Pearson (1923) Charles Darwin 1809-1882. An Appreciation. With Frontispiece Portrait and Plate of Noah’s Ark

The publication focuses on Darwin’s revolutionary impact on intellectual thought, especially concerning Francis Galton, Pearson’s mentor. Pearson asserts that Darwin, alongside Einstein, provided the necessary intellectual freedom from “dogmatic bondage” and “old tribal beliefs”. Darwin’s publication of the Origin of Species (1859) “burst the enthrallment of the intellect” woven by the proponents of the argument from design, giving thinkers “a sense of freedom” that was “very real and very vivid at the time”.

The core of Darwin’s doctrine – that all organic beings developed through variation and natural selection – was deemed incompatible with an anthropocentric universe created by a just First Cause. Pearson highlights that accepting this revolutionary truth required a strong intellectual effort and a “reversal of thought,” a task often shirked by minds grown “too rusty”. This resistance was historically evident, as illustrated by the French Academy of Sciences suppressing Lartet’s memoir on the antiquity of the human race in 1860 because the truth was spoken “too early”.

Galton himself was profoundly affected by Darwin’s work, stating that it “enlarged the horizon” of his ideas, leading him to draw “the breath of a fuller scientific life”. Pearson concludes that Darwin’s gift to modern scientific inquiry was this profound liberation from outdated dogmas, underscoring that the pursuit of human knowledge and future evolution rests on this foundation.