A month and more since my last post. Apologies, friends. It could not be helped. Here is an imagined conversation that actually might have happened between two key figures of the nineteenth century. See what you think. 

                                  

                   I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

                                          --   Isaac Newton 

                  

                            (image credit: Godfrey Kneller, via Wikimedia Commons)

                                     A Conversation In 1848

“Pardon me, sir, but I am moved to be forward and speak to you, though I own that we have not been introduced. I hope you shall not take offense, but I feel I must ask: Are you the poet, William Wordsworth?”

“I am he. To whom am I speaking? Surely it cannot be Mister Charles Darwin.”

“I am amazed that one as famous as you could know my name. I am indeed Charles Darwin. I am also amazed that we are so propitiously brought together by chance in such an unlikely place. I was given to understand the you did not care for train stations.”

“I do not care for trains or the modern age generally, it is true. I am here but to meet a friend who is arriving on the express from London in a few minutes. But you are right, Mister Darwin. This is an alien place for me. I find it oppressive even when none of the clanking, huffing metal monsters are about for I know one will come along at any moment. They are unnatural, Mister Darwin. No good is going to come of this fashion for things that huff and clank.”

                      

                                               

                                                               William Wordsworth 

                                   (credit: B. R. Haydon, via Wikimedia Commons)

“Please, I beg you, sir. Call me ‘Charles’. I would be honored if you would.”

“Very well. I would also welcome your calling me ‘William’. I still peer about to see who is being addressed when I hear the title ‘Mister’. The salutation surely cannot be addressed to me.” (laughs quietly)

“Ah, I find your sensibilities agree with my own. Give me the wilds of del Fuego rather than the trials of a mannered company. I like you well already, sir.”

“I am glad to hear it, Charles, but I must confess that I am very cautious of you right now. I have heard of your reputation in scientific circles in England. You have even published some papers that are much admired in the community of naturalists in the civilized nations of the world. The view of the world that Science offers to our kind seems dangerously amoral to me. Not immoral, which might be contended with, but amoral as it takes no position on what constitutes decency or a decent way of life. This is the illness of our age, in my view.”

                      

                                                             Charles Darwin 

                                                   (credit: G. Richmond, via Wikiquote) 

“Now there, William, most respectfully, I must disagree with you. Science tells us to dedicate ourselves to the truths of the solid world. We must be able to test a proposition in the material processes of this world before we can assess the truth or falsity of that proposition. That is the prime directive that I and many others take from Science.”

“But, Charles, surely you see that, first, no propositions concerning decency may be tested in such a manner, and, second, no life for humans in community is possible without principles of decency firmly embedded in the modes of thought and behavior practiced daily within the community.”

“Ah, my dear Mister Wordsworth. Pardon me. My dear William, as we agreed. I am most inspired by the quality of your mind. You refuse to be detoured by the trivial appurtenances of a discussion and leap right to the heart of the matter in one fell swoop. Pardon me again, but I do not flatter. I have attempted to have this same discussion with so many of my friends and colleagues, and they simply get side-tracked in minor corollary issues and propositions, while the main question remains neglected between us. When I attempt to steer the debate back to that main question – Where do the principles of what we call “decency” come from? – they keep wandering away toward hobby horses of their own: their trades, their travels, their farms, their families, and so on. The conversation then rapidly becomes wearying in the extreme. I feel I must affirm again that I value the quality of your mind. I have read your poetry and found much sense and sensibility in it. Thought and feeling in fine balance. As a younger man, I dreaded the thought of meeting the authors of my favorite works. They were heroes of superhuman proportions to me. I feared meeting the man for real would puncture my balloon utterly. But you …you have not failed me, sir.

“But, as Hamlet says, to the quick of the ulcer. I have speculated long upon this matter. I do not know the extent of your knowledge of Natural Philosophy, but I am now working very hard on the proof of a theory which discloses the cause of the variety of living things that we see in our world. My wife has also been much distressed several times by the mechanical view of life that I am laboring to prove. But I am certain that the world view I am developing is the correct one. Or to be accurate, I am as certain of it as it is possible for one to be of anything in this life.

“Life began from a few simple forms at least ten million years ago on our world, and it has been progressing by the laws of variation from generation to generation under the pressures of a second law, which simply requires that the individuals fittest to survive in their environments go on to reproduce, while those not so fit to survive die out before reproducing, thus taking their peculiar qualities and modes of activity out of the population with them.”

“You are a delightful young man in many ways, I feel certain, Charles, but do you not see that we humans are not in this model of yours. Everywhere human beings have a deep moral sense, a deep sense of which acts and utterances are decent and which are not. I agree that there are large numbers of varied customs and modes of living among the many nations of our world, but embedded in their belief systems, we find universally that they all have notions of right and wrong so similar to our own as to require the conclusion that these must be coming into their hearts by some means other than the physical. It is from this consideration that I and many like me draw the further conclusion that there must be a higher dimension from which this faculty flows into our very beings.”

“Yes, William, yes! Again, you proceed to the heart of the matter practically in an instant. Thank you, sir. But to rejoin with you …as I said, I have given much private time to the contemplation of these matters, and the conclusion I, as a scientist, am driven to is that like our physically inherited traits of eye color and length of finger nail and so on, so our socially acquired beliefs and customs are in constant competition for survival. Societies which have modes of discourse and activity that enable them to survive well in their places and times flourish, while those that do not die out. The mechanism is as clear and as harsh as that.

“The whole theory has given me much inner turmoil and distress as I have worked to explicate it for my colleagues in Science, and perhaps for the rest of the world as well. I don't think I shall ever publish these musings on the competitions between nations, belief systems, and ways of life. I fear my conclusions on the ways in which species in the non-human realms arise, compete, flourish, and then are extinguished are going to be explosive enough to draw all the wrath down upon me that Hell can offer. All I can bear. But I must follow Truth where she beckons. That is the way of Science.”

“You are a wholly delightful young man to bare your inner soul to me after an acquaintance of less than half an hour, Charles. But do you not also see that if you insist on characterizing our human inclinations and sensibilities in this mechanical way of yours, then you are honor-bound to tell your fellows the source from which these customs, and the values and concepts that underlie them, are taking their direction. Why did human creatures in these remote eras that you imagine ever come to live by any values in the first place?”

“Excellent point, William. The truth is that like the origins of life, the origins of decency are shrouded in mystery to me. I can’t say with any comfortable degree of confidence why we believe and behave as we do. I have speculations, but as I have little to no evidence to support them, I keep them to myself. But I can assert that granted that such things as customs do exist, I can explain how they work. That is the truth of the matter. As a scientist, I wish to promulgate to the world that which I can demonstrate with material evidence. Wonderings such as those spoken of by our own Isaac Newton I do not share with the world, nor even with close friends and associates. They remain my own.”

“I am going to extend your view of this universe in which there is no benign and loving universal presence and ask you now a couple of very hard questions, Charles. I hope you will bear with me.”

“You are a complete gentleman, William. I cannot be persuaded that you could ask a question of any sort that would be other than pertinent and penetrating. For me, as a scientist, no question of this kind can be thought rude. It is simply the key element in the best sort of discourse between men.”

“Very well then. I shall enquire: Charles, have you any children?”

“I do, sir. A houseful of them that I love very, very much. They are the fruit of my love for my wife. Treasures beyond all tallying. Yes, sir. I do.”

“I perceive in your very tone that these assertions about yourself are only the unvarnished truth. So now the hard question steps forward: Have you ever experienced the death of a child of your own?”

“I have not. But I think I see where you are pointing with this question. That life is too cruel to bear if we do not believe in another dimension where the love of a Creator reigns and the principles of decency are the laws of that other existence. Am I correct in surmising so?”

“You are, Charles.”

“I fear such an event in ways that dissolve all my processes of thought. Could I face the death of one of my children? I fear such a possibility more than the Armageddon portrayed in the cruelest verses of the Revelation of St. John, the Divine. But I remain a scientist. Pain and death, and even our extreme distress in the face of them, are but parts of a natural world that is ultimately more kind than cruel. Like the firm father who will not appoint his own child for a medal at the school where the father is headmaster unless he is certain that his child truly is the best of all candidates for the award, so the presence I sense is only firm with us. Never cruel. Just firm. Death is a key part of the evolution process of all life on our world. I don’t know that I would be able to remain true to my model of the world if I did lose one of my children. One’s whole response to such a terrible thought is that it is more than merely cruel. It is unnatural. It is against every decent instinct and cognition in our deepest selves. But from the view of Science, even these are parts of the larger process.

“Oh, my heaven! It is just occurring to me now! I am so ashamed, William. So ashamed, my friend! You have …you have known such a loss? Can it be so?”

“My London friend’s train is arriving momentarily, Charles. I am sorry, but I must end my part in this discussion. Let me close with this thought upon which you may ruminate. I once believed in the benevolence of Nature. I believed in a view of the world not dissimilar to the one you have expounded for me today. But yes, I have known that cruelest of blows. I lost my rosy view of the natural world. It never returned. I will end by bidding you a polite farewell. And bestowing upon you my fervent wish that you may remain true to your scientist’s faith, for faith is what it is. And may you remain true to it even when you do come to know what incredible, despairing suffering can afflict those of us who love. But to wish you may be spared such loss I cannot do. I know you will not be spared. It is the way of the world. Bear up as well as you can, Charles. One hour at a time, one minute at a time if need be. There is nothing else to do.

“Farewell and good luck, my young friend. I now must receive a much older, but no less worthy friend. Shall we shake hands, then?”

“You have not disappointed me in even one minor trait, my dear William. I feel a fondness for you that is all out of proportion to our short acquaintance. Indeed, fare well. Fare however you need. You have given me the best discussion of, perhaps, all my days. Utterly and wholly courteous, intelligent, and candid.”

“You are very kind, Charles. Farewell.”

“Farewell.”     

                                   

     

   

                                               

                                                                leopard kill 

                                          (credit: NJR ZA [CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)