The Kingdom of Speech (3 page)

The Navajo Indians' creator was an insect that seems to have been identical to what is known today as the biting midge (colloquially, the no-see-um bug). Biting midges are so small you can't see them. But you can't mistake them when they bite your ankle. For all practical purposes they are invisible. But the Navajo biting-midge creator was smaller than small and invisibler than invisible, because it came into this world without its two wings. Yet it is the creator in probably the most sophisticated cosmogony ever believed in, a story of full-scale, gradual evolution from next to nothing to modern man. In the beginning, the biting midges lived in the First World, down deep deep deep beneath the earth's surface. As evolution began, they grew back their missing wings, and one species evolved all the way into a full-blown insect, a locust. Locust led the hives up into the Second World, where they began to evolve into animals of every species. Then Locust led the whole burgeoning menagerie up into the Third World, where the most advanced species evolved into men. Then Locust led all the men and all the animals up into the Fourth World, which was right below the crust of the earth. In an Inktomi-like show of energy and dedication, the menagerie's spiders built rope ladders out of their webbing so that everybody could climb up onto the earth's surface.
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A later cosmogony was a dead ringer for the Navajos', dead and unfortunately duller, except for one thing. The creator in this cosmogony was a creature even smaller, even less visible to the naked eye, than a biting midge, namely, a single, undifferentiated cell—or “four or five” of them. “Undifferentiated” means it could evolve into any living thing, vegetable or animal. This cosmogony was the only one recent enough for people to know the chief storyteller by name: Charles Darwin. “Four or five” is from a scrap of conversation he had with a group of students not long after he told the story publicly. The students had the sort of naive, unbridled, free-floating curiosity most youths unfortunately rein in far too early in life. They wanted to know some small but fundamental details about the moment Evolution got under way and how exactly, physically, it started up—and from what?

Darwin had apparently never thought of it quite that way before. Long pause…and finally, “Ohhh,” he said, “probably from four or five cells floating in a warm pool somewhere.”
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One student pressed him further. He wanted to know where the cells came from. Who or what put them in the pool? An exasperated Darwin said, in effect, “Well,
I
don't know…look, isn't it enough that I've brought you man and all the animals and plants in the world?”

In this respect, Darwinism was typical of the more primitive cosmogonies. They avoided the question of how the world developed ex nihilo. Darwin often thought about it, but it made his head hurt. The world was just…
here.
All cosmogonies, whether the Apaches' or Charles Darwin's, faced the same problem. They were histories or, better said, stories of things that had occurred in a primordial past, long before there existed anyone capable of recording them. The Apaches' scorpion and Darwin's cells in that warm pool somewhere were by definition educated guesses. Darwin, a Cambridge man, after all, was highly educated by the standards of his time, but so, no doubt, was the Apache medicine man who came up with the little old man with the long beard in the disk. The difference in Darwin's case was that he put together his story in an increasingly rational age. It wouldn't have occurred to him to present his cosmogony as anything other than a scientific hypothesis. In the Navajo cosmogony the agent of change (as distinct from the creator) was alive. It was Locust. In Darwin's cosmogony it had to be scientifically inanimate. Locust was renamed Evolution.

There were five standard tests for a scientific hypothesis. Had anyone observed the phenomenon—in this case, Evolution—as it occurred and recorded it? Could other scientists replicate it? Could any of them come up with a set of facts that, if true, would contradict the theory (Karl Popper's “falsifiability” test)? Could scientists make predictions based on it? Did it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas of science? In the case of Evolution…well…no…no…no…no…and no.

In other words, there
was
no scientific way to test it. Like every other cosmogony, it was a serious and sincere story meant to satisfy man's endless curiosity about where he came from and how he came to be so different from the animals around him. But it was still a story. It was not evidence. In short, it was sincere, but sheer, literature.

It certainly wasn't scientific experimentation or observation that finally convinced Darwin that man had no special place in the universe. It was a visit to the London Zoo in the spring of 1838, two years after the voyage of the
Beagle.
One of the zoo's most popular attractions was an orangutan named Jenny. Jenny had become so used to being around people that many of her reactions had become absolutely human in nature. Sometimes she wore clothes. Her gestures, her facial expressions, the sounds she made, the way she acted out frustration, mockery, anger, guileless glee, or
I-love-you, Help-me! Help-me!, I-want I-want
…this last with a whine that made one see how hard she was struggling to put it all into words—it was clear as day! Now Darwin was certain! Jenny was a human being behind the flimsiest of veils. He used his clout as a Gentleman and a leading naturalist to enter Jenny's cage and study her expressions up close.
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Certain
he was…and so what? That left him as stumped as everybody else who was so sure about it, including his grandfather Erasmus Darwin. Erasmus couldn't figure out exactly
how
transmutation
i
—Evolution—occurred, and neither could his grandson.

In October of 1838, Charles happened to pick up a copy of Thomas Malthus's
Essay on the Principle of Population…
“for amusement,” as he put it, apparently assuming that no deep thinker could possibly find a book as old and popular as
Principle of Population
profound.
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He started reading it, and—

Ahura!
That old Malthusian magic's got me in its spell! It lights up Darwin's brainpan precisely the way it would Wallace's twenty years later—
It!
—the solution to what naturalists, including Darwin himself until that very moment, called “the mystery of mysteries”: how the littlest creature (or “four or five” of them), smaller even than the smallest invisible biting midge—namely, a cell; never mind those great bulky hares and scorpions and dung-eating beetles—a
cell,
or a cell and a few brethren, grew up into the most highly developed creature of all, one with a certified Latin name,
Homo sapiens.

But what happens to someone like Darwin, who has been honored, who is highly esteemed, who has the highest credentials in his field…when he announces that man is not made in the image of God but is, in fact, nothing but an animal? He could see,
feel,
the Church and thousands, tens of thousands, of believers descending upon…
me…
with the Wrath of God. He was aware of what had happened to Mr.
Vestiges,
all too aware. It terrified him.

So in the two decades between 1838—back when he was twenty-nine years old—and 1858 he hadn't told a soul other than Lyell about his
Ahura!
moment, and he didn't even tell Lyell until 1856. For the twenty years before that, his career had been devoted…secretly…to compiling evidence to support what in due course, he calculated, would shake the world: his revelation of the
actual
origins of man—and, while he was at it, all animals and plants: his Theory of Evolution through natural selection. He was bringing forth, for all mankind to marvel at…the
true
story of creation! Man was not created in the image of God, as the Church taught. Man was an animal, descended straight from other animals, most notably the orangutans.

Darwin was afraid of not one but two things: one, the Wrath of the Godly, and two, some enterprising competitor getting wind of his idea and forestalling him by writing it up himself. And sure enough, up from nowhere pops this little flycatcher Wallace with a scholarly paper, ready for publication, on the
evolution of species through natural selection!
He racked his brain to recall whether or not he had written something in a letter that tipped Wallace off. But he couldn't recall a thing.

Oh, Lyell had warned him
j
…Lyell had warned him…and now all my work, all my dreams—
all my dreams
—

Then he caught hold of himself. He mustn't give in to this horrible feeling overwhelming his solar plexus. There was something more important than priority and glory and applause and universal admiration and an awesome place in history…namely, his honor as a Gentleman and a scholar. He summoned up every tensor of his soul and did what he had to do, and he did it like a man. He dispatched Wallace's paper to Lyell along with a letter saying, “It seems to me well worth reading…Please return to me the M.S. which he does not say he wishes me to publish; but I shall of course at once write & offer to send it to any Journal. So all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed.”
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Coming from the pen of a Gentleman as ever-composed and self-possessed-to-the-point-of-phlegmatic as Darwin, that word “smashed” rose up from the page like a howl, a howl plus the
riiiippp
of those tensors in his soul going haywire and tearing the damned thing to pieces. What he howled was, “My
whole life
is about to be
smashed
and reduced to dust, to a mere footnote to the triumph of another man!”

Oh, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie…
said Lyell, shaking his head. Who was it who warned you two years ago about this fellow Wallace? Who was it who told you you'd better get busy and publish this pet theory of yours?…So why should I even bother, this late in the game?

But…we
are
Gentlemen and old pals, after all…and I think I know of a way to get you out of this predicament. It so happens there is a meeting of the Linnean Society, postponed from last month in deference to the death of one of our beloved former Linnean presidents, coming up
thirteen days from now,
July 1. Unfortunately, we don't have any way to notify Wallace in time, do we. But that's not
our
fault.
We
didn't schedule the meeting. That's just the way it goes sometimes. We'll bring our good friend Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, the botanist, in on this. All three of us are on the society's council.
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We can make the whole thing seem like the most routine scholarly meeting in the world…the usual learnéd papers learnéd papers learnéd papers, the usual
drone drone
drone humm drumm humm
…The main thing, Charlie, is to establish your priority. We'll present your work
and
Wallace's. Now, that's fair, isn't it? Even-steven and all that? Well, to be perfectly frank, there
is
one slight hitch. You've never published a line of your work on Evolution. Not one line. As far as the scientific world at large is aware, you have never
done
any. You don't even have a paper to present at the meeting…
hmmm
…Ahh! I know! We can help you create an abstract overnight! An
abstract.
Get it?

“Abstract” was the conventional word in scientific publications for a summary of an article. It usually ran right below the title. After that came the article itself.

Now do you get it, Charlie? All we need is for you to give us an
abstract
of a scholarly paper of yours that doesn't exist!

Darwin was aghast. “I should be
extremely
glad
now
to publish a sketch of my general views in about a dozen pages or so,” he wrote to Lyell. “But I cannot persuade myself that I can do so honourably…I would far rather burn my whole book than that he or any man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit.”
b

In fact, he said, he had been intending to write Wallace relinquishing all claim of priority when Lyell's letter arrived. So how could he possibly concoct his own essay overnight and raise his hand and claim priority himself? How very paltry. Darwin had taken to repeating this word, “paltry,” over the last few days. It meant “small-minded,” “mean,” “vile,” “despicable.” Not a pretty word, but a lot better than “dishonest”—

—hold on a second: what's
that?
A tiny hole…or is he just seeing things?…no, there's a tiny hole in Lyell's letter, the tiniest hole you ever saw in your life…and through that hole shines a little gleam of light, so little he wonders if it could possibly be real…but it
is
real! It emits the faintest of glimmers—the faintest of glimmers, but an
honourable
glimmer!

Darwin pivots 180 degrees. His heart turns clear around.

Or that “was my first impression,” he says to Lyell, suddenly switching gears, “& I should have certainly acted on it, had it not been for your letter.”
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But your
letter
…
your
letter…
your letter
has shown the way.
Even Stephen,
you have ruled,
Even Stephen!
And who am I to presume to overrule Sir Charles Lyell? You are the dean of British naturalists, my old friend. There is no greater or wiser man in this entire field. Everyone, including Wallace, will be better off in the end if we leave all this in your accomplished hands.

Yes, Sir Charles Lyell had made his decision. The two papers, Wallace's and Darwin's, would be made public simultaneously before the Linnean Society. With a single stroke Sir Charles had made the question of priority disappear. He, Darwin, would not be claiming priority. Just the opposite. He was extending a magnanimous hand to a newcomer. He would be making room on the stage for a lowly flycatcher to be heard.

The one remaining catch was that Lyell and Hooker expected Darwin to write his own abstract. He couldn't do that—he
mustn't
do that. He begged off with some pathetic excuse. He didn't have the courage to tell them that his own conscience must be kept clear. His
own conscience
had to believe he had nothing to do with this project. It wasn't
his
idea. It was entirely theirs, Lyell's and Hooker's. I, Charles Darwin,
had nothing to do with it!
Above all, let no man be able to say I wrote an abstract for myself after reading Wallace's paper. There mustn't be a hint of any such paltriness before an august body like the Linnean.

So it fell upon Lyell's and Hooker's shoulders, the task of concocting for Charlie an abstract out of what they could lay their hands on quickly…let's see…we have a copy of a letter he sent last year to an American botanist at Harvard named Asa Gray giving a halfway outline of his concept of natural selection…and there's some sort of abortive “sketch,” as he calls it, that he has at home for a book on transmutation he's been telling himself…for the past fourteen or fifteen years…he's going to write someday.
c
And of course we have Wallace's paper for…
hmmmm
…how should one put it?…for “background” or “context” or maybe something along the lines of “corroborative research” or “heuristic monitoring.” We'll think of a term. In any case, we're in a position to make sure there will be no important points in Wallace's paper that aren't also in Charlie's. Hooker's wife, Frances, is a bright little number. We'll get her to read Wallace's letter and then pull together some extracts from Charlie's “sketch”…and, while she's at it, shape things up a bit…where necessary.
d
There is more than one way to swat a flycatcher.

When they were finished, Darwin had
two
papers to his name, both very short—first, an abstract of his letter to Asa Gray and, second, the extract of his unpublished sketch, tidied up by Mrs. Hooker. Combined, they were almost as long as Wallace's twenty pages.

To put the matter in perspective, one has only to imagine what would have happened had the roles been reversed. Suppose Darwin is the one who has just written a formal twenty-page scientific treatise for publication…and somehow Wallace gets his hands on it ahead of time…and announces that he made this same astounding epochal discovery twenty-one years ago but just never got around to writing it up and claiming priority…a horse laugh? He wouldn't have rated anything that hearty. Maybe a single halfway-curled upper lip, if anybody deigned to notice at all.

At the Linnean Society meeting on July 1, neither party was present…not Wallace, because the Gentlemen had been more than content to leave the flycatcher in the dark in equatorial Asia, 7,200 miles away…and not Darwin, because his infant son, Charles Waring Darwin, his and Emma's tenth child after nearly twenty years of marriage, had died of scarlet fever on June 28.
e
He couldn't very well show up in public three days later, on July 1, advancing his career beneath a banner saying
HUMAN BEINGS ARE NOTHING BUT ANIMALS
.

At Linnean Society meetings, papers on a single subject were read in alphabetical order, by author, and—wouldn't you know it?—
D
comes before
W
.
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That was just the way it goes sometimes, too. So the society heard two of its most distinguished members, Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, peers of the realm, do the introductions, which were spent pointing out that Darwin, who clearly had priority, was all for including Wallace on the program.
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Both authors may “fairly claim the merit of being original thinkers in this important line of inquiry,” Lyell and Hooker begin, but Darwin was the
first
…it just took him twenty-one years to get around to writing his thoughts down. Then the Linneans heard not one but two papers by their renowned colleague Charles Darwin, member of the Royal Society of London, famous for his many years of worldwide explorations…and then one by some little flycatcher named Wallace. It was not hard to get the impression that the distinguished Mr. Charles Darwin, with his big heart, was giving a pat on the head to this obscure but promising young man off catching flies in the tropical bowels of Asia.

That impression never changed. Wallace was an outsider and not a Gentleman, not the Linnean Society sort. An undersecretary read the introduction and all three papers aloud. They prompted no questions or discussion; none at all. Most of the twenty-five or thirty Linneans on hand appeared bored, if not put to sleep, by the drizzle drizzle of species transmutation biogeographical variations injurious adaptations drizzle drizzle…when, O Lord, will the fog clear out? They had come to hear Lyell, a gentleman among Gentlemen, deliver a promised eulogy of the society's lately departed former president, which he did, first thing. As for the rest of the program, they did their best to endure…the first public revelation of a doctrine that would turn the study of man upside down—and kill God, if Nietzsche had anything to say about it. At the moment, however, the Gentlemen of the Linnean Society greeted the news with yawns so big they couldn't cover them with their bare hands.

In his annual state-of-the-society speech the following spring, the society's president said, “The year which has passed…has not, indeed, been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the department of science on which they bear.”
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It was not until three months later, in October of 1858, that Wallace, by then off to New Guinea for more flycatching, had any idea that a meeting of the Linnean Society involving his work had ever taken place. The news arrived in letters (both in the same envelope) from Hooker and Darwin, implying how generous Darwin had been throughout and how highly he thought of Wallace.
g
He had given him equal credit not only before the Linnean Society but also in an upcoming issue of the
Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society
. Wallace's paper and Darwin's “abstracts” would be running even-steven in its prestigious pages. Once it was published, Darwin got the courage to send Wallace a copy. The truth was, the very layout and look of the
Journal
were so unbalanced in Darwin's favor that Darwin himself sucked in a great guilty two-whole-lobes load of air and averted his eyes the moment he saw it. The distinguished Mr. Darwin's name was placed first on the contents page and at the top of page after page after that—the strictures of alphabetical order again,
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wouldn't you know it—and the unknown Mr. Wallace's followed…another generous pat on the head for an obscure young man who certainly had worked-hard-you-had-to-hand-him-that.

Wallace hadn't a clue that his paper was going to be published. He had sent it to Lyell for an expert opinion before publication. After all, he would be presenting the world with a radical discovery: how Evolution occurred through natural selection. He hadn't the faintest notion that the Linnean Society—meaning three of its officers, Darwin, Lyell, and Hooker—had their hands on it and would do with it as they pleased. They hadn't asked for permission and never gave him a chance to edit or proofread his own work. They would never have dared pull any such sleight of hand on a Gentleman—
any
gentleman, no matter how obviously clueless he might be.

Wallace's reply, a letter to Hooker, got straight to the sore point. “I was very much surprised to find that the same idea had occurred to Darwin.”
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But then he gave up. He knew nothing at this juncture about exactly how it had “occurred” to Darwin, and he didn't have the nerve to insist on finding out. He realized there was no way that he, all by himself on the wrong side of the class divide, was going to prevail against the Gentlemen. He was a flycatcher. He might as well be content to keep his mouth shut and salvage what he could from the wreckage of his plans and let them dress him up in their flattery and pluck him up from obscurity and put him on the Big Stage. He couldn't have sounded more grateful. By the time Wallace got the letters from Darwin and Hooker, Darwin had already been writing for three months, faster than he had ever written in his life, to scoop Wallace by publishing that most solid, hard-shelled claim to priority: a book.

Three months' head start—but where was he ever going to find the energy to finish the race? Throughout the voyage of the
Beagle
…way back when…Darwin had been in his twenties, enjoying the heedless animal health of youth. Today, in October of 1858, going on twenty-two years later, he was almost fifty…and afflicted with what his doctors told him was dyspepsia. But very likely their real diagnosis was hypochondria…referring to some recurring imaginary malady unlikely to kill you even if it were real. In Darwin's case it consisted of sudden, uncontrollable vomiting and every sort of pain in his distended belly and bowels, every known belch, retch, heave, gas-pass, watery rush, and loathsome gush, plus foul wind erupting from one end of his digestive tract and foul sounds eructing
grrrrekkk
from the other. And where was he going to find the time? Half the time he seemed to be laid up in the Ilkley spa, in the Yorkshire Dales, taking “the waters” and “the cure,” wrapped up in wet sheets from head to toe like a mummy in order to douse the fiery itch of his chronic eczema.
h