I Have Landed (20 page)

A conventional solution would try to dissolve the anomaly by arguing that Marx and Lankester shared far more similarity in belief or personality than appearances would indicate, or at least that each man hoped to gain something direct and practical from the relationship. But I do not think that this ordinary form of argument can possibly prevail in this case.

To be sure, Lankester maintained a highly complex and, in some important ways, almost secretive personality beneath his aura of Establishment respectability. But he displayed no tendencies at all to radicalism in politics, and he surely included no Marxist phase in what he might later have regarded as the folly of youth. But Lankester did manifest a fierce independence of spirit, a kind of dumb courage in the great individualistic British tradition of “I'll do as I see fit, and bugger you or the consequences”—an attitude that inevitably attracted all manner of personal trouble, but that also might have led Lankester to seek interesting friendships that more timid or opportunistic colleagues would have shunned.

Despite his basically conservative views in matters of biological theory, Lankester was a scrappy fighter by nature, an indomitable contrarian who relished professional debate, and never shunned acrimonious controversy. In a remarkable letter, his mentor T. H. Huxley, perhaps the most famous contrarian in the history of British biology, warned his protégé about the dangers of sapping time and strength in unnecessary conflict, particularly in the calmer times that had descended after the triumph of Darwin's revolution. Huxley wrote to Lankester on December 6, 1888:

To cite the two most public examples of his scrappy defense of science and skepticism, Lankester unmasked the American medium Henry Slade in
September 1876. Slade specialized in seances (at high fees), featuring spirits that wrote messages on a slate. Lankester, recognizing Slade's
modus operandi
, grabbed the slate from the medium's hands just before the spirits should have begun their ghostly composition. The slate already contained the messages supposedly set for later transmission from a higher realm of being. Lankester then sued Slade for conspiracy, but a magistrate found the medium guilty of the lesser charge of vagrancy, and sentenced him to three months at hard labor. Slade appealed and won on a technicality. The dogged Lankester then filed a new summons, but Slade decided to pack up and return to a more gullible America. (As an interesting footnote in the history of evolutionary biology, the spiritualistically inclined Alfred Russel Wallace testified on Slade's behalf, while Darwin, on the opposite side of rational skepticism, quietly contributed funds for Lankester's efforts in prosecution.)

Three years later, in the summer of 1879, Lankester visited the laboratory of the great French physician and neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. To test his theories on the role of electricity and magnetism in anesthesia, Charcot induced insensitivity by telling a patient to hold an electromagnet, energized by a bichromate battery, in her hand. Charcot then thrust large carpet needles into her affected arm and hand, apparently without causing any pain.

The skeptical Lankester, no doubt remembering the similar and fallacious procedures of Mesmer a century before, suspected psychological suggestion, rather than any physical effect of magnetism, as the cause of anesthesia. When Charcot left the room, Lankester surreptitiously emptied the chemicals out of the battery and replaced the fluid with ordinary water, thus disabling the device. He then urged Charcot to repeat the experiment—with the same result of full anesthesia! Lankester promptly confessed what he had done, and fully expected to be booted out of Charcot's lab
tout de suite
. But the great French scientist grabbed his hand and exclaimed, “Well done, Monsieur,” and a close friendship then developed between the two men.

One additional, and more conjectural, matter must be aired as we try to grasp the extent of Lankester's personal unconventionalities (despite his conservative stance in questions of biological theory) for potential insight into his willingness to ignore the social norms of his time. The existing literature maintains a wall of total silence on this issue, but the pattern seems unmistakable. Lankester remained a bachelor, although he often wrote about his loneliness and his desires for family life. He was twice slated for marriage, but both fiancées broke their engagements for mysterious and unstated reasons. He took long European vacations nearly every year, and nearly always to Paris, where he maintained clear distance from his professional colleagues. Late in life,
Lankester became an intimate platonic friend and admirer of the great ballerina Anna Pavlova. I can offer no proof, but if these behaviors don't point toward the love that may now be freely discussed, but then dared not speak its name (to paraphrase the one great line written by Oscar Wilde's paramour, Lord Alfred Douglas), well, then, Professor Lankester was far more mysterious and secretive than even I can imagine.

The famous
Vanity Fair
caricature of E. Ray Lankester, drawn by Spy
.

Still, none of these factors, while they may underscore Lankester's general willingness to engage in contentious and unconventional behavior, can explain any special propensity for friendship with a man like Karl Marx. (In particular, orthodox Marxists have always taken a dim view of personal, particularly sexual, idiosyncrasy as a self-centered diversion from the social goal of revolution.) Lankester did rail against the social conservatives of his day, particularly against hidebound preachers who opposed evolution, and university professors who demanded the standard curriculum of Latin and Greek in preference to any newfangled study of natural science.

But Lankester's reforming spirit centered only upon the advance of science—and his social attitudes, insofar as he discussed such issues at all, never
transcended the vague argument that increasing scientific knowledge might liberate the human spirit, thus leading to political reform and equality of opportunity. Again, this common attitude of rational scientific skepticism only evoked the disdain of orthodox Marxists, who viewed this position as a bourgeois escape for decent-minded people who lacked the courage to grapple with the true depth of social problems, and the consequent need for political revolution. As Feuer states in his article on Marx and Lankester: “Philosophically, moreover, Lankester stood firmly among the agnostics, the followers of Thomas Henry Huxley, whose standpoint Engels derided as a ‘shamefaced materialism.'”

If Lankester showed so little affinity for Marx's worldview, perhaps we should try the opposite route and ask if Marx had any intellectual or philosophical reason to seek Lankester's company. Again, after debunking some persistent mythology, we can find no evident basis for their friendship.

The mythology centers upon a notorious, if understandable, scholarly error that once suggested far more affinity between Marx and Darwin (or at least a one-way hero-worshiping of Darwin by Marx) than corrected evidence can validate. Marx did admire Darwin, and he did send an autographed copy
of Das Kapital
to the great naturalist. Darwin, in the only recorded contact between the two men, sent a short, polite, and basically contentless letter of thanks. We do know that Darwin (who read German poorly and professed little interest in political science) never spent much time with Marx's
magnum opus
. All but the first 105 pages in Darwin's copy of Marx's 822-page book remain uncut (as does the table of contents), and Darwin, contrary to his custom when reading books carefully, made no marginal annotations. In fact, we have no evidence that Darwin ever read a word
of Das Kapital
.

The legend of greater contact began with one of the few errors ever made by one of the finest scholars of this, or any other, century—Isaiah Berlin in his 1939 biography of Marx. Based on a dubious inference from Darwin's short letter of thanks to Marx, Berlin inferred that Marx had offered to dedicate volume two
of Das Kapital
to Darwin, and that Darwin had politely refused. This tale of Marx's proffered dedication then gained credence when a second letter, ostensibly from Darwin to Marx, but addressed only to “Dear Sir,” turned up among Marx's papers in the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. This letter, written on October 13, 1880, does politely decline a suggested dedication: “I Shd. prefer the Part or Volume not be dedicated to me (though I thank you for the intended honor) as it implies to a certain extent my approval of the general publication, about which I know nothing.” This second document seemed to seal Isaiah Berlin's case, and the story achieved general currency.

To shorten a long story, two scholars, working independently and simultaneously in the mid-1970s, discovered the almost comical basis of the error—see Margaret A. Fay, “Did Marx offer to dedicate
Capital
to Darwin”
(Journal of the History of Ideas
39 [1978]: 133–46); and Lewis S. Feuer, “Is the ‘Darwin-Marx correspondence' authentic?”
(Annals of Science
32: 1–12). Marx's daughter Eleanor became the common-law wife of the British socialist Edward Aveling. The couple safeguarded Marx's papers for several years, and the 1880 letter, evidently sent by Darwin to Aveling himself, must have strayed into the Marxian collection.

Aveling belonged to a group of radical atheists. He sought Darwin's official approval, and status as dedicatee, for a volume he had edited on Darwin's work and his (that is Aveling's, not necessarily Darwin's) view of its broader social meaning (published in 1881 as
The Student's Darwin
, volume two in the International Library of Science and Freethought). Darwin, who understood Aveling's opportunism and cared little for his antireligious militancy, refused with his customary politeness, but with no lack of firmness. Darwin ended his letter to Aveling (not to Marx, who did not treat religion as a primary subject in
Das Kapital)
by writing:

Nonetheless, despite this correction, Marx might still have regarded himself as a disciple of Darwin, and might have sought the company of a key Darwinian in the younger generation—a position rendered more plausible by Engels's famous comparison (quoted earlier) in his funerary oration. But this interpretation must also be rejected. Engels maintained far more interest in the natural sciences than did Marx (as best expressed in two books by Engels,
Anti-Dühring
and
The Dialectics of Nature)
. Marx, as stated above, certainly admired Darwin as a liberator of knowledge from social prejudice, and as a useful ally, at least by analogy. In a famous letter of 1869, Marx wrote to Engels about Darwin's
Origin of Species:
“Although it is developed in the crude English style, this is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.”

But Marx also criticized the social biases in Darwin's formulation, again writing to Engels, and with keen insight:

Marx remained a committed evolutionist, of course, but his interest in Darwin clearly diminished through the years. An extensive scholarly literature treats this subject, and I think that Margaret Fay speaks for a consensus when she writes (in her article previously cited):

To cite one final anecdote, the scholarly literature frequently cites Marx's great enthusiasm (until the more scientifically savvy Engels set him straight) for a curious book published in 1865 by the now (and deservedly) unknown French explorer and ethnologist P. Trémaux,
Origine et transformations de I'homme et des autres êtres
(Origin and Transformation of Man and Other Beings). Marx professed ardent admiration for this work, proclaiming it
einen Fortschritt über Darwin
(an advance over Darwin). The more sober Engels bought the book at Marx's urging, but then dampened his friend's ardor by writing: “I have arrived at the conclusion that there is nothing to his theory if for no other reason than because he neither understands geology nor is capable of the most ordinary literary historical criticism.”