Charles and Emma by Deborah Heiligman Page A

“modification by natural selection.” He knew he had to study his idea in minute and exacting detail, in an organized and disciplined way. But he now had “a theory by which to work.” Observing Jenny, reading Malthus, thinking about the finches, he put it all together.
    He was beyond excited. He now knew for sure that this theory was going to be the governing force of the rest of his life.
    But what about Emma?
    His theory essentially eliminated God’s role in the process of creation. What would Emma think? He knew he was flirting with materialism, the philosophical doctrine that says that there are no spiritual or divine forces in nature, only matter. If Emma knew, would she want him to be flirting with her? In one of his notebooks he wrote, “Oh you materialist!” There was no denying—to himself—what he was becoming.
    This juxtaposition of his heart and mind gave him not only headaches but weird dreams. One night he had an anxiety attack that woke him up. Not to be deterred, he used himself as a specimen, just like Jenny, and made observations.
    â€œFear must be simple instinctive feeling,” he wrote in his “M” notebook, a dark red leather one marked “private” inside because he was filling it with thoughts about emotions and mental issues—his own and those of his family and his friends. “I have awakened in the night being slightly unwell & felt so much afraid though my reason was laughing & told me there was nothing, & tried to seize hold of objects to be frightened at.”
    He watched himself carefully and in the dim light recorded, “The sensation of fear is accompanied by troubled beating of heart, sweat, trembling of muscles.” He asked himself how his fear related to what happened in the jungle to an animal scared by a predator: “are not these effects of violent running away,” he scribbled.
    Looking back at early man, perhaps, or at his ape cousins, he saw that running away was what you did instinctively when you were afraid; retreating was the usual effect of fear. Hecould relate to the instinct to run away. Wouldn’t it be easier to run than to confront the object of your fear? But what if you could not run fast enough to get away? Could an orangutan outrun a lion? What were the other options? You could play dead: “the state of collapse may be imitation of death, which many animals put on.” Should he play dead with Emma? Just forget the idea of marrying her? Or of marrying at all?
    He was anxious not because he thought he was wrong about the origin of species, but because he felt sure he was right. He knew what he had to say would be shocking to Emma and others who believed that God was the creator of all species. And he knew that if he confessed that he thought God was not part of the equation, he would hurt people close to him, especially the woman with whom he wanted to share his life.
    â€œConceal your doubts!” his father had said. He just couldn’t. Not completely. He could not lie. But maybe he didn’t have to tell everything he was thinking. He wrote to himself, in his notebook, just after his anxiety attack, that he would “avoid stating how far, I believe, in Materialism.” He didn’t have to tell the whole thing. Yet.
    He wrote down his thoughts about marriage again, this time focusing not on the “if” but on the “when.” “If one does not marry soon, one misses so much good pure happiness—”of caressing his wife, of feeling that flush of passion. But what about adventure? If he married soon, “I never should know French,—or see the Continent,—or go to America, or go up in a Balloon, or take solitary trip in Wales…” But again he came to the same conclusion: “Never mind my boy—Cheer up—One cannot live this solitary life, with groggy old age, friendless and cold and childless staring one in one’s face,