charles_darwin

The Life of Charles Darwin
his idea. He continued to collect information. He did not formulate a
theory; he made observations and he took notes.
In October 1838, he read An Essay on the Principle of Population
by Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) and it gave Darwin an idea. Malthus,
an English economist, suggested that competition for limited
resources, particularly food, was a major reason for disputes and
wars between groups of humans. As Darwin put it, ‘‘here then I had
at last got a theory by which to work.’’ 40 Applying Malthus’s idea to
species, Darwin surmised that those animals and plants that were
best adapted to their environment would survive the competition for
resources, the struggle for existence: those species that adapted
poorly would die. In 1842, after more thinking and research, Darwin
wrote a thirty-five-page explanation of his theory. In 1844, he wrote
out his theory in more detail, penning an essay of two hundred and
thirty pages.
In 1844, Darwin also began an important friendship—with
Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911). Hooker’s father was Sir William
Jackson Hooker (1785–1865), the first director of the Royal Botanic
Gardens at Kew in London, an important contact for Darwin in his
research on plants. (Kew Gardens, like the Jardin des Plantes in
Paris, had a large collection of plants from around the world.)
Hooker and Darwin shared a common interest in the geographical
distribution of plant species and, equally important, both knew the
thrill that came from conducting research while on a long sea voyage.
On 11 January, Darwin wrote to Hooker, whom he hardly knew
at the time, saying, ‘‘I am almost convinced (quite contrary to the
opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a
murder) immutable.’’ Darwin worried that Hooker might think his
‘‘presumption’’ crazy. 41
In fact, Darwin had been a little coy. In his book The Expression
of the Emotions in Man and Animals published in 1872, he wrote, ‘‘At
the above date [1838] I was already inclined to believe in the principle
of evolution, or the derivation of species from other and lower
forms.’’ 42 Later, in his autobiography, he wrote that ‘‘as soon as I had
become, in the year 1837 or 1838, convinced that species were
mutable productions, I could not avoid the belief that man must
come under the same law.’’ 43 Perhaps the cause of Darwin’s reticence
was the fact that Hooker was not a confidante. Darwin expressed
relief when Hooker wrote back, saying that he would be ‘‘delighted’’
to hear Darwin’s theory rather than condemning him. 44
And then Darwin dropped the matter. Or, more precisely, the
urgency to publish his theory dissipated as he concentrated on completing
other projects such as his work on barnacles. Ten years
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