The Story of Charles Darwin is not to be found here*. That was written once and for all by his son. Its bare outline is sufficient for Author Bradford's purpose: born in 1809 (the same day as Abraham Lincoln), son of a prosperous doctor, he attended Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities, gave up tentative plans for medicine and the clergy, obtained the post of naturalist on the cruiser Beagle, was gone five years observing and exploring, married his cousin (one of the pottery Wedgwoods) in 1839, conceived the principle of evolution of species through natural selection the same year, fathered ten sons and daughters, spent 20 years amassing proof for his hypothesis, published The Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871), died in 1882 having sorely suffered from chronic indigestion for 40 years.
The Facets of Charles Darwin, mental, emotional, spiritual, are what this book contains.
The Observer comes first. The power and habit of seeing in minute detail were upon him from childhood. Once, with a rare beetle in each hand and a third in sight, he transferred one wriggling creature to his teeth, with distressing results. He studied facial expressions of people in trains, of his children from infancy, of dogs, which always took to him. He would painstakingly count tens of thousands of plant seeds under his microscope. He devoted years and two fat tomes to barnacles. An invalid, he had to systematize his work rigorously. He trusted few reports save of his own eyes.
The Thinker. Fertile, vigorous, imaginative of mind, he disciplined himself to follow only inductive logic—from observation and experiment to hypothesis. He could not rest until he had tried experiments which seemed absurd even to himself. Slow in argument, a poor expositor, he was a great night-thinker, losing much sleep longing to correct possible false impressions. Huxley described "a marvelous dumb sagacity about him ... he gets to truth by ways as dark as those of the Heathen Chinee." Eternally openminded, he was frank before criticism, glad to acknowledge error, seldom condemned another's views by any word stronger than "odd."
The Discoverer. When Darwin had labored 20 years to support his theory, another man (Alfred Russel Wallace) appeared about to forestall him by announcing the same theory, with him a week old. Far from jealous or bitter, Darwin joined his announcement with Wallace's. They were warm friends. Darwin's point: the the ory outweighed its authors' feelings as the earth does a peanut.