Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1882-04-22
THE Death OF DAKwIs.

Oharles n. DAVID, author oil the "Orlgln o.
Species BY Means Of Natural Selection" ha
passed to Immortality after long lie of use
fulness, devoted to the investigation OF the law
Of life. He lived to enjoy the highest honon
that can he conferred upon a scientist-th'
approval and Enforcement of the most emf
nent of his fellows-and 10 know that the
theories Of evolution which he sc
modertly advanced have at last been uuiver.
sally accepted. Wallace, in England, and
Hakel, in Germany, almost anticipated him
in the result which has changed the whole
current of thought as to creation and gene
SIS and in n msnly way he made quick ac-
acknowledgement of their Independent and
simultaneous Investigations in the same
direction and of their seryices in
sustaining, with signal ability, the theory
10 which his name has been given. But
to him the honor belongs OF confronting the
preconcep,ions Of the dark ages and the pre-
ju1iees growing out of them, aud Of besring
the brunt Of assault from those who could
in a. special crea=.
ton, an assault which took on every form
OF invective, denunciation, even to sour
Tility, and OF ridicule. For fifteen years the
shafts of bitter irony were hurled at him
from pulpit, press and platform, only to fall
harmless at his feet, 80 thoroughly armed
was he at every point. He was proof against
all attacks. He met most of them with silence,
so strong was he in the rectitude Of his pur-
pose, in his knowledge, in the perfection of
his methods of investigation, and in
innate in his communings with nature.
Frien1a like John TYndal-who, like his
famous namesake, is a noble example Of
what a protestant against error ought to
be--undertook the defense Of what he mod
estly PIT forward as a theory, and it was not
long before he found himself surrounded by
a noble company Of men whose names will
stand beside his own forever as among the
greatest lights of science, and foremost
among the leaders Of this age OF abnor-
maly intellectual activity. His services
while with the Beagle" commanded
by Captain Fifzroy of the royal navy,
and all the Investigations he had made in
geology and the domain of natural history
were ignored when, in 1859, he announced
his discovery Of the origin of species by
means Of natural selection. The church,
always first to protest and ohstruct the march
of sciences, huriedly massed its forces and
feebly opposed the Geneseric account of Gre
alton as the voice of the Creator Himself
telling the story of a special and individual
creation OF all species, whether on the esrth
or in it, above it, in the air or in
the waters of the sea. But against this
blind assertion he had erected go imposing a
it, that one after another of the boldest |
dropped away until now but few of the |
feebler sort remain to repeat the cry with
which at first the zealots and bigots sought J
to silence him. He outliyed the storm he |
had raised, and which he withstood in so
manly a spirit of silent vindication. The
roads he had travelled lead him to the con-
illusions he had reached, and he pointed the |
way silently to ali his detractors, know |
ing we'll that if they followed it
they would be compelled TO acknowledge the |
potency and power" of the Darwinian |
theory. Ginrdano Bruno was burned at the |
stake in Rome for unfolding the teaching OF
modern astronomy as to the immensely Of |
the universe and the plurality OF worlds;
Copernscls was censured and condemned /
for teaching that the sun and not |
the earth was the center Of the solar system;
and Calico was imprisoned because he proved |
the correctness of and upheld the Copernican
system now familiar to every scholar in our
public schools. Truth always survives error,
even when it is surrounded by the halo of |
dogma. Darwin still lives. The church
has survived these blind and bitter
attacks by her uperserviceable ser
wants upon demonstrated truth, and has
never been more useful to mankind as
conserv ator Of morals than she is now when
h>r acceptance of the Copernicsu theory and
eution anu ->>"rder of those patient discov-
erers of soms of nSture's most profound
secrets. Darwinism presSils and the church
goes on its way conquering in the domain
OF morals, laying its wise r.straints upon
men within that limit, but shorn of
any power successfully TO intCrfere with
science orireedom of thought. Geology which
az one time was denounced because il tsS::;;ht
that the world had existed for millions of
years and had taken its shape under natural
laws, is now a branch of study in every wen
conducted school. All attempts at fxity OF
tenure by the church in the scientific world
has brought to it humiliation and defeat.
The Darwinian theory was its latest trial,
let US hope it is its last. There is nothing
Copernican or Darwiuian theories. The law
of evolution, the gradual unfolding and adj
vancement of life from the protoplasm to
man Is as worthy the Great Creator,
as Moses's six days of special creations. The
unfolding aud advancement of nations, and
even of individuals, is a source OF never
ending wonder to those who read history.
The physical growth of man is not near so
astonishing as his mental expansion. The un-
folding OF the powers of mind under the
stimulus OF education is as wonderful 10 the
student of man as those growths, unseen by
the multitude, which lie at the basis of Mr..
DArwin's theory. The difference between the
boy and the man is not so wide as that which
teparates the savage of the caves or the hill
men Of Borneo from the average American,
but it is wide enough to furnish an example
of development by the building of lair upon
lair Of knowledge, the sum OF which is
dlnerence That cannot De accumulated or 4
made up for in any other way. The gap that |
lies between a Shakespeare and African
bushman can only be bridged ON the princi-
pie Of evolution, and the chain is as long, and
TO the masses as incomprehensible, as that
which connected the primal man with the
primal forms of matter. Leading up to his
browning work, Mr. Darwin. who was the
son of noted Shrewsbury physician,
and the grandson of the eccentric poet and
scientist, DIR. Erasmus Darwin-one of the
noted free-thinkers of the last century-frst
became famous through his "Journal of Re-
searches into the Geology and Natural His
tory of the Various Countries" visited by
the Beagle, which FIRST appeared in 1887.
After his marriage in 1889 to the daughter
OF Josiah Wedgewood, the improver and
manufacturer of earthenware, he edited the
Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle" and
published three separate volumes on geology
-" The Structure and Distribution OF Coral
Reeis," in 1912; Geological Observations on
Volcanic Islands, 1914; and Geological
Observations on South Americs," 1916
The most important OF Mr.. Darwin's subse-
quent works are a Monograph of the Family