Background
In the weeks before Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838, Charles Darwin sought medical advice for his mysterious physical symptoms. He then travelled to Scotland for rest and a "geologising expedition" but also revisited the old haunts of his undergraduate days. On the day of the coronation, 28 June 1838, Darwin was in Edinburgh. Two weeks later, he opened a private notebook—Notebook M—for philosophical speculation, and, over the next three months, filled it with his ideas about hereditary influences on the psychological aspects of life. Darwin also made his first attempt at autobiography in August 1838.
Darwin fully grasps his conception of natural selection towards the end of September 1838, after encountering the sixth edition of the Essay on Population (1826) by Thomas Malthus.[8][10][11] However, Malthus and his essay are strangely unmentioned in Notebook M, their acknowledgement delayed till October 1838 in Notebook N.
In Notebook M, Darwin describes conversations with his father—a successful doctor with a special interest in psychiatric problems—about recurring patterns of behavior in successive generations of his patients' families. Howard Gruber comments that these passages suggest genetic aspects to emotions and thought, and there is emphasis on the continuity between sane and insane.
Darwin was concerned about the materialistic drift in his thinking and the suspicions this might arouse in early Victorian England. At the time, he was mentally preparing for marriage with his cousin Emma Wedgwood, who held firm Christian beliefs. On 21 September 1838, Notebook M discloses a "confusing" dream where Darwin found himself involved in a public execution; the corpse had come to life and joked about not running away and facing death like a hero.
Darwin assembled the central features of his evolutionary theory while developing an appreciation of human behavior and family life; during this period, he was experiencing some emotional turmoil, largely expressed in physical symptoms.
A detailed discussion of the significance of Notebook M can be found in Paul H. Barrett's Metaphysics, Materialism and the Evolution of Mind – Early Writings of Charles Darwin (1980).
illustration of grief from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
