Canto II
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ORIGIN OF SOCIETY.
CANTO II.
REPRODUCTION OF LIFE.
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CONTENTS.I. Brevity of Life 1. Reproduction 13. Animals improve 31. Life and Death alternate 37. Adonis emblem of Mortal Life 45. II. Solitary reproduction 61. Buds, Bulbs, Polypus 65. Truffle; Buds of trees how generated 71. Volvox, Polypus, Tænia, Oysters, Corals, are without Sex 83. Storgè goddess of Parental Love; First chain of Society 92. III. Female sex produced 103. Tulip bulbs, Aphis 125. Eve from Adam's rib 135. IV. Hereditary diseases 159. Grafted trees, bulbous roots degenerate 167. Gout, Mania, Scrofula, Consumption 177. Time and Nature 185. V. Urania and the muse lament 205. Cupid and Psyche, the deities of sexual love 221. Speech of Hymen 239. Second chain of Society 250. Young Desire 251. Love and Beauty save the world 257. Vegetable sexes, Anthers and Stigmas salute 268. Vegetable sexual generation 271. Anthers of Vallisneria float to the Stigmas 279. Ant, Lampyris, Glow-Worm, Snail 287. Silk-Worm 293. VI. Demon of Jealousy 307. Cocks, Quails, Stags, Boars 313. Knights of Romance 327. Helen and Paris 333. Connubial love 341. Married Birds, nests of the Linnet and Nightingale 343. Lions, Tigers, Bulls, Horses 357. Triumphal car of Cupid 361. Fish, Birds, Insects 371. Vegetables 389. March of Hymen 411. His lamp 419. VII. Urania's advice to her Nymphs 425. Dines with the Muse on forbidden Fruit 435. Angels visit Abraham 447-458. |
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p. 44 | When Time's cold hands the languid senses seize, Chill the dull nerves, the lingering currents freeze; Organic matter, unreclaim'd by Life,* Reverts to elements by chemic strife. Thus Heat evolv'd from some fermenting mass* Expands the kindling atoms into gas; 10 Which sink ere long in cold concentric rings, Condensed, on Gravity's descending wings. "But REPRODUCTION with ethereal fires New Life rekindles, ere the first expires; Calls up renascent Youth, ere tottering age Quits the dull scene, and gives him to the stage; Bids on his cheek the rose of beauty blow, And binds the wreaths of pleasure round his brow; With finer links the vital chain extends, And the long line of Being never ends.* 20 by others, except the young broods, who were defended by their mother; and hence the animal world existed uniformly in its greatest strength and perfection; see Additional Note VII. |
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"Self-moving Engines by unbending springs* Unbending springs, l. 21. See Additional Note I. 4. |
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Combines with Heat the fluctuating mass,* |
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p. 47 |
"So, as the sages of the East record* Emblem of Life, 1. 47. The Egyptian figure of Venus rising from the sea seems to have represented the Beauty of organic Nature; which the philosophers of that country, the magi, appear to have discovered to have been elevated by earthquakes from the primeval ocean. But the hieroglyphic figure of Adonis seems to have signified the spirit of animation or life, which was perpetually wooed or courted by organic matter, and which perished and revived alternately. Afterwards the fable of Adonis seems to have given origin to the first religion promising a resurrection from the dead; whence his funeral and return to life were celebrated for many ages in Egypt and Syria, the ceremonies of which Ezekiel complains as idolatrous, accusing the women of Israel of lamenting over Thammus; which St. Cyril interprets to be Adonis, in his Commentaries on Isaiah; Danet's Diction. |
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p. 48 |
Pleased for a while the assurgent youth above So the lone Truffle, l. 71. Lycoperdon tuber. This plant never rises above the earth, is propagated without seed by its roots only, [cont. below] |
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p. 49 |
No stamen-males ascend, and breathe above, and seems to require no light. Perhaps many other fungi are generated without seed by their roots only, and without light, and approach on the last account to animal nature. |
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p. 50 |
So the lone Tænia, as he grows, prolongs dwell in our ditches and rivers under aquatic plants; these animals have been shown by ingenious observers to revive after having been dried, to be restored when mutilated, to be multiplied by dividing them, and propagated from portions of them, parts of different ones to unite, to be turned inside outwards and yet live, and to be propagated by seeds, to produce bulbs, and vegetate by branches. Syst. Nat. |
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p. 51 |
Parturient Sires caress their infant train, travel to its neighbours, is probably without sex. I observed great masses of the limestone in Shropshire, which is brought to Newport, to consist of the cells of these animals. |
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p. 52 |
No nutrient streams from Beauty's orbs improve* A softer sex, l. 114. The first buds of trees raised from seed die annually, and are succeeded by new buds by solitary reproduction; which are larger or more perfect for several successive years, and then they produce sexual flowers, which are succeeded by seminal reproduction. The same occurs in bulbous rooted plants raised from seed; they die annually, and produce others rather more perfect than the parent for several years, and then produce sexual flowers. The Aphis is in a similar manner hatched from an egg in the vernal months, and produces a viviparous offspring without sexual intercourse for nine or ten successive generations; and then the progeny is both male and female, which cohabit, and from these new females are produced eggs, which endure the winter; the same process probably occurs in many other insects. |
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p. 53 |
The potent wish in the productive hour Imagination's power, 1. 118. The manner in which the similarity of the progeny to the parent, and the sex of it, are produced by the power of imagination, is treated of in Zoonomia. Sect. 39. 6. 3. It is not to be understood, that the first living fibres, which are to form an animal, are produced by imagination, with any similarity of form to the future animal; but with appetencies or propensities, which shall produce by accretion of parts the similarity of form and feature, or of sex, corresponding with the imagination of the father. |
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p. 54 |
Whose mingling virtues interweave at length It has been supposed by some, that mankind were formerly quadrupeds as well as hermaphrodites; and that some parts of the body are not yet so convenient to an erect attitude as to a horizontal one; as the fundus of the bladder in an erect posture is not exactly over the insertion of the urethra; whence it is seldom completely evacuated, and thus renders mankind more subject to the stone, than if he had preserved his horizontality: these philosophers, with Buffon and Helvetius, seem to imagine, that mankind arose from one family of monkeys on the banks of the Mediterranean; who accidentally had learned to use the adductor pollicis, or that strong muscle which constitutes the ball of the thumb, and draws the point of it to meet the points of the fingers; which common monkeys do not; and that this muscle gradually increased in size, strength, and activity, in successive generations; and by this improved use of the sense of touch, that monkeys acquired clear ideas, and gradually became men. |
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p. 55 |
Unmarried Aphides prolific prove The Mother of Mankind, 1. 140. See Additional Note X. |
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Round her fine form the dim transparence play'd, Acquired diseases, 1. 165. See Additional Note XI. |
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"So grafted trees with shadowy summits rise,* So grafted trees, 1. 167. Mr. Knight first observed that those apple and pear trees, which had been propagated for above a century by ingraftment were now so unhealthy, as not to be worth cultivation. I have suspected the diseases of potatoes attended with the curled leaf, and of strawberry plants attended with barren flowers, to be owing to their having been too long raised from roots, or by solitary reproduction, and not from seeds, or sexual reproduction, and to have thence acquired those hereditary diseases. |
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Sad Beauty's form foul Scrofula surrounds And, fell Consumption, 1. 183.
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Hears on the new-turn'd sod with gestures wild |
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—"Ah me! celestial Guide, thy words impart Enamour'd Psyche, l. 223. A butterfly was the ancient emblem of the soul after death as rising from the tomb of its former state, and becoming a winged inhabitant of air from an insect creeping upon earth. At length the wings only were given to a beautiful nymph under the name of Psyche, which is the greek word for the soul, and also became afterwards to signify a butterfly probably from the popularity of this allegory. Many allegorical designs of Cupid or Love warming a butterfly or the Soul with his torch may be seen in Spence's Polymetis, and a beautiful one of their marriage in Bryant's Mythology; from which this description is in part taken. |
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Thin folds of gauze with dim transparence flow |
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'Shed their sweet smiles in Earth's unsocial bowers, While Beauty broods, 1. 261. *
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p. 63 |
"HENCE on green leaves the sexual Pleasures dwell,* From the nectar'd cup, 1. 268. The anthers and stigmas of flowers are probably nourished by the honey, which is secreted by the honey gland called by Linneus the nectary; and possess greater sensibility or animation than other parts of the plant. The corol of the flower appears to be a respiratory organ belonging to these anthers and stigmas for the purpose of further oxygenating the vegetable blood for the production of the anther dust and of this honey, which is also exposed to the air in its receptacle or honey-cup; which, I suppose, to be necessary for its further oxygenation, as in many flowers so complicate an apparatus is formed for its protection from insects, as in aconitum, delphinium, larkspur, lonicera, woodbine; and, because the corol and nectary fall along with the anthers and stigmas, when the pericarp is impregnated. |
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"The Stamen males, with appetencies just,* With appetencies just, 1. 27l. As in the productions by chemical affinity one set of particles must possess the power of attraction, and the other the aptitude to be attracted, as when iron approaches a magnet; so when animal particles unite, whether in digestion or reproduction, some of them must possess an appetite to unite, and others a propensity to be united. The former of these are secreted by the anthers from the vegetable blood, and the latter by the styles or pericarp; see the Additional Note VIII. on Reproduction. |
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Break from their stems, and on the liquid glass acquire wings, but not the females, as ants, coccus, lampyris, phalæna, brumata, lichanella; Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Note on Vallisneria. |
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"Hence, when the Morus in Italia's lands* Untasted honey, 1. 302. The numerous moths and butterflies seem to pass from a reptile leaf-eating state, and to acquire wings to flit in air, with a proboscis to gain honey for their food along with their organs of reproduction, solely for the purpose of propagating their species by sexual intercourse, as they die when that is completed. By the use of their wings they have access to each other on different branches or on different vegetables, and by living upon honey probably acquire a higher degree of animation, and thus seem to resemble the anthers of flowers, which probably are supported by honey only, and thence acquire greater sensibility; see Note on Vallisneria, 1. 280 of this Canto. |
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Wakes from his trance, alarm'd with young Desire, others fins, and others claws, from their ceaseless efforts to procure food or to secure themselves from injury. He contends, that none of these changes are more incomprehensible than the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies; see Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Additional Note XXXIX. |
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p. 68 |
With rustling pinions meet, and swelling chests, There the hoarse stag, 1. 321. A great want of one part of the animal world has consisted in the desire of the exclusive possession of the females; and these have acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose, as the very thick shield-like horny skin on the shoulder of the boar is a defence only against animals of his own species, who strike obliquely upwards, nor are his tushes for other purposes, except to defend himself, as he is not naturally a carnivorous animal. So the horns of the stag are sharp to offend his adversary, but are branched for the purpose of parrying or receiving the thrusts of horns similar to his own, and have therefore been formed for the purpose of combating other stags for the exclusive possession of the females, who are observed, like the ladies in the times of chivalry, to attend the car of the victor. |
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While female bands attend in mute surprise, "So Knight on Knight, recorded in romance,* "So when fair HELEN with ill-fated charms, |
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"Now vows connubial chain the plighted pair,* The incumbent Linnet, 1. 348. The affection of the unexperienced and untaught bird to its egg, which induces it to sit days and weeks upon it to warm the enclosed embryon, is a matter of great difficulty to explain; See Additional Note IX. on Storge. Concerning the fabrication of their nests, see Zoonomia, Sect. XVI. 13. on instinct. |
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p. 71 |
Loud trills sweet Philomel his tender strain, "The Lion-King forgets his savage pride,* and as one half of the external shell is thus moist, and the other half dry, as soon as the mother hearing the chick chirp, or the chick itself wanting respirable air, strikes the egg, about its equatorial line, it breaks into two hemispheres, and liberates the prisoner. |
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p. 72 |
Shakes o'er the obedient pairs his silken thong, "Pleased as they pass along the breezy shore* With undulating train, 1. 373. The side fins of fish seem to be chiefly used to poise them; as they turn upon their backs immediately when killed, the air-bladder assists them perhaps to rise or descend by its possessing the power to condense the air in it by muscular contraction; and it is possible, that at great depths in the ocean the air in this receptacle may by the great pressure of the incumbent water become condensed into so small a space, as to cease to be useful to the animal, which was possibly the cause of the death of Mr. Day in his diving ship. See note on Ulva, Botan. Gard. V. II. |
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p. 73 |
High o'er their heads on pinions broad display'd part of the tail on the right side of the fish strikes the water at the same time that another oblique plain strikes it on the left side, hence in respect to moving to the right or left these percussions of the water counteract each other, but they coincide in respect to the progression of the fish; this power seems to be better applied to push forwards a body in water, than the oars of boats, as the particles of water recede from the stroke of the oar, whence the comparative power acquired is but as the difference of velocity between the striking oar and the receding water. So a ship moves swifter with an oblique wind, than with a wind of the same velocity exactly behind it; and the common windmill sail placed obliquely to the wind is more powerful than one which directly recedes from it. Might not some machinery resembling the tails of fish be placed behind a boat, so as to be moved with greater effect than common oars, by the force of wind or steam, or perhaps by hand? |
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Pair after pair enamour'd shoot along, "Delighted Flora, gazing from afar,* |
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O'er the bright Pair a shower of roses sheds, "ONWARD with march sublime in saffron robe* |
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O'er burning sands, and snow-clad mountains, treads, VII. Now paused the beauteous Teacher, and awhile* |
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'To secret shades, ye Virgin trains, retire, Now at her nod the Nymphs attendant bring* With laugh repress'd, 1. 434. The cause of the violent actions of laughter, and of the difficulty of restraining them, is a curious subject of inquiry. When pain afflicts us, which we cannot avoid, we learn to relieve it by great voluntary exertions, as in grinning, holding the breath, or screaming; now the pleasurable sensation, which excites laughter, arises for a time so high as to change its name, and become a painful one; and we excite the convulsive motions of the respiratory muscles to relieve this pain. We are however unwilling to lose the pleasure, and presently put a stop to this exertion; and immediately the pleasure recurs, and again as instantly rises into pain. Which is further explained in Zoonomia, Sect. 34. 1. 4. When this pleasurable sensation rises into a painful one, and the customs of society will not permit us to laugh aloud, some other violent voluntary exertion is used instead of it to alleviate the pain. |
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p. 78 |
In crystal cups the waves salubrious shine, So when angelic Forms to Syria sent* |
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p. 79 |
The Guests ethereal quaff the lucid flood, END OF CANTO II. |
Notes
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 1. Without further preamble, Urania begins the canto by bemoaning the brevity of life, as adumbrated at the end of Canto I. This sets up her ensuing celebration of reproduction as a response to the previous canto's presentation of life as purely mortal, moving from dust to dust. Retrospectively, Canto I becomes the presentation of death which marked the first of the Eleusinian Mysteries's four "scenes," while the present canto corresponds to its second scene, the marriage of Cupid and Psyche by which the fear of death is overcome (see I, 137n). The note corrects a common impression that Hippocrates's "ars longa, vita brevis" celebrates the eternity of art: the context makes clear that "ars" indicates the unattainable goal of complete scientific understanding, rather than completed artistic achievement. The reference is particularly poignant given Darwin's imminent death, in anticipation of which the present poem reads as a determined attempt to put his own scientific house in order.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 3. See Phytologia (p. 557) for the source of 3n's argument that old age is a disease of "civil society," before which the struggle to survive weeded out the old and infirm. On the other hand, Additional Note VII (to which 3n refers us) draws heavily on Zoonomia's psychosomatic physiology to suggest that nowadays ageing can be postponed by a proper balance of stimuli, concluding that constant injections of novelty and surprise to the system may shake it out of its desensitizing habits and defer "the debilities of age, and consequent death" indefinitely (p. 32). The idea that death may be avoided by keeping in the right state of mind was shared by the radical atheists Thomas Holcroft, William Godwin and the latter's disciple Percy Shelley (see William Hazlitt, Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft, pp. 364-5; Desmond King-Hele, Shelley: His Thought and Work, pp. 30, 36).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 7. The idea that life constantly has to "reclaim" matter from a "chemic strife" leading to ultimate entropy reverses the earlier image of life "stay[ing] . . . chemic change" (I, 420).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 9. This image of the effects of heat overcome by those of gravity likewise reverses an earlier picture of them working in harmony to create life (I, 235-42). While 9-12 technically constitute a simile for death, they gain force from a subliminal sense that the "chemic strife" of 8 might lead to the "fermenting mass" of 9: if so, that hope is defeated in its turn.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 20. The introduction of the canto's main theme, "Reproduction" (13), brings us to the progressive, horizontal image of the constantly improving "vital chain" of "the long line of Being"—replacing the more traditional hierarchical image of a fixed and vertical "great chain of being."
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 21. In contrast to ideas associated with the French philosophe Julien Offray de la Mettrie (L'Homme machine, 1747), human and other animals are not machines; but stating this gives Darwin a chance to touch on some Lunar Society inventions: Richard Lovell Edgeworth invented a "robot caterpillar" and a "walking table" capable of carrying forty people; Darwin himself constructed a spring-powered artificial bird; and Matthew Boulton made important advances in thermometer design (see Desmond King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: A Life of Unequalled Achievement, pp. 228, 81, 137-8, 49).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 27. "Elf" here simply means "being." In l. 30, “parts” means "separates" and "Ens" means "entity" or, again, "being."
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 31. In good conditions, each descendant will grow healthier than its parents: it is not completely clear whether this just implies generational improvement in the same species, or hints at the evolution of well-adapted animals into new ones.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 39. Though the note directs us to I, 248, the relevant discussion of organisms' conversion of gas into solids through fusion with heat is in I, 268n: another reminder that 20 lines were inserted late into Canto I.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 45. Together with its note and 43n, the canto's first extended classical simile relates many ancient birth and resurrection myths to the conservation of organic matter after the individual's death. 43n argues that Pythagoras's belief in reincarnation or transmigration of souls was based on the idea that, since organic matter was recycled between organisms, life itself must be also. Similar truths (known as usual to the pre-literate Egyptian magi) about life regularly emerging and disappearing from organic matter underlie the myth of Adonis, slain by a boar and condemned to divide the year between the underworld goddess Proserpine (herself the subject of a similar myth) and his lover Venus (or Dione) who has secured him a partial reprieve. Having established (I, 372n) that Dione's own sea-birth represented the conversion of the seabed's organic deposits into land by volcanic eruptions, Darwin now argues that her affair with Adonis represents the endless migration of life in and out of organic matter. In a sidelong glance at Christianity, Darwin calls the myth the source of (only) "the first religion promising a resurrection from the dead" and reminds us that the Old Testament prophets saw such cults as idolatrous. The simile's closing alternation of "light" and "night" (59-60) echoes the last couplet of the earlier account of Orpheus's partial resurrection of Eurydice (I, 203-4), perhaps another variant on the same theme. For Danet's Dictionary of Antiquities, see I, 83n.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 61. The second section of the canto begins by focussing on primitive, asexual reproduction. The postulation of the parents "unknown to sex" as male "sires" betrays a certain gender-bias, but does prepare for Darwin's later handling of the Adam story. We begin with plants, which can propagate from bulbs, roots and shoots without recourse to the sexually produced seeds.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 71. The "lone truffle" only accounts for lines 71-4; 75-82 describe the asexual formation of tree-buds. Additional Note VIII, to which 77n refers us, moves from asexual to sexual reproduction, drawing heavily on Phytologia, Section VII (pp. 89-131), and concluding with a carefully worded restatement of Darwin's first full-blown statement of evolutionary theory in Zoonomia, vol. II, pp. 233-48—see my note to I, 134n. Here the formula "would it be too bold to imagine that [. . .]?" is changed to the more insinuating "But it may appear too bold in the present state of our knowledge on this subject, to suppose that [ . . .]?," where the final question mark subverts the initial apparent disclaimer of certainty.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 83. These microbes, tapeworms, oysters and coral-builders also reproduce asexually. Darwin's notes refer to Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae (1735); these examples also feature in Phytologia, VII (pp. 89-131).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 92. "Storge" is the Greek for the affection of parents to children: in Additional Note IX, Darwin attempts to explain it in terms of physical rewards to the parent, imitation of parental behaviour and transmitted memories from earlier evolutionary states. Though Darwin is here applying it to supposedly male non-sexual parenting, his personification of Storge (95-102) is perhaps unavoidably female. The Psyche and Cupid who follow in her train (102) will make a fuller reappearance at II, 221, and represent the way sexual love is a later development than parental.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 105. "Beauty's orbs": Canto III (207-22) explains that the mother's breasts are in fact the source of our ideas of beauty.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 114. As the note explains, many species switch from asexual to sexual reproduction after several generations, and then back again. The poem blurs the "increasing wants" leading to this occasional switch within particular species with a more general impulse among asexual species to become sexual.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 118. The "potent wish" of single-sex parents, envisaged as male, produces a second sex. Though there is some poetic licence here, in this belief in willed species-change Darwin's evolutionism resembles that of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), whom he probably influenced, rather than that of Charles Darwin. 118n refers to one of Zoonomia's more curious arguments—related to the idea of voluntary evolution—that the sex and appearance of the child is determined by what the father was imagining at the moment of conception. Though the 1801 3rd ed. retracts this argument in favour of the more modern view—worked out in Phytologia (pp. 130-1)—that elements from both parents contribute equally (vol. II, pp. 277-80), the earlier argument is also retained there in full (vol. II, pp. 263-77). The present note suggests either that Darwin had still not made up his mind upon final revision in 1802, or that most of Temple of Nature was written before 1801, and not completely revised.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 120. "Nascent world" reminds us that we are still considering the very earliest separation of the sexes.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 122. The "nymphs and swains" are personifications of non-human sexual differentiation as in Loves of the Plants. However, 122n considers the possibility that humans too "were formerly in an hermaphrodite state," before moving to somewhat stronger evidence that we evolved from quadrupeds thanks to the development of opposable thumbs. This note is (I think) the only time Darwin speculates that we may have evolved from Mediterranean (i.e. African) apes—a theory held not just by the controversial French philosophes Buffon and Helvetius but by the ur-anthropologist Lord Monboddo (see my note to I, 36) and the poet Richard Payne Knight in The Progress of Civil Society, whose resemblances to Darwin's draft The Progress of Society are discussed elsewhere in this edition. By and large Darwin is uninterested in such speculations, which often emerged from an implicitly racist concern to place Africans at the bottom of the human scale, rather than from verified scientific research.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 125-134. This section versifies the points made in 114n about species which switch between asexual and sexual reproduction. But the opening "So" leaves it ambiguous whether the tulips and greenfly (the "Aphides" of 131) are examples of "ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny" or simply similes for the once-for-all development just described.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 135. We return to Adam, last seen cheerfully bartering "life for love" in I, 33-46. The "So" makes the creation of Eve in response to Adam's desirous dream merely a simile for the evolution of sexual reproduction, but—as usual—Additional Note X (indicated by 140n) suggests that the myth actually encodes ancient hieroglyphic wisdom about precisely this development, as allegorized by the Egypt-educated Moses. As usual, the Fuseli engraving embodies a moment of somewhat strange erotic fantasy.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 158. The account of Adam and Eve's lovemaking concludes with a verbatim echo of Paradise Lost (IV, 311), as if to remind us that the frank description of prelapsarian sex has full Miltonic sanction. Perhaps Eve's "amorous delay" gets extra force from the idea that the female principle was itself an evolutionary latecomer, only appearing when the lone male had become desperate, as it were.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 159. We turn to the disadvantages of non-sexual reproduction: the ill-effects of disease and other environmental factors accumulate through the generations.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 167. Grafted trees, raised from roots or shoots rather than seed, are particularly prone to such decline unless allowed to propagate sexually from flower to seed. 167n refers to Richard Payne Knight's brother Thomas Andrew, to whose research on the diseases of grafted apple and pear trees Darwin also refers in Phytologia (pp. 95-7).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 177. The argument widens somewhat to include the effects of inbreeding even in "sexual tribes," especially man: gout, insanity, scrofula and tuberculosis are all seen as more likely to be inherited when "unmix'd the breed."
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 185. The reminder that even the advent of sexual reproduction has not removed suffering or death plunges Urania into the mode of "graveyard poetry" in the tradition of Milton's Il Penseroso, Young's Night Thoughts and Gray's Elegy. The speaker of 201-4 is Poetic Melancholy, though not strongly distinguished from the grieving mother she has just observed.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 205. The first break in Urania's speech occurs as she completes a circle, reverting to the gloomy theme of the canto's opening words, "How short the span of life!"
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 208. The only mention of the Muse's wings, which do not appear in Fuseli's Frontispiece. The next four lines are more a summary of those which follow than a prelude to them. The idea that death is only sleep echoes much Christian thought as well as Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech, the difference being that for Darwin the "sleep" comes between different formations of our organic matter in this world rather than between it and the next.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 216. The word "nascent" often carries a certain ambiguity in this canto (see "nascent world," 120). Here the Muse could be referring back to the way hereditary Consumption and other ills attack the innocent "Youth's reluctant heart" (II, 184), but "nascent heart" could also refer to the dashing of the Muse's and reader's renewed hopes on learning of the promise held out by reproduction; lastly, it could remind us that up to now we have chiefly been considering very primitive species (with references to more developed ones such as man as similetic illustrations only), "nascent" in the sense of being part of the dawn of organic life. The next couplet seems to confirm this by suggesting that we have not yet considered air-breathing species or healthy examples of sexual reproduction.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 223. To establish the topic of successful sexual love, Urania reverts to the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, whom we last glimpsed on line 102. This marriage constitutes the second "scenical representation" of the Eleusinian Mysteries as described in I, 137n: its full-dress presentation here is the clearest indication so far that the poem's four cantos will correspond with the Mysteries' four stages. 223n summarises part of Economy of Vegetation, Additional Note XXII: Psyche's "aurelian" wings (denoting the gold of a chrysalis) identify her with the butterfly, whose "rising from the tomb" of its cocoon made it an ancient symbol for the soul's rebirth after death. Though "Psyche" specifically means "soul," this should perhaps be read alongside 43n's suggestion that Pythagoras's belief in reincarnation of souls was based on the recurrence of the same organic matter in different organisms. Thus her "marriage" to Cupid symbolizes the way life propagates itself through sex rather than more conventional ideas about the soul as a separate immortal essence. It is also, more directly, a depiction of sexual love itself: Cupid's much-emphasized quiver of arrows—usually denoting his power to make mortals fall in love—seems here to be a delicate way of talking about sperm; and Psyche's "blushing" tallies with later accounts of female sexual arousal (see e.g. 253-4).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 239. Hymen, the god of marriage, sets his seal on the union and expands its significance further.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 245. i.e., "This fond pair will delight all forms of life, and unite the willing world, sex to sex." The second line nicely echoes and carries forward the poem's opening address to Immortal Love, who links "sex to sex" (I, 26) and connects "the whirling world!" (I, 20): "willing" shows how Love holds the otherwise scarily whirling world together.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 250. One of the first reminders of Darwin's intended title, "The Origin of Society." Love and the family form the basic "chain," or tie of obligation, which holds society together: it is "golden" because pleasurable (and also perhaps because it is the basis of property-transmission).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 251. In the following description of sexual love, "desires" are pluralized to suggest specific physical changes, their purple wings suggesting the arterial blood which at puberty causes male erections and female blushing and heart-throbbing.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 256. "Heaven's ethereal image" refers to the Biblical idea that man is in God's image, but also to the way in which the parent's image—and, in a sense, identity—is passed on to the child.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 260. Cupid has become generalized as Love, but his ability to parry "the shafts of death" reminds us of the function of his own arrows.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 261n. The note refers to Lucretius's opening address, in De Rerum Natura, to "life-giving Venus": "Through you all living creatures are conceived and come forth to look upon the sunlight" (I, 2, 4-5). This acknowledges one of the main sources for the whole poem, but also draws attention to Darwin's decision to identify Venus with female "Beauty" throughout the poem (see, e.g., I, 372n), transferring her more usual identification with sexual love to the male Cupid. Though sex could not take place without attraction, here "Beauty" mainly denotes the female maternal principle, her winged "brooding" reminding us of the sexually ambiguous "immortal love" at the start of Canto I and thence, perhaps, of the creative Holy Spirit at the start of Paradise Lost. The "sinking world" she saves reminds of how, as Venus/Dione, she represented the first emergence of land from water.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 263. From various human representations of love we return to where we left the scientific account of reproduction—with the drawbacks of asexual plant propagation. Now a number of plant sexual mechanisms are described, very much in the manner of Loves of the Plants. Again, "Loves" are male and "Beauties" female.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 265. Anther = pollen-holding part of stamen, male organ of plant; stigma = pollen-receiving part of the female organ, which also includes styles and pericarp (see 271n).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 268. In suggesting that flowers produce nectar for their own nutrition, and that some of it is poisonous to bees, 268n reveals the prevailing unawareness that its function is precisely to lure bees and other insects to facilitate pollination. In Economy of Vegetation Additional Note XXXIX, Darwin argues that flowers need to protect their nectar from the insects which prey on them.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 271. As 271n explains, the desires of the male and female parts are "just" in the sense of perfectly suited, each producing complementary "prolific" substances—pollen and nectar—which combine in the pericarp, or what will become the wall of the fruit.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 280. The stigmas of the floating plant vallisneria (or frogbit) resemble Hero (285) because their male counterparts detach themselves from their stems and "swim" to pollinate with distant females, as her lover Leander regularly swam to her across the Hellespont. For other accounts of this plant, see Loves of the Plants, I, 393-406, and Phytologia, p. 108, from which 280n is copied. The Cyprian queen (284) is Venus.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 287. The "Hence" reminds us that we are still looking at examples of sexual reproduction. We now move on to insects and other small animals. The male ant only grows wings at mating time, and Darwin speculates in 288n as to whether the lights of fireflies and glow-worms have a sexual function in locating mates. For hermaphrodite snails, containing "both male and female organs," see Phytologia, pp. 100-101.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 293. "Morus" = mulberry. Following Phytologia (pp. 110-11), the silkworm is used here as an example of moths in general, whose dramatic change from leaf-eating grubs "uninform'd of love" to winged, honey-sipping sexually desirous adults prompts the speculation in 302n that they may have evolved from anthers, broken loose from their parent plants like those of vallisneria (see 285 above), since the change from plant to animal is no stranger than that from caterpillar to butterfly. In Economy of Vegetation Additional Note XXXIX, the naturalist to whom Darwin attributes this idea is only identified as an acquaintance.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 307. Section 4 begins with an abrupt switch from the benefits of sexual love to one of its drawbacks: jealousy. Its frown is like a Gorgon's because it freezes others' pleasures and thus, ultimately, life; its pursuit of Love in its iron chariot evokes the menace of the dogged stalker, but also prepares us for the later lengthy image of Love and Psyche triumphing in their own more beautiful but even more "despotic" chariot (361-410).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 313. The "war" instilled by jealousy appears throughout nature, equipping male fowl with clawed heels, rufflable plumage and loud crowing ability. The bloodied "crests" of 318 evoke the medieval knights to be described later (327).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 321. As the note makes clear, Darwin focusses on male fowl, deer and boars because their "weapons" have no function other than to fight their own species for sexual possession. 321n is copied verbatim from the section of Zoonomia to which it refers.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 327. As often, the "So" introduces similes which are also examples: medieval tournaments were clearly structured round the symbolism (at least) of courtship battles, of which the Greeks' ten-year war on Troy, to avenge Menelaus's loss of his wife Helen to the Trojan Paris, is another supreme example.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 341. With another unexplained leap we return to successful love, as manifested in the familial- and pair-bonding of nest-building birds. The notes to 348 and 351 stress the length of time mother-birds such as linnets sit on the nest and their assistance with their chicks' hatching, while 356 gives a role to the father in teaching young nightingales to sing, as explained in 356n.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 357. The sideways leaps of 307 and 341 begin to be resolved as we see love conquering the "bestial war" of jealousy. The extended description of the chariot of "despotic Love" acquires an awesome, somewhat frightening dimension from the fact that ferocious animals such as lions and tigers are actually harnessed to it, albeit with "silken thongs": the demon jealousy that we last saw stalking Love has now become incorporated into its power. The mention of Psyche at Love's side (365-6), linking this passage with the earlier account of their marriage, confirms their domination of the canto as a whole, in conformity with the Eleusinian Mysteries' second stage.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 371. Fish and birds also follow the chariot, occasioning fascinating if tangential notes on their swimming and flying techniques, with suggestions for imitating these mechanically: 373n looks forward to the principle of the (steam- or otherwise-fuelled) ship propellor; less clearly, 375n's points on the changing "obliquity" of birds' body shapes enabling them to rise or sink look forward to the careful angling of aeroplane wings, though the second paragraph's emphasis on mere energy expenditure somewhat disperses the aerodynamic point.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 380. Insects round off the list of Love's animal devotees, followed by a full selection of classical spirits of land (fauns), trees (dryads), sea (female nereids, male tritons) and fresh water (naiads).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 389. The plant world now joins in, as personified by Flora. Like that of the Goddess Botany in Economy of Vegetation, I, 61-8, the hitherto unadorned chariot becomes lavishly bedecked with flowers, whose description brings the account of the triumph of sexual love to a satisfying poetic climax.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 411. Previously encountered on 239, the god of marriage Hymen condenses the theme of sexual love into a single rather more sober personification. His torch, which becomes the central image from 415 and in 424 "rekindles" nature's fires in the new generation as the old one wanes, looks forward to the third stage of the Eleusinian Mysteries: the "procession of torches, which . . . probably signified the return of light, and the resuscitation of all things" (I, 137n).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 425. Urania ends her speech by somewhat conventionally warning her virginal followers against Love. This seems hard to take too seriously, unless as a warning simply to hold out until marriage: the "vestal fire" of 432 is a mark of virginity (Rome's Vestal Virgins tended an undying flame), but also perhaps the "secret flame" we have just seen inspired in virgin bosoms by Hymen, the god of respectable married love (421). The length of the two notes to 434 suggests that the virgins' repressed giggles are the real point of the passage. If the virgins are familiar with Lucretius, they will know that De Rerum Natura's similar warnings against love, at the end of Book IV (1037-1287), do not preclude healthily self-centred sexual activity (1063-72).
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 435. The mood of somewhat saucy comedy continues as Urania's attendants serve the poet's Muse with a picnic of "no longer interdicted" fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, washed down with clear spring water (perhaps from the spring of the Pierides or Muses, from which Lucretius drinks the clear water of knowledge in De Rerum Natura I, 925-8: better known as the "Pierian Spring" of Learning from which Pope advises us to "drink deep, or taste not" in An Essay on Criticism (216)). The casual lifting of the ban on the fruit of Knowledge continues the undermining of the Eden myth begun in I, 33-46, and neatly introduces us to the topics of Cantos III and IV: the progress of the mind and the nature of good and evil.
EDITOR'S NOTE: l. 447. But the passage also subliminally links the Lucretian/Epicurean preference for water over alcohol (see 435-8) with the vegetarian sympathies of Canto III's reading of Edenic innocence (see my note to III, 449). As a doctor and agrarian economist, Darwin regularly inveighed against excessive consumption of meat and alcohol. See, e.g., Canto IV, 77-82; Phytologia, pp. 467-8.