a man of well-marked character. He had no pretensions to being a man of science, no tendency to generalise his knowledge, and though a successful physician he was guided more by intuition and everyday observation than by a deep knowledge of his subject. His chief mental characteristics were his keen powers of observation, and his knowledge of men, qualities which led him to "read the characters and even the thoughts of those whom he saw even for a short time." It is not therefore surprising that his help should have been sought, not merely in illness, but in cases of family trouble and sorrow. This was largely the case, and his wise sympathy, no less than his medical skill, obtained for him a strong influence over the lives of a large number of people. He was a man of a quick, vivid temperament, with a lively interest in even the smaller details in the lives of those with whom he came in contact. He was fond of society, and entertained a good deal, and with his large practice and many friends, the life at Shrewsbury must have been a stirring and varied one—very different in this respect to the later home of his son at Down.[3]
We have a miniature of his wife, Susannah, with a remarkably sweet and happy face, bearing some resemblance to the portrait of her father painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds; a countenance expressive of the gentle and sympathetic nature which Miss Meteyard ascribes to her.[4] She died July 15, 1817, thirty-two years before her husband, whose death occurred on November 13, 1848. Dr. Darwin lived before his marriage for two or three years on St. John's Hill, afterwards at the Crescent, where his eldest daughter Marianne was born, lastly at the "Mount," in the part of Shrewsbury known as Frankwell, where the other children were born. This house was built by Dr. Darwin about 1800, it is now in the possession of Mr. Spencer Phillips, and has undergone but little alteration. It is a large, plain, square, red-brick house, of which the most attractive feature is the pretty green-house, opening out of the morning-room.
The house is charmingly placed, on the top of a steep bank leading down to the Severn. The terraced bank is traversed by a long walk, leading from end to end, still called "the Doctor's Walk." At one point in this walk grows a Spanish chestnut, the branches of which bend back parallel to themselves in a curious manner, and this was Charles