Down House

Darwin lived and worked in Down House for the rest of his life. In 1844, he extended and re-wrote his 1842 manuscript on natural selection. It was now 270 pages long. Darwin still did not publish the theory. He was well aware of the overthrowing effect his thoughts would have on the scientific world’s view of nature. That same year “Vestiges of Natural History of Creation” was published and caused quite a stir. The author was anonymous, and the book itself was a selection of scientific facts and fantasies.  The overall development perspective was very close to Darwin’s own well-documented ideas, but completely lacked the necessary and solid substantiation, which was demanded in order to be taken seriously by scientists at the time. There is no doubt that the popularity of the book and the massive scientific critic which followed, kept Darwin from publishing his ideas. He did however make sure that his own manuscript on evolution would be published in case he would die before finishing the number of works he now planned to write about the evolution of species.

Those works were never written, although Darwin was very productive. He worked as much as he could despite the fact that his health had declined since his journey with the HMS Beagle. Over the next eight years, he studied living as well as fossil barnacles and wrote the definitive four volume work about their nature. The conception of nature, which was the foundation of this work, was heavily influenced by a biological development although this was never expressed directly. He was by now more and more convinced of his theory and let more and more colleagues and friends in on his thoughts. All life had developed from a simple starting point and was through natural selection transformed into the incredible variation of plants and animals which Darwin had experienced on his journey around the world.

Peter C. Kjærgaard