The article on Oken in the eighth edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is signed "R.O.": Huxley wrote to Darwin (April 18th, 1864), "There is not the smallest question that Owen wrote both the article 'Oken' and the 'Archetype' Book" (Huxley's "Life," I., page 250). Mr. Huxley's statements amount to this: (1) Prof. Owen accuses Goethe of having in 1820 appropriated Oken's theory of the skull, and of having given an apocryphal account of how the idea occurred to himself in 1790. (2) in the same article, page 502, Owen stated it to be questionable whether the discoverer of the true theory of the segmental constitution of the skull (i.e. himself) was excited to his labours, or "in any way influenced by the a priori guesses of Oken." On this Huxley writes, page 288: "But if he himself had not been in any way influenced by Oken, and if the 'Programm' [of Oken] is a mere mass of 'a priori guesses,' how comes it that only three years before Mr. Owen could write thus? 'Oken, ce genie profond et penetrant, fut le premier qui entrevit la verite, guide par l'heureuse idee de l'arrangement des os craniens en segments, comme ceux du rachis, appeles vertebres...'" Later on Owen wrote: "Cela servira pour exemple d'une examen scrupuleux des faits, d'une appreciation philosophique de leurs relations et analogies, etc." (From "Principes d'Osteologie comparee, ou Recherches sur l'Archetype," etc., pages 155, 1855). (3) Finally Huxley says, page 289, plainly: "The fact is that, so far from not having been 'in any way influenced' by Oken, Prof. Owen's own contributions to this question are the merest Okenism, remanie.") and the French work on the Archetype (points you do not put quite clearly), he never did a baser act...You are so good a Christian that you will hardly understand how I chuckle over this bit of baseness. I hope you keep well and hearty; I honour your wisdom at giving up at present Society for Science. But, on the other hand, I feel it in myself possible to get to care too much for Natural Science and too little for other things. I am getting better, I almost dare to hope permanently; for my sickness is decidedly less--for twenty-seven days consecutively I was sick many times daily, and lately I was five days free. I long to do a little work again. The magnificent (by far the most magnificent, and too magnificent) compliment which you paid me at the end of your "Origin of Species" (175/4. A title applied to the "Lectures to Working Men," that "green little book" referred to in Letter 156. Speaking of Mr. Darwin's work he says (page 156): "I believe that if you strip it of its theoretical part, it still remains one of the greatest encyclopaedias of biological doctrine that any one man ever brought forth; and I believe that, if you take it as the embodiment of an hypothesis, it is destined to be the guide of biological and psychological speculation for the next three or four generations.') I have met with reprinted from you two or three times lately.
LETTER 175A. TO ERASMUS DARWIN. Down, June 30th, 1864.
(175A.1. The preceding letter contains a reference to the prolonged period of ill-health which Darwin suffered in 1863 and 1864, and in this connection the present letter is of interest.
The Copley Medal was given to him in 1864.)
I had not heard a word about the Copley Medal. Please give Falconer my cordial thanks for his interest about me. I enclose the list of everything published by me except a few unimportant papers. Ask Falconer not to mention that I sent the list, as some one might say I had been canvassing, which is an odious imputation. The origin of the Voyage in the "Beagle" was that Fitz-Roy generously offered to give up half his cabin to any one who would volunteer to go as naturalist. Beaufort wrote to Cambridge, and I volunteered. Fitz-Roy never persuaded me to give up the voyage on account of sickness, nor did I ever think of doing so, though I suffered considerably; but I do not believe it was the cause of my subsequent ill- health, which has lost me so many years, and therefore I should not think the sea-sickness was worth notice.